Late Tuesday afternoon, after months of uncertainty about its future, the board of the Bay Street Theatre announced it had inked a new lease with landlord Patrick Malloy III to remain in its Long Wharf home in Sag Harbor.

According to Bay Street Theatre Board of Directors President Frank Filipo, Malloy has given the theatre a 10-year lease beyond 2013 with a slight increase in rent. The financial stability of having a fixed 10-year lease coupled with Malloy agreeing to allow the theater flexibility to leave the space with proper notice should Bay Street Theatre achieve its goal of finding a permanent home is a “gift,” said Filipo.

“The beauty of this and what Pat has agreed to is that this lease gives us stability but also the flexibility to pursue other opportunities that arise,” said Filipo.

The announcement came after months of speculation about where Bay Street Theatre would go after its stage went black when its lease expired in May 2013.

Late last year, Bay Street Theatre officials announced they would not seek to renew their three year lease with Malloy citing the inability for the theater to remain financially viable without a permanent home or at the very least a long-term lease option.

At a grim meeting in January, sitting on the stage Bay Street Theatre has called home for over 20 years, theater officials pledged their loyalty to Sag Harbor. But they explained there were few options available for moving the theater within the village and said talks had begun in earnest with Southampton Village where Bay Street was being offered a new home in the soon to be vacated Parrish Art Museum space.

On Tuesday, Filipo stressed that working with Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley and his team in looking at a possible future for Bay Street Theatre in Southampton was a positive experience.

“You have to go back to the basic premise that the organization’s preference was to stay in Sag Harbor if possible,” said Filipo. “Mark Epley was wonderful to work with, but when this opportunity presented itself it was not one we could pass up.”

According to Bay Street Theatre Executive Director Tracy Mitchell, the theatre will pursue a capital campaign for a new facility while enjoying its new longer lease.

“We deeply thank Pat Malloy for his understanding and his goodwill,” said Mitchell. “He has provided us with the stability we have sought — an assurance that we can continue our innovative and award-winning productions while a permanent home is being developed.”

“I am very pleased that Bay Street Theatre has decided to stay in Sag Harbor and happy to be able to help them again with a favorable lease,” said Malloy in a written statement. “My hat is off to the good directors and managers for making the decision to continue to provide great theater to Sag Harbor.”

Filipo said that costs would remain high for the theater and that fundraising, for the theater’s annual budget as well as the capital campaign, will be critical.

“I think it is important that Bay Street Theatre stays here,” said Sag Harbor Village Trustee Robby Stein, who is also a member of the Bay Street Theatre board. “It helps business, it is a cultural center and it has been serving as a community center. I think there was a strong response to people wanting the theater to stay here and I think Pat heard that.”

Looking into a future for Bay Street in Sag Harbor, several sources did report that Bay Street has met with Cape Advisors, the firm developing the former Bulova Watchcase Factory into luxury condominiums. According to those sources, a discussion was had about the ability for the firm to help the theatre develop a permanent home in Sag Harbor.

On Wednesday, Mitchell said the theatre did meet with members of Cape Advisors, but called the discussion “preliminary at best.”

“We had an exploratory conversation and we have not talked to them since,” said Mitchell. “We wanted to meet with each other and the upshot is we are seeing if there is an overlap in both of our business needs and that is all at this point.”

As for whether or not Cape Advisors was interested in helping Bay Street actually construct a theatre, Mitchell said the theatre administration is interested in talking to any developers or private parties about how that can be accomplished.

“Everyone knows what our end goal is,” said Mitchell.

“We view Bay Street Theatre as important to Sag Harbor as it is one of the crown jewels of the village, said David Kronman, a spokesman for Cape Advisors. “We wanted to sit down and map out where they are to see what we may be able to do in the future to keep them in Sag Harbor.”

Popularity: 2% [?]

