27Speaks

With more wind and solar power coming on the grid in the near future, infrastructure plans call for battery energy storage systems where excess electricity can be stored at times of peak production and then withdrawn overnight and at times of peak demand. But in communities where a BESS is proposed, neighbors are concerned about fire and environmental risk. To assuage those concerns, Southampton T...

The East End's wine industry got its start in 1973 in Cutchogue, when Alex and Louisa Hargrave planted the first Long Island vineyard. Today, the North Fork has many stops on its wine trail, and the South Fork boasts Wölffer Estate Vineyard, Channing Daughters Winery and Duck Walk Vineyard. On this week's 27Speaks podcast, the editors discuss the 50th anniversary of the Long Island wine region and...

On this week's 27Speaks, the editors discuss a selection of some of the top stories locally: air alerts due to wildfires in Canada, a deceased humpback whale in Shinnecock Bay, lights for East Hampton High School's athletic field, and the recent death of well-known local photographer Tom Kochie.

Local government officials recently joined East End charter boat captains in voicing objections to a decision by federal fisheries managers to impose strict new limits on the harvesting of striped bass. It's a move the fishermen say will hamstring their business and is counterproductive to conservation goals. This week, senior reporter Michael Wright joins the editors in a discussion of the new fe...

The Southampton Village Board is deeply divided in a way village residents have not seen before, with the four trustees in one camp and the mayor alone on an island. Each side is accusing the other of acting with political motivations in the weeks prior to the village election on June 16, as incumbent Mayor Jesse Warren and Trustee Bill Manger face off for the mayor’s seat and incumbent Trustees R...

Sag Harbor Village will celebrate the official opening of John Steinbeck Waterfront Park, named for the author of "The Grapes of Wrath" among other acclaimed works, at 11 a.m. on May 25, just in time for Memorial Day weekend. On this week's podcast, reporter Stephen J. Kotz joins the editors to discuss how the 1.25-acre parcel, once host to derelict buildings, was preserved for $10.5 million and t...

Chairman of the Shinnecock Nation Council of Trustees Bryan Polite and attorney Tela Troge, a member of the Shinnecock Graves Protection Warrior Society, join the editors on 27Speaks this week to discuss the unmarked graves protection legislation that recently became law through the New York State budget process.

As Memorial Day weekend fast approaches, Sag Harbor Express publisher-emeritus Bryan Boyhan joins the editors to discuss the summer 2023 outlook, including events, traffic, real estate and more.

The New York State Board of Regents voted this month to ban the use of Native American names and imagery for school mascots. Shinnecock Council of Trustees Secretary Germain Smith sits on the Department of Education advisory council to address Indigenous education needs, and he joins the editors on 27Speaks this week to discuss the new mascot ban, why Native Americans like himself advocated for th...

At the age of 4, Water Mill's Rowland Egerton-Warburton became one of just 54 people in the world diagnosed with a rare neurodevelopmental genetic disorder. ADNP (Activity-Dependent Neuroprotective Protein) syndrome is a form of autism that can cause problems with neurological, cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal systems. Rowland, now 10, is nonverbal and receiv...

This week on the podcast, the editors discuss New York State's Open Meetings Law, a sunshine law designed to ensure that all levels of government, from the State Senate down to local village boards, land-use boards and school boards, conduct the public's business out in the open, where citizens can observe the deliberations behind the decisions that affect their wallets and quality of life. The ed...

This week on 27Speaks, the editors are joined by senior reporter Stephen J. Kotz and Frank Quevedo, executive director of the South Fork Natural History Museum and Jake Kushner, the reptile/amphibian specialist at the museum, to talk about a $30,000 grant the museum received from the Hollomon Price Foundation, which will be used to track the movements of endangered eastern tiger salamanders around...

Carl Johnson was a point guard for the Bridgehampton boys basketball team when it won three state championships in a row from 1978 to 1980. He went on to lead the Killer Bees to four more state championships as head coach, and last month was inducted into the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Glens Falls, inside the same arena where his teams won all seven of their state...

With the passage of the three-year mark since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in New York State and changed life on the East End forever, the editors reflect on what the early days were like, how individuals coped and how institutions adapted.

New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. joins the editors on the podcast this week to respond to a previous "27Speaks" episode on which the editors discussed the Community Preservation Fund's impact over the past 24 years and the present deficit of attainable housing. Thiele defends the CPF and also explains Governor Kathy Hochul's New York Housing Compact, a plan that includes growing the n...

This week, the editors talk with East Hampton resident Susan Stout, a certified end-of-life doula who helps terminally ill people and their families find peace with dying. Death doulas are not medical personnel and don’t replace hospice care. Instead, doulas like Stout step in close to the end of life or after someone receives a terminal diagnosis to offer nonmedical, holistic support and comfort...

As Southampton Town officials and Sag Harbor School District consider a way forward for the acquisition of properties on Marsden Street near Pierson Middle-High School for the development of athletic fields, reporter Cailin Riley joins the editors on the podcast this week to discuss all of the considerations: the use of Community Preservation Fund money, how the ownership might be structured, publ...

Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, discussing the town's zoning laws and the dearth of affordable housing, observed during a recent interview: “We did a great job protecting the environment, but we can’t really function if there’s no one to pick you up in an ambulance when you have a heart attack.” In this week's podcast, the editors and senior reporter Stephen J. Kotz discuss how prese...

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. recently put Stony Brook University on blast for the sorry state of the Stony Brook Southampton campus, charging that by failing to meet its stewardship commitment to the 80-acre site, the state university had become “the biggest slumlord on the East End” and was squandering an opportunity to use the campus as an economic engine for the region. Thiele joins the...

Real Estate Leaders Assess The State of the East End Market by The Express News Group

Convincing more East Hampton homeowners to invest in creating affordable rental accessory apartments on their properties has proven daunting for East Hampton Town officials. This week’s discussion focuses on the Town Board’s latest tweaks to boost financial incentives.

The number of South Fork home sales plummeted by around 50 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, when compared to the same quarter a year earlier, but that data point hardly tells the whole story of what's happening in Hamptons real estate. Chronically low inventory of homes for sale is restricting the number of closed homes sales while also bolstering prices even as mortgage rates have doubled....

Ospreys, the large, fish-eating birds of prey once listed as endangered in New York State, have had a miraculous rebound since DDT was banned and initiatives were put in place to provide nesting sites where development has encroached on their habitat. On the East End in particular, the osprey population has grown from around 100 individual birds in the 1980s to more than 350 nesting pairs, accordi...

Southampton Village Mayor Jesse Warren and the village trustees have been at odds lately, and both sides have made their views very public. Much of the divide is due to the trustees appointing their pick for the next chief of the Village Police Department over the mayor's objections. Warren did not hold back in criticizing the choice, and the trustees' chief pick ultimately reversed course and tur...

This week, with the recent news that Friends of Bay Street has put the property at 22 Long Island Avenue in Sag Harbor on the market, the editors discuss what might come next, not only for the Bay Street Theater, which had hoped to build a new permanent home on the site, but the surrounding area as well.