Government

East Hampton Town

Issue $1.7 Million in Bonds

    With a unanimous vote last Thursday, the East Hampton Town Board authorized the issuance of almost $1.7 million in bonds to cover the costs of a variety of capital projects. After postponing the adoption of a capital budget until prior financial accounting problems were ironed out, the board drafted a three-year capital plan this year.

    East Hampton Town Trustee Debbie Klughers has secured a federal grant that will not only make it possible for fishermen to dispose of used fishing gear but also allow them to turn the gear, including line, lobster pots, nets, dredges, and buoys, into energy.

    The Fishing for Energy program is a partnership of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Covanta Energy Corporation, and Schnitzer Steel Industries. All four organizations are working together to reduce mountains of derelict fishing gear nationwide.

East Hampton Town

Assessors Rolls Available

    The latest property tax assessments for the Town of East Hampton are available for review at the assessors office at 300 Pantigo Place weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. On Mondays there will be evening hours from 6 to 8. The board of assessment review will meet in Town Hall on May 15 from 10 a.m. to noon, from 2 to 4 p.m., and from 6 to 8 p.m. to hear grievances and requests for changes.

    A hearing will be held tonight before the East Hampton Town Board on a proposed law requiring bars and restaurants that offer live music or other entertainment to obtain permits. The permits would be subject to certain provisions, such as a limit on the number of people allowed to gather for outdoor entertainment. They would be issued by the town clerk without review, carry no fee, and be valid for a calendar year. One-year renewals would be automatic.

    The Surf Lodge, Montauk’s hot summer spot, will be mellowing down a bit this summer with a new ownership group, Montauk Properties L.L.C., it was announced Monday. The new team will still feature Jayma Cardoso as its day-to-day manager and public face, but Rob McKinley, Jamie Mulholland, and Steve Kamali, other former owners, are out of the picture, according to Montauk Properties.

    Ms. Cardoso sees this as a chance to reassess and reinvigorate the Surf Lodge, focusing more on the hotel and dining experience, as opposed to simply being a nighttime destination.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals debated two controversial applications Tuesday night, making a decision on one and tabling the other for a week.

    The first involved three and a third acres on Napeague, between Montauk Highway and the beach, where the owners, Mindy Nam and Mark Dehnert, have asked for a natural resources permit for a 2,000-square-foot lawn, a 6,050-square-foot tennis court, a 640-square-foot pavilion, a 100-square-foot shed, along with 831 square feet of deck and parking. The sticking point was the lawn.

    In the second of two challenges the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals heard Tuesday to recent rulings by the town’s senior building inspector, Tom Preiato, a group of Amagansett neighbors took on his decision to reinstate a building permit that he himself had rescinded for construction of a woodworking shop on Abraham’s Path.

    East Hampton’s scavenger waste treatment plant, which is next to the former landfill, now a recycling center, on Springs-Fireplace Road, is in a “unique location” above a groundwater divide, Kevin Phillips said on Saturday at a Town Hall forum held to discuss the plant and the handling of septic waste. “Theoretically, the water that leaches through the landfill goes straight down into the aquifer,” he said.

    With the season looming for places like the Surf Lodge on Montauk’s Fort Pond, the company that owns the controversial and popular night spot, which has been in and out of court on almost 700 alleged zoning code violations, is seeking a ruling from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals that would allow it to get up and running. On Tuesday night, the Surf Lodge deliberations were on one of two appeals before the panel challenging decisions by the town’s senior building inspector, Tom Preiato.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals held a busy but brisk session on Tuesday evening at Town Hall with four applications for variances on the agenda, in addition to a discussion about the Wainscott Wombles project on Montauk Highway in Wainscott (covered separately). Only one of the four applications drew opposition at the meeting.

    Denise Schoen of Tarbet, Lester, and Schoen, the attorney for Michael Davis, who owns the Wainscott Wombles property at 411 Montauk Highway in Wainscott, received a two-week extension of time on Tuesday to respond to the Concerned Citizens of Wainscott, as represented by David Eagan, who is challenging a ruling by the town building inspector that a residence on the lot, which has a commercial use, would be legal.

Alex Walter, the Z.B.A. chairman, reported that the two sides were in negotiation toward a possible settlement, and the extension was approved unanimously.

    Peter Kirsch, an attorney serving as East Hampton Town’s consultant on airport matters, will speak to the town board at a 10 a.m. work session on Tuesday at Town Hall.

    Mr. Kirsch has been asked to discuss information provided by the Federal Aviation Administration in response to questions that Representative Tim Bishop submitted to the agency.

    Bill Babinski, a farmer who owns 20 acres of land on Beach Lane in Wainscott, will be able to build the second barn he needs after the East Hampton Town Planning Board okayed his application at an April 4 meeting. The 1,380-square-foot barn, to be erected next to one already standing, is a little less than half its size.

    A neighboring couple, Tom and Shelly Gilbert, expressed strong opposition to the application at a hearing on March 7, saying that the new barn would obliterate their ocean view if it were sited as proposed.

    “This was just woods,” Maureen Murphy, the executive director of the East Hampton Housing Authority, said. She was referring to the Accabonac Apartments, a 50-unit project that opened in 1999, a year after Ms. Murphy joined the agency. Now, Ms. Murphy is retiring from the post. “It’s enough,” she said. “It’s time.”