Last Wednesday, the Bridgehampton School Board of Education formally adopted a $10,696,364 budget for the 2012-2013 school year. The budget represents a 1.1-percent or $119,650 increase over last year’s budget and falls below the New York State imposed two-percent tax cap.

The tax levy, or the amount of money the school district will seek to raise through property taxes, is $9,734,246 — a $545,515 and 5.94-percent increase over last year.

According to Bridgehampton Superintendent Dr. Lois Favre and business administrator Bob Hauser, because New York State allows the school to subtract monies for capital projects like the ongoing middle school renovations, the construction of a new café and a window replacement project when calculating how much a district can spend under the tax cap, the budget falls just below the cap despite the 5.94 percent increase in the tax levy. As such, the district needs just a simple majority of residents who turn out on May 15 to vote for or against the budget and elect three residents to the school board.

Incumbents Lillian Tyree-Johnson, Doug DeGroot and Ronald White are all seeking re-election to the board of education. Newcomer Gabriella Braia has also joined the race.

According to Dr. Favre, a majority of the increases in spending this year are attributed to a rise in health and dental insurance costs. Since the budget advisory and administrative staff at Bridgehampton began hacking away at the tentative budget over two months ago, Dr. Favre said the district was able to achieve a low tax increase thanks to faculty and staff voluntarily agreeing to freeze their salaries next year at a savings of $100,000. Also keeping the spending in check is a 15-percent reduction in spending across most budget lines, $113,000 in savings in reduced transportation costs after a new contract was negotiated and a $166,000 reduction in BOCES costs.

The Bridgehampton School Board of Education will hold a hearing on its proposed budget on Tuesday, May 8 at 7 p.m.

Popularity: 1% [?]

An antique store for an antique house?

That was the question the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board considered on Tuesday night. While the discussion was preliminary and brief, members warmed to the idea that the historic Gingerbread House on Main Street could be preserved while hosting La Maisonette on the first floor and a second floor residential use.

The Gingerbread House dates back to 1840. It was at the center of a Sag Harbor development controversy in 2004 when then owner Jon Gruen proposed to demolish the neighboring 127 Main Street and build a new two story structure residents feared would overshadow the Gingerbread House and the historic Latham House.

That proposal eventually gave way and 127 Main Street was purchased by James Giorgio, a local real estate developer who added a modest addition to the back of the building in a proposal largely supported by residents.

According to La Masionette owner Lynn Park Charveriat’s attorney, Dennis Downes — who represented Gruen and later Giorgio — while the Gingerbread House has been on the market since 2007 it has failed to find a buyer. However, Charverait is interested in opening her store on the first floor of the building and would not expand it’s footprint.

In order to do so she would need approval from the Sag Harbor Planning Board for a change of use to allow commercial retail on the first floor of what is considered a two-family residence.

Downes said there has been discussion about digging out along the side of the front yard to create a space in the basement of the residence, but that has not been fully explored.

“It does seem consistent with neighboring properties,” said board member Greg Ferraris about adding a commercial element to the building.

Formal plans will have to be submitted to the board for review.

In other news, Dean Golden presented updated plans for the renovation of the building that contains Sen Restaurant on Main Street.

The building’s owner, Jeff Resnik, has proposed the construction of a 550-square-foot first floor addition on the eastern side of the three story building in an area that now is used as a storage shed. That construction is aimed at increasing the size of the existing kitchen and will allow for the redesign of bathroom and bar areas in the restaurant.

It is also proposed that the building be expanded on the second and third floors, by 590-square-feet and 488 square-feet, respectively, to expand and reconfigure two existing apartments.

Throughout Tuesday night’s meeting, Golden stressed the number of seats in the restaurant and bedrooms in the apartments would not increase, protecting the application from needing to meet additional requirements in terms of parking or a new septic system.

Sag Harbor Environmental Planning Consultant Rich Warren said he would like Golden to provide the board with a break down of the square footage throughout the building to ensure the project does not trigger a 3,000 square-foot limitation on expansion in commercial buildings within the village.

