The East Hampton Town Board will hear comments from the public tonight about plans for new parking regulations along School Street in Springs, developed in concert with the Springs School.

    According to the proposal, parking would be prohibited between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. on school days along a stretch from the corner of Springs-Fireplace Road toward the school, on the school side of the street, with a short section of “no stopping, no standing” adjacent to the school driveway. Parking would also be prohibited, from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, from the intersection of Ed Hults Lane and School Street toward Old Stone Highway.

    On the Pussy’s Pond side of the street, a two-hour limit on parking would be instituted all day Monday through Friday from Old Stone Highway toward the school. In the area directly across from the school to Sand Lot Road, stopping and standing would be prohibited at all times.

    Cars would be allowed to park for one hour during school hours on the school side of the street, in the area between Ed Hults Lane and the school driveway. In addition, left turns onto School Street from Ed Hults Lane would be prohibited between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. and 3 to 3:30 p.m. during drop-off and pick-up times, and a stop sign would be installed at that intersection.

    The hearing will begin at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation late Wednesday announced that it would partially lift a temporary ban on shellfish harvest in some East Hampton waters. Several areas remained off-limits, awaiting the results of water tests. The closures were put in place as a precaution following heavy rain on Sept. 3. No specific human health threats have been identified.

As of sunrise on Thursday, harvesters will be able to take shellfish from Accabonac Harbor, Napeague Harbor, and Lake Montauk. Hog Creek, Three Mile Harbor, Northwest Creek, portions of Northwest Harbor, and around Sag Harbor remained off-limits.

In Southampton and Brookhaven Towns, the state will reopen portions of Moriches Bay at dawn Thursday. Closed areas remained Quantuck, Shinnecock Bay, Cold Spring Pond, North Sea Harbor, Noyac Creek, and the Sag Harbor coves and their tributaries.

    Turnout for Tuesday’s Republican primary was low in East Hampton, with just 67 people casting ballots at the polls.

    While the results of the write-in primary for East Hampton Town supervisor will not be known until at least early next week, unofficial tallies in the races for the G.O.P. nomination for district attorney and county sheriff show clear wins for the incumbents, Thomas J. Spota and Vincent De Marco respectively.

    In East Hampton, no one had stepped forward to express interest in challenging Larry Cantwell, who is running for supervisor on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families lines. In fact, there was a concerted Republican effort to nominate Mr. Cantwell as a write-in. He has informed the Suffolk County Board of Elections that he would decline the nomination if he won it, but he still has some time to think about it.

    The Board of Elections will not begin the recanvassing process until Monday, tallying write-in votes from polling places as well as affidavit and absentee ballots. The candidate with the majority of votes would be considered the winner, but he or she can choose to decline the nomination.   

    Cochlodinium, or rust tide, has been discovered in Three Mile Harbor, Northwest Harbor, and Accabonac Harbor.

    At the meeting of the East Hampton Town Trustees on Tuesday night, Stephanie Forsberg, in the aquaculture report she delivered to her colleagues, reported the recent discovery. Cochlodinium, she said, is algae that can be fatal to shellfish and finfish, but is not harmful to humans when ingested.

    Two weeks ago, as reported in The Star, rust tide had not been seen in waters overseen by the trustees, despite its existence to the west, in Peconic Bay and Shinnecock Bay. “It shows you how quickly things can change in a week,” Ms. Forsberg said. Densities of the rust tide are lower than were found in westerly waters, she said, “but these are higher than we’ve seen in the past.”

    A difficulty in addressing the algal bloom, she said, is that “it can change, from day to day, where it is. It’s not necessarily isolated to one part of a harbor. We can be hopeful for our ecosystem and shellfish that it doesn’t stay in any one place long enough, that tidal flushing will move it.” Tides, wind, and cooler temperatures will eventually resolve the situation, she said.

    The trustees, in cooperation with Dr. Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University, have funded a comprehensive monitoring of the waters they oversee. Ms. Forsberg told her colleagues that water sampling has been increased to at least once per week. “We’re going to continue to do that now because that’s all we can do,” she said.

    “What’s the leading cause?” Nat Miller, a trustee and bayman, asked.

    “Nitrogen,” Ms. Forsberg answered, “but we don’t know exactly from which source. It can be very site-specific. At least now we have quantification of it.”

    Ms. Forsberg also reported that no blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, had been discovered in Georgica Pond. Last September, a dog died after apparently drinking water containing a toxin that, she said, may have come from a pond adjacent to Georgica Pond.  

