Government

Three weeks before a Democratic Party primary in which East Hampton Town Councilman Jeff Bragman will challenge Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, a furious argument broke out among the town board, with Mr. Bragman seizing on a letter from the town's board of ethics that criticized town board members for having taken guests to a May 7 event at the Clubhouse in Wainscott honoring pandemic frontline workers and food pantry staff and featuring a performance by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jon Bon Jovi.

Aidan Corish and Bob Plumb, Sag Harbor Village Trustees who are running to keep their seats in the June 15 village election, talked this week about their separate priorities. Mr. Corish, Mr. Plumb, and a first-time candidate, Bayard Fenwick, are vying for two seats on the village board.

East Hampton Town and the Marram Montauk resort, the former Atlantic Terrace motel located on the ocean beach near the hamlet's downtown, have settled a lawsuit brought by the town last year. The case stemmed from use of unapproved bar areas and a snack bar that the town said had been converted to a full-service restaurant without approval.

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to approve use of an aquatic weed harvester in Georgica Pond on Thursday. Used in the pond in the summers of 2016, 2017, and 2018, and on a limited basis last year, the harvester is part of a multifaceted effort to alleviate conditions that have promoted blooms of toxic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that have fouled the pond every summer for almost a decade.

Court records in a legal tangle between East Hampton Town and the owner of several Montauk resort and restaurant properties outline a series of secret conversations kept out of public view until now.

New legislation prohibits seaplanes from taking off, landing, taxiing, mooring, or taking on or discharging passengers on or from town beaches and waterways, trustee waters and beaches, or town docks or floats. The prohibition also applies to helicopters, making exceptions for Gardiner's Island, East Hampton Airport, and the Montauk Airport.

The East Hampton Town Board unanimously passed a resolution in support of a home rule request concerning companion bills in the New York State Legislature that would stagger the terms of office for the nine-member town trustees and increase the trustees' terms from two to four years.

Sag Harbor Village Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy, who is running for a second term in the June 15 election, touted her leadership during the pandemic, and said that if re-elected she would continue her efforts to improve water quality and protect the village's waterfront from overdevelopment, and would initiate a village-wide traffic study. Ms. Mulcahy is running against James Larocca, a trustee making his first bid for mayor.

The East Hampton Independence Party submitted nominating petitions with around 500 signatures to the Suffolk County Board of Elections last week, far more than the 277 valid signatures required in order for its candidates to appear on the Nov. 2 ballot.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork will sponsor three virtual candidates debates for town and village elections next week.

A proposal to reconfigure parking on portions of Newtown Lane and in parts of East Hampton Village's downtown Reutershan parking lot from parallel to angled, drive-in spaces was approved in a party-line vote. The lines will be restriped in the coming weeks, as soon as the temperature allows, Mayor Jerry Larsen said.

Members of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council's fisheries advisory board strongly objected to the council's conclusion that the South Fork Wind Farm's new "minimization alternative" -- 12 wind turbine generators instead of 15, reducing its footprint -- and a $12 million fisheries compensation package, are consistent with the state's Ocean Special Area Management Plan.

The Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court has ruled that the Department of Environmental Conservation overstepped its authority in granting more width and more depth for the Sand Land mine in Noyac.

The East Hampton Village Board approved an agreement that will allow Tesla, the electric vehicle company, to operate charging stations in the municipal parking lot on Osborne Lane.

Protection and remediation of water bodies were on the agenda at last Thursday's meeting of the East Hampton Town Board. Public hearings on proposals to expand the water protection district and award grants to six projects drew only positive comment from the public and the board. 

After Sag Harbor Village began charging for parking spaces in the Long Wharf lot on Friday, residents and visitors said they were dismayed that yet another cost has been added to daily life on the South Fork.

The East Hampton Town Trustees' virtual meeting on Monday will include a presentation on the acoustic telemetry studies and trawl surveys associated with the South Fork Wind farm's export cable, which is to make landfall at the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott. Researchers from Stony Brook University, Monmouth University, and Cornell Cooperative Extension will discuss their findings.

The East Hampton Town Planning Department gave a qualified recommendation for the town board to approve the use of an aquatic weed harvester to remove macroalgae from Georgica Pond this year, but wants more collaboration with the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, which operates the harvester, "to get a better handle on how the project can go forward and reap the benefits it's provided and ensure there aren't any adverse impacts that haven't been identified."

The annual sand replenishment at the ocean beach in downtown Montauk is complete, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told his colleagues on the town board on Tuesday.

A new East Hampton Town law prohibiting the use of gas or diesel-powered leaf blowers rom May 20 to Sept. 20 went into effect on Thursday. The law also established a licensing requirement for commercial landscapers engaged in property maintenance, and is intended to encourage "green" landscaping practices, such as electric leaf blowers, which are free of emissions and quieter than their fossil fuel-powered counterparts.

Two years after banning the intentional release of balloons, the East Hampton Town Board appears poised to go further by also enacting a ban on the sale and distribution of filled latex and Mylar balloons.

On Wednesday for the first time since Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo imposed an executive order 13 months ago requiring face coverings in public, people could go into a store or a walk down Main Street without a mask -- provided they were fully vaccinated. The change comes as the number of vaccinated people continues to grow and the infection rate across the state and here in Suffolk County drops to levels not seen since September and October.

The proposal from the Promised Land Kelp Company is for an initial pilot program at locations in Napeague Harbor, Three Mile Harbor, and the near Northwest Harbor County Park to determine the optimum site for growth, followed by a long-term program at the site that proves to be best. "These areas have historically been nonproductive shellfishing areas, especially for bay scallops," according to a letter from the company.

Effective Wednesday in New York, people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 no longer need to wear masks or physically distance, both indoors and out. Immunocompromised and unvaccinated people should continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing, and masks will still be required in schools and correctional and health care facilities, on public transportation and in nursing homes and homeless shelters.

East Hampton and Sag Harbor Villages will begin charging for some prime parking spaces in their commercial districts in the coming days, and both will use ParkMobile, a smartphone app-based payment service. 

When the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jon Bon Jovi walked up to a microphone at a benefit concert at an East Hampton sports complex on Friday, he might not have imagined that he was also stepping into a potential ethics controversy.

Consultants hired by the town to study aircraft activity at East Hampton Airport, including noise complaints and the potential economic impact of closing the airport, told the town board on Tuesday that after four consecutive years of increases, the number of flights between July 2 and Sept. 30, 2020, was 35 percent lower than in 2019, but because of the pandemic, "2020 was a unique year, and it's a bit of an outlier."

A proposal that would impose term limits on East Hampton Village's elected officials, a tentative budget for the next fiscal year, and the impact of the state's marijuana legalization were discussed at a village board meeting last Thursday. The board also announced that a public hearing will be held on Friday, May 21, on a proposal to convert parallel parking spaces to angled, drive-in ones on parts of Newtown Lane.

Amos Goodman, a former chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, last week pleaded guilty in Suffolk County First District Court to one misdemeanor and three violations after being charged in 2018 with 20 felonies when, during his time as chairman, he was accused of forging signatures on candidate petitions for an East Hampton Town special election.

James Larocca, a Sag Harbor Village trustee, is challenging Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy in the June 15 election. The mayor "ran on the promise of developing an overarching master plan, and the absence of such is one of the biggest problems we have in combating this wave of money and developers that are now swarming all over the west side of town," he said.