Government

President-elect Joseph Biden is expected to nominate Antony Blinken, who has a connection to East Hampton, to the cabinet position of secretary of state. Mr. Blinken's father is Donald Blinken of Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton Village, who is a former United States Ambassador to Hungary.

Plans to create a wastewater management district for downtown Montauk took another step forward on Tuesday when an official from the East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department offered recommendations for the hiring of consulting and engineering services for the project. 

The count of absentee ballots sent by voters in New York's First Congressional District is expected to begin Thursday, an official at the Suffolk County Board of Elections said on Tuesday. 

The activist group Progressive East End Reformers has set Dec. 1 at 3 p.m. as a tentative date to mobilize to support President-elect Joe Biden's apparent Electoral College victory. The group's gathering would take place at the Bridgehampton Community House.

Ideas for addressing and mitigating climate change came fast at Monday's meeting of East Hampton Town's energy sustainability committee, with with Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board's liaison, listing potential capital projects, including more solar arrays, pollinator gardens underneath them, and closed-loop geothermal heating and cooling systems for town buildings.

People visiting ocean beaches from East Hampton to Sagaponack on Sunday were surprised to behold the Loredo Brazos, a massive barge standing out of the water just offshore at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott. The barge and a second vessel are conducting survey work for a transmission cable for the proposed South Fork Wind farm, to be situated approximately 35 miles off Montauk.

Adopting a building construction code that would mandate greater energy efficiency and solar and electric vehicle-charging readiness would move East Hampton closer to the goal of achieving its energy needs from renewable sources and help New York State realize the steep emissions cuts mandated by the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the town board was told on Tuesday.

The large lift boat that is conducting geotechnical survey work off the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott is to move closer to shore on Wednesday evening, a spokeswoman for the developers of the proposed South Fork Wind farm said.

As soon as Monday, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy will conduct geotechnical assessments that will involve soil borings and measurements of the sea floor off the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott.

The East Hampton Town Board adopted a flurry of resolutions last Thursday that enable the town to implement a community choice aggregation program, revise its music entertainment permit, and, on the recommendation of its water quality technical advisory committee, allocate money for multiple remediation projects.

Items such as a nearly $500,000 police communications van, a $1.3 million tower ladder fire truck, and nearly $5 million for the purchase of public works vehicles and infrastructure improvements are on the lisst to be included in the village's five-year capital plan. 

Though Representative Lee Zeldin has a commanding lead in his re-election campaign in New York's First Congressional District, Nancy Goroff, his Democratic Party challenger, has yet to concede, telling supporters on Sunday that the contest is far from over. The same is true in the race to replace State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle.

One year after the last election and one year ahead of the next one, the East Hampton Town Trustees took up the question of how the nine-member governing body is chosen, holding the first formal discussion of staggered election cycles on Monday.

Reaction on the South Fork was muted, at least publicly, when the Associated Press and major news networks announced on Saturday that former Vice President Joe Biden had won the presidential election, voters having rejected the norm-shattering reign of President Trump after one term.

A reconfiguration of East Hampton Village government in which Marcos Baladron, the new village administrator, relinquished the post's former duties of clerk and treasurer, and Pamela Bennett, the deputy clerk, and Dominique Cummings, the deputy treasurer, assumed those offices respectively, was approved by the village board last Thursday. 

Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott, a group formed in opposition to the plan to land the proposed South Fork Wind farm's export cable at the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in that hamlet, shared its views with the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee on Saturday.

Open-loop geothermal systems for a typical 2,000-square-foot house require about 15 gallons per minute, or more than 21,000 gallons per day of continuous water usage. Houses larger than 10,000 square feet can have systems that use in excess of 50 gallons per minute, or 72,000 gallons per day.

With Suffolk County reporting a steady increase in the Covid-19 positivity rate, East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen announced on Monday that Village Hall will be closed to the public starting Thursday and through the end of the year.

The proposed South Fork Wind farm's export cable will not come ashore at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett, the clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees flatly told the New York State Public Service Commission last week.

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to vote today to begin the process of adopting a community choice aggregation program. Community choice aggregation, or 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 the incumbent utility.

If you're going to talk to someone in the aftermath of what's shaping up to be the most confounding presidential election in two decades, Julian Zelizer is your man.

Consultants hired by Sag Harbor Village to create a new zoning code that will control its redevelopment presented the goals of the project on Oct. 28 at a village board meeting. Marta Goldsmith, director of the nonprofit Form-Based Institute, said the new code will be designed to protect the village's historic charm and water quality, preserve and enhance views and access to the water and open spaces, and maintain a diversity of architectural styles.

As the pandemic continues into the colder months, East End restaurants are extending the outdoor dining season with the use of heaters, tents, and igloos, and the East Hampton Town Board is seeking to draft a law that would allow restaurants to transfer up to 100 percent of their seating capacity from indoors to outdoors.

The Suffolk County Health Department traced a cluster of Covid-19 infections to the early voting site at the Stony Brook Southampton campus, County Executive Steve Bellone said in press briefing on Wednesday.

Voting this year for the first time, local teens weren't just #adulting — a popular hashtag that means taking grown-up life seriously, and a term that teens may not even be using anymore these days. Instead, they headed to the polls equipped with information and intent, determined to make their voices count.

Monday morning dawned bright with a stiff, northwesterly wind on the bay as I lifted the bedroom shades. I squinted as I tried to focus on my surroundings from the second floor. It was a little after 7, and not a single boat was in view. It was a sad sight to see but not a total surprise.

The counting of some 75,000 ballots cast by mail in New York's First Congressional District will not begin until next week, but as of yesterday Representative Lee Zeldin appeared headed for a landslide win in his quest for a fourth term.

With early voting and Election Day votes counted, the Republican incumbent Lee Zeldin appears to be the winner of the race to represent the First Congressional District, having garnered 61.31 percent of those votes to Nancy Goroff's 38.66 percent, according to unofficial totals from the Suffolk County Board of Elections.

If you're voting Tuesday, you have until 9 p.m. to cast a ballot at your regular polling place. Not sure where to vote? You can look it up at here, and here's a list of polling places by election district in East Hampton Town and eastern Southampton Town.

Since March, when fear of Covid-19 drove many second-home owners into town prematurely, and many of them permanently, the East Hampton Recycling Center has absorbed a vast surge in recyclable and non-recyclable materials.