Government

In this closer-to-normal summer than during pandemic-impacted 2020, many residents are pleading with the town board to close the airport or severely restrict flights when Federal Aviation Administration grant assurances expire in September.

After being sworn in as mayor of Sag Harbor Village at a ceremony in John Steinbeck Waterfront Park on Tuesday, James Larocca asked residents to leave the "hard-fought election" behind them and rally together to focus on issues such as protecting the waterfront and water quality, developing affordable housing, and addressing the village's longstanding lack of parking.

New York State has $110 million available to fund community-based mobility and environmental initiatives. The money will support projects focusing on safety and accessibility in public transportation as part of the Transportation Alternatives Program and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program. 

The Southampton Town Board approved a ban on helium and gas-filled balloons on June 22, and is giving businesses a year to pivot away from them before it goes into effect.

At the start of last Thursday's meeting, Mayor Jerry Larsen apologized for the village's failure to put out American flags on June 19 in honor of the first observance of Juneteenth — a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the nation — as a federal holiday.

A public hearing on a proposed code amendment that would prohibit trucks greater than nine tons from a stretch of Accabonac Road in East Hampton drew three speakers urging its adoption, and one opposing it, as the East Hampton Town Board met in person for the first time in 16 months last Thursday.

Representative Lee Zeldin of New York's First Congressional District is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee for governor of New York, following the state party's straw poll of county Republican committees last week. The congressman, who declared his candidacy in April, won more than 85 percent of the vote.

The New York State Public Service Commission will hold a virtual public statement hearing on Wednesday at 1 p.m. regarding a petition filed by the developers of the South Fork Wind farm. The deadline for registering for public comment is Tuesday at 3 p.m.

The site, at climatechangeresources.org, is to serve as a one-stop portal for anyone seeking information and wanting to take action on climate change. It was founded by Lena Tabori, an East Hampton resident and a member of the town's energy sustainability advisory committee, and Mike Shatzkin, a media consultant.

The public will have a chance to comment on the "revisioning" of East Hampton Airport, in person or remotely, at a town board work session on Tuesday at 11 a.m. The meeting will be broadcast live on LTV and via its website.

The East Hampton Town in-person meetings will resume at Town Hall today, with a 2 p.m. town board meeting, but some officials, citing the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus and compromised immune systems, are not ready to return to the format.

An ongoing boom in the real estate market produced nearly $94 million in revenue for the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund in the first five months of 2021, the highest five-month total in the program's history, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. announced last week.

The Suffolk Board of Elections certified the results of East Hampton Town's June 22 Democratic primary on Tuesday, with little change to the outcome.

After absentee ballots had been counted on Tuesday, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, who is seeking a third term, had held off a challenge by Councilman Jeff Bragman, winning the primary by 1,102 to 864 votes, or 56 percent to 44 percent.

In an organized act of civil disobedience, East Hampton baymen and their supporters drove a caravan of 39 trucks onto what is popularly known as Truck Beach on Napeague on Sunday morning to assert what they believe is their right to use, and drive on, the ocean beach there. 

East Hampton Town will buy 32.6 acres of farmland in Amagansett from the Bistrian family using $28 million from the community preservation fund, the town announced on Tuesday. The acquisition, following years of discussion and negotiation, is the town's largest of farmland to date.

"I'm excited, you can tell," Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming said about the new Suffolk Transit On-Demand service along Noyac Road from Sag Harbor to Southampton Village. The project has been at the heart of Ms. Fleming's work since her election in 2015, shortly after which eight bus routes were cut from service because of budgetary constraints.

Thirty-three years after joining East Hampton Town's Planning Department, JoAnne Pahwul, the department's director for the last two years, retired on Friday. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc recognized Ms. Pahwul at the town board's meeting last Thursday. She "served our community extremely well over all of those many years," he said, noting her rise to senior planner, assistant director, and director. "Thank you for helping keep East Hampton the beautiful place it is today." 

Free Wi-Fi is up and running at East Hampton Village's Main Beach and is coming soon to its other beaches and commercial district but with a requirement that did not sit well with two village trustees.

The East Hampton Town Board's plan to begin implementing recommendations from the Wainscott hamlet study, adopted and incorporated into the comprehensive plan last year, got off to a bumpy start with last Thursday's public hearing on a proposed amendment to the zoning code that would reclassify a stretch of Montauk Highway in the commercial district from central business to a single-family residence designation with limited business overlay.

The East Hampton Town Board approved the immediate addition of sand to the ocean beaches at Ditch Plain in Montauk as well as to the hamlet's downtown beach following a Memorial Day weekend northeaster that rendered the former beach unsafe and partially exposed geotextile bags installed to stabilize the downtown beach several years ago.

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc is the apparent winner in Tuesday’s Democratic Party primary election, holding off a challenge from Councilman Jeff Bragman, and his running mates, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and Cate Rogers, chairwoman of the East Hampton Democratic Committee, also prevailed in the three-way race for the Democratic nomination for town board.

The Hampton Hopper, a seasonal bus service serving Montauk that was suspended during the pandemic last year, will resume service as soon as Thursday, with an expanded service territory.

"The emergency is over," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Wedneday. Fifteen months after invoking emergency powers to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, he announced that the state of emergency will end on Thursday.

As of Monday, 71 percent of New Yorkers 18 and older had gotten at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control. To make it easier for people 12 and up to join the ranks of those partially or fully vaccinated locally, New York State will add Tuesday and Wednesday evening hours at its mass vaccination site at the Stony Brook Southampton college campus. 

An attorney representing East Hampton Town baymen said this week that his clients are prepared to "storm the beaches" if they are turned away from the stretch of ocean beach on Napeague where the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division ruled earlier this year that town residents have no inherent access rights.

A Cornell Cooperative Extension shellfish ecologist plans to monitor scallop reproduction, growth, and survival in Napeague Harbor and record data including water temperature, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll A, and pH, a measurement of the water's acidity or alkalinity.

The Suffolk County Public Works Department's Division of Vector Control commenced the aerial application of mosquito larvicides this week, but Accabonac Harbor was not among the targeted areas.

The Health Department announced on Monday that starting the next day marshes across the county would be treated with methoprene, a larvicide, and Bti, a naturally occurring bacterium that contains toxin-producing spores that affect mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae. The spraying was to have continued through today.

Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island will receive $160,000 in New York State funding to help residents get money from the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

On the same day that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the lifting of most remaining Covid-19-related restrictions, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told his colleagues on the town board of his intention to resume in-person meetings with the July 6 work session. 

Companion bills in the New York State Legislature that would stagger the terms of office for the nine-member East Hampton Town Trustees and increase the trustees' terms from two to four years passed in the State Senate and Assembly last week.