Government

John Avlon and Nancy Goroff, Democratic candidates for Congress, will debate Monday night at 7, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork. It will be available to stream on Southampton Town's SEA-TV YouTube channel.

One thing was clear in a discussion at an East Hampton Town Board meeting about a proposed roundabout at the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path, Long Lane, and Two Holes of Water Road: No one wants East Hampton to look like western Suffolk. 

About two months after a Suffolk Supreme Court judge froze their bank accounts — a result of the yearslong, and ongoing, Truck Beach litigation — the East Hampton Town Trustees regained control of their money on May 23.

The season's first toxic algal bloom in a South Fork body of water has been detected in Wainscott Pond, the County Department of Health Services announced Monday.

The East Hampton Housing Authority is the target of a federal lawsuit involving a teenage boy whose mother says he has suffered physically and mentally because of the authority’s refusal to allow his emotional support animal to live with him at the Accabonac Apartments. 

East Hampton Town Councilman Ian Calder-Piedmonte, a Democrat appointed to the post in January, faces a challenge from Hy Mariampolski, a first-time candidate running for the Republicans. The winner will fill out the remaining one year of the term vacated by Kathee Burke-Gonzalez when she became supervisor in January.

A proposed 100-foot cell tower behind Sagaponack’s Village Hall, at 3175 Montauk Highway, which breezed through a single public hearing in February, is receiving renewed scrutiny from residents of the one-and-a-half-square-mile village. At issue is not necessarily the pole’s existence, but its placement.

The East Hampton Village Board voted last Thursday to support state legislation that could lead to the installation of cameras at stop signs here. According to the proposed law, the vehicle owner would be hit with a $50 fine if they failed to stop at a stop sign with a camera. If they ignore the fine, it increases to $75.

In the leadup to Memorial Day weekend, the New York State Department of Transportation, the Suffolk County Water Authority, and National Grid have been in the midst of a handful of projects affecting traffic in and around the heart of East Hampton Village. 

The Green at Gardiner’s Point, the name given to the 50 rental apartments at 286 and 290 Three Mile Harbor Road being built as affordable housing, is now accepting applications for the apartments, which will start at $1,500 for a one-bedroom unit.

While the private membership club Zero Bond wasn’t explicitly mentioned, the East Hampton Village Board unanimously passed a law that was drafted after rumors began percolating weeks ago that the club was close to signing a long-term lease with the Hedges Inn on James Lane.

Sag Harbor has a legitimate political race on its hands. Four experienced candidates are vying for the two trustee seats now held by Ed Haye and Jeanne Kane, who are seeking re-election. Ron Reed, a member of the village’s planning board, and Mary Ann Eddy, who sits on its harbor committee, hope to displace them.

With Orsted and Eversource set to begin pre-construction activities in September on the 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind farm, the developers are hosting an open house for mariners and “fisheries stakeholders” in Montauk on Wednesday.

The Town of East Hampton is suing Fly Blade Inc., operator of Blade helicopters and seaplanes, for what it claims is $186,354 in past-due fees associated with a license agreement to maintain a counter at the East Hampton Airport terminal. It is looking to terminate Blade’s occupancy at the terminal if the payment is not received.

ChangeHampton, an environmental organization, makes use of the concept of pollination both literally and figuratively. After planting a pollinator garden at the East Hampton Town Hall campus two years ago, it is now hoping to augment those plantings with an adjacent 6,500-square-foot grassland meadow.

Invited by the Suffolk County Department of Public Works to a meeting about the proposed overhaul of Three Mile Harbor Road on May 8, comments poured in from East Hampton and Springs residents who travel the road nearly every day.

The Huntting Inn, appearing before the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday, announced no substantial changes to its application regarding a pool and hot tub, and for neighbors, that is a problem. Those two items are and have long been their main point of contention.

An eroding bluff doesn’t respect zoning distinctions. That was the message delivered to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday by Alice Cooley, a lawyer representing property owners on Soundview Drive in Montauk. Her clients, Sarah and Maurice Iudicone, are forbidden under zoning rules from building any sort of hardened coastal structure, such as a stone revetment or bulkhead, to protect their property.

A former public bathing beach at the end of South Lake Drive in Montauk that has been closed for nearly 20 years was the one subject the East Hampton Town Board mulled on Tuesday when it held its first work session in the hamlet since before the pandemic. The board heard about two projects that could help to get the beach open again for bathing.

It became increasingly apparent, during Monday night’s monthly meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, that discussion of East Hampton Town’s proposed new senior center may remain on center stage for a long time to come.

Tuesday at 5 p.m. marked the cutoff for the submission of petitions to get on the ballot for the June elections in East Hampton Village, and with no one other than Mayor Jerry Larsen, Deputy Mayor Christopher Minardi, and Sandra Melendez, a village board member, submitting a petition, the incumbents will run unopposed. 

The church bells in the village will be ringing more often than usual this weekend as the Presbyterian Church and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church welcome visitors on Saturday and Sunday as part of the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s 2024 Sacred Sites open house weekend.

There will be more opportunities for East Hampton Town residents to transform their food scraps into healthy soil this year, thanks to East Hampton Compost. The loose collaboration between ReWild Long Island and the town is in its second year.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to approve the purchase of a .46-acre property at 6 Oyster Shores Road near Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton using $1.4 million from the community preservation fund.

The town-owned Montauk Skatepark was recognized last month with a platinum Engineering Excellence Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of New York.

The maximum allowable size of a single-family residence in East Hampton Town should be sliced in half, from 20,000 square feet to 10,000, a working group looking at sweeping zoning code amendments told the town board. Another key proposal, which proved controversial, was to include finished basements and attached garages in calculating a house’s gross floor area.

The environmental review for East Hampton Town's new 22,000-square-foot senior citizen center in Amagansett will be guided by the town board, not the planning board, after a decision was reached Tuesday by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. 

With major improvements planned for North Main Street and Three Mile Harbor Road from East Hampton into Springs, the Suffolk County Department of Public Works and the East Hampton Town Board and town staff want to hear from the public about the road and its future. At a hearing at Town Hall on Wednesday at 7 p.m., officials from the town and county will talk about the plans and take comments from the public.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals agreed with the town Planning Department last month that a detailed and lengthy environmental review is necessary for a proposal to build a 108-foot stone revetment, 83-foot PVC retaining wall, and new house at 117 Bay View Avenue on Napeague. This despite accusations of complicity between the board and the Planning Department from Brian Matthews, the attorney for Nicholas Grecco, who owns the parcel.

The Sag Harbor Planning Board agreed that Adam Potter’s plans for a 61,292-square-foot downtown building including 44 apartments and nearly 8,000 square feet of commercial space would require a lengthy environmental review. The developer said he is “happy to go through the process. . . . We’d love to be able to answer any questions that people have.”