A proposal meant to close a loophole that is barring enforcement of an East Hampton Town prohibition on running businesses and parking large commercial vehicles at residences will go back to the drawing board.

    A hearing to change the definition of “light truck” in the East Hampton Town Code was to be held tonight, but was postponed due to an error in the published notice. At the same time, members of the East Hampton Town Board found other details to adjust.

    The proposed definition of a light truck is one that weighs 10,000 pounds or less and is a maximum of 25 feet long. However, the legal notice for the hearing described a light truck as weighing “10,000 pounds or more,” not less. There are no restrictions on light trucks in residential zones.

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said that, as now written, the code amendment “essentially outlaws anything that is not a ‘light truck.’ ” Business owners, he suggested, should be allowed to park one larger vehicle at their residences, “within certain limits. I’m not talking about a semi truck.”

    “I really don’t want to hurt the sole proprietor with a single vehicle,” he said. “It might be a landscaper, it might be a painter. . . .” 

    Another problem, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson pointed out, is that while the code amendment would make it clear that large trucks cannot be parked on residential lots, there is nothing on the books that prohibits the parking of those vehicles along residential streets.

    “We haven’t thought through all the details,” said Councilwoman Theresa Quigley.

    As she has during several previous discussions of the issue, she said she “is loath” to enact a law that could have an impact on business owners.

    “Before we start saying what you can’t do, you have to have a suggestion as to what you can do,” she said.

    And, said Mr. Wilkinson, if the town bans large truck parking on properties and on residential streets, the board must also “look at areas they could congregate” outside of those places, such as at public parking lots. He said he had hoped that “in each hamlet, we could provide some alternate parking for these vehicles.”

    “I just want to make a fundamental point that seems to have been forgotten: the zoning code already prohibits commercial businesses in a residential zone,” interjected Patrick Gunn, the head of the town’s public safety division, who has been asking the board for months to address the problems with enforcing this particular part of the code.

    Ms. Quigley presented maps showing the few vacant lots in the town that are zoned for commercial use. However, said Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, to get a real idea of what might be available for businesses now illegally operating in residential zones, the board should get information about the occupancy level of existing commercial sites, as well as the number that have been approved by the planning board but are not yet built.

    Another question, said Mr. Van Scoyoc, is “how many operations are in a residential area? That’s what I expect we will hear at a public hearing.”

    “We are trying to address a very specific problem here,” he said. “That is, people who are operating businesses in residential zones, to a level that affects, very negatively, the neighbors and the neighborhood.”

    “At a certain level,” he said, a business is expected to move its operations to an area zoned for that activity.

    “That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Wilkinson remarked. “Where is the mandate that they go into a commercial zone?”

    “That’s called zoning,” Mr. Van Scoyoc and Ms. Overby both told him. “If you disagree with zoning. . . ,” Mr. Van Scoyoc began.

    The problem, Mr. Wilkinson said, is the dearth of commercial zoning in the town — only 4 percent of the properties, he said.

    In hindsight, Councilman Dominick Stanzione said, the board could ask, “Was that smart?”

    “Certainly we used the zoning process to achieve that, and we would use the zoning process to adjust that,” Mr. Stanzione said. But in the meantime, he said, while there “is an obvious lack of preparation on the part of our planning” to provide adequate space for businesses, the board must “balance the interests.” He has advocated addressing the loophole in the code first before tackling larger planning issues.

    Darlene Smith, a bus driver for East Hampton Town’s Human Services Department, was suspended without pay for 30 days, retroactive to July 29, in a unanimous vote of the town board last Thursday.

    Diane Patrizio, the town’s director of human services, has charged Ms. Smith with misconduct and incompetence. Under the state’s Civil Service Law, a hearing officer has been appointed, and Ms. Smith can demand a hearing of the charges.

    East Hampton Town’s bond rating was upgraded by Moody’s Investors Service earlier this month by one level, from A1 to Aa3, reflecting the rating agency’s assessment of the town’s financial standing and its “stable outlook.”

    The rating was issued in advance of the sale on Aug. 15 of just over $2 million in bonds and bond anticipation notes, used to refinance previous notes and to raise money for upcoming capital projects.

