An open meeting about proposed affordable housing developments in the Wainscott School District is scheduled for tomorrow at 9 a.m. at the St. Michael’s senior citizens housing complex on Montauk Highway in Amagansett.

Kathy Byrnes, a co-manager of the Windmill Village and Windmill II senior citizens housing developments in East Hampton as well as the St. Michael’s apartments, attended Tuesday’s meeting of the Amagansett School Board to ask for its support. The proposal has met with “some defiance” from the Wainscott School Board, she said, and asked the Amagansett board to send a representative to the meeting.

Ms. Byrnes said that every district’s school board and hamlet’s citizens advisory committee has been asked to send a representative as well.

East Hampton Town

Downtown Montauk Beach Work

East Hampton Town and Suffolk County will share the cost of maintaining the reinforced sand dune to be built by the Army Corps of Engineers on the beach in downtown Montauk, according to a vote on Tuesday of the County Legislature.

The project, designed as an interim measure to provide flood protection until the Army Corps completes a more comprehensive beach rebuilding effort that is planned, will be paid for with federal money, under a post-Hurricane Sandy appropriation by Congress. However, a “local sponsor” must take responsibility for it once it is completed.

The town has agreed to be the sponsor, which includes undertaking annual inspections and assuming liability, but will split the costs of annual maintenance, such as replacing sand lost from the dune, equally with the county, according to an intermunicipal agreement agreed to this week.

County Legislator Jay Schneiderman and Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell provided information to county officials during a lengthy session before a 17-to-1 vote approving the arrangement.

Montauk Wastewater Meeting

Problems caused by wastewater in Montauk, such as ground and surface water pollution, and potential solutions will be discussed at the Montauk Firehouse on Tuesday during a session with the East Hampton Town Board and Pio Lombardo, a consultant who authored a draft comprehensive wastewater management plan for the town.

Mr. Lombardo will review elements of the plan pertinent to the hamlet, including the impact of septic systems on Lake Montauk and his proposals for neighborhood wastewater treatment systems to replace them. The public has been invited to attend and will have an opportunity to ask questions of Mr. Lombardo.

The meeting begins at 10 a.m.

The mess hall at the former Boys Harbor summer camp, which is jointly owned by East Hampton Town and Suffolk County, would be a perfect place for a “multidisciplinary center” devoted to art, education, and recreation, according to the East Hampton Arts Council, which presented a proposal to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

The building could provide a venue for art exhibits, poetry readings, theater, music, dance performances, and other cultural activities, the proposal stated, becoming “an important community arts and nature center.”

The mess hall is the only building remaining on the 28-acre site on Springy Banks Road in East Hampton, the others having been in severe disrepair and demolished. But the mess hall, though in need of work, “is pretty well sound,” said Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc Tuesday. He has just formed an advisory committee charged with generating plans for town-owned properties for which various uses have been proposed, including Boys Harbor.

The council provided sketches and cost estimates for mess hall repairs, which it developed in consultation with several builders and architects. Between $750,000 and $1 million would be needed to restore the building and grounds, the group estimated. In addition, they said a $750,000 endowment for future maintenance is a goal.

Any proposal for the use of town-owned property should be tailored “to the broadest possible public use,” said Mr. Van Scoyoc, noting that the one presented by the council “falls within the parameter.”

However, questions of funding remain. The arts council has begun a capital campaign to raise money from private and corporate donors, organizations, and the community. “We look forward to having further discussions with your group and others,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

A ban in East Hampton Town of commonly used thin plastic bags is gaining favor among organizations and some business owners, as well as members of the town board, who are expected to set it for public hearing with the idea of its becoming effective at the end of 2015. Called single-use bags, they are already banned in East Hampton and Southampton Villages.

According to calculations by the town Natural Resources Department, there are 10.7 million such bags used in town every year. The calculation was based on an Environmental Protection Agency estimate that 104 billion of the bags are used each year in the United States.

At a town board meeting on Tuesday, Frank Dalene, the chair of East Hampton’s energy sustainability committee, said each bag is used for an average of only 12 minutes, “but they remain in our landfills for years.” 