“It’s a pretty tight site,” he added, asking Golden also provide a plan for construction staging to ensure precious village parking spaces are not usurped by construction if it is approved by the board.

Ferraris said he would like to see more detail provided in terms of the expansion of the residential units and the restaurant to ensure that parking was being met. In addition to the number of seats in a restaurant, he noted, the village requires parking spaces for employees meaning if Sen Restaurant intends to hire more people once the kitchen is expanded they may need to seek a variance from the village zoning board of appeals.

Golden said the Sen Restaurant kitchen was so crammed as it exists today that they have to have more people in the kitchen to accomplish what they need to. With more space, employees will be able to move more freely and take on more tasks, he said.

Village attorney Denise Schoen added that Golden had already met with building inspector Tim Platt who did not believe the project would trigger the need for more parking.

“As far as the staging of construction, that is something we would be foolhardy not to consider,” agreed Golden, adding the project would be constructed in the off-season and likely in two phases.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Three years ago, Lillian Tyree-Johnson, Doug DeGroot and Ronald White battled through a contentious school board race which revolved largely around the question of whether or not the Bridgehampton School District should allow students to go to high school elsewhere. The concept sparked emotional debates and ultimately united a community intent on supporting its school — Tyree-Johnson, DeGroot and White easily elected for their pro-high school stance.

After the drama that surrounded her election in 2009, for Tyree-Johnson this year’s school board race is a breath of fresh air, and a testament to how far the school district has come in just three short years.

“It seems like just yesterday we were fighting for our lives,” she said in an interview this week. “I think in the last three years we have changed a lot of minds. We don’t have everyone on the same page yet, but I think we are headed down the right path.”

Tyree-Johnson, DeGroot and White will all vie for a second term next month. They are joined on the ballot by newcomer, and parent, Gabriella Braia, who will also seek one of the three seats up for grabs during the budget vote and board election on Tuesday, May 15.

Tyree-Johnson, a bookkeeper and wife of Bridgehampton Bees basketball coach Carl Johnson, said not seeking a second term was never an option.

“I think we have more to do and are in a really good place,” she said. “We have a good group of people on the board who are willing to work together, a great new superintendent [Dr. Lois Favre] and a lot more to accomplish.”

Tyree-Johnson said she would like to see the district continue to develop an individual education plan for each student, a specialty of Dr. Favre and one of her initiatives at Bridgehampton School, as well as consider the possibility of expanding the actual school building.

“We are definitely outgrowing our space,” she said. “I think we have always been good enough to say that we will just get by, but it is time to update the building.”

Tyree-Johnson said she would like to see a discussion about expansion to begin next year, with an eye on building a new gym.

“It is also a way to make the school more attractive,” she said, noting that has been an ongoing priority for her as a board member — to show the Bridgehampton community at large how special Bridgehampton School truly is despite preconceived notions.

Similar to Tyree-Johnson, DeGroot feels a connection to the school because his children are a part of the community.

“I feel attached to the school,” he said. “My children are here and I want to try and influence the direction of the school and create better educational opportunities for all the kids.”

DeGroot, the owner of the Buckskill Tennis Club, also views himself as a fiscal conservative who has kept an eye on the school’s budget and keeping spending at a minimum without taking away educational opportunities.

“We have done an outstanding job — I know that sounds self congratulatory, but I mean it for the whole school board — in being very careful in how we look at our budgets, squeezing them and holding the line on spending,” said DeGroot.

He also credited the school’s faculty and staff, which recently agreed to freeze its salaries for next year to keep the budget below a state mandated two-percent tax levy cap.

DeGroot said he would like to focus on expanding curriculum at Bridgehampton, including creating more language options for elementary school children and continuing to expand Advanced Placement course offerings.

Achieving that without drastically raising spending, said DeGroot, is done through hiring faculty with diverse certifications, allowing them to move throughout the school and teach a variety of subjects.

