A majority of the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday ratified an agreement between the town and Sheila Carter, a supervisor of the Human Services Department’s senior citizens bus service who was brought up on disciplinary charges in October.

    Diane Patrizio, the human services director, had alleged misconduct and incompetence, insubordination, failure to perform duties, and an unacceptable performance of supervisory responsibilities, and sought to have Ms. Carter fired. She was placed on an unpaid 30-day suspension through Nov. 9.

    The Civil Service Employees Association, the town employees union, denied all of the charges on Ms. Carter’s behalf and requested a hearing. However, according to a stipulation of settlement, Ms. Carter waived the right to a hearing and pleaded guilty to one charge of failure to perform her duties.

    She will be placed on an unpaid leave from town employment for a year, retroactively, through Jan. 17, 2014, when she will resign from her post as the senior citizens bus service supervisor or be fired.

    Until that time, according to the agreement, Ms. Carter will be eligible for appointment to the next vacant position as a town clerk-typist that the town seeks to fill, “provided that she is qualified for the position.”

    But the town will not be required to offer her a post in the Human Services Department. If a clerk-typist is not to be hired before next January, or if she is offered a position in any department other than human services and refuses, the town’s obligation to Ms. Carter — and her employment — ends.

    The agreement guarantees to Ms. Carter full coverage, at no cost, for individual health insurance through April. The stipulation, which Ms. Carter has signed, also releases the town from any potential future claims.

    At a town board meeting last week, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley cast the sole vote against entering into the agreement.

    Calling the Sagaponack Village Board’s ongoing discussions of the Wolffer Trust’s two-year-old subdivision proposal “completely irrational,” an attorney for the trust pressed the board on Monday to schedule a public hearing on the project.

    Michael Walsh, the attorney, told board members that neighbors might want to weigh in on their latest request, for a new plan with houses built further west on the property, closer to Sagg Road. Wolffer wants to build four houses on a 12.3-acre piece of its 134-acre parcel.

    “This has never happened,” said Mayor Donald Louchheim of the request for a public hearing absent a board-approved site plan. However, the village attorney, Anthony B. Tohill, confirmed the applicants’ right to a hearing.

    Mr. Walsh expressed frustration with the board’s past requests, which began, he said, with concerns about views from Montauk Highway. “You asked for 1,900 square feet,” he said. “It was irrational, but we gave it.” Next it was the view from Narrow Lane, said Mr. Walsh, with a setback of 650 square feet, “which makes the residences virtually invisible after landscaping. Now, we’re told the west side is more desirable?”    

    The Wolffers have preserved about 120 acres, Mr. Walsh said on Tuesday, “and have asked for only four lots.” “Christian [Wolffer’s] ex-wife lives here,” he said, pointing to an aerial photo. “Their two daughters want houses on the property.”

    Marc and Joey Wolffer, sons of the late Mr. Wolffer, assumed ownership of the vineyard in January with long-term plans of expanding its offerings and continuing their father’s legacy.

    Mr. Walsh told the board the 32-foot-tall residence that would be 650 feet away from Narrow Lane would have zero impact, according to the environmental consulting company that prepared the survey. The trustees’ preferred plan, he said Tuesday, would block its view of a field.

    “I am not a planner . . . just a village resident,” said Mr. Louchheim, “but it seems a sad precedent in the middle of the largest parcel of land in the village . . . to plop four new building lots.” He said he would prefer open space in the back, adjoining existing stables and three sides of other properties in agricultural uses. “One of those owners may be interested in acquiring that lot for a horse farm,” he said.

    Lee Foster, a board member, said that if the houses were placed on the lower end, the west side, construction would have a less destructive impact. She acknowledged, though, that she was “extremely ambivalent.”

    “I am at odds with myself,” Ms. Foster said. “I would like to see another plan.”

     “I feel strongly that I would prefer to see them along Sagg Road,” said Lisa Duryea, a board member. Another member of the board, Joy Sieger, said that “our plan in Sagaponack is to keep the views.”

    William Barbour was the only board member in favor of keeping the lots to the east, to the rear of the property, which would make it easier for farm equipment to get to the land in front, he said.

    “This is a closely held, family estate farm,” Mr. Walsh said in response to what he considered a time-wasting discussion of farming. “Row crops are not likely to happen here,” he told The Star Tuesday. It was very important to the Wolffers that the houses not be constructed on the Sagg Road side, he added, saying that four houses there would “destroy the scenic vista on this country lane.”

