Government

Air traffic at East Hampton Airport during the Thursday-through-Monday period surrounding the Memorial Day holiday increased by 20 percent over the same period last year and generated numerous complaints.

Jim Brundige, the airport manager, told the East Hampton Town Board Tuesday that there were 872 takeoffs and landings over the long weekend and 475 complaints about noise and disturbance. During last year’s holiday period there were 248 complaints.

East Hampton Town

Survey for Senior Citizens

A committee appointed by the East Hampton Town Board to evaluate the needs of senior citizens in the community, and resources available to them, is polling older residents through a survey, which can be completed online at easthamptonsurvey.com. Survey forms can also be found at various public buildings throughout the town, including Town Hall. Responses must be submitted by June 19.

Suffolk County

Nitrogen Reduction Efforts

An East Hampton group that has been fighting against the installation by PSEG Long Island of a high-power electricity transmission line on new and higher poles filed suit on Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court in Riverhead in an effort to stop the project.

Ride to Montauk, a planned Manhattan-to-Montauk bicycle trip on Saturday encountered a pothole this week when both East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village denied permits for the event.

Cyril’s Fish House, the popular roadside restaurant on the Napeague stretch, received the okay to open for the season last Thursday, when acting Su­preme Court Justice Joseph Farneti lifted a temporary restraining order that would have required the restaurant to operate in conformance to its layout in the mid-1980s, when the establishment was much smaller.

Garages that contain apartments have drawn the attention of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals in recent years and continued to do so on Friday when a hearing on one was postponed and another was granted approval.

East Hampton Town

Push for Airport Noise Complaints

With the summer season under way at East Hampton Airport, the Quiet Skies Coalition issued a press release this week urging “aircraft-noise-affected residents” to log complaints by calling the aircraft noise complaint line at 800-476-4817, or posting complaints online at plane­noise.com/khto.

Recent storms have claimed some 20 feet of bluff, and several residents have proposed a sand-covered rock revetment to hold back the waters of Gardiner's Bay.

    A consultant’s assertion that East Hampton Town has nothing to gain by fixing and reopening its scavenger waste treatment plant, which has been offline since 2012 and used solely as a transfer station, went unchallenged at a hearing held by the town board last week.

East Hampton Town

Complaints Online

    Complaints to the East Hampton Town Ordinance Enforcement Department, regarding, for example, possible town code violations from overcrowded housing to illegal summer rentals, litter, or businesses operating in residential zones, may now be lodged online through the town’s website at www.ehamptonny.gov.

    Taxi drivers in East Hampton Town will be fingerprinted and checked for criminal convictions under a new law passed last Thursday.

    Before being issued a town taxi license, drivers and principals in taxi companies will be vetted by state and town officials.

Amagansett may finally get the public restrooms some residents have sought for more than a decade.

At a meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee on Monday, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee, showed a blueprint of the parking lot on the north side of Main Street, and suggested a restroom location near the lot’s center adjacent to a vegetated island as opposed to in the southwest corner, as had originally been proposed.

Although the opening of the season is drawing near, opening day at Cyril’s Fish House, a summertime bar and restaurant on Napeague, remains far away as it deals with a stop-work order from East Hampton Town and a restraining order from State Supreme Court. If that weren’t enough to keep the popular roadside institution shuttered, last Thursday East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky rejected a motion by Dianne Le Verrier, attorney for the owners, to dismiss 53 zoning alleged zoning violations. That case is due back in Justice Court on Monday.

As a Rhode Island company navigates multiple regulatory agencies in order to construct the first offshore wind farms in the United States in the ocean east of Montauk, commercial fishermen are raising concerns about how such projects will impact their livelihood.

East Hampton Town

Scavenger Waste, Mass Gatherings

The future of East Hampton Town’s scavenger waste treatment plant, which has been mothballed pending repairs and upgrades to meet environmental standards, will be the subject of a hearing tonight before the town board.

The plant is being used only for the transfer of septic waste from pump-out trucks for transport to other processing facilities, and officials are considering closing it permanently, based on a recommendation by a consultant.

