Government

Supporters of the campaign to transform the Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck’s Sag Harbor waterfront property into a writers’ retreat got some good news last week: Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has nominated the project to receive a state grant of $500,000 toward its purchase.

Legislation to increase and protect access to water supply, sponsored by State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., has been approved by both the Assembly and the Senate, and is awaiting the governor’s signature.

The Pollock-Krasner House, East Hampton Village, the Montauk Anglers Club and Marina, and Concerned Citizens of Montauk were chosen from a larger pool of candidates to receive money from East Hampton Town.

Blade, the helicopter and seaplane operator, was forced to cancel its seaplane service to Sag Harbor Thursday after the village complained of misrepresentations in Blade’s advertising.

Citing the threat of erosion, the Devon Yacht Club on Gardiner's Bay in Amagansett is looking to move its clubhouse, bath house, and sailing center away from the water.

Air traffic to and from East Hampton Airport was typically brisk over the Memorial Day weekend, the temporary restraining order granted by a New York State Supreme Court Justice having halted the town board’s plan to briefly close the airport last month and reopen it as a private facility with advance permission required for takeoffs and landings.

The Hero Beach Club, a Montauk resort at the westernmost entrance to the hamlet, will finally be able to offer food to its guests, pending a June 22 public hearing before the East Hampton Town Planning Board.

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.

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

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.

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. 

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 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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

"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.

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.

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.