    A public hearing on the plan will be set for next month upon receipt of a corrected map.

    Also on Monday’s agenda was an application for a site plan review for proposed plantings in a 50-foot drainage easement with 50 feet of property behind it on Erica’s Lane. Mayor Louchheim voiced concern: “If we allow them to do this on the easement, we are incurring liability with neighboring property owners,” he said.

    With safety concerns about police and fire access, and flooding an issue, the board was inclined to deny the application. However, since the owner was not present, it will be discussed at a future meeting.

    The waterfront building at 21 West Water Street in Sag Harbor, where construction has been at a standstill for almost four years, will become luxury condominiums with a rooftop pool by fall.

    After receiving site plan approval from the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board in 2006 and beginning construction not long after, the developer, East End Ventures, filed for bankruptcy. Now, the company is before the board again to modify its plans.

    “I don’t see that as much of a change,” said Jack Tagliasachi, a board member.

    Because of increasing the number of bedrooms per unit, the number of units will be scaled back from 19 to 15, John Reddington, the company’s architect told the board on Feb. 26. This, in turn, means that fewer parking spaces will be required.

    A walk-through from Garden Street was eliminated, and one will be added to allow access to Baron’s Cove next door, which is adding a restaurant on its second level. This brought up the issue of whether a walkway is a structure, which would need a variance from the village zoning board and would require a public hearing. The matter will be referred to Timothy Platt, the building inspector.

    The changes, which Greg Ferraris, a board member, called “pretty benign,” also include reworking the landscape and lighting plans and adding “outdoor rooms.” Mr. Reddington said these would be enclosed outdoor areas with a hedge extending from the porches. Mr. Ferraris said this was another matter to be reviewed by Mr. Platt for adherence to setbacks.

    Landscape changes from the original site plan include the planting of low-growing material closer to the building and native grasses and perennials along Water Street, Mr. Reddington said, and an additional row of evergreen screening on the west side of the building.

    A gravel outdoor seating area is also proposed. Denise Schoen, the Sag Harbor Village attorney, warned that this may count toward the property’s overall lot coverage and could also require a variance and a public hearing.

    Mr. Ferraris said that a review of lighting would be necessary too, to be sure it complies with dark skies regulations.

    With millions of dollars of liens against the property by subcontractors, East End Ventures is in the midst of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but found a way to finance the project and move forward.

    The application was tabled until to next month’s meeting.

    The Federal Aviation Administration’s designation of East Hampton Airport as a “regional” airport in a May 2012 report classifying airports across the nation has raised concerns on the part of East Hampton’s Quiet Skies Coalition and touched off a new volley between that group and the East Hampton Aviation Association.

    In a press release, Kathleen Cunningham, the Quiet Skies Coalition president, said that the classification “clearly demonstrates the F.A.A.’s aggressive expansionist view of the East Hampton Airport.”

    The new designation, she said, could impose requirements that would push the town to accept new federal funding for the airport, a move that the organization believes would prevent the town from enacting meaningful restrictions to limit airport noise by obligating the town to new grant assurances, or agreements with the F.A.A.

    Asked to comment on the designation at a town board meeting on Tuesday, Jim Brundige, the airport manager, said that the “regional” title “has no effect on this airport.” He reported that Peter Kirsch, the town’s aviation attorney, had agreed, telling him that at this time it has “absolutely no legal, regulatory, funding, or other significant” impact.

    The F.A.A.’s report, “General Aviation Airports: A National Asset,” and its assessment of 2,950 airports for classification as either “national,” “regional,” “local,” or “basic” airports was done to assist the agency in decisions on distributing federal Airport Improvement Plan funds, Mr. Brundige said.

    The F.A.A. describes a “regional” airport as being in a metropolitan or “micropolitian” area and having high levels of activity, including some international travel, and with an average of about 90 aircraft based at the field, including at least three jets.

    “These are hardly appropriate descriptions of our airport or our community,” Ms. Cunningham said of some of the descriptors. She said she was “shocked” that federal officials see “our local airport . . . as regional.”

    Although it is yet to be determined exactly how the new categories could affect F.A.A. requirements for individual airports, in terms of facilities, funding, or grant assurances, the Quiet Skies Coalition pointed out in its press release that the May 2012 report will underpin the issuance of F.A.A. “airport operating certificates” which require adherence to safety standards that address such things as pavement condition, lighting, signs, and rescue equipment.