    Len Bernard, the town’s budget officer, said Tuesday that the rating upgrade enabled the town to obtain a “great” interest rate of 2 percent on the bonds and .43 percent — less than half a percent — on the notes. At a previous bond sale, Mr. Bernard said, the interest rate was set at 2.75 percent. The current rate went down even though rates in general have been increasing, he said.

    Rich Tortora, a financial adviser to the town, had calculated the low interest rate would save the town approximately $100,000 over the bonds’ nine-year repayment period, said Mr. Bernard. Going from a single-A Moody’s rating to the highest-tier Aa level “is pretty significant,” he said, “especially with everything that happened here,” speaking of the previous administration’s financial mismanagement, which resulted in an accumulated deficit of $28 million.

    Moody’s ratings increase from Aa3 to Aa2, Aa1, and, finally Aaa, designating the highest possible financial standing.

    East Hampton’s upgrade, Moody’s wrote in its analysis, “reflects improvement in the town’s financial position over the past three years, the result of conservative budgeting and strengthened financial management practices. The rating also incorporates the town’s significant deficit financing as well as a moderate and shrinking debt burden and sizeable tax base characterized by strong wealth and income levels.”

    “The stable outlook reflects our view that the town’s financial position will continue to stabilize given strong budgeting and formal policies to maintain ample reserves.”

    Other positive attributes cited by Moody’s were “strong management with demonstrated ability to restore financial flexibility” and “above-average wealth levels with sizable tax base.”

    The town’s “challenges,” according to the report, include “above average” spending on debt service as a percent of budgetary spending, and the need to maintain “balanced financial operations amidst rising spending pressures and limited revenue-raising flexibility.”

    The conclusion reflects the agency’s view that “the town’s financial position will continue to stabilize.” Growing cash reserves, an indication of continued improvement, could result in a better rating, Moody’s said.

    Among the capital projects now funded through the recent bond and note sale are road repaving and sidewalk projects, the purchase of new police cars and a new garbage truck, refurbishment of town docks and of the comfort station at the Atlantic Avenue beach in Amagansett, and repairs and renovations to the East Hampton YMCA RECenter building.

    Consultants to East Hampton Town will discuss the development of a wastewater management plan at a public presentation on Monday at 1 p.m. at Town Hall.

    Pio Lombardo of Lombardo Associates and Kevin Phillips and Stephanie Davis of the FPM Group will address the three components of the plan: wastewater management, scavenger waste management, and water-quality monitoring.

    According to an announcement, they will focus on “the project’s science-based methodology” that will define “the corrective actions needed to achieve environmental and economic sustainability, to restore the impaired waters in East Hampton, and to protect the town’s valuable aquatic resources.”

    The consultants are expected to produce an action plan in the next six to eight months, with public participation through the appointment of an advisory committee that would hold monthly public meetings. A Web site, EHWaterRestore.com, will provide information and an opportunity for members of the public to communicate with the consultants.

    A town board majority voted on April 4 to hire the consultants, a consortium including Lombardo, FPM, and the Woods Hole Group, to develop the comprehensive plan at a cost not to exceed $197,989. East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley had fought against developing the plan; Mr. Wilkinson was absent from the April vote, while Ms. Quigley voted no.

    At a board work session on Tuesday, Ms. Quigley took issue with the circulation, by Mr. Lombardo, of an e-mail announcement about Monday’s public meeting. Reading a list of the recipients — elected regional officials, environmental leaders, several private citizens, and a Montauk businessman — she said that “these people, in my mind, are all of a persuasion. Other than Paul Monte, these are all government people and special interest-group people.” The problem is, she said, that the notice was sent “to a bunch of environmental groups, and one businessman.”

    “Why are we limiting the invitation list? Where is Joe Public?” the councilwoman asked. According to town policy, Ms. Quigley said, the members of any appointed advisory committee must represent different points of view.

    News of the meeting, Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby told her, was to be disseminated to the public through the media. The e-mails, said Mr. Van Scoyoc, were an additional notice to people “both in the community and within the region” who are “prominent people” who have expressed an interest in seeing the wastewater management plan move forward. It was “prudent,” he said, “to contact people in leadership positions that would inform other people” of the meeting.

    The members of the advisory committee are to be selected by the town board in a separate process.

