A hearing will be held at East Hampton Town Hall next Thursday night at 7 p.m. on a preliminary 2013 town budget of just over $69 million.

    If adopted as proposed, the budget would result in a 4.6-percent tax rate increase for most town residents, and a 1.7-percent tax rate decrease for those living in East Hampton or Sag Harbor Villages, who are not taxed for certain services already provided by the villages.

    Tax rates would be $27.86 per $100 of assessed value for properties in the town, and $10.93 per $100 of assessed value for properties in the villages.

    For the first time in several years, elected and appointed officials, as well as town department heads, would receive a 2-percent salary increase under the proposed budget.

    Salaries for town board members would be set at $61,750. The town supervisor’s annual compensation would be $98,800, and the salaries for both the highway superintendent and the town clerk would be $83,285.

    Two discussions of the tentative budget prepared by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson resulted in few changes to the draft. However, the town board may revise the budget before meeting a state-imposed Nov. 20 deadline for final budget adoption based on comments made by members of the public at the hearing.

    Concerned citizens and members of the Quiet Skies Coalition gathered at LTV Studios on Oct. 26 to hear from a panel led by Sheila Jones, an attorney specializing in environmental litigation and a partner at the Denver-based law firm Holland & Hart, discussing Federal Aviation Administration grants for the East Hampton airport.

    Should East Hampton Town choose not to accept the grants, Ms. Jones was more encouraging on its prospects for airport control than Peter Kirsch, an attorney specializing in aviation law, had been earlier last month at the town board’s invitation. Mr. Kirsch gave a bleak assessment that most of the grant assurances simply echo federal law and cannot be countermanded.

    Ms. Jones explained that “the [Federal Aviation Administration] has the authority to regulate aircraft routes, manage airspace, and also regulate noise at its source,” but said there was also a law that allows the “proprietors” of airports to “manage environmental impact” as they see fit.

    She cited the example of the East 34th Street Heliport in Manhattan, which imposed a curfew, as well as limitations on hours of operation, to counter noise issues. The restrictions were challenged, but were upheld in court as “non-discriminatory.”

    “You must define a proposal that looks to dealing with the noise in a rather surgical way,” she said. “If you do not, you may very well lose.”

    The town could well incur lawsuits if it decided not to take more federal money, negating its contractual agreement with the federal government (a possibility that could occur as soon as 2014), and began imposing restrictions on the airport to deal with the ever-increasing noise, especially from helicopters. Ms. Jones explained that if the F.A.A. decided that any of the restrictions were unreasonable or discriminatory, it could sue the town, a costly prospect.

    To forestall that possibility, she said, the town might explore other methods of noise control.

    “If a proprietor is going to regulate noise, they have to use a balanced approach,” she said. “It means you must look at measures to address noise abatement that do not affect airport operations or hours, such as sound barriers, acquiring land, and other measures, first.”

    Even if the town enforces a local noise standard in what it believes to be a non-discriminatory way, the F.A.A. could still challenge it, she said. although there would be no fear of breaching a contract.

    Ms. Jones outlined the possibility of imposing restrictions on helicopters following specific procedures outlined under the Airport Noise Capacity Act of 1990.

    “If ANCA applies, and you’re trying to deal with noise from [helicopters], you simply follow the procedure, there is no F.A.A. approval,” she said. “You’re done.”

    “Yes, there may be more cost involved, as well as studies,” she said. “But ANCA is not a restriction in any sense of the word, in a legal or practical sense.” If East Hampton chose not to follow the ANCA protocol, she cautioned, it could not receive any F.A.A. money. “But from the perspective of East Hampton, if you’re going to stop taking money in the future, you don’t much care.”

    Jim Matthews, chairman of the Northwest Alliance, a group of concerned residents in that part of town, weighed in on the negative impacts of aircraft noise, offering disconcerting evidence of damage both to the environment, in particular Northwest Creek, and to wildlife.

    All incoming helicopter traffic heads straight down the creek, he said, which was not only “a bit of a horror to those taxpayers who enjoyed the tranquillity,” but also took its toll on bald eagles, American black ducks, raccoons, and geese. “They begin to flee,” said Mr. Matthews. “Fleeing interferes with their ability to feed, their mating behavior, brooding, the raising of young, and the eventual abandonment of their habitat.

    Studies have shown that people who live near airports have higher blood pressure and children have lower attention spans, he added, asserting that in its second year of service the dedicated noise-complaint line, 537-LOUD, had received one phone call for every three flights that went overhead.