    “The obvious implication of all of this is that safety standards for a regional airport will be stiffer and more expensive to comply with than for a local or basic airport,” according to the press release.

    Added expenses to comply with new standards, Ms. Cunningham asserted, “will feed Mr. Stanzione’s argument for the need to take F.A.A. funding and 20 more years of restrictive grant assurances,” she said, referring to the town councilman who serves as airport liaison.

    The position of the Quiet Skies Coalition, and others advocating noise-abatement actions, is that the limits on what regulations the town can impose on the airport, under the agreements with the F.A.A., will prevent the imposition of effective noise control measures.

    The new designation, Ms. Cunningham said in the press release, “belies the claims of airport interests that they do not seek expansion of the airport and the ever-increasing noise it will inflict on East End residents.”

    She said that “by conspiring to seek and create a need for F.A.A. funding, they plan to hamstring the town” with new agreements with the F.A.A. tied to the funding “that will guarantee endless expansion and block any effective noise mitigation.”

    The new designation, she charged, is consistent with the recent establishment of the airport control tower and efforts to make it permanent. She questioned “what part this new development played in Stanzione’s oft-mentioned ‘dialogue with the F.A.A.’ ”

    In his own press release, Gerard Boleis, the president of the East Hampton Aviation Association, said that “once again the airport opponents are trying to mislead and scare the public with distorted reports about the airport.”

    “It is utterly untrue to say the airport is expanding,” he said. “Just the opposite.” Under the adopted airport master plan, he pointed out, one runway will be eliminated, another is being made shorter and narrower, and “the third will remain in exactly the same configuration it has been since it was built in 1936.”

    Mr. Boleis also said that “for decades, pilots have been flying throughout the region since the airport was built. Upstate New York and New England are favorite regional destinations.”

    Three vendors who won bids last year to sell food and drink at Montauk beaches or road-ends are relinquishing their sites, opening the way for others.

    Bids will be accepted beginning March 14 by East Hampton Town’s Purchasing Department on the right to vend at the westernmost parking lot at Ditch Plain, at Kirk Park, and at the end of West Lake Drive.

    Bidding will also be reopened on exclusive rights to sell at two locations on which no one bid last year: Gin Beach in Montauk and Maidstone Park in East Hampton.

    At a work session on Tuesday, town board members briefly discussed whether to provide electricity at the vending locations so that food trucks would not have to rely on generators. The noise from generators at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett generated complaints from beachgoers last year, and one vendor has asked the town to have electrical hookups installed. Last year, board members had said that the cost of extending electric lines to the parking spots used by food trucks should be borne by the vendors themselves. However, incorporating that requirement midway through their contracts with the town was considered problematic.

    On Tuesday, Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said that, to address citizens’ complaints, the town should bear the cost of installing electric lines but charge vendors for electric usage.

 “The beaches are a place that people should be able to enjoy the peace and solitude that is supposed to be offered by this town,” she said.

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc agreed that the noise of generators impedes the peaceful enjoyment of the beach. However he thought the vendors should subsidize the cost of the electric installations, which would have to be provided for all the spots the town leases out. The board did not come to a conclusion on the matter.

    The East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing next Thursday on a request to change the zoning of two parcels on the Napeague stretch from one-acre residential to neighborhood business.

    The land, owned by Michael Dioguardi, totals just over an acre. One parcel is vacant, the other is the site of Cyril’s Fish House.

    Attorneys for the property owner have said the zone change will enable Cyril’s to add parking spaces, allowing more patrons to park on the property rather than along Montauk Highway, a state road. The change would also allow Cyril’s to work toward legalizing a number of outstanding zoning violations.

    According to the public hearing notice, only five parcels of the roughly 250 individual lots in the area have commercial zoning designation. Four are zoned for and contain resorts; one other, where the Lobster Roll restaurant is located, was rezoned from three-acre residential to neighborhood business by the town as part of a land transfer agreement with the property owner.

    The other parcels in the area are zoned for parks and conservation, recreation, or residential use.

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

East Hampton Town

Budget Meeting Tomorrow

    East Hampton Town’s Budget and Finance Advisory Committee will meet tomorrow to discuss possible improvements to the town’s information technology systems.

    Bob Pease, the head of the town’s Information Technology Department and its systems administrator and several industry representatives are expected to attend, including Brad Kramer, a senior solution architect at CA Technologies, and Peter Welling, an account manager who works with state agencies. Mike Diesenhaus, a committee member who worked in information technology for the New York Stock Exchange, will also participate.

