On an average day at the Montauk School, it’s normal for around 13 or 14 students to be absent, amounting to 4 percent of the school’s enrollment of 328. On Friday, its absences jumped to 23 percent — about 75 children — after a social media post threatening violence went viral and whipped families into a frenzy across the nation.
If there’s any doubt that people are concerned about rising Covid-19 numbers on the South Fork, countywide, and across the state, one need only drive by East Hampton Town’s Covid testing site on Stephen Hand’s Path. The facility ran out of tests and closed early on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning, the line of people waiting for tests was 50 cars long.
With the East Hampton Town Board’s unanimous vote on Tuesday to approve an agreement to put an emergency communications tower at the Camp Blue Bay property on Flaggy Hole Road in Springs, a collective sigh of relief could be heard elsewhere in the hamlet as residents’ five-month struggle to prevent the tower from being erected in a wooded area in their neighborhood had officially succeeded.
The new owner of the former Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe in Montauk has big plans for the property, but they are far too big, the East Hampton Town Planning Board told his attorney last week.
