A federal lawsuit against East Hampton Town alleging discrimination against the clients of a private residential substance abuse treatment facility in Northwest, filed in January after the town reversed its approval of the operation, has been put on hold so that the parties can negotiate an out-of-court settlement.

    Safe Harbor Retreat L.L.C., the owner of the Dunes East Hampton, withdrew its complaint late last week after a judge denied a request by both sides to extend a filing deadline. “The parties are going to try to come to an amicable agreement,” Brian Sokoloff, the attorney for the town in the matter, said Tuesday.

    The lawsuit was withdrawn, however, without prejudice, meaning that if a settlement can’t be agreed upon, the matter can again be referred to court.

    The Dunes, a high-end, private-pay-only center, has been treating clients with drug and alcohol addictions since 2010. Before it opened its doors, it was endorsed by then Supervisor-Elect Bill Wilkinson, now serving his second term in office, and got a go-ahead from Tom Preiato, the town’s acting chief building inspector.

    Based on descriptions submitted by Safe Harbor Retreat about how the center would operate, Mr. Preiato determined that the residents would be functioning as a family unit, thus allowing the residential property to be used for the center.

    But, the lawsuit against the town alleges, Mr. Preiato reversed his decision after the town received a complaint from George Meredith, the owner of the Seafield Center, another private treatment center, in Westhampton Beach. The reversal requires the Dunes to submit a site plan application and obtain a special permit from the town planning board in order to operate legally on its rented residential property at 26 Bull Run.

    The lawsuit claimed that the effect of that decision violates the federal Fair Housing and Americans With Disabilities Acts, as well as the Constitutional due process clause, by threatening to deny housing opportunities to recovering alcoholics and substance abusers in East Hampton, discriminating against them, and causing them distress and setbacks in their efforts at recovery.

    Neighbors of the rehab house, meanwhile, have hired an East Hampton attorney, Jeffrey Bragman, to make their case that use of the property by the Dunes should have been subject to planning board review.

    Frustrated that the town has not compelled the Dunes to submit a planning board application and has allowed it to continue operating since Mr. Preiato’s new ruling last September, Mr. Bragman, on behalf of Anthony Liberatore of 20 Bull Run, sent a letter to town officials last week putting them on notice that “in the absence of appropriate town action to enforce zoning, New York State Town Law . . . authorizes the initiation of taxpayer litigation to do so.” Mr. Bragman said this week that the residents could seek an injunction to shut the Dunes down.

    According to the lawsuit, Joseph McKinsey, the founder of the Dunes, met with Mr. Wilkinson in December 2009, just before Mr. Wilkinson took office, and the supervisor-elect expressed his support for Mr. McKinsey’s plan.

    In February 2010, according to the narrative submitted to the court, Mr. McKinsey met with Mr. Preiato to advise him of his plans. In a letter sent to the Building Department later that month, Mr. McKinsey asked that the town make a determination that the center’s residents would be considered the “functional equivalent of a family,” allowing the facility to operate in a residential zone without first obtaining a planning board permit.

    Early in March of that year, Mr. Preiato issued a determination that the plan met the town’s zoning code requirements. A 60-day period, during which any challenges to zoning determinations must be made, passed with no challenges submitted.

    According to the lawsuit, Safe Harbor Retreat, “as a result of Mr. Preiato’s determination,” spent approximately $2 million “to establish 26 Bull Run as a residential treatment facility.”

    In July 2010, a letter signed by Supervisor Wilkinson, John Jilnicki, the town attorney, and East Hampton Town Police Chief Eddie Ecker was submitted to the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services in support of Safe Harbor Retreat’s state license application. The license was issued, and the rehab center opened on Nov. 20, 2010.

    The lawsuit says that in November 2010 and again the following summer, town officials toured the facility and “continued to show their support.”

    However, according to the suit, in September of last year, the town’s director of public safety, Patrick Gunn, met with Madeline Narvilas, Safe Harbor Retreat’s executive director and a former East Hampton Town attorney, and told her that, following an article about the facility in The New York Post, there had been a complaint.

    The sole complainant, the lawsuit alleges, was Mr. Benedict, the Seafields owner. Mr. Gunn, the lawsuit says, asked if the Dunes would consider applying for a special permit and site plan approval from the town based on a “change of use.”

    An attempt to reach Mr. Meredith was referred to Mark Epley, Seafield’s executive director, who is also the Southampton Village Mayor. Mr. Epley did not return a call for comment by press time.

    Mr. Bragman, who represents 30 neighbors of the Dunes, said Tuesday that he believes the nature of the center was misrepresented to the town at the start. It was portrayed, he said, as more of a “sober house,” where a group lives together for mutual support, versus as a residential treatment center that provides counseling and other clinical services.

    In letters to Mr. Preiato as well as to the state licensing agency, Mr. McKinsey stated that only “nonclinical” services would be offered at the house, and that residents would go elsewhere for treatment.

    The center’s Web site indicates otherwise, Mr. Bragman asserted Tuesday. “The neighbors have on occasion heard therapy sessions they’ve had outdoors,” he said. “There’s a pretty serious amount of critical care going on there. It’s not just a house.”

