Government

    Even as winter winds on, the seeds of a future garden on the grounds of East Hampton Town Hall are firmly in place, with plans to begin planting daffodils, jonquils, and boxwood surrounding the  entrance sign by Earth Day this spring.

    The town’s litter committee has taken on the project, which it is envisioned will ultimately result in plantings of native, heirloom, and deer-resistant herbs, flowers, and shrubs around the historic Town Hall buildings and along walkways leading to and from various town offices. It will be an all-volunteer effort at no cost to the town.

East Hampton Village has appointed a replacement for Larry Cantwell, the village administrator for the past 30 years, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. announced on Friday.

    The question of who was put in charge of installing a new telephone system at East Hampton Town Hall and why it has taken two years and counting to complete the job prompted biting remarks from Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley over the pace of progress and sharp criticism for a town employee and fellow board members.

    Sharon McCobb, a member of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, failed to win reappointment last Thursday when a resolution supporting her did not get a majority East Hampton Town Board vote.

    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who introduced the resolution, and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc voted for her reappointment. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley voted no, and Councilman Dominick Stanzione abstained. There was no discussion of the matter.

    Working capital small business loans are still available to small businesses, agricultural cooperatives, and private, nonprofit organizations who have unpaid bills and lost business due to Hurricane Sandy. The Small Business Association loans have a cap of $2 million for physical damage and economic injury, and are also available to homeowners associations and planned unit developments.

    “I wish they would do more,” said Sagaponack Village Mayor Donald Louchheim on Monday after a glance at proposed deer legislation drafted by New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.

    The village trustees had been asked for feedback on the proposed law, which would increase deer-hunting opportunities on the East End. Board members looked over the draft at their meeting on Monday.

    Oceanfront homeowners in Bridgehampton and Sagaponack voted on Saturday to approve a $24 million beach renourishment project in an effort to protect approximately six miles of shoreline from further erosion.

    The long, winding road that the Beach House, a Montauk summer hotspot for the young and hip, has journeyed, may be coming to a close — or just beginning, depending on what happens at Tuesday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals.

    Is a new house to be built on Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett closer to wetlands than the one already on the property? And would the new house be a minor enlargement or a major one? Those are the questions the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals wrestled with Tuesday as it considered Michael Patrick and Carol Sedwick’s application for several variances to tear down their 2,054-square-foot house and replace it with a larger one.

    The New England Fishery Management Council’s scientific and statistical committee met yesterday in Newburyport, Mass., to decide how deeply to cut the quota of Georges Bank cod. The committee’s decision could have a big impact on the Montauk charter and party boat industry.

    Stock surveys undertaken in the spring of 2012 and again as recently as December appear to show that the two primary cod populations, the Gulf of Maine stock and the Georges Bank stock, are in “poor” condition, according to a report released by the council last week.

East Hampton Town

Calling Wireless Companies

    Hoping to prompt wireless communications companies to expand their coverage, eliminating dead zones in East Hampton, as well as to raise revenue for the town, perhaps, by leasing public sites for antennas and other equipment, the East Hampton Town Board is developing a request for proposals from the industry. Councilwoman Theresa Quigley has been pushing the effort.

“Do we have to close Indian Wells Highway at Bluff Road and say you can’t get by there without a town sticker?” asked Kieran Brew, the committee’s chairman. “I don’t like the ‘police’ aspect of it, but it is kind of crazy down there.”

    After abruptly quitting her job as assistant to East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson on Jan. 4, Johnson Nordlinger, a Montauk resident, has reportedly met with an attorney who specializes in helping employees who have allegedly been wronged.

    “We’ve met with her, and we’re investigating the situation,” Thomas Horn of Sag Harbor said Tuesday. “So far it’s a rare combination of alarming but not surprising,” he said of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Johnson’s resignation.

    The future of Hren’s Nursery, a landmark on the Montauk Highway between East Hampton and Amagansett, was on the agenda of the East Hampton Town Planning Board  last week. The business was closed last year. Now, however, the Hren family has proposed subdividing the property, with one lot for the nursery, four house lots, and an agricultural reserve. The landscaping part of the business would be discontinued.

    “The people of Wainscott are suffering. I don’t have enough sand,” Billy Mack of the First Coastal company told the East Hampton Town Trustees last week. The coastal engineer appeared at the trustees’ regular monthly meeting on Jan. 8 to request a supply of sand excavated from the seaward end of Georgica Pond.