    “That is human suffering,” said Mr. Matthews. “It’s a human representation of acute discomfort.”

    At the close of Tuesday’s East Hampton Town Board work session, Patrick Gunn, an assistant town attorney who is in charge of East Hampton Town code enforcement, spoke even though he was not on the agenda.

    “We’re doing some work right now to make sure the public is clear on the correct protocol on a complaint process,” said Mr. Gunn. “We’re working on how to define certain activities in the town, and how code enforcement would react to it.”

    Public education is an important objective. Mr. Gunn plans to enhance public awareness of the code by “developing informational fliers to the public on hot-button issues as they arrive, presenting information online, and, most importantly, officers in the field,” he said.

    This week’s topic, for example, is residential parking. If a house is owner-occupied there are no restrictions on the number of registered vehicles that can park there. A rental, however, can have no more than four vehicles parked on the property. There are some restrictions regarding commercial vehicles.

    Explaining the new campaign, Mr. Gunn said it was “a perception thing, putting up the fliers. ‘You can’t do what you want.’ This takes the stress off code enforcement.”

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson asked Mr. Gunn how many of the calls that Code Enforcement receives are unfounded, meaning that an officer did not observe a violation. The answer: about 49 percent. “Our officers have to personally observe it,” said Mr. Gunn in explanation. Mr. Wilkinson was concerned at the high percentage. “As code enforcement is short-staffed, we must convey some responsibility on the complainants as well,” he said.

    Although Steven Gaines, an author who is navigating his first campaign for political office, has spent a large portion of his adult life in the public eye and describes himself as “outgoing and warm,” he said this week that the public scrutiny in the political realm is decidedly different than what he has experienced as an author. In that gap lies the daunting demand of being a candidate.

      “I love talking to people and strangers about ideas and thoughts, so that was not foreign to me,” said Mr. Gaines, who is running on the Republican ticket and on his own Opportunity Party line. “Although I was trying to sell my books, I never walked up to people and said, ‘Will you buy my book please?’ ” As a candidate, he said, “I’m really out there selling myself in a different kind of way. If you’re insecure, you can’t do this.”

    On the cusp his 65th birthday, Mr. Gaines is also on the edge of a different world, trying to juggle the challenges and criticism with grace, humor, and open-mindedness.

    Mr. Gaines, who has written 12 books including the best-selling “Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons,” explained that while he was used to having people criticize his work as a writer, sometimes being lambasted by as many as 150 newspapers across the county, he never felt his personal self was in question.

    “In politics people criticize you as a person, not necessarily your merit as a candidate,” he said. While Mr. Gaines says that by and large people are “lovely,” he has had a few unfortunate run-ins while campaigning. Laughing and shaking his head, Mr. Gaines recalled one instance while going door to door in which a man threatened to run him over if he didn’t get out of his way. Another time, more comically, a woman he was talking to yelled to her son “Run! It’s a politician!”

    In East Hampton, he said, people are intensely loyal to their particular political parties.

    “I’ve been disappointed in people. I’m still the same guy even though I’m running for office,” he said. “Nothing has changed. I find that for some people, politics is a religion and an obsession. They feel that they’ve chosen a team and they have to support them with the same fervor. But it’s totally inappropriate in this small town where we all know each other.”

    He realized that his seeming renouncement of his lifelong Democratic stance to run as a Republican was forcing people to make a choice they didn’t want to. That led him to create the Opportunity Party, which will be a new line on the East Hampton ballot next month.

    Mr. Gaines believes the Opportunity Party will not only woo back a Democratic contingency of supporters who couldn’t bear to vote Republican, but also offers independent voters an attractive option, bringing something “new and different and fresh” to local politics.

    People don’t seem to realize, he said, that the local Republican Party is very different from the national one, particularly in its liberal leanings. The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee wouldn’t even interview him for a spot on the ticket, explaining, he said, that they just didn’t believe a gay man could win the race in East Hampton.

    “But I don’t think that’s bigotry, I believe it’s cynicism. People say, ‘You’re Democratic, you’re gay, you’re Jewish, you’re pro-environment, how can you run with the Republicans?’ But I ask, ‘How come the Republicans gave me this nomination?’ That’s the greater question. None of that mattered to them. It was how capable I was.”

