A lawsuit that challenged the adoption of a master plan for East Hampton Airport in 2010 has been dismissed by a federal appeals court. Brought by the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, the suit centered on aircraft noise, which was the impetus for the four proposed airport use restrictions that drew a crowd to a town board hearing at LTV Studios in Wainscott last Thursday. The hearing is reported on separately.

The master plan, which is still in force, was adopted by the East Hampton Town Board during the administration of Supervisor Bill Wilkinson. It relied on a generic environmental impact statement, which found there was “no significant noise outside of the airport itself.” The lawsuit disputed that finding, claiming that the noise averaging system used to reach that conclusion was flawed and that the environmental assessment fell short of the requirements of town law and the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

With the court case pending, the current town administration undertook aircraft noise studies and the analysis needed to develop the proposed restrictions, which would limit takeoffs and landings by helicopters and other aircraft designated as “noisy” and impose a nighttime curfew.

Consequently, “. . . the fact is that the court’s decision has already been overtaken by events and is, as a practical matter, irrelevant,” Pat Trunzo III, the chairman of the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, said in a press release. In any case, he noted, the town is no longer fully bound by F.A.A. airport regulations and its noise threshold.

In settlement of a prior lawsuit the committee had brought against the F.A.A., the agency agreed that after 2014 it would no longer enforce several “grant assurances,” or agreements binding East Hampton to particular airport mandates enacted when the town took federal grants.

“Having recovered control over its own airport due to the efforts of the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, the Town of East Hampton is now poised to adopt meaningful airport access restrictions to control noise and for the first time in decades deliver substantial relief to the noise afflicted across the East End,” Mr. Trunzo wrote.

A project to determine how much nitrogen is entering the Peconic Bay through groundwater and identify its specific sources, which has been under way since fall, will conclude next month. A joint venture of Cornell Cooperative Extension, the Peconic Land Trust, the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative, and the National Grid Foundation, the findings will be presented this summer.

The effort is intended to identify specific causes of algal blooms that are harmful to shellfish and finfish, as well as to the eelgrass beds which are spawning and nursery habitat. The estuary, which contains several shellfish farms, is considered an important component of the East End’s economy. While algae blooms can occur naturally and are a key food source for some marine life, nutrient pollution, including excessive levels of phosphorus as well as nitrogen, contributes to harmful blooms.

Brown tide, an algal bloom that began appearing in the Peconic waterways in 1985, was followed by a precipitous decline in the bay scallop. And last year, the East Hampton Town Trustees closed Georgica Pond to the taking of shellfish and other marine life for much of the summer owing to a bloom of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae.

The researchers plan a project in the Town of East Hampton, where aging septic systems and cesspools are suspected of contributing to excessive nitrogen in waterways. 

Nitrogen is a primary contributing factor to the growth of algae, Kim Barbour, of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Suffolk County marine program, said this week. “More than just pointing the finger at people, we need to come up with solutions,” she said. “This project is interesting because, using state-of-the-art technology that no one else is using, we are able to track and quantify groundwater seepage coming through the bay.”

Nitrogen can enter surface waters by various means, including runoff and atmospheric deposition, but, she said,  nitrogen “coming up through groundwater could be very significant to the equation.” The hope is that data from the research program will be useful in remediation efforts, she said.

The research has been focused on the Peconic River, Noyac Bay, and Orient, Chris Smith, a natural resources educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension, said. The researchers use equipment including a trident probe, which measures conductivity and temperature. “It uses ultrasonic sound to measure flow rate at very low flow levels,” Mr. Smith said. Once a groundwater source is identified, samples of the water occupying spaces between sediment particles — are taken and brought to a lab for analysis. From there, the rate of nitrogen seepage during a tidal period, the length of time between successive high or low tides, is calculated.

An examination of land use alone would not necessarily provide a correct diagnosis, Mr. Smith said, “the reason being that aquifers are driven by gradients of pressure.” In areas where the terrain is hilly, like Shinnecock Hills, aquifers are usually associated with a lot of pressure, he said. “In flatter areas, it might barely contribute groundwater to a location.”

The economy of East Hampton Town — how money is made, from whom, and the needs of consumers and businesses — will be the subject of a study to be commissioned by the East Hampton Town Board.

Recommendations for a business study were drafted by a business needs committee chaired by Job Potter, a forner  town board member, and current planning board member, and presented on Tuesday to the town board. As outlined, the study’s goal is “to determine what the town needs to do to allow business to thrive and meet the needs of our communities within the context of our comprehensive plan goals.”

