East Hampton Town

Building Code Revisions

After holding hearings on changes to the town building code, the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday approved several revisions, including one that would reduce the size of houses that can be built throughout the town.

The maximum gross floor area of a residence will be reduced to 10 percent of its lot area, plus 1,600 square feet. Current law allows houses to be as large as 12 percent, plus 1,600 square feet, of the size of the parcels they are on. A provision that precludes any house from being larger than 20,000 square feet, regardless of its property size, will remain in place.

The board also adopted a law that restricts the size of cellars, limiting how far they can extend beyond the exterior wall of a first story to 10 percent of the first floor’s gross floor area. The law will also prohibit cellars from being more than 12 feet below ground.

Another law approved last week will revise the town code’s definition of gross floor area, calling for measurement to be taken to the exterior face of the frame or masonry wall. It will exclude cellars, attics, or spaces with ceilings lower than five feet and calls for stairwells and interior spaces where ceilings are higher than 15 feet to be counted twice.

Also approved were changes to the town code governing home contractors’ licenses, allowing companies to designate one person to complete required continuing education training.

Regarding a C.P.F. Purchase

The town board will take comments next Thursday on the purchase of a .81-acre property at 142 Waterhole Road in Springs for $900,000 from the community preservation fund. Owned by the Hamilton Family Trust, the parcel has a house and outbuildings on it; they would be removed at the seller’s expense before the property changes hands. The land would be returned to a natural state. The hearing will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

Four Merit-Based Raises

After recently instituting a system through which town employees can be granted merit-based salary increases, the town board last Thursday approved the first of those pay hikes for four union employees. The board awarded raises ranging from $2,104 to $2,832 to Andrew Gaites, an environmental analyst in the Department of Land Acquisitions and Management, Rosemary Berti, a Finance Department clerk, Evelyn Calderon, a clerk in the Building Department, and Cindy Graboski, who is a clerk at the Highway Department. J.P.

New York State

For Ag Property Tax Help

Legislation recently introduced by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. would free agricultural property owners from paying state estate tax, as long as their land is protected by an easement, covenant, or other legal restriction that limits its use to farming and bars its development.

Current estate tax policy, which levies taxes based on the “highest and best use” of land rather than its current use, “results in the conversion of valuable farmland to development” when property owners are faced with a need to raise money to pay the tax, Mr. Thiele said in a press release.

“The high value of real estate in places like Long Island, the Hudson Valley, and other agricultural areas near urban fringes and metropolitan areas threatens the future economic viability of agriculture. This legislation instead would make state tax policy an incentive promoting secure regional sources of food as well as protecting our rural quality of life and economic traditions,” he said in the release.

In an unusually lively first meeting of the year, the East Hampton Town Trustees heard an appeal from Sara Davison, executive director of the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, for permission to conduct a survey of the pond’s marine life. The trustees also reappointed Francis Bock as clerk, or presiding officer, without dissent. Mr. Bock, a Democrat, became the clerk a year ago, following his election in November.

However, it took a 7-to-2 vote for the trustees to reappoint Bill Taylor, a Democrat, and Rick Drew, a first-term Democratic trustee, as the body’s two deputy clerks. Mr. Drew replaces Pat Mansir, another first-term Democrat, who was not renominated. Ms. Mansir said on Tuesday that she was not upset about failing to be reappointed. “It’s politics. Rick Drew is a really hard worker, and I’m glad that he got it,” she said.

Diane McNally and Tim Bock, Republicans, opposed both deputy clerk appointments. Mr. Bock had nominated Ms. McNally, the body’s former longtime clerk, for a deputy position. However, she declined the nomination. “Thank you very much,” she said.

Georgica Pond has experienced toxic algal blooms over the past several summers, prompting the trustees to close it to the harvesting of crabs and the foundation to be established by pond-front property owners in an effort to improve its ecological condition. 

Ms. Davison proposed a survey of fish and crabs to be conducted by Bradley Peterson and Christopher Gobler, both of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Dr. Gobler has been monitoring the pond’s quality for the trustees for the past few years, and more recently for the foundation.

The plan calls for one winter survey, possibly in early March, and two or three daylong surveys in the summer. A 12-foot aluminum boat with a 9.9-horsepower motor would be used as well as a crab dredge, allowing evaluation of the number of crabs in different areas of the pond. The trustees would have to grant permission and the town board authorize trawls since motorized boats and trawls are not now permitted on the pond.