    On the agenda are the existing town system and systems used by other municipalities, including their capabilities and cost-effectiveness. In subsequent sessions, the group plans to review various systems in more detail and to look at what is offered by local I.T. vendors.

    The committee will take a look at software that could be used for tax assessment, land planning, code enforcement, highway maintenance and management, and issuing town permits, as well as discuss an overall “technology strategy,” which could include cloud computing and the integration of desktop computing and phone systems, before making recommendations to the town board.    

Suffolk County

Peconic Bay Region

    Land transactions raised more than $11 million for open space, farmland, and historic preservation in the five East End towns during January, the highest monthly amount for the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund in five years.

    The fund, which was established in 1999, receives the proceeds of a 2-percent transfer tax on most real estate sales.

    New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. reported that there were 1,054 transactions in January, compared to 499 sales generating only $3.4 million in January, 2012.

    In East Hampton, preservation fund revenue for the month totaled $2.3 million, compared to $850,000 a year ago. Of the five participating towns, Southampton Town received the most preservation money in the first month of this year — $7.49 million, compared to $2.1 million last year. Totals for January in Riverhead, Shelter Island, and Southold were $240,000, $570,000, and $510,000, respectively.

    Since its inception, the preservation transfer tax, which expires in 2030, has generated more than $789 million.

    Even as winter winds on, the seeds of a future garden on the grounds of East Hampton Town Hall are firmly in place, with plans to begin planting daffodils, jonquils, and boxwood surrounding the  entrance sign by Earth Day this spring.

    The town’s litter committee has taken on the project, which it is envisioned will ultimately result in plantings of native, heirloom, and deer-resistant herbs, flowers, and shrubs around the historic Town Hall buildings and along walkways leading to and from various town offices. It will be an all-volunteer effort at no cost to the town.

    Monetary donations, which are tax-deductible, are being sought, and can be sent to the Town of East Hampton, 159 Pantigo Road, East Hampton 11937, earmarked “Litter Committee — Town Hall Garden.”

    According to information distributed by Deborah Klughers, the litter committee chairwoman, after a recent planning meeting, about $500 will be needed for the Earth Day garden — with four to six boxwoods and about 100 potted daffodils and jonquils to be planted under the sign.

    To finish other plantings included in the design’s first phase, the cost will be about $3,000.

     Organizers will seek donations of plants from local nurseries, and have suggested setting up plant registries at local stores — a list of plants needed for the project, which shoppers could purchase at the business for donation to the town. Signs would be designed for display at the shops. Committee members hope that businesses might offer a discount on purchases for the Town Hall project.

    Besides providing a plant wish list to businesses, the committee would advertise the project and delineate its needs through local media outlets.

    After the first planting, which will be celebrated with a gathering on Earth Day, April 22, next to go in the ground will be lavender, catmint, yellow yarrow, and more boxwood.

    The gardens will reflect traditional practices and designs, as well as organic gardening techniques. In addition to the litter committee members, plans are being developed with help from Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town planning director, and Colette Gilbert, an herbalist who recently installed a garden at the East Hampton Historical Society’s Mulford Farm, and Sara Shepherd, an herbalist and master gardener.

    The planners anticipate participation by students, senior citizens, and the disabled, for whom a sensory garden would be planted.

     East Hampton Village has appointed a replacement for Larry Cantwell, the village administrator for the past 30 years, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. announced at a village board meeting on Friday.

     Rebecca Molinaro, the clerk-treasurer of the Village of Westhampton Beach, will assume the role on May 1. Mr. Cantwell and Ms. Molinaro will work together until Mr. Cantwell's retirement in July.

     Ms. Molinaro has a master's degree in public policy and 10 years of government experience as executive assistant to Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele. She has served in her present role for the past three years. Ms. Molinaro said Friday that she and her daughter, Emma McGrory, will relocate from Remsenburg to East Hampton. Her starting salary, said the mayor, will be $95,000 per year.

     "Becky's education and work experience is directly within the area of expertise required for the position of village administrator and this makes her an outstanding choice to carry on the tradition of good work by Larry," the mayor said in a prepared statement.

     The incoming village administrator said after the meeting that she is "very excited and thrilled" about her upcoming post. In governing on a local level, she said, "the response is tangible and almost immediate." She said her hiring gives her "an amazing opportunity to become part of it."