East Hampton’s comprehensive plan, according to the outline, “articulates the overall image of what the community would like to be in the future.” It says that future development “should be harmonious with the existing character of the community,” that the seasonal economy of second-home owners and visitors should be encouraged to continue, and that “a diverse population should continue to have opportunities to engage in a variety of livelihoods ranging from traditional agriculture and fishing to clean technology and the arts.”

The study, said the business needs committee, should include an inventory of local demographics and the types and functions of existing businesses, as well as a survey of consumers’ “habits, needs, and wants.” An analysis should be conducted, the group said, to document the town economy, determining its sectors and the percentage of the overall economy they represent. Zoning, parking regulations, and other town laws should be examined with an eye toward their impact on the various sectors.

Planning studies of the town’s various hamlets would also be undertaken, as was called for in the 2005 update of the comprehensive plan. Because future decision-making on land use and other matters in each hamlet could be tied to the outcome of the business needs study, the town board plans to commission the hamlet studies concurrently.

A request for proposals will be created for both, and submitted to the board for review in several weeks. 

Citing “the amount of money coming into the village, and what this money can do,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and his colleagues on the East Hampton Village Board heard last Thursday about the mushrooming number of basements that extend beyond the footprints of their houses, providing more living space but also adding more “density.”

Kenneth Collum, the village’s code enforcement officer and fire inspector, told the board that among recent residential renovations and teardown-rebuild projects, almost every one is not only rebuilding to the limit of the allowed gross floor area but fully developing subterranean basements to include bedrooms and bathrooms as well as home theaters and recreation rooms. While these basements are not adding to a structure’s mass, he said, they do bring more people, more cars, and more congestion. This is a particular concern on smaller residential streets such as Mill Hill Lane, Meadow Way, Cooper Lane, and Conklin Terrace, Mr. Collum said.

Of 41 demolition permits issued last year, he said, 35 were for a teardown and reconstruction. “We have seen where basements extend out underground,” beyond the footprint of the house, Mr. Collum said. “Because of that, we raised a question about G.F.A.” (gross floor area).

New York State law allows bedrooms to be situated in basements provided there is proper egress. While zoning codes in nearby towns do not regulate the gross floor area of basements, Mr. Collum suggested, as a first step, restricting their dimensions to the physical footprint of the house.

“If we do go forward with this,” he said, “we’re going to make a lot of nonconforming-use properties. We have to look at that as well.”

Such restrictions might be unnecessary on larger lots, said Philip O’Connell, chairman of the village’s planning board, but he worried aloud that, should they be enacted, other owners would wait for a certificate of occupancy before finishing the basement. “Then you’re not getting the benefit of the review from the health department,” he said. “It’s going to promote unsafe conditions.”

Another thing to consider, he said, was “people starting to go down two stories in their foundation. I think that’s something that should be limited also.”

Lys Marigold, vice chairwoman of the village’s zoning board of appeals, presented a more extreme scenario. In “iceberg houses” in London, she said, residential structures can extend three stories below ground level. “What you see aboveground is the tip of the iceberg,” she explained.

While the high water table makes that unlikely in East Hampton, she warned the board about applications before the zoning board in which multiple additional bedrooms are sought in subterranean spaces, which would inevitably add more cars and people to the village.

“The village in the summer can hardly handle any more cars,” Ms. Marigold said. “It’s a stretch on our ecosystem . . . If each house on all these streets goes from three to six bedrooms, what is going to be the long-term implication?

Richard Lawler, a board member, said that if such houses were rented, the additional vehicles and attendant traffic and noise would significantly affect neighbors’ quality of life. With the emergence of short-term rental websites like Airbnb, Ms. Marigold replied, “it’s going to be explosive.”

Board members discussed with Linda Riley, the village attorney, how regulations might be enacted while maintaining homeowners’ rights. “You need to zero in on what you see as the issue you want to address,” Ms. Riley said, suggesting that if vehicle congestion is the issue, “maybe we should focus the research there. I don’t really know, sitting here, whether it would be lawful to limit the number of bedrooms in a basement. I could look into that. It’s relatively unprecedented in this area.”

“My concern is that if we go forward, we have to do a lot of due diligence to make sure we’re not creating a huge zoning issue,” Mr. Collum said. “We have to look at all those things to make sure we’re not creating a lot of nonconforming properties.”

