Government

Thirty-three years after joining East Hampton Town's Planning Department, JoAnne Pahwul, the department's director for the last two years, retired on Friday. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc recognized Ms. Pahwul at the town board's meeting last Thursday. She "served our community extremely well over all of those many years," he said, noting her rise to senior planner, assistant director, and director. "Thank you for helping keep East Hampton the beautiful place it is today." 

"The emergency is over," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Wedneday. Fifteen months after invoking emergency powers to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, he announced that the state of emergency will end on Thursday.

The Hampton Hopper, a seasonal bus service serving Montauk that was suspended during the pandemic last year, will resume service as soon as Thursday, with an expanded service territory.

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc is the apparent winner in Tuesday’s Democratic Party primary election, holding off a challenge from Councilman Jeff Bragman, and his running mates, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and Cate Rogers, chairwoman of the East Hampton Democratic Committee, also prevailed in the three-way race for the Democratic nomination for town board.

As of Monday, 71 percent of New Yorkers 18 and older had gotten at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control. To make it easier for people 12 and up to join the ranks of those partially or fully vaccinated locally, New York State will add Tuesday and Wednesday evening hours at its mass vaccination site at the Stony Brook Southampton college campus. 

On the same day that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the lifting of most remaining Covid-19-related restrictions, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told his colleagues on the town board of his intention to resume in-person meetings with the July 6 work session. 

The federal Department of the Interior announced on Friday a proposed sale for offshore wind development on the outer continental shelf in the New York Bight, an area of shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast.

The Suffolk County Public Works Department's Division of Vector Control commenced the aerial application of mosquito larvicides this week, but Accabonac Harbor was not among the targeted areas.

The Health Department announced on Monday that starting the next day marshes across the county would be treated with methoprene, a larvicide, and Bti, a naturally occurring bacterium that contains toxin-producing spores that affect mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae. The spraying was to have continued through today.

Companion bills in the New York State Legislature that would stagger the terms of office for the nine-member East Hampton Town Trustees and increase the trustees' terms from two to four years passed in the State Senate and Assembly last week.

An attorney representing East Hampton Town baymen said this week that his clients are prepared to "storm the beaches" if they are turned away from the stretch of ocean beach on Napeague where the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division ruled earlier this year that town residents have no inherent access rights.

Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island will receive $160,000 in New York State funding to help residents get money from the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

A Cornell Cooperative Extension shellfish ecologist plans to monitor scallop reproduction, growth, and survival in Napeague Harbor and record data including water temperature, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll A, and pH, a measurement of the water's acidity or alkalinity.

East Hampton Town's overtaxed wireless communications infrastructure, further stressed by last year's influx of "Covid refugees" from New York City, can be improved with the strategic siting of new facilities of various types, a wireless consulting firm told the town board.

Turnout was light last weekend at Windmill Village on Accabonac Road in East Hampton, the site of early voting ahead of Tuesday's Democratic Party primary, in which there are races for the nomination for town supervisor, town board, and town trustee.

James Larocca, a Sag Harbor Village trustee mounting his first bid for mayor, pulled off an upset on Tuesday, unseating the first-term incumbent, Kathleen Mulcahy, with 379 votes to Ms. Mulcahy's 357. Aidan Corish and Robert Plumb, the incumbents running for the two open seats on the village board, were re-elected.

As throngs of people in East Hampton Village's commercial district pass the time shopping, dining, and doing errands, the village's high-tech parking enforcement vehicle scans the streets to make sure they haven't overstayed their welcome. Since the village started charging for parking in the Reutershan and Schenck lots last month, humans have been confused about the regulations, but the computer is programmed to know all.

On Tuesday, exactly one year, three months, and one week since the day that Suffolk County's first Covid-19 patient was admitted to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that more than 70 percent of adult New Yorkers have received at least one vaccine shot and lifted most of the remaining pandemic restrictions on retail stores, restaurants, offices, gyms and fitness centers, amusement and family entertainment centers, hair salons and barber shops, and personal care businesses.

East Hampton Village is no longer issuing daily parking permits on weekends for Main and Two Mile Hollow Beaches. Monthly passes for the beaches are nearly sold out for July and August, and halting the sale of daily permits is a way of ensuring ample parking for village residents and those who bought season-long and monthly passes.

Truck traffic has surged on Accabonac Road since the Long Island Rail Road trestle near its southern end was raised, residents of the road have told the East Hampton Town Board, and the effect, they say, is a diminished quality of life, between the noise and the large vehicles' threat to the safety of pedestrians, joggers, cyclists, children, and pets. 

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilman Jeff Bragman, who is challenging him in a Democratic Party primary on June 22, argued at length about the since-vacated 2019 settlement with the owner of Duryea's in Montauk during a debate on Saturday sponsored by the East Hampton Group for Good Government, Mr. Bragman charging the supervisor with "at best misjudgment, at worst improper conduct" in the matter. 

The three candidates running for two open Sag Harbor Village Board seats on Tuesday shared their visions for the new Bay Street Theater complex and offered plans to improve water quality, rein in development, increase access to parking, and reduce traffic congestion in a debate on June 4. 

East Hampton Town officials are enforcing a prohibition of vehicles on a 4,000-foot stretch of ocean beach on Napeague popularly known as Truck Beach, following Friday's injunction issued by the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division reiterating its February affirmation that the property owners do, in fact, own the beach and that residents have no inherent right to drive or park vehicles there. 

"Don't fix what's not broken" was the message from several dog owners calling in to Tuesday's town board meeting about a 42-acre town property on Three Mile Harbor Road in Springs that is heavily used as a dog park.

Several members of the public called in last Thursday to support a plan to change the zoning classification of a Pantigo Road, East Hampton, parcel to allow an affordable housing development. Two other callers to the virtual town board meeting, however, voiced concerns about its impact on neighboring properties. 

Legislation to facilitate the development of a community choice aggregation program in the Long Island Power Authority's service territory has passed the New York State Assembly and Senate, and will be sent to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for his signature. Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who sponsored the legislation, announced its passage in the Assembly last Thursday and in the Senate on Monday.

Sag Harbor Village Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy, who is running for a second term in Tuesday's election, and James Larocca, a trustee making his first mayoral bid, offered starkly different opinions on paid parking, a proposed waterfront zoning code, and the most suitable location for Bay Street Theater's new home in a contentious debate on Friday.

Unlike the Democratic candidates for East Hampton Town supervisor, the three Democratic candidates vying for two seats on the East Hampton Town Board offered nary a contrary word during two debates last week. Rather, they professed a raft of similar goals and philosophies and offered only positive messages in their respective pitches to Democratic voters. 

The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council formally concluded on June 2 that plans for the South Fork Wind farm, including its 12 turbines and a $12 million fisheries compensation package, are consistent with the state's Ocean Special Area Management Plan.

Noyac residents contacted The Star on Monday to report seeing a chain across the entrance to the Sand Land mine -- with activity there apparently on hold -- after Southampton Town came down with a stop-work order on Friday. The order followed a state appeals court ruling the previous week that voided its most recent permit. 

Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn has announced her intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination to represent New York's First Congressional District. She joins a fellow Democratic legislator, Bridget Fleming, who announced a bid for the seat last month, and already has the endorsement of last year's nominee.