Government

    Two proposed houses, in two different neighborhoods, had neighbors seeing red at public hearings during a marathon East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting at Town Hall on April 16.

    In both cases, the board concluded that the wisest path for the property owners might be to break bread with their neighbors, to see if a compromise could be worked out. And in both cases, the applicants offered compromises on Tuesday, although whether they would satisfy the opposition remains to be seen.

    Three members of the East Hampton Town Board agreed at a work session on Tuesday to move forward on “parallel tracks” to implement both long-term and short-term recommendations made by a town committee on coastal erosion. Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilmen Dominick Stanzione and Peter Van Scoyoc outlined the steps to be taken in the absence of Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who did not attend.

East Hampton Town

Barn at Duck Creek Farm

    The condition of the barn at the East Hampton Town-owned historic Duck Creek Farm, which is the former studio of the painter John Little, will be evaluated to see if it can be used for a temporary art installation proposed by the Parrish Art Museum for the month of August.

    Landing fees at East Hampton Airport could rise this year by more than 100 percent for some types of helicopters, according to a proposal discussed Tuesday by the East Hampton Town Board.

    The fees, said Jim Brundige, the airport manager, have not been increased since 2008, but the airport has had “a clearly steady increase” in expenses.

    Mr. Brundige told the board he structured the fees so that, with the traffic expected based on last year’s, they would rise enough to cover operating expenses this year.

    East Hampton’s representatives in the State and County Legislatures came out this week in support of creating a town comprehensive wastewater management strategy and plan, an initiative that has drawn strong opposition from East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley.

East Hampton Town

Town Hall’s New Phone System

    A new phone system at East Hampton Town Hall allows callers to use a central number, 324-4141, for transfer to most town departments and employees. It also provides access to citizens’ complaint lines for housing and litter issues.

   After approving a three-year capital spending plan last Thursday, which includes projects totaling $12.4 million, the East Hampton Town Board decided to issue $2.7 million in bonds to kick-start a number of projects.

   The East End is heading back to the future to harvest deer. Figures compiled by the State Department of Environmental Conservation show that of the 1,451 deer harvested in Suffolk County during the regular hunting season that began last October and ended at the end of January, over two-thirds were killed by arrows. The overall harvest in East Hampton Town was the highest on record. Only 143 deer were taken during the regular January shotgun season.

   The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals ruled on two controversial matters on April 9 with a voting pattern unusual for this board.

    Members voted 4-1 to grant several variances and a natural resources special permit to Morgan Neff, which will allow him to keep, unchanged, two of his seven cottages, known as Millionaires Row, on Fort Pond in Montauk.

East Hampton Town

SEQRA for Cyril’s

    East Hampton Town Board members were split this week on whether to further entertain a request to change the zoning on the Napeague property that is home to Cyril’s bar and restaurant, and a vacant site next door.

   Chris and Kristen Vila appeared before the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday with scaled-back plans for an addition to their house on Mill Hill Lane.

    Though far more amenable to the revised plans, board members expressed lingering skepticism and pressed the couple’s representatives for satisfactory answers.

   A bid by the Viking Fleet to dock a day-fishing charter boat at the town commercial fishing docks at Gann Road in East Hampton appeared dead in the water at the end of an East Hampton Town Board discussion Tuesday.

Larry Cantwell, the East Hampton Village administrator, announced his candidacy for town supervisor, saying he hopes to win support from the Democratic and Independence Parties.

Board members want to know who is in the pool and belly up at the bar

    With a “yes” vote by three members of the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday, consultants were hired to create a comprehensive wastewater management plan for the town that will address water protection, septic systems, and the town’s aging scavenger waste treatment plant.

    Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who has been advocating for the plan and offered the resolution, lauded it after the meeting as an important step for the town’s environmental future.

    A plan to improve public safety by better controlling traffic and crowds at Indian Wells Beach was presented to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee at its meeting Monday night. 

    Armed with the current draft proposal, Capt. Michael Sarlo of the East Hampton Town Police Department addressed committee members as to the concerted effort to limit idling cars and nonresidents’ vehicular access, as well as to police the hundreds-strong gatherings for which the beach has become infamous.

    An oceanfront house on Marine Boulevard in Amagansett was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on April 2 for variances that would allow what might be called a creative expansion.

    “I’m a composer,” Carter Burwell, the applicant, told the board. Mr. Burwell is, in fact, the composer for the Coen brothers, the Academy Award-winning film-making duo, having written the scores for all but one of their films.