In the summer, traps and crab pots would be set, the traps baited and left overnight. A small trawl would do brief tows at multiple locations, and its contents and the contents of the traps processed on the boat. Densities of crab and other larvae would also be quantified, and all marine life would be returned to the pond, Ms. Davison said.

Dr. Peterson would also interview baymen working on the pond, and information from the town’s Natural Resources Department would be solicited. Survey results would be summarized in a report to the trustees.

Ms. McNally asked for specific dates and prior notice, as well as detailed information in the final report on where traps and pots were set and trawls conducted. Overall, however, the trustees were amenable to Ms. Davison’s proposal.

Also at the meeting, the trustees set the cost of an annual lease for a trustee-owned house lot at Lazy Point in Amagansett at $1,716.66, a 2-percent increase over last year. 

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee will celebrate the Jan. 20 inauguration of Donald Trump and Mike Pence as president and vice president of the United States with a party at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett.

Guests can “feel free to dress in formal attire,” according to an invitation. Tickets to the celebration, which will take place from 6:30 to 11:30 p.m. the day of the inauguration, cost $50 in advance and $60 at the door.

The celebration will simply be about having a good time, Reg Cornelia, the committee’s chairman, said on Tuesday. “This is certainly not a boring transition, from the status quo slightly this way to the status quo slightly that way,” he said. “I think we have a neo-Marxist in the White House until the 20th, and now a guy” — Mr. Trump — “who believes in capitalism. I’ll take that for starters. I wish his delivery was a little smoother, but he’s getting better. I think he means it when he says he’s going to change the rules.”

For East Hampton Republicans, the election of Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence, the re-election of Representative Lee Zeldin, and the party’s success in maintaining control of the Senate and House of Representatives have provided reasons to celebrate after local elections did not. In November 2015, the party’s candidate for town supervisor, Tom Knobel, was defeated by Larry Cantwell, the incumbent. Its two candidates for town board also suffered lopsided losses, and the composition of the town trustees swung from a 5-to-4 Republican majority to a 3-to-6 minority.

Soon after, Mr. Knobel was fired from his job at the Suffolk County Board of Elections and resigned as the committee’s chairman. In April, Mr. Cornelia, a longtime member of the committee and its vice chairman since 2014, was elected to lead it. Rebuilding morale was among the first items of business, he said at the time.

The filming permits issued by East Hampton Town to producers, filmmakers, and still photographers seeking to use local sites for TV shows, movies, and ads are expected to take center stage before the town board in the coming days of this new year.

Filming on private property, either outside or in, would for the first time require a permit, according to proposed changes to the existing law. Currently, permits are needed only when filming is to take place in public places.

That loophole has had a couple of turns in the spotlight involving two cable TV shows. “The Affair,” a Showtime drama series set in Montauk that premiered in 2014, used a house in Amagansett’s Beach Hampton neighborhood as a home base for some of its characters. Filming there into the night, with trucks and lights, set off complaints from neighborhood residents and prompted the town board to call in the producers. With a round of filming for the show’s second season anticipated, and hoping to keep using the same house, they worked with the town to negotiate a compromise. The show, which won a Golden Globe for Best Television Series, launched a third season in November.

Last summer, town officials turned down a request for a filming permit for “Summer House,” a Bravo reality show that premieres later this month. But the producers, who have publicized the show as chronicling 20-somethings partying at a share house in Montauk (the actual house was on Napeague), went about the hamlet on their own, seeking permission to film from shopkeepers and owners of private property.

With the Montauk Chamber of Commerce and others decrying the show’s depiction of the hamlet as a wild summer playground full of debauchery, they got a number of cold shoulders, and locals discussed ways to sabotage the filming that did take place.

But the experience stung. Sitting in at a Dec. 21 town board meeting where revisions to the film-permit regulations were discussed, Laraine Creegan, the Montauk chamber’s executive director, asked the board, “Do you take into consideration what is being filmed?”

“As much as we might have a personal opinion,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell told her, “we do not have the constitutional authority to regulate the content.” The “lawful concerns” that the town may assess, he said, are those related to public safety, such as traffic, or to health. “Governments do not regulate freedom of speech.”

