Government

The nomination of Zachary Cohen for East Hampton Town councilman from the floor at the Democrats’ nominating convention on May 15 made for some tense moments for Job Potter and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the candidates favored by the party’s screening committee. In the end, Mr. Potter and Ms. Burke-Gonzalez prevailed.

    They will share the top of the ticket with Larry Cantwell, the outgoing East Hampton Village administrator, who is also running on the Independence Party line.

    With summer approaching, the Division of Vector Control in Suffolk County’s Department of Public Works will soon resume its battle against mosquitoes.

    “We’ll basically be conducting surveillance for mosquitoes and primarily treating breeding sites,” said Dominick Ninivaggi, superintendent of the county’s Division of Vector Control. It’s an approach similar to previous years and conforms to a long-term plan passed by the County Legislature in 2007, over objections of environmentalists and the county’s Council on Environmental Quality.

    A plan devised by a task force to “spread the pain” of helicopter noise over three routes into and out of East Hampton Airport was supported by a majority of the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday, although officials acknowledged it would make no one happy.

    In a split vote on Tuesday, the East Hampton Town Board decided not to grant a zone change request by the owners of the Napeague property that houses Cyril’s bar and restaurant.

    Bonnie and Michael Dioguardi, who own the site as well as an adjacent parcel, had asked that the properties, now zoned for residential use, be placed instead in a neighborhood business zone.

    Southampton Councilman Chris Nuzzi was nominated by the Suffolk County Republican Committee last week to challenge the five-term incumbent Jay Schneiderman for Suffolk County legislator. Mr. Schneiderman, a member of the Independence Party, is seeking his sixth and final two-year term.

    Mr. Nuzzi is serving his second and final term as a member of the Southampton Town Board.

East Hampton Town

Seek Food Truck and Pool Bids

    East Hampton Town is soliciting bids from food truck vendors interested in leasing the exclusive right to sell at Gin Beach in Montauk. Bids must be received by 3 p.m. on Wednesday by the town’s Purchasing Department, which can provide specifications.

    Bids are also being sought for a rehabilitation — by marble dusting — of the pools at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter. They are due by next Thursday.

    Dick Cavett’s Tick Hall, one of seven McKim, Mead, and White houses on the Montauk ocean bluffs, and two houses on the waterfront on the other side of the Montauk peninsula, have made for interesting agendas at recent East Hampton Town Zoning Board meetings. The latter, an  application for erosion-control work on Soundview Drive, was approved on Tuesday. A hearing on Mr. Cavett’s application met with favorable response on April 23, although a decision is pending.

    Suffolk County’s public health clinic on Accabonac Road in East Hampton is slated for consolidation with a Southampton clinic, with both to be housed near Southampton Hospital, according to a plan being promoted by Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone.

    As expected, the East Hampton Democratic Committee’s screening committee has recommended that Larry Cantwell, the retiring East Hampton Village administrator, should be the party’s nominee to run for town supervisor in the November election. The choices are in advance of an official nomination convention on Wednesday.

    Both houses of the New York State Legislature have passed a measure that would allow the municipalities of East Hampton, Southampton, and Southold to transfer land, at little or no cost, to the trustees of those townships.

    The measure, which awaits Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s signature, was championed by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. of Sag Harbor and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle of Port Jefferson.

    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.