Government

G.O.P. Officers

    The East Hampton Town Republican Committee re-elected Kurt Kappel and Tom Knobel as its chairman and vice chairman at its annual meeting last Thursday. Richard Gherardi will be the committee’s treasurer and Deborah Schwartz will be the secretary for the 2013-14 year.

Meet-and-Greets

    Candidates for East Hampton Town supervisor and town board will meet at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street Saturday afternoon for the first of several debates scheduled over the next five weeks.

    This one, sponsored by the East Hampton Group for Good Government, is likely to include questions on the airport, deer control, wastewater, code enforcement, and the merits of a town manager, the group’s president, Jeffrey Fisher, said Monday. The debate will start at 2 p.m.

    A meeting on East Hampton Town’s comprehensive wastewater management plan, which was to have been held in Montauk on Wednesday, will be rescheduled.

    Consultants hired to develop the plan, which will include recommendations regarding the town’s septic waste-treatment plant, individual septic systems, and ongoing water-quality monitoring, are planning a series of meetings to focus on the needs and issues of individual hamlets.

    The Northwest Alliance, a group formed to protect Northwest Creek and Harbor, Barcelona Neck, the Grace Estate, and the environmental quality of areas in East Hampton’s Northwest Woods, has asked candidates for East Hampton Town Supervisor and town board to answer a short list of questions on water quality, the dredging of Northwest Creek, and aircraft noise “in the hopes of building a consensus on the urgency of the protection of this area,” according to T. James Matthews and Patricia Hope, members of the alliance’s steering committee.

The applicants propose to merge the three lots into one, and then build a 79-unit condominium community for affluent older residents, down from the 89 units first proposed.

    A public meeting with the consultants preparing a comprehensive wastewater management plan for East Hampton Town will be held at the Montauk School library on Oct. 2 from 6:30 to 9 p.m.

    The meeting is the first of a series that will focus on wastewater issues, needs, and potential solutions in each of the town’s hamlets. A Web site, EHWaterRestore.com, has been set up to provide information and updates on the process.

    The expansion of a house and an artist’s studio along with a Zen garden got a peace sign from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals at a busy Sept. 10 work session, but a deer fence on the same property raised the board members’ ire.

   East Hampton Studios, the building on Industrial Road in Wainscott that was constructed as a film production soundstage in hopes that it would stimulate a developing film industry here, will become a storage facility.

    Cochlodinium, or rust tide, has been discovered in Three Mile Harbor, Northwest Harbor, and Accabonac Harbor.

    At the meeting of the East Hampton Town Trustees on Tuesday night, Stephanie Forsberg, in the aquaculture report she delivered to her colleagues, reported the recent discovery. Cochlodinium, she said, is algae that can be fatal to shellfish and finfish, but is not harmful to humans when ingested.

   Representatives of the Long Island Power Authority will present details this evening in a meeting about a project to replace existing utility poles to allow for an upgraded electrical transmission line between East Hampton Village and Amagansett. The session will take place in an open-house format at the East Hampton Village Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street from 6 to 8 p.m. The public has been invited.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation late Wednesday partially lifted a temporary ban on shellfish harvest in some East Hampton waters.

   The formation of a citizens committee charged with collecting information about businesses and their needs appears to be on the horizon, after a plea from a business organization leader that East Hampton Town officials base decisions affecting business owners on actual data, rather than speculation.

    Like the post-Labor Day calm that descended on East Hampton Village last week, the village board’s work session last Thursday was brief, quiet, and uneventful.

    Turnout for Tuesday’s Republican primary was low in East Hampton, with just 67 people casting ballots at the polls.

    While the results of the write-in primary for East Hampton Town supervisor will not be known until at least early next week, unofficial tallies in the races for the G.O.P. nomination for district attorney and county sheriff show clear wins for the incumbents, Thomas J. Spota and Vincent De Marco respectively.

   Angela Scott of Spring Street, representing 168 Sag Harbor residents who have signed a petition for what she conceded is a complex problem, once again urged the village board to make flooding in the village a priority. “Last week it hit home,” she said, and offered to do “whatever we can do to help you in the process.”

    With complaints from the heavy rain on Sept. 3 including flooded basements, cars stuck in massive puddles, and some that were destroyed, Mayor Brian Gilbride agreed, saying that “weather patterns are crazier than they were.”

        The East Hampton Town Board will hear comments from the public tonight about plans for new parking regulations along School Street in Springs, developed in concert with the Springs School.

