Government

On Tuesday, the Sag Harbor Village Board will hear from residents and business owners on a proposal to prohibit single-use plastic bags at retail stores. The proposal is part of a movement on the East End to ban such bags in time for Earth Day 2015.

Last month, there was some question as to whether the proposal would apply to all plastic bags, like the heavier plastic bags used at the Wharf Shop on Main Street. Nada Barry, an owner of the store, also told the board that many businesses order plastic bags in bulk, and they likely couldn’t use all of them up before April.

East Hampton Town

Accolades for Financial Reporting

East Hampton Town has received an award from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada for the quality of its annual financial report.

An Oct. 8 letter from the Wainscott School Board to the district’s taxpayers about a proposed affordable housing development was called “inflammatory” and “a blindside” from “a very small but very vocal group” at a meeting on Friday at the senior citizens housing complex at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett.

The process of gaining town approval to put up an agricultural building on farmland would be simplified under a proposed revision to the East Hampton Town code that will be the subject of a hearing before the town board next Thursday.

At present, the law requires review by the town planning and agricultural review boards, as well as approval of the town board for buildings or other structures on farmland over which the town holds development rights.

Under the proposed change, town board approval would not be required.

The town board voted last Thursday to move ahead with three property purchases using the community preservation fund, following hearings on the deals.

Three lots on Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett totaling 2.6 acres will be purchased for $2.2 million. They are owned by Helen S. Rattray, the Star’s publisher, the Sky and Ray Family Trust, and Indian Pot L.L.C.

According to Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, the area has “pristine secondary duneland” that is a good example of a maritime dune community.

The East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan, which was adopted in 2005, does not call for an end to commercial flights at the East Hampton Airport, as stated in a story that appeared last week.

The authors of a letter asking for strict restrictions at the airport drew that conclusion from a 2002 document in which Lee Koppelman, a planner working on an early version of an update of the town’s comprehensive plan, characterized residents as believing that “scheduled commercial operations should be prohibited.”

Plans to move a 1,000-square-foot outbuilding from one spot to another on a Pantigo Road property that straddles neighborhood business and residential zones have residential neighbors crying foul.

The nearly one-acre property at 458 Pantigo Road, which backs up onto Skimhampton Road, has space for four businesses. Two are vacant, and the others are occupied by Calvo’s Deli and Wilson Express Cargo.

An open meeting about proposed affordable housing developments in the Wainscott School District is scheduled for tomorrow at 9 a.m. at the St. Michael’s senior citizens housing complex on Montauk Highway in Amagansett.

The East Hampton Town Trustees continued a discussion last week about the relocation of an erosion-threatened house on trustee-owned property at Lazy Point in Amagansett, agreeing in principle to support its relocation but insisting on a further exploration of alternative sites.

Montauk residents concerned about hunting on Fort Pond in proximity to the houses ringing its shores, as well as downtown Montauk, appealed to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday to restrict hunting on the pond. A petition with over 100 signatures supporting a hunting ban was submitted to the previous board in 2012, Jane Bimson said at a board work session, but no action was taken. She urged the current board to consider the matter.

A small but fervent group rallied outside Town Hall on Saturday, hoping to drum up public support and influence the East Hampton Town Board to take a stand against proposed state hunting regulations that would allow gunning on weekends in January.

The public restroom to be constructed in the parking lot north of Main Street in Amagansett is “ready to go,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell told the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee on Monday night. Mr. Cantwell displayed the latest blueprints prepared by the architect, Joseph Catropa, which he said he considered the final design. The next steps, he told the committee, are to solicit bids, choose a contractor, and complete construction of the cedar-shingled building before next summer.

Officials of 19 Danish offshore wind companies that are visiting the United States to explore investment in the offshore wind market visited Long Island yesterday. The Long Island Association and Long Island Forum for Technology hosted the delegation.

The group toured the Composites Prototyping Center in Plainview and held a discussion about manufacturing capabilities on Long Island. Representatives from Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company seeking to develop an offshore wind farm 30 miles east of Montauk, participated in the tour and discussion.

East Hampton Town

Charge Your Electric Car

Both spending and anticipated revenues in the proposed $71.5 million 2015 East Hampton Town budget are “reasonable,” according to the New York State Comptroller’s office.

The state required the town to issue a deficit-financing bond covering the $28 million shortfall that accumulated under the McGintee administration, and as part of the requirement the town must submit its annual budgets to the state for review.

Groundwater will be tested for the chemical pentachlorophenol, a toxic wood preservative used on utility poles, including those recently installed by PSEG Long Island as part of a controversial six-mile high-voltage electric line at three East Hampton Town and Village sites.

