Riverhead Town Police Dept. closed 2025 with fewer criminal incidents in Dec. than Nov.

The Town of East Hampton plans to hike landing fees at its airport in Wainscott by 15% to generate revenue to repair and replace aging infrastructure at the facility. Alek Lewis reports in NEWSDAY that the town also wants to hike fuel fees at the airport, which are currently 30 cents per gallon, by 2 cents.

The public airport serves a mix of private pilots, charter flights, commercial businesses and seasonal visitors.

The town is increasing fees at a “sweet spot” that lets it pay off the roughly $4.6 million it seeks to borrow for capital improvements, East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said during a work session yesterday. The increases in landing and fuel fees are expected to generate more than $350,000 in additional yearly revenue.

“We're not building VIP rooms or expanding any type of amenity at the airport. Everything that's on this list is critical for airport safety, and I don't think those are negotiable,” Councilwoman Cate Rogers said.

Board members said they agreed to the fee increases and plan to vote on them in March — giving time for aviation industry representatives to weigh in. The rate hikes would take effect on May 1, when flights pick up due to the influx of seasonal visitors.

This year’s big-ticket item is the resurfacing of one of two runways, which is estimated to cost $2.7 million, airport director Jim Brundige told board members. While the town has repaired cracks in the runway over the years, it now “needs to be completely milled out and repaved,” he said.

The town has not raised landing fees since 2016. Fuel prices were last hiked in 2014.

East Hampton-based aviation businesses, many of which have leases at the airport, are exempt from landing fees, but not from the fuel charge, said Katie van Heuven, outside counsel for the town. Last year, 3,033 of the 12,674 landings at the airport were exempt from the fees, according to town data.

East Hampton Town officials said they will revisit the airport’s fees in 2027 and possibly increase them again to finance future projects. The town wants to ensure the airport remains self-sustaining and is not financed by tax revenue, Burke-Gonzalez said. The airport relies on the fees to operate.

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The Riverhead Town Police Department closed out 2025 with a lower number of criminal incidents in December than in November, according to the department’s monthly activity reports presented to the Town Board by Police Chief Ed Frost at the board’s Jan. 22 work session. The reports also include year-end totals and a full-year breakdown of criminal offenses recorded in 2025. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that Chief Frost presented two months of reports at the work session because the November report had not been delivered previously. He told board members the department logged 2,604 total incidents in December, including 106 criminal incidents — “a significant drop from even November,” he said.

He told the board that “simple assault was down” and that shoplifting was down as well, saying the department recorded 24 shoplifting incidents during the month.

Board members praised the trend. Supervisor Jerry Halpin said it was notable to see shoplifting going down even as the Route 58 retail corridor continues to add businesses.

Frost attributed at least part of the month-to-month results to both policing strategy and store policy. He said some stores have internal thresholds and “do not call us if it’s under a certain amount of money,” even though, he said, the department will respond. The chief also described a visible holiday-season deployment in shopping areas: in the weeks before Christmas, he said, the department assigned extra patrol cars to shopping plaza parking lots. Police coordinated with loss control personnel at various stores that wanted to participate. The stores had extra loss control people on site on a...