Government

East Hampton Town’s bond rating has again been upgraded by Moody’s Investors Service, which assesses the town’s financial position and outlook before issuing a rating prior to a town bond sale.

The rating went up one level from Aa3, assigned last year, to Aa2. The ratings range from a low of C to a top rating of Aaa. Numeric modifiers of 1, 2, or 3 are added to all but the top designation, with 1 indicating a top rating within the alphabetical category. The Aa2 rating is two steps from the top rating of Aaa.

East Hampton Town

Helicopter Traffic Soars

East Hampton Town is considering banning thin-ply plastic bags, and is seeking input from the business sector as well as from members of the town’s litter and energy sustainability committees.

Supervisor Larry Cantwell said Tuesday that the supervisors and mayors of the eastern Suffolk towns have been discussing a regional ban, and that a rough draft of legislation is being circulated.

A vote on a law that would subject chain stores to additional scrutiny by the East Hampton Town Planning Board is to take place in the coming weeks.

East Hampton Town

Seeking a Truck Law Compromise

A committee comprising homeowners and local contractors who could be affected by proposed limits on the parking of commercial vehicles at one’s house will meet to seek a compromise after both sides spoke passionately at a July 17 hearing on a possible new law.

Residents who wish to make a complaint to the town ordinance enforcement department may now do so online, and the complaint will be immediately received electronically by officials and officers on the job, who will call officers on the job via cellphone.

Betsy Bambrick, the head of the department, described the procedure at a town board meeting on Tuesday.

A complainant must provide a valid email address and other information, or the system will not accept the complaint. Once an investigation begins, case files are kept confidential, she said.

The East Hampton Town Trustees will likely extend the closure of Georgica Pond in East Hampton to the harvesting of crabs and fish, as microcystin toxin, a product of the blue-green algal bloom known as cyanobacteria that can cause liver damage in humans and animals, has now been measured in the water body. Georgica is closed to the taking of shellfish other than crabs year round.

East Hampton Town

151 Signs

Signs illegally placed on the public rights-of-way have been removed by East Hampton ordinance enforcement officers and other personnel, Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell reported last week. Mr. Cantwell said that to date, 151 signs have been removed.

Leber on A.R.B.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a public hearing next Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall to consider the town’s purchase of the 3.7-acre Gardiner home lot on James Lane, in conjunction with East Hampton Village.

Olney Mairs Gardiner, who is known as Bill, put the property up for sale last fall and has accepted the town’s offer of $9.625 million for the historic property, which the town would buy using money from the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund. The respective open space plans for both the town and village recommend the property for acquisition.

At a hearing next Thursday night, the East Hampton Town Board will take comments on a change to the town code that would clarify restrictions on the expansion of commercial buildings in limited-business zones.

The zoning district is designed to allow low-intensity uses in places where business areas give way to residential zones. Restrictions on the types of businesses and their size are designed to protect the residential character of the designated areas.

A ban on daytime drinking on weekends and holidays at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett was approved unanimously last Thursday by the East Hampton Town Board.

Enforcement will begin as soon as the law is filed with New York State, which will take a number of business days.

The law will be in effect through September. After that, the town board has said its efficacy at tamping down unruly parties on the beach, which prompted numerous residents to complain, will be assessed.

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.