Government

A Suffolk County effort mandated by the state is underway with the goal of reducing property taxes or eliminating tax increases by getting municipalities in the county to coordinate or eliminate duplicated services and to make purchases together for better prices.

Southampton has established the East Coast’s first “green zone” in a town-owned East Quogue park, where it is using electric-powered maintenance equipment only, to reduce noise levels and eliminate carbon emissions and toxic pollutants.

The East Hampton Town Trustees will apply this week for an emergency permit to open Georgica Pond to the Atlantic Ocean, according to Francis Bock, the governing body’s presiding officer.

A court decision last fall prohibiting barns and other structures on farmland protected by a Suffolk County program may play into a lawsuit challenging a barn on Peconic Land Trust acreage in Amagansett.

Under the proposed law, installation of one of the new nitrogen-reducing systems would be required for new construction, when undertaking a substantial expansion, when an existing system fails and needs replacing, and when commercial sites require new site plan review.

Tiina Laakkonen and Jonathan Rosen face an uncertain future in their effort to expand Tiina the Store, their Amagansett Main Street retail shop, after the site plan, reviewed by the East Hampton Town Planning Board on June 14, seemed to raise more questions than it answered.

A forthcoming addition to the municipal parking lot behind Amagansett Main Street was the focus of Monday night’s meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee.

The expansion of the restaurant at the Montauk Manor, La Fine, was opposed by some of the condominium’s residents during an East Hampton Planning Board hearing on May 17.

Three water quality improvement projects in Springs are set to become the first to be funded by the community preservation fund, after voters last fall approved using up to 20 percent of the fund to save ground and surface water from pollution. Until now, the fund had been earmarked solely for land preservation.

East Hampton Town and Friends of the East Hampton Airport have submitted legal briefs to the United States Supreme Court in the matter of East Hampton Town’s petition asking the court to review an appeals court decision against the town last fall.

The East Hampton Town Trustees’ harbor management committee met yesterday with officials of Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that seeks to construct the proposed South Fork Wind Farm approximately 30 miles off Montauk.

Mark Rowan, who has invested heavily in Montauk’s Fort Pond neighborhood in recent years, was back before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday in another attempt to replace four small cottages at 80 Firestone Road.

With affordable housing in acutely short supply, more than 30 hopefuls attended a home ownership lottery drawing on May 31 at Town Hall in East Hampton, where numbers that had been randomly assigned to applicants were drawn and sequentially entered onto a waiting list.

A special Southampton Town Board meeting was held last Thursday to consider extending the current moratorium on new planned development districts.

The Southampton Town Independence Party has picked its slate for the November election. The choices are considered designations only, however, as the actual nomination is by petition, a process that starts today.

Rabbi Steven Moss, the chairman of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission, will lead a community conversation about issues of bias in East Hampton and throughout the county at a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall on Wednesday at 4 p.m.

The public purchase of three lots in East Hampton Village that could provide space for an expansion of Herrick Park will be the subject of a hearing before the East Hampton Town Board tonight at 6:30 at Town Hall.

East Hampton Town’s hamlet studies will be discussed during a series of meetings beginning today with consultants who have drafted recommendations for the future of downtown areas based on previous public workshops and discussions. There will be separate presentations focusing on individual hamlets, as well as a presentation of the overall plan.

The situation at the East Hampton Airport last weekend, the first weekend of the 2017 high season following a court’s decision to strike down last summer’s overnight curfew on aircraft, was unremarkable, according to Jim Brundige, the airport manager.

In both traffic and complaints about aircraft noise, “it seemed to be a pretty normal weekend,” Mr. Brundige said on Tuesday. “It didn’t seem any busier than any other holiday weekend.”

Conditions in Georgica Pond are ripe for yet another harmful algal bloom, the East Hampton Town Trustees were told on Monday, and they should consider an emergency opening of the pond to the Atlantic Ocean, which would mitigate the situation.

With a vote at a board meeting tonight, East Hampton Town officials plan to hire a law firm that successfully represented the city of Santa Monica, Calif., in a fight to gain local control over its airport to advise the town as it pursues Federal Aviation Administration approval of restrictions on the use of East Hampton Airport in order to control noise.

About a year after Southampton Town initiated a moratorium on any new planned development district applications and an official review of the existing legislation began, Supervisor Jay Schneiderman has proposed wiping the law off the books.

East Hampton Town

Future of the Coastline

A public forum on the ongoing effort to develop a coastal assessment resiliency plan for East Hampton Town will take place on Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Amagansett Presbyterian Church’s Scoville Hall, on Meeting House Lane. Representatives of GEI Consultants, who are working with a committee appointed by the town board, will discuss sea level rise, erosion, and potential storm impacts throughout East Hampton.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee completed its selection of candidates for townwide offices last week and was expected to formally nominate them at its regular monthly meeting yesterday.

After a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday evening to inaugurate Amagansett’s new privy in the parking lot behind Main Street, members of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee repaired to the American Legion Hall for their monthly meeting.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals must weigh a request that would allow a retirement "dream house" on a half-acre, landlocked parcel. The site contains wetlands and dunes.

East Hampton Town’s Republican and Democratic Committees have finalized their respective slates of candidates for the nine-member town trustee board.

On Monday, the East Hampton Town Republican Committee announced that Susan Vorpahl, a daughter of Mary Vorpahl and the late Stuart Vorpahl, is a designated candidate for town trustee in the Nov. 7 election.

A Montauk hotel with a popular outdoor lounge scene would use an adjacent property for unspecified events most weekends this summer, a town official said.

Representative Lee Zeldin has reintroduced the Plum Island Preservation Act, a bill to prevent the sale of Plum Island by the government to the highest bidder.

A dark cloud over a proposed car wash in Wainscott grew darker on April 19, when the East Hampton Town Planning Board, by a 5-to-1 vote, asked the Planning Department to prepare a memorandum examining the environmental impact of the proposal.