    The Sagaponack Village Board will hold a special meeting on Saturday at 9 a.m. to get community input on a proposal to create a village police force.

    A budget, prepared by former Southampton police chief William Wilson, is expected to detail a timeline and the costs involved. Mayor Donald Louchheim believes the village will get more service for less money with its own force as opposed to its current arrangement for policing through Southampton Town Should residents and village board members agree, the mayor hopes to have a new police department in place by Jan. 1.

G.O.P. Primaries Tuesday

    Demonstrators were at East Hampton Airport on Friday afternoon to call attention to the noise generated there and its effect on South Fork residents.

    More than 30 residents and members of the Quiet Skies Coalition from Sag Harbor, Springs, East Hampton, Wainscott, and Noyac, carried signs and stood along the road and at the tarmac edge, hoping to raise the awareness of passengers and pilots that the noise from helicopters, jets, and seaplanes disturbs those living near and under flight paths.

    The quality of the Town of East Hampton’s waterways, which are managed by the town trustees, is good, Stephanie Forsberg, a trustee, reported to her colleagues at the board’s meeting on Tuesday.

   The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation has invited bidders to submit their proposals for operating a tennis concession at Montauk Downs State Park. According to a release, the state is looking for a “creative and visionary business entrepreneur” to manage the lessons, pro shop, and maintain the courts.

    Income from a real estate transfer tax into the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund continued to rise this year in all five East End towns, providing money for the public purchase of land for open space, historic preservation, and farmland protection.

    In East Hampton, the fund has swelled to about $42 million, Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, said Tuesday. Of that, $2.7 million will be spent this year on debt from previous land purchases.

    Responding to a move by some East Hampton Republicans to get him on their ticket for town supervisor via a write-in G.O.P. primary, Larry Cantwell said this week that he was not interested.

    “I am filing a candidate declination form with the Suffolk County Board of Elections for the Republican primary on Sept. 10 in order to make clear that I am not a candidate in this primary election,” Mr. Cantwell said in a statement issued on Tuesday, adding that he did not want “Republican voters who may cast a vote in the primary to be misled.”

    Consultants to East Hampton Town will discuss the development of a wastewater management plan at a public presentation on Monday at 1 p.m. at Town Hall.

    Pio Lombardo of Lombardo Associates and Kevin Phillips and Stephanie Davis of the FPM Group will address the three components of the plan: wastewater management, scavenger waste management, and water-quality monitoring.

    A public meeting to determine whether tiny Sagaponack Village gets a police force all its own — “the last one before the board decides yea or nay,” promised Mayor Donald Louchheim when the village board met on Monday — will take place on Sept. 7 at 9 a.m.

    The board will hear views pro and con at that time, said the mayor, this time including line-by-line budgets. An Aug. 10 meeting, attended by 100 or so residents, did not provide detailed numbers and ended with more questions than answers.

    Darlene Smith, a bus driver for East Hampton Town’s Human Services Department, was suspended without pay for 30 days, retroactive to July 29, in a unanimous vote of the town board last Thursday.

    Diane Patrizio, the town’s director of human services, has charged Ms. Smith with misconduct and incompetence. Under the state’s Civil Service Law, a hearing officer has been appointed, and Ms. Smith can demand a hearing of the charges.

    While the topics addressed at an Amagansett “listen in” hosted by Democratic candidates for town supervisor and town board were diverse, the message was unmistakable: Quality of life, for which so many choose to make East Hampton their home, has deteriorated, and something has to be done.

    Like the rising seas and the more violent and destructive storms the scientific community says are upon us, residents asserted that problems caused by summer visitors, in their numbers and their behavior, have become extreme and must be mitigated.

Southampton Hospital has planned to establish a Center for Tick-Borne Diseases, and on Sunday will team up with the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance for an event called Bite Back for a Cure, part of the alliance’s national campaign to raise awareness and encourage local advocacy.

    East Hampton Town’s bond rating was upgraded by Moody’s Investors Service earlier this month by one level, from A1 to Aa3, reflecting the rating agency’s assessment of the town’s financial standing and its “stable outlook.”

    The rating was issued in advance of the sale on Aug. 15 of just over $2 million in bonds and bond anticipation notes, used to refinance previous notes and to raise money for upcoming capital projects.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals had applications before it in recent weeks on properties facing Gardiner’s Bay, delaying decision on one — which Tom Preiato, the town’s head building inspector called “an insult,” and saying no by a split vote to two others for a concrete revetment. A few mixed decisions and yeses were also handed out on less controversial proposals.