Government

On a recent Sunday morning, the Rev. Karen Ann Campbell of Sag Harbor’s Christ Episcopal Church delivered a sermon reminding her congregation that “we were all once strangers” so “we must therefore always welcome the stranger.”

Once again, for the third time since last October, East Hampton Town has sent a formal letter of protest to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation opposing expansion of the Sand Highway L.L.C. mine on Middle Highway in East Hampton.

East Hampton Town’s tentative budget for 2020, unveiled on Tuesday, calls for $81.87 million of spending, representing an overall increase of about 1.42 percent. If adopted as is, the budget would remain slightly under the New York State-mandated tax levy cap.

The Town of East Hampton has prohibited Analar Corporation, a New Jersey-based charter helicopter provider and management service for aircraft owners, from using East Hampton Airport for 90 days, citing multiple “unsafe and reckless” operations.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has co-sponsored a bill that would permit cities, towns, and villages to reduce maximum speed limits on local roads from 30 to 25 miles per hour.

For those who remember David Gruber’s early involvement in East Hampton politics, his alliance this election year with the local Republican Party might seem an unlikely pairing.

Imagine a village with fewer empty stores in the off-season, with more cafes and affordable apartments in “bungalow courts.”

Those are a few of the potential changes a civil engineering firm hired by the East Hampton Village Board on Friday will explore as it develops plans to revitalize East Hampton Village’s commercial district, provide a sewage treatment system for the area, and increase parking and affordable housing.

For the first eight months of 2019, revenues for the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund are down by nearly 21 percent from the same period last year.

A new policy handed down by the Trump administration last month will limit the ability of immigrants to obtain visas and apply for permanent residence. The “public charge” ruling, as it is known, pertains to applications by people who have used or are even likely to use many types of government benefits.

As if to underscore the validity of her words, Greta Thunberg twice interrupted her remarks to call for heat-related medical attention for one of the youthful mass gathered under the late-summer sun in Manhattan's Battery Park on Friday afternoon, the 16-year-old climate activist's appearance the culmination of the Youth Climate Strike that drew tens of thousands of students, some of them from East Hampton. 

In a move it described as precautionary, the Suffolk County Health Department announced on Monday that it will conduct a private well survey in an area surrounding the closed landfill and at least two commercial composting or mulching operations along the Springs-Fireplace Road corridor in East Hampton and Springs.

A proposal from the Springs Fire District to remove an unutilized 150-foot-tall communications tower behind the firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard, and replace it with a 180-foot-tall tower to improve radio and pager communications for fire, ambulance, and police personnel, came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board on Sept. 11.

The public weighed in on a proposal from the Peconic Land Trust to build a more than 4,100-square-foot barn on Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett at an East Hampton Town Planning Board meeting on Sept. 11.

Toward the end of a contentious meeting at which neighbors threatened legal action should the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals allow the replacement of a house at 33 Lily Pond Lane by a larger one with more amenities and lot coverage, the property’s owners told the board they would abandon their plans and renovate the existing residence instead.

The Victor D’Amico Institute of Art, also known as the Art Barge, has closed for the season, but a project critically important to the Napeague landmark’s reopening next year is intensifying.

The bulkhead protecting the retired Navy barge from Napeague Harbor is in need of reconstruction. It has severely deteriorated on its eastern side, with sand leaking through it and into the harbor, rendering it ineffective and the ground landward unsafe to traverse.

Tomorrow is the seventh annual Car Free Day Long Island, and on Tuesday the East Hampton Town Board adopted a nonbinding resolution in support of the designation.

The House of Representatives voted on Sept. 11 to permanently protect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico from offshore drilling.

Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day, and the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons will use the opportunity to explain to people across the South Fork where, when, and how to register for the Nov. 5 election.

Residents and visitors alike are willing to pay for the preservation of Montauk’s ocean beaches, the East Hampton Town Board was told on Tuesday, and both groups are amenable to either a property tax or a lodging tax to finance a wide, healthy beach. 

One may not need a sleek, luxurious lake runabout to attract attention to energy sustainability programs, but it certainly seemed to help on Saturday, when members of Southampton Town’s sustainability committee signed up residents for free home energy audits and solar evaluations at Sag Harbor’s annual Harborfest event.

Perry Gershon, who seeks the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York’s First Congressional District next year, has announced a series of events called the “Restore American Values Tour: 10 Town Halls in 10 Months.”

Win With Wind, a group that formed in the spring to advocate for the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, and Montauk United, a group advocating for quality-of-life issues in that hamlet, have joined forces to support a Wainscott landing for the proposed South Fork Wind Farm’s export cable.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority will host an open house to discuss the state’s efforts to advance offshore wind on Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. at Southampton High School.

The first of two forums on community choice aggregation, a model that replaces the utility as the default supplier of electricity or natural gas and gives municipalities the opportunity to seek lower prices from alternative suppliers, was held on Tuesday evening at East Hampton Town Hall.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has decided a proposal by an East Hampton mining company to expand a pit on Middle Highway will not have a significant negative impact on its surroundings, but the D.E.C. is still accepting public comments on the matter, through Sept. 27, before it formally decides on issuing a permit.

Howard Schultz, the former chairman and chief executive of the Starbucks chain and a part-time resident of East Hampton Village, has abandoned his independent campaign for president.

Legislator Kara Hahn, the majority leader of the Suffolk County Legislature, has endorsed Nancy Goroff in her bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York’s First Congressional District next year.

The efforts of Susan McGraw Keber of the East Hampton Town Trustees to persuade the Suffolk County Legislature to enact a ban on the intentional release of balloons paid off on Sept. 4, when that body voted unanimously to do so.

East Hampton Town Hall will be the site of two upcoming forums on community choice aggregation, a model that replaces the utility as the default, monopolistic supplier of electricity or natural gas and gives municipalities the opportunity to seek lower prices from alternative suppliers.

The East Hampton Town Board, having authorized a payout last month of $188,375.40 to Marguerite Wolffsohn, the planning director who retired at the end of July, voted to amend that resolution on Tuesday, citing an adjustment of her accrued vacation time based on the town’s department head employment policy.