The East Hampton Village Board spent last Thursday’s work session making small adjustments to sections of the village code, most involving beach regulations, and some pertaining to the code of ethics involving East Hampton Village ambulance volunteers. Rounding out the discussion was a measure allowing “dead spaces” over garages or pool houses to be insulated.
There are now no members of the East Hampton Village Department of Emergency Medical Service who are not also members of the nonprofit organization known as the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association — at least not the association that is recognized by the village (a matter of some contention, and a potential lawsuit, from some emergency medical technicians who left the service during an organizational dustup this spring). “I wanted to define ‘ambulance association’ with an ending date of April 30, 2023, because that’s when the E.M.S. was created, just to clean up the code,” said Mayor Jerry Larsen, at the meeting.
Members of E.H.V.A.A. who had been granted exempt status as of April 30, when the municipality’s new responding service was created, still get the benefit of a resident beach sticker, he said. But, as the code stood until now, if a member of the new municipal E.M.S. department were to go exempt, there was nothing in the code allowing them to reap their accrued benefits of service; therefore, the new department has been added to the code and the wording that specified E.H.V.A.A. members was stricken.
“We took out ‘ambulance association volunteers’ because that title will no longer exist,” Mayor Larsen said. “The Village is not going to do business with the E.H.V.A.A.,” he said after the meeting.
The language change may seem insignificant, but Mayor Larsen sees it as the “first step in seeing the association go away. We may ask the state to dissolve it, because they can’t fulfill the reason they were created,” he said.
A search in the New York State Department of State website for “East Hampton Village” indicates the E.H.V.A.A. was formalized as a recognized nonprofit organization in 2004. The search term also, surprisingly, produced the name of a new not-for-profit corporation, active only since the end of October, named “the East Hampton Village Ambulance Members, Inc.,” with a mailing address of 1 Cedar Street. No name was associated with the new corporation.
Further work-session news this week in regard to volunteers had to do with parking in the Reutershan Parking Lot. At present, inactive first responders have been allowed to park for an unlimited amount of time. The board discussed changing that so that only active members would benefit from that perk. “The spirit of the code was so if there’s a volunteer who works in the village, they can access their car easily. If you’re inactive, there’s no reason to bend regulations,” said Chris Minardi, the deputy mayor, at the meeting.
Other discussion at the work session had to do with uninhabited spaces above attics, garages, or pool houses. Insulating such spaces will not turn them into “dwellings or habitable spaces,” said Mr. Minardi. He said that insulating was necessary, especially given the costs of construction, because not doing so was not good for the structures. He also said many residents use the spaces to store art, which could get damaged in an unregulated environment. “It’s silly to not allow homeowners” to insulate their “dead spaces” he said.
The new code “eliminates the prohibition of insulation in pool houses” said Billy Hajek, the village planner. A recreation room is allowed above a garage, but not a bed. A half-bath is permitted, but not a shower.
And someone must have recently watched “Jaws,” because the board saw fit to add code to “give the authority to the chief of police to close the beach in any type of emergency.” Previously, they have had to wait for the East Hampton Town Trustees to close the beaches. The board also removed the ability of residents with a handicap sticker to drive on the beach at all hours, instead limiting driving hours to between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. They lowered the blood-alcohol-level standard for a driving-while-intoxicated charge on the beach from .10 to .08, to match the state standard.
All of the changes discussed at last Thursday’s work session will be the subject of public hearings at tomorrow morning’s village board meeting, which will be held at 11 at LTV studios on Industrial Road in Wainscott. Meanwhile, Tom Preiato, the chief building inspector for the village, said when asked after the meeting that he hoped repairs on the emergency-services building on Cedar Street would be finished by spring, allowing for village meetings to be moved back to that location.
