Government

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.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork has scheduled four debates among candidates for East Hampton, Southampton, and Shelter Island Town supervisor and town board, and for the Suffolk County Legislature’s Second District.

Since June, East Hampton Village residents have submitted over 50 letters opposing an application to install a pool at the historic Huntting Inn. The zoning board of appeals has received zero letters of support for the application, though some residents expressed support for an aspect of the project that would provide accessibility for those with disabilities. 

“Modest home in tony Hamptons trailer park asks a record-breaking $4.4M” was the breathless headline in the Aug. 28 issue of The New York Post. While the report focused on the modular structure’s asking price, it “drew the attention of” East Hampton Town's public safety officials, with its “interior photos depicting an attic-floor bedroom that was apparently installed without permits."

Under the new Community Housing Fund program, which saw a .5-percent real-estate transfer tax take effect in April to gather resources for affordable housing in four East End townships, money has been slowly — very slowly — coming in. Based on its glacial pace thus far, officials say, it will be some time before the money will have an impact on the availability and affordability of housing here. 

The East Hampton Town Board is poised to amend its code to require that an updated certificate of occupancy be obtained upon a change in a property’s ownership, following a public hearing last Thursday. 

The citizens group Montauk United is sponsoring the first campaign event in East Hampton Town’s 2023 election season, a candidates forum on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Montauk Firehouse. 

The East Hampton Town Trustees approved a request, on behalf of the Maidstone Club in East Hampton Village, for permission to stabilize two small areas of shoreline on Hook Pond. “We are proposing to restore those areas by supplementing them with compost and mulch, and replanting them with native plants,” Drew Bennett and Steven Giles of D.B. Bennett Engineering explained to the trustees.

A new study by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology suggests that what is called “artificial light at night” could be affecting whales, horseshoe crabs, and other marine life. “Light is a key structuring system in marine ecosystems,” says the report, and the negative impacts of artificial light could point to a need to revise lighting codes.

Concerned Citizens of Montauk has started a petition in support of a project the group pitched to the East Hampton Town Board that would see goats used to remove invasive vegetation in a portion of the roughly 40-acre Arthur Benson Preserve. As of Wednesday morning, it had 210 signatures.

The East Hampton Town Board looked favorably on a proposal to install three small “stations” in coastal areas within the town that are meant to document site changes such as sea level rise and changing coastlines.

The outside counsel representing East Hampton Town in its long-running dispute with Duryea’s Lobster Deck on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk asked a New York State Supreme Court justice last week to vacate a 2019 order allowing a certificate of occupancy for the restaurant. Recently posted photos showing indoor seating led to a charge that it has “illegally converted a limited outdoor food service establishment into a full-blown restaurant and event space.”