New Faces in Town Hall for 2015
The East Hampton Town Board began a new year on Tuesday, authorizing several new appointments.
Kathleen Cunningham, by unanimous vote, will join the town planning board for a seven-year term through 2021. Ms. Cunningham, director of the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton, is a member of the town’s airport advisory committee and also serves on a town business committee. A founder of the Quiet Skies Coalition, which advocates for the reduction of noise from the East Hampton Airport, she has also been key to other community efforts such as the Five Town Rural Transit initiative to promote public transportation on the East End.
Nancy Keeshan, who was named to the planning board in 2010 to fill John Lycke’s unexpired term, which ran through 2014, was appointed to fill out the rest of Patrick Schutte’s term, which expires at the end of 2018. Mr. Schutte has stepped down from the board.
John Whelan, who served out the remainder of Alex Walter’s term on the Zoning Board of Appeals through 2014, was appointed to a five-year term of his own on that board, and was designated its chairman. Mr. Walter withdrew from the Z.B.A. in April to become executive assistant to East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell.
Two new members will sit on the town’s architectural review board. Edward Krug will serve the remainder of Rossetti Perchik’s term, through 2017, and Peter Michael Gumpel will serve a five-year term through 2019.
In a State of the Town address on Tuesday, Mr. Cantwell provided a look back at 2014 and outlined some goals for this year, among them the adoption of “meaningful controls” at the airport to limit noise, local laws to increase penalties for zoning and town code violations and to strengthen the enforcement of housing laws, and a water quality protection program to replace failing septic systems in harbor protection areas.
Other items on the list for 2015, the supervisor said, are plans for a new community center to replace the aging senior citizen center building in East Hampton; updating the town comprehensive plan to include hamlet studies of Springs, Amagansett, Montauk, and Wainscott; a business needs study, and a coastal resiliency plan. The town board also intends to adopt better zoning rules regarding property setbacks in business zones along the Montauk Highway “to preclude another planning mistake like the Wainscott Home Goods store,” he said.
Also, the board will try to regulate the growing number of nightclubs in the town and resolve the thorny issue of zoning regulations governing the parking of commercial trucks, “in order to “limit commercialization in residential areas,” said Mr. Cantwell, “in a fair and reasonable way.”
Also this year, he said, town officials should “continue to press every level of government” to get PSEG Long Island to bury its new power transmission lines, and should consider creating a town manager’s office to improve government “efficiency and effectiveness.”
“East Hampton must be a full participant in the long-term plan of Southampton Hospital,” said Mr. Cantwell, a tenet asserted in a senior citizens needs study presented recently to the board. The need of residents for health care services within the town must be recognized, he said.
The supervisor thanked his fellow board members for working together cooperatively and establishing “civil discourse at town board meetings.”
“Civility is the glue that holds us together as a democracy and as a community, and it allows all of us to participate in a reasonable dialogue,” he said.
In 2014, Mr. Cantwell said, the board made “major efforts” in environmental protection, including the purchase with the community preservation fund of 66 properties totaling 133 acres, more such transactions “than ever before in a single year.”
In addition, he reported, the town secured almost $10 million in federal funding to buy and “sterilize” properties within the Lazy Point floodplain; received $270,000 in state grants to promote energy conservation and green technology; established an “ambitious goal to make East Hampton energy-independent;” sought out solar energy production here through private sector companies and a Long Island Power Authority program, and adopted a ban on single-use plastic bags.
A $250,000 grant will underwrite development of a plan to address coastal erosion and storms, Mr. Cantwell said, and the town has been working with the Army Corps of Engineers on its downtown Montauk beach-protection project, securing an agreement with the county as a partner in the maintenance costs of the project while “appealing the need for a full beach-stabilization project to be completed under the Fire Island to Montauk Point plan.”
Mr. Cantwell also cited improvements on the financial front, including an upgraded credit rating, better procedures and controls, a decline in total indebtedness, increasing surpluses, and taxes held below the state property tax cap. He also mentioned the closure of the town’s waste treatment plant, resulting in an annual savings of $800,000; progress on data collection regarding the airport and potential noise mitigation measures; increased coordination among town departments, resulting in better code enforcement with seven full-time ordinance officers now on staff, and improvements and repairs to town infrastructure and buildings.
“New affordable housing projects are in the works,” Mr. Cantwell said, as is funding to provide mental health services for those in need. In the last year, he said, the town board has adopted regulations governing taxis and formula chain stores, approved a new lighting law to protect dark skies “while making it simpler for businesses to comply,” and revised the law addressing permits for large gatherings “to cut out abuses by commercial interests using public property.”
The supervisor concluded his New Year remarks by thanking the people of the town for providing him and the other town board members with “encouragement and support.”
“You give us energy and reinforce our commitment to serve, and I sincerely thank you for this,” he said.