Touching on points made by Tyree-Johnson and DeGroot, White said he would like to remain a school board member so he can continue to focus on the budget, but also bring people in the Bridgehampton community into the school to see what they are supporting.

“I would like to make the community more aware of what we are doing and why,” said White “There is a buzz about Bridgehampton School right now, but I think in the community there are still some caught up in a cloud of speculation. It is not enough for us as a school to send mass mailings letting people know about what we are doing, we need to talk to people face to face, knock on doors, make phone calls. This is a small enough community where we should all know each other on a first name basis.”

White, a parent and real estate agent, said he believes the current board works well together and would like to see the original slate elected.

However, Braia believes she has something to offer the board. She decided to run because. as a parent with children in the Bridgehampton School, she felt it was her responsibility to get more involved.

Braia is also a real estate agent whose husband is a general contractor. Residents in the Bridgehampton School District, the Braia family lives just outside Sag Harbor Village.

“I would like to see more opportunities developed for our children,” said Braia. “I think we need more after school programs and more variety.”

Similar to Tyree-Johnson, Braia believes the school is in desperate need of a new gymnasium and said she was interested in fundraising around that expansion project. An enclosed swimming pool, she added, would make the school more attractive to prospective parents, added Braia.

“The school has a great academic program,” she said. “I see that things are getting better and I want to get involved.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Around Memorial Day, people passing through Montauk Highway in Wainscott will have a new seasonal business offering a variety of local produce and perhaps even fish in a farm stand setting.

This kind of establishment is traditional on the East End — except in this case the store being opened is organic food market giant Whole Foods.

This week, regional public relations and public affairs manager Michael Sinatra confirmed that the company has leased the former Plitt Ford dealership at 368 Montauk Highway in Wainscott from owner Gregg Saunders. The intention is to operate a “pop up” Whole Foods market this summer in East Hampton.

While an opening date has not been finalized, Sinatra said the store would open some time around Memorial Day and close near Labor Day.

In addition to offering organic foods and specialty items, Sinatra said the store would also feature some local produce and perhaps even local seafood, as well as products from throughout New York State as per the company’s commitment to supporting local food producers.

“It’s a part of our business,” said Sinatra in a phone interview on Tuesday. He noted that the North Fork’s Satur Farms, among other Long Island producers, is already featured prominently in Whole Foods Market stores.

“We may have fresh fish sources locally,” added Sinatra. “A lot of our meats come from the Northeast, and we will look into other products. Locals are essential to us.”

Sinatra said while the building is being gutted, as Saunders already has plans to demolish the building and construct a new supermarket on the site, Whole Foods would not be dumping tons of money into renovations. Instead, it would rely on the existing architecture to create the farm stand feel. He said the company plans to capitalize on the existing garage doors to allow Whole Foods Market to give shoppers a truly open air shopping experience.

“We are an environmentally driven company,” Sinatra said. “We are not going to come into a location and make all sorts of changes before a building is knocked down.”

Which is exactly what will eventually happen. For years, Saunders — a real estate developer who lives in Sagaponack —has sought approvals from the Town of East Hampton to demolish the former Plitt Food dealership and build a grocery store in Wainscott. On April 4, he finally earned that approval from the East Hampton Town Planning Board, which unanimously approved a site plan that includes the construction of a 17,500 square-foot building for just that purpose.

According to Sinatra, while there are no formal plans for Whole Foods Market to operate anything other than a seasonal store at this point, the company is always on the lookout for new locations in the right communities.

“We are always looking for new opportunities and we have been hearing from customers and potential customers for a long time that would like to see a Whole Foods in this area,” said Sinatra. “We think this is a nice way to segue into the community — with a seasonal store.”

While some may speculate that Whole Foods would require a much larger space than Saunders will eventually offer, Sinatra noted that the company’s store in Manhasset is around 16,000 square-feet, and that each Whole Foods Market is custom built around a community.