   The formation of a citizens committee charged with collecting information about businesses and their needs appears to be on the horizon, after a plea from a business organization leader that East Hampton Town officials base decisions affecting business owners on actual data, rather than speculation.

    Margaret Turner, the executive director of the East Hampton Business Alliance, spoke to the town board at a meeting last Thursday, highlighting recent discussions about a town code change that would make it easier to cite certain businesses being run in residential areas for illegal operation.

    The proposed code change pertains to the parking of large trucks on residential lots.

    “There are no true statistics,” Ms. Turner told the town board. “You have no idea of the numbers of vehicles that will be displaced.” She said the business community does not dispute that homeowners whose neighbors are illegally operating businesses need relief. “But,” she said, “you need to consider how the problem got started in the first place. We feel it was poor, or lack of, planning.”

    There is a vacuum, Ms. Turner said, where long-term plans for the town’s economy are concerned.

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley jump­ed on the idea of creating a group to gather information on businesses, similar to one she led that presented the board with information regarding housing.

    “I think it is important that this town come up with data,” Ms. Quigley said at a board work session on Tuesday. “We have no stats for our businesses; it’s time we get the stats. With that, this town will be better able to make decisions that affect businesses in this town.”

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc questioned the scope of the committee’s tasks, and its ultimate goal. “Because business, while it’s a major component of our town, and it provides jobs — it’s part of the fabric of our town — it’s got to be balanced,” he said. “So, are we looking to try to improve the business climate?”

    “I want to know what the town provides in terms of zoning; what their needs are . . . in terms of infrastructure,” Ms. Quigley said. “This is about data; somebody else can interpret it. There are no results considered.”

    Ms. Turner said she envisioned a “multi-pronged approach,” beginning with the collection of “basic data” about numbers of businesses, what types, and their locations, as well as their needs. “What do they need in terms of survival, what do they need to grow their businesses?” Ms. Turner asked. “Can all of their needs be met? Probably not,” she said. “But there can certainly be a lot more assistance from the town.”

    The town’s comprehensive plan, last updated in 2005, called for several undertakings that have not been addressed, including planning studies of individual hamlets, an erosion-control plan, and a business-needs study, Mr. Van Scoyoc noted. “There are a number of unfinished items,” he said.

    With building department and assessors’ records, and the like, the town has “a lot of data,” the councilman said. Councilwoman Sylvia Overby agreed.

    “We have garbage,” Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said.

    Ms. Quigley said she envisioned including members of varied professions among the appointed committee members, who could provide information about the numbers of businesses here within their category. She had suggested a similar approach for completion of a planning study on the hamlet of Wainscott, charging its citizens advisory committee members with pulling it together with the help of town staff.

    But Ms. Overby suggested that a professional planning consultant was in order. “This needs to be done professionally,” she said. “The hamlet studies need to be done professionally. We get a better outcome . . . it’s not done just by citizens getting together.” She cited several planning studies commissioned by the town in the past that provided a wide-ranging overview of pertinent issues as well as recommendations.

    Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson protested. “Every time we need a professional, we go outside,” Mr. Wilkinson complained. “If we don’t have the asset inside, we should get rid of the assets who aren’t doing the job.”

    “We are understaffed,” Ms. Overby said.

    Ms. Turner said she had learned at a recent county-sponsored forum that other East End towns have staff members dedicated to long-term planning and economic development. “They . . . have in-house planners who are working on what they want their town to look like 5 or 10 years down the road,” she said.

    “You are accountable to the East Hampton Town residents, to do something to protect our health,” Ilissa Meyer told members of the town board on Tuesday.

    During the development of a town deer management plan, which was recently adopted, Ms. Meyer reminded the board that she had been “begging you to take action” to address not only the population of deer, but of the creatures they often host — ticks. According to the town plan, which contains a variety of options for future actions, such as enacting a deer contraception program, or culling the herd, one goal of deer population control is to stem the transmission of tick-borne diseases.

    Ms. Meyer has provided the board with information about the prevalence of those diseases and with research and contacts for those studying the problem, including the Centers for Disease Control.

    On Tuesday she said that initial findings released by the C.D.C. indicate that the number of people nationwide diagnosed each year with Lyme disease, one of the most common of the illnesses contracted after a tick bite, is estimated to have reached the 300,000 mark. The preliminary estimate, based on findings from three ongoing studies, was presented on Sunday in Boston at the 2013 International Conference on Lyme, Borreliosis, and Other Tick-Borne Diseases.

    In a press release, Dr. Paul Mead, the chief of epidemiology and surveillance for the C.D.C.’s Lyme disease program, called Lyme “a tremendous public health problem in the United States” and said there is an “urgent need for prevention.”

