Government

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.

The East Hampton Housing Authority is the target of a federal lawsuit involving a teenage boy whose mother says he has suffered physically and mentally because of the authority’s refusal to allow his emotional support animal to live with him at the Accabonac Apartments. 

A flier placed on cars in the lot at the Springs Park this week raised alarm bells for users of the preserve, commonly called the Springs Dog Park. 

At a May 29 open house addressing the new Sunrise Wind project, consisting of up to 84 turbines to be built 26.5 miles off the coast of Montauk, its corporate parents, Orsted and Eversource, projected the new wind farm will yield 924 megawatts of energy -- enough potentially to power hundreds of thousands of houses.

A proposed 100-foot cell tower behind Sagaponack’s Village Hall, at 3175 Montauk Highway, which breezed through a single public hearing in February, is receiving renewed scrutiny from residents of the one-and-a-half-square-mile village. At issue is not necessarily the pole’s existence, but its placement.

The East Hampton Village Board voted last Thursday to support state legislation that could lead to the installation of cameras at stop signs here. According to the proposed law, the vehicle owner would be hit with a $50 fine if they failed to stop at a stop sign with a camera. If they ignore the fine, it increases to $75.

East Hampton Town Councilman Ian Calder-Piedmonte, a Democrat appointed to the post in January, faces a challenge from Hy Mariampolski, a first-time candidate running for the Republicans. The winner will fill out the remaining one year of the term vacated by Kathee Burke-Gonzalez when she became supervisor in January.

In the leadup to Memorial Day weekend, the New York State Department of Transportation, the Suffolk County Water Authority, and National Grid have been in the midst of a handful of projects affecting traffic in and around the heart of East Hampton Village. 

The Green at Gardiner’s Point, the name given to the 50 rental apartments at 286 and 290 Three Mile Harbor Road being built as affordable housing, is now accepting applications for the apartments, which will start at $1,500 for a one-bedroom unit.

Sag Harbor has a legitimate political race on its hands. Four experienced candidates are vying for the two trustee seats now held by Ed Haye and Jeanne Kane, who are seeking re-election. Ron Reed, a member of the village’s planning board, and Mary Ann Eddy, who sits on its harbor committee, hope to displace them.

While the private membership club Zero Bond wasn’t explicitly mentioned, the East Hampton Village Board unanimously passed a law that was drafted after rumors began percolating weeks ago that the club was close to signing a long-term lease with the Hedges Inn on James Lane.

With Orsted and Eversource set to begin pre-construction activities in September on the 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind farm, the developers are hosting an open house for mariners and “fisheries stakeholders” in Montauk on Wednesday.

The Town of East Hampton is suing Fly Blade Inc., operator of Blade helicopters and seaplanes, for what it claims is $186,354 in past-due fees associated with a license agreement to maintain a counter at the East Hampton Airport terminal. It is looking to terminate Blade’s occupancy at the terminal if the payment is not received.

ChangeHampton, an environmental organization, makes use of the concept of pollination both literally and figuratively. After planting a pollinator garden at the East Hampton Town Hall campus two years ago, it is now hoping to augment those plantings with an adjacent 6,500-square-foot grassland meadow.

An eroding bluff doesn’t respect zoning distinctions. That was the message delivered to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday by Alice Cooley, a lawyer representing property owners on Soundview Drive in Montauk. Her clients, Sarah and Maurice Iudicone, are forbidden under zoning rules from building any sort of hardened coastal structure, such as a stone revetment or bulkhead, to protect their property.

Invited by the Suffolk County Department of Public Works to a meeting about the proposed overhaul of Three Mile Harbor Road on May 8, comments poured in from East Hampton and Springs residents who travel the road nearly every day.

The Huntting Inn, appearing before the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday, announced no substantial changes to its application regarding a pool and hot tub, and for neighbors, that is a problem. Those two items are and have long been their main point of contention.

It became increasingly apparent, during Monday night’s monthly meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, that discussion of East Hampton Town’s proposed new senior center may remain on center stage for a long time to come.

A former public bathing beach at the end of South Lake Drive in Montauk that has been closed for nearly 20 years was the one subject the East Hampton Town Board mulled on Tuesday when it held its first work session in the hamlet since before the pandemic. The board heard about two projects that could help to get the beach open again for bathing.