The mayor called the discussion “an opening salvo” in that due diligence. “We all recognize what’s happening within the footprint of our beautiful Main Street and secondary bucolic roads . . . To an extent, it’s beyond our control.” The board had a responsibility to “grapple with this problem,” he said, and “if it means piecemeal, we’ll certainly do it piecemeal.”

A group will be appointed to study the issue in concert with the zoning and planning boards, he said, predicting an incremental approach.

Representatives for HomeGoods received a chilly reception from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals last week as the board reviewed a request for signs on the new Wainscott building the store will occupy.

Town code limits total sign area to 20 square feet at that location, but HomeGoods wants to exceed that by nearly 50 percent, with a 14-square-foot sign on the back of the building by the parking lot and another one on the Montauk Highway side of the building.

The company already received approval from the town’s architectural review board for one 14-square-foot sign, but needs the additional sign because the building is so large, its attorney Patrick Fife of Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin & Quartararo, argued on Feb. 3. The shingled structure, which sits at the north edge of Montauk Highway, is 156 feet wide and 35 feet tall, he said.

Mr. Fife said the signs were not as large as was calculated by the town because the letters would have no background.

Cate Rogers, a board member, pointed out that the letters, while not self-illuminated, were being painted in a color called “neon red.” She also said that it appeared that the sign in back, as approved by the A.R.B., was to be lit by three lamps, whereas it appeared in the sketches before the Z.B.A. that five lamps were being used.

Then John Whelan, the board’s chairman, noticed that the sign in back was actually over a stucco surface, not a shingled one, making it a background for the letters, countering Mr. Fife’s proposed calculations on coverage involving free-standing letters.

Mr. Fife showed the board a series of large photos of signs elsewhere that he said appeared to be in excess of the code’s requirements, but many of these were in the village, not in the town. When he showed a photo of the sign outside East Hampton High School, followed by the one outside the East Hampton Town government complex on Pantigo Road, the board made a collective groan. “I don’t think Town Hall needs to go to the A.R.B.,” Mr. Whelan said.

“Has HomeGoods thought of making a smaller sign?” asked David Lys, another board member.

Adam Schleyer, a HomeGoods manager, told the board that the chain had six-foot-tall signs in towns like Riverhead and Patchogue.

Local municipalities can, and should, enact standards for septic systems that are more stringent than those upheld by the Suffolk County Health Department, which regulates septic waste systems throughout the county, Kevin McAllister, the founder of Defend H20 in Sag Harbor, told the East Hampton Town Board this week.

Several companies have introduced technology that can reduce the amount of nitrogen in the effluent released into the environment from septic systems — a key pollutant causing the deterioration of drinking and surface waters.

Mr. McAllister, the former Peconic Baykeeper, urged East Hampton officials to follow the lead of Brookhaven Town, which recently enacted a law requiring the use of “best available technology” for sanitary systems and sewage treatment facilities of a certain size in the Carmans River watershed.

According to the Brookhaven law, “the stricter standard is necessary because the standard in use by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services is generally intended to protect human health, but is not sufficient to protect ecological health and to avoid ecological impacts to the Carmans River.” The law sets a threshold for the maximum amount of nitrogen that can be discharged from a system over a year, on average, as well as an amount that cannot be exceeded in any one month.

The law, said Mr. McAllister on Tuesday, is “a really important first start,” and is “exceptional, in as far as we really should be imposing more stringent discharge levels. We all have our stressed watersheds,” he said.

In East Hampton Town, Fort Pond, Accabonac Harbor, Northwest Creek, Lake Montauk, and Georgica Pond have all been deemed “impaired water bodies” by the state, based on the level of pollutants.

Mr. McAllister has long advocated for more stringent septic discharge limits, and for the Health Department to revise its guidelines.

While previously it was unclear whether local towns could set their own tighter limits, Mr. McAllister said Tuesday that recent case law upheld the right of an upstate New York town to do so. He provided information on that case to East Hampton officials.

East Hampton is developing a comprehensive wastewater management plan, with the help of Pio Lombardo of Lombardo Associates, which is among the firms that have developed highly efficient septic systems. The reduction of nitrogen-rich septic discharge is a goal.

Although new pumps have been installed at the Empire Gas station, now Citgo, in Montauk and a pump island has been expanded, its application for site plan approval for the expansion remained in limbo on Feb. 4 when the members of the East Hampton Town Planning Board coalesced against a canopy for the island. 

The site plan for the expansion was first brought before the board in June of 2012. For more than three years Nancy Keeshan, a member of the board who is in real estate in the hamlet, has been adamant in opposing a canopy, calling it out of character. She has told the board that many Montauk residents had expressed opposition to the structure.