In a poll she conducted online, Deborah Klughers, the head of the town’s recycling and litter committee and an East Hampton Town Trustee, said at the meeting, 92 percent of respondents favored some kind of plastic bag ban.

The plastic, which does not disappear or break down in the environment, “is now entering the human food chain,” Dieter von Lehsten, co-chair of Southampton Town’s sustainable green advisory committee, said at the meeting.

And John Botos of the Natural Resources Department said they  are tied to disruptions of the endocrine system. There are “social costs” to inaction, he said.

“It’s important for us to start taking these steps,” said Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who has advanced the initiative. She and Mr. Botos have been meeting with businesspeople who would be affected by the ban, and she said, so far, they are on board.

Margaret Turner, the executive director of the East Hampton Business Alliance, proved that point. Outreach and education would be critical “so that people don’t fear this, and realize it’s not going to hurt so much,” she said.

Catherine Foley, an owner of the Air and Speed Surf Shop in Montauk, told the board that she supported the ban wholeheartedly. “The public is ready,” she said. “They just need continued encouragement, guidance, and support.”

Ms. Overby envisions announcing a pending bag ban and launching educational efforts on Earth Day next April, with a law to go into effect at the end of 2015.

If nearby municipalities discussing similar actions follow the same schedule, Mr. von Lehsten said, “that will give a big impetus for Suffolk County,” and perhaps, eventually, New York City to follow suit.

Bans on single-use plastic bags are already in place in several big cities, including Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, he said, and had been passed by 103 California municipalities before a statewide ban was enacted there last week.

“The whole movement is really a bottom-up movement,” he said. Locally, he added, the Milk Pail farm stand in Water Mill recently posted a sign saying it would no longer use plastic bags, and the Waldbaum’s in Southampton is charging a fee for each paper bag a customer uses, and is donating that revenue to the Peconic Land Trust. The East Hampton Waldbaum’s also charges for paper bags following the ban in the village.

East Hampton Town

Rental Registry

A law that would establish a rental registry in the Town of East Hampton requiring those who rent out properties to obtain permits and update them regularly, regarding specific details about tenants, will be discussed at a town board work session on Tuesday.

The law has been proposed as a way to assist enforcement against those who violate housing laws by, for example, renting to large groups or consistently renting properties for short periods of time.

The meeting gets under way at Town Hall at 10 a.m.

LTV ‘Village Green’

Elected officials will gather for a “village green” meeting on Friday at LTV Studios on Industrial Road in Wainscott at 6 p.m., to which the public has been invited and which will be broadcast live.

Representative Tim Bishop, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Suffolk Legislator Jay Schneiderman, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., and Southampton Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst will talk about the issues in a forum moderated by Robert Strada, the LTV board president.

Questions for the officials are being solicited in advance at phlive.at, with a password of “LTV.”

The members of the East Hampton Town Planning Board had a smorgasbord of applications at its meeting on Oct. 8, ranging from a proposed delicatessen with an upstairs apartment in Montauk, and a request to divide a one-acre house lot in Amagansett, to a plan at an electric substation used by PSEG and National Grid, and a request from Verizon.

Eulalia Lazo owns an 18,206-square-foot parcel at 403 West Lake Drive in Montauk, which has a single-family house, although it is zoned for resort use. It is the owner’s intent, Eric Schantz, the senior environmental planner with the town’s Planning Department, told the board, to reconfigure the two-story structure into an 1,800-square-foot delicatessen, with an affordable apartment on the second floor. A special permit would be required, and the board members seemed enthusiastic about the plan.

Diana Weir, one of the members, expressed concern about the property having a narrow driveway, and Pat Schutte, a member who runs a septic services company, agreed. He cautioned that the new business might spread the sense of sprawl from the dock area. But Nancy Keeshan, a member whose real estate business is in Montauk, disagreed, saying the area was already mostly commercial. Several members applauded the affordable apartment idea but were uncertain if it would ever be available to year-round renters.

 A clause in the town code covering such apartments reads that they may be used “for seasonal rental to employees of the business operating within the same commercial structure.” As a result, there is a growing trend in Montauk for motels to buy housing for seasonal employees. In fact, Gurney’s Inn bought a motel on the same block as 403 West Lake Drive for that purpose.