    Mr. Wilkinson, too, objected to Mr. Lombardo’s having taken the initiative to publicize the meeting. But Councilman Dominick Stanzione, a strong proponent of the long-term planning effort, said he had “no problem with the initial invitation list. I’m excited for the project to get started.”

    “Sure, give [Mr. Lombardo] whatever responsibility you want to,” Mr. Wilkinson said to Mr. Stanzione, calling the process “laissez-faire management.”

    By phone later on Tuesday, Mr. Lombardo said that during the first few months of the project the consultants would identify the issues affecting water quality, such as bacterial contamination (an excess of nutrients). By late November, he said, the goal is to “zoom in on solutions and alternative solutions” and to lay out options and budget estimates for the town board. 

    While the topics addressed at an Amagansett “listen in” hosted by Democratic candidates for town supervisor and town board were diverse, the message was unmistakable: Quality of life, for which so many choose to make East Hampton their home, has deteriorated, and something has to be done.

    Like the rising seas and the more violent and destructive storms the scientific community says are upon us, residents asserted that problems caused by summer visitors, in their numbers and their behavior, have become extreme and must be mitigated.

    Larry Cantwell, the Democrats’ candidate for supervisor, and Job Potter and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, candidates for the town board, fielded questions from a sizable group of residents on topics including affordable housing, pedestrian safety, climate change and sustainability, air traffic, litter, services for the disabled and mentally ill, alcohol consumption on beaches, deer, taxes, open vistas, and bicycle lanes. It was their third such forum. The others were in Springs and Montauk.

    Among the many phenomena that come along with summer visitors, said Dell Cullum, “is the trash buildup at our local beaches. The reason I get so sad about this topic is because I grew up on these beaches. . . . I don’t see anything being done about it; I see it getting worse as the summer progresses. . . . Is there hope, is there something that can be done, not just at beaches but at the Nature Trail?”

    “I’m insulted by the litter I see in places, and the condition of our beaches after a Saturday night is deplorable,” Mr. Cantwell said. “There are a lot of elements to it, certainly education and enforcement. But I think the village does a reasonably good job, and a much better job than is being done in the Town of East Hampton in terms of overall appearance. That’s a question of utilizing your resources to meet the problem.”

    “I agree with Larry,” said Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, “but it goes beyond beaches. In Springs, people feel if they don’t need a couch or a dresser anymore they’ll just put it in front of their house and wait for someone to take it. When did that become acceptable?” Mr. Potter said that he and his colleagues were committed to reopening the household exchange at the town’s recycling center, a remark that drew applause.

    The town’s code enforcement, said Mr. Cantwell, is inadequate, an observation the entire room seemed to agree with. “Everywhere we go, we hear the same thing over and over: ‘You’ve got to do something about overflow parking, noisy nightclubs waking residents at 3 a.m., wild parties on beaches, overcrowding in Springs.’ People have had it up to here on the negative impact on quality of life. We live here for quality of life, and the town has a responsibility to stand up and do something about it.”

    Like a school’s budget, said Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, a town’s budget “is a reflection of what the community’s goals are. You’re going to see us allocating things differently to get a fully-staffed code enforcement department. We need a chief building inspector. We need a fully engaged and staffed legal department. We’re sending a lot of legal work to outside firms, and that’s costly.”

    Mr. Cantwell was asked if the village allows alcoholic drinks on its beaches, to which he replied that it does not. “Then, based on what’s happening at Indian Wells beach in the last two years, do you expect to extend that ban to the town?” he was asked.

    Alcohol consumption, Mr. Cantwell said, “is part of the problem. . . . In terms of the town of East Hampton, it’s something I would certainly consider. . . . There are a lot of ways to do this that are not a complete ban, but we could wrestle with the issue of huge beer parties on public beaches that are not designed and not traditionally used for anything like that.”

    Mr. Potter said that he had counted a group of approximately 350 young adults at Indian Wells Beach the previous Saturday afternoon. “There were beer cans everywhere, red cups, rum and vodka bottles. They weren’t actually doing any harm, and controlling traffic has only helped, but it really looked strange and out of place to me. . . . I think we have to deal with this. We have to target that particular area.”

    On the same day, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said, she had picked up her daughter at the same beach and found “an accident waiting to happen,” given the crowded parking lot and abundance of young adults who had been drinking.