    In addition, he said, “there’s a lot of coming and going,” prompting complaints from nearby residents about traffic and noise. “This thing is impacting a neighborhood; the neighbors have never had a public hearing. ”

    The initial support of the town board and other officials, Mr. Bragman said, “short-circuited a process that otherwise exists. The critical thing is getting that neutral, predictable working process of planning review.”

    The Dunes’s submission to the court says that in late September of last year, Mr. McKinsey received a letter from Mr. Preiato telling him that upon further review of the operation of the facility, “namely the providing of on-site addiction treatments and services, as well as the transient nature of your clients’ varied residencies at the facility, it is now clear that such an operation is not permitted in a residential zone without site plan approval.” He said the Dunes could be classified as a “semi-public facility.”

    A semi-public facility designation does not rule out a location in a residential zone. However, the planning board must approve such a use, and issue a special permit for it, after first considering potential impacts to the surrounding neighborhood.

    Mr. Preiato apparently followed up his September letter with another to Mr. McKinsey, in early November, saying that the matter required immediate attention.

    A counsel for the Dunes wrote back later that month questioning the basis for Mr. Preiato’s conclusion.

    The standoff continued, until, the lawsuit says, Mr. Preiato appeared at the center in January and asked to inspect it. Ms. Narvilas, it says, told him that any contact should be through the center’s attorneys.

    Later that month, after correspondence between the parties, Mr. Jilnicki informed the center’s lawyer of his support for Mr. Preiato’s position and said that the building inspector would be “proceeding with appropriate efforts to enforce the requirements of the East Hampton Town Code.” Safe Harbor Retreat, a k a the Dunes, filed suit in federal court on Jan. 25.

    The lawsuit asked the court to keep the town from taking any action that would interfere with the continued use of the house by the Dunes; to declare that the town has “illegally discriminated” against the Dunes “by arbitrarily and capriciously applying its zoning, building, and property maintenance codes” to the site, thus violating the housing and disabilities acts, and Constitution; to issue an order stating that the plaintiffs’ use of the house is consistent with town zoning, and to award compensatory damages and costs.

    In a statement issued yesterday, Mr. Gunn said “no charges have been filed on this property, however, with the assistance of outside counsel, the town has been engaged in negotiations to resolve the matter through voluntary compliance.  It is the town’s position that Safe Harbor Retreat, in its current operational form, requires [a] site plan and special permit and [zoning board of appeals] setback relief. Because of potential litigation and the sensitive nature of the negotiations, no further information will be forthcoming, other than that our expectation is for resolution very soon,” he said.

    The terrible moment, the awful decision being forced upon her, the gut-wrenching scene in which she and her husband were the principal players was being played out in warm tropical water, under big puffy clouds that floated across a blue Caribbean sky above the island of Virgin Gorda.

    Maria Beaulieu was exhausted. Waves were breaking over her head. Her husband, John McWhinnie, was in the throes of severe panic. She could see it in his eyes. She told him he had to calm down, to try to float on his back, but she knew from past, far calmer times in the water together, that he didn’t believe he could. They became separated.

    The command “Swim to the right, swim to the right!” being shouted at her by a man she didn’t know, a man she had seen dive into the water after hearing her cries, suddenly made sense. He was telling them to go with the rip current that had them in its grip, not against it as they had been.

    Over and over, George Chait yelled at her to come toward him. There was a sandbar.

    “John had gone in ahead of me. I was defogging my mask. When I got in and looked up, wow! He was so far out. Maybe he saw something.” 

    Ms. Beaulieu met Mr. McWhinnie in 1987 at a “hideous bank processing center” in Maine where they both worked. Last month, overlooking Gardiner’s Bay from the house she had shared with her husband and soulmate of 24 years, Ms. Beaulieu stared out a window and far beyond the hilltop lawn where their marriage had taken place.

    She said that with summer coming on, with people going to the beach to swim, she wanted to tell her story.

    She described her husband as a poet philosopher, a man who had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees simultaneously from Boston College, and who had taught in the Philippines as a Fulbright scholar before returning to the United States, where his love of rare books and manuscripts was kindled in the dusty archives of Columbia University.

    “He got to handle one-of-a-kind, exquisite things, and it was up there near Columbia in the book stalls on the street where he found a book by Kerouac that was signed with the odd line ‘look out for low-flying pigeons.’ He knew the signature. The guy was asking $40. We had no money. He was at school and I was making jewelry. The book sold for $600, and the bug bit.”

    Ms. Beaulieu said her husband was a rare book dealer first and foremost. For a time he had his own shop, Beatific Books, that grew out of his love for the beat writers and poets including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. “He was a frustrated writer. He wanted to write. I said, ‘Stop selling books and write one.’ He was a natural storyteller. He would entertain children he claimed not to enjoy, magical stories.”

    Mr. McWhinnie later managed Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, a rare book emporium and gallery in East Hampton, with a second shop located in New York City. “He developed a clientele over the course of eight years. He knew what they wanted.”

