Government

The four candidates vying for two seats on the East Hampton Town Board agreed on some issues and differed on others in an Oct. 18 debate hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and North Fork.

This winter, the East Hampton Village Department of Public Works plans to shift hedgerows and remove a chain-link fence that separates a parcel at 8 Muchmore Lane from the neighboring Herrick Park. When the work is complete, village officials said, it will have the effect of making the park appear larger, as the lot has been hidden from view and inaccessible.

The East Hampton Town Trustees heard recommendations from a subcommittee Monday confirming their understanding that there are noncompliant structures in trustee waters that will have to be brought into compliance or removed, and that in some instances previously issued permits could be revoked.

Seven of the nine incumbent East Hampton Town Trustees, six of them Democrats and one a Republican with Democratic cross-endorsement, are seeking re-election on Nov. 7. Altogether, there are 12 people running for the nine seats, including three Republican challengers, one Democrat, and one other cross-endorsed candidate.

Elected officials, utility contractors, and other interested parties will gather to celebrate the completion of a project to bury utility lines and remove utility poles at the “Montauk Gateway,” in front of 589 Montauk Highway, on Monday at 10 a.m. The public has been invited to attend.

Wastewater management, renewable energy, housing, traffic, and migrants were among the topics addressed in Monday’s debate between candidates for the Suffolk County Legislature’s Second District, hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork. Manny Vilar of Springs, the chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee and a retired state parks police officer, is the Republican candidate. His Democratic opponent is Ann Welker, a Southampton Town trustee.

Experts say food waste typically accounts for around 30 percent of a garbage truck’s load. That's changing in East Hampton Town, where some 2,782 pounds of food scraps were diverted from landfills or incinerators, eliminating the equivalent of 1,310 pounds of coal burned or 3,025 miles driven, through a pilot composting program launched over the summer.

In the race for Suffolk County executive, voters will choose between an experienced politician, Ed Romaine, a Republican and the current Brookhaven Town supervisor, and a newcomer to politics, Dave Calone, an entrepreneur and former prosecutor who is a Democrat. Steve Bellone, a Democrat who has served as county executive since 2012, is term-limited and could not run for re-election.

The East Hampton Town Justice race to replace Lisa R. Rana, who, after 20 years on the bench, is retiring, pits David Filer, running as a Democrat, against Brian Lester on the Republican ticket. Both men are fathers, both boast of family ties tracing back to East Hampton’s earliest settlers, and both have had long careers in the law.

The extension of the residential dock moratorium, first enacted in 2021 and now effective through Dec. 31, will “give the public a chance to weigh in on the points that we’re bringing up,” said John Aldred, an East Hampton Town trustee, during Friday's meeting.

East Hampton Town’s new senior citizens center “really is shaping up to be something we can all be proud of,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said at the conclusion of a presentation by its project team on Tuesday.

“Oysters do a fantastic job of filtering our water,” Bob Tymann of South Fork Sea Farmers explained to the Sag Harbor Village Board last week while displaying a slide showing algae, nitrogen, and other contaminants entering an oyster and coming out clean. The bivalves are like mini wastewater treatment plants, each adult filters 50 gallons a day. 

The hamlet's historic district guidelines, which were drawn up in 2000, was one topic of discussion at Monday's meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee. The Reform Club, an event and wellness venue on Windmill Lane, was another.

This month will see candidates debates for East Hampton Town and Southampton Town supervisor and board, and for the Suffolk County Legislature’s Second District, hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork.

East Hampton Town’s Water Quality Technical Advisory Committee has endorsed nine projects, aimed at improving the health of local surface and ground waters by upgrading septic systems and eliminating pollutants, to receive a combined $2.24 million in grant money.

A wintertime pipe burst at the Springs General Store, which has been shuttered for a year, spurred changes to plans to redevelop and reopen the store. Its owners have obtained liquor licenses for on and off-premise consumption, which seemed to pique the anxieties of the East Hampton Town Planning Board last week.

As Sag Harbor Village considers a law pertaining to the preservation of trees, one village resident displayed photos that, she said, "illustrate how often, when given the opportunity, all trees on properties are felled, and usually replaced with lawns and hedges, not new trees.”

East Hampton Village already has a leash law at beaches during the summer. Now new rules being considered would expand the leash law to the village’s other public places.

A traffic roundabout at the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path, Long Lane, and Two Holes of Water Road in East Hampton could see “substantial completion” by summer, a consultant told the board on Tuesday.

Nancy Goroff, the Democratic Party’s 2020 nominee to represent New York’s First Congressional District, has announced a second bid for the party’s nomination, three years after losing the election to then-Representative Lee Zeldin.

The East Hampton Town Board’s public hearing last Thursday on amending the “purposes” section of the zoning code to control development drew more than 35 comments, nearly all of them in favor of modifications that would better reflect the town’s comprehensive plan.

“Today, we are topping the building with a final piece of steel," Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s chief medical officer and chief operating officer, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday. Completing the 23,000-square-foot structure itself is one hurdle and staffing it will be another, he said, but the freestanding emergency room under construction could be open this winter.

In a joint Sept. 27 letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, and State Senators Kevin Thomas and Monica R. Martinez pressed the governor to direct the State Department of Environmental Conservation to end mining activity at the site.

With cooperation among East Hampton Town's Ordinance Enforcement Department, the fire marshal, the police, and other departments “at an all-time high,” enforcement of East Hampton Town’s code was a success in the summer of 2023, the director of ordinance enforcement told the town board this week.

Because of the heavy rains of last week and the subsequent closure of most East Hampton Town waterways to the harvesting of shellfish, the town trustees’ Largest Clam Contest, already postponed from Sept. 24 to Sunday, has been canceled.

Democratic candidates for East Hampton Town supervisor and town board accentuated leadership and experience, while their Republican counterparts pointed to what they called mismanagement and slow progress on a range of issues, during a forum hosted by Montauk United at that hamlet’s firehouse on Sunday.

A clash between what is allowed by law and what has existed for the last 75 years in East Hampton's Sammy's Beach neighborhood has people fed up. A proposal to demolish three houses built in the 1950s, two which are under 1,000 square feet, and replace them with a nearly 5,000-square-foot modern glass structure was roundly criticized at an town zoning board of appeals meeting last week.

East Hampton Town’s 2024 budget, issued in tentative form on Friday and examined by the town board at its meeting on Tuesday, would grow by just over $4.7 million, or 5.256 percent, over the 2023 adopted budget, to $95.4 million.

Last week, for the third time since July, the owners of Rowdy Hall, the popular East Hampton bar and restaurant that is relocating to Amagansett, attempted to win approval from the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board to bring its signature look to Amagansett Main Street. It did not go well.

On Saturday, Representative Nick LaLota of New York’s First Congressional District voted yes on a continuing resolution that prevented a government shutdown that would have started on Sunday amid the latest partisan battle over federal spending.