Government

United States Army Corps of Engineers staff and New York State officials have sidestepped East Hampton Town in moving ahead with a planned multimillion-dollar project to protect the downtown Montauk ocean shoreline without obtaining local authorization.

A State Supreme Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit against East Hampton Town, its office of housing and community development, and the East Hampton Housing Authority over a mold infestation at the Windmill Village affordable housing complex.

Local municipalities can, and should, enact standards for septic systems that are more stringent than those upheld by the Suffolk County Health Department, which regulates septic waste systems throughout the county, Kevin McAllister, the founder of Defend H20 in Sag Harbor, told the East Hampton Town Board this week.

Several companies have introduced technology that can reduce the amount of nitrogen in the effluent released into the environment from septic systems — a key pollutant causing the deterioration of drinking and surface waters.

Although new pumps have been installed at the Empire Gas station, now Citgo, in Montauk and a pump island has been expanded, its application for site plan approval for the expansion remained in limbo on Feb. 4 when the members of the East Hampton Town Planning Board coalesced against a canopy for the island. 

East Hampton Town

Montauk Beach: Easements Are In

East Hampton Town has obtained all of the needed agreements from the owners of Montauk properties along the downtown shore where the Army Corps of Engineers plans to build a reinforced sand dune.

Representatives for HomeGoods received a chilly reception from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals last week as the board reviewed a request for signs on the new Wainscott building the store will occupy.

Town code limits total sign area to 20 square feet at that location, but HomeGoods wants to exceed that by nearly 50 percent, with a 14-square-foot sign on the back of the building by the parking lot and another one on the Montauk Highway side of the building.

Susan Knobel, who for more than a year has sought permission from the East Hampton Town Trustees to move her house from a severely eroded shoreline at Lazy Point in Amagansett, had reason to celebrate on Tuesday night. The trustees, who have debated the request while often asking for additional information, voted to authorize Ms. Knobel to apply for the variance relief that she will need from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to relocate her house to nearby lots that are at a higher elevation.

Citing “the amount of money coming into the village, and what this money can do,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and his colleagues on the East Hampton Village Board heard last Thursday about the mushrooming number of basements that extend beyond the footprints of their houses, providing more living space but also adding more “density.”

Residents’ anxiety over being priced out of the modest houses they own on land they lease from the East Hampton Town Trustees at Lazy Point in Amagansett was evident during a lengthy and sometimes tense meeting on Tuesday night, with accusations heard that the members of the panel were continuing to be adversarial and belligerent.

The trustees had previously announced their intention to raise annual leases to $6,000 per lot per year. Leaseholders now pay $1,500 per year.

The economy of East Hampton Town — how money is made, from whom, and the needs of consumers and businesses — will be the subject of a study to be commissioned by the East Hampton Town Board.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee will screen potential candidates for Suffolk County legislator on Wednesday at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett.

Legislator Jay Schneiderman of Montauk, first elected on the Republican ticket and now a member of the Independence Party, is serving his sixth and final two-year term in the Legislature, which has term limits. In 2013, Chris Nuzzi, then an outgoing Southampton Town councilman, ran against Mr. Schneiderman on the Republican and Conservative lines.

A Montauk resident’s civil rights lawsuit against former East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has been dismissed.

Town Hall Campus Remake

East Hampton Town will accept proposals from architectural firms with ideas for remaking the Town Hall campus, where the original Town Hall building has sat empty for several years after the completion of a new main building from donated historic structures.

The plan is to eliminate off-campus town offices, such as those at the Pantigo Place office condominiums, which would be sold, and to consolidate all of the town offices on the main campus.

A review of the East Hampton Town Building Department prompted by the discoveries of an undeposited 2010 check for a building permit, $290 in undeposited cash along with a receipt lacking a year, and a cash receipt book with pages missing has led to the development of stricter controls over the issuance of building permits and the collection of fee payments.

Just as long-awaited plans for a public restroom in Amagansett’s business district parking lot near completion, with bids for construction to be opened today, opponents of its location reopened the debate at Monday’s meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee.

The Montauk Movie, where rainy days could be spent catching the latest flick, will be reincarnated in the coming months as SoulCycle, where folks will be able to spin their days away instead, if a site plan now before the East Hampton Town Planning Board is approved. Although no structural changes to the building are planned, the change of use triggers the review.

After a somewhat contentious debate Tuesday night, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals approved a subdivision of a Georgica Association property that will leave the resulting lots smaller than the five-acre standard there. The four board members who voted to approve the requested variance from the minimum lot size held that by doing so they were actually reducing density, in accordance with the goals of the comprehensive plan for the area.

The East Hampton Town Planning Board will hold four public hearings Wednesday night, including one for a proposed subdivision in Wainscott that has generated controversy and three others that have not been questioned.

New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week signed into law a bill designed to protect licensed physicians from sanction by the New York State Board of Professional Medical Conduct for prescribing long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease.

The law, which was co-sponsored by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., was among recommendations by the Senate Majority Coalition’s task force on Lyme and tickborne diseases in order to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of such diseases in the state.

“The Town of East Hampton v. Clan-Fitz, et al.,” East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky said Monday morning, calling the attorneys for both the town and Cyril’s Fish House to the floor in court once again. The legal battle has been raging between the two for years, in both local and state court. But, in keeping with the holiday sentiment, there was an air of peace between the two on Monday.

The Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee voted on Monday to inform the East Hampton Town Board that it is considering whether to request a hamlet study in which problems related to housing, wastewater, transportation, utility lines, and beaches would be identified and addressed.

The Suffolk County Legislature approved a measure last week that could bolster the county’s drinking water protection program by paying reimbursements for the salaries of employees doing water quality work back to the program, rather than into the county’s general fund.

Citing recent heavy rainfall and stormwater runoff, the State Department of Environmental Conservation has temporarily closed several waterways in East Hampton and Southampton to the harvesting of shellfish.

It was a good year for piping plovers on East Hampton beaches, Juliana Duryea of the town’s Natural Resources Department reported to the town board on Dec. 2. The birds are considered an endangered species in New York State. Their East Coast population is on a federal list of threatened species, and they are protected.

A program to protect them and increase the chances of successful breeding begins in late March each year, Ms. Duryea said, and the results are reported to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the state.

East Hampton Town

Heating Oil Assistance

East Hampton Town residents who wish to apply to the federal Home Energy Assistance Program for help in paying winter heating bills can get some one-on-one assistance with the application through the town’s Department of Human Services. Also available are emergency benefits, to pay for heating costs when fuel is running low or heat is scheduled to be shut off, and grants to low-income homeowners to cover heating equipment repair or replacement.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals approved the reconstruction of a dilapidated dock in Gardiner’s Bay off the subdivision known as Broadview at its Nov. 18 work session in Town Hall.

A proposed 120-foot-tall cellphone monopole along with a vinyl-sided shed on a parcel on Napeague received negative signals from the East Hampton Town Planning Board on Nov. 19.

The pole, to be used by AT&T, would be placed at the rear of a nearly 16,000-square-foot parcel on the north side of Montauk Highway owned by an entity called Surf Barn. The site has one house on it and a store occupied by Goldberg’s, a bagel shop that opened there earlier this year.

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.

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.

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.