Government

The Suffolk Board of Elections certified the results of East Hampton Town's June 22 Democratic primary on Tuesday, with little change to the outcome.

After absentee ballots had been counted on Tuesday, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, who is seeking a third term, had held off a challenge by Councilman Jeff Bragman, winning the primary by 1,102 to 864 votes, or 56 percent to 44 percent.

In an organized act of civil disobedience, East Hampton baymen and their supporters drove a caravan of 39 trucks onto what is popularly known as Truck Beach on Napeague on Sunday morning to assert what they believe is their right to use, and drive on, the ocean beach there. 

East Hampton Town will buy 32.6 acres of farmland in Amagansett from the Bistrian family using $28 million from the community preservation fund, the town announced on Tuesday. The acquisition, following years of discussion and negotiation, is the town's largest of farmland to date.

"I'm excited, you can tell," Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming said about the new Suffolk Transit On-Demand service along Noyac Road from Sag Harbor to Southampton Village. The project has been at the heart of Ms. Fleming's work since her election in 2015, shortly after which eight bus routes were cut from service because of budgetary constraints.

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." 

Free Wi-Fi is up and running at East Hampton Village's Main Beach and is coming soon to its other beaches and commercial district but with a requirement that did not sit well with two village trustees.

The East Hampton Town Board's plan to begin implementing recommendations from the Wainscott hamlet study, adopted and incorporated into the comprehensive plan last year, got off to a bumpy start with last Thursday's public hearing on a proposed amendment to the zoning code that would reclassify a stretch of Montauk Highway in the commercial district from central business to a single-family residence designation with limited business overlay.

The East Hampton Town Board approved the immediate addition of sand to the ocean beaches at Ditch Plain in Montauk as well as to the hamlet's downtown beach following a Memorial Day weekend northeaster that rendered the former beach unsafe and partially exposed geotextile bags installed to stabilize the downtown beach several years ago.

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.

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.

"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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

"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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.