Government

Congestion pricing, a new tolling plan that targets New York City’s Midtown Manhattan and aims to ease traffic congestion while simultaneously decreasing pollution, is on the horizon. The program will charge drivers a fee upward of $23 to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street.

“I am extremely concerned now about how it might affect public safety at the main artery to Montauk,” East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys said of the trees on Napeague killed by an infestation of southern pine beetles in recent years.

The 5-megawatt lithium-ion battery energy storage system that caught fire at a Cove Hollow Road, East Hampton, substation on May 31 will be out of commission for an unknown length of time, but while its owners say there are no safety or power concerns for residents, proponents of renewable energy are concerned that the fire will fuel calls for a moratorium on further installations.

A new 185-foot tower to house emergency communications and personal wireless equipment, a component of East Hampton Town’s long effort to upgrade its emergency communications infrastructure, has been installed on the Camp Blue Bay property in Springs. The goal is for it to be operational by next spring.

Following an inspection, the New York State Department of Transportation and the Long Island Rail Road have closed the bridge at Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett due to structural problems. It is the second closure of the bridge in less than two months.

It was never going to be easy for the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to rule against the Shagwong Tavern in Montauk. This week after wrestling with language and the weight of history it sided with the tavern, deciding in a split vote that the Shagwong is not a nightclub even when the tables are pushed aside for dancing, but that it still must comply with fire codes.

In recent months, judges have twice overturned East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals decisions regarding natural resources special permits, and that could have significant ramifications moving forward, as the town zoning code gets chipped away by the Suffolk County Supreme Court.

Thomas Gardella, who ran unopposed for Sag Harbor Village Mayor, seems intent on building bridges, which could be just what the village needs after a turbulent couple of years.

Restoring the east inlet, which closed in 2007 after an April northeaster, would improve water quality and habitat for shellfish, finfish, and eelgrass. It would also reduce water flow through the west inlet, and, potentially, shoreline erosion north of Lazy Point and on Promised Land. It is “a project beyond the scope of what the trustees on their own could finance.”

Before she was named to the Z.B.A., Jeanne Kane chaired the village’s historic preservation and architectural review board. “She’s familiar with the boards and working with the building department,” said the new mayor, Thomas Gardella. She will be sworn in on Monday, taking his unexpired seat on the village board.

The long-planned deepening and widening of the navigational channel in Montauk Harbor, which was scheduled for completion this autumn, will be delayed by a year, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said on Tuesday.

It was the East Hampton Village Board versus invasive plants at Friday’s meeting, and the board attacked with both legislation and action to reduce and remove the problematic plants from within its perimeters, especially Town Pond.

While it is clear the building at 44 Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton, which for decades operated as a nightclub, will no longer be one, its reincarnation has nonetheless been a show. At a June 7 planning board meeting, members voted to hold a second public hearing on the project, setting the stage for yet another act on the complicated application.

The East Hampton Town Board filed a request with the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division on June 14 to expedite its review of the town’s appeals regarding the future of East Hampton Town Airport. This came a month after a State Supreme Court justice held the town in civil contempt for violating the temporary restraining order he issued last year enjoining the town from converting the public airport to private status or imposing restrictions on flight activity.

The federal Army Corps of Engineers has completed, ahead of schedule, an extensive reconstruction of the stone revetment that wraps around Montauk Point, protecting the famed Lighthouse there, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said on Tuesday.

“Between private donations and funds from the town, we have enough money for the anticipated costs” of the aquatic center, the president of the foundation’s board said this week, anticipating that the first phase of the project will be put out to bid this summer.

“People are asking me, ‘Do you really want to do it?’ and ‘Are you prepared to be supervisor?’ ” the Democrats' supervisor candidate, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, said. “And I just want everyone to know here and now, yes and yes. I am ready, and I’m excited. That is partly because, look at the tremendous team I get to work with. . . .”

Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island has hired immigration and civil rights attorneys following a flurry of policy pronouncements, lawsuits, and rumors at the town, county, and state levels, resulting in fear and insecurity for some immigrants. The announcement came in the wake of the Suffolk Legislature’s June 1 vote to hire outside counsel to advise on blocking the arrival of migrants bused to the county from elsewhere.

Two outside agencies that assess the fiscal health and accounting practices of municipalities have recognized East Hampton Town for its financial health and fiscal reporting.

Project Most, which hopes to turn a donated house into a brand-new facility on Three Mile Harbor Road, has filed an updated site plan with the East Hampton Town Building Department. The updated plan was the subject of a discussion last week before the town planning board.

New designs for the intersection of North Main Street, Springs-Fireplace Road, and Three Mile Harbor Road and at the intersection of Abraham's Path and Three Mile Harbor Road are among the ideas being floated as consultants take a close look at traffic, land use, and environmental issues in what the East Hampton Town Board is calling the Springs-Fireplace Corridor.

Carl Irace, a lawyer and village resident, won 327 votes to beat out East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky, who ended with 141 votes, for a four-year term as Sag Harbor Village Justice. Mr. Irace will replace Lisa Rana, who is retiring.

While everyone seemed committed to reaching a workable solution, plans for a new outdoor pavilion behind the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, at the Woods Lane gateway to East Hampton Village, brought more than the usual amount of opposition at a public hearing on Friday before the village zoning board of appeals.

At a special meeting on Monday, the East Hampton Town Trustees gave themselves an Aug. 15 deadline to complete an inventory of docks and other structures in waterways under their jurisdiction.

“Faced with access versus no access, access won,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee Monday night. The Cranberry Hole Road bridge to Lazy Point, a destination beloved of clammers, kite surfers, windsurfers, birders, and solitary seekers of peace and quiet, was recently reopened — though with no guarantee of permanence — after being shut down on May 7 when a large gap appeared in its wooden substructure.

LTV, East Hampton Town’s public access television station, saw revenue exceed expenses by $180,000 in 2022, a 27-percent increase over the previous year, its executive director, Michael Clark, told the East Hampton Town Board, and 77 cents of every dollar received is spent directly on programming, incuding thousands and thousands of hours of local government and education coverage each year. “Those are the kind of numbers that you want to see,” Mr. Clark said.

Manny Vilar, the Republican Party candidate for Suffolk County legislator in the Second District, will hold his campaign launch event Thurssday night from 6 to 8 at the American Legion Hall in Hampton Bays. On Wednesday, the town’s Republican Committee will hold a fund-raiser from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Clubhouse in Wainscott.

The East Hampton Town Board voted on June 6 to approve six of its water quality technical advisory committee’s seven recommendations to fund projects, from a motel in Montauk to Clinton Academy, that emerged from the committee’s first request for applications in 2023.

Across the road from the Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk, a 21.7-acre parcel, much of it undevelopable, could be divided into three lots. One would include a reserved area and two existing horse barns, the second would hold an existing house and garage, and a third lot, which is now empty and zoned residential, could hold a large house.

Attorneys for East Hampton Town and the town trustees described “vans full of nonresident people coming at night” and “taking bushels and bushels of shellfish out of Napeague Harbor” and other waterways including Georgica Pond, where people working alone or in concert have repeatedly poached blue-claw crabs. New deterrents to punish poachers might include fines starting at $1,000 and possibly even jail time.