    “If you’re there at 3 or 4 p.m.,” said the questioner, “you’ll find kids urinating on the beach, vomiting on the beach. . . .”

    “They’re not bad people, as such,” said Mr. Potter, “but they’re not Amagansett kids. I don’t think Indian Wells needs to be that place.”

    Excessive consumption of alcohol is a problem beyond Indian Wells Beach, said Susan Jaxheimer. “I walk my dog in the morning at 7:30,” she said, “and on weekends Amagansett looks like a hamlet with a hangover.” She cited litter including bottles, cans, cups, pizza boxes, and paper plates, as well as merchants’ signs demolished and split-rail fences broken in half.

    The candidates were asked to address share houses. “These mammoth houses that are being built,” one person in the audience said, “would make tremendous share houses.”

    “It gets back to the code enforcement,” said Mr. Cantwell. “This is a fundamental issue that is pervasive, whether you live in Montauk, Springs, Amagansett, or Northwest, whether it’s an overcrowded house in Springs or someone who’s rented a house on Miankoma Lane to 30 people. It’s a question of the town having the will to enforce the code that is well established and the community supports. Right now, I don’t think the town’s current administration has the will to enforce these laws, and the public is getting fed up with it.” The room erupted in applause.

    Discussion also turned to affordable housing, pedestrian safety, and preparedness for natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy.

    Responding to a question from Hope Mulholland about climate change, Mr. Cantwell said, “We need to prepare for it. . . . There are a number of things we need to do better,” emergency planning among them. “I’ve talked about the need for a hazard mitigation and recovery plan. . . . We need to examine the coastline with the natural protections we have. Much of our coastline has been preserved, yet we have areas in Napeague that are very vulnerable where we have development.”

    Advance planning is critical, he said. “We don’t want to be making it up as we go along. The modeling today to predict storm surge and damage is available. We can put together a plan for exact steps we need to take.”

    Mr. Cantwell, who recently retired as the East Hampton Village administrator, listed actions the village government took, such as securing a $400,000 grant to install solar panels on public buildings and the recent transition to natural gas for heating. “Not only are we doing something for the environment, but we’re lowering operating costs,” he said.

    Milford Crandall, who has lived in Amagansett since 1957 and who Mr. Cantwell said had been his fifth-grade teacher, recalled a long-ago traffic accident in which a colleague’s grandchild was killed by a drunk driver on Atlantic Avenue. “If you look at the lanes of Amagansett, you will not find one sidewalk that goes from Main Street to Bluff Road. . . . I have not seen any change in safety of our roads in the 56 years I have been here. . . . Something has to change. We’ve got to protect our pedestrians.”

    Vehicular and pedestrian traffic have increased tremendously, Mr. Potter said. The sidewalk along Bluff Road improved pedestrian safety there, but he said that to do more, both the town board and the highway superintendent will have to work together.

    “The way you begin to address an issue like this is by looking at the most important places you want to move people to and from,” Mr. Cantwell said. “School is an obvious one.”

    In Springs, said Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, who serves on that hamlet’s school board, “we got $554,000 for safe routes to school,” referring to a grant from the state. “They actually gave us more money than we requested. We worked closely with the police, the Planning Department, the Highway Department.”

    With many senior citizens in attendance at the meeting, which was held in the community room of the St. Michael’s senior citizens affordable apartment complex, much of the discussion addressed the shortage of affordable housing. In his opening remarks, Mr. Potter, a former town board member, said that East Hampton “used to do a lot of affordable housing for seniors and working families. There’s nothing in the pipeline and hasn’t been for several years.” He pledged to work for the creation of more affordable housing if elected.

    Indeed, the need is great, said Brian Byrnes, citing a waiting list of more than 200 people for affordable senior citizen housing, not to mention the needs of younger people who grow up here and want to continue living here.

    The town “needs to be active in trying to find suitable locations where partnerships can be put together, as was done here,” Mr. Cantwell said, commending the partnership that came together to create the housing complex at St. Michael’s, calling it “a model development for affordable housing in the community” and one that should be used in the future.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals had applications before it in recent weeks on properties facing Gardiner’s Bay, delaying decision on one — which Tom Preiato, the town’s head building inspector called “an insult,” and saying no by a split vote to two others for a concrete revetment. A few mixed decisions and yeses were also handed out on less controversial proposals.

