Government

East Hampton Village has big plans for the holiday season, including a tree-lighting at the Hook Mill sponsored by Prada and Santa arriving by helicopter in Herrick Park, but those tiny trees that went up last week? Not planned.

The East Hampton Town Board formally adopted the its proposed budget of $90.355 million for 2023 at its meeting last Thursday. The adoption, by unanimous vote, followed a Nov. 3 public hearing.

For the second time in just under a year, the East Hampton Town Board held a public hearing on a proposed law that would give the town regulatory powers over mining, mulching, and composting operations and require the monitoring and reporting of the impact of such operations on groundwater.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to raise the cap on money it could pay the Cooley law firm, its outside consultants on matters relating to the town’s effort to enact restrictions at East Hampton Town Airport, to more than $3 million for fiscal year 2022. The move came shortly after attorneys for three plaintiffs who have successfully prevented any such changes at the airport, petitioned New York State Supreme Court to compel Cooley and two other law firms to return to the town’s airport fund all fees they received for work performed after May 16.

The East Hampton Town Board’s vote this month to acquire 18.8 acres of vacant land at 66 East Lake Drive in Montauk with general municipal funds, and not community preservation fund money as initially intended, has prompted both suspicion that the land will be swapped with Suffolk County for property in Hither Woods to build a wastewater treatment plant, and, more recently, one accuser’s resignation from an advisory committee on which he has sat for more than a decade.

Since East Hampton Village's Town Pond was “mucked out” last year, it has had a difficult time holding water. It is also beset by an invasive aquatic plant, Eurasian watermilfoil, which workers are beginning to remove this week, but the effect will be largely aesthetic, as plant fragments and roots will remain in place allowing the invasive plant to spread in the future.

A proposal to subdivide the long-vacant former Stern’s Department Store property on Pantigo Road in East Hampton into three house lots has raised the question of whether the site might be better used for affordable housing, and with an apparently willing seller open to discussions, the town planning board agreed on Nov. 16 to let the town board know it was unanimous in support of that option.

The East Hampton Town Trustees gave permission to John Nicholas, an owner of the East Hampton Oyster Company and of Sunset Cove Marina, on Folkstone Creek off Three Mile Harbor in Springs, to convert a portion of the marina to an oyster nursery.

Nick LaLota was in Washington, D.C., this week, the representative-elect in New York’s First Congressional District among the incoming freshmen of the 118th Congress who descended on the nation’s capital for new member orientation.

Four potential designs for East Hampton Town’s new senior citizens center, to be constructed on seven acres at 403 Abraham’s Path in Amagansett, were unveiled at the East Hampton Town Board’s work session this week.

New York State’s Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022, which voters passed by a comfortable margin on Nov. 8, will be of greatest benefit to Long Island, an environmental activist said this week.

The East Hampton Town Trustees have extended the moratorium on new residential docks, catwalks, floating docks, floating structures, and platforms in waters under their jurisdiction for a second year.

Stymied by lawsuits and a New York State Supreme Court justice in its efforts to implement restrictions on aircraft operations at East Hampton Town Airport, the town board discussed options with its consultants this week.

Members of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee are claiming that the Maidstone Gun Club, a private group that leases close to 100 acres of town-owned land in that hamlet, has violated multiple clauses of its lease.

The East Hampton Town Board voted at its meeting last Thursday to acquire 18.8 acres of vacant land at 66 East Lake Drive in Montauk, but will do so with general municipal funds and not community preservation fund money, as initially intended. The change in funding source spurred an accusation, during a public hearing earlier in the meeting, of a “secretive town board plan” to construct a sewage treatment plant for the hamlet at the property.

The war of words between attorneys over the 4,000-foot stretch of Napeague ocean beach popularly known as Truck Beach continued this week, when an attorney for the homeowners associations who successfully sued East Hampton Town and the town trustees to assert that their property deeds extend to the mean high-water mark of the beach submitted a motion to hold the trustees in civil contempt.

Despite the approach of winter, the East Hampton Village Board turned its attention to Main Beach and summer recreation issues at its Nov. 4 work session.

Nicholas LaLota, the Republican and Conservative Party nominee to represent New York’s First Congressional District, is the winner of the race to succeed Representative Lee Zeldin, the four-term congressman who ran for governor of New York on the Republican and Conservative Party lines. Mr. LaLota defeated Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming with 55.81 percent of the vote.

The East Hampton Town Board will address the situation at the airport — what has transpired to date and the town’s options after its latest legal setback — at its work session on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee is shifting its short-term focus to flight routes, hoping to impact air traffic by next summer.

In a procedural, but consequential, step, the Sag Harbor Village Board issued a “positive declaration” Tuesday on the mixed retail and housing development proposed by Adam Potter and Conifer Realty. When a positive declaration is made, it means a project could have a significant environmental impact and must undergo a lengthy public review.

The East Hampton Village Board is considering making Mill Road one way. Traffic could continue to head from James Lane to Route 27, but drivers heading on Route 27 would no longer be able to turn onto the short street.

Unofficial results have Gov. Kathy Hochul defeating Republican Representative Lee Zeldin with 52.7 percent of the vote in a contest that became tighter than expected in the final lead-up to the election. Mr. Zeldin conceded on Wednesday afternoon.

A community housing fund proposition that would authorize a .5-percent tax on some real estate transfers passed in East Hampton, Southampton, Southold, and Shelter Island Towns. “The funds raised will be a significant part of the town board’s ‘All Hands on Housing’ effort to address the housing crisis here in East Hampton,” East Hampton's supervisor said.

A public hearing on East Hampton Town’s 2023 preliminary budget drew few comments during the town board’s meeting last Thursday, but one from a labor union representative conveyed appreciation for a key feature of the document, the salary increases that close to 200 of its members would see.

Residents of Sag Harbor’s historically Black neighborhoods, Azurest, Ninevah, and Sag Harbor Hills, showed up in force at a village board meeting Tuesday night for a public hearing on whether to create an overlay district for those neighborhoods, as a means of preserving their character in the face of recent development trends.

A new 185-foot emergency communications tower at Camp Blue Bay in Springs, including antennas for the four main personal wireless carriers, could be operational by Memorial Day. And there appears to be movement on a tower at the Springs Firehouse, where an attorney for the fire district said it was reviewing a shorter pole. “Until September, we thought we still needed a 180-foot pole. . . We didn’t have reason to prioritize review of a shorter pole. We do now."

As New Yorkers went to bed on election night the ABC and NBC news networks were projecting that Gov. Kathy Hochul had won her race against Representative Lee Zeldin of New York's First Congressional District, although only 1 percent of votes from Suffolk County, a stronghold for the Republican and Conservative Party challenger, had been counted. 

Unofficial results posted after midnight on election night gave the Republican Nick LaLota the win over Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming in the First Congressional District. Republican State Senator Anthony Palumbo won over Skyler Johnson, and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a Democrat, was returned to Albany. A community housing fund proposition passed in East Hampton, Southampton, and Southold Towns.

The John Behan Memorial Park will be established in Montauk to honor the longtime state assemblyman and Marine Corps veteran who died last year. A ceremonial groundbreaking is planned for Veterans Day, which was also his birthday.

“There’s trouble in paradise,” Gail Pellett of ChangeHampton said outside East Hampton Town Hall last Thursday, where a group of elected officials and residents had gathered for a ceremonial groundbreaking for a community pollinator garden that will extend a pollinator pathway that includes another garden and a wildflower meadow in progress on the campus.