“It breaks my heart. This is my hometown. I would rather not see it look like Riverhead,” Ms. Keeshan said. “I would like to see somebody work with us.”

During work sessions over the years, board members have generally been sympathetic to Ms. Keeshan’s concerns, but they apparently had been constrained by advice from the board’s counsel, John Jilnicki, that aesthetics alone cannot be used to reject a site plan. The architectural review board, he had told the board, covers that.

Richard A. Hammer, a Montauk attorney representing Citgo, addressed the board on Feb. 4, calling the canopy a standard design. “Funny you say that,” Ms. Keeshan said, “because, there are no canopies in Montauk. This would be the very first. When this came back I was kind of surprised because, for months it didn’t seem any suggestions were heard. They fell on deaf ears.”

Reed Jones, the board’s chairman, pointed out that the new pumps appear designed for a canopy since large vertical poles already are in place. However, he pointed out that the A.R.B. had expressed opposition to the canopy in previous memos.

Mr. Hammer told the board that the A.R.B. had already considered the canopy and asked whether it could be lowered to 12 feet. Mr. Mammer explained that would not be possible due to the need for clearance for large trucks and campers.

Marguerite Wolffsohn, the director of the town’s Planning Department, said that Ms. Keeshan was suggesting “that you send your opinion to the A.R.B. If the A.R.B. were to deny the canopy on aesthetics, based on the standards in the code, you could then take the A.R.B.’s resolution, and use that as the basis for your denial.”

Elizabeth Vail, the head town attorney who was sitting in for Mr. Jilnicki that night, concurred with Mr. Jilnicki that the board could not deny the canopy based solely on aesthetics. Two board members, Job Potter and Ian Calder-Piedmonte, then expressed some confusion, with Mr. Calder-Piedmonte noting that the board uses aesthetics routinely when considering questions like screening or lighting.

Acting on the board’s consensus against the canopy, Mr. Jones sent a memo to the A.R.B. on Friday that read, in part, “The planning board still has serious concerns over the impact that the proposed canopy will have to the character of downtown Montauk and feels that the canopy may represent an undesired and inconsistent aesthetic. It was also the consensus of the planning board that, at the very least, alternative designs for the canopy, including those which utilize a pitched and possibly shingled roof, should be considered.” The matter may well be taken up at tonight’s A.R.B. meeting.

The applicants have already received needed zoning board of appeals variances for the structure, due to its proximity to Fort Pond.

A State Supreme Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit against East Hampton Town, its office of housing and community development, and the East Hampton Housing Authority over a mold infestation at the Windmill Village affordable housing complex for senior citizens on Accabonac Road in East Hampton.

Four residents of Windmill, which is owned by an autonomous housing development fund, sued their landlord, claiming mold problems had caused health and other problems, and had not been adequately addressed.

They also named the housing authority, a separate, non-municipal agency that operates other affordable housing complexes in East Hampton, and the town and its housing office.

Judge Joseph C. Pastoressa said in an October ruling that the plaintiffs had failed to follow required legal procedures in making their claim against the three outside agencies.

Tom Ruhle, East Hampton’s director of housing and community development, said this week that as administrator of federal Housing and Urban Development rent subsidy funds, the town does deal with some tenants of the Windmill complex. In extreme circumstances where issues of habitability and the like arise, the town could legally withhold the rent payments until a situation is resolved.

In the Windmill mold matter, Mr. Ruhle said his office had consulted with Windmill managers and kept abreast of their mold remediation efforts, finding them acceptable.

In any event, he said, and though the town was dismissed as a defendant in the tenants’ lawsuit on a technicality, lease agreements and other legal criteria preclude the town from being drawn in as a third party to such a lawsuit.

Frank Pellegrini of Pellegrini and Associates, a Manhattan lawyer representing the tenants, said Monday that the tenants’ lawsuit against Windmill is continuing.

United States Army Corps of Engineers staff and New York State officials have sidestepped East Hampton Town in moving ahead with a planned multimillion-dollar project to protect the downtown Montauk ocean shoreline without obtaining local authorization.

Under a 2007 town law that divides the shoreline into four zones, as well as an earlier policy, the project, which involves approximately 14,500 sandbags and thousands of tons of fill placed on the beach for an indefinite period, is prohibited. A provision that would allow a short-term, six-month alternative with a possible one-time extension has not been invoked.

In letters sent to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Town of East Hampton, Carl Irace, a lawyer representing the Surfrider Foundation, said officials had misinterpreted the town’s policies.