    The application that Mr. Preiato objected to was for property at 57 Waters Edge in the Barnes Landing neighborhood of Springs. Because coastal bluffs and wetlands were involved, the owners sought a natural resources permit. They also asked for a variance to allow them to build 43 feet from a bluff crest when 100 feet is the required setback. The hearing was on Aug. 6.

    An 1,196-square-foot-house with a 500-square-foot deck had been constructed on the site before the town zoning code was adopted, so it was a legal pre-existing, nonconforming use. The owners had come before the Z.B.A. in early 2012, requesting variances to construct a 549-square-foot second story, along with a terrace and a 480-square-foot swimming pool. These requests were granted. At the same time, however, the board denied a request for an additional 1,136-square-foot second-story expansion, which members found would violate the pyramid law regulating the height of buildings in relation to property lines. Then, in Nov. 2012, the board approved a modification of the previous approvals, granting permission to replace the existing deck. So far, so good.

    But on April 30, Mr. Preiato issued a stop-work order after learning that not only had the deck been removed, but the house itself. By removing the house, Mr. Preiato, and subsequently the Town Planning Department, agreed that the house had lost its pre-existing, nonconforming status. This was significant because the rules for new houses on vacant lots take the environment into consideration.

     Lisa D’Andrea, a member of the Planning Department staff, sent the board a memo before the hearing noting that the property is in the Peconic Estuary critical environmental area as well as the Accabonac Harbor scenic area, a state designation. A new house would have to be sited, the memo said, in an area less harmful to the environment on the property, which is well over an acre.

    “I made it clear from day one that this house was not to be removed,” Mr. Preiato told the board at the hearing. He also addressed what he indicated had become a questionable practice: rebuilding a nonconforming structure by taking it down one wall at a time. He called the practice “an unwritten code.”

    Not only had the whole house been removed, but the foundation itself had apparently been moved. He called what was done an insult. “I was born at night, but not last night,” he said.

    Jonathan Tarbet, an attorney, did his best to defend the owners. One of them, Matt Rutigliano, also spoke at the hearing. Mr. Tarbet said Mr. Rutigliano thought he was complying with law. Mr. Rutigliano said he had taken the house apart in pieces, with the goal being to reconstruct it as it was. “I made a mistake,” he said.

     Alex Walter, the board’s chairman, commented that it had been a 1960s-style house and asked, “Once you take it apart, how are you going to put it back together?”

    “. . . You must have known this wasn’t going to work,” Don Cirillo, a board member, said. “You want the best of both worlds. Every homeowner is going to say, ‘What a great idea.’ Just accidentally tear the house down.” The board is expected to rule in the next few weeks.

    Two no votes were on applications from the owners of 235 and 237 King’s Point Road, facing Gardiner’s Bay in Springs. Virginia Schmidt and David Wagner wanted to build a single 180-foot concrete structure, ribbed with rebar, and held in place with helical wall anchors to protect both lots. Each lot is slightly under 30,000 square feet. A natural resources permit was needed. It was unclear whether the East Hampton Town Trustees would also have to approve the project. The board voted 4-to-1 against the applications, with Don Cirillo casting the only yes vote.

    At a June 4 public hearing, David Lys, a board member, said the applicants had not demonstrated that they had sufficiently explored softer alternatives to the concrete structure. He warned of the impact such a bulkhead would have on neighboring coastline. Another member agreed. “The bulkheads have a large scouring effect,” Lee White said. Brian Gosman, who is also a member of the board, said he sympathized with the owners, but added, “The way the code is written, it doesn’t meet the code.”

    Mr. Cirillo disagreed. “All the houses to the west have hard structures. It is not fair to say to the applicant that they are the last ones in, and they are not allowed to build. They are not going beyond what the neighbors have done,” he said.

    However, Mr. Walter pointed out that the neighboring bulkheads were made of wood. In its review, the Planning Department had warned of negative implications of approval.