    “I was living in Houlton, Me. John was born in Michigan. His dad worked for Ford. He was 18. I was 19. He walked in the door wearing a vintage motorcycle jacket like a Ralph Lauren ad. Within a week we were dating. I knew he was it. This was the one. Our first date was on leap-year day. We took all these steps together in life.” Many were penurious in the beginning, she said. “We always lived year to year.”

    The couple discovered the Caribbean in the late 1990s. “We went to Guadeloupe. I’ve always been drawn to the water. We hadn’t snorkeled, but took a glass-bottomed boat at the Jacques Cousteau Preserve. Oh my God! We went to St. Lucia and snorkeled. He came up and said, ‘There’s a brown snake with pink polka dots.’ ”

    “He was uncomfortable in the water. He did a show at the East Hampton gallery in August one year, Michael Halsband’s surfing book.” The book featured the surfing legend Joel Tudor, who invited Mr. McWhinnie to California. “He got a lesson from Joel. He called me and said, ‘I just went surfing. I got up.’ It was a thrill for him. His face would light up when he caught a wave on a boogie board. He had a lot of surfer friends and he would talk conditions, but my Scotch-Irish-skinned husband was a bookworm. He loved this, our coffee chairs, the house built for this view, perfect for reading, relaxing.”

    Jan. 6, 2012, was a Friday. The couple were vacationing on Virgin Gorda. They packed a light lunch and hiked 45 minutes from their hotel to get to a more secluded beach. “We got there about 10 a.m. The tide was high, the surf very big. I was in shock. I had never seen it like that. It was a gorgeous day, big white puffy clouds. I was stunned at the size of the waves — but beautiful.”

    The couple took several cooling dips during the day. The snorkeling was compromised by sand and silt kicked up by the surf. “On one of the last times, he looked at me and said, ‘You don’t like it.’ I said, ‘I like it a click less.’ That’s what we used to say, ‘a click more or a click less.’ ”

    “I don’t like being slammed. I grew up on lakes. I love it when the ocean is like a lake, a beautiful gentle ride. That’s why I loved to go down to the Caribbean. The movement is so healing, and for us, with no kids, and John’s season is the summer, we’d go when everyone else was coming back.”

    Ms. Beaulieu’s eyes stared out her window, focused on a group of chickens feeding in the past. “We only had a nut bar and a couple of apples. Right before the last time we went in, a chicken was looking for food. John being John decided to share his apple. He tossed a piece to the chicken but scared it off.”

    “We looked at the water. The tide was out. It looked like we might snorkel. ‘When we leave, the chicken might calm down.’ ”

    “John went in ahead of me. I was defogging my mask,” Ms. Beaulieu said, returning to the moment she saw her husband taken by the rip current.

    “We were in the water 30 seconds. How did this happen? Nobody was in the water. We didn’t mean to go so far out. What’s going on? He looked at me. I knew it was panic. Then we hit coral. Oh my God, what way do we go? And the waves were hitting us. At one point I pushed him toward the beach. It probably made it worse for him.”

    Ms. Beaulieu said she remembered seeing Mr. Chait and his wife watching them from the beach. “I was waving, I knew I needed to do the two-arm wave. I screamed at the top of my lungs. It probably further panicked John. I saw George put his things down. I told John he had to calm down. ‘You’ve got to breathe. Just lean back; pick your feet up.’ He was looking at me for guidance. It was then I heard George say, ‘Go right, go right.’ ”

    “I saw him take at least one stroke to the right. Walls of water were hitting me. John was on the other side of the walls. I was exhausted. I think I was out of the current. George was on the sandbar trying to see John. He brought me to the sandbar. I said, ‘He’s panicking. Please go get him.’ I heard a woman scream for me to get out of the water. I knew George knew how to get us out of this mess. I allowed him, put faith in him. I had taken on water, exhausted, given my all, everything I could for John.”

    Ms. Beaulieu recalled the agonizing moment she realized she could no longer help her husband. George Chait brought Mr. McWhinnie to shore. “For 45 minutes they worked on him.”

    A man approached her. “I knew he didn’t have good news. He walked away, hoping, I guess. Then he came back a few minutes later. I stared him down. I’m going to change this in his eyes. You’re not going to tell me what you’re going to tell me.”

    She remembered thinking about her husband drowning. “He must have gotten to a spot when he couldn’t see me, when he gave into it. They say it’s euphoric.”

    John McWhinnie was 43. 

    “Life turns on a dime,” Ms. Beaulieu said. "There’s The Times, but I don’t read it. I don’t watch television. There are so many triggers. I feel his presence all the time.”

    Petitions calling for East Hampton Town to put a proposed sale of a Montauk alleyway to a townwide vote were declared invalid last week by Fred Overton, the town clerk, prompting a lawsuit by a group that helped collect the 644 voters’ signatures.

    The $35,000 sale of a portion of a public alley that bisects the old Ronjo motel property downtown was approved by the town board’s Republican majority last month, over the objections of the Democratic minority members, who said the land should first be appraised, and that consideration should be given to whether public access to the area should be retained.

