Government

Serendipity may be responsible for bringing the “fastest growing sport in the world,” Padel, a racket sport that is often described as a mix between pickleball and squash, to East Hampton this summer.

A New York State Supreme Court judge certified the 2022 congressional and State Senate district maps on Friday, dealing a blow to Democrats who had sought to gain seats through district remapping drawn by the Democratic-dominated State Legislature in February. 

After East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen filed an objection to Arthur Graham's nominating petition for village trustee, a bipartisan team at the Suffolk County Board of Elections on Tuesday ruled that Mr. Graham's petition could stand and made a motion to invalidate Mr. Larsen's challenge. But it's not over yet.

East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen confirmed Thursday afternoon that he would not fight a Suffolk County Board of Elections ruling upholding Arthur Graham's nominating petition for village trustee.

"We don't really know," a consultant to East Hampton Town said when asked about the future status of the town's airport. 

The Long Island Rail Road has rejected the request of local lawmakers and commuters to provide one eastbound Friday-morning train on the South Fork Commuter Connection during the summer.

Four water quality grant awards totaling $462,193, all recommended by the East Hampton Town’s Water Quality Technical Advisory Committee, drew strong support at a town board hearing last Thursday.

Rita Cantina, a Springs restaurant that has drawn local criticism for operating three catering businesses from its small plot, learned last week at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board that it may be required to upgrade its sanitary system to a low-nitrogen system.

The East Hampton Town Board voted unanimously last Thursday to prohibit smoking within 500 feet of lifeguarded areas at all town beaches. The ban will apply to tobacco and cannabis smoking and vaping and will be in place during the hours that lifeguards are on duty.

The League of Women Voters of New York State filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court on Friday, seeking the postponement of State Assembly primary elections from June 28 to Aug. 23 in order to align with the State Senate and congressional primaries.

The owner of the 70.5-acre site has plans for a 50-lot subdivision. Some in Wainscott have a different vision: parkland or perhaps an art center. The question for a group looking at implementation of a Wainscott hamlet study: How might the old mine itself be redeveloped to enhance redevelopment of the larger area?

Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn has announced the suspension of her campaign for the Democratic Party nomination to represent New York’s First Congressional District, and has endorsed the candidacy of Bridget Fleming, her colleague in the Legislature.

East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen has filed an objection to Arthur (Tiger) Graham's nominating petition for village trustee for the June 21 election. If it succeeds, the sole dissenting candidate would be off the ballot.

New York's First Congressional District would grow slightly under a proposed map by a neutral expert tasked with redrawing the state's congressional and State Senate district boundaries. The map appears likely to encourage Republican gains in Washington, D.C., in November, possibly resulting in a G.O.P. majority in the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.

"It's important to start now," Laura Tooman of Concerned Citizens of Montauk told the East Hampton Town Board, in urging it to adopt a plan that recommends a range of strategies to address risks to coastal areas as a result of climate-change-induced sea level rise, coastal erosion, and extreme weather. Among the plan's most controversial elements is a call for managed retreat in downtown Montauk.

The East Hampton Town Board is working on many fronts to tackle the region's most bedeviling problem, and this week, board members reported on their progress on specific initiatives to provide affordable rental and ownership options for those who live or work in the town. 

“As a result of the actions already taken and processes in place, the F.A.A. has significant concern that the court and the parties have introduced a major safety issue into this complex airspace system,” an F.A.A. official wrote in a letter to East Hampton Town after a judge on Monday blocked the scheduled closure of the airport as a public facility and its reopening as a private one with new restrictions.

At the end of March, in an ambitious effort to eradicate ticks on North Haven, the village relaunched its campaign to install "four-poster" feeding stations for deer. The stations bait deer with corn. While they feed, a tickicide is applied directly to their necks.

"As it fails, it will continue to leak material into Lake Montauk," said Brian Frank, chief environmental analyst for East Hampton Town, of an aging bulkhead on the east side of Lake Montauk, where David Zwirner, a New York City gallerist, hopes to create an artists' retreat, rebuilding 17 cottages and a large single-family house — but not the bulkhead.

Having beaten back a plan to site a 180-foot tower to house emergency and personal wireless communications equipment in the woodlands of their neighborhood, a group of Springs residents is now asking East Hampton Town to make the approximately seven wooded acres a nature preserve.

Both the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals and Design Review Board, at times appearing frustrated by questions of overlapping or insufficient jurisdiction, signed off unanimously last week on improvements sought by Guild Hall to its exterior. Both boards made it clear that they had no control over the more controversial future of the John Drew Theater and its iconic "circus tent" roof, leaving all the drama inside the building.

A New York State Supreme Court Justice issued a temporary restraining order on Monday blocking East Hampton Town from temporarily closing its airport on Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. as it had planned.

Clearing the way for the Peconic Jitney's planned Greenport-to-Sag Harbor service, the Sag Harbor Village Board voted on Tuesday to amend the village code allowing for limited seasonal passenger ferry use at the end of Long Wharf.

On Friday, May 20, town officials will meet at the existing senior citizens center with current users of the building and staff as well as representatives of the town's Human Services Department and the architectural firms designing the new facility. The public has also been invited to a listening session in the main meeting room at Town Hall on May 21 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

If voters approve a .5-percent real estate transfer tax in a referendum on the ballot in November, East Hampton Town will have what Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc on Tuesday called "perhaps the most important tool" to address the scarcity of affordable housing. 

Eversource, the Boston and Hartford-based energy company that is a partner with the Danish energy company Orsted in the South Fork Wind farm and other projects, may sell all or part of its offshore wind assets.

The East Hampton Town Board is moving forward with its plan to close East Hampton Airport on Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. and reopen it 33 hours later as the private-use East Hampton Town Airport.

The East Hampton Town Trustees voted on Monday to accept the proposal from Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences for his lab's 2022 water quality monitoring program, and also accepted his proposal for a sediment survey of Accabonac Harbor.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing next Thursday at 11 a.m. on banning smoking of all types within 500 feet of lifeguarded areas while lifeguards are on duty.

While the East Hampton Town Board is preparing for a hearing next Thursday on written procedures to make "hybrid" meetings permanent, the East Hampton Town Trustees held a hearing on Monday and afterward unanimously adopted their own written procedures for the use of video conferencing to conduct their meetings.