According to the real estate division of the Whole Foods Market website it is not just the size of a store location, but the surrounding demographics and accessibility that the company considers when picking a location. The number of college-educated graduates in a community, noted Sinatra, is one of the critical demographics the company looks at before opening a new store.

While no plans have been made on Whole Foods Market’s future on the South Fork, Sinatra did not say a year round location was out of the question.

“We are always looking at all our options,” he said.

Popularity: 2% [?]

By Claire Walla

You’re standing at the top of a three-tiered podium, wearing a tri-colored tracksuit, holding a bouquet of flowers with one arm and waving to a deafening crowd of ecstatic people with the other. Finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for: you bend at the waist and a thick ribbon attached to a bright, shiny medallion is placed around your neck.

You’ve won the gold!

For most of us, this dream is confined to our inner-thoughts and the screens of our television sets. But for a select group of athletes, the hope of attaining Olympic gold is a dream that’s well within reach.

So, what separates the enthusiasts from the elites? We at The Express looked no further than our own backyard to find out.

“When I was qualifying, I thought about two words: London 2012,” explained sailor Amanda Clark, 29, a Shelter Island native who will be competing in this summer’s London Olympic Games for the second time as part of Team U.S.A.

Clark’s first Olympic appearance was at the 2008 games in Beijing, where she and teammate Sarah Mergenthaler Chin placed 12^th overall.

“At that point it had been about eight years of Olympic campaigning,” Clark said. “So just qualifying [for the games] was special in itself.”

This year, after she and Mergenthaler Chin went their separate ways, Clark quickly teamed up with Floridian Sarah Lihan and went on to beat the favored U.S. team, once again finishing first in the U.S. Olympic trials—this time with a tie-breaking win.

As you might expect, Clark said her love of sailing began at a young age. She learned how to sail at 5, joined the junior program at Shelter Island Yacht Club when she was 7, and by age 15 she became the youngest female sailor to qualify for the U.S. Olympic trials.

Ever since she was a “tween,” Clark said, sailing has been her life.

“It has really been intense for quite some time,” Clark said. “I spent long hours on the water as a kid. And now, we might spend less time on the water, but all the planning, traveling, training… it really has been a full-time job.”

This, according to Sag Harbor resident Lester Ware, is a big part of the equation.

“You’ve gotta have a fanatical work ethic,” explained Ware, who is also owns and operates Personal Best Fitness in Bridgehampton. “You gotta be able to just get up in the middle of the night sometimes and go for a run—because you’re worried, What’s that other guy doing?”

Ware knows from personal experience what it’s like to be in the thick of serious training. He won several international titles and, in 1984, he even qualified to be an alternate for the summer games in Los Angeles.

As a high school student in Southampton, Ware said once he got the wrestling bug he did whatever it took to make it to the top. When his father wasn’t able to drive him, Ware took the train or he hitched a ride to Nassau Community College for wrestling practice three times a week.

And when his college wrestling career came to a close, he took two years to train for the Olympic games, working out in the morning and then proceeding to lead three different practices before his day finally came to a close.

“To get to that level, you have to give yourself over to it,” Ware said of his training. “You have to completely surrender to it.”

It’s a concept 16-year-old Wainscott resident Brittni Svanberg knows well.

While she may not indulge in spontaneous nocturnal sprints (yet), Svanberg knows what it’s like to dedicate inordinate amounts of time to sport. The East Hampton High School sophomore and regional ice-skating champ is training to qualify for the U.S. Nationals competition this year, and has her sights set on the 2018 Olympic Games.

Her training includes waking up every Saturday morning at 4 a.m. for the one-hour drive to The Rinx skating rink in Happaugue, where she laces up and practices her triple jumps.

As an athlete whose sport is not accommodated here on the East End—the only local rink, at Buckskill in East Hampton, is only open seasonally—Svanberg said she makes this commute five times a week. And when she has access to the local rink, she doubles up on her practice time.

