Government

"I'm excited, you can tell," Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming said about the new Suffolk Transit On-Demand service along Noyac Road from Sag Harbor to Southampton Village. The project has been at the heart of Ms. Fleming's work since her election in 2015, shortly after which eight bus routes were cut from service because of budgetary constraints.

The East Hampton Town Board's plan to begin implementing recommendations from the Wainscott hamlet study, adopted and incorporated into the comprehensive plan last year, got off to a bumpy start with last Thursday's public hearing on a proposed amendment to the zoning code that would reclassify a stretch of Montauk Highway in the commercial district from central business to a single-family residence designation with limited business overlay.

The Hampton Hopper, a seasonal bus service serving Montauk that was suspended during the pandemic last year, will resume service as soon as Thursday, with an expanded service territory.

"The emergency is over," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Wedneday. Fifteen months after invoking emergency powers to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, he announced that the state of emergency will end on Thursday.

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc is the apparent winner in Tuesday’s Democratic Party primary election, holding off a challenge from Councilman Jeff Bragman, and his running mates, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and Cate Rogers, chairwoman of the East Hampton Democratic Committee, also prevailed in the three-way race for the Democratic nomination for town board.

As of Monday, 71 percent of New Yorkers 18 and older had gotten at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control. To make it easier for people 12 and up to join the ranks of those partially or fully vaccinated locally, New York State will add Tuesday and Wednesday evening hours at its mass vaccination site at the Stony Brook Southampton college campus. 

The federal Department of the Interior announced on Friday a proposed sale for offshore wind development on the outer continental shelf in the New York Bight, an area of shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast.

A Cornell Cooperative Extension shellfish ecologist plans to monitor scallop reproduction, growth, and survival in Napeague Harbor and record data including water temperature, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll A, and pH, a measurement of the water's acidity or alkalinity.

Companion bills in the New York State Legislature that would stagger the terms of office for the nine-member East Hampton Town Trustees and increase the trustees' terms from two to four years passed in the State Senate and Assembly last week.

On the same day that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the lifting of most remaining Covid-19-related restrictions, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told his colleagues on the town board of his intention to resume in-person meetings with the July 6 work session. 

Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island will receive $160,000 in New York State funding to help residents get money from the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

The Suffolk County Public Works Department's Division of Vector Control commenced the aerial application of mosquito larvicides this week, but Accabonac Harbor was not among the targeted areas.

The Health Department announced on Monday that starting the next day marshes across the county would be treated with methoprene, a larvicide, and Bti, a naturally occurring bacterium that contains toxin-producing spores that affect mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae. The spraying was to have continued through today.