The owner of a long, narrow one-acre rectangle of land at 38 Indian Wells Highway in Amagansett wants to subdivide it, but what might sound simple was unusual in several respects.

The property is between Montauk Highway and Further Lane, and, although zoned for one-acre house lots, already contains two houses, which were built before zoning limited each lot to one house.

Both houses, along with a detached garage, are on the half of the property closer to Indian Wells Highway. The front house is two and a half stories, while the back house is a smaller, one-story structure.

According to a memorandum from Mr. Schantz, Thomas Onisko, the owner, would like to tear down the smaller house, then build another one on the other half of the property. The result would be two houses and two lots, both of which would be smaller than zoning now requires. A variance from the zoning board of appeals would be needed, and the Z.B.A. had asked the planning board for its opinion.

Several board members expressed concern or even opposition to the proposal. “The main issue is, you’re down-zoning,” Ms. Weir told Britton Bistrian, the applicant’s representative. “I do think you are asking a lot,” Ian Calder-Piedmonte said. However, he also said that while he could not recommend approving the request, he was open to changing his mind.

Robert Schaefer suggested that his fellow board members refrain from sending any comment to the Z.B.A., but Job Potter disagreed. “We’re in one-acre zoning, and the applicants are asking to create half-acre lots. . . . I would recommend denial,” he said.

Ms. Keeshan expressed concern that a precedent might be set, and Reed Jones summed up what appeared to be the consensus: “I don’t blame the homeowner for splitting the property. A lot of people would like to do that, This is not proper planning.”

David A. Weaver of George Waldbridge Surveyors then addressed the board on behalf of the applicant. “This is not precedent-setting,” he said. “We have done many, many of these applications.” The board held off deciding what, if any, comments would be sent along.

The substation used by PSEG and National Grid is on Industrial Road in Montauk and on Fort Pond. According to Laurie Wiltshire of Land Planning Services, Marketspan Generation, a company that controls the nonnuclear generating assets of the former Long Island Lighting Company, wants to clear part of the site, putting in clean sand and gravel and an underground layer of plastic to prevent weeds. The substation would eventually be moved to the cleared area, which is less prone to flooding.

With the exception of the substation and a 50-foot-tall pole leased to T-Mobile, the facility, which contains oil tanks and generators, is obsolete, said Ms. Weir, who is a former member of the Long Island Power Authority’s board of trustees.

Because moving the substation might be years away, the board asked why the cleared land should not be allowed to have weeds.  Ms. Wiltshire said the company was concerned that if native plants were allowed to flourish, they might become an issue when it came time to clear the land again.

Mr. Potter suggested creating an “agreement with the town that would allow them to plant, but still have right to relocate the electrical substation.” It was an idea the board agreed to.

Back on Pantigo Road in East Hampton, Verizon wants to install additional equipment on its tower behind the town courthouse. The question of how much unused capacity would be left for the town to use for emergency communications was the central issue.

East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael D. Sarlo had sent an email to the board explaining that the town needed 10 percent of the total capacity on the tower and now has only 5 percent.

Ben Weisel, an attorney representing Verizon, told the board his client was willing to do major work to strengthen the tower, which would result in increased capacity. The board asked Mr. Weisel to meet with the police chief to layout his proposal.

Representative Tim Bishop and his challenger, State Senator Lee Zeldin, who are engaged in what is expected to be a close contest for New York’s First Congressional District, will meet a number of times over the next week — twice in East Hampton Town.

Mr. Bishop and Mr. Zeldin will debate tonight at 7 p.m. at Westhampton Beach High School. They will make opening and closing statements and answer questions from a panel including David E. Rattray, the editor of The Star, and Joe Shaw, executive editor for The Press News Group.

Mr. Bishop and Mr. Zeldin will meet again on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Montauk Firehouse when Concerned Citizens of Montauk hosts its annual Meet the Candidates Forum. They will have a chance to address the gathering and pose one question to each other. State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who is running for re-election on the Democratic, Working Families, and Independence Party tickets, and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, a Republican, are also expected at the event. Their challengers were invited, but did not respond, according to the organization. Challenging Mr. Thiele are Heather Collins, on the Republican ticket, and Brian DeSesa, on the Conservative Party line. Michael Conroy, a Democrat, is challenging Mr. LaValle.