“It’s definitely hard to balance it with school,” she admitted. Svanberg also has does about six hours of training off-the-ice each week: “jumping, strengthening, stretching, plyometrics… a lot of core training!” she exclaimed. “I’m definitely willing to work for everything, but, yeah, when I started I didn’t know exactly all the commitment it would take.”

She said the road to gold is not easy, but that’s never stopped her. “I really like skating,” she continued. “So, it’s easy to keep going.”

Now that the 2012 Summer Olympic Games are only a few months away, Clark and her partner and completing their last round of training in Spain. At this point—with years of work-outs, fundraising and qualifying races under her belt—Clark said she and Lihan are focusing more on the mental aspects of competition.

This, according to Lester Ware, is exactly what separates athletes from Olympians.

“It’s much more in the mind than it is in the body,” he said. “It’s all about believing, or rather, not believing you have limits—I never had limits.”

Clark said she and her teammate work with a sports psychologist, and frequently run through meditation and visualization routines.

“As in every sport, everybody’s pushing to be the best they can be,” she continued. “For us right now, there are so many teams that are in this to win medals. And we’re actually a team that, if we start to sail closer to our full potential, we’re going to be the team that people look at and say, ‘Ahhh… How did they do that?!’”

Popularity: 1% [?]

The reconstruction and restoration of the former Bulova Watchcase Factory on Division Street is easily the largest development project in Sag Harbor Village’s recent history, and it has shaken things up for neighboring residences and businesses — quite literally so.

During Tuesday night’s planning board meeting, member Larry Perrine — the planning board liaison between the village, the community and the condominium project’s developers Cape Advisors — reported dust emanating from construction is the newest ire for nearby property and business owners. This follows complaints about vibrations from the installation of a retaining wall which shook some residences so much, residents worried about the structural safety of their homes.

According to Perrine, last month the construction of the temporary retaining wall along Church and Sage Streets — necessary to shore up the property while an underground garage is being constructed — literally shook neighboring properties for two solid weeks as the 45-foot long steel pilings were vibrated into the ground.

“The developers and I both dealt with the complaints and concerns and did our best to alleviate the worries of citizens that were most impacted and live closest to the site about the potential damage to their homes,” said Perrine.

Cape Advisors’ contractor Racanelli Construction did make alterations to how they were installing the pilings, said Perrine, adding Cape Advisors has agreed to work with neighboring homeowners to ensure any damage is taken care of.

Now that the retaining wall is installed, the newest crop of complaints has come from a dust cloud that has made its home around the former factory building. This is due to restoration work on interior wooden beams which are being blasted with walnut shells instead of traditional sand. The method is meant to protect the historic wood, but is also viewed as a more environmentally friendly method of cleaning it.

However, Perrine said using this method coupled with the repointing of bricks throughout the building’s façade has resulted in dust clouds around the former factory building and affecting neighboring properties.

“We have had a number of complaints,” said Perrine who was planning to meet with project manager David Kronman and Sag Harbor Village Building Inspector Tim Platt on the Bulova property site this Thursday.

“The grinding of the mortar in the bricks could take as long as five weeks so it is a bit of a problem and we have to sit down and see what we can do to mitigate this,” said Perrine.

Popularity: 3% [?]

For many in Sag Harbor, Provisions Natural Foods Market & Organic Café is a daily stop where they can pick up an organic lunch or healthy groceries.

It appears that come summer, owner Rich Kresberg will have more shelf space for homeopathic remedies and vitamins, organic produce and organic dry goods. Kresberg’s application to expand Provisions into an adjacent retail space was greeted favorably at Tuesday night’s Sag Harbor Village Planning Board meeting.

Kresberg is in final lease negotiations to take over the 1 Bay Street storefront which was most recently occupied by The Style Bar and is directly next to Provisions. On Tuesday night, his attorney Dennis Downes presented the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board with plans to expand Provisions into the first floor of the former Style Bar space. The expansion is part of an overall effort to reconfigure the café and grocery store.

