Government

The Suffolk County Legislature voted 10 to 7 along partisan lines to recess and close its hearing on Tuesday without acting to put the Suffolk County Water Quality Protection Act on the Nov. 7 ballot, which would have let voters decide whether or not the county sales tax should be increased by one-eighth of a cent to create a Water Quality Restoration Fund.

The East Hampton Town Board is in discussions with the Long Island Rail Road about the Cranberry Hole Road Bridge over the railroad tracks, which was has been closed since July 1 because of structural problems.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs who have successfully thwarted East Hampton Town’s plan to briefly close East Hampton Airport and reopen it as a private airport have told the New York State Supreme Court that they calculated nearly $295,000 in fees associated with a May motion holding the town in civil contempt, fees the judge in the suit had ordered the town to pay. The town's attorneys say those fees are excessive and that the court should reject them.

The Southampton Town Board, at a special meeting last Thursday, voted unanimously to hold an Aug. 8 public hearing on the imposition of a six-month moratorium on applications for battery energy storage systems, following an outcry from residents near a proposed installation on North Road in Hampton Bays. Several board members expressed support for the proposed moratorium.

Representative Nick LaLota of New York’s First Congressional District has joined the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, a group comprising an equal number of Republicans and Democrats.

A lawsuit brought by four Wainscott residents challenging the onshore construction of the South Fork Wind farm, one of many efforts to stop its construction via the courts, was dismissed by a federal judge this week. 

The Huntting Inn wants to add a swimming pool to its property, to which at least one neighbor has objected. “If the application is granted, I imagine the Maidstone Inn, Hedges Inn, Mill House Inn, and perhaps some B&Bs, will ask for [a pool], and the fresh precedent will be difficult to overcome,” Frank Morgan told the Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday.

Is your property overrun with invasive plants like honeysuckle and poison ivy? You may want to consider goats. That’s in part what Concerned Citizens of Montauk pitched to East Hampton Town for the roughly 40-acre Arthur Benson Preserve on Old Montauk Highway.

Auditors told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday that they found nothing amiss in a review of the town's finances. "Everything’s really in good shape,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said.

Tom Flight, a Democratic Party candidate for the East Hampton Town Board, is on the road to recovery after spending four days at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital following a seizure on July 4. 

Temporary roadside informational signs are being placed in East Hampton Town to raise awareness and enforce the New York State Move Over Law, which aims to protect law enforcement officers, emergency workers, tow and service vehicle operators, and other workers stopped along roadways.

A proposed teardown project on Oyster Shores Road in East Hampton, which came before the zoning board of appeals at a public hearing late last month, raised the question of whether more weight should be given to proposed improvements to a parcel and its surroundings, or to the dictates of the town zoning code.