    A combination of his own careful observation of politics and his passion for East Hampton spurred his decision to run for office, he said. It also has a bit to do with his birthday.

    “I’m going to be 65 in November; it’s a milestone in anyone’s life,” he said. “East Hampton has been my life, my career, what I write and think and talk about. It didn’t seem like a stretch to want to do this for the next four years.”

    His decision to run on the Republican ticket was reinforced by the fact that his running mate, incumbent Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, has been a human resources director for Disney. While working as a Hollywood industry reporter for Buzz magazine, Mr. Gaines wrote a cover story on the most progressive and diverse movie studios. What did he discover? Disney was at the top of the list.

    “It turned out they had the largest gay and lesbian employees union of any movie studio. When I asked why, Bill Wilkinson explained that Disney has a policy to simply hire the best person for the job. Bill Wilkinson was head of human resources and that was his philosophy.”

    While Mr. Gaines is the first to admit that he is a novice politician — he hasn’t sat on any town boards and doesn’t have intimate understanding of the intricacies of town code (like the lighting farmers can use in hoop houses) — he believes this gives him a level of lucidity. He has no preconceived notions of how things should be, rather it’s an evolving dialogue.

    “My positions in this town are not written in concrete like some of my competitors whose ideas are implacable,” he said. “I don’t have ideas that are rigid. When I asked Bill Wilkinson, ‘Why me in particular,’ he told me, ‘Your brain.’ ”

    Mr. Gaines, a Brooklyn native and New York University Film School alumni who first came to East Hampton around 1971 to write his first book, “Marjoe,” moved to the South Fork full-time in 1980. If he is elected, Mr. Gaines has set his sights on bolstering local businesses as well as attracting new business to the town; he believes there is a danger in becoming only a resort community.

    “I’d love to bring some sort of low-density businesses to East Hampton,” he said. “Not factories and smokestacks, but maybe a software company that doesn’t have a lot of trucks delivering materials. That means maybe 50 people could be hired and that would bring money into the community. Otherwise we’ll have to depend on second homeowners for 60 percent of our tax dollars and it’s not sustainable.”

    Mr. Gaines went on to say that East Hampton is losing a generation because local kids graduating from high school and college are unable to find a job, and he is determined to meet those needs in the coming years.

    “Win or lose the election, it will be a celebration,” he said. “It’s an honor to participate in the democratic process in America.”

    A proposed amendment to East Hampton Town’s zoning code, designed to simplify the procedure for farmers looking to add greenhouses, farm stands, or other buildings to their land is the right idea, most speakers at a town board hearing last week on the legislation agreed, but the devil is in the details.

    In fact, the legislation may even be illegal under state law, according to one speaker, David Eagan, an East Hampton attorney who owns a Wainscott horse farm with his wife, Mary Ann McCaffrey. He explained to the board the State Agricultural and Markets Law, which supersedes town law, and described a court decision rendered in a case regarding his own property, which found East Hampton’s site plan review process unreasonably restrictive to farmers. It was deemed unenforceable, he said.

    “Since that time, nothing has changed in East Hampton,” he told the board. “I’m disappointed that the town has not involved the State of New York in this process.” Although the intent of the proposed law is good, and “long overdue,” Mr. Eagan said, several aspects of the legislation violate state guidelines regarding zoning rules that can be enforced by municipalities on agricultural operations.

    He said he had submitted the proposed town law to the State Department of Agriculture and Markets for a formal review.

    If the legislation is adopted, Mr. Eagan wrote, “the East Hampton Town Code will continue to blatantly violate the protections afforded owners and operators of farm operations contained in . . . the New York State Agriculture and Markets Law in many respects. . . .”

    In addition to running afoul of state agricultural law jurisdiction, Mr. Eagan said at last week’s hearing that the proposal to have site plan review for farms conducted by the architectural review board rather than the planning board — an aspect of the proposal that has drawn criticism on other fronts — is also illegal under state law.

    Town boards, he said, may delegate their jurisdiction over the planning process to a planning board, as East Hampton has chosen to do, but once that designee is chosen, the town board may not hand specific aspects of planning review to other entities.

    Nonetheless, Mr. Eagan said the proposed legislation “gets closer” to the type of regulations the state approves of for farms, “but it doesn’t go far enough, and it isn’t inclusive enough.” For instance, he said, the streamlined site plan process proposed would not be available for certain kinds of farms, including commercial horse-boarding operations. “The state wants and demands and mandates a streamlined process,” Mr. Eagan said.