Originally, said Downes, Kresberg hoped Provisions could take over a full 777-square-feet of space at 1 Bay Street. The café would keep its legal 32-seats and would not expand, said Downes, so there would be no additional parking or sanitary needs associated with the project.

However, because Provisions already occupies a 2,450 square-foot space, adding that amount of square footage would require a special exception permit as the store would exceed 3,000 square-feet. The latest incarnation of the village code limits retail spaces to a maximum 3,000 square-feet in order to maintain Sag Harbor’s small storefronts.

“I cannot meet those standards,” said Downes of the special exception permit requirements, which would require Kresberg to explore installing affordable housing in an apartment above 1 Bay Street — something Kresberg’s landlord is not interested in doing, said Downes. As the application would have called for the expansion of a grocery store to over 3,000 square-feet, Downes added, the village code requires a marketing study, which would cost Kresberg upwards of $10,000 to complete.

The Sag Harbor Village Planning Board, he added, is not allowed under the village code to waive special exception permit standards in this case because the overall floor area of Provisions is growing.

“I think the main reason behind that was to handcuff some boards so they could not offer waivers,” said planning board member and former village mayor Greg Ferraris.

To solve this issue, Downes said he had consulted with Sag Harbor Village Building Inspector Tim Platt who advised him that as originally planned Kresberg would need to shave just 105-square-feet from the expansion and could do so by using that space as storage. Not only does this eliminate the need for the permit, said Downes, but it also gives the planning board the ability to waive a public hearing in its site plan review of the proposal.

“I am inclined to view this as a benign change in use request,” said planning board chairman Neil Slevin.

According to Sag Harbor Village planning consultant Rich Warren, the board will still need to review the site plan application and complete a short environmental review of the proposal, which could be completed as early as the board’s April 24 meeting.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Last week, the New York State Independence Party announced it would endorse St. James businessman Randy Altschuler as its candidate for the 2012 Congressional First District in New York.

The party backed incumbent Congressman Tim Bishop in 2010.

Altschuler, a Republican, will have to face off against Ronkonkoma attorney George Demos for the Republican nomination, although he has received the support of the Suffolk County Republican Committee. That primary is slated for June 26.

This will be Altschuler’s second run for Congress. In 2010 he narrowly lost to Congressman Bishop by just 593 votes. Of the 196,000 ballots cast, Bishop earned 7,370 on the Independence party line.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Sag Harbor Village Board of Trustees holds a public hearing on its proposed 2012-2013 budget on Friday at 4 p.m.

The budget is for $8,056,311 in the general fund, which is a 2.78 percent increase in cost over the 2011-2012 budget. In addition to paring down the budget over the last two months, the village board of trustees had also chosen to use $30,000 of the $2.1 million in its reserve to offset an increase in taxes. With a projected 1.4 percent increase in the tax levy, the amount of money the village needs to raise through property taxes to fund the budget, the village has not exceeded a state-mandated two-percent property tax cap.

Based on assessed values of homes in Sag Harbor Village, the general fund budget will result in a tax increase of one percent. For a home in the village with an estimated value of $795,000, this would result in a tax bill of $2,175.80, a $21.55 increase over a tax bill received in 2011-2012.

The village’s sewer fund budget has remained the same as last year, reported Trustee Robby Stein, who is the board’s liaison to the wastewater treatment plant. That budget is for $506,224, with just $20,588 available to offset the cost placed on users within the sewer district. However, because of a higher consumption level for the water use portion of the sewer payments the rate charged per unit will decrease from $5.38 to $5.29 in 2012-2013, said Mayor Brian Gilbride. That could translate into $234 in annual savings for some of the highest users in the sewer district, he said, with restaurants expected to save about $70 annually and a single family home saving about $24.

Popularity: 1% [?]