    “It’s important for the town to take action with deliberate speed. The Montauk commercial district is threatened,” Drew Bennett, who chaired the town’s erosion control committee, told East Hampton Town Board members at a work session on Tuesday.

    Mr. Bennett’s caution was echoed by Montauk residents and business owners also at the meeting.

    Montauk’s Viking Fleet has its eye on Three Mile Harbor as a fishing site, and has asked for permission to dock a 60-foot boat at the East Hampton Town dock there, to take passengers out for daily fishing trips during the springtime months.

    The proposal was first submitted to the town board last fall and was renewed some weeks ago, with hopes that the boat could run out of the Gann Road dock in April, May, and June.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees’ plan to condense the 90 moorings set aside for large boats within a broad area in the center of Three Mile Harbor came under fire during the trustees’ monthly meeting Tuesday night.

    Sean McCaffery and Stephanie Forsberg, trustees, and the panel’s clerk, Diane McNally, explained to the dozen or so boaters in attendance that the board was trying to correct a disorderly pattern which boaters had come to accept as normal.

    Was the driveway asphalt, or was it gravel, or was it gravel-covered oil? And is gravel-covered oil the same as asphalt?

    Those were the questions of the day at the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on March 26. The driveway in question is part of a sprawling 186,000-square-foot property at 2118 Montauk Highway on Napeague owned by Lawrence Weiss.

    A majority of the East Hampton Town Board voted Tuesday to allow the Montauk Brewing Company, which plans to add brewing equipment to its tasting room in Montauk, to use three public parking spots in a nearby lot to fulfill a town requirement to provide more parking.

    Instead of having a consultant create a comprehensive wastewater management plan for East Hampton Town — a plan that is to include recommendations on environmental protection, ongoing surface and groundwater quality monitoring, meeting regulatory mandates, and what to do about the town’s currently inoperable scavenger waste treatment plant — Councilwoman Theresa Quigley suggested on Tuesday budgeting perhaps as much as $10 million to subsidize upgrades of private septic systems in ecologically sensitive areas of town.

East Hampton Town

Louse and Lazy: Much Debris

    Cleanup efforts led by the East Hampton Town Trustees last week at Louse Point in Springs and Lazy Point on Napeague yielded a large amount of debris that was hauled away from the beaches and boat-launching areas. Deborah Klughers, a trustee, reported to the town board on Tuesday that 13,500 pounds of debris had been collected at Lazy Point, not including fishing ropes, traps, and the like taken separately to a gear drop-off at the Montauk recycling center. At Louse Point, the total was more than 5,800 pounds.

    “Dear Honorable President Obama:” begins a letter sent last week to the president by the East Hampton Town Trustees.

    Members of the 300-year-old panel asked Mr. Obama to direct the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to delay the start of annual efforts to protect endangered shorebirds beyond April 1. That is the deadline for halting all activities that might endanger piping plovers and least terns during their breeding season, which ends in August. An extension would allow workers to continue restoring beaches ravished by Superstorm Sandy.

    A draft capital plan for East Hampton Town in 2013 includes $9.5 million in projected spending, on items ranging from playground equipment to new stairs at Culloden Beach in Montauk and Police, Parks, and Highway Department vehicles.

    In 2014, the proposed plan, for which a town board vote is forthcoming, includes $1.9 million in projects.

    The projects will largely be funded by borrowing money — through issuing bonds — although some will be subsidized by federal, state, and county grants.

    The fate of the last parcel of undivided farmland in the Wainscott corridor, once part of two farms owned by the Hedges and the Osborne families, came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board on March 20.

    The land, almost 40 acres at 55 Wainscott Hollow Road once owned by Ronald Lauder, is owned now by a limited liability company with the address as its name.

    Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, who was the East Hampton Town Republicans’ top choice to run for supervisor this year, announced Monday that he will instead seek a sixth and final term in the Legislature, leaving Republicans to seek out a new candidate to lead their ticket.

    “It was not an easy decision,” Mr. Schneiderman said Monday. “Ultimately I came to the conclusion that I could still do a lot for the community at the county level.”

    An East Hampton Town committee developing recommendations on protecting Lake Montauk from pollution presented the town board with several interim suggestions at a board meeting on March 12.

    Residents of the East Hampton neighborhood comprising Miller Lanes West and East and Indian Hill Road have been left frustrated with the results of their continuing appeals to the town board to do something about the volume of traffic and speeding through their neighborhood.