    In a presentation to the town board last Thursday, Mr. Overton cited flaws in the petitions, such as the omission of required wording, which invalidated all of the signatures. He said there were other failings, such as 170 signatures not accompanied by a complete address and 40 signatures by people not registered to vote.

    An Article 78 lawsuit that was filed in State Supreme Court on Tuesday not only contests the requirement that a certain phrase appear on the petition — which says in part “that my present place of residence is truly stated opposite my signature hereto” — but asserts that, under applicable state law, there is no provision calling for the town clerk to render an opinion.

    What is proscribed, the lawsuit petitioners say, is that any challenges to the petition must be filed with the town clerk within five days after submission of the petition, which occurred on April 4. That time period has elapsed, and no challenges were filed. All challenges would have been reviewed by the court.

    Jeanne Frankl, the head of the East Hampton Democratic Committee, which spearheaded the petition drive, said Tuesday that those bringing suit represent “a diverse group of people.” Besides Ms. Frankl, they include Betty Mazur, Elaine Jones, chairwoman of the East Hampton Independence Party, Fred Nagel, Mary Miller, and Zachary Cohen, whose bid for supervisor last fall failed by a narrow 15 votes.

    “Our view is, we owe it to the public who signed the petition to challenge” the clerk’s invalidation, Ms. Frankl said.

    “I think that the law is very clear,” Mr. Overton said Tuesday.

    “Hours and hours of work was spent on this,” he told the town board last Thursday. “It’s been a long, arduous task.” He said he had consulted with John Jilnicki, the town attorney, who provided examples of case law that supported his decision. “I insisted that I be on firm, solid ground before I made the determination,” Mr. Overton said.

    “It was my understanding that the town clerk was responsible for validating the signatures,” he said Tuesday, citing a precedent that occurred in 1999 when another permissive referendum petition was filed at East Hampton Town Hall.

    Regardless of the petition’s legal standing, Ms. Frankl told the board last Thursday, “I think that the petitions speak for themselves. . . . So I hope you will, as our leaders, regard what our citizens said as a guide for you.”

    And, she said about the town board’s vote on April 17 to obtain its own appraisal of the alley, for a maximum cost of $3,000, “It’s really gratifying that the town board majority has finally acknowledged the appropriateness of appraising town property before a sale.”

    However, Ms. Frankl and other speakers criticized the board for not naming the appraiser who would be hired, instead leaving a blank line in the resolution.

    In addition, in a letter to the board, Sam Kramer, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the Article 78, said that once the referendum petition was filed, the board’s actions were legally limited to either rescinding the resolution of sale or holding the referendum.

    “This resolution looks like window dressing after the fact, to cover an error made by the majority of the board,” Ms. Mazur, a Democratic committeewoman, said last Thursday.

     “It’s a charade,” Ms. Frankl said. According to the resolution, the appraisal is to be done because “the town board wishes to confirm that the agreed upon consideration for the surplus property set forth in Resolution 2012-259 is fair and reasonable consideration for the property to be conveyed.” 

    “I think hiring an appraiser to ‘confirm’ a price is a mockery,” she said Tuesday.

    “What it sounds like,” Ms. Frankl told the board at last Thursday’s meeting, “is the majority buying an appraisal to sanitize the reckless action after the fact. It insults the citizenry of the town,” she said.

    John Whelan, citing public controversy over a number of the sales of public property that have been proposed by the administration, such as the sale of town docks and the Fort Pond House property in Montauk, said that he hoped the board would work “towards a more clear, focused policy . . . a policy that the public can clearly understand when it comes to the sale of town property.” Mr. Whelan ran for a town board seat on the Democratic ticket in 2009.

    “You really, really took the cake,” David Buda, a Springs resident, said to the board about its adoption of an incomplete resolution.

    When hiring appraisers, the town’s normal practice is to select from a county-approved list. All appraisers on the list are based in Suffolk County. The town usually elicits bids from several appraisers before selecting one to hire.

    After approving the resolution, the town board did not publicly discuss or vote on who would be hired.

    According to the town clerk’s office, Ronald Paradiso, a vice president at Jerome Haims Realty in New York City, has been retained. By phone yesterday he said that he is a member of the Appraisal Institute and has done numerous appraisals on the East End and in East Hampton Town, and had received a call from Councilwoman Theresa Quigley. He said he would give an “honest opinion” of the property’s value.

    Mr. Buda also remarked at last week’s meeting on a decision by the senior building inspector, made after a meeting with the Ronjo property owners and several town officials, rendering the project eligible for a site plan approval.

    Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley interrupted him, asking why he would direct comments about a planning board application to the town board. “We’re not going to interfere with the planning board,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

    “I’m saying that as a result of the actions of three of your town departments — Planning, Building, and the town attorneys — the planning board is acting in a [certain] way. . . .” Mr. Buda said. “The blinders that were placed on the planning board . . . was the result of directions from your town attorneys.”

    Ms. Quigley called his comments “inflammatory.”

    “Mr. Buda, you’ve made a very serious allegation against several of our departments,” she said.

