Government

In a move that has the potential to change how Town Hall operates for years to come, the East Hampton Town Board has appointed the first town administrator, whose responsibilities will range from overseeing staff in the supervisor’s office to preparing the annual operating budget.

At a time when East Hampton Town faces “many challenges,” Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez was sworn in at the town board’s organizational meeting on Tuesday and began to implement changes at Town Hall and to set priorities for the coming year. 

East Hampton Town will have a town administrator for the first time, there will be new members appointed to the planning board, zoning board of appeals, and architectural review board, and a new chairman for the A.R.B. in 2024. 

Work continues this month on a $1 million New York State effort to prevent wildfire spread at Napeague and Hither Hills State Parks in Amagansett and Montauk.

Coast Guard Station Montauk will soon be without its 87-foot cutter, Bonito, it was revealed at the town board’s Dec. 19 meeting. A personnel shortage is blamed.

Forty years after moving to East Hampton Town and more than 20 years after starting a journey in public service that has now reached its conclusion, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby reflected this month on her tenure on the town board, the planning board, and, prior to those, the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee.

Randy Parsons was first elected to the East Hampton Town Board in 1979, when the population of East Hampton was only 14,000; he will be leaving the planning board, on which he has served for the last seven years, on Dec. 31, and when he leaves, a great deal of institutional knowledge leaves with him.

After three terms as East Hampton Town supervisor, two as town councilman, and tenures on both the planning board and zoning board of appeals, Peter Van Scoyoc is leaving Town Hall. It has been an improbable path for the onetime owner of a construction company, he said, “and yet circumstances arose, and I felt compelled and called to serve.”

At the East Hampton Town Board’s final meeting of 2023, there were fond farewells upon the retirement of Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, and a proclamation for Rebecca Morgan Taylor, the executive director of Project Most, recognizing her nearly two decades of service to the children and families of the town.

The plan to remove invasive vegetative species at the Benson reserve in Montauk, which calls for the use of 12 to 15 goats as well as machinery, has split residents of the hamlet. With that in mind, the East Hampton Town Board held another substantial discussion of the proposal.

The East Hampton Village Board is considering using cameras on village roads that would photograph license plates of speeding vehicles and generate either a ticket or a warning that would be mailed to the vehicle’s owner.

Even though clearing for the new East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett is to begin next month, its design, features, and cost have been drawing scrutiny; and, now, potential zoning exemptions for the project are being debated, too.

Aidan Corish and Bob Plumb were spooked by draft legislation introduced before an affordable housing workshop that would create an Affordable Workforce Housing Zoning District “floating zone,” with one calling it “a powerful and potentially damaging tool.”

Representative Nick LaLota of New York’s First Congressional District supports the impeachment inquiry targeting President Biden and blames both Democrats and extremists in his own party for congressional dysfunction in 2023, as he prepares to seek re-election next November.

A replay of the 2022 effort to redraw New York State’s congressional district maps may this time hand Democrats an advantage in next year’s elections, as the State Court of Appeals voted 4 to 3 last week to order the redrawing of the maps.

Members of the Surfrider Foundation Eastern Long Island Chapter descended on the East Hampton Village Board meeting on Friday, pressing for legislation to support their Skip the Stuff initiative, which aims to limit plastic waste generated by takeout food orders.

The year 2026 is the latest projected date that Suffolk County plans to repave Three Mile Harbor Road, also known as County Road 40, from its intersection with Copeces Lane in Springs south to its terminus, where it meets Springs-Fireplace Road, one of the busiest intersections in East Hampton Town. Now the town is considering adding a roundabout to the project.

The New York State Public Service Commission has once again ruled against Sag Harbor Village, in a last-minute denial of the village’s request to rehear its July decision allowing KeySpan Gas East Corporation to lease the so-called “gas ball lot” to the developer Adam Potter. The lot, at 5 Bridge Street in the village, contains 93 parking spaces.

The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals granted both a special permit and variances, with conditions, to the Jewish Center of the Hamptons to construct a pavilion for outdoor services and to install security planters along their front property line.

Small house, small addition, small parcel, big problem. That was the sense at the meeting last month of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals as it discussed a 707-square-foot house on Mulford Lane on Napeague, built before the adoption of zoning, that needs a natural resources special permit and variances before it can add a small addition and outdoor shower and rebuild a deck.

As the town prepares to start clearing next month at the Amagansett site where the new center will be built, the two people who spoke at a public hearing on the project both said the town may be moving too fast and that there are questions that should be answered first.

The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals was busy making up for lost time at its December meeting Friday, its November session having been canceled. Its first discussion peripherally involved a property on West End Road owned by Harry Macklowe.

After months of discussion prompted by a fatal fire in Noyac last summer, the Sag Harbor Village Board has amended its seasonal-use dwelling-unit law, resolving Tuesday night to require the addition of a rental registry permit. The intent of the new law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, is to ensure the safety of rented properties, in accordance with New York State Code.

A plan to alleviate chronic flooding and improve safety by constructing a traffic circle at the five-way intersection between Fort Pond and Fort Pond Bay in Montauk was hashed out at Tuesday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Board.

When East Hampton Town Supervisor-elect Kathee Burke-Gonzalez is sworn in next month, one of the first changes that will be seen at Town Hall is a resumption of the town board’s Thursday evening meetings. 

The East Hampton Town Trustees codified new policies on docks and other floating structures in waters under their jurisdiction, including a prohibition on construction of any new residential piers or fixed or floating docks in the entirety of Three Mile Harbor.

The East Hampton Village Board spent last Thursday’s work session making small adjustments to sections of the village code, most involving beach regulations, and some pertaining to the code of ethics involving East Hampton Village ambulance volunteers. Rounding out the discussion was a measure allowing “dead spaces” over garages or pool houses to be insulated.

Town, county, and state officials were in a celebratory mood last week at Town Hall, toasting the electricity that began flowing from the South Fork Wind farm through 78 miles of underwater cable to a LIPA substation here.

East Hampton Town’s senior purchasing agent recommended to the town board on Tuesday that the town become a Green Purchasing Community, a New York State program that confers buying guidance through state-approved specifications.

History was made in the United States House of Representatives on Friday when Representative George Santos of New York’s Third Congressional District, following the issuance of a damning Nov. 16 report by the House Committee on Ethics, was expelled by his colleagues less than halfway through his first term.