News

As we get older, visits to various doctors become more frequent. It’s a simple fact of life really. And the past week was no exception for me.

According to figures filed earlier this month, the Democratic candidate for East Hampton Town Board, David Lys, has a substantial financial edge over his Republican opponent, Manny Vilar.

Long Island is an island. More than 450 years after its naming, following its discovery by Columbus, and at least 200 years after geologists said so, New York’s highest court decided that it was indeed an island. But it’s not the only Long Island in America; there’s one on the upper Pacific Coast and no doubt others, should one study the maps closely.

As the town planning board’s early engagement with just one stakeholder — the Tintle family, owners of a 70.4-acre sand and gravel pit in Wainscott through Wainscott Commercial Center L.L.C. — already suggests, it’s going to be a long and laborious process before Wainscott or any of the hamlets is dramatically reconfigured from end to end.

Owners of properties in the three historically black neighborhoods seek historic district status, and were thrilled recently after receiving a statement of eligibility from state officials.

The East Hampton Town Trustees have set Nov. 11 as the opening date on which scallops can be taken from waters under their jurisdiction.

Two sons of immigrants presented a case for their election to the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday as the East Hampton Clericus hosted David Lys and Manny Vilar at Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton.

Weeks before the Nov. 6 election, Representative Lee Zeldin holds an eight-point lead over his challenger, Perry Gershon of East Hampton, in the race to represent New York’s First Congressional District, according to a New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll released last week.

The Town of East Hampton appears set to follow the lead of East Hampton Village in enacting a ban on polystyrene products, commonly referred to as Styrofoam.

The first two of six works attributed to Willem de Kooning and discovered in a storage container sold on Sunday for a grand total of $1,272,000 after multiple bids.

Lessons about family rarely unfold in dramatic thunderclaps. But death has a way of clarifying what is important and what is not.

A fire broke out on the roof of a house in the Landfall section of Northwest Woods in East Hampton last Thursday after workers from an unlicensed company, doing renovations without a building permit, burned construction debris in a fireplace.

While free on bail and awaiting sentencing on a conspiracy charge related to an August drug bust in Montauk, Kevin L. Becker, 30, was arrested on a felony drunken-driving charge on Friday.

Fall rolls on. It appears to be more like past autumns in the new millennium, except the fall of 2017, when the leaves stayed on the trees until December and forsythia, which normally blooms only in the spring, bloomed in the last half of November.

In a scene reminiscent of a July 2015 meeting of the East Hampton Town Board, in which hundreds of Montauk residents aired their collective outrage at an out-of-control party atmosphere, supporters, and some opponents, packed the town hall meeting room last Thursday to comment on a proposed change to zoning code establishing parking requirements that could affect motels’ ability to add accessory uses such as restaurants, bars, or retail stores.

The East Hampton Town fire marshal's office said an overloaded power strip in the school's science room was to blame for a small fire on Monday.

A proposal to use $4 million of the Town of Southampton’s community preservation fund to buy the development rights and a historic preservation easement on the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center will be the subject of a public hearing on Oct. 23 at 6 p.m. at Southampton Town Hall. The town has been negotiating with the Sag Harbor Partnership, which bought the movie theater site for $8 million after the building was largely destroyed by fire in December 2016.

A $3 million project to rehabilitate Long Wharf in Sag Harbor was presented to the village board on Tuesday by Paul Boyce, the president of the engineering firm P.W. Grosser Consulting. No action was taken.

A joint effort that brought together the county, the trustees, the Nature Conservancy, and the town’s Natural Resources and Planning Departments resulted in targeted application of methoprene based on weekly mosquito larval sampling and its conveyance to the county’s Department of Public Works, allowing less, and less frequent, application.

Six thousand or so secondhand books, warehoused in three rooms upstairs, were in pretty good shape, but the floors of the Springs Library’s 167-year-old Ambrose Parsons House were buckling under their weight. The house belongs to East Hampton Town, and Tom Talmage, the town engineer, deemed the situation dangerous. One day in July, a Highway Department truck arrived to take the books away.

A public hearing on the Wainscott hamlet study drew praise and encouragement from residents at last Thursday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Board, with some speakers emphasizing that the former sand pit property, north of Route 27 behind the business district and running all the way to the railroad tracks, represents an opportunity to alleviate the town’s critical shortage of affordable housing.

The Trump administration’s hardline policies regarding undocumented immigrants, and remarks by the president that many construe as racist, have fostered a climate of terror among the South Fork’s Latino community, its effect dramatically played out at Town Hall last Thursday.

Would-be New York voters have until the end of the day Friday, Oct. 12, to register for the Nov. 6 election. A Department of Motor Vehicles online form where state residents with driver licenses or non-driver identification cards can register or change their party affiliation

Orsted will acquire Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that plans to construct and operate the South Fork Wind Farm some 35 miles from Montauk.

A Bridgehampton teen was arrested in East Hampton Saturday night in connection with a threat of violence to be carried out at the Southampton High School Homecoming after-party.

In a hoped-for development in the ongoing effort to install approximately 45,000 feet of water main in Wainscott, a project with an estimated price tag of $24 million that will allow property owners access to public water, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has announced a $9.7 million water infrastructure grant for the Town of East Hampton and the Suffolk County Water Authority.

State officials may want to turn part of Camp Hero State Park in Montauk into a camping destination, with its sweeping panoramic views from atop the bluffs just west of Montauk Lighthouse, but several groups think that’s just one terrible idea.

Concerned that the formula by which parking requirements are determined may not adequately address actual needs for some businesses, the East Hampton Town Board is proposing a zoning code amendment that would change that formula for bars, taverns, or restaurants that are accessories to resorts or motels.

"Most of us think of human trafficking as something that’s happening across foreign borders. But it’s happening right here, right under our noses — sex trafficking, labor trafficking," said Paula Bess Smith, a Shinnecock activist helped organize a seminar on the problem last week.

Public hearings on a series of studies aimed at developing long-range plans for each of East Hampton Town’s hamlets will begin tonight at Town Hall, when the town board takes comments on a Wainscott hamlet study and an overall business study.