    “We’re not deciding what is art,” Gail Pickering, the chairwoman of the Sag Harbor Village Zoning Board of Appeals, said Tuesday night after the board voted to deny Janet Lehr and Vered’s application to keep a pair of 16-foot-tall “Legs” by Larry Rivers on their Madison Street property.

    “Art can be both art, and a structure subject to zoning,” Ms. Pickering said, explaining the board’s decision to uphold the village building inspector’s determination that the sculpture qualifies as a structure under village code, and must either meet the required setbacks or receive variances if it does not.     Upon hearing the final decision, Vered called the board “a bunch of chickens.”

    “It is disgusting,” she said as she held up images of the proposed Harbor Heights gas station renovation, which shows a brightly lit canopy over the gas pumps in front of a new convenience store. “In a residential neighborhood?” she asked. “That structure is okay because it’s far enough from the road?” She was then asked to leave the room unless her discussions were relevant to the current application being heard. She and Ms. Lehr stepped outside to vent their frustrations before returning for the rest of the meeting.

    “In all of the years I have been here on this board,” said Anton Hagen, the first trustee to explain his opposition, “I have never seen as much of a variance asked for.” In order to keep “Legs” where it is — one foot from their Henry Street property line — the couple needed a 34-foot variance from side-yard setbacks as well as height and pyramid law variances. “It would go against all of the other decisions I have made over 10 years,” Mr. Hagen said.

    Benedetta Deubel, another board member, agreed. “I have traveled all over the world to look at art,” she said during the hearing on the application in March. “In this case it is a legal matter.”

    The first thing the board needed to consider, Ms. Pickering explained Tuesday night, was whether Timothy Platt, the building inspector, was in error when he determined in January that “Legs” was an accessory structure. They decided that Mr. Platt’s decision was “rational and reasonable,” she said. The board pointed to a prior case considered similar involving a heron sculpture that Southold Town determined to be a structure. The decision in that case was aid to be a factor in the Vered-Lehr decision.

    Also taken into consideration was that “several neighbors appeared before the board, vehemently opposed,” Ms. Pickering said, adding that the size, location, and light disrupt the neighbor’s enjoyment of their own properties.

    Speaking at the hearing in March, Vered said that the loudest voice of opposition was that of the homeowner next door, who she said “has not lived there for 10 years. When we bought [the house], he wanted it torn down because it was old and dilapidated. We put our life and money into it. His house is for sale,” she said. Another woman, she said, “didn’t like the light. I can accommodate her. Those are the only two people that didn’t like it. Both have their houses for sale.”

    The couple collected more than 500 signatures of people in favor of keeping the sculpture where it is and presented the petition to the board last month along with 120 e-mails and letters of support. “There is no such thing as one size fits all,” Vered said at the time. “Every case has to have its own merits.”

    “Dimension requirements are the issue here,” Ms. Pickering said Tuesday, adding that it is “clearly an undesirable change to the neighborhood.”

    “If they were looking for a foot or two feet . . . but it seems like an enormous undertaking to give them a variance,” Brendan Skislock, another board member, said in explaining his no vote.

    The board’s attorney suggested giving Vered and Ms. Lehr 60 days to remove the sculpture, Ms. Pickering proposed instead that the sculpture be allowed to remain until Sept. 15.

    With the exception of Michael Bromberg, who recused himself from the application, the trustees unanimously agreed.

    Later in the meeting, Mr. Skislock had an application of his own before the board. He and Vincent Frezzo requested a variance for an in-ground swimming pool to be built within 27 feet of their front lot line, where a minimum of 35 feet are required, and 27 feet from a wetland boundary, where a minimum of 75 feet is required. Mr. Skislock recused himself from deliberations.

    Vered spoke in opposition. “I know that Mr. Skislock is one of the members of this committee. I hope that will not work to his advantage,” she said, then asked, “Do you have the jurisdiction to decide on distance from wetlands? Did he get permission?”

    Ms. Pickering explained that “since the property is bulkheaded, the [Department of Environmental Conservation] jurisdiction disappears.”

    The application has not been publicly heard by the Harbor Committee, which must approve it, but it has been put in their hands, according to Dennis Downs, an attorney representing Mr. Skislock. The lawyer said that Richard Warren, the village’s environmental consultant, had reviewed the application and made a number of requests including a drywell. Mr. Skislock’s property is pre-existing and nonconforming, with 1,946 square feet of wetlands. Mr. Downs said a cited “Eco-smart pool filtration system” is planned and that the septic system will be moved from the rear to the front yard, farther from wetlands.

    “I have been inclined to approve it,” Mr. Hagen said. “I think the Harbor Committee looked at this. I don’t think I want to argue with them as far as protecting the wetlands.”

    Mr. Bromberg agreed, “I think this meets our criteria, no matter what the Harbor Committee says.”

    When the board unanimously approved the application, Vered yelled “Surprise!” and left the room.

    Whole Foods Market has signed a short-term lease to rent the former Plitt Ford dealership on Montauk Highway in Wainscott for the summer, a company spokesman said on Tuesday.

    “We’re going to do a pop-up store,” said Michael Sinatra, a spokesman for the national chain. “It’s going to be a farmers market. We’re very excited about being out there.”