    Alex Balsam, an owner of Balsam Farms, spoke in favor of the proposal, which would also increase the maximum allowable size of farm stands to 500 square feet and establish front-yard setbacks of 20 feet and side and rear setbacks of 15 feet.

    Mr. Balsam addressed some objections to the code revision voiced at a previous hearing, when some people argued that a qualified board such as the planning board should review details such as the placement of buildings, driveways, and the like.

    “People who fail to recognize what farmers need for their business and instead take the position that we need to protect our community from our farms frankly fail to see the forest for the trees,” Mr. Balsam said. Working farms, he said, and not simply open space, “create the character of the community.”

    “We’re primarily talking about aesthetics, and for handling aesthetics, the architectural review board is the right venue,” Mr. Balsam said. He said that he thought state officials would find little fault with the proposal. “This is either great code, or damn near it,” he said.

    But Elaine Jones, an Amagansett resident, said the construction of large “temporary” growing houses, many of which remain in place year round, could have a significant impact. “Are you opening up to something much bigger in residential neighborhoods?” she asked. “This is not a minor change. This is huge, with the possibility of monster greenhouses close to neighbors.”

    “Our community must work to keep farmers in business, in balance with the town’s planning goals,” said Sylvia Overby, a Democratic candidate for town board. A former  planning board member, she said she was concerned about omitting review of specifics such as lighting, or a requirement to submit a survey showing the position of buildings and other details, including topographical information.

    “Land-use planning doesn’t seem to be one of the duties of the A.R.B., according to our code,” she said, noting that the architectural review board’s task is described as “architectural and design review.” A previous version of the code amendment would have handed site plan review on farms to the town building inspector.

    Ms. Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, a current planning board member and her running mate in the town board election, both questioned a provision in the proposed law requiring a farm to have been in “active use” for two years before it could qualify for the streamlined review process. That, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, would unnecessarily affect “someone starting out in the business.”

    Scott Chaskey, a farmer at the Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett for 22 years, and Ira Bezoza, a director of Food Pantry Farm, which grows vegetables for food pantries at the East End Cooperative Organic Farm in East Hampton, urged the board to press forward. Mr. Bezoza said gaining approval to erect a hoop house is key to the farm’s “ability to grow organic vegetables to give to food pantries in the winter and early spring when the demand is greatest. . . .”

    Mr. Chaskey suggested that the board appoint a committee, on which he volunteered to serve, to work on the legislation so that it could pass muster with the state.

    The town board has not had a public discussion of the issue since the hearing was closed last Thursday night.

    As ducks begin to fly south from their northern summertime habitats, the East Hampton Town Trustees are planning to set aside at least one and perhaps two blinds for hunters from the general public to shoot from. 

    Trustees in both Southampton and East Hampton have for decades leased shoreline and bottomland to duck hunters to place their blinds. Many of the locations have been secured by the same individuals or the same families for years. This will be the first time in either town that members of the public, with hunting licenses, will be able to reserve a town-owned blind for one or two days, or more, depending on availability.

    Last year, the East Hampton trustees leased locations for 66 duck blinds, 15 in Three Mile Harbor, 11 in Accabonac Harbor, 25 in Georgica Pond, five in Napeague Harbor, four in Fresh Pond, and one in Wainscott Pond. Not all the applications are in yet for this year’s hunt.

    Southampton, with 26,000 acres of bays and ponds and 800 acres of shoreline, leases locations for about 300 duck blinds each year.

    During the trustees’ monthly meeting on Tuesday night, Joe Bloecker outlined his public blind concept to the board.

    He said that he and Billy Vorpahl searched trustee-owned water bodies for likely locations and settled on Fresh Pond in Amagansett and Scoy Pond in Northwest as the most likely. Trustees have never leased a spot in the latter location. Georgica Pond was decided against because of its single access point via the Beach Lane road end, and because of the number of private homes on its banks.

    Mr. Bloecker said one of four blinds in Fresh Pond had not been used in recent years. “There’s parking, and room for three hunters.” Getting to the proposed Scoy Pond blind would require permission to access a gate in the Grace Estate. Mr. Bloecker said he would reach out to caretakers to see if an accommodation was possible.     

    Mr. Bloecker proposed a fee of $25 per day be charged to cover the cost of installing, maintaining, and removing the blind at the end of the hunting season. “I don’t think it should be more,” he said, noting that the seasonal lease rate for individual hunters was only $20.

