Government

East Hampton Town

Budget, Land Buy Hearings

    The East Hampton Town Board held hearings last Thursday on legislation designed to address complaints  about commercial vehicles — work trucks and other equipment — parked on residential lots, largely in Springs. The board found, however, that its proposed solution — to allow two commercially registered vehicles of up to 14,000 pounds gross vehicle weight — did not sit well with a number of speakers.

    A second proposed law would prohibit the parking of commercially registered vehicles on residential streets between midnight and 6 a.m.

    Like most emergency services volunteers, Karen Haab, who has been an advanced emergency medical technician for 11 of her 12 years with the Springs Fire Department, is not one to toot her own horn.

But lately, others have been all too happy to do it for her.

    On Saturday, with friends, officials, and a good number of her colleagues from the Springs Fire Department on hand, Ms. Haab was presented with a medal of honor from the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York.

    Martin Drew of Springs, a political gadfly and frequent writer of letters to the editor, announced last Thursday that he would run a write-in campaign for East Hampton Town supervisor.

    A semi-retired contractor and real estate investor, Mr. Drew, 47, said he was undaunted by the prospect of trying to defeat Larry Cantwell, the popular former East Hampton Village administrator, whose name will be the only one on the ballot, under the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families lines.

Dems’ Campaign Rally

    The East Hampton Democratic Party has invited people to an “old-fashioned campaign rally” on Saturday from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at the East Hampton Neighborhood House. There will be live music, free food and drinks for adults and children, and the Democratic candidates for town supervisor and town board, Larry Cantwell, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, and Job Potter, will be on hand. The Neighborhood House is on Three Mile Harbor Road.

Gansett Gathering for G.O.P.

    It was mostly quality-of-life issues in Montauk that were discussed at a candidates forum hosted by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk on Sunday at the Montauk Firehouse. The current East Hampton Town Board administration was harshly criticized for everything from approving the Shark Attack Sounds party permit for almost 4,000 people at the Montauk Yacht Club over July Fourth weekend to not hiring a coastal engineer to analyze the erosion issue in downtown Montauk.

    A house can be built at 85 South Edgemere Street in Montauk on a controversial vacant lot at the edge of  Fort Pond,  just not the exact house the owners had wanted, according to a 3-2 vote Tuesday by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals. The lot is slightly over an acre, but with a very small building envelope due to surrounding wetlands.

    At its meeting tonight, the East Hampton Town Board is expected to approve scheduling a hearing for Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall on a proposed $69.9 million budget for 2014.

    A storage facility on Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton that was said to be for one man’s car collection seemed to be traveling along a smooth road until last week when it hit a massive pothole. During preliminary site plan review by the East Hampton Town Planning Board back in July, the applicant, Derek Trulson, said, “I have a collection of muscle cars. I want to store my cars there. My cars are toys, but they are also investments.”

    Property owners who have been receiving New York State’s Basic STAR exemption, relieving them of a portion of their school taxes, must register with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance by Dec. 31 in order to continue to receive the exemption in 2014 and subsequent years.

    Until now, a one-time registration assured that the exemption would be applied year after year. The new requirement to reregister was instituted after the state comptroller found that numerous taxpayers had fraudulently obtained STAR exemptions for their properties.

Independence Buffet

    Candidates running on the Independence Party line in East Hampton Town will meet voters tonight from 6 to 8 in the community hall at the St. Michael’s senior housing complex in Amagansett.

    Hearings will be held tonight by the East Hampton Town Board on two additions to the town code that are designed to help officials better enforce the law against running businesses in a residential zone.

    The first would regulate the parking of commercial vehicles on residential properties. According to the proposed law, two commercially registered vehicles, each with a gross vehicle weight of 14,000 pounds or less (excluding fuel trucks) would be allowed to regularly park on a residential lot.

    Candidates for East Hampton Town and Suffolk County office will appear together at two major forums this week — a Concerned Citizens of Montauk meet-the-candidates event on Sunday and a League of Women Voters debate in East Hampton on Monday.

    The Montauk event, the group’s 43rd, will take place at the Montauk Firehouse starting at 1 p.m. Typically the only time when all candidates appear together in Montauk, it often draws a standing-room-only audience.

    State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle is among those named to head a Senate task force that will be charged with studying state and federal efforts to combat Lyme and other tick-borne diseases and make recommendations for a state plan to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of them.

How it Was, How it Will Be

    Candidates for East Hampton Town Board will share their views on preservation following a screening at LTV tonight of a vintage film by the jazz age illustrator Hamilton King.

    The free program, from 5 to 7 p.m., is hosted by the East Hampton Historical Society and LTV. The film, which includes footage of East Hampton in the 1920s and 1930s, will serve as the springboard for a panel discussion with the candidates on the future of preservation in the town.

    LTV is at 75 Industrial Road in Wainscott.

    Larry Cantwell was the top vote-getter in the Republican primary for East Hampton Town supervisor, but Mr. Cantwell, the former East Hampton Village administrator who is running on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families lines, has declined the nomination.

    Turnout was lower than 2 percent, and even in countywide Republican races, like those for sheriff or district attorney, less than 8 percent of registered Republicans showed up on Sept. 10.

On the 28th anniversary of Hurricane Gloria’s landfall on Long Island, the Village of East Hampton’s Zoning Board of Appeals held a second, lengthy hearing to consider whether or how to allow an oceanfront homeowner to protect her property from extreme weather events

    At the urging of Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has granted a six-month extension for Sandy-impacted homeowners to file flood insurance claims. The move follows a bipartisan call led by Ms. Gillibrand to extend FEMA’s Oct. 29 deadline for homeowners to file a Proof of Loss form under the National Flood Insurance Program the agency manages.

    Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Schumer, along with New Jersey’s U.S. senators and members of both states’

    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.

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

    In the aquaculture report she delivered to her colleagues at the East Hampton Town Trustees’ meeting on Tuesday, Stephanie Forsberg said that levels of cochlodinium, or rust tide, had decreased from the levels measured in local waters two weeks earlier.

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.

   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 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.

   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.

    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.