Investigators have seized a "massive amount" of potential evidence from suspected Gilgo Beach killer Rex A. Heuermann’s Massapequa Park home, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said yesterday, as the 12-day-long search of the house concluded.

“We have reached the end to the search of the Gilgo house,” Tierney said. Nicole Fuller reports on Newsday.com that now begins the lengthy process of analyzing the materials for any evidentiary value, said Tierney, who spoke to reporters Tuesday afternoon near the 59-year-old architect turned accused killer's home on First Avenue. While the district attorney declined to describe the items that investigators removed, he said any potential trace evidence that was found, which could include possible blood, DNA and fibers, will be analyzed by scientists in a laboratory.

“We have obtained a massive amount of material,” Tierney said. “All of this has to be cataloged and analyzed and it’s going to take quite some time. … It’s not like TV. It’s going to be a while for the analysts to do their job. Heuermann has pleaded not guilty to a six-count indictment charging him with first and second-degree murder in the killings of three women who worked as sex workers and whose remains were discovered in the Gilgo Beach area in 2010 — Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello. Heuermann is also the "prime suspect" in the killing of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, whose body was found in proximity to the other three women, prosecutors have said.

Heuermann is being held at the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead.

A proposal to raise the Suffolk County sales tax to fund a sweeping expansion of sewers and high-tech wastewater treatment won't be on the November ballot after the Republican-controlled Suffolk County Legislature failed to advance the measure today. Vera Chinese reports on Newsday.com that the legislature considered two measures that were key to the proposed expansion: one to consolidate the county’s 27 sewer districts and another to fund wastewater treatment in Suffolk through a .125% (1/8th of a penny) sales tax increase.

The Republican-controlled legislature on Tuesday voted 10-7 along party lines, with Legis. Jim Mazzarella (R-Moriches) absent, to recess public hearings on the countywide sewer district and the sales tax hike, preventing them from moving forward.

The proposed sales tax increase, which would require voter approval, would fund sewers and grants for septic upgrades for individual property owners.

The legislature has until Aug. 4 to approve the sales tax increase for it to be on the ballot in the November general election, but yesterday’s meeting was the last the legislature will hold until September.

Democrats, environmentalists, and union leaders have rallied behind the sales tax initiative, saying it is needed to advance Suffolk’s Subwatersheds Wastewater Plan, a 50-year, $4 billion effort to reverse nitrogen pollution in local waterways.

The agreement on a new contract between Section XI, the governing body of scholastic sports in Suffolk County, and its referees for the upcoming season was voted down by the President’s Council of Suffolk County Officials by a 44-3 vote on Monday. Gregg Sarra reports on Newsday.com that the proposed three-year agreement between the officials' negotiating committee and Section XI was initially agreed to on Friday. The deal called for incremental raises of 2% in the first year and 3% in the second and third years. The agreement also called for a pay increase for playoff officials and the rules interpreter for each sport.

The lack of an agreement will likely result in the two sides participating in a mediation process or binding arbitration, which could affect the start of the fall sports season. The previous five-year contract, which went into effect on July 1, 2018, expired on June 30.

The cost for officials is estimated to be around $3.4 million in Suffolk for the 2023-24 school year. More than 700 officials are affected.

A group of New York Republicans yesterday filed an appeal to a state court decision that ordered new congressional maps be redrawn in the latest salvo in the ongoing battle throughout the nation for control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Allie Griffin in THE NY POST reports that the GOP voters’ appeal will bring the case to New York State’s highest court after the appellate court sided with Democrats earlier this month, reversing a lower court’s decision that appointed a special master to create a map and ordering the bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission to draw up a new one.

The neutral, court-appointed special master created a map with new district lines in New York state that caused Democrats to lose multiple seats in last year’s midterm election — helping to pave the way for GOP control of the House.

Republicans had vowed to take the power struggle to the New York Court of Appeals immediately after the court ordered the special master map to be tossed for a new map ahead of the 2024 midterms.

Before the special master was selected for the politically-charged job, Albany Democrats were accused of gerrymandering district lines after the redistricting commission failed to agree on a map and turned over the job to legislators.

“We’re looking forward to getting back to work,” Karen Blatt, the commission’s Democratic co-executive director, said following the appellate court decision on July 13. “And we’re looking forward to working with our Republican side as well.”

The last time East Hampton Town updated its zoning code, as part of its 2005 Comprehensive Plan Update, builders from throughout the region attended town meetings en masse to protest upzoning plans at the time. Beth Young of East End Beacon reports that in the 20 years since, new construction has run rampant throughout the East End.

In the midst of all this, East Hampton has embarked this summer on the quixotic task of updating its zoning code to face these modern challenges, though some worry the town is closing the barn door after the horse has already gone out to pasture.

The Town of East Hampton folded a Climate Action Plan into its Comprehensive Plan in 2017, followed by Hamlet Studies of each of its hamlets in 2022, a Coastal Assessment and Resiliency Plan in 2022 and a Community Housing Plan this year.

“Zoning and a Comprehensive Plan go hand in hand,” said

Councilwoman Cate Rogers, who has been heading up a new Zoning Code Amendments Working Group for the past two months, as she unveiled the committee’s proposed changes to the Purposes of Zoning chapter that sets the framework for the zoning changes at a July 11 work session.

The new purposes, which were applauded by a chorus of community members during the public comment portion of the work session, read like a chorus of modern-day concerns, and include housing affordability, town sustainability, coastal resiliency, climate change, clean water, natural resources conservation, historic resources preservation, open space protection, safety and health and density and congestion.

Long Island is the birthplace of the quintessential American suburb, a vision hatched by developer William Levitt and facilitated by “master planner” Robert Moses. But about 75 years after Levittown was founded and became an archetype for post-World War II suburbs throughout the country, some experts are asking whether Levitt and Moses got it wrong. Bart Jones reports on Newsday.com that their vision, one embraced by hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders over the decades, was of a suburban paradise of single-family homes with white picket fences and private backyards, where residents would host barbecues and family gatherings. It was to be a welcome escape from the urban areas many were fleeing.

But Long Island has become nearly unaffordable for large swaths of the middle class that “Levittowns” were supposed to service, not to mention those living under or close to the poverty line. Thousands of families struggle to get by, figuring out each week how they will pay the rent or mortgage, buy food, cover health care costs, get clothes and put gas in the car. It leaves some having to make a choice between paying the rent or the electric bill.

“People can barely scrape by,” said Martin Melkonian, an economics professor at Hofstra University. “A lot of people on the lower end of income are barely making it.” The national poverty level for a family of four is $27,750, according to the federal government, meaning one in five Long Islanders fall into that category. But Long Island legislators say that is a vast underestimate for our region. The real poverty level figure for Nassau and Suffolk should be double: about $55,500.

The whole picture creates a situation where "you can have a family that is significantly above the poverty line, but that is shouldering such high housing costs that they have very little left over for health care and for necessities like food," said Christopher Niedt, a professor of suburban studies at Hofstra University.