Government

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.

Representative Tim Bishop and his challenger, State Senator Lee Zeldin, who are engaged in what is expected to be a close contest for New York’s First Congressional District, will meet a number of times over the next week — twice in East Hampton Town.

East Hampton Town

Rental Registry

A law that would establish a rental registry in the Town of East Hampton requiring those who rent out properties to obtain permits and update them regularly, regarding specific details about tenants, will be discussed at a town board work session on Tuesday.

The law has been proposed as a way to assist enforcement against those who violate housing laws by, for example, renting to large groups or consistently renting properties for short periods of time.

The meeting gets under way at Town Hall at 10 a.m.

The members of the East Hampton Town Planning Board had a smorgasbord of applications at its meeting on Oct. 8, ranging from a proposed delicatessen with an upstairs apartment in Montauk, and a request to divide a one-acre house lot in Amagansett, to a plan at an electric substation used by PSEG and National Grid, and a request from Verizon.

The mess hall at the former Boys Harbor summer camp, which is jointly owned by East Hampton Town and Suffolk County, would be a perfect place for a “multidisciplinary center” devoted to art, education, and recreation, according to the East Hampton Arts Council, which presented a proposal to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

The building could provide a venue for art exhibits, poetry readings, theater, music, dance performances, and other cultural activities, the proposal stated, becoming “an important community arts and nature center.”

A ban in East Hampton Town of commonly used thin plastic bags is gaining favor among organizations and some business owners, as well as members of the town board, who are expected to set it for public hearing with the idea of its becoming effective at the end of 2015. Called single-use bags, they are already banned in East Hampton and Southampton Villages.

A team that has been looking at how East Hampton Town might centralize its offices has recommended tearing down the old town hall building, which is largely empty, and building a state-of-the art, 14,000-square-foot annex, using green construction and technology.

Town offices are now scattered throughout the town. Bringing them together, it is said, would not only save money but improve work efficiency and service to residents.

Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer for the East Hampton Village Board, summarized modified plans for road work on two of the village’s busiest streets at the board’s work session last Thursday. He had presented original proposals to the board at its meeting on Sept. 19. Board members seem pleased with his recommendations, but have not yet approved them.

East Hampton Town

Downtown Montauk Beach Work

East Hampton Town and Suffolk County will share the cost of maintaining the reinforced sand dune to be built by the Army Corps of Engineers on the beach in downtown Montauk, according to a vote on Tuesday of the County Legislature.

East Hampton Town

Lucius Ware on East End Prejudice

Lucius Ware, the president of the Eastern Long Island Branch of the N.A.A.C.P., will discuss bias and prejudice on the East End at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force on Wednesday. The public has been invited to attend the meeting, which will be held in the Town Hall meeting room at 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Police Contract

Congressman Tim Bishop and State Senator Lee Zeldin, who is challenging Mr. Bishop to represent New York’s First Congressional District, are in a dead heat, according to a poll released this week by a conservative group that is backing Republican candidates.

The poll surveyed 400 likely voters from Sept. 23 to the 25th, 34 percent of whom identified themselves as Republicans and 31 percent Democrats, according to Public Opinion Strategies. The firm conducted the poll for American Action Network, which is spending $1.2 million on Mr. Zeldin’s campaign.

The Sept. 17 East Hampton Town Planning Board public hearing on the proposed subdivision of almost 40 acres containing prime farmland in Wainscott began with neighbors pitted against neighbors but, after two hours, they seemed to coalesce, agreeing that the town should save as much of the farmland as possible.

East Hampton Town

Chain Store Law Takes Effect

A new law requiring chain stores hoping to open here to obtain a special permit and undergo particular planning board review was passed by a majority vote of the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday. Councilman Fred Overton voted against it.

With Election Day less than six weeks away, Representative Tim Bishop, the six-term Democratic incumbent in New York’s First Congressional District, and his Republican opponent, State Senator Lee Zeldin, have been deep into campaign season. The candidates met in a debate on Monday night at Hampton Bays High School, and will attend fund-raising events in the coming days on the South Fork.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals held a two-hour public hearing on Sept. 16 on whether to allow a boardwalk through the double dunes in Amagansett to accommodate access to the ocean beach by upland property owners who use wheelchairs. The hearing was essentially part two of the application. 

East Hampton Town

Reconsidering Mass Gatherings

The town board will hold a hearing tonight on revisions to the town laws regarding mass gatherings. The law requires permits for assemblies of more than 50 people on residential properties, for organized gatherings of five or more people on public properties, and for gatherings on commercial sites if they involve outdoor areas, use of a tent, off-site parking, or sales of goods or refreshments on a property, or in an area of a property, not already approved for such sales.

Anticipated changes to New York State hunting regulations could prompt East Hampton officials to revise the lottery system for hunting permits on town lands during the shotgun-hunting season in January.

Pentachlorophenol, a chemical preservative on the utility poles PSEG Long Island recently erected in East Hampton Town to support a 6.2-mile high-voltage electric line, has been found in significant levels in the water from a well at the East Hampton Village Firehouse on Cedar Street, Rebecca Singer, a co-chair of Long Island Businesses for Responsible Energy, which has sued PSEG over the installation, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

Unless future testing of East Hampton’s Georgica Pond has better results, taking crabs and other marine life will be prohibited there for at least another three weeks, the East Hampton Town Trustees decided on Tuesday. Most recent water samples indicate a “dangerously high level” of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, which was first detected in the pond in July, said Stephanie Forsberg, the trustees’ assistant clerk.

Conciliation was in the air, and olive branches were extended in all directions on Aug. 27, when the East Hampton Town Planning Board scheduled a public hearing on the subdivision of roughly 40 acres of Wainscott farmland, which will result in seven house lots. The development had been years in the making and the subject of two lawsuits. The hearing will be at 7 p.m. on Sept. 17.

A draft comprehensive wastewater management plan for East Hampton Town, developed by a consultant who has analyzed the waste treatment and water quality issues throughout the town from an environmental and economic standpoint, will be the subject of upcoming discussions by the town board and of several hearings at which the public may comment.