Government

The house and studios of the late James Brooks and his wife, Charlotte Park, both artists associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, were designated as historic landmarks by the East Hampton Town Board last week.

The town purchased the artists’ 11-acre property on Neck Path in Springs last March for $1.1 million, intending to take the buildings down and preserve the parcel as open space, but the efforts of a grassroots group that was formed after neighborhood residents happened upon the site resulted in reconsideration of that plan.

The Surf Lodge, a popular nightlife destination in Montauk, is about to undergo an inventory check, of sorts, from Tom Preiato, East Hampton Town’s chief building inspector, who will be looking for structures there that have never received site plan approval.

He is acting at the behest of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, which received a site plan application on June 25 for a new 500-gallon propane tank, replacing an older model, but in a different location on the property. “It is in place, but not being used,” Richard A. Hammer, Surf Lodge’s attorney, told the board.

East Hampton Town

Indian Wells Hearing

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing tonight to consider a prohibition on alcoholic beverages for a distance of 1,000 feet east and west of the Indian Wells Beach road end in Amagansett on weekends during lifeguard-protected hours. The proposed legislation represents compromises reached with the trustees, most of whom opposed any restriction and suggested a 500-foot ban, while the town board initially sought a 2,500-foot distance.

The East Hampton Town Planning Board weighed in at a meeting on July 9 on proposed town legislation that would set restrictions on formula or chain stores. The measure received a mixed reception, and the planners ultimately voted to recommend the legislation be approved by a vote of 4 to 3. The town board will hold a public hearing on the measure at 6:30 tonight at Town Hall.

Calls for the East Hampton Town Trustees to have meetings videotaped have increased in recent weeks, with several speakers reiterating the point at a town board meeting on Tuesday. The issue had been brought up at a trustees meeting several weeks ago.

The trustees are an elected, independent board that oversees town beaches outside of Montauk and that has the authority to approve or dismiss many coastline projects. The panel was established by the Colonial-era Dongan Patent, and is not subject to decisions by the town board.

A letter thanking the East Hampton Town Board and the town trustees was in order, the Amagansett Citizens Committee unanimously agreed at its meeting Monday, for reaching a compromise on proposed legislation regulating drinking at Indian Wells Beach. But before the session was over, committee members and Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee, expressed doubt about whether the legislation was needed any longer. 

Representative Tim Bishop, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst, and Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming and Councilman Brad Bender are among the guests expected at the Southampton Town Democratic Committee’s summer party on July 27.

A producer for the Showtime series “The Affair,” which filmed in East Hampton Town last fall and again in late May, will have to return to the town board for a second take, as he did not get the full thumbs-up on plans for a late-July shoot.

Midway through the year, East Hampton Town is not only “on budget” for 2014, but is expected to end the year with surpluses in all its major funds, Len Bernard, the town budget officer, reported this week.

The New York State Public Service Commission has set in motion a process to address the depletion of phone numbers with the 631 area code, which is projected to occur by the first quarter of 2016, and has scheduled public hearings on alternate strategies for doing so. A public hearing before an administrative law judge will be held in Riverhead on Tuesday at the Riverhead County Center, 300 Center Drive, at 2 p.m., preceded by an informational forum at 1 p.m. Those wishing to speak need only appear.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday unanimously approved the variances needed to allow Temple Adas Israel of Sag Harbor to expand its cemetery on Route 114, just south of the East Hampton Town-Sag Harbor Village border, onto land it bought in 2011. Entrance to the new part of the cemetery is via a road under town trustee control, and the panel had already agreed to its use.

Suffolk County

Credit vs. Cash

Legislator Jay Schneiderman is cosponsoring a bill that would require gasoline retailers in Suffolk to display credit card prices as prominently as cash prices.

The East Hampton Town Trustees’ water-quality monitoring program, conducted in conjunction with Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University, will soon gain greater exposure. At their meeting on Tuesday, the trustees voted to approve Dr. Gobler’s request to include trustee-managed waterways in the Long Island Water Quality Index, a weekly report issued by his laboratory and featured on News 12 Long Island and in Newsday.

A plan to build 12 affordable townhouse condominium units on land owned by East Hampton Town is being re-energized after languishing for five years.

A former tennis court at 181 Accabonac Road in East Hampton next to the Windmill Village senior citizens housing complex would house the one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom units contained in three “manor houses” on the two-acre property. They have been “designed to look like a farmhouse,” Tom Ruhle, the town housing director, told the town board on Tuesday.

East Hampton Town

Aircraft Noise Study

A study of noise over East Hampton and surrounding areas from aircraft using the East Hampton Airport got one step closer to fruition on Tuesday, when a committee that reviewed consultants’ proposals made a recommendation to the town board as to whom to hire.