    In an e-mail sent Tuesday, Mr. Sinatra said that “during the next couple of weeks, the Whole Foods Market team will be outfitting the space and creating a temporary store to service the area through the summer months, offering a variety of fresh produce, specialty items, and more.”

    While the actual opening date is not yet set, he said the market would most likely be open from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

    According to Gregg Saunders, the owner of the site, whose plan for a 17,500-square-foot retail store on the property is working its way through the East Hampton Town planning process, this summer will be a test for both him and Whole Foods to determine the long-term viability of a hub store at that location.

    It has been Mr. Saunders’s preference to lease to a gourmet food store as opposed to a major drugstore or furniture chain.

    “This is going to cost them a fortune,” he said last Thursday about the test run, adding that he has been negotiating with Whole Foods for the last several months, telling them, “People are begging for you out here.” Mr. Saunders owns several other buildings in the Northeast that are leased by Whole Foods.

    “It went from ‘No, no, no’ to ‘Let’s see how this works,’ ” he said of his conversations with Whole Foods executives. “Then, at the end of the summer, we can decide.”

    Some nearby merchants are welcoming the news.

    “I would love it,” said Colin Mather, owner of the Seafood Shop a few doors down on Montauk Highway. “Dead space next to your business is never a good thing. Something like that, even though they sell fish, we would feed off one another.”

    “More good food in the area means more people and more business for all of us,” Brad Thompson, an owner at Breadzilla, said yesterday. He acknowledged that there would be competition, but said there would also be “complementation.”

    Mr. Saunders’s longer-term plans to construct a new “hub store” on the property passed a big hurdle on April 4, when the planning board voted 6 to 0 (Bob Schaeffer was absent) that further environmental review was not required for the site, and — citing Mr. Saunders’s cooperation with the Town Planning Department and the board — specifically asked that his application be fast-tracked. The board noted that there had been no public opposition to the project, with the exception of concern expressed at a public hearing about increased traffic, a matter that was not explored in great detail.

    The Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee is scheduled to discuss Mr. Saunders’s application, as well as others pending in Wainscott, at its meeting on Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Wainscott Chapel.

    “This is the gateway to our community,” said Patrick Schutte, a planning board member, “and this is going to be a vast, vast improvement to what’s there, and it is going to far outweigh any detriment of the traffic, I don’t know how traffic can get any worse.”

    “It is a well-thought-out plan,” said Reed Jones, the board’s chairman. “The benefits clearly outweigh the negatives. It is a huge plus when you have someone willing to take the time and money to redevelop a building that is . . . ”

    “ . . . Is an eyesore,” the board’s vice chairwoman, Diana Weir, interjected.

    Mr. Reed laughed and agreed.

    “I appreciate seeing someone willing to come in and invest his money in our community,” Mr. Schutte added.

    “Are we at a stage now where we can simply say, we feel it is ready for approval and we can move to the resolution at the next meeting?” Mr. Jones asked the planning director, Marguerite Wolffsohn, after the board’s vote.

    Ms. Wolffsohn told the board that the next step was to send the plan to the Suffolk County Planning Department, and once that departmewnt approved it, the planning board could move to a resolution.

    “Is there nothing we can do to expedite it?” Mr. Reed asked.

    Ms. Weir, a veteran of town and county politics, replied that it was, indeed, possible for the planning board to express its desire to the county that the matter be expedited.

    Can the Whole Foods Market’s three-month visit to Wainscott turn into year-round residency?

    “It’s going to be up to the town, and the people of East Hampton,” Mr. Saunders said.

    Nat Miller stood in the basement workroom of his house in Springs last week mending a section of net soon to be part of the labyrinth of mesh that corrals fish into the parlor section of a fish trap.

    Rhumb Line, his elderly chocolate lab, moved gingerly around the mesh curtain as though he’d known of its dangers all of his life, which he has.

    Mr. Miller is a 13th-generation East Hampton local. His first child, a boy, is due to enter the world in August, the start of the 14th generation. 

    He graduated from East Hampton High School with the class of ’97 and, after spending a year crewing on a dragger, won a scholarship to the State University at Oswego. His last class of the week was on Thursdays, and during  bass season he would drive seven hours, fish until Monday afternoon, and drive back.

    His contemporaries include Paul, Dan, and Kelly Lester, who on Monday stood with other fishermen and their attorney at an outdoor press conference in Amagansett to announce their demand that the State Department of Environmental Conservation pay them for fish seized during a raid on their property. Last year they were found not guilty of violating fishery laws, but were never compensated for the seized fish. A story on this subject appears elsewhere in today’s paper.

    Plainspoken in the Bonac tradition, Mr. Miller is perhaps more voluble than many baymen, but not what you’d call chatty. In November, he was elected to be one of nine East Hampton Town Trustees. He has a bachelor’s degree in American history and Native American studies from Oswego, where he found that the upstate locals, “like Bonac, don’t like to move.”

    Stuart Vorpahl, a fisherman, former town trustee, and a town historian, is his uncle. Scott Bennett is another uncle. Being dropped off at the beach with a bait barrel and a net was one of his first memories.

