Government

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee has rescheduled its campaign kickoff party for Friday night from 6 to 8 at the Clubhouse in Wainscott.

“The only way to save what’s left of our culture is to offer as much affordable housing to our local families as we possibly can,” Prudence Carabine said at a June 7 East Hampton Town Planning Board hearing on the town’s proposed affordable housing development at 395 Pantigo Road.

From court appearances to public hearings, it’s been a busy couple of weeks for Rita Cantina, the embattled Mexican restaurant near Maidstone Park in Springs.

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby suffered a medical event during the town board’s meeting on May 9 and has been absent from the board’s meetings since then.

The lawsuit brought by several residents of Merchants Path in Wainscott against the Maidstone Gun Club continues to wind its way through Suffolk County Supreme Court, meaning that renewal negotiations on the club’s lease of town-owned land on Wainscott Northwest Road, which expires in October, are on hold.

A campaign launch and fund-raiser for the campaign of Manny Vilar, the Republican Party candidate for Suffolk County legislator in the Second District, happens next Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the American Legion Hall in Hampton Bays.

The New York State Legislature has once again voted in favor of a bill to reinstate state recognition and acknowledgement of the Montaukett Indian Nation, a measure that was vetoed four times previously by a New York State governor.

Fifty years after Judith Hope was elected East Hampton Town supervisor, a woman running for supervisor is hardly noteworthy. But while women routinely run and win elections at the local and state levels, and a woman was elected vice president of the United States in 2020, the East End of Long Island has a particularly abundant crop of women seeking office in 2023.

The Julius D. Parsons Homestead, nearly 11 acres in Springs, includes the 1880 farmhouse of Julius Dayton Parsons, who also ran the Springs General Store, a circa-1880 two-story barn, a small family cemetery, and a cottage that was moved from the other side of the road, which an 1873 atlas identified as the residence of Henry Mitchell, believed to have been part Native American.

Tim Garneau, an East Hampton Town trustee and volunteer for many civic-minded groups, was recognized by the town board last Thursday for his leadership in the relocation of Little League playing fields from Pantigo Place in East Hampton to the recreational facility on Stephen Hand’s Path in Wainscott, which opened in April.

There were charges of class favoritism and redlining at an East Hampton Town Board meeting as Patricia Currie of Noyac and John Kirrane of Sag Harbor angrily denounced the impact of a recently reinstated flight path to the airport on people living beyond East Hampton’s borders.

Sand Highway L.L.C., a 14.49-acre sand and gravel mine on Middle Highway in East Hampton, is challenging a 2022 determination by the town’s principal building inspector that its mining activities have surpassed what the town allows. The matter was in front of the town’s zoning board of appeals on May 16. There is a lot of history.

With about $2 million in hand for water quality improvement projects, East Hampton Town has put out a call for applications for projects that will improve wastewater treatment, abate pollutants, and restore aquatic habitats.

Three weeks ago, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board voted to approve an emergency measure to lower the maximum striped bass size to 31 inches. The current “slot” regulation in New York allows anglers to keep one bass between 28 and 35 inches in length per day. However, there has been pushback from local political representatives on the reduced slot for the highly-prized striper before the New York Department of Environmental Conservation moves forward with a formal ruling.

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee will launch its 2023 campaign next Thursday with an event from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Clubhouse in Wainscott. Those attending will be able to meet the Democratic slate in this fall’s elections.

An East Hampton Town proposal for 16 affordable housing units on a vacant 12-acre parcel at 395 Pantigo Road in East Hampton is set for a public hearing Wednesday before the town planning board. It would be the third affordable housing project in the pipeline for the town, where both the public and private sectors are having difficulty finding and keeping employees, in part due to a lack of housing options.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a public hearing this afternoon on the proposed acquisition of nearly 11 acres on Springs-Fireplace Road in Springs using community preservation fund money. Should the board approve the purchase, the town will pay $5 million for the 10.9 acres.

The House of Representatives voted 314 to 117 Wednesday night to suspend the debt ceiling for two years and set federal spending limits, sending the Fiscal Responsibility Act to the Senate, but Representative Nick LaLota was disappointed his SALT reduction amendment was not included.

Marcos Baladron, the East Hampton Village administrator, unveiled the village’s nearly $28 million 2024 budget at last Friday’s village board meeting. While budgets are never truly exciting, residents can be pleased that for the second year in a row taxes will be lower — for the first time in the village’s history, according to Mr. Baladron.

“We’re going to have to regroup,” Francis Bock, clerk of the trustees, said of their dock inventory effort, “figure out exactly what got done last year, what needs to get done this year, and make it a priority. We have to complete it this year.”

On May 1, as part of its mosquito control program, the Suffolk County Department of Public Works began to spray biological and chemical pesticides in some tidal marsh and wetland areas here, but county residents can opt out through a “no-spray” registry.

A new mixed-use proposal for the Amagansett Historic District, centering on a 112-spot parking lot, was unanimously panned last week at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board.

The East Hampton Town Board set June 15 as the date of a public hearing on amendments to the town code regarding attached and detached affordable accessory apartments.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Paul Baisley Jr. on Friday held the town in civil contempt for violating the temporary restraining order he issued last May to keep the town from converting the public airport to a private one or imposing restrictions on flight activity there. He ordered the town to pay the plaintiffs $250,000 and a fine of $1,000 per day “for each day it fails to comply with the T.R.O. from the date of this order.”

Last year, with the understanding that restrictions would reduce traffic, “we limited the access to the airport with an ‘Echo’ route from the north, and a ‘Sierra’ route from the south," said Jim Brundige, the East Hampton Airport manager. "The traffic was about the same,” which strained the air traffic control tower and residents south of the airport. This year the “November” route has been reinstated, to be used for arrivals, and only from the South Shore helicopter route.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will officially kick off operations at its new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas, signalling the start of a slow and careful decommissioning process at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which for the last 69 years has been devising ways to identify and treat transboundary animal diseases.

Carissa’s Bakery has made a difficult but necessary decision to reduce its restaurant capacity by six seats. Doing so decreases its septic waste, a move expected to speed Carissa’s application to merge two building lots, at 219 and 221 Pantigo Road in East Hampton.

East Hampton Town’s energy and sustainability advisory committee will recommend to the town board the All-Electric Building Act, which would require all appliances, including heating and cooling systems, hot water, and stoves in new residential and commercial construction, to be all-electric as of Jan. 1, 2025, eliminating their use of fossil fuels.

Consultants hired by East Hampton Town to identify and recommend solutions to gaps in personal wireless service throughout the town estimated a need for 10 new antennas 100 and 140 feet tall and 44 smaller antennas over the next decade.

Despite questions from some members of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, Joseph Palermo, the town’s chief building inspector, said a large expansion of the building at 44 Three Mile Harbor Road, which for decades has operated as a nightclub, would be considered a reconstruction, and not a new building entirely.