Government

The owner of a high-end rental house in Springs that East Hampton Town officials are trying to shut down appeared before an East Hampton Town justice this week along with the alleged house manager.

A review and potential changes to the New York State marine fisheries licensing system will be the subject of a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall on Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Perry Gershon, an East Hampton resident who narrowly lost a bid to unseat Representative Lee Zeldin last year and plans to challenge him again next year, made pointed remarks about recent mass shootings in the country to supporters on Saturday.

The Southampton Town Board has authorized Supervisor Jay Schneiderman to execute a contract with Joule Assets, a Katonah, N.Y., energy company, to serve as administrator of the town’s new “community choice aggregation” program.

The East Hampton Town Board’s plan to consolidate the town’s shellfish hatchery at a site on Three Mile Harbor continues to be a target of pushback by neighbors and others who are alarmed by what they predict will dramatically intensify activity in an already active and residential area.

Ronna McDaniel, co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, who was to attend on Friday, tweeted that the two events had raised $12 million.

The exposure of bony fish including bluefish and striped bass to electromagnetic fields emanating from an offshore wind farm’s export cable would be rare and of negligible consequence, according to an evaluation by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Campaign reporting data compiled from the Federal Election Commission’s website had some surprising statistics this week. Since December, Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., has received more individual donations from Southampton to Shelter Island than any other presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican — ahead of President Trump by a double-digit margin.     

With a new hospital farther west set to eventually replace Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, the effort to clear the way for an emergency-care facility in East Hampton is “an emergency itself,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said on Tuesday.     

As a debate ensues over a septic system at the Montauk Shores Condominiums mobile home community, a county agency is reviewing applications for redevelopment of two units there.    

Demolition of the old East Hampton Town Hall building on the Town Hall campus at 159 Pantigo Road began on Monday.     

The building has been unoccupied since 2010, when the main Town Hall  offices were moved into the complex built from donated 18th and 19th-century buildings. The old building, constructed in the early 1960s, was already in disrepair and left to deteriorate.     

East Hampton Town officials obtained a temporary restraining order last week to stop parties, photo shoots, product launches, and other commercial activities at a 10,000-square-foot house in Springs.     

To spur East Hampton Town residents to replace aging or failing sanitary systems to improve ecologically degraded waterways, the town’s Water Quality Technical Advisory Committee has recommended several modifications to the town’s rebate program.

The East Hampton Town Board adopted a resolution last Thursday supporting the New York State Drinking Water Quality Council’s recommendation of a maximum level of 10 parts per trillion for perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. The move follows the 2017 and 2018 detection of the perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, in more than 150 residential wells south of East Hampton Airport.     

A resolution supports legislation that would require notification to certified apiarists to attempt to relocate a “nuisance” bee colony or hanging swarm before pesticides are applied or other action taken that would damage or exterminate it.

An attorney who had threatened to sue the Town of East Hampton over its allowing the East Hampton Library’s Authors Night benefit to be held on an Amagansett field purchased with community preservation fund money, said yesterday that he has reached an agreement with the town, under which officials will adopt a “suitable” management plan for the 19-acre site, popularly known as 555 Montauk Highway, by the end of this year.

New York State’s Department of Agriculture and Markets has issued a clarification of its rules pertaining to cannabidiol, or CBD, as a food, food additive, or ingredient — saying, specifically, that CBD cannot be used in those ways in New York.

A proposal from AT&T to build a freestanding 50-foot-high structure at St. Peter’s Chapel on Old Stone Highway in Springs, to house cellphone antennas and associated equipment, was discussed at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board.

Suffolk County officials have unveiled a $4 billion, 50-year wastewater plan to rid the county of environmentally unfriendly cesspools and outmoded septic systems.

The environmental and traffic impacts of a proposed 27,000-square-foot fitness center across from Bridgehampton Commons on Montauk Highway were discussed last Thursday at a Southampton Town Planning Board public hearing.

Carol Konner, the principal owner of an eight-acre parcel, is seeking to subdivide the land into three lots. One lot, adjacent to Kellis Pond, would be in a residential zoning district, the other two  zoned for highway businesses.

For years, drivers with handicapped placards have favored a space for easy access to the library and Guild Hall across the street. Now, suddenly, the Handicapped Parking sign was no longer there.

East Hampton Town announced that officials obtained a temporary restraining order to stop promoters' parties, photo shoots, product launches, and other commercial activities at a 10,000-square-foot house at 145 Neck Path in Springs.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, PSEG Long Island, and the Long Island Power Authority have announced a partnership that will be included in the county’s 2020 shared services plan to assist local governments with energy efficiency projects, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce electricity bills.

Susan McGraw Keber, an East Hampton Town Trustee, urged the Suffolk County Legislature at its July 16 general meeting to pass legislation that would prohibit the intentional release of balloons, a move intended to protect wildlife and the environment.

Gordian Raacke, the executive director of the East Hampton advocacy organization Renewable Energy Long Island, has been appointed to Suffolk County’s Community Choice Aggregation Task Force.

Farmers, shocked that proposed legislation requiring the planting of a cover crop on agricultural fields includes jail time as a potential punishment for failing to do so, pushed back at a public hearing during the East Hampton Town Board’s meeting last Thursday.

Eighty acres of Lake Montauk will see a seasonal shellfishing closure extended by 60 days, and 21 acres in Sag Harbor’s Little Northwest Creek will be permanently closed to shellfishing, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation announced last week.

Members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife renewed a push for the town board to ban hunting on one weekend day during hunting season at the board’s meeting last Thursday, with the submission of a petition bearing 601 signatures, nearly all of them residents.

A practical move to consolidate the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery, or an ill-advised and unseemly rush to do the wrong thing? The town board debated the question anew last Thursday, much of its four-hour meeting devoted to a heated debate pitting the board’s majority against one member and two residents.

It now appears that the Springs General Store is not covered after all by a facade easement, which, according to a 2015 report in The Star, would have precluded the addition of new structures to the site, protected the store, the gas pumps, and existing outbuildings from external change, and preserved the view of the property.