A hearing on a new plan to curb drinking at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett by banning alcohol during lifeguarded hours only on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays through the rest of the summer is expected to be scheduled for July 17. But, by the time a new hearing is held and the law put into effect, there will be only a few weekends left of the summer season.

Nearly 600 listings but few Montauk vacancies

An Army Corps of Engineers’ amphibious vehicle known as a LARC, for Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo, will be out in the ocean and along the beach between Ditch Plain and the eastern edge of Washington Drive in Montauk today in preparation for the design of a beach protection and reconstruction project.

The “vehicle is designed to allow surveying in the water, across shoals, and even through the surf zone up to the base of the beach dunes,” according to a release.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold hearings next Thursday on several property purchases with the community preservation fund. Land in Northwest, East Hampton, at 32 and 36 Mile Hill Road, owned jointly by family members through the estate of Mary Whelan, is proposed for purchase at $4.8 million. The 18 acres would be preserved for open space.

East Hampton Town

Stop-work Order Upheld

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals has upheld a stop-work order issued in January by Tom Preiato, the town’s chief building inspector, rejecting an appeal from the owners of Cyril’s, the bar and restaurant on Napeague. The board concluded on June 17 that Mr. Preiato was correct in finding that “the applicant did not have the proper permits and approvals to remove two 2,000- gallon underground fuel tanks from the subject premises.”

The East Hampton Town Trustees own and manage the town’s waterways on behalf of the public, as set forth in the Dongan Patent of 1686. They have debated the proposed ban on alcohol in several of their meetings, and have split on whether to support any ban, with a majority opposed.

East Hampton Town will seek proposals for the use of its new tract of public land in Amagansett, 19 acres of open space and farmland along Montauk Highway where a luxury senior citizens housing development had been planned.

The property was purchased this spring with $10.1 million from the community preservation fund for “the preservation of agricultural open space and recreation,” according to a town board resolution approving the deal.

Frustration boiled over as a group of commercial shellfishermen confronted the East Hampton Town Trustees Tuesday about the efficacy of the town shellfish hatchery’s annual seeding program, which the trustees help fund. The meeting was marked by multiple angry exchanges and those in the small room in the town’s Lamb Building on Bluff Road, Amagansett, talking over one another. When the shouting was over, all agreed that a survey after the seeding was completed would be in everyone’s interest.

A per-gallon fee added to the cost of aviation fuel at East Hampton Airport will be doubled, to 30 cents per gallon, beginning Tuesday. An East Hampton Town Board majority agreed to increase what is known as the “flowage” fee at its meeting last Thursday despite repeated pleas from Cindy Herbst of Sound Aviation Services, one of two businesses that sell fuel at the airport. The fee had remained static for 22 years. 

Last week, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals considered a six-foot-wide boardwalk. Next week, it expects to come to terms with bodies six-feet deep.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell has suggested a countywide ban on disposable plastic shopping bags.

Mr. Cantwell said he had proposed the idea at a recent meeting of the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association. “That is a more comprehensive way to do it,” he said. “I’m hoping that the supervisors are going to support that request to the county.”

It isn’t usual for the East Hampton Town Planning Board to actually welcome an application for site plan review of commercial construction, but that was the reaction on June 11 when a proposal for a two-story building in the downtown area of Montauk came up. Two other site plan applications also were on the agenda, and in those cases the board called for more narrative.

The Town of Southampton earned the highest rating possible from Standard and Poor’s Rating Services on Tuesday, when it was upgraded from AA+ to AAA. Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said the new rating was the result of fiscal discipline at Town Hall over the past four years.

According to a statement from S&P, the rating reflects the agency’s view of the town’s economy, management, budgetary flexibility, liquidity, budgetary performance, debt and contingent liabilities, and institutional framework, which were identified as being “strong” or “very strong.”

The Republican Party’s primary election to determine the candidate who will face the incumbent, Representative Tim Bishop, will take place on June 24. The primary pits Lee Zeldin, a two-term state senator from Shirley, against George Demos, an attorney formerly  with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who lives in Stony Brook.

Mr. Bishop, who is seeking a seventh term in what is expected to be a closely contested election, does not face a primary challenger.

The Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to adjust its estimated value of the benefits of rebuilding a stretch of downtown Montauk beach — and thus the potential extent of a beach reconstruction project it will undertake, at federal expense — by half again as much as its original $103.8 million estimate, Aram Terchunian of First Coastal Corporation told the East Hampton Town Board this week.

Additional revisions may be forthcoming, said Mr. Terchunian, based on further analysis.