Government

Stacey Abrams, political leader and author, picked apart the rapid transformation of American government and culture in a 90-minute discussion with Ken Miller, a financial executive and activist, for the Thinking Forward Lecture Series Tuesday.

There is no timeline for the gravel lot off Bridge Street to reopen. That means approximately 93 parking spots have been suddenly removed from the village in the height of the summer season.

Seeking to make it easier and cheaper for residents to update their aging septic systems, which have been found to be a main cause of excessive nitrogen in ground and surface waters, the East Hampton Town Board seemed supportive of increasing funding for their installation at the board’s July 21 meeting.

Two East Hampton Town Trustees vented their continued frustration with the town board to their colleagues recently, exasperated over being found in civil and criminal contempt for failing to prevent vehicles from using a 4,000-foot stretch of Napeague beach that a judge had ruled was privately owned. 

The East Hampton Town Trustees unanimously approved a resolution on Monday that sets a new application fee for docks, floating docks, platforms, walkways, and/or bulkheads in waters and on bottomlands under their jurisdiction. It is specifically aimed at modifications made to structures without trustee approval. 

The Bourbon virus, a potentially deadly tick-borne disease first discovered in 2014 in a man from Bourbon County, Kansas, has recently shown up in New York State, and the most common tick on the East End, the lone star tick, can spread it.

“We’ve sunk nine wells and we’re going to be sinking more,” Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine said of the county’s investigations into the origin of the contamination that caused two Suffolk County Water Authority wells to be taken offline. “These findings are off the charts!”

The time for America’s testing has come, Judge Michael Luttig told a rapt audience at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Monday. “In Lincoln’s terms,” he said, “we are going to determine, in this calendar year, whether this nation, or any nation so conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, can long endure.” 

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine announced last week that the county intends to buy the 822-acre island, largely untouched by development except for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, and described it as an environmental jewel.

Following several changes to legislation that would allow for rent-restricted employer-sponsored housing, the town board held a second public hearing on the proposal on July 16, but the changes were not enough, apparently, to create public support.

Representative Nick LaLota, who announced last month that he was cutting off East Hampton Town and Village from federal community project funding over their adoption of laws prohibiting cooperation with the federal government in civil immigration enforcement, is not letting up in his threats.

Three marshes in East Hampton Town — at Cedar Point County Park, Napeague, and Beach Hampton — were scheduled to be sprayed with a larvicide this week, weather permitting, according to the Suffolk County Department of Health Services.

A plan to improve water quality at Havens Beach, where elevated levels of nitrogen and bacteria, including fecal coliform, have concerned residents for decades, had its first public hearing before the Sag Harbor Village Board on July 8.

Angry board members. That was the theme last week at meetings of both the East Hampton Town Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals.

The East Hampton Village Z.B.A. appeared disinclined to grant variances allowing a freestanding sign to be erected at 28 Newtown Lane, the former Odd Fellows Hall, which now houses the Rolex Boutique.

Amid the continuing and worsening drought, the Suffolk County Water Authority issued the season’s first Stage 1 water alert on Tuesday for all customers in Southold, Shelter Island, Southampton, and East Hampton Towns. Those restrictions include using an odd/even watering schedule, and no lawn watering is permitted between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

A week after Richard Normoyle, East Hampton Town’s chief building inspector, told the town board that progress was being made on a large backlog of applications, rumors began spreading among building industry insiders that he is not New York State Code-certified to perform inspections. 

Two locations in Montauk, one at the southwest corner of Lake Montauk and the other at the northwest corner of Fort Pond, will be improved with so-called “living shorelines.”

Aircraft and firearms, two things America has more of than any other country in the world by a wide margin, are causing frustration to boil over in Wainscott.

The closure, effective Tuesday due to recent heavy rainfalls, will remain in place through Saturday’s Great Bonac Fireworks Show and until a determination that water quality is acceptable for the harvest of shellfish is made.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit created by Congress in 1984, has awarded Concerned Citizens of Montauk a $323,000 grant to address coastal resilience in Montauk and on Napeague. It is the largest grant the nonprofit has ever been awarded.

Two weeks after the heavily contested Democratic primary election, absentee and early mail ballots have been counted, and the results have been finalized. Spoiler alert: They’ve barely changed since election night. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation on Monday amending the New York State tax law to stipulate that $250,000 of Suffolk County’s hotel and motel taxes be appropriated to help maintain and operate the Montauk Lighthouse. 

Richard Normoyle, the chief building inspector, detailed the organization of the greatly expanded department (it’s nearly doubled in size in the last year, to 19 approved positions) and said it would be fully caught up on the permit backlog by the end of the year, five months ahead of his May estimate.

After the removal of two large trees estimated to be more than 100 years old on a residential Newtown Lane property where a house was recently demolished, Mayor Jerry Larsen said this week that he will discuss with the village board possibly amending the code to require a permit to remove trees. 

At Guild Hall’s first Hamptons Institute program of 2026, founders of the Indivisible movement promoted bottom-up, grassroots, local activism in the face of rising authoritarianism.

Chris Gallant, who won the Democratic primary election last week and will face Representative Nick LaLota in November, calls CD-1 “a very flippable district.”

Three years after the Cranberry Hole Road bridge in Amagansett was deemed structurally deficient and closed to all traffic, the Long Island Rail Road has awarded a contract for its reconstruction, which is expected to start by early 2027.

“I don’t know how to respond,” Jerry Larsen said after hearing about the effort taking shape a little over a week after his Democratic primary loss to Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez. “I don't want to discourage them, but I’m not actively campaigning."

During a work session on June 25, the village board discussed the possibility of creating more stops and backups to make the village a less desirable cut-through for traffic heading to points east or points west.