    “How many tourists do you think will continue to come to East Hampton . . . if they know there is a 50-percent chance of contracting a tick-borne disease?” Ms. Meyer asked the board.

    The C.D.C., she said, along with other researchers, is working to identify new methods to kill ticks and prevent the illnesses they transmit. She urged the town to immediately form a tick task force, with members including experts in the field, such as doctors, veterinarians, and C.D.C. personnel.

    The Centers for Disease Control is also advocating a proactive approach. “We need to move to a broader approach to tick reduction, involving entire communities, to combat this public health problem,” the agency said in its release. “This community approach would involve homeowners trying to kill ticks in their own yards, and communities addressing a variety of issues. These issues include rodents that carry the Lyme disease bacteria, deer that play a key role in the ticks’ lifecycle, suburban planning, and the interaction between deer, rodents, ticks, and humans. All must be addressed to effectively fight Lyme disease.”

    Most Lyme disease cases reported to the C.D.C. are in patients living in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks. Other tick-borne diseases include ehrlichiosis and babesiosis. All can be serious if left untreated.

    Southampton Hospital has planned to establish a Center for Tick-Borne Diseases, and on Sunday will team up with the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance for an event called Bite Back for a Cure, part of the alliance’s national campaign to raise awareness and encourage local advocacy.

    The event, which will help raise money for the new center, will begin with an eight-mile bike ride through Southampton Village for riders of all ages. Registration is $30 per person or $60 per family. Check-in will begin at 8 a.m. at the Rotations Bicycle Center on Windmill Lane, and the ride will start at 9:30. Bicycles will be available for rental.

    According to Marsha Kenny, a spokeswoman for the hospital, the Center for Tick-Borne Diseases, which they hope to open next spring, would provide information for residents and visitors, as well as serve as an educational resource for the resident physicians in the hospital’s medical education program, along with other South Fork doctors. The hospital would not provide treatment for tick-borne diseases (except to patients visiting the emergency department), but would provide referrals to physicians familiar with the diseases.

    According to Ms. Kenny, “the hospital recognizes tick-borne disease as a serious public health problem for the South Fork and we feel that we must provide resources to help people.”

    Income from a real estate transfer tax into the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund continued to rise this year in all five East End towns, providing money for the public purchase of land for open space, historic preservation, and farmland protection.

    In East Hampton, the fund has swelled to about $42 million, Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, said Tuesday. Of that, $2.7 million will be spent this year on debt from previous land purchases.

    The town closed just last week on five open space lots totaling 1.8 acres on Copeces Lane in Springs, for $1.8 million, and it has money earmarked for another five acquisitions. They include almost three acres off Old Stone Highway, along Accabonac Harbor in Springs, a wetland lot in Montauk, as well as money for the purchase of development rights, with the Peconic Land Trust, on almost 10 acres of Stony Hill Farm in Amagansett. The aquifer at Stony Hill is understood to supply drinking water to the surrounding hamlets.

    Only a handful of large parcels, including woods and farmland, remain in the town’s sights, Mr. Wilson said, as many large tracts of open land have already been preserved.    

    Between 15 and 20 appraisals have been ordered by the town this year on potential purchases, and another 15 to 18 are expected to be ordered before the end of 2013, Mr. Wilson said. The town has offered to buy about half a dozen other properties, he said, although community preservation money can only be used to buy land for which there is a willing seller.

    In 2012, East Hampton Town purchased 16 parcels of land using the community preservation account. This year, Mr. Wilson said, the total is expected to be 13. During the first seven months of this year, the real estate transfer tax earned East Hampton $16.8 million, compared to $10.4 million during the same period last year.

    In all five towns, this year’s January through July total reached $52 million from a total of 4,840 real estate transactions, versus $34.5 million last year stemming from 3,533 sales. Since its inception in 1999, the Peconic Bay Regional Community Preservation Fund has generated $841.9 million. According to Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., an author of the legislation establishing the fund, this year’s  revenues are on track to be the highest annual total since 2007, at more than $90 million.

    The fund’s revenue for the first seven months of this year grew by more than 119 percent on Shelter Island, with $1.3 million coming in, and by approximately 50 percent in both Riverhead and Southampton Towns, with revenues, respectively, of $1.3 million and $30.8 million. In Southold, this year’s revenues so far are up 10 percent, to $2.2 million.

    Demonstrators were at East Hampton Airport on Friday afternoon to call attention to the noise generated there and its effect on South Fork residents.

