Government

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.

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.

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 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.”

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

East Hampton Town

Charge Your Electric Car

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.