     Mayor Rickenbach and Ms. Molinaro discussed the considerable similarities between the villages, which include a year-round population that swells in size with an influx of summer residents and visitors, issues of storms and coastal erosion and, especially in recent years, the need to be familiar with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

     The mayor described Ms. Molinaro as "a professional lady and a class act," and predicted "an extremely smooth and transparent transition."

    Sharon McCobb, a member of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, failed to win reappointment last Thursday when a resolution supporting her did not get a majority East Hampton Town Board vote.

    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who introduced the resolution, and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc voted for her reappointment. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley voted no, and Councilman Dominick Stanzione abstained. There was no discussion of the matter.

    Ms. McCobb, a fitness trainer and organizer of the I-Tri youth triathlon program, has continued to attend zoning board hearings since her term expired at the end of 2012.

    Later in the meeting, Mr. Wilkinson offered a resolution appointing Karen Benvenuto, a real estate broker and director with Brown Harris Stevens in East Hampton, to the zoning board. It was supported only by Ms. Quigley.

    Mr. Stanzione abstained during the vote for Ms. Benvenuto, which appeared to irritate Mr. Wilkinson, who paused a roll call to ask him why. Mr. Stanzione explained that he wanted more time to think about it.

    “You interviewed her,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

    “Yes, I did interview her, and I actually interviewed a couple of other people. I haven’t made my mind up. Another couple of weeks isn’t going to kill anyone,” he answered.

    “It’s going to kill any efficiency that this board is going to produce,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

    “I’ll take another week,” Mr. Stanzione said.

    “You’ll take a week of politicking; that’s what you’ll do,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

    According to a biography posted on the Brown Harris Stevens Web site, Ms. Benvenuto cut her teeth in East Hampton Town real estate in the 1980s with the conversion of the Beachcomber Motel in Montauk to a 92-unit co-op. Following that, she and her husband, a builder, developed and sold more than 100 houses in the area. She is on the board of directors of the Lion Head Beach Association and an adviser for Hamptons Free Ride, an advertiser-funded shuttle service.

    Separately, Ms. Overby presented a resolution to appoint Lee White as the zoning board’s vice chairman. A vote on the change failed 3-to-2. Don Cirillo, a former East Hampton Republican Committee treasurer, will remain the Z.B.A.’s vice chairman. Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc are Democrats; Mr. Wilkinson, Ms. Quigley, and Mr. Stanzione are Republicans.

    Separately, Roy Dalene was reappointed to the license review board and will remain its chairman by a 3-2 vote, and the board appointed Richard Gherardi as a new member. Mr. Dalene had yes votes from Ms. Overby, Mr. Van Scoyoc, and Mr. Stanzione. A counter-resolution offered by Ms. Overby to reappoint Robert Ortman to the board was defeated 2-2, with Mr. Stanzione abstaining.

    The reappointment votes were bookended by a sharp exchange between Ms. Quigley and the board’s two Democrats over nominations to fill two open seats on the license review board.

    Ms. Quigley had introduced a resolution naming Carlos Perez and Daisy Bowe to take the seats. While Mr. Stanzione again abstained from taking a position, Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc voted no.

    Mr. Stanzione’s delay apparently irked Mr. Wilkinson, who asked, “How long is it going to take you to decide? We’ve gone through this for months.”

    Ms. Overby interjected that she did not know Mr. Perez or Ms. Bowe, which drew Ms. Quigley into the exchange.

    “This is getting to be an embarrassment. I sent around these names . . . two weeks ago,” Ms. Quigley said. She said that Mr. Perez and Ms. Bowe were “minority members of this community.”

    “Right now I am embarrassed to be a member of this town board,” Ms. Quigley said.

    “You are appointing two white men and you are not appointing a Latino man and an African-American woman,” Ms. Quigley said.

    Mr. Van Scoyoc responded that he was not “looking at it that way.”

    “Well you should,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

    Later in the ongoing back-and-forth Ms. Quigley said, “It’s high time we stopped putting whites onto every single board. It’s high time.”

    Mr. Van Scoyoc described Ms. Quigley’s view as “kind of like a racist way of looking at it,” which led to emphatic objections from Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley.

    Ms. Overby pointed out that the license review board under Mr. Wilkinson had not had new members since 2010. “You took no action to appoint someone,” she said, adding that she objected to Ms. Quigley bringing race into the discussion. “I find that objectionable,” she said.

    “This is an affirmative action request on the part of this board to consider inclusion and diversity in decision making in this town,” Mr. Wilkinson responded.