Government

At an otherwise quiet East Hampton Town Board meeting, a decision about a special permit for surfing lessons in Montauk drew the most attention.

Nearly 200 “small cell” towers, each 42 feet tall, will be deployed across East Hampton Town, with over 150 slotted for Northwest Woods and Springs alone. The large majority, 129, could be operational by the end of the year.

The whiplash resulting from policies announced and quickly reversed by the Trump administration continued this week with the surprise announcement that construction of the Empire Wind 1 offshore wind farm, which was halted last month by a stop-work order issued by the secretary of the Department of the Interior, could resume.

The United States House of Representatives passed President Trump's spending bill early Thursday, sending it along to the Senate. In it is a quadrupling of the cap on the State and Local Tax deduction, known colloquially as the SALT deduction, which Representative Nick LaLota said in a press release early Thursday is "a significant win for Long Island taxpayers."

“This is a town project that’s on time and under budget,” said Maureen Cahill, a board member of the Montauk Community Playhouse Foundation, where a new aquatic and cultural center is on track to open before summer’s end. “It’s a really good model of town, state, and private funding that put this together. Without those three it doesn’t work.”

Trevor Darrell has been appointed East Hampton Town’s prosecutor, and Brittany Toledano has been hired as deputy town attorney, both effective as of Monday, according to a statement issued from Town Hall this week.

Word that the United States Coast Guard has proposed to remove hundreds of navigational markers along the Northeast coast, including buoys, day beacons, and lights, is drawing a mostly negative reaction among mariners in East Hampton Town, with commercial fishermen and others warning that their removal would worsen already dangerous conditions.

A long-discussed roundabout at the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path, Long Lane, and Two Holes of Water Road in East Hampton has begun operating, despite the continuation of work on the inside part of the circle.

Some ocean beaches, including Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett and South Edison and Ditch Plain in Montauk, will be staffed by lifeguards beginning on Saturday, May 24, during the Memorial Day weekend, as will Big Albert’s on the bay in Amagansett. They will remain open on weekends until mid-June, when all beaches will be staffed full time.

With a $338,000 grant from the East Hampton Town Community Housing Fund to help cover “soft costs,” the Windmill I senior citizen housing development is honing plans to add 20 new units to its property on Accabonac Road.

The East Hampton Town Trustees heard and approved a request by South Fork Sea Farmers, a nonprofit educational arm of the town’s shellfish hatchery and its community oyster garden program, to implement a program aiming to establish eelgrass meadows in Accabonac Harbor. 

OpenGov, software powering payments, permitting, and licensing on the Town of East Hampton’s website, is now open for business.

The East Hampton Town Board has decided it’s time to restore the historic Peach House, which lies about a peach’s throw from the board’s own meeting room. The renovation could begin this fall and be completed by May 2026, at which time it will house three town offices and a reception area.

Removing an eastbound lane on Main Street, reconfiguring the Reutershan parking lot, and redevelopment of the Gingerbread Lane/Railroad Avenue district were among the ideas voiced during a virtual workshop on an update to East Hampton Village’s comprehensive plan.

As the summer season draws closer, East Hampton Town’s new director of the Ordinance Enforcement Department is urging residents to remember the words “assurance” and “patience” when registering complaints about code violations.

The East Hampton Town Board seems inclined to extend a Covid-era outdoor dining pilot program, which expired at the end of December, for another three-plus years and possibly to make it permanent.

A hearing held by the East Hampton Town Board about a community preservation fund acquisition at 351 Old Stone Highway in Springs highlighted the need for a subsequent discussion about changes to the town code regarding nature preserves. Legislation governing nature preserves was written in 1991, before creation of the community preservation fund or even the town’s Land Acquisition and Management Department.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals agreed last week to send a nonbinding letter of potential approval to the town planning board regarding 20 variances required for a major rebuild of the Devon Yacht Club that has been making its way through the town’s review boards for the better part of three years.

At present, elected officials and employees of East Hampton Town are not allowed to accept a ticket to an event that is priced at over $75. The East Hampton Town Board is considering amending its code of ethics to allow its officers and employees to accept such tickets no matter what the value, and further allow them to accept one complimentary ticket for a guest.

Horseshoe crabs and clams were the primary topics of discussion at an East Hampton Town Trustees meeting, as the trustees looked ahead to an annual horseshoe crab monitoring program in a few weeks and set a date for their annual Largest Clam Contest in the fall.

Two Springs ports of call, Rita Cantina and the Springs General Store (which hopes to be open by next summer), have been recommended by East Hampton Town’s new water quality technical advisory committee for sizable grants to upgrade their septic systems.

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine called it an “aha moment” — an awakening after the Westhampton Pines fire on March 14. He’d had enough of the devastation caused by the southern pine beetle across the county he leads, and he wanted to do something about it.

Rona Klopman, chairwoman of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, began its meeting Monday night by addressing a recent East Hampton Town Board proposal to bypass planning and zoning regulations when weighing a project’s benefits to the community against its impacts on the environment.

It was a phragmites-removal project that turned bad and devolved into a six-year war between East Hampton Village and the billionaire real estate developer Harry Macklowe. Now, with a new application that will be presented to the village’s zoning board of appeals on May 9, Mr. Macklowe is attempting to put it all to bed.

The future of offshore wind power in New York State and throughout the United States was thrown into question last week as the Trump administration’s interior secretary ordered a halt to construction of the 810-megawatt Empire Wind 1 project, which was to span 80,000 acres in the New York Bight and send renewable electricity to New York City.

Republicans may be in control now in Washington, D.C., but it’s a different story in East Hampton Town, where the chairman of the Republican Committee confirmed this week that his party will not be running a candidate for supervisor and that only one of its candidates for town board will be actively campaigning.

East Hampton Town announced the hiring of two new department heads last week, including a new director of code enforcement, Marty Culloton, and a new town attorney, hired from within, Jake Turner.

A hearing Tuesday on the draft environmental impact statement for the 81,257-square-foot building Adam Potter is planning in Sag Harbor drew a number of critics, but also several supporters who spoke of the urgency of affordable housing.

After coming under criticism for a proposal to broadly exempt town projects from the town zoning code if they are deemed "community resources," the East Hampton Town Board tabled a resolution to hold a public hearing on the matter.

Two themes were apparent when over half a dozen people turned up at an East Hampton Town Board meeting this week: consternation that the town would soon settle a lawsuit brought after the board attempted to close the airport in 2022 and immediately reopen it with restrictions, and threats that a settlement would ultimately hurt the board members at the ballot box.