    “I started on the ocean picking bluefish,” he said. He fished with Calvin Lester. “You didn’t get taught by Calvin, you got ‘lessoned in,’ ” he said with a smile for the late, often cantankerous, hard-working, and talented bayman.

    There’s no doubt that Mr. Miller has the Bonac pedigree, and he said it’s what he sees as his East Hampton birthright that brought him to the trustees.

    “I have an interest in American history, but the local heritage has had more of an impact. I’m not a politician, but I can’t see complaining and not trying to fix it. I’ve always told myself that for my kid, my grandson — I’d like to think this will be around 400 years from now. The people who live here and love this beautiful place are just as important as someone who takes a billion dollars to make it the way they want it. Money changes everything — the lawyers — but with the trustees they can’t do that.”

    He smiled when asked about the trustees’ recent “defeat” in State Supreme Court in the case that pitted the town’s 300-year old government body against Lloyd and Barbara Macklowe, owners of a vast estate on Georgica Beach.

    There was no question that the trustees, on behalf of the East Hampton public, own the beach there, and that fishermen have, for hundreds of years, had the right to “cart fish” on it. No doubt that today’s tourists, sportfishermen, and vacationing families can do their equivalent. The legal question was, where does that trustee beach end and the Macklowe property begin?

    The Macklowes claimed that a grassy dune had grown seaward due to sand accretion (forming a broader beach), the result of the Georgica jetties, and therefore their property had grown. The trustees argued the southerly border of the Macklowe’s property was established by deeded meets and bounds farther upland.

    Last month, Justice Thomas Whelan accepted the Macklowe attorney’s finding that in 1900, for a pittance, the trustees agreed to set the seaward border of the property in question and that of a number of neighboring properties, at the “southernmost line of beach grass on the dunes.”

    The trustees have appealed the decision. If the trustees should lose their appeal in the appellate division of the State Supreme Court, the decision will be binding on judges throughout Long Island. John Courtney, the trustee attorney, declined to comment.

    Mr. Miller smiled, and spoke about the “foresight” of the centuries-old trustees. “I think it’s a win. They messed their neighbors up good,” he said of the oceanfront property owners. The reason was simple, he said.

    If the southern boundary of the Macklowe’s property is established as the seaward extent of dune and beach grass, it follows that when that boundary is inevitably eroded, the trustees will maintain their claim to public beach no matter how far it creeps onto what had been the homeowner’s land.

    “We want to stop erosion. We like the idea of a dune ladder,” Mr. Miller said, referring to a wooden structure being tested on trustee-owned beach at Lazy Point that collects and holds sand. “But, once you put in a bulkhead, the beach goes. Then, there’s no beach for the public. If high tide winds up under a house that’s been raised on stilts — an application to do just that is now before the trustees — where’s the public’s access?”

    “A home is not an investment. It’s a place to live and raise a family. If a storm comes, [the beach] is more important than one person’s investment. Maybe we’re aware of what our grandparents saw, the doubling effect of development. Here there’s work, and family. It’s not a business venture.”

    “Our predecessors never thought about it,” Mr. Miller said, referring to today’s sea-level rise and chronic erosion. Still, he said, they knew enough not to build their houses in close proximity to the ocean. Two Mile Hollow was named for a reason. “It’s a hollow, and the sea is an uncontrollable thing.”

    Reasons for combining all the public schools on the South Fork into one consolidated district — at least in terms of money — were described at a meeting of the East Hampton School Board Tuesday night.

    The main conclusion of the district’s citizens advisory committee, after studying data for 2009-10, was that East Hampton spends more than the average school in Suffolk County — about 35 percent more.

    Bill Grathwohl, who spent 20 years on Wall Street and represented the committee at the meeting, said East Hampton had an average cost per pupil of $30,702, compared to a regional average of $22,735.

    The group had obtained New York State’s school report cards — which Mr. Grathwohl called “a wealth of information.” They compared East Hampton to other K-to-12 districts in Suffolk County and to schools of similar size in other areas. East Hampton’s costs, based on 1,871 children, were compared with districts that have between 1,000 and 2,000 students.

    “We have no specific agenda,” Mr. Grathwohl stressed. “It’s purely an objective look, and we wanted to make sure the board is aware of it.”

    East Hampton outdistanced the Southampton district somewhat; the Southampton per-pupil figure was $30,177. Mr. Grathwohl also reported on Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton’s per-pupil costs. Sag Harbor came in at $32,759, a few dollars over East Hampton, but tiny Bridgehampton’s per-pupil expense was $72,146.

    A mathematical formula, called a regression model, leveled the playing field, he said. The average cost per student was arrived at by calculating the overall average for all districts ($19,011). To that was added an average of $7 million in fixed costs per district and the total was divided by the number of students in each district. The model came up with an average cost of $22,735 to educate a student in districts of between 1,000 to 2,000.

    “This is not the cost of tuition,” Mr. Grathwohl pointed out. “This is the cost of everything in the school divided by the number of students.” He added that that “spending goes down in the larger schools.”