    The hunting season for sea ducks opens on Saturday, while the season for the puddle ducks that are beginning to fly into local freshwater bodies runs from Nov. 24 through Nov. 27, and from Dec. 5 through Jan. 29.

    In other trustee news, it was decided on Tuesday that the annual scallop season in trustee waters will start on Nov. 21, two weeks after the Nov. 7 opening in state waters, including Northwest Harbor.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals approved the construction of a rock revetment on the Montauk bluffs Tuesday night, apparently setting a precedent on coastal erosion structures.

    Passed by four votes, with one member, Lee White of Montauk, having recused himself, the board gave John Ryan of Surfside Avenue an okay to build a 100-foot-long and 10-foot-wide stone structure to stem erosion from  stormwater and runoff. The work will involve regrading an eroding stream, or gully, that runs over the bluffs and putting in cedar terracing along its west side. There  are freshwater and tidal wetlands on the property.

  At a public hearing on the application on Aug. 16, members of the Surfrider Foundation, the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, and some Montauk residents had voiced opposition to the proposal, which has received approval from the State Department of Environmental Conservation. Because the property is slightly east of Shadmoor State Park, however, the record was held open so that the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation could comment.

    In a letter dated Sept. 11, M. Pamela Otis, director of environmental management for that office, discussed how the proposed rock revetment had the potential to contribute to erosion at Shadmoor.

 “When considering this application, the Town of East Hampton should adhere to the L.W.R.P. [Local Waterfront Revitalization Program] policy, minimizing flooding and erosion hazards through nonstructural means, carefully-selected, long-term structural measures, and appropriate siting of structures.”

    She also suggested that the environmental assessment form that had been prepared on the application be updated to include the recent discovery of two additional endangered plants. She wrote that while it appeared “there would be no direct impacts to known rare plant populations,” it was “possible that increased flow could lead to increased erosion of the bluffs on the east side of the project area.” She requested more information about stormwater control and clarification of the work zone.    

    Board members, however, agreed there was merit in the project, suggesting that it might help slow the speed of the erosion. Both the chairman and vice chairman of the panel spoke in favor of approval. Philip Gamble, the chairman, said the project would “have the least amount of damage to surrounding area and beaches and Shadmoor. Erosion is going to happen either way on this property. We’re trying to protect this person’s property,” he said.

    “It doesn’t seem fair to make the situation worse for the homeowner,” Don Cirillo, vice chairman, said. “If he wants this initiative, I see no reason to stop him. It won’t stop the water, but hopefully will stop the erosion.”

    “It’s a waterfall over there. Whatever is going up will come down,” Sharon McCobb, a member of the panel, said. Another board member, Alex Walter, noted that Larry Penny, the town’s director of natural resources, had approved the project and that the state had not put a “negative spin” on it.

    A majority of the town board voted last Thursday to sell East Hampton’s 50-percent share of the Poxabogue Golf Center to Southampton Town, the joint owner.

    According to the terms of the sale, East Hampton will sell its half-share of the site, for which it paid $3.25 million in 2004, to Southampton for $2.2 million.

    The vote came toward the end of a meeting during which two speakers asked the board not to proceed with the sale until it could be more fully discussed and public opinion weighed.

    Jordy Mark, a member and former co-chairwoman of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee, which was involved in the initial discussions of and supported the golf center’s purchase, told the board that Poxabogue is “an incredible asset in our community, because it is used by every age group, every economic level. It is a real community facility.”

    “I think the community deserves to participate” in the decision as to its future, Ms. Mark, an employee of The Star, said.

    A proposal to develop the land housing the driving range and golf course into residential lots prompted a public outcry to save the facility, and the course was bought for $6.5 million, with each town paying half.

    Although the Sagaponack site is within Southampton Town, Poxabogue’s popularity with East Hampton residents and its proximity to the town border were the basis for East Hampton’s partnership with the neighboring town.

    Southampton used its community preservation fund, while East Hampton issued an 18-year bond to raise the money.

    “I am told it was one of the most enthusiastically supported purchases,” Ms. Mark said last Thursday. “The way it functions now serves the community.”

    “I’m not a golfer,” she said. “I really speak to this as a member of the community who sees a facility that is so loved and so well used.”

    “Southampton’s going to buy it with [the community preservation fund], and so it’s going to stay as it is,” Supervisor Bill Wilkinson told her.