Mr. Bishop and Mr. Zeldin will meet again next Thursday at LTV Studios in Wainscott for a 7 p.m. debate.

Tomorrow, LTV will present a “village green” meeting at its Studio 3. The open discussion is to feature Mr. Bishop, Mr. Thiele, Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, and Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst.

Mr. Bishop appeared on Sunday with several dozen veterans who support his re-election at a rally at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4927 in Centereach. Earlier this month, Mr. Bishop and labor groups presented $10,000 to the Suffolk County American Legion to fund a post-traumatic stress disorder training program that would train veterans and their family members on assisting returning veterans facing P.T.S.D. and traumatic brain injury.

Mr. Bishop’s campaign announced yesterday the endorsement of the Coalition of Suffolk Police Unions. In a statement, the county Patrolman’s Benevolent Association president, Noel DiGerolama, cited Mr. Bishop’s “long and distinguished record of supporting the Suffolk County police.”

Mr. Zeldin has been endorsed by the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donahue, among others.

American Action Network, a group supporting Republican candidates, has targeted the Bishop-Zeldin race as an opportunity to pick up an additional seat in Congress, which Republicans presently control. It has pledged $1.2 million to defeat Mr. Bishop, though the political website The Hill reported on Monday that A.A.N. and a sister organization, the Congressional Leadership Fund, have now spent $1.5 million in that effort.

A 37-acre oceanfront property on Napeague owned by East Hampton Town was designated as a nature preserve by the town board last Thursday night, but the question of whether there will be parking allowed along the preserve’s western edge, on Dolphin Drive, remains.

Advocates of maximum public access to the preserve and the beach said last Thursday at a hearing on a proposed parking ban on Dolphin Drive that off-road parking spaces could easily be created along one side of the road in a right-of-way area.

Others, including a number of residents of Dolphin Drive and streets nearby, said that parking cars on the roadside could damage the fragile environment of the preserve and create a dangerous situation with restricted access along the narrow road.

Some painted the issue as a conflict between residents of the area and the public interest at large.

“The public has to have rights, too,” Jay Blatt, a local fisherman, said. “There are thousands of us and 150 of these people. If you’re going to not let people park on a road, just because they’re elitist, it’s not fair,” he told the board.

“I urge you as a board not to set a dangerous precedent by de facto privatization of a beach access,” said Ira Barocas, a resident of Babe’s Lane in Springs, where the public has access to a town preserve on Three Mile Harbor.

Tim Taylor spoke on behalf of the group Citizens for Access Rights, which coalesced around a challenge by Napeague oceanfront property owners to use of the beach in front of their house by vehicles and their owners. The property owners have sued the East Hampton Town Trustees and the town, and the matter is still in court.

Mr. Taylor said his group “believes that a parking ban in this area is a loss of access.”

The town trustees support parking in the area, two members of the elected body, Tim Bock and Deborah Klughers, told the town board. But in light of the lawsuit, said Mr. Bock, “nothing should be done at this time.”

“This is a precedent you don’t want to set,” Ms. Klughers told the board, “. . . to allow small groups of people to prohibit large groups of people to be able to access” public lands.

The question of parking, said Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, should be decided along with development of an overall management plan for the nature preserve.

Discussions in East Hampton and Southampton of the infrastructure needed to deal effectively with wastewater and avoid further degradation of ground and surface waters from nitrogen and other pollutants have inevitably led to eyes on the large dollar sign in the room: the enormous cost of sewering systems, treatment plants, and the like.

So eyes have turned to a potential source of ongoing, substantial revenue: the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund, approved in 1998 by New York State to raise money for land preservation in the five East End towns through a 2-percent real estate transfer tax.

New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., an author of the C.P.F. legislation, addressed the question of whether the fund could or should be tapped to pay for initiatives to protect ground and drinking water in an interview last week.

