Government

A request from State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele and environmental advocates that East Hampton Town allocate 2 percent of funds it receives from the Peconic Bay Region's Community Preservation Fund to the Peconic Estuary Partnership was endorsed by the town board on Tuesday.

Seeking a site for the construction of a sewage treatment facility, the East Hampton Village Board narrowed the options down to two village-owned properties at a meeting on Friday. In the running are a vacant lot just north of the railroad trestle on North Main Street, and the Accabonac Road parcel that is home to the Department of Public Works.

A seven-acre property at 403 Abraham’s Path in Amagansett is the site for a proposed new East Hampton Town senior citizens center.

East Hampton Town is seeking additional volunteers to help staff a first-dose vaccination clinic on Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. at its Center for Humanities on Stephen Hand's Path. Those interested have been asked to call Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc's office on Friday.

For elderly residents still in need of a Covid-19 vaccination, including the homebound and those lacking the computer skills needed to schedule an appointment, East Hampton Town is offering help through the Human Services Department, and other organizations are also looking to help.

Summer water temperatures are rising in East Hampton, stressing organisms including bivalves and seagrasses. Meanwhile, the water quality in Wainscott Pond is rapidly worsening, with 2020 measurements of a toxin "unlike anything we'd ever seen," the town trustees were told on Monday.

Bay Street Theater’s plans for a new theater complex adjacent to Steinbeck Park in Sag Harbor may be too ambitious for the good of the village, Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy said. “We want to keep Bay Street in Sag Harbor, but we don’t want to be a local theater surrounded by a village.”

The East Hampton Town Board took a step closer to adopting a more stringent building code at its work session on Tuesday. Among other things, the new law would require new construction and major renovations to achieve maximum efficiency through technology and design, in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The removal of a mulberry tree, native beach plums and roses, and other plants in late March was one outcome of Southampton Town maintenance workers coming to "scrape" the parking lot at Long Beach to prevent vegetation from encroaching. But not only did the plants serve as habitats for many native animals, environmental advocates say, they also anchored the beach against erosion.

CSEA members ratified the agreement in an April 7 vote, with 74 percent in favor. The ratification, announced in a statement issued from Town Hall on Tuesday, comes more than two years after the previous contract expired. Negotiations commenced in 2018, prior to its expiration, but a mediator was called in when the parties reached an impasse.

This year, high school seniors can expect graduation ceremonies that inch closer to the traditional norms of past years, thanks to new guidelines announced by New York's governor on Monday which expand capacity over 2020's limitations.

Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott, whose petition to force a vote to incorporate a 4.4-square-mile expanse of the hamlet was rejected by East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc last month, will prepare a new petition to present later this year. 

East Hampton Town's water quality technical advisory committee has issued recommendations to the town board to fund four projects using money from the portion of the community preservation fund allocated to water quality improvements.

Existing armor stones weighing 5 to 10 tons will be removed from about 1,000 linear feet of the sea wall in front of the Lighthouse, to be reused elsewhere. In their place, contractors will install 10-to-15-ton stones.

Representatives from the New York Power Authority pitched the East Hampton Town Board on the New York Energy Manager utility bill integration platform on Tuesday. The subscription service, which allows users to access and view usage and billing data for all utility accounts in one place, is of interest to town officials in part as a tool for identifying and implementing energy saving measures.

Two members of the East Hampton Town Board expressed wholehearted support for the "decriminalization" of marijuana on Tuesday, one week after the New York State Legislature voted to legalize it for adult recreational use, but said that the board should move slowly in deciding whether to opt out of allowing its retail sale in the town.

East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen introduced a new scaled-back proposal to charge for parking in the Reutershan and Schenck parking lots at a village board meeting last Thursday, and the board discussed plans to provide free Wi-Fi in the commercial district, to allow Tesla, the electric car company, to install charging stations in the small municipal parking lot on Osborne Lane, and to lift bans on drinking alcohol and smoking on village beaches.

An at-times furious argument ran throughout the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee's meeting Saturday as a resident of the hamlet repeatedly accused the East Hampton Town Board of misleading the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Suffolk County Health Department as to firefighting foam stored at East Hampton Airport.

Representative Lee Zeldin of New York's First Congressional District on Thursday announced he will seek the Republican nomination in the next gubernatorial election, which is in 2022.

A proposal that would allow outdoor dining to become a post-pandemic fixture in East Hampton Village's commercial district and at its historic inns was introduced at a village board meeting on Thursday and will be the subject of a public hearing on Friday, April 16. 

The theater provided a first glimpse of architectural renderings of the new complex it will build in Sag Harbor, and announced that Friends of Bay Street is seeking to purchase and tear down 2 Main Street, an adjacent building that is home to the K-Pasa restaurant and the Espresso Da Asporto and the Yummylicious! food shops. 

In a striking reversal of former President Trump's energy policies, the Biden administration announced on Monday a set of actions that would significantly expand offshore wind projects, including the creation of a new wind energy area in the New York Bight and the acceleration of the permit process for other projects along the Atlantic Coast.

New rates for federal flood insurance that were to take effect today are on hold after Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the majority leader, objected. Mr. Schumer said that the rate changes, intended to more accurately reflect risk, would increase costs to residents of Long Island.

The East Hampton Town Trustees have given unanimous approval to the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, a group of pondfront property owners, to employ an aquatic weed harvester to extract plant material from the pond this summer, continuing an action that in the past has had measurable results in discouraging the harmful algal blooms that have fouled the 380-acre water body over the last several years.

The new owner of the Palm restaurant and Huntting Inn in East Hampton Village wants to add a pool with a hot tub, cabanas, and a patio to the property, and to renovate the building, which dates to 1699, to make it accessible to people with disabilities.

A disagreement about safety has led to a standoff between the Bay Street Theater, which is seeking to hold its summer season in a tent in Steinbeck Park, and the Sag Harbor Village Board, which has thus far nixed the plan, citing concerns about noise, crowding, traffic flow, and other quality-of-life issues.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has introduced legislation to facilitate the development of community choice aggregation programs in the Long Island Power Authority's service territory. Community choice aggregation, C.C.A., allows a local government to procure electricity and/or natural gas on behalf of its residents, businesses, and municipal accounts from a provider other than its current utility.

Nominating petitions for three East Hampton Town Democrats who hope to force a primary election in June — Jeff Bragman, John Whelan, and Rick Drew — were delivered to the Suffolk County Board of Elections last week, and the would-be candidates, two of them incumbents, were upbeat this week about their prospects. 

The New York State Legislature voted on Tuesday to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use, joining a growing cadre of states that see green in the leaves and flowers of cannabis. Local reaction ranges from concerned to "cautiously optimistic."

The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct has admonished East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana for “inappropriate political activity” during the 2019 election campaign. The matter was first reported in The East Hampton Star.