Government

“Degraded, inadequate, and poorly maintained.” That’s how East Hampton Town Police detectives characterized the safety management systems at the Maidstone Gun Club’s 200-yard rifle range during an investigation into a bullet, allegedly originating from the club, that struck a Merchants Path house on Aug. 5, 2022.

After months of discussion at Sag Harbor Village Board meetings, members of the public will have their say in front of the Southampton Town Board at 1 p.m. on Jan. 24 regarding a potential use of community preservation fund money on the John Steinbeck house on Bluff Point Lane in the village. Residents can also submit written comments to the board before the 24th.

“Even in the grave, all is not lost,” wrote Edgar Allen Poe, but Poe never encountered the all-powerful New York developer and real estate lobby that ultimately helped persuade Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto a popular gravesite-protection bill on Dec. 30.

The entity behind the recent series of blistering print and social media advertisements targeting members of the East Hampton Town Board relative to the proposed privatization of the town airport, has been identified as a recently formed not-for-profit organization calling itself Political Transparency, Inc., but in charging the board with a lack of transparency, the group has raised numerous unanswered questions about its own transparency.

In a far-reaching, $1.65 trillion package of federal legislation signed by President Biden last Thursday, the campaign to permanently preserve Plum Island took another step forward: Congress has officially invited stakeholder agencies to come to the table for a joint briefing on the island’s future.

The Peconic Land Trust is hoping to transfer just over 13 acres of property in a preserve north of Town Lane in Amagansett to a private estate adjoining it off Abraham’s Path, but to do so it first needs the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s approval of a modification of the parcel’s lot line and — because Suffolk County owns the development rights to the property — approval from the county’s farmland committee.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association has hired a lawyer to fight what it says was an illegal transfer of its ambulance service certificate from the association to the village government without its agreement, notification, or use of administrative protocols required by state law. The transfer could lead to billing for ambulance services.

Year-round tennis in Amagansett: That’s the goal of the plan pitched by Claude Okin, who owns the Sportime facility and camp off Town Lane and Abraham’s Path, to the East Hampton Town Trustees in December.

The bright blue slashes of paint stand out like neon under a black light, marking the trunks in a stand of healthy pine trees along both sides of Cranberry Hole Road on Napeague that will be sacrificed to protect the overall health of the region’s forests as the southern pine beetle continues its destructive eastward march.

The latest report from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s office shows that year-to-year community preservation fund revenues in the five East End towns have fallen more than 17 percent over all.

Dozens showed up for a New Year's Day hike in Hither Woods, many with signs, to send a message to the East Hampton Town Board: They do not support a sewage treatment plant in the parkland there, even one that is near the old, capped landfill.

Nicholas LaLota, newly elected in the First District, said in a statement Tuesday that while he, like other House Republicans, is “eager to be sworn in and focus on our commitment to America and our respective districts,” he had heard from countless Long Islanders expressing “how deeply troubled they are by the headlines surrounding George Santos.” Mr. LaLota added that as a Navy veteran “who campaigned on restoring accountability and integrity to our government,” he believed a full investigation by the House Ethics Committee, “and, if necessary, law enforcement, is required.”