Government

Two themes were apparent when over half a dozen people turned up at an East Hampton Town Board meeting this week: consternation that the town would soon settle a lawsuit brought after the board attempted to close the airport in 2022 and immediately reopen it with restrictions, and threats that a settlement would ultimately hurt the board members at the ballot box.

East Hampton Town and the Maidstone Gun Club in Wainscott, which has been shuttered since August 2022, may be close to renewing a lease for the 97-acre property despite litigation brought by several residents who say that errant bullets fired from the private club have hit their houses, posing a threat to their very lives.

Several East Hampton Town Trustees have questioned the expansion of an oyster restoration effort and an accompanying reef in Georgica Pond, as requested by Stony Brook University scientists. “I don’t want to be a board that drastically changed that entire closed ecosystem,” the presiding officer said.

In the wake of the March 8 and 9 brush fires in the Pine Barrens around Westhampton Beach, Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine has announced the county’s first southern pine beetle symposium, which happens on Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon at Suffolk Community College’s Riverhead campus.

A plan to replace a large asphalt parking area, remove invasive species, and create bio-retention areas that could help filter and capture stormwater runoff before it reaches Lake Montauk moved ahead at the April 8 meeting of the East Hampton Town Board. The West Lake boat ramp, the project target, is large, denuded of vegetation, and its asphalt and hard-packed soil is on a pitch that sends it directly into the lake.

A strong turnout from East Hampton residents dubious about plans to build affordable housing in their neighborhoods has at least temporarily derailed the town’s efforts to purchase four parcels of land from Suffolk County.

The Sag Harbor Village Board was receptive to a pitch on Tuesday to reduce single-use plastics, which the Surfrider Foundation says constitute the bulk of litter found at its beach cleanup efforts. 

A proposed amendment to the East Hampton Town Code that would allow certain projects to be defined as “community resources,” and thus exempt from compliance with the town zoning, planning, and architectural review board review, received a warm, if at times cautious, reception from the town board this week.

A balloon, three feet in diameter, hovering exactly 150 feet above the location of a proposed communications tower behind the Springs Firehouse on April 21 will be part of a test that will allow people to assess the visual impact of a proposed 150-foot tower from many vantage points. The new tower would replace the one that is already there.

The crowds began to gather in front of Town Hall in East Hampton and at Steinbeck Park in Sag Harbor around 11:45 on Saturday morning as part of the Hands Off! rallies held concurrently across the country and in Mexico to protest the actions of the new Trump administration.

People will gather in East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and communities across the country on Saturday for a nationwide “day of action” organized by Hands Off 2025.

Looking to make constructing accessory dwelling units even easier, the East Hampton Town’s A.D.U. committee made five recommendations to the town board this week, suggesting removing some zoning restrictions and changing eligibility requirements.

A hacker disrupted the Zoom portion of last Thursday’s Sag Harbor Village Board budget meeting, displaying pornographic images alongside racial and antisemitic slurs on the twin screens in the meeting room. “Those disgusting images are etched in my brain,” said the board’s Bob Plumb.

On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order that would strip the Institute of Museum and Library Services, established in 1996 and the only source of federal funds for the state library, to its bones. The state library is the sole conduit through which state and federal aid flows, providing support services to libraries across the state and reducing redundancies.

Five years after an eight-acre parcel comprising four lots, across from the Wolffer Estate Vineyard in Sag­aponack, was purchased for agricultural use with money from the South­ampton Town Community Preservation Fund, it remains fallow, and Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt are now asking the Southampton Town Board to switch the parcel’s use to protect Poxabogue Pond, which the land borders.

Since February, East Hampton Town has lost the heads of its Code Enforcement, Building, and Housing and Community Development Departments, and the top two lawyers in the town attorney’s office.

Adam Potter’s project at 7 and 11 Bridge Street in Sag Harbor took another step forward Tuesday evening, when the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board unanimously voted to deem the draft environmental impact statement on the project complete.

A bill to reinstate New York State recognition of the Montaukett Indian Nation, introduced by Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni, has passed the Assembly in a unanimous vote. It has now been delivered to the State Senate, where it needs to pass before it reaches the desk of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has twice vetoed similar bills, most recently in December. 

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday night to change a formula in the zoning code that ties the maximum gross floor area of a residence to the size of its lot. 

East Hampton Town completed a pilot invasive species removal project at the 42-acre Springs Park on March 18. The park was closed while the work was being done, and town employees who spent the day guarding the gates estimated that 80 people had to be turned away. 

The Wainscott Commercial Center will be required to provide more environmental analysis of its planned 50-unit industrial park near the western gateway to East Hampton Town, after a unanimous vote by the town planning board last week.

The Sag Harbor Village Board met Saturday afternoon to hold a public workshop on the village’s accessory dwelling unit laws, discussing ways the village can make it easier for people to build them on their properties, particularly on those that already have a pre-existing structure. 

In January, when the Shinnecock Indian Nation received confirmation from the U.S. Department of the Interior that its sovereignty extends to the territory known as Westwoods, Lisa Goree and her colleagues on the tribal council should have been able to breathe a bit easier. Instead, they find themselves in fight mode all over again.

Aidan Corish of the Sag Harbor Village Board has announced his intention to seek his fifth two-year term.

Despite division, the East Hampton Town Board was set to approve a plan to reduce the maximum gross-floor-area formula, a part of the town’s zoning code that ties the maximum square footage of a house to the size of its lot. With two holdouts on the board, there was still enough support for a cap of 7 percent of a lot plus 1,500 square feet.

Sag Harbor Village and the Suffolk County Department of Transportation do not know who owns the four-way intersection of the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, Brick Kiln Road, Jermain Avenue, and Main Street. This became apparent during the March 11 meeting of the village board.

Tom Preiato’s friendly, matter-of-fact style has served him well in the 25 years he has been a building inspector on the South Fork, working for East Hampton Town, Sag Harbor Village, and East Hampton Village. Though he has at times been a “building inspector to the stars,” the soon-to-be retired Mr. Preiato said, “I’m just a regular guy. I don’t get caught up with who they are.”

Rick Martel, on the Republican and Conservative lines, defeated John Leonard, a Democrat who also ran on the Working Families line, in Tuesday's special election for the Southampton Town Board seat vacated by Tommy John Schiavoni.

The surprising news in an update on wildfire readiness in East Hampton Town at Tuesday’s town board meeting was that trees felled by the southern pine beetle are not top of mind for fire experts who are assessing the town’s fire risk. 

The United States Army Corps of Engineers has successfully completed an emergency dredging project at the Lake Montauk Inlet.