Town and village officials will hire an independent consulting firm to sample areas around three of the poles installed where there is a high water table and leaching may have occurred, Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said yesterday.

The public can have its say on next year’s town budget tonight at Town Hall, when the East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing on the proposed $71.5 million plan.

If it is passed as it stands, properties outside the incorporated villages of Sag Harbor and East Hampton would pay $28.90 per $100 of assessed value, an increase of 1.8 percent over this year. Property owners within the villages would pay $11.63 per $100, an increase of 2.8 percent.

Of the overall budget, just over $49 million would be raised by taxes; the rest would come from various other sources. 

At 10:40 p.m., Representative Tim Bishop announced that he was throwing in the towel with 87 percent of the districts reporting.

Year-round, unsewered homeowners in Suffolk County are eligible for a lottery to participate in an alternative wastewater treatment pilot program. The county will select 19 winners, who will get a new system installed at no cost, along with five years of free maintenance.

Nitrogen leaking from aging septic systems is seen as contributing to the deteriorated quality of some town waterways, helping to cause algal blooms that can kill marine life.

A noise analysis report on the East Hampton Airport is to be the subject of a special town board meeting today at 10 a.m. at East Hampton Village’s Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.

Peter Kirsch, an aviation attorney hired by the town, will be on hand to address the interim report and potential next steps for the town. Peter Wadsworth of the town’s airport finances subcommittee will review an analysis of 2014 airplane noise. A public comment period will follow the presentations.

With the midterm elections 12 days away, Representative Tim Bishop and his challenger, State Senator Lee Zeldin, are locked in what polls indicate is a close contest.

A Newsday/News12/Siena poll conducted in September gave Mr. Bishop, a Democrat, a 10-point lead, but a more recent poll released by a conservative group backing Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, called it a dead heat.

A 37-acre oceanfront property on Napeague owned by East Hampton Town was designated as a nature preserve by the town board last Thursday night, but the question of whether there will be parking allowed along the preserve’s western edge, on Dolphin Drive, remains.

Advocates of maximum public access to the preserve and the beach said last Thursday at a hearing on a proposed parking ban on Dolphin Drive that off-road parking spaces could easily be created along one side of the road in a right-of-way area.

Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague will likely have to start scaling back to its much smaller 30-years-ago size one of these days, according to the latest ruling in East Hampton Town’s ongoing lawsuit against the roadside restaurant.

The town is seeking to force Cyril’s to remove a number of structures erected since 1984 and operate as it did then. A State Supreme Court Justice has denied the town’s request for a preliminary injunction, but concluded in his decision, released last week, that “the likelihood of success favors the town.”

Discussions in East Hampton and Southampton of the infrastructure needed to deal effectively with wastewater and avoid further degradation of ground and surface waters from nitrogen and other pollutants have inevitably led to eyes on the large dollar sign in the room: the enormous cost of sewering systems, treatment plants, and the like.

Representative Tim Bishop and his challenger, State Senator Lee Zeldin, who are engaged in what is expected to be a close contest for New York’s First Congressional District, will meet a number of times over the next week — twice in East Hampton Town.

East Hampton Town

Rental Registry

A law that would establish a rental registry in the Town of East Hampton requiring those who rent out properties to obtain permits and update them regularly, regarding specific details about tenants, will be discussed at a town board work session on Tuesday.

The law has been proposed as a way to assist enforcement against those who violate housing laws by, for example, renting to large groups or consistently renting properties for short periods of time.

The meeting gets under way at Town Hall at 10 a.m.

The members of the East Hampton Town Planning Board had a smorgasbord of applications at its meeting on Oct. 8, ranging from a proposed delicatessen with an upstairs apartment in Montauk, and a request to divide a one-acre house lot in Amagansett, to a plan at an electric substation used by PSEG and National Grid, and a request from Verizon.

The mess hall at the former Boys Harbor summer camp, which is jointly owned by East Hampton Town and Suffolk County, would be a perfect place for a “multidisciplinary center” devoted to art, education, and recreation, according to the East Hampton Arts Council, which presented a proposal to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

The building could provide a venue for art exhibits, poetry readings, theater, music, dance performances, and other cultural activities, the proposal stated, becoming “an important community arts and nature center.”

Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer for the East Hampton Village Board, summarized modified plans for road work on two of the village’s busiest streets at the board’s work session last Thursday. He had presented original proposals to the board at its meeting on Sept. 19. Board members seem pleased with his recommendations, but have not yet approved them.

A ban in East Hampton Town of commonly used thin plastic bags is gaining favor among organizations and some business owners, as well as members of the town board, who are expected to set it for public hearing with the idea of its becoming effective at the end of 2015. Called single-use bags, they are already banned in East Hampton and Southampton Villages.