Government

“The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” may be an apt description of a recent development in the race to represent New York’s First Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives, where former Representative George Santos of New York, who was expelled from the House in December, has announced that he will challenge first-term Representative Nick LaLota for the Republican nomination.

New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has endorsed the candidacy of John Avlon in New York’s First Congressional District, adding to Mr. Avlon’s tally of endorsements since entering the race to challenge Representative Nick LaLota three weeks ago.

East Hampton Town’s 2024 draft capital plan — a wish list of 85 construction, upgrade, or acquisition initiatives with an estimated total cost of just over $15 million, much of it allocated to the Highway, Police, and Parks and Building Maintenance Departments — was presented to the town board on Tuesday.

Sag Harbor Village has agreed to sublease the so-called "gas ball lot" from the developer Adam Potter, who controls 5 Bridge Street Limited Liability Company, which was awarded the lease by National Grid at the end of last year.

Monday night’s lengthy meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee was devoted almost entirely to the increasingly contentious question of the new East Hampton Town Senior Center. A subcommittee appointed last month to consider the details of the proposed building submitted the following recommendations, which were unanimously applauded by ACAC members and some 17 residents in attendance. 

1. The town should look into a smaller, less costly facility or two-story design. Use gifted plans by a local architectural firm.

A nine-foot wall of geocubes at the end of Bay View Avenue on Napeague has prevented access to the beach from neighboring houses since it was installed in 2018, but without the geocubes, the owner of the property said, his house would be inundated during storms and made unlivable. He wants to replace them with a 108-foot-long, 10-foot-high rock revetment.

“We’re looking at Ditch as potentially a two-phase project with the dune restoration to happen as quickly as possible, and we’ll reassess before Memorial Day to see if we need to have more sand brought in,” said East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez. The immediate goal is to protect the neighborhood from flooding following a series of winter storms that took the beach down to the hardpan.

After its site plan was unanimously approved by the East Hampton Town Planning Board in November, work has begun on the expansion of Gardiner’s Marina on Three Mile Harbor.

East Hampton Town will seek New York State Pro-Housing Community designation as part of a program established last year by executive order of Gov. Kathy Hochul to reward local governments that are working to address the state’s housing crisis. Municipalities with Pro-Housing Community status that apply for grant funding are given priority by certain state agencies.

John Avlon, the author, columnist, and former CNN anchor who announced his candidacy in New York's First Congression District on Feb. 21, will appear at LTV in Wainscott Monday with Nancy Goroff, the Democrats’ 2020 nominee, who is running again this year.

The beach infill component of downtown Montauk’s portion of the Fire Island to Montauk Point beach nourishment project was completed in 20 days, right on schedule, and sand fences and beach grass plugs are now being installed, but the Army Corps of Engineers has said that walkways over the dunes might not be repaired before summer.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork will lead an educational program highlighting a new equal rights amendment to the New York State Constitution on Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. at LTV Studios in Wainscott. The amendment will appear on the ballot in November.

The East Hampton Town Planning Board voted at its Feb. 28 meeting to advise the town board of its intent to declare itself lead agency for the proposed new senior citizens center, opposing the town board's plan to take the lead on reviewing the application.

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to vote tonight to raise its nonresident fees for beach parking and beach driving permits, adding a beach driving permit for co-op owners, who despite having property rights in the town are not technically residents.

Multiply the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposed congestion tolling plan by the tens of thousands of trips the Hampton Jitney makes into Manhattan each year, and that adds up to a challenge for the coach bus company even as the M.T.A. seeks to reduce congestion, improve safety, and begin mitigating the environmental impact of the volume of traffic flowing in and out of the borough.

Although his nomination is still considered unofficial until petitions are formally filed on April 16, Stephen Kiely has been named as the Suffolk County Republican Committee’s candidate to run for the New York State Assembly seat now held by Fred W. Thiele Jr., a Democrat who is retiring after a long career in politics.

Representative Nick LaLota of New York’s First Congressional District came out swinging at a prospective opponent in his first re-election bid in November, referring to the former CNN anchor John Avlon as “a Manhattan elitist attempting to parachute into Suffolk County to try to buy a congressional seat.”

More than 60 years in the making, the Fire Island to Montauk Point beach reformulation project will have arrived and departed from Montauk’s downtown in barely the blink of an eye. The beach-infill component of the project began on Feb. 6 and was completed on Sunday, with around 475,000 cubic yards of sand pumped from an offshore site by a 480-foot suction-hopper dredge called the Ellis Island.

Michael and Christine Aaron have begun fund-raising for the next phase of a legal battle to prevent Mill Hill Realty Corporation from opening Toilsome Farms Restaurant and Brewery on a property neighboring their house on Toilsome Lane. The attorney for Mill Hill said this “might delay the project by a few months, but ultimately, it’s not a factor.”

It took six public hearings, and nearly a seventh, but the Sag Harbor Village Board finally passed a tree preservation law at its Feb. 13 meeting. Property owners who want to remove a tree with a diameter at breast height of 12 inches or more must now first obtain a permit from the Building Department.

In response to years of community concerns, and taking into account patterns of heavy traffic on the road at certain times of the day and year, the New York State Department of Transportation has agreed to add a left-turn lane on the northwest-bound side of Route 114 at Goodfriend Drive in Wainscott this spring.

East Hampton Town’s portion of the federal Army Corps of Engineers’ Fire Island to Montauk Point beach nourishment project, which calls for the placement of 450,000 cubic yards of sand on downtown Montauk’s ocean beach, is nearing 70-percent completion this week.

Basketball courts, the farmers market, the May Day 5K, and the Hamptons Whodunit festival were topics of interest at Friday's meeting of the East Hampton Village Board.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to accept bids for the long-awaited construction of an aquatic center and multi-use cultural center at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. While the plan initially called for two phases of construction, owing to the amount of money raised “we’re doing phase one and phase two together,” Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said.

Shortly after Superstorm Sandy in 2012, Bruce Bates, then and still the emergency preparedness coordinator for the Town of East Hampton, told The Star that “getting assets and resources out here is difficult, at best. It seems that when supplies are heading east, they seldom get past Yaphank or Riverhead.” What, then, to expect of the East End’s ability to deal with a long-term emergency?

On the heels of Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s announcement that he will not seek re-election, Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni threw his hat into the ring on Monday with an announcement of his candidacy for District 1, represented by Mr. Thiele since 2014.

The feud between former volunteers and East Hampton Village was reignited Friday at a hearing held by Suffolk County to determine if the new municipal ambulance department can continue to provide emergency medical services to town residents who live in Northwest Woods and other areas beyond village boundaries.

The privately owned Montauk Airport could see a nearly 100-percent increase in summertime flight operations if air traffic were restricted at East Hampton Town Airport, the town board was told last Thursday during a presentation of a draft generic environmental impact statement.

Since John Avlon announced his candidacy, the field of Democrats hoping to challenge Representative Nick LaLota in November has shrunk to four, and one of the two who suspended his campaign has endorsed Mr. Avlon.

There was no big announcement, or surprise, only a letter to residents of East Hampton Village, circulated by Mayor Jerry Larsen along with an absentee ballot application, indicating he will be on the ballot for the June 18 village election. Deputy Mayor Christopher Minardi and Sandra Melendez, a trustee, will also run for re-election.