    The East Hampton Town Board split along party lines last Thursday in a vote on reorganizing the Human Resources Department. As reported last week, the measure, approved by the Republican majority, 3 to 2, abolishes the position of Pat Breen, the town personnel officer, who served as the department head. The board also moved two other staffers to different departments, one to the town clerk’s office and the other to the tax receiver’s office, leaving just one in human resources.

    Once the small group at the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee’s meeting on Monday evening had dispensed with minutes and reports from the committee’s zoning and planning board liaisons, summer 2012 seemed uppermost in everyone’s minds.

    A hearing on the Sagaponack Village budget has been scheduled for Monday at 3 p.m. in Village Hall.

    “Total spending rises from $663,180 to $708,059,” Mayor Don Louchheim said in a letter on March 27. In the statement, he wrote that the “new budget projects modest increases in both spending and non-tax revenues, with no increase in the village property tax rate for the fifth consecutive year.”

East Hampton Town

Trails Acquisition

    A 6.7-acre tract in the Stony Hill woods of Amagansett to be deeded to the town contains trails that connect sections of the extensive trail system in the area, Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

    The site, off Laurel Hill Lane, was set aside as a reserve when a subdivision was created. Under site plan approvals, such reserves must be given to the town or held by a homeowners association.

    A restructuring of East Hampton Town’s Human Resources Department, expected to be put to a vote at a town board meeting tonight, will eliminate the department head position held by Pat Breen, and, after the transfer of two department staffers, leave just one person in the department.

    After putting all capital spending on hold while sorting through the effects of past financial mismanagement, which resulted in a $27.2 million deficit, the East Hampton Town Board considered a three-year capital spending plan on Tuesday, and is expected to approve it at a board meeting tonight. The plan calls for spending $2 million next year, and $7 million over three years.

    David Eagan, the attorney for the Concerned Citizens of Wainscott, which has one lawsuit pending over a proposed Wainscott development and another waiting in the wings, blasted the East Hampton Town Attorney’s office this week for working too closely with real estate lawyers who are representing applications before the town.

    He referred in particular to a statement made by the developer Michael Davis, whose certificate of occupancy for 411 Montauk Highway in Wainscott Mr. Eagan was challenging before the town zoning board of appeals on March 27.

    On Monday afternoon in East Hampton, Daniel G. Rogers, an attorney for Paul and Kelly Lester, announced that he had asked Gov. Andrew Cuomo to instruct the state’s inspector general to investigate the actions of the State Department of Environmental Conservation before and after its raid on the Lester property on Abraham’s Path in July.

East Hampton Town

Energy Forum at Town Hall

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals ruled on Tuesday in favor of two applicants who needed variances to install septic systems. In a unanimous decision, the board found that a variance for a third floor was appropriate because it provided a way to put in a multi-ringed septic system that would conform to the county health code and help protect Lake Montauk.

    At the same meeting, the board granted a 60-foot variance from the required setback from the oceanfront dune crest in Amagansett so that a septic system could meet county regulations.

    There is seemingly only one obstacle remaining between Michael Davis and his Wainscott Wombles development on the corner of Montauk Highway and Sayre’s Path, but that last obstacle may be impassable, at least according to David Eagan, an attorney for the Concerned Citizens of Wainscott and a neighbor, who is challenging the right of Mr. Davis to proceed with his plans to tear down the building there and construct a similarly-sized one with a garage, small house, and parking spaces behind it.

East Hampton Town

Accabonac Excavation

    The East Hampton Town Trustees will hold a special meeting today starting at 10 a.m. in their Bluff Road, Amagansett, office. The subject will be the excavation of the entrance to Accabonac Harbor.

Draft New Lighting Law

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and members of a lighting code committee presented a new draft of outdoor lighting legislation on Tuesday. The draft will be reviewed by town board members and discussed at a future meeting.

    A push this week by Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby to suspend or rescind a resolution to sell a piece of public land in Montauk and first obtain an appraisal on it was rejected and prompted angry outbursts by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley.

    An attempt by the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion to obtain a temporary restraining order stopping East Hampton Town from accepting a Federal Aviation Administration grant for an airport fence project failed in New York State Supreme Court earlier this month. An appeal will be heard by a four-judge panel today.

    The Babinski farmland on Beach Lane in Wainscott has been worked by members of the same family since colonial times, and the development rights to the 20-acre parcel were sold to the Town of East Hampton and the Peconic Land Trust, but a proposal now before the East Hampton Town Planning Board to build a second barn there has met with opposition.

    In a meeting on March 7, the board considered Bill Babinski’s site plan application. The law allows another barn on the property. But to Tom and Shelly Gilbert, the neighbors, the location chosen for the barn is a burden.

    East Hampton Town Board members continued to argue this week over a decision by the Republican majority to sell a portion of a town-owned strip of land in Montauk to the owners of the Ronjo Motel.

    At a work session on Tuesday, Democratic Councilwoman Sylvia Overby asked the majority to rescind its vote last week to sell what is called an alleyway to the new owners of the motel for $35,000. The majority refused to do so. She said the town should have had the strip, which bisects the Ronjo property, appraised.