Mr. Thiele said he supports and is exploring the idea. While the preservation fund was established to bankroll land purchases, and that is expected to remain its goal, “it’s become rather obvious,” said Mr. Thiele, that maintaining pure drinking and surface waters is essential to preserving “community character,” a main tenet of the community preservation program.

“While in the ’70s and ’80s, it was land preservation, now it’s water preservation,” the assemblyman said. “I think that water quality is the issue of this decade,” he said. A decline in quality and the pollution of East End surface waters used for fishing and swimming, and of the aquifers that provide drinking water, “would certainly undermine not only the environment, but the economy,” he said.

Projects like those being discussed in East Hampton — such as the neighborhood wastewater treatment systems that have been proposed by the town’s wastewater management consultant as a solution to septic system pollution — are costly. With federal grants unlikely and limited state money available, they are “certainly beyond” the means of local governments alone, Mr. Thiele said.

Mr. Thiele has already had informal discussions with members of the coalition of environmental and business groups that backed the preservation fund legislation and has talked about the idea with the supervisors of the five participating East End towns.

Under a preliminary proposal developed by Mr. Thiele, the voter-approved term of the preservation fund and its 2-percent real estate transfer tax funding mechanism could be extended beyond its current 2030 expiration, through 2050.

The state law authorizing the preservation fund program would be amended to allow the towns to spend a percentage of the preservation money on capital projects related to water quality, such as alternative septic systems, wastewater treatment facilities, marine sewage pumping stations, and so on.

According to Mr. Thiele’s projections, revenue into East Hampton Town’s preservation fund during the additional 20 years could reach $415 million. Of that, $74 million could be set aside for water quality projects; $300 million would fund continued land purchases, and the remainder, up to $40 million, could be used for land stewardship, as a portion of the fund is now used.

Assemblyman Thiele said last week that he will continue discussions with all involved throughout the fall and, if a consensus is reached to pursue a change to the preservation fund law, would begin efforts in January to get an amendment passed by the State Legislature.

The final step, he said, would be a public referendum authorizing the extension of the preservation fund tax, which, if all goes well, could take place on Election Day next fall.

With the midterm elections 12 days away, Representative Tim Bishop and his challenger, State Senator Lee Zeldin, are locked in what polls indicate is a close contest.

A Newsday/News12/Siena poll conducted in September gave Mr. Bishop, a Democrat, a 10-point lead, but a more recent poll released by a conservative group backing Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, called it a dead heat.

The Cook Political Report calls the race leaning toward Mr. Bishop’s re-election, while the Rothenberg Political Report predicts a “tossup tilt-Democrat.” The conservative website realclearpolitics.com lists the First Congressional District as the 17th in the nation most likely to switch parties.

The candidates, who held debates last Thursday and on Sunday, will meet again tonight at 7 at LTV Studios in Wainscott. Yesterday, former President Bill Clinton headlined a campaign rally for Mr. Bishop at Stony Brook University.

On Saturday, John Boehner, the speaker of the House, chose Mr. Zeldin to deliver the weekly Republican address. Mr. Boehner was on Long Island last month to raise money for the candidate’s campaign. In the address, Mr. Zeldin spoke about his time in the Army 82nd Airborne Division as well as his wife and twin daughters. He called for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, private-sector jobs, and the need to put “parents in charge of their kids’ education.”

Mr. Bishop’s campaign issued a release asserting that the choice of Mr. Zeldin to deliver the address reflected his “ability to recite the far-right’s talking points” and “reckless agenda that puts the interests of big corporations ahead of the middle class on Long Island.”

Tomorrow, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who is running for re-election on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families tickets and facing challenges from Republican and Conservative Party candidates, will appear at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor. He is to congratulate Catherine Creedon, the library’s director, on the receipt of a $250,000 Community Capital Assistance Program grant, which he secured for the library.

Last Thursday, Mr. Thiele’s office issued a release stating that he had passed 18 bills through both houses of the New York State Legislature in 2014. According to the New York Public Interest Research Group, that was the most among Long Island’s 22-member delegation, and sixth in the 150-member Assembly. The bills pertained to deer management, the commercial fishing industry, and numerous actions requested by East End town governments. In total, Mr. Thiele passed 22 bills through the State Assembly; four did not pass the Senate.