Government

There were welcome hints of normalcy during the East Hampton Town Board’s meeting on Tuesday despite its five members’ remote participation via videoconference.

The East Hampton Town Board and residents are angry and dismayed by the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s March 30 issuance of a modified permit that allows an East Hampton mining company to expand a pit.

East Hampton Town’s essential services are functioning, despite mandates to reduce staffing and implement the social distancing practices critical to controlling the now-explosive growth in COVID-19 infections in the tristate area. 

“We need to support those on the front lines of crisis, particularly the health care workers,” Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said. “None of us have direct experience with this, even in my 27 years of government experience I’ve never faced anything like it.”

Survey work for the proposed South Fork Wind Farm’s transmission cable route in Wainscott, which was to begin on Monday, has been put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Perry Gershon, who is seeking a Democratic Party primary win to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York’s First Congressional District, has announced the suspension of his petition gathering and public events.

Arthur Graham, an East Hampton Village trustee since 2017, declared his candidacy for mayor in June’s election on Monday. He joins Barbara Borsack, the deputy mayor, and Jerry Larsen, a former East Hampton Village police chief, in the village’s first contested mayoral election since 1992.

The airport itself has not closed and flights can still come in and out.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Town of East Hampton on Friday declared a state of emergency, canceled most meetings, and announced initiatives to allow essential government functions to continue while minimizing face-to-face contact and residents’ need to visit Town Hall and other town facilities. 

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to authorize an agreement with Orsted and Eversource Energy, partners in the proposed South Fork Wind Farm off Montauk, to conduct survey work for the 15-turbine installation's cable route in Wainscott.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said that advisories related to COVID-19 will be posted to the town’s website, ehamptonny.gov, and reminded residents that they can sign up for alerts via text message.

The public has been invited to vote on student-made bumper stickers submitted to a contest sponsored by the Town of East Hampton Anti-Bias Task Force. They are on display in the foyer of Town Hall.     

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has asked the East Hampton Town Board to halt the planned demolition of the Springs house and studios of the Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park.     

Despite a massive die-off of bay scallops in the Peconic Estuary last fall, many waters under East Hampton Town Trustee jurisdiction, though by no means all, were of a high quality in 2019.     

A group of Springs property owners sued the Town of East Hampton last week over a plan to relocate the town’s shellfish hatchery from Fort Pond Bay in Montauk to 36 Gann Road.

Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming and her potential opponent come November, Representative Lee Zeldin, have garnered new endorsements.

As one of the warmest winters in memory nears an end, the Town of East Hampton’s energy sustainability committee looks toward a looming deadline: the town’s goal to meet 100-percent renewable energy consumption, communitywide in all sectors, by 2030.     

The Southampton Town Board, using money from the community preservation fund, voted last week to purchase two parcels in Shinnecock Hills, in an area believed to be ancient burial grounds of the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Members and supporters of the Nation had lodged strong protests over housing construction at a nearby site.     

Though a statewide ban on plastic bags officially took effect Sunday, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said Friday that it would not begin enforcement of the action until April 1.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced in January that it would not perform the independent Superfund evaluation that many Noyac residents had hoped for. 

A proposal from AT&T to build a 50-foot-high freestanding “campanile” to house cellphone antennas, at St. Peter’s Chapel on Old Stone Highway in Springs, took a big step forward on Feb. 26, when the East Hampton Town Planning Board determined the project would not have a negative impact on the environment.     

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to vote tonight on a resolution authorizing Orsted and Eversource, partners in the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, to conduct survey work for the 15-turbine installation’s transmission cable route in Wainscott.     

The companies have identified a subterranean path from a cable landing at the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott to a Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton as the preferred route.     

Yearly maintenance dredging at Georgica Pond — up to 15,000 cubic yards of sand — is nearing completion.

The Government Finance Officers Association, which represents public finance officials in the United States and Canada, has awarded the Town of East Hampton a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting for its fiscal year 2018 comprehensive annual financial report.     

Continuing his effort to relocate an Amagansett house designed by the late architect Francis Fleetwood from its present location to another parcel nearby, Michael Novogratz, the billionaire investor whose properties are the subject of two stop-work orders, has sued the Town of East Hampton.

In its ongoing effort to remediate the degraded condition of Georgica Pond, which has experienced toxic algal blooms every summer since 2012, a group of pondfront property owners sought and received permission from the East Hampton Town Trustees to take part in a sediment chronology study.     

A federal Army Corps of Engineers official did not address why dredges and crews were being redirected from the Fire Island to Moriches Inlet Stabilization Project to a nonemergency project less than one mile from President Trump’s resort in Florida in response to an inquiry by The Star this week, saying only that the project would nonetheless be completed by the June 19 contracted completion deadline.     

The controversy over the proper name of one of the Town of East Hampton’s hamlets flared anew last Thursday and again this week, after signs bearing the message “Welcome to The Springs” were removed from Three Mile Harbor Road and Springs-Fireplace Road.

Scores of residents of the Town of East Hampton attended an information session for the presidential campaign of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Feb. 19 at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett.

The Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett will host a town hall-style event with Perry Gershon, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York’s First Congressional District, on March 8.