    In other action, an application was recently approved  for a 10-by-55-foot solar panel to be built on a Montauk bluff by Nejma and Peter Beard of Old Montauk Highway. The well-known naturalist and photographer and his wife had come to the board before. At that time, the panels were to be placed just one foot, rather than the required 15 feet, from neighboring state parkland. The board had voted it down, 4-to-1. The proposal had subsequently been modified, moving the panel six more feet from the sideline. After a brief discussion following a July 23 hearing, the board approved the amended application unanimously.

    In two other appeals, the board gave each applicant both a yes and a no. Sean MacPherson, the owner of the Crow’s Nest restaurant in Montauk, wanted to build a 432-square-foot second-story addition on his house on Miller Avenue in Montauk, along with legalizing a shower and a deck, which had been built before he bought the property.

    He also asked for approval to build a new 600-square-foot garage for his vintage cars. The board went for the second-story addition, but not the garage. Mr. Gosman said it would have “too big of a footprint” on the environmentally sensitive property. And Mr. Cirillo agreed. “It looks more like a barn than a garage,” Mr. Cirillo said.    The board voted 4-to-0, with Mr. Lys abstaining.

    Another yes and no were given to a second Montauk applicant who wanted to build an addition along with a garage that would have dwarfed Mr. MacPherson’s.

    Donna Gilbert had applied for a 400-square-foot, two-story addition for her Madison Drive house in Montauk and a new 971-square-foot detached garage. The board voted unanimously to approve the addition to the house, but gave the garage a resounding 5-to-0 no.

    A public meeting to determine whether tiny Sagaponack Village gets a police force all its own — “the last one before the board decides yea or nay,” promised Mayor Donald Louchheim when the village board met on Monday — will take place on Sept. 7 at 9 a.m.

    The board will hear views pro and con at that time, said the mayor, this time including line-by-line budgets. An Aug. 10 meeting, attended by 100 or so residents, did not provide detailed numbers and ended with more questions than answers.

    Mr. Louchheim and the board feel that a Sagaponack police department would provide more service to residents, at a lower cost, than Southampton Town police do now. The village has tried over the past two years to get the town to provide more coverage for its $2.3 million annually, but without success. “As a practical matter,” said Mr. Louchheim, having its own force “may be the only course available under current law.” If public opinion backs him up, he hopes for a local force to start patrolling no later than Jan. 1, 2014.

    The mayor told Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst last week that he would consider a proposal from the town up until Sept. 16.

    In response to requests at the Aug. 10 meeting for a public referendum, the mayor said he had researched state and village laws and that the board was “prohibited from holding a referendum on this.”

    A resolution was unanimously passed on Monday to hire William Wilson, a former Southampton Town Police chief, as a consultant to prepare a budget and a timeline of implementation. He was chosen, according to the mayor, for his knowledge of police department personnel, equipment, supplies, and vehicles.

    The budget will be posted on the village’s Web page, and the board will negotiate with other local departments for services such as dispatch and the use of a jail.

    Mr. Wilson, who resigned from his town job in November after 18 months of disagreements with the town board and the supervisor, will be paid a fee not to exceed $2,500.

    Al Hulten, a village resident, had a few questions for the board. He was unclear if and how a police department would be formed by Jan. 1; the mayor confirmed that that was indeed the target date. Mr. Hulten then suggested that unemployed officers recently laid off by Southampton Town might be interested to work outside the Police Benevolent Association’s requirements. The mayor said that applications had already been received.

    In other business, the board decided to widen Sagg Road and add painted shoulder lines as the process of improving its drainage continues. Although it will not be a bike lane, which would require four feet and special markings, the widening is expected to enhance the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians.

    An application for a Family Fun Day at the Renksy residence on Bridge Lane, which was rejected at the board’s last meeting, was revised and revisited following a plea from Kimberly Proal, who runs Ms. Rensky’s New York business, City Babies. Calling it a “charity event in Tracy’s backyard,” Ms. Proal offered to remove a vendor section which was to have been set up for retailers to promote their products. “Besides juice and water, they have all have been eliminated,” she said.

    The charity to benefit, Baby Buggy, delivers basic babies’ needs throughout the five boroughs, she explained.

    Joy Sieger, a trustee, recommended that a parking plan be submitted by tomorrow. The application was accepted on that condition, and the applicant was also asked to include a local charity.

    “If a valet parker tries to park on the road, they will be ticketed,” warned Mayor Louchheim.

    “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.

    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.”