A review of Army Corps documents suggests that it did not consider a key section of town law when preparing for the work last year. A line-by-line analysis by the corps of the East Hampton Town Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, which requires that New York State and federal agencies follow its regulations, did not include any reference to the 2007 portion that sets policy for coastal permits.

In the town’s Zone 1, where the downtown Montauk project is planned, the law allows sandbags, or geotextiles, on the ocean beach only on a short-term, emergency basis. Emergency permits can be obtained from the town’s building inspector to defend property deemed in imminent peril, provided that the work is “immediately necessary to protect the public health, safety, or welfare, or to protect publicly or privately owned buildings and structures from major structural damage,” the law states.

In addition, even when permits are obtained they are subject to strict limits. The town’s emergency erosion-control regulations require that provisions must be made at the time the permits are issued for the eventual removal of sandbags.

“Neither the federal nor state government has the authority to usurp the town’s sovereignty over coastal consistency review of projects within town jurisdiction,” Mr. Irace wrote.

“This is a really important topic, and everybody is getting this wrong, as wrong as wrong could be,” Mr. Irace said in a follow-up interview this week.

Laz Benetiz, a spokesman for the Department of State, and other officials reached for comment said the downtown Montauk project was considered temporary because the Army Corps viewed it as a first step toward the far-larger Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation Study. Known as FIMP, it was authorized by Congress in 1960.

However, an Army Corps document variously described the Montauk work as satisfying a state requirement that the project “have a reasonable probability of controlling erosion for at least 30 years” as part of the Fire Island to Montauk Point project, as well as having a 15-year “project life.”

“You can’t argue this is temporary, particularly when the town sets six months as the definition of temporary,” Kevin McAllister, an environmental activist and founder of Defend H20, said.

“You could use that argument taken to its extreme that anything is good because you are waiting for FIMP,” said Mike Bottini, a naturalist and consultant who chairs the Surfrider Foundation’s local chapter.

Roughly $233 million for Army Corps projects in New York State was included in Congress’s $49 billion Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013.

Chris Gardner, an Army Corps spokesman, said in an email earlier this month that if local permits were required for the Montauk work, the company hired to do the work would have the responsibility of obtaining them. He was not able to respond to a follow-up request for clarification.

“This is one of the craziest projects I have ever reviewed in more than 25 years of environmental planning,” Mr. Bottini said.

Proposals from contractors seeking to take on the downtown Montauk job were to be submitted by Tuesday. Bids will be opened and examined next week, Mr. Gardner said.

Concern about the high-risk exposure of the downtown Montauk oceanfront goes back at least a decade. In 2005 the Town of East Hampton briefly considered creating an exemption for the properties there that would have allowed structural erosion-control measures of the sort being prepared by the Army Corps. That idea was dropped, and when the Department of State signed off on the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program two years later, the area had been put in Zone 1, where none are allowed.

The section of the law setting coastal erosion zones was the final, long-delayed step before East Hampton Town’s L.W.R.P. was approved by Albany. This was no mere formality; state-sponsored actions and some federal projects from that date forward had to, at least on paper, be consistent with town law.

For projects being contemplated along the shore, this meant that the state would no longer take the lead.

According to the Department of Environmental Conservation website, East Hampton Town, along with 41 other local governments in the state, administers its own coastal erosion management permits, though related approvals from other authorities can also be necessary. Nevertheless, the D.E.C. has been named the lead agency for the Montauk project.

Like the Town of East Hampton, East Hampton Village, Sagaponack Village, Southampton, Southold, Brookhaven, and Riverhead are all listed as certified by the D.E.C.

“Why did we go through the whole painful process of doing the L.W.R.P? Thousands of hours of work were put into that,” Mr. Bottini said.

Numerous requests for a response from the D.E.C. were unsuccessful. East Hampton Town officials, including Elizabeth Vail, the town attorney, were on vacation and unavailable for comment.

In a letter signed in October, Matthew Millea, a deputy secretary of state in the Office of Planning and Development, agreed with an Army Corps finding that the estimated $9 million project conformed to the town’s local laws. Mr. Millea, who is now Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s deputy director of state operations, did not respond to an interview request.

The Army Corps’s six-page review of East Hampton Town’s waterfront laws, released in June, did not address the prohibition on hard structures in the town’s coastal erosion hazard law. And even though the corps acknowledged that the section of the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program that predated the division of the shoreline into four zones, states that “only non-structural measures are permitted to minimize flooding and erosion,” it concluded that the 3,100-foot-long, 14,560-sandbag project was a “non-structural dune reinforcement” activity. 

