Government

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.

East Hampton Town and the Maidstone Gun Club in Wainscott, which has been shuttered since August 2022, may be close to renewing a lease for the 97-acre property despite litigation brought by several residents who say that errant bullets fired from the private club have hit their houses, posing a threat to their very lives.

Several East Hampton Town Trustees have questioned the expansion of an oyster restoration effort and an accompanying reef in Georgica Pond, as requested by Stony Brook University scientists. “I don’t want to be a board that drastically changed that entire closed ecosystem,” the presiding officer said.

In the wake of the March 8 and 9 brush fires in the Pine Barrens around Westhampton Beach, Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine has announced the county’s first southern pine beetle symposium, which happens on Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon at Suffolk Community College’s Riverhead campus.

A plan to replace a large asphalt parking area, remove invasive species, and create bio-retention areas that could help filter and capture stormwater runoff before it reaches Lake Montauk moved ahead at the April 8 meeting of the East Hampton Town Board. The West Lake boat ramp, the project target, is large, denuded of vegetation, and its asphalt and hard-packed soil is on a pitch that sends it directly into the lake.

A strong turnout from East Hampton residents dubious about plans to build affordable housing in their neighborhoods has at least temporarily derailed the town’s efforts to purchase four parcels of land from Suffolk County.

The Sag Harbor Village Board was receptive to a pitch on Tuesday to reduce single-use plastics, which the Surfrider Foundation says constitute the bulk of litter found at its beach cleanup efforts. 

A proposed amendment to the East Hampton Town Code that would allow certain projects to be defined as “community resources,” and thus exempt from compliance with the town zoning, planning, and architectural review board review, received a warm, if at times cautious, reception from the town board this week.

A balloon, three feet in diameter, hovering exactly 150 feet above the location of a proposed communications tower behind the Springs Firehouse on April 21 will be part of a test that will allow people to assess the visual impact of a proposed 150-foot tower from many vantage points. The new tower would replace the one that is already there.

The crowds began to gather in front of Town Hall in East Hampton and at Steinbeck Park in Sag Harbor around 11:45 on Saturday morning as part of the Hands Off! rallies held concurrently across the country and in Mexico to protest the actions of the new Trump administration.

People will gather in East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and communities across the country on Saturday for a nationwide “day of action” organized by Hands Off 2025.

Looking to make constructing accessory dwelling units even easier, the East Hampton Town’s A.D.U. committee made five recommendations to the town board this week, suggesting removing some zoning restrictions and changing eligibility requirements.

A hacker disrupted the Zoom portion of last Thursday’s Sag Harbor Village Board budget meeting, displaying pornographic images alongside racial and antisemitic slurs on the twin screens in the meeting room. “Those disgusting images are etched in my brain,” said the board’s Bob Plumb.

On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order that would strip the Institute of Museum and Library Services, established in 1996 and the only source of federal funds for the state library, to its bones. The state library is the sole conduit through which state and federal aid flows, providing support services to libraries across the state and reducing redundancies.