Government

The Hero Beach Club, which sports the iconic winking smiley face on its facade, is the first commercial property drivers see as they’re headed into Montauk. Since 2017 it has been attempting to provide on-premises food service. On May 18, the planning board finally deemed the application ready for a public hearing.

An attorney for the Napeague property owners suing East Hampton Town and its trustees over the stretch known as Truck Beach has told attorneys for the town and the trustees that if the elected officials do not engage in settlement discussions with his clients, they could be subject to removal from office and be held personally liable for attorneys' fees and a fine imposed by a New York State Supreme Court justice.

With a target date of next Thursday to adopt a resolution to send a ballot proposition to the Suffolk County Board of Elections that, if passed in the Nov. 8 election, would activate a fund dedicated to the creation of affordable housing, the East Hampton Town Board and a town attorney worked to finalize the wording of the proposition and an accompanying abstract on Tuesday.

There’s good and not-so-good news for commercial and recreational shellfishermen in the updated rules governing shellfish-season openings and closures in East Hampton Town waters.

East Hampton Village has settled on a preferred location for a new underground wastewater treatment facility — under the long-term parking lot off Gingerbread Lane — but it could be years from completion, a consultant told the village board last week.

There were 859 takeoffs and landings at East Hampton Airport over Independence Day weekend, the highest total since 2019.

Changehampton, which describes itself as a group of alarmed East Hampton residents who “can no longer stand idle while global warming, climate change, and species collapse are escalating around us,” took its message to the town trustees on Monday.

The Icahns solved a yellowjacket problem by putting up a collapsible gazebo, then a permanent breakfast nook with a deck, and then a permanent gazebo. Now, some 15 years later, they're seeking retroactive approval for the replacement. Unfortunately, the spot where they like to have breakfast is in a coastal erosion hazard area and within the dune setback.

A multiuse path in the Buckskill Meadow Trunzo Preserve in Wainscott will be named to honor the late Lewis Zachary Cohen, a longtime member of East Hampton Town’s Nature Preserve Committee, during a ceremony on Monday at 11 a.m.

The Southampton Town Board is working to amend the town code to accommodate the possible arrival of cannabis dispensaries and on-site pot lounges in town. Turns out it’s a pretty contentious issue even after the town voted along with more than 600 other towns across the state to participate in New York’s newly legalized cannabis economy. 

Historical problems with both traffic safety and flooding at a multi-street intersection in Montauk may be alleviated by a redesign and installation of a roundabout.

East Hampton Town is asking residents to weigh in on the new senior citizens center to be constructed at 403 Abraham’s Path in Amagansett, with results to inform the design of the center and the programs offered there.

An East Hampton Town Trustees-commissioned study of fish migration in the vicinity of the landing site of the South Fork Wind farm’s export cable is to begin today and last approximately one week.

The East Hampton Village Board will resume public work sessions after a vote at their meeting on July 6. They will be held the first Thursday of each month, at 11 a.m., at a historic location to be determined before each meeting.

In response to the Supreme Court of the United States having overturned a 1913 New York State statute that sharply restricted the carrying of concealed firearms in public, Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday signed legislation bolstering the state’s concealed-carry restrictions.

One year after a landmark deal in Southampton returned Shinnecock Nation burial grounds to the tribe, New York State stands poised to enact two bills that would further honor Long Island’s Indigenous populations. One would grant the Montaukett tribe its long-sought state recognition while the other would ensure that unmarked burial remains in the state are honored and preserved.

“This is exactly the type of project we hoped would come forward,” Ed Haye, a Sag Harbor Village trustee, said at Friday’s special meeting to discuss a 79-unit proposal for affordable housing in Sag Harbor’s downtown office district that was pitched to the village by Adam Potter and Conifer Developers.

Careful observers may have noticed the removal of 1,600 square feet of phragmites along Hook Pond in East Hampton Village, only feet from the Main Beach parking lot, as well as 300 feet of hedgerow that ran along Ocean Avenue and blocked the view of the pond. Here's what's happening.

East Hampton Town’s Energy and Sustainability Advisory Committee has recommended to the town board that all building permits for new residential and commercial construction issued after Dec. 31 require that all appliances, including heating and cooling systems, be electric and energy efficient.

Language is being finalized for a Nov. 8 referendum that will ask voters whether to approve a .5-percent real estate transfer tax to be allocated to a community housing fund, which would be in addition to the 2-percent transfer tax for the community preservation fund.

A New York State Supreme Court justice has ordered that more than 6,000 East Hampton beach-driving permits be revoked. The decision came in a legal battle over a section of ocean shoreline on Napeague known as Truck Beach. 

Following a Supreme Court ruling that lets states set their own abortion laws, the world's richest and most powerful democracy joined one of the poorest countries in the continental Americas (Nicaragua), the smallest country in Central America (El Salvador), and an ultranationalist Poland to become only the fourth country in the Western world where abortion care is widely banned.

Eight months after the East Hampton Town Trustees narrowly voted to approve construction of a dock on Three Mile Harbor — the first such approval in more than three decades — the town’s zoning board of appeals denied an application for the permit needed for the dock’s construction to proceed.

A Montauk property owner accused by East Hampton Town of renting his house more than 50 times over nine months could be facing over $200,000 in fines after being issued dozens of appearance tickets for alleged violations of the town's rental registry law. His attorney says "there are lots of reasons why the town's case is not going to be acceptable to an East Hampton Town jury."

Last year, the contest pit clams dug from Three Mile, Accabonac, and Napeague Harbors against one another, with previous contests including those harvested from Lake Montauk. This year's contest, the trustees' 32nd, will be on Oct. 9.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who became New York State’s first female governor in August following the resignation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo amid accusations of sexual harassment, easily defeated two challengers in Tuesday’s Democratic Party primary election. On the Republican side, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York’s First Congressional District is the winner in a four-way race for the party’s nominee for governor.

The Supreme Court of the United States overturned a 1913 New York State statute that sharply restricted the carrying of concealed firearms in public by requiring applicants for concealed-carry permits to demonstrate proper cause. Reaction was swift on both sides of the issue.

The Coalition for Hither Woods, an organization of conservation groups that formed in 1982 to oppose proposals to develop that area of Montauk, has reformed as an incorporated not-for-profit to oppose the potential siting there of a sewage treatment plant to serve the hamlet.

Not a single person at Tuesday night’s public hearing on PSEG-Long Island’s plan to run an underground transmission line through the Long Pond Greenbelt supported the idea. Many forcefully opposed the cable, which would run beneath existing high wires, which slice the greenbelt in two and currently connect two substations, one off the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike in Sag Harbor, the other off Buell Lane in East Hampton.

Orsted and Eversource, joint developers of the South Fork Wind farm, have announced an agreement with environmental groups to further enhance measures aimed at protecting the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale during construction and operation of the wind farm.