The Sagaponack Village Board put off a decision on Marc Goldman’s proposal for a 13,770-square-foot house on the corner of Daniel’s and Peter’s Pond Lanes until his representatives can show how much the house will hinder one of the last unobstructed views in the village.

The East Hampton Town Trustees are holding firm in their opposition to the town board’s proposed ban on the consumption of alcoholic beverages within 2,500 feet in either direction from the road ends at Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue Beaches, Amagansett.

The owners of Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague were handed another setback in their fight to open the popular roadside eatery for the 2014 summer season, when the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals upheld a stop-work order issued last winter by Tom Preiato, the town’s chief building inspector.

The board, led by John Whelan, its newly appointed chairman, voted 4-0 to uphold the order, which was issued on Jan. 28 after two gasoline tanks dating from the late 1960s, when the site was a gas station, were dug up and removed.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Legislator Jay Schneiderman took to the road in heavy wind and rain to meet with their East End constituents, coming all the way to Montauk, Mr. Schneiderman’s home town, where they sat down with some 30 people at Gurney’s Inn and talked with a group of commercial fishermen at the docks.

An agreement between the Eastern Region Helicopter Council and East Hampton Town’s airport managers and air traffic controllers regarding helicopter routes into and out of the airport calls for choppers to reach altitudes of 3,000 and 3,500 feet over certain waypoints along designated routes, flying 1,000 feet higher than what had previously been outlined.

Suffolk County

Schneiderman to Address League

Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman will be the guest speaker at the annual meeting of the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons on Sunday. Mr. Schneiderman, who is in his sixth and final term in the Legislature, will discuss East End issues and trends over brunch at the Southampton Cultural Center on Pond Lane.

Installation of solar energy systems on Long Island is poised to expand with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s announcement last week of a $60 million investment to support the solar industry’s transition to PSEG Long Island, which operates the Long Island Power Authority’s transmission and distribution system.

Speakers at a hearing last Thursday on proposed regulations on chain stores in East Hampton Town were largely in favor of the idea, but some counseled caution and urged the town board to notify individual commercial property owners and give them another chance to weigh in.

“I don’t read the little print on these newspapers,” said Michael Cinque, the owner of Amagansett Wines and Spirits and several Main Street buildings in that hamlet. “Slow this down,” he said. “You should be contacting the people who are affected.”

A unanimous vote by the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday to buy 19 acres of Amagansett land along Montauk Highway and preserve it for agriculture and recreation drew kudos and congratulations from members of the audience, several of whom spoke at a hearing on the $10.1 million purchase prior to the vote. The money will come from the town’s community preservation fund.

Alex Walter, a member of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, is to resign from that board and become the executive assistant to Supervisor Larry Cantwell, according to resolutions to be offered at a town board meeting tonight. Mr. Walter will earn an annual salary of $30,000 in his new post.

John Whelan, an architect who is East Hampton’s representative on the County Planning Commission and a Democrat who once ran for town board, is to be appointed to the Z.B.A for the remainder of Mr. Walter’s term, through the end of this year.

 “The sadness of an era passed,” one member of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee called it, as the committee considered on Monday night whether to support a proposed ban on alcoholic beverages at the hamlet’s two popular ocean beaches, Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue.

A big push to get work done by Memorial Day, then it will be quiet time

A new chain store on the site of the old Plitt Ford dealership on the Montauk Highway in Wainscott is becoming a reality almost two years after the death of the principal owner of the property in a car crash just miles away.

A 15,000-square-foot Home Goods store, designed by the architect Peter Cook, will be constructed there, Mr. Cook said Tuesday. Home Goods specializes in home furnishings and is  part of a larger corporation, TJX, which also owns Marshall’s, T.J. Maxx, and Sierra Trading Post, according to the Home Goods website.

A toll-free telephone number at which residents could register complaints about construction and landscaping noise was one outcome of the East Hampton Village Board's ongoing discussions on restricting the offending activities.