East Hampton Town’s erosion-control law differs on this point, including the bags on a list of prohibited structures. “Any coastal geologist can tell you that this is a hard structure,” Mr. Bottini said.

Peter Weppler, an Army Corps official credited as the author of the six-page review of the town laws, was not available for comment.

In an email, Mr. Benetiz acknowledged the existence of the town’s emergency erosion-control procedure in which the building inspector can issue short-term permits. He did not say if the Department of State had considered the town’s coastal zones law in a broader context and did not respond to a follow-up question.

“Everybody seems to be going along here, and I am troubled by that,” Mr. McAllister said.

Following the insistence of East Hampton Town officials that work on the Montauk Beach be suspended during the summer months, the work, which was to be done as a single project, was divided into two phases. The first, about 1,200 feet in length, is to begin in March on the eastern side of the downtown. Activists have raised questions about whether new environmental assessments should be required now that the work will be done in two phases, and legal challenges are reportedly being contemplated.

Much of the excavation and placement of the sandbags will take place on private property, above the high-water mark, extending in at least one location into naturally vegetated dunes. Work on the Montauk beach would resume on Oct. 1, according to the Army Corps. Because it is difficult to plant beach grass during the summer, the first phase of construction would remain bare until the fall.

“This is destined for failure. There is no way it’s going to work,” Mr. Irace said.

Meanwhile, a similar, if far smaller, project is being planned by four neighbors for the Springs bayfront near Louse Point. Unlike the Army Corps, the property owners have requested variances from the coastal erosion hazard area law. This will soon be reviewed by the town zoning board of appeals. The Springs residents hope to install about 550 feet of rock revetment to protect their houses.

Related stories:

Trustees Urged to Take Stand on Army Corps Project, Feb. 19, 2015

New Detail on Massive Montauk Seawall, Feb. 6, 2015

New Delays, Added Costs For Montauk Beach Defenses, Dec. 24, 2014

State Dismisses Impact Of Army Corps Project, Dec. 4, 2015

State Sanguine on Sandbag Plan, Nov. 26, 2014

Renewed Opposition to Army Corps Plan, Oct. 8, 2014

Army Corps Offers One Montauk Option, April 25, 2014

Town Board Asks for Army Corps Analysis, Oct 24, 2013

Town Okays Erosion Law Just Before Storm, April 19, 2007

The East Hampton Town Trustees and homeowners on trustee-managed land at Lazy Point in Amagansett are moving toward an agreement under which residents’ annual leases would rise by 10 percent this year, far below the trustees’ initial proposal of a fourfold increase, and there would be a doubling of the transfer fee, levied when a house is sold, to 4 percent.

A meeting between a subcommittee of trustees and representatives of the Lazy Point community, who own their houses but not the land on which they sit, was “positive,” said Rick Drew, who is serving as a spokesman for the lessees.

At the trustees’ Feb. 10 meeting, a lengthy and contentious discussion at which residents packed the trustees’ meeting room at the Lamb Building in Amagansett, Mr. Drew had implored the trustees to assess only a modest fee increase for the coming year and devote more time later in the year to developing a long-term framework for those increases, which the trustees consider essential to reflect both the services they provide the public and the land’s value.

On Tuesday, the trustees voted 7 to 1 in favor of amendments to the lease rules and regulations, which must be provided to the lessees and public at least 30 days prior to the April 29 expiration of the existing leases. The 10-percent increase would mean a $1,650 annual fee. Residents occupying a portion of a second lot must also pay a proportional share for that property.

The rules and regulations were also amended so that any sublease of a house must include the name and mailing address of the subtenant. The amended rules and regulations are effective April 14.

Still to be determined is a storage fee for boats or other property on vacant trustee-managed land, which would run concurrently with leases. Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, said that small boats can be kept next to residents’ houses, but the “one or two really huge boats” she saw there should either be in the water or stored at a marina. “This board would like to get a handle on what’s being stored on the vacant properties and who’s storing it,” she said. A storage fee of $15 per foot was fair, the trustees said.

A trustee subcommittee and residents’ representatives agreed to meet on March 17 for further discussion of lease terms.

“The relationship is much improved,” one resident summarized at Tuesday’s meeting. If the two groups devote sufficient time this year to negotiating a long-term framework for incremental fee increases, he said, “hopefully we’ll be done before the holidays.”

“It’s an effort,” Ms. McNally said of the negotiations. “Like a marriage,” she said, to laughter.