Government

The East Hampton Town Board took up the matter at Tuesday’s work session in a discussion led by Councilman David Lys, who wants to see free public Wi-Fi hotspots at numerous town beaches — including Gin Beach in Montauk, Maidstone Park in Springs, and Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett — among other proposed locations.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc announced Friday that he will retire from public service at the end of this year, opting not to seek re-election to a fourth term. His deputy supervisor, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, will seek the Democrats' nomination for supervisor.

East Hampton Town Democrats and Republicans have put out the call for people interested in running for public office this year.

After months of discussion at Sag Harbor Village Board meetings, members of the public will have their say in front of the Southampton Town Board at 1 p.m. on Jan. 24 regarding a potential use of community preservation fund money on the John Steinbeck house on Bluff Point Lane in the village. Residents can also submit written comments to the board before the 24th.

“Even in the grave, all is not lost,” wrote Edgar Allen Poe, but Poe never encountered the all-powerful New York developer and real estate lobby that ultimately helped persuade Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto a popular gravesite-protection bill on Dec. 30.

The entity behind the recent series of blistering print and social media advertisements targeting members of the East Hampton Town Board relative to the proposed privatization of the town airport, has been identified as a recently formed not-for-profit organization calling itself Political Transparency, Inc., but in charging the board with a lack of transparency, the group has raised numerous unanswered questions about its own transparency.

Freshly minted Representative Nicholas LaLota says the Republican Party’s dramatic and dayslong effort to elect a speaker of the House last week didn’t have much of an impact on his ability to hit the ground running as the new representative for New York’s First Congressional District.

In his State of the Town address last Thursday, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc highlighted areas of concern, conflict, and possibility that East Hampton will encounter this year.

A year and four months after learning the truth about Capt. William J. Rysam’s role in slave trading in the founding days of this community, the East Hampton Town Trustees on Monday voted unanimously to drop his name from the scholarship they award annually to a graduating senior from East Hampton High School.

The powerful storm that hit the East End just before Christmas left Accabonac Harbor in need of help: A particularly pronounced sand spit emerged, causing boaters and fishermen difficulty in navigating the area off Louse Point.

Everybody must get zoned: That was the message coming out of a Southampton Town Board meeting last Thursday as the town continues to work its way toward rules to guide the new world of marijuana legalization in New York State.

Bamboo bans, beach party limits, and the proposed $25-million-plus new senior center on town-owned land were all on Tuesday’s East Hampton Town Board agenda.

“Degraded, inadequate, and poorly maintained.” That’s how East Hampton Town Police detectives characterized the safety management systems at the Maidstone Gun Club’s 200-yard rifle range during an investigation into a bullet, allegedly originating from the club, that struck a Merchants Path house on Aug. 5, 2022.

The latest report from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s office shows that year-to-year community preservation fund revenues in the five East End towns have fallen more than 17 percent over all.

Dozens showed up for a New Year's Day hike in Hither Woods, many with signs, to send a message to the East Hampton Town Board: They do not support a sewage treatment plant in the parkland there, even one that is near the old, capped landfill.

In a far-reaching, $1.65 trillion package of federal legislation signed by President Biden last Thursday, the campaign to permanently preserve Plum Island took another step forward: Congress has officially invited stakeholder agencies to come to the table for a joint briefing on the island’s future.

The Peconic Land Trust is hoping to transfer just over 13 acres of property in a preserve north of Town Lane in Amagansett to a private estate adjoining it off Abraham’s Path, but to do so it first needs the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s approval of a modification of the parcel’s lot line and — because Suffolk County owns the development rights to the property — approval from the county’s farmland committee.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association has hired a lawyer to fight what it says was an illegal transfer of its ambulance service certificate from the association to the village government without its agreement, notification, or use of administrative protocols required by state law. The transfer could lead to billing for ambulance services.

Year-round tennis in Amagansett: That’s the goal of the plan pitched by Claude Okin, who owns the Sportime facility and camp off Town Lane and Abraham’s Path, to the East Hampton Town Trustees in December.

The bright blue slashes of paint stand out like neon under a black light, marking the trunks in a stand of healthy pine trees along both sides of Cranberry Hole Road on Napeague that will be sacrificed to protect the overall health of the region’s forests as the southern pine beetle continues its destructive eastward march.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. told The Star that he had some optimism that the bill might ultimately be met with her signature, noting that Gov. Kathy Hochul and her staff had been engaged in discussions over the bill with stakeholders that include New York’s powerful real estate lobby, which leans Democratic in its campaign-funding largess and is one of the reasons Governor Hochul prevailed in her race against Lee Zeldin this year.

Off-premises catering companies on the South Fork are welcoming Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signing, on Dec. 20, of legislation to close a loophole that previously restricted them from obtaining liquor licenses. Now, they will be able to apply for permanent catering permits that will ultimately enable them to add liquor, and sales of alcohol in general, to the “approved” list.

Nicholas LaLota, newly elected in the First District, said in a statement Tuesday that while he, like other House Republicans, is “eager to be sworn in and focus on our commitment to America and our respective districts,” he had heard from countless Long Islanders expressing “how deeply troubled they are by the headlines surrounding George Santos.” Mr. LaLota added that as a Navy veteran “who campaigned on restoring accountability and integrity to our government,” he believed a full investigation by the House Ethics Committee, “and, if necessary, law enforcement, is required.”

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Cate Rogers has a legislative “bucket list” item for 2023 that would see the creation of a pilot program to ramp up composting efforts in the town. Her vision would flip the script on the well-worn “farm-to-table” concept to a so-called table-to-farm program where residents — and eventually, restaurants — would collect food scraps that would then be composted instead of being sent off to landfills, where some 40 percent of all waste is residential food waste.

After earmarking $1.2 million in its 2022 capital plan for repairs at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, the East Hampton Town Board will be putting the job out to bid again after “the bids came back much higher than anticipated,” Deputy Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said last week.

Jim Brundige, manager of East Hampton Airport, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday that five capital projects there, with a combined cost estimate of more than $600,000, are either underway or circling in for a landing.

As it strives to make good on President Biden’s goal of adding 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by decade’s end, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced last week that it had issued two draft environmental impact statements for proposed wind projects in waters off Virginia Beach and New York.

Pending approval from the D.E.C. to place a wastewater treatment plant under the long-term parking lot off Gingerbread Lane, the East Hampton Village Board heard a presentation on alternate locations including at the village's Department of Public Works property at 172 Accabonac Road, outside the village, and at 29 King Street, which is not owned by the village but is within its boundaries.

Following in her predecessor’s footsteps, Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday vetoed a bipartisan and widely supported bill passed by the State Legislature this year that would have granted state recognition to the Montaukett Indian Nation. It was the fourth time in nine years that a Montaukett recognition bill was shot down by the state’s executive branch after passing in the Legislature.

Chief lifeguard John Ryan Jr. this week recapped what he called a “great summer,” in which lifeguards performed 137 rescues — including 15 on unprotected beaches.