Income from a real estate transfer tax into the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund continued to rise this year in all five East End towns, providing money for the public purchase of land for open space, historic preservation, and farmland protection.
In East Hampton, the fund has swelled to about $42 million, Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, said Tuesday. Of that, $2.7 million will be spent this year on debt from previous land purchases.
A public meeting to determine whether tiny Sagaponack Village gets a police force all its own — “the last one before the board decides yea or nay,” promised Mayor Donald Louchheim when the village board met on Monday — will take place on Sept. 7 at 9 a.m.
The board will hear views pro and con at that time, said the mayor, this time including line-by-line budgets. An Aug. 10 meeting, attended by 100 or so residents, did not provide detailed numbers and ended with more questions than answers.
The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals had applications before it in recent weeks on properties facing Gardiner’s Bay, delaying decision on one — which Tom Preiato, the town’s head building inspector called “an insult,” and saying no by a split vote to two others for a concrete revetment. A few mixed decisions and yeses were also handed out on less controversial proposals.
Darlene Smith, a bus driver for East Hampton Town’s Human Services Department, was suspended without pay for 30 days, retroactive to July 29, in a unanimous vote of the town board last Thursday.
Diane Patrizio, the town’s director of human services, has charged Ms. Smith with misconduct and incompetence. Under the state’s Civil Service Law, a hearing officer has been appointed, and Ms. Smith can demand a hearing of the charges.
While the topics addressed at an Amagansett “listen in” hosted by Democratic candidates for town supervisor and town board were diverse, the message was unmistakable: Quality of life, for which so many choose to make East Hampton their home, has deteriorated, and something has to be done.
Like the rising seas and the more violent and destructive storms the scientific community says are upon us, residents asserted that problems caused by summer visitors, in their numbers and their behavior, have become extreme and must be mitigated.
East Hampton Town’s bond rating was upgraded by Moody’s Investors Service earlier this month by one level, from A1 to Aa3, reflecting the rating agency’s assessment of the town’s financial standing and its “stable outlook.”
The rating was issued in advance of the sale on Aug. 15 of just over $2 million in bonds and bond anticipation notes, used to refinance previous notes and to raise money for upcoming capital projects.
Southampton Hospital has planned to establish a Center for Tick-Borne Diseases, and on Sunday will team up with the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance for an event called Bite Back for a Cure, part of the alliance’s national campaign to raise awareness and encourage local advocacy.
Consultants to East Hampton Town will discuss the development of a wastewater management plan at a public presentation on Monday at 1 p.m. at Town Hall.
Pio Lombardo of Lombardo Associates and Kevin Phillips and Stephanie Davis of the FPM Group will address the three components of the plan: wastewater management, scavenger waste management, and water-quality monitoring.
East Hampton Town
Metal Posts and Sand Fencing
The East Hampton Town Board was presented Tuesday with recommendations made by a committee that examined rules on beach fencing.
The use of metal posts to erect the sand fencing put up along ocean dunes to trap and hold sand is banned, but they are being used in Montauk in spots where, property owners say, it is too difficult to hammer metal into the hardpan below the sand.
Councilwoman Sylvia Overby will present to the East Hampton Town Board suggestions for locations where signs might be erected alerting motorists to state laws designed to protect pets from harmful conditions in parked cars.
Ms. Overby noted that Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. recently acted to strengthen the laws and penalties for leaving pets in cars during extreme weather conditions, and a group of local residents is working with nearby municipalities to provide and install the signs.
“It was a mistake. We’re sorry. . . . It will not happen again,” Sagaponack Village Mayor Donald Louchheim said Monday of a weekend-long event hosted by Ivy Connect at a private house in the village.
A proposal meant to close a loophole that is barring enforcement of an East Hampton Town prohibition on running businesses and parking large commercial vehicles at residences will go back to the drawing board.
A hearing to change the definition of “light truck” in the East Hampton Town Code was to be held tonight, but was postponed due to an error in the published notice. At the same time, members of the East Hampton Town Board found other details to adjust.
A $261,985 bill from a consulting firm that had overseen the process of gaining federal approval for the air traffic control tower at East Hampton Airport created shock waves — and a heated exchange — at a town board meeting on Tuesday when Councilwoman Theresa Quigley suggested the work had not been authorized by the board. In a lengthy discussion, it also was reported that the 2013 airport budget was likely to be exceeded by $200,000, and perhaps $300,000.
The East Hampton Independence Party and Friends of Dominick Stanzione, both of which had not filed detailed financial disclosure statements for the first half of the year by the July 15 deadline, filed their statements with the New York State Board of Elections in the past week.
The East Hampton Independence Party listed no contributions in its report, but paid out $2,518.98. A $2,000 contribution on April 28 to Friends of Jay Schneiderman, supporting his re-election bid for county legislator, accounts for the bulk of that.
