Government

Save Sag Harbor and a group of village residents scored a victory against the village this week when Justice Stephen Hackeling of Suffolk Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down two village laws that allowed for Adam Potter’s proposed 79-unit affordable housing and retail complex. Justice Hackeling agreed with the petitioners that the village had failed to comply with the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act when it crafted the laws.

The Suffolk County Legislature voted 14-to-3 last week to raise its hotel/motel tax from its current 3-percent rate to 5 1/2 percent. The increase starts on June 1, just in time for the season. Legislator Bridget Fleming was one of the three who voted against the hike, along with Al Krupski of Cutchogue and Anthony Piccirillo of Holtsville.

A groundbreaking ceremony for a long-awaited aquatic center at the Montauk Playhouse is planned for July, Sarah Iudicone, the president of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation’s board, told a delighted East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

The East Hampton Town Board last Thursday voted to promote Eric Schantz, the assistant planning director, to director of housing and community development, making him the fifth new town department head appointed since late December, following the retirement of several longtime key officials.

Opponents of a new spring turkey hunting season pleaded with the East Hampton Town Board to opt out of the program until the last minute, but on Tuesday the board, as it had previously indicated it would, voted only to prohibit hunting during a five-day span around Memorial Day weekend.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to extend the time that developers of the South Fork Wind farm have to complete the restoration of Beach Lane in Wainscott, from April 30 to May 22.

Sag Harbor Main Street is scheduled to be repaved from Monday morning through approximately Wednesday, weather permitting. According to the village's Department of Public Works, no street parking will be permitted from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. until the work is complete.

The owners of a historic timber frame house on Montauk Highway in East Hampton Village appeared before the village’s design review board on Tuesday to seek a retroactive certificate of appropriateness after gutting the house during renovations.

The county leads New York State by a huge margin in pesticide and herbicide diversity and use, according to a report released by the State Department of Environmental Conservation last week. In 2021, a staggering 6.5 million pounds of pesticides were applied in Suffolk.

In East Hampton Town, the massive geotextile sandbags that are used to protect waterfront properties from erosion are allowed on only a temporary basis — for just six months with the potential for a three-month renewal — but in reality those erosion-control measures have sometimes remained in place for years.

“The sentiment, I think, would range from discouragement to outrage right now,” the chairwoman of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee said, as discussion turned to the Maidstone Gun Club, which hopes to renew its lease on East Hampton Town land even as a group of residents is suing the town and the club in an effort to permanently close it.

The federal Department of the Interior announced on Monday that the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has completed a 60-day review of critical design and installation reports for the South Fork Wind farm, the final regulatory hurdle that clears the way for installation of the wind farm’s foundations and turbines.

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to pass a resolution Thursday regarding an additional turkey hunting season, which would span May 1 to May 25 this year. Ahead of the 2 p.m. meeting, a protest at Town Hall will be staged by the East Hampton Group for Wildlife.

The mayoral election in Sag Harbor is June 20 and the race, or perhaps lack thereof, is becoming clearer. Last week, Mayor James Larocca announced in a staff meeting that he would not be seeking re-election, and on Monday, Thomas Gardella, the current deputy mayor, confirmed that he will be running for mayor.

A puzzle of an application involving two adjacent parcels, a bunch of portable restrooms, access to them, and a house in a commercial neighborhood came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board this month. The immediate issue is that the house, even though it is on a commercially zoned lot, is the parcel’s only legal use (though it pre-exists town zoning and is classed as nonconforming).

On paper, a 2,379-square-foot house on the South Fork may not seem outlandish, but place that house on a .17-acre lot in a flood zone with a raised swimming pool and decking in the middle of Ditch Plain in Montauk, and both neighbors and town planners have a problem.

Beachgoers will soon see temporary string fencing at sites along 18 miles of ocean and bay shoreline, as the federally and New York State-protected piping plover makes its annual return to East Hampton Town and Village.

Anna Soccorsi of the Natural Resources Department told the town board on March 21 that it is seeking seasonal volunteers to monitor sites where the shorebirds nest, the better to assist conservation efforts of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The East Hampton Town Trustees voted on Monday to allocate $83,160 for the 2023 water quality and bottomlands assessment of waters under their jurisdiction.

The East Hampton Town litter action committee will launch a monthlong No Fling Spring initiative on Earth Day with a cleanup of Springs-Fireplace Road. Beach cleanups and a No Fling Spring Fling dance party in May are also on the agenda.

Owners of the third-largest commercial building in East Hampton Town, the Home Sweet Home warehouse in Wainscott, want to convert it into a self-storage facility, but town planners want to see a smaller building with more space for parking, among other things.

After a long-anticipated historical and architectural assessment of the Springs house and studios of the late Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park was delivered to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday, the board signaled that it was ready to embrace the site’s restoration and conversion into an arts and nature center.

Don’t call it an expansion, but Carissa’s Bakery at 221 Pantigo Road in East Hampton needs a little more elbow room — and parking.

The New York State Supreme Court has once again sided with property owners along a 4,000-foot stretch of Napeague oceanfront popularly known as Truck Beach, granting five property owners associations’ motions to dismiss separate complaints by East Hampton Town and the town trustees, along with a dozen fishermen.

A temporary fence could be installed as early as this week around parts of Herrick Park in East Hampton Village, where renovations to the tennis courts and softball field are set to begin on April 1. Work is expected to conclude no later than June 15.

The East Hampton Town Board has appointed an advisory committee to review potential affordable housing initiatives and make recommendations to the town board, following the town’s recently adopted Community Housing Opportunity Fund Project Plan.

For at least 50 years the property at 44 Three Mile Harbor Road has operated as a nightclub — Leo, Philippe, SL East, NV Tsunami, way back when a place called the Jag, and even before that Mellowmouth — but its owner wants to convert the 5,000-square-foot one-story stucco building into a mix of retail, office, and affordable housing units. The town planning board will hold a hearing on the proposal in April.

Representative Nick LaLota of the First Congressional District has formally proposed legislation to declare Plum Island a national monument under the 1906 Antiquities Act. His bill, known as H.B. 1584, emphasizes the need for “ecological conservation, historical preservation, and the discovery and celebration of our shared cultural heritage.”

The effort to impose restrictions on aircraft at East Hampton Town Airport took another incremental step forward on Tuesday when consultants presented the town board with the scope for a draft environmental impact statement that reflects input from the public and the board.

East Hampton Town and New York State would like comments from residents 60 years of age and older for a comprehensive survey of older adults, the director of the town’s Human Services Department said on Tuesday.

The New York Housing Compact, the governor's plan to address a housing shortage by building 800,000 new residences over the next decade, is a heavy-handed approach that would be wholly incompatible with East Hampton Town, according to the town planning director. Another planner described it to the town board as an “all sticks and no carrots” approach to solving the housing crisis.