Government

With his Tuesday primary victory in New York’s First Congressional District, John Avlon of Sag Harbor will now face first-term Republican Representative Nick LaLota in the November election.

“There was a concerted effort to cut out all comment on this,” Aidan Corish, a Sag Harbor Village trustee, said of a barely averted vote to create a local development corporation at the June village board meeting. “It’s disturbing. We were one vote away from basically giving over financial borrowing authority to an unelected board in perpetuity.”

What was originally estimated to be a $2.4-million wastewater treatment project at the Montauk Shores Condominiums has swelled to $5.4 million, leading the community’s management to borrow money to make up the difference.

President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, are coming to town. An “afternoon reception” with the Bidens is to take place on Saturday in East Hampton, though its exact time and location is being kept under wraps for guests only.

John Avlon, who quickly rose to the top in a field of Democratic congressional contenders that numbered half a dozen just a few months ago, is the winner of Tuesday's primary in New York's First Congressional District, besting the second-time candidate Nancy Goroff.

On Friday, voters in the Village of Sagaponack rallied to steer their board of trustees in a new direction. Two challengers, David McMillan Jr. and Mark Landis, were elected, ousting the incumbents, Marilyn Clark and Lisa Duryea Thayer.

Long Pond in Bridgehampton, Poxabogue Pond in Sagaponack, Mill Pond in Water Mill, and Agawam Lake in Southampton were confirmed this week. It was also discovered earlier this month in Wainscott Pond.

The Suffolk County Department of Public Works has three main objectives for the turnpike: improving pedestrian safety, repairing the pavement of the road itself, including asphalt resurfacing, and repairing and adding new drainage systems to improve the flooding conditions.

A public hearing last week on Adam Potter’s planned development of a 64,429-square-foot, mixed-use building on Bridge Street in Sag Harbor Village brought out many critics.

At an East Hampton Town Board work session full of safety information for pedestrians, cyclists, and fire-pit lovers, the presentation that drew the most interest from the board was one on e-bikes, given by Lt. Chelsea Tierney of the East Hampton Town Police Department. “The biggest thing is that people just don’t know the laws,” she told the board.

The end-times landscaping job wrought by the southern pine beetle along Montauk Highway in Amagansett could seem pretty compared to how it would look after a fire. “It’s a giant tinderbox out there,” said Chris Beckert, who is in his fourth year as chief of the Amagansett Fire Department.

In a rare case of the Town of East Hampton removing an illegally built accessory structure, it took out a wooden walkway that connected a house on South Emerson Avenue in Montauk to the beach. According to the director of code enforcement, it was built without a permit and crossed over an easement seeded with beach grass meant to help prevent erosion.

Ditch Plain Beach will be more beach and less ditch this summer after a beach replenishment project that will bring approximately 200 truckloads of sand, about 1,000 cubic yards daily, began on Monday.

Jeanne Kane and Ed Haye, running as a slate to retain their seats on the Sag Harbor Village Board, were victorious Tuesday night over their challengers, Mary Ann Eddy and Ronald Reed.

Ahead of early voting for the Democratic primary election in the First Congressional District, a debate between John Avlon and Nancy Goroff covered many topics in only an hour, ranging from climate change, to social media, to gun violence and antisemitism. It was a polite affair in which the candidates often agreed with each other and didn’t engage in crosstalk.

Suffolk County announced Friday that it is planning to reconstruct part of County Road 79, better known as the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, on an approximately 1.5-mile stretch from Scuttlehole Road north to Brick Kiln Road.

On Friday, Justice Jerry Garguilo of the Supreme Court of Suffolk County ruled that the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, a nonprofit that had served the village since 1975, could no longer exist, and ordered it dissolved. 

After receiving numerous complaints about “nuisance lighting” last year, Kevin Cooper, who heads the town’s Public Safety and Code Enforcement Department, sat down with the town attorney in January to brainstorm about changes to the code that would limit the wattage and hours of up-lighting.

There’s no contest for mayor or trustee in East Hampton Village, but voters can weigh in nevertheless when polls open on Tuesday at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street from noon to 9 p.m. 

Four experienced candidates are running for two places on the Sag Harbor Village Board, and the winners will be selected by voters on Tuesday. 

The deadline is Aug. 9 at 4 p.m. for community members, organizations, businesses, and other entities in East Hampton Town to apply for water-quality grant money.

Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island has "secured a place in the New York State budget," with the State Legislature allocating a total of $100,000 to support its Youth Connect program, which addresses mental health among teens.

A Springs woman drew the attention of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation after removing what she said was an inactive osprey nest from her dock on Accabonac Harbor in early June. 

Paid parking will begin in some locations in Montauk starting on Saturday; perhaps most notably at the Kirk Park Beach lot, where an attendant took payment in years past. After Friday, June 21, cash will no longer be accepted there. In addition, 19 spots on the east side of South Edison Street, and 20 more on the north and south sides of South Elmwood Avenue, between South Edison and South Essex Streets, will require payment.

“I need more activism,” said Sagaponack Mayor William Tillotson when asked why he decided to campaign alongside two new candidates for village board on the Piping Plover Party line. Four candidates are vying for two trustee seats, each with a two-year term, and the mayor is hoping for a shakeup in the election, which will be held on Friday, June 21, from noon to 9 p.m. 

John Avlon and Nancy Goroff, Democratic candidates for Congress, will debate Monday night at 7, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork. It will be available to stream on Southampton Town's SEA-TV YouTube channel.

One thing was clear in a discussion at an East Hampton Town Board meeting about a proposed roundabout at the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path, Long Lane, and Two Holes of Water Road: No one wants East Hampton to look like western Suffolk. 

About two months after a Suffolk Supreme Court judge froze their bank accounts — a result of the yearslong, and ongoing, Truck Beach litigation — the East Hampton Town Trustees regained control of their money on May 23.

If accepted, a $29 million tentative budget for 2025, which will be the subject of a public hearing on June 21, will lower taxes by a smidge, .0184 percent, representing the third consecutive year of tax cuts for village residents.

The season's first toxic algal bloom in a South Fork body of water has been detected in Wainscott Pond, the County Department of Health Services announced Monday.