    Zachary Cohen, a Democratic candidate for supervisor, questioned whether the sale had been adequately analyzed. “I don’t really feel the board is prepared tonight to vote on Poxabogue.” For instance, he said that the “quantifiable benefit” to the community, such as the value to East Hampton residents of a discounted rate for golf games, should be considered.

    In addition, he questioned the fiscal wisdom of the sale, pointing out that even after it no longer owns the facility, East Hampton will have to pay interest on money borrowed for the purchase for the next four years, until the debt can legally be retired.

    Before the vote last Thursday, Councilwoman Julia Prince recommended that the board table the matter and invite the public to weigh in. She reminded Mr. Wilkinson of comments he had made earlier in the meeting. “Everybody on the board is in favor of selling the asset,” she said. “However, as Bill said earlier, we do learn a lot from public hearings.” She abstained from the vote on the sale resolution, which passed with four yes votes.

    This week, Mr. Cohen and his running mates for town board issued a statement calling the sale a “tax trick” by the supervisor, allowing him to lower taxes next year by eliminating the payment of principal on the debt, although the interest payments must remain in the budget.

    “Once again, in his desire to keep our property tax rate low for the upcoming year, Supervisor Wilkinson is loading us taxpayers with higher and unavoidable taxes further down the road. Is this an election-year gimmick? At the very least, it is imprudent finance,” the release said.

     But according to Len Bernard, the town budget officer, “This is beyond a no-brainer. You don’t lose anything by selling it.”

    The town will save in the long run, he said, and according to his figures the $1.7 million remaining from the sale proceeds after making debt principal payments from it for the next four years will not only cover the payoff on the bond but also leave $38,000 to spare.

    “I find it odd that people would poke holes in something that will save the town about $2.5 to $2.6 million in taxes over the next 12 years,” Mr. Bernard said Tuesday.

    “There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Ms. Mark told the board last week. “I think that you’re selling us all short if you think that this is ready for a vote. All of the issues deserve a public hearing.” She submitted a letter with similar sentiments written by Sam Kramer, also a former Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee co-chairman and currently a Democratic candidate for town trustee.

    Ms. Mark reminded Mr. Wilkinson of a conversation some time ago in which she had told him about her concern over rumors of a possible Poxabogue sale. He assured her, Ms. Mark said, that the rumors were untrue.

    “Even if the end result is to sell it, I still think the members of the community deserve to discuss, and deserve to be convinced,” she said.

    “We do public hearings when we’re obliged to do public hearings,” the supervisor said.

    According to Mr. Bernard, the remaining debt on the property would total approximately $2.4 million, in principal and interest, by the end of the bond period, in 2023.

    Proceeds of the sale to Southampton, plus some $200,000 that is expected — East Hampton’s half of a capital reserve fund into which the profits from Poxabogue have been placed — would be set aside in an interest-bearing reserve fund for paying off the bond debt.

    By selling its share right now, Mr. Bernard said, and paying off the entirety of the remaining debt in four years — the earliest, by law, that the bond can be paid off — the town will save some $288,000 in interest. In addition, after that the principal payments that would have been made until 2023 can be eliminated from annual budgets, he said. Principal payments of about $180,000 per year can be made from the sale proceeds for the next four years.

    But the town will still have to pay annual interest payments of about $82,500 for each of the next four years until then, money that will have to be included in annual budgets and raised through taxes. Federal and state law allows the town to use the sale proceeds that have been set aside only to pay off the bond principal, and not the interest, Mr. Bernard said Tuesday.

    Mr. Cohen said last week that it doesn’t make sense to have to continue making interest payments on a loan for a property the town doesn’t own.

    In the political press release, which was titled “Supervisor Wilkinson Shows Rash Judgment in Uninformed Decision to Sell ‘Poxy,’ ” he said that according to his calculations, the sale price “will not even be sufficient to pay off the debt that is still owed.”

    “By 2016, the town will have paid out $2.2 million in principal, interest, and fees, and will have no ownership of anything to show for all that taxpayer money. All the townspeople will have are memories of having once partnered with Southampton in ownership of this beloved local institution, known to locals as ‘Poxy,’ ” the release said.

     Items such as the number of rounds of golf played annually by East Hampton residents and the total savings on discounted greens fees, the value of income from the facility and capital improvements made, as well as projected income, should be considered, according to the candidates’ statement. The property, they asserted, could provide “substantial income” in the future, after it is paid off.