    Both fine-grained beach sand and clean “beach-compatible” sand that includes coarser grains from sand mines are becoming harder to come by.

In light of extreme-weather events in 2011 and 2012, it is essential that residents take a more proactive and self-reliant approach to future storms. That was the message from Bruce Bates, the Town of East Hampton’s emergency preparedness coordinator, when he addressed the Amagansett citizens advisory committee on Monday.

The Vajravarahi Meditation Center in Sag Harbor has asked the Sag Harbor Zoning Board of Appeals to overrule a building inspector’s determination that meditation classes cannot be held in its Hampton Street storefront.

    Improving air quality in the pool area at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter could cost a minimum of $20,000, and perhaps considerably more, Juan Castro, the facility’s executive director, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

    The town owns the building and has contracted with the Y.M.C.A. to run the center. The agreement calls for a $590,000 annual contribution from the town to the Y’s $2.2 million budget, and makes the town responsible for capital repairs to the building.

East Hampton Town

Tax Day Descends

    Payments of the first half of 2012-13 East Hampton Town property taxes are due today and can be made in person at the town tax receiver’s office on Pantigo Place in East Hampton until 4 p.m.

Payments can also be made, using a credit card, online at officialpayments.com, or by phone, using a number provided on the town Web site, town.east-hampton.ny.us.

    A $554,310 grant was announced last week that will be used to make it safer for students to walk and bike to the Springs School.

    Johnson Nordlinger, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson’s assistant, abruptly resigned from her job, without notice, on Friday.

    Ms. Nordlinger, a Montauk resident, declined to comment this week, beyond confirming that she is no longer working at Town Hall. Her position drew an annual salary of $45,000 last year, and was to have increased by $8,000, to $53,040, this year. The cost of associated benefits last year was $33,949; in 2013 benefits for the position are expected to cost $37,556, according to the town budget.

A petition calling for East Hampton Town to prohibit waterfowl hunting on Montauk’s Fort Pond prompted a discussion at a board work session on Dec. 18

    The Sagaponack Village Board adopted five local laws at a meeting on Monday, with lot coverage regulation and a coastal erosion plan among them.

    Local Law No. 4, designed to control excessive development of residential parcels, had been of particular interest to many in the village, as shown by large crowds at the public hearings preceding its adoption and many written comments.

    The terms of a negotiated agreement between East Hampton Town and Linda Norris, who had been suspended in October from her post as the adult day care supervisor for the Human Services Department, were detailed this week. In addition to being kept on in a different town department, as announced last week, Ms. Norris will be required to attend sensitivity training at her own expense, and has been put on notice that she would be fired if any further issues arise.

   An East Hampton Town employee who was suspended from her job for 30 days without pay after her supervisor, Diane Patrizio, the head of the Human Services Department, brought disciplinary charges of misconduct and incompetence against her, will be transferred to another town department, at a slight pay decrease.

East Hampton Town

Litter Initiatives

    The town’s litter committee is seeking a go-ahead from the East Hampton Town Board for a number of initiatives, Deborah Klughers, a committee member, told the board at a meeting on Tuesday. Several could save, or even earn, the town money, she said.

   After a decade of attempts at remediating the often-polluted Havens Beach off Bay Street, the Sag Harbor Village Board has allocated $295,000 toward the project and entered into a grant agreement with Suffolk County to get it done.

   The cleanup plan involves the reconfiguring of a 24,000-square-foot drainage ditch and system, which storm waters run through before entering Shelter Island Sound.

     The owner of an approximately one-acre property at the northeastern corner where Ditch Plain Road hooks east and becomes Deforest Road continued to seek the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s approval on Nov. 28 to divide it into two lots, each about the same size. An existing house to the north of the property, which has a shared driveway with another lot to the east, would fall into the newly created eastern lot.

    Prompted by a constituent’s frustration over being shuffled between the town’s planning and architectural review boards and a desire to streamline the review process, East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley advocated Tuesday for the planning board’s absorption of the A.R.B.’s duties.

    Although not all town board members were in agreement, the proposal will be subject to further consideration.

    With weekends quieter than in the summer, when taxis swarm downtown hamlets seeking passengers buzzing about for a night of festivities, the East Hampton Town Board is taking time to review legislation that regulates taxicab companies here.

    A law put in place before last season required taxi operators to obtain licenses from the town clerk after providing proof of insurance and driver’s license information.