In a split vote last Thursday, the East Hampton Town Board agreed to join a coalition of municipalities surrounding the Peconic Estuary, in order to work together on water-quality goals.
The proposed inter-municipal agreement had been a matter of contention for several weeks, as Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby pressed for East Hampton to join in, while Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said the proposal had not yet been thoroughly vetted, and raised questions about details of the agreement.
“I wish,” said Nathaniel Miller, “that whoever it is would be a man and come and talk to me, or yell at me, or something.”
In recent months, multiple acts of vandalism have targeted the boat, mooring line, nets, and truck belonging to Mr. Miller, a 13th-generation bayman and, since his election in 2011, an East Hampton Town Trustee. Last winter, windows were broken at the Lamb Building in Amagansett, where the trustees meet. Floodlights were cracked, a fence rail was broken, and a tire iron was found on the floor of the meeting room.
On July 16, Representative Tim Bishop introduced a bill that would prevent further development on Plum Island by decoupling its sale from the construction of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas.
In addition to a proposal that East Hampton Town establish a rental registry, which is covered separately, two other regulations to address problems in residential neighborhoods were discussed this week by the town board. One involves trucks parked on house lots; the other whether permits should be required for backyard sporting events.
East Hampton Town
Eyeing Cemetery Expansion
The East Hampton Town Board is pondering a land purchase that would allow for expansion of the Oak Lane Cemetery in Amagansett. Board members said Tuesday that, before deciding to proceed, they will first examine the status of other cemeteries in the town to see if additional space will be needed, review the costs, including purchase price and ongoing maintenance costs of the expansion, tally the potential proceeds from gravesite sales, and discuss who would be able to purchase the cemetery plots.
Establishing an East Hampton Town rental registry, and requiring landlords to inform the town about their plans, would not solve housing code violations, nor even give town officials the clout that had been hoped for when the idea was first broached. So said Patrick Gunn, a town attorney and head of East Hampton’s Division of Public Safety, on Tuesday.
Republicans to Pen Supervisor PrimaryThe East Hampton Town Republican Committee, which did not nominate a town supervisor candidate through the usual channels this year, has instead turned the selection process over to rank-and-file Republicans by successfully petitioning for a write-in primary on Sept. 10.
Approval of an agreement through which East Hampton Town would join forces with other East End municipalities to work together on water-quality protection issues, including those mandated by federal and state agencies, got put off for the second time at an East Hampton Town Board meeting on Tuesday.
The Peconic Baykeeper organization has taken legal action against the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation over what it says are more than 1,400 septic systems and sewage treatment plants across Suffolk County that are not being held to environmental standards.
In a split vote last Thursday, the East Hampton Town Board declined to join forces with other municipalities bordering the Peconic Estuary in an effort to pursue ecosystem and water quality protection goals.
An intermunicipal agreement calls for each entity to contribute to the costs of achieving the goals of a comprehensive conservation and management plan developed by the Peconic Estuary Protection Committee — goals such as restoring and enhancing tidal wetlands, controlling and reducing pollution, and complying with federal, state, and local coastal regulations.
East Hampton Town
Arts Council Appointments
After establishing an East Hampton Arts Council last month, the East Hampton Town Board appointed 12 members to the group at a meeting last Thursday. The group includes visual artists and art instructors along with an art lawyer, a collector and photographer, a theater director, a writer and publisher, and owners of a gallery and a music store.
Residents of a Springs neighborhood near Three Mile Harbor who are members of the Duck Creek Farm Association are poised to begin caring for a town nature preserve along Babe’s Lane, fronting on the harbor, as soon as a officials approve a management plan.
The association is the first to “adopt” a preserve under a program established by the town, and will work to remove invasive species from the two-acre waterfront area under a restoration plan.
Putnam Bridge, the Connecticut developer seeking to build a senior citizen housing development on the former Principi property east of the Amagansett commercial district on Montauk Highway, has downsized its plan for the development following the Town Planning Department’s critique of the proposal.
Initial plans for 555 Amagansett, as the proposed development is known, called for 63 cottages and 26 apartments, for a total of 89 units. These dwellings were to average 1,550 square feet and be priced between $850,000 and $1.8 million.
“We offer on-premises, heated, indoor, winter storage for your vehicle in our state-of-the-art, 12,000-square-foot facility,” Kalbacher’s Auto in Springs proudly states on its Web site.
The problem, according to East Hampton Town’s chief building inspector, Tom Preiato, is that in 2006 the town planning board approved only half that for indoor car storage at the Fort Pond Boulevard site. And that discrepancy is part of what is holding up a certificate of occupancy for the property.
Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. welcomed the members of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals at the board’s meeting on Friday, saying that zoning “probably is the core issue with respect to the governance of a municipality,” and suggesting that they “be mindful that as the zoning code evolves and is applied and manifests itself, that’s how your community maintains its personality and aura of cooperation and embracement.”