    Other comparable schools in Suffolk, he said, have 10.7 students to 1 teacher; East Hampton has a 9.5-to-1 ratio. “If East Hampton were to follow that model,” Mr. Grathwohl said, “it would have 175 teachers instead of 196.”

    However, Mr. Grathwohl also pointed out that student performance in Suffolk, as measured by a district’s average test scores, did not correlate with student-teacher ratios, spending, or size.

    Using the regression model, the committee showed that by combining districts in some form, East Hampton could see a decrease in spending ranging from 6 to 11 percent per student. Decreases for smaller districts that would join East Hampton would be greater.

    “There’s some noise in this data,” he acknowledged. “Another statistician could come up with a different set of numbers.”

    Laura Anker Grossman, the president of the school board, thanked the committee. “We will look at this in greater detail and study it,” she said. “It was really helpful. We will continue this dialogue.”

    East Hampton and the Springs School District already have agreed to study consolidation as part of their contract on tuition that Springs pays to East Hampton. Michael Hartner, the Springs superintendent, also has submitted an application for a grant to look at consolidation of six South Fork school districts and the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

    During the meeting the board also continued to look at possible cuts to the 2012-13 budget, proving that no amount was too small to consider. A recommendation that the high school contribute $4,000 to the district’s sailing team for the rest of this year — an amount previously borne by the Ross School, which participates — was met with a round of questions by the board and a split vote.

    After Alison Anderson, a board member, asked if the district could afford it, another board member, George Aman, called the sport “superfluous” and said it should be discontinued. “That money could go toward next year’s budget,” he said. The board voted to keep the program going for now, with Dr. Aman opposed.

    “I’m voting for the children,” Liz Pucci, a board member, said. The team had already begun sailing in the fall. Ms. Anderson was clearly uncomfortable although she voted with the majority.

    “We keep approving these wonderful things. What happens when we have to go back and take them away?”

    “It’s a horrible situation we’re in,” agreed Ms. Pucci.

    “This was very awkward,” Ms. Anderson said. “We should have known about this ahead of time.”

    “You should have voted no,” Dr. Aman said.

    On another topic, Arthur Goldman, a high school social studies teacher, wanted to clarify misinformation presented by a resident at a previous meeting and reported by The Star.

    Paul Fiondella had raised questions about the teachers retirement system, comparing what he deemed the state’s overspending on pensions to the economic calamity in Greece. Mr. Goldman called his statements “inflammatory and false. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

    Mr. Goldman said the independent Pew Center on the States had called New York’s pension fund one of the best managed in the country for two years in a row. “The average pension for a New York State employee is $19,000 a year,” Mr. Goldman continued. “The average for retirees from the teachers retirement system is $39,000.”

    The board also recognized Cameron Yusko and Tania Urichima, the 2012 valedictorian and salutatorian, with a round of applause and a standing ovation for the students’ parents, who were in the audience.

    And Richard Burns, the district’s interim superintendent, urged everyone at the meeting to visit Guild Hall’s student art exhibition. “The artistic expression is absolutely remarkable,” he said. “I was drawn into some of the works — they were stunning. What the teachers are doing here is unparalleled.”

    After the last summer season, when weekend fun at popular bars and restaurants regularly resulted in a tide of complaints by residents overwhelmed by noise, crowds, and traffic, particularly in Montauk, East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley has been working on legislation designed to limit the numbers of people that can gather outside at those spots, and hopes to get it in place before the cycle begins again.

    Under her proposal, being developed with Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, town attorneys, police, and other town officials, businesses offering live or amplified music would be required to obtain an “entertainment permit,” which would replace the current system of music permits.

    The new permit would set a maximum number of attendees, determined by the fire marshal individually for each establishment, and prescribe where they could gather, hours of operation, and other details. 

    “A violation would lead to the potential for the town to get an injunction” shutting down a continually offending business, Ms. Quigley said Tuesday. Limits on the town’s ability to obtain an injunction when a business continually violates aspects of the town code have frustrated residents and town officials in dealing with problematic clubs, such as Montauk’s Surf Lodge, which remained open despite amassing over 680 citations last summer.

    An entertainment permit law could be passed right away, Ms. Quigley said at the board’s meeting earlier this week, and other provisions, such as occupancy limits tied to septic system capacity, adopted later.

    “I’m looking for a way to have it happen, but have it happen in a controlled way,” Ms. Quigley said of summertime outdoor music and other activities.

    But Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, a former planning board member, questioned her approach. “The approach that we’re taking — it seems to me this will allow for an illegal expansion of use,” he said.

    “To say that kind of activity is a right, that has not been proven,” he said. Before the planning board issues a site plan approval for a business, he noted, it determines whether there is adequate parking, for instance, for the number of patrons expected, based on restaurant tables and other factors.

    And, he said, the County Health Department approves septic systems based on their ability to accommodate a maximum number of people. “The whole idea is that you have a certain capacity based on how things are.”

    “If you’re going to regularly exceed that,” it raises a number of problems, he said. “If somebody wants to do more . . . that would be an expansion of use” either requiring new approvals, or