    More than 30 residents and members of the Quiet Skies Coalition from Sag Harbor, Springs, East Hampton, Wainscott, and Noyac, carried signs and stood along the road and at the tarmac edge, hoping to raise the awareness of passengers and pilots that the noise from helicopters, jets, and seaplanes disturbs those living near and under flight paths.

    Among the protestors were residents of the Sag Harbor Hills neighborhood, which is experiencing increased air traffic due to a new departure route being used to relieve air traffic over Noyac. In a Quiet Skies Coalition press release, Becky Young said, “The air traffic over our neighborhood has increased so much that it has negatively impacted our quality of life. We’d consider selling the house, but this air traffic has decreased the value of our home,” she said.

     “Route distribution is a losing strategy, as the basic choice is to decide into which of your neighbors’ yards you’re going to throw your trash,” Kathleen Cunningham, the chairwoman of the Quiet Skies Coalition, said in the release.

    “The only effective noise mitigation plan is to limit access to East Hampton Airport,” she said. “Without meaningful access limits, someone is always going to be victimized by uncontrolled aircraft noise.”

    The organization has been pressing the East Hampton Town Board to stop accepting Federal Aviation Administration money and to allow existing agreements with the agency over airport operation to expire. Then, they have said, the town would be able to impose use limits, including curfews, and even be able to ban the noisiest aircraft. The degree to which federal regulations would allow local autonomy over such decisions has been a matter of debate.

    A survey of the candidates for East Hampton Town Board regarding airport noise will be released soon, the Quiet Skies Coalition has announced.

   The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation has invited bidders to submit their proposals for operating a tennis concession at Montauk Downs State Park. According to a release, the state is looking for a “creative and visionary business entrepreneur” to manage the lessons, pro shop, and maintain the courts.

    The contract would be for four years with an option to extend for up to two more. According to a request for proposals, the average annual income for the last five years has been $77,400. Interested parties can request details from [email protected], with R.F.P. X001140 in the subject line. Bids are due by 2 p.m. on Sept. 25.

    Responding to a move by some East Hampton Republicans to get him on their ticket for town supervisor via a write-in G.O.P. primary, Larry Cantwell said this week that he was not interested.

    “I am filing a candidate declination form with the Suffolk County Board of Elections for the Republican primary on Sept. 10 in order to make clear that I am not a candidate in this primary election,” Mr. Cantwell said in a statement issued on Tuesday, adding that he did not want “Republican voters who may cast a vote in the primary to be misled.”

    “The effort to promote my candidacy has not been authorized by me; in fact no one even asked me if I would agree to accept,” he wrote.

    Republican leaders had asked the former village administrator, who is already running on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families Party lines, to screen with them in the spring after Jay Schneiderman announced that he would seek a final term as county legislator rather than run for town supervisor as the G.O.P. had hoped. “I politely declined because I honestly believed the voters of East Hampton deserve a choice in the election for supervisor,” Mr. Cantwell said in the release.

    With no chosen candidate for the spot, Republican Party members mounted a successful petition drive to force a write-in primary in hopes that Mr. Cantwell would accept the nomination of the Republican rank and file, if not the leadership. Republicans will already be going to the polls that day to select district attorney and sheriff candidates. The person with the most votes — even if that is just one — can win the nomination, but he or she does not have to accept it.

    “I don’t know of any politician who honestly seeks to have an opponent to discuss the issues. . . . That’s clearly not the case here,” said Thomas Knobel, the vice chairman of the East Hampton G.O.P., who has urged Republicans to support Mr. Cantwell on primary day. 

    “The real issue is the unity campaign that he has propounded in the past, contrasted with his refusal to work with the Republicans,” Mr. Knobel said yesterday. “A pre-emptive declination clearly says that’s not so,” and it may have no legal bearing. “Republicans can test Larry out on this, and say, ‘Hey do you really mean it when you say you’re going to be supervisor for all of us?’ ”

    “The Democrats claimed Carole Brennan [town clerk] and Steve Lynch [highway superintendent] after our nomination without a blink of the eye,” said Mr. Knobel.

    Mr. Cantwell said that appearing on the Republican ticket along with the town board candidates Fred Overton and Dominick Stanzione might also call into question his “enthusiastic support” for his running mates, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and Job Potter. He is sharing the Independence ticket with Mr. Overton and Mr. Stanzione.

    Those who might not want to vote for him on the Democratic line have two other options, Mr. Cantwell noted. “I hope the participants in the write-in primary for supervisor will choose a candidate so an honest debate of the serious issues our town faces can occur.”

    With or without an opponent in November, Mr. Cantwell promised that “my style of governing, of building consensus, and seeking compromise that leaves everyone well-served will be the same.”