Government

The East Hampton Town Planning Board came close to scheduling a public hearing on an application for the relocation of a 150-foot communications tower at the Springs Firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard last week. Instead, despite pressure from Elite Towers, the applicant, the board decided one more meeting was necessary. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation at Suffolk Community College in Brentwood last week aimed at making septic system upgrades more affordable, which environmental advocates say is critical to addressing impaired water bodies, including in East Hampton Town. 

Lee Zeldin, who represented New York’s First Congressional District from 2015 to 2023 and is now the administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, was heckled and admonished by climate activists at the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, in a chaotic scene that turned violent.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to spend $10 million in community preservation fund money to acquire a conservation easement over approximately 5.5 acres of vacant land along the shore of Georgica Cove, at 41 and 47 Cove Hollow Farm Road in East Hampton Village.

The rally coincided with the fifth anniversary of the death of John Lewis, a United States representative from Georgia and an icon of the civil rights movement, and was the latest in a series of protests against the Trump administration organized by People for Democracy East Hampton.

The underutilized Town Lane Park in East Hampton, where works by the late sculptor Sasson Soffer are on permanent display, could see a dramatic transformation, as proposed to the town board on Tuesday by Soffer’s widow, Stella Sands, and Emily Goldstein of the Drawing Room gallery in East Hampton.

The East Hampton Town Trustees voted to authorize a special season for the taking of soft clams or razor clams by the method known as powering, or churning.

ReWild Long Island and East Hampton Town have launched an initiative to encourage backyard composting by taking advantage of a “flash sale” on compost bins and expert support.

Jeff Miller, the Republican candidate for East Hampton Town clerk, will hold a campaign fund-raiser at LTV Studios in Wainscott on July 24 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Speaking at an Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee Meeting this week, State Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni said that rebuilding of the Cranberry Hole Road bridge is included in the M.T.A. capital plan, “but the pace is glacial.”

As goes the little saltmarsh sparrow, so goes the salt marsh. In what could be a win for both, a team of scientists will now capture and band saltmarsh sparrows at Accabonac Harbor.

East Hampton Town experienced a total governmental funds loss of $27.3 million in 2024, primarily due to losses in the general fund and the community preservation fund, the latter impacted by last year’s $56 million purchase of a 30-acre lot at 66 Main Street in Wainscott, the largest C.P.F. purchase in the town’s history.

A special event, purportedly for an electric vehicle educational display in Herrick Park, went awry on July 9 and was promptly shut down by Marcos Baladron, the East Hampton Village administrator, after he fielded multiple complaints from residents about a General Motors “car dealership” at the park’s entrance.

Dubbed the “Save Montauk’s Waters” campaign, the plans to help the beleaguered water body were equal parts education and action. “The ultimate goal of this study is solid, evidence-backed recommendations for remediation of toxic blue-green algae and pathogenic bacteria in the pond, that will be cost effective and long lasting,” said Rebecca Holloway, Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s manager of environmental advocacy.

East Hampton Town has asked a New York State Supreme Court judge to hold the owner of Duryea’s, on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk, in contempt of the court’s May 2019 orders allowing a certificate of occupancy to remain in effect, order the removal of a new parking lot and deck that were constructed without proper permits, and allow the town to resume enforcement of its ordinances.

“We actually lived off the land. We didn’t have electricity until I was 12. We had cows, steer, pigs. I milked the cows,” said Larry Koncelik, speaking at a public hearing before the East Hampton Town Board on the proposed purchase of a 9.35-acre parcel at 43 Mile Hill Road, along Northwest Harbor.

Experts disagree on whether Nicholas Grecco’s house at 117 Bay View would become a new feature of Napeague Bay without its wall of geocubes, essentially huge sandbags, strung and piled atop one another, protecting the house from wave attack.

After a positive public hearing last Thursday before the East Hampton Town Board, it appears another major community preservation fund purchase is close. The deal is a complex arrangement between the town, East Hampton Village, and the Peconic Land Trust, with the majority of the $55 million purchase price — $35 million — coming from the land trust.

The “apparent decline in our civil liberties and the unusual and extraordinary accretion of executive power that we’ve seen since Donald Trump was inaugurated” were considered with a mixture of gloom and optimism alongside denunciations of the conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court and a spirited call for citizen action to defend democracy at “Guardrails on Democracy,” the first Hamptons Institute discussion of the 2025 season.

Simmering discontent with the effort by East Hampton Village officials to publicize code amendments passed over the winter that require service workers to register with the village and curtail noise by tightening the hours during which such work can be done came to a boil at the village board’s July 2 meeting, with an attorney and the director of a Latino advocacy organization forcefully criticizing what they deemed insufficient outreach.

A private developer's plan to build 47 two and three-bedroom units on Pantigo Road and sell them as condominiums to local businesses for workforce housing “deviates from nearly every affordable housing development that exists in the town,” said Eric Schantz, a principal planner for the East Hampton Town Planning Department.

The East Hampton Town Board moved closer to loosening restrictions on homeowners who want to build accessory dwelling units on their properties, but not before two members of the public spoke out against the proposals.

East Hampton Town has ordered Christopher Winkler, a Montauk fisherman who was convicted in 2023 of falsifying records in order to sell fluke and black sea bass in quantities that vastly exceed legal limits, to vacate the slip at the hamlet’s commercial dock where his trawler, the New Age, has been docked for around 40 years.

East Hampton Town’s Democratic Party candidates launched their 2025 campaign on Monday with a gathering marked by gloomy assessments of Democrats’ status at the national level mixed with encouraging signs of resistance. At home, they enjoy a supermajority on the town board and among the town trustees, with some incumbents running unopposed for re-election.

The East Hampton Village Board voted to approve a $30.7 million budget for the next fiscal year that includes a tax increase of 1.28 percent for village residents.

It might be surprising to learn that the Coast Guard, which has a station in Montauk, owns 17 houses in Springs. Perhaps even more surprising was the news last week that it would like to upgrade the septic systems at all 17 properties, and will seek grants from the town to do so.

The total cost of the project is $1,688,962 or an average of $99,000 for each property. However, according to Kim Shaw, the town’s environmental protection director, that figure includes some items that are not eligible for town funding.

The East Hampton Village Board was criticized at its meeting last week for not doing enough to communicate two new laws that have been ensnaring landscapers and contractors since the middle of May. One requires service workers to register annually with the village at a cost of $250. The other, a noise ordinance, shortens hours for certain landscaping and construction activities between May 15 and Sept. 15.

The East Hampton Town Trustees will write a letter to the town board supporting the purchase of two parcels fronting Georgica Cove by the Peconic Land Trust, which is at present in contract, and the simultaneous sale of an easement to the town and to East Hampton Village to ensure their preservation in perpetuity.

The East Hampton Village Board has posted new dates for public hearings on a plan to trim term limits for the zoning board of appeals and the planning board from five years to three. Those hearings will now be held on July 2.

While conditions had improved by Monday, last weekend, the Surfrider Foundation’s Eastern Long Island chapter, which partners with Concerned Citizens of Montauk and the Peconic Baykeeper in sampling and analyzing local waters, canceled an International Surfing Day meetup that was to happen that day at Ditch Plain Beach, citing alarmingly high levels of Enterococcus bacteria in the water.