At present, applications for film permits are evaluated by the same committee that assesses requests for mass-gathering permits. The committee includes town board members, police, a fire marshal, and so on. Approved permits are issued by the town clerk. Shoots with a cast and crew of five or fewer are exempt from the permit process.

The creation of year-round housing in outbuildings on lots of an acre or more, to be rented to permanent residents at prices within affordable housing guidelines, got the go-ahead with a vote of the East Hampton Town Board on Dec. 1.

After a hearing on revisions to the town housing code that evening, the town board voted to allow, for the first time, the creation of accessory dwellings in detached structures, but only on acre-sized properties. 

The change was recommended by a town housing committee as a way to add some needed affordable housing in the town for year-round residents. 

Accessory apartments, built onto houses, have been allowed since 1984, but only 16 or 17 permits have been issued for them by the town since that time, Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said on Thursday. A maximum of 20 permits for such apartments in each of the town’s five school districts, or 100 throughout the town, remains in place. 

According to another revision of the law approved that week, the minimum lot size where an attached accessory apartment may be built was increased from 15,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet, or a half-acre. 

In addition, the revised regulations will allow a homeowner to reside in an attached accessory apartment, rather than the main house. Homeowners will not, however, have that option if the accessory dwelling is in a separate building. In addition, only four property owners in each school district will be allowed that option. The others will have to follow current law, which requires a homeowner to live in the primary residence while renting out an accessory apartment.

Speaking at the hearing on the revised law, Diane O’Connell, a chief of the East Hampton Ambulance Association, said that the ability to provide housing on family property for adult children is a way to help them stay in the community.  Otherwise, she said, with a lack of affordable housing, “they can’t live here.” 

But David Buda of Springs spoke against the proposed law, which he said “should have been . . . a nonstarter” in light of existing housing issues in Springs, where, he said, illegal overcrowding is overwhelming septic systems, and the school. 

The town board’s efforts to address the need for affordable housing, he said, should be focused on “multifamily apartment zoning” in hamlet centers.

Brad Loewen, also of Springs, also questioned whether backyard housing is the right idea. “The young people I talk to don’t want to live in an accessory structure on Mom and Dad’s yards for the rest of their lives,” he said. As the chairman of the East Hampton Fisheries Committee, he expressed concern about additional pollution to surface waters such as Pussy’s Pond from increased septic waste from new housing. 

Two other speakers expressed their approval of the idea.

Also on Dec. 1, after hearing comments from the public, the board approved a new merit pay system through which department heads could receive bonuses of up to $5,000 annually. 

Carole Campolo, a Springs resident, spoke against the idea. “Managers by definition are expected to perform at a very high level,” she said. A set of criteria by which their eligibility for bonuses would be evaluated falls short, she added. “Those are the things they should be doing every single day for the salary they are currently receiving.”

Formal annual performance reviews for all employees should be conducted, she said. Town employees already enjoy compensation packages beyond those of many taxpayers, who “are strung out already,” Ms. Campolo said, and should not be asked to cover merit pay. 

The Springs Citizens Advisory Committee had discussed the concept earlier that week, Councilman Fred Overton reported, and asked that the board delay a vote. But Mr. Cantwell said the law was “pretty thorough,” and “spells out in great detail the merit pay program, which would be at the town board’s discretion. With all due respect to the S.C.A.C., I don’t know that that much is going to change here, and my instinct is we should adopt it.” The program was approved unanimously. 

Also approved by the entirety of the board was a three-year extension of the town’s contract with LTV, the nonprofit entity that provides public cable television access in East Hampton, and broadcasts coverage of the town’s public boards.

The East Hampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force, concerned about what its members say appears to be an increase in young adult and high school suicides that may have been related to gender identity and to bullying, is seeking support for increased mental health services here.

In a presentation last week at an East Hampton Village Board meeting, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who is the town board’s liaison to the committee, summarized the task force’s recent activities and said its members believe the town faces “a bias issue.”

Looking back over the last few years, Ms. Overby said the task force had recently updated a brochure that includes resources and is printed in both English and Spanish.

Among its accomplishments, Ms. Overby said, was the screening of two documentaries at LTV Studios in Wainscott, “A Time For Justice,” which begins with the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision that outlawed school segregation and continues to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and “Mighty Times: The Children’s March,” which chronicles a nonviolent protest in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. A panel discussion moderated by the Rev. Katrina Foster, formerly of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett, followed.

The task force also sponsored a student film contest on suggested themes, such as anti-bullying, diversity, and acceptance of others. The films were presented at LTV Studios and at Town Hall.

The group also sponsored events at Town Hall featuring Lucius Ware, president of the Eastern Long Island chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Rabbi Steven Moss, chairman of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission and Interfaith Anti-Bias Task Force.

The East Hampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force is chaired by Rosa Scott and includes East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and 19 others. It is scheduled to meet on the second Wednesday of each month.

A rally hosted by environmental groups, elected officials, labor unions, and civic organizations drew more than 100 people to the Long Island Power Authority’s headquarters in Uniondale on Tuesday. Participants sought to build momentum for offshore wind and other renewable, emission-free energy sources.

The rally was intended to praise LIPA’s support for offshore wind farms and encourage its board, which was meeting at the time, to formally approve a proposed 90-megawatt, 15-turbine wind farm that would be located 30 miles from Montauk.

“We had more people there than ever before,” said Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island and a member of the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee.

The board meeting and rally came one week after Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company, announced that the Block Island Wind Farm, the nation’s first offshore wind farm, had commenced operation. Deepwater Wind has proposed the larger South Fork wind farm, which LIPA’s chief executive officer signaled would be approved in July, before the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority asked it to delay a vote so that the project could be examined in the larger context of the Offshore Wind Master Plan that was still under development. A blueprint of the master plan, which is expected next year, was released in September.

Participants in the rally also called on LIPA to move forward on an islandwide renewable energy request for proposals that could include another 210 mega­watts of wind power off Long Island.

In August, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the New York State Public Service Commission had approved the Clean Energy Standard, which requires that 50 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable energy sources by 2030.

A 25-acre tract of land in the Buckskill area of East Hampton will be purchased and preserved by East Hampton Town, and could become a recreation destination, according to a vote of the town board last Thursday. The $8.6 million purchase of land fronting on Buckskill Road and Towhee Trail was approved after a hearing.

The money will come from both the community preservation fund and from a capital project budget. The property, owned by the Pasquale J. Trunzo Qualified Personal Residence Trust, the Nancy T. Trunzo Qualified Personal Residence Trust, and Buckskill Realty, a limited liability corporation, contains a house, two barns, a pool, and other structures. All but one barn will be removed at the owners’ expense before money changes hands. The barn will be used for “recreational opportunities” and for equipment storage.

Because use of the preservation fund is restricted to open land, the town will use capital funds to pay $131,000 toward the purchase — the appraised value of the barn. The remainder of the cost will be covered by the C.P.F.

The 25-acre site is in a water-recharge area, and its preservation will not only provide opportunities for recreation, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said, but will help protect groundwater.

A management plan detailing how the property will be used and cared for will be drafted after the purchase, to be discussed by the board after a public hearing. Recreational uses that would not require personnel on site are under consideration, Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, said last Thursday, including the installation of handicapped-accessible trails, an area for Frisbee golf, and a “human-scale chess” board.

David Buda, a Springs resident who often raises questions about proposed land purchases, said at the hearing that given the cost, the board should have had “long and considered” discussions about the land’s use before voting to move ahead, rather than adopting a stance of “buy it now and we’ll figure out something to do with it later.”

“This is not an area that cries out for a need for recreation,” he said.

Mr. Buda took issue with the potential for development on the site, as depicted by Mr. Wilson. But Mr. Wilson said that he and town Planning Department staffers had examined the pertinent zoning and other regulations, and that, if developed, the land could yield up to 15 new houses.

A small step toward curtailing the use of methoprene, a mosquito larvicide, in the Town of East Hampton was taken this month when the Suffolk County Department of Public Works agreed to work with the town trustees and other town officials to that end.

On Dec. 8, Francis Bock, Tyler Armstrong, Jim Grimes, and Bill Taylor of the trustees met at Town Hall with Kim Shaw, director of the town’s Natural Resources Department, Tom Iwanejko, the county’s director of vector control, Gil Anderson, the county public works commissioner, and Legislator Bridget Fleming. There, it was agreed that the county, town, and trustees would work together toward wetlands management and education efforts, with the goal of reducing or eliminating use of methoprene, which the trustees fear is harmful to nontarget aquatic species including lobsters and crabs.

Historically, the vector control division uses helicopters flying at low altitudes to apply methoprene and Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, or Bti. At the urging of Ms. Fleming and the trustees, however, the county and town are planning a three-year trial, starting in 2018, in which methoprene would not be applied to a specific area. The county would continue to take larval samples from the area to determine if mosquitoes, which can carry West Nile virus, Eastern equine encephalitis, and other diseases, can be controlled without methoprene.

“It’s a very, very small step,” Ms. Fleming said yesterday, “but it’s the first time there’s been a specific goal of reducing or eliminating the use of methoprene in the plan. Knowing how challenging it is sometimes to change past practices in government, I feel that, even though it’s a very small step, it’s an important step forward.”

At the urging of commercial fishermen, Connecticut prohibited the use of methoprene in coastal areas in 2013. Fishermen and environmentalists in New York have long advocated a ban, and the town board has repeatedly voiced its opposition to methoprene to the county.

At their meeting on Monday, the trustees considered sparsely populated areas that could serve as a test site. Mr. Armstrong suggested a western section of Napeague, a marshland area bordered by Napeague Meadow Road, Lazy Point Road, and Napeague Harbor, to which his colleagues largely agreed. “I’m all for this as a way to move forward and get a working relationship with them, so that in the future we can work more to craft a plan . . . that’s more tailored to our region,” he said, citing fisheries and wetlands. “But I think we need to show them that we can do something here to get some credibility under our belt with them.”

The county also applies methoprene to marshlands around Accabonac Harbor, but, said Rick Drew, a trustee, a trial prohibition there might be difficult because of extensive residential development. Diane McNally, a trustee and the body’s former longtime clerk, suggested that the group solicit public comment as to a suitable location.

It was agreed that the trustees’ aquaculture committee would be tasked with identifying a location for the test site, while also receiving comment from the Natural Resources Department.

“There’s a lot more work to do here,” Mr. Armstrong said, “but if we keep this going and stay on it, we can make some headway on this issue that we could not in the past.”

In the meantime, though, on Dec. 12 the Suffolk Public Works, Transportation, and Energy Committee approved its 2017 work plan, which includes aerial and ground application of methoprene. That approval, however, followed Ms. Fleming’s move to table the adopting resolution at a Nov. 28 meeting, as it did not include the goal of reducing methoprene use. The full Legislature approved the 2017 plan on Tuesday.

With the new year approaching, East Hampton Town officials have looked ahead to the $4.6 million they estimate the town will receive annually from the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund for water quality improvement, or $152 million over the life of the program.

The community preservation fund is derived from a 2-percent transfer tax on most real-estate transactions. Voters in the five East End towns, for which it was established, overwhelmingly approved a referendum last month to extend the fund through 2050, and to allow up to 20 percent of the money to be used for water quality projects.

As a result, beginning in 2017, the revenues the towns receive will be able to be tapped for clean water initiatives as well as preservation of open space and historic or recreational properties. The projects must fall within parameters described in the law voters approved and included in town water quality improvement plans.

The East Hampton Town Board approved such a plan this year, making wastewater treatment systems, pollution prevention, stormwater diversion, aquatic habitat restoration, and similar projects eligible for funding.

With recent Suffolk County approval of two “new-generation” sanitary systems, the town board is expected to design a program that would provide financial assistance or rebates, using the fund, for property owners to install advanced systems. The systems are seen as key to improving and protecting water quality by treating wastewater and removing much of the nitrogen, which is the cause of much of the pollution, before it seeps into the ground and surface waters. Areas around harbors are likely to be targeted, although the details have yet to be discussed.

The five East End towns have derived more than $1 billion since the fund was initiated in 1999. It has enabled East Hampton to preserve more than 2,000 acres of open space as well as historic and recreational properties.

Overall, however, the fund has had an average decline for the year so far of 7.3 percent. In November alone, the five towns collectively received $7.4 million compared to $9.5 million during November 2015, a 22-percent drop.

East Hampton, whose revenue from the fund peaked in 2014, at $32.3 million, shows a small decline so far this year, 2.7 percent, or $25 million in comparison to $25.7 million in the same period last year. Revenue in Southampton Town dropped by over 11 percent in this period, but Riverhead, Shelter Island, and Southold Towns had increases. Southold had the largest increase, 5.82 percent or $5.6 million.

  In a press release early this week, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said the overall decline in the regional fund could “be attributed to the Hamptons, primarily the Town of Southampton, which has seen revenues dip by $6.29 million.”