Government

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing next Thursday at 11 a.m. on banning smoking of all types within 500 feet of lifeguarded areas while lifeguards are on duty.

While the East Hampton Town Board is preparing for a hearing next Thursday on written procedures to make "hybrid" meetings permanent, the East Hampton Town Trustees held a hearing on Monday and afterward unanimously adopted their own written procedures for the use of video conferencing to conduct their meetings.

The East Hampton Town Board voted on Tuesday to adopt an amendment to the town code that expands the definition of litter to include soil, loam, dirt, gravel, and sand; prohibits drag-out of such materials onto public roadways, and requires that the contents of any vehicle containing yard waste be covered and secured. The vote followed an April 7 public hearing on the proposed amendment.

A group working on implementation of the Wainscott hamlet study took a close look at the possibility of burying the power lines on Montauk Highway when it met last week. 

The East Hampton Town Board is moving forward with its plan to close East Hampton Airport on Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. and reopen it 33 hours later as the private-use East Hampton Town Airport.

The East Hampton Town Trustees voted on Monday to accept the proposal from Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences for his lab's 2022 water quality monitoring program, and also accepted his proposal for a sediment survey of Accabonac Harbor.

The installation of the temporary “cell on wheels” that is to be sited on Gann Road in Springs until a permanent emergency communications tower is designed and constructed elsewhere in the hamlet has been delayed because of “supply chain issues,” the East Hampton Town Board was told on Tuesday.

Following the New York State Court of Appeals ruling last week that the Democratic-controlled State Legislature’s redrawing of congressional and State Senate districts violated the State Constitution, New York’s primary elections will be postponed from June to August 23 as a neutral expert draws new district maps.

Fishermen on the South Fork are angered by the placement in August of several dozen 500-pound concrete blocks on the ocean floor off Wainscott, moorings for the telemetry devices in use for the South Fork Wind Fisheries Study Work Plan that was a condition for the East Hampton Town Trustees’ lease agreement allowing the South Fork Wind farm’s transmission cable to make landfall on a beach under their jurisdiction.

The currently projected range of sea level rise “will transform East Hampton into a series of islands with permanent submergence of low-lying areas as early as 2070.” That is the ominous conclusion that leads a draft of the town’s Coastal Assessment and Resiliency Plan, issued last week.

East Hampton Town’s Water Quality Technical Advisory Committee recommended to the town board on Tuesday the funding of five projects with $545,543 from the portion of the community preservation fund allocated to water quality improvements.

The effort to preserve the Springs house and studios of the late Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park had another boost yesterday with the announcement that the National Trust for Historic Preservation has included the site on its annual list of the 11 most endangered historic places in the United States.