    “Why would we sell an income-producing asset that also provides benefits of use to the residents without having first looked at other less productive and less popular assets?” the candidates asked. In their view, according to the release, the decision on Poxabogue “demonstrates the same lack of research and insight” shown in other proposed property sales — of the commercial fishing docks in Montauk and that hamlet’s Fort Pond House.

    Mr. Wilkinson had publicly advocated selling the docks, but then backed off in the face of opposition by fishermen, saying the docks were merely one of a number of properties included in a list prepared by the Planning Department. The Fort Pond House was placed on the market, but the sale has been challenged in a lawsuit.

    The Democrats cited the original resolution approving the towns’ joint purchase of the golf center, which concluded that there was a need for public golf facilities. They said that that situation has not changed. They also said that with Southampton as sole owner, the style of the course could be drastically changed, or use of the site could be changed to a different type of park.

    Last week, both Ms. Mark and Mr. Cohen questioned whether the contract of sale included a provision ensuring a discount for East Hampton residents. Mr. Bernard said this week that the topic had been broached with Southampton officials and that they were amenable to such a codicil.

    East Hampton Town’s come-hither Web site, with information for media production companies that town officials hope will come here for movie, commercial, or still-photography shoots, is online at filmthehamptons.org.

    The site was developed by members of the town’s media advisory committee, which was convened by the town board in order to develop media business here. Councilwoman Theresa Quigley has been working closely with the group.

    The Web site was launched last Thursday to coincide with the Hamptons International Film Festival, and information about it was distributed at film festival events.

    The site provides information about services here, from production facilities such as East Hampton Studio to hotels, caterers, and other professionals, and includes a gallery of photographs of different locations throughout the town.

    A logo created by a graphic design volunteer depicts a tripod with a lighthouse on top emitting beams of light and says, “We are open for business.” The site calls East Hampton a “tax and permit-friendly destination.” There is a direct link to the town’s filming-permit application.

    Media advisory committee members have contacted East Hampton High School staff members about initiating a program for students who would take additional photographs of East Hampton to be put on the Web site. In the future, Cesar Vera, a media advisory committee member, said, they would like to have an internship program enabling students to work with production companies shooting here.

    The Film the Hamptons Web site can track the number of visitors and their whereabouts. During the film festival weekend, Mr. Vera said, there was an uptick of visitors to the site.

    He said the town had seen “a big increase since last year” in the number of media shoots here and that he expected the numbers to continue to increase.

    During a recent four-day shoot here, $266,000 was spent locally by people working on the television show “Royal Pains,” Ms. Quigley said.  

    The owners of the Surf Lodge in Montauk, who have accrued more than 640 alleged town code violations over the past four months, submitted site plans to the East Hampton Town Planning Board on Sept. 21. The board will discuss them at its meeting on Wednesday.

    The applicant, Edgemere Montauk L.L.C., with the principals Jayma Cardoso and Rob McKinley, wants to put a 5-by-8-foot hot dog “cart” in a parking area and a 7-by-12-foot seasonal covered wait service area on a pre-existing deck. The Surf Lodge has permitted commercial uses as a restaurant and motel dating from before town code restrictions on such uses.

    In a Planning Department memo dated Monday, an initial site plan evaluation reveals that at minimum, a natural resources special permit is required for the project, as both proposed structures are within 150 feet of Fort Pond, which is in a harbor protection district. While a diagram for the wait service area has not been submitted, it would need a variance because the rear deck is only 31 feet from the bulkhead.

    The site plan indicates that the hot dog cart would be in an area reserved for handicapped-accessible parking, the memo said. There is no approved site plan for parking on record, but because of the big crowds the Surf Lodge attracts, the number of parking spaces there is well below the requirements of the town code.

    The Planning Department suggested that eliminating a parking space to make room for the hot dog cart would not be ideal and that a parking variance could be necessary. It was recommended that the applicants put the cart somewhere else.

    According to the memo, aerial photographs show that there are structures at the Surf Lodge that have not received site plan approval. Some small accessory structures — patios and sheds, for instance — appear to have been moved, taken down, or built without site plan approval or variances, according to the Planning Department. In addition, since the most recent certificate of occupancy, which dates from 1998, a patio was added to the south of the deck, the memo says.

    The Planning Department advised the applicants to formally add those structures to the proposal.