Government Briefs 09.28.17
East Hampton Town
Wind Farm Meeting Wednesday
The next meeting of the East Hampton Town Trustees’ harbor management committee will be dedicated to the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine installation that would be constructed approximately 30 miles from Montauk. The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m. at Scoville Hall in Amagansett. Rick Drew, who heads the committee, told his colleagues on Monday that the meeting will be devoted to a discussion of the project’s benefits to the town, including construction of a resilient, sustainable energy infrastructure. Officials of Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that plans to build the wind farm, will attend, he said, along with members of the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee and the East End Resilience Network. He asked that members of the commercial and recreational fishing industries attend as well. C.W.
Training Center Named for Franzone
The firefighters training center in Wainscott will be renamed the Larry Franzone Fire Training Center in honor of the longtime member of the Montauk Fire Department. The late Mr. Franzone, who joined the department in 1969, served two terms as its chief, from 1977 to 1979, and again in 2007, when he was the oldest active fire chief in the State of New York. He also served as a Montauk Fire District commissioner for 15 years. Mr. Franzone, a former president of the East Hampton Town Fire District Officers Association who had been chairman of the East Hampton Town fire advisory committee for more than a quarter-century, was elected to serve as the first chairman of the committee that oversaw the planning and construction of the fire training center, which is on Industrial Road.
Bill King Sculpture Donation
A sculpture by the late Bill King, “Nureyev and Fontaine,” will be donated to East Hampton Town by Laura Cutler and placed on the Town Hall property. The town board voted last week to accept the donation. Mr. King, a recipient of an International Sculpture Center Lifetime Achievement Award and of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as of four honorary doctorates and numerous fellowships, lived in East Hampton for more than 40 years. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
Preservation Fund Income Declines
East Hampton Town lagged behind the rest of the East End in income from the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund through the first eight months of the year.
State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said in a release yesterday that revenue from the 2-percent tax on most real estate sales had declined 13.7 percent in East Hampton from the same period last year. Regionally, community preservation fund income for 2017 was up nearly 4 percent. Southold Town led the pack, with a spike of 27.4 percent. Shelter Island followed with a 12-percent increase. Southampton’s figure jumped by 11.3 percent, and Riverhead’s by 3.4 percent. Through August, East Hampton Town’s preservation fund income was just under $17.3 million; it was $20 million for the same months in 2016. Southampton took in $38.4 million between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31. Since the preservation fund was established in 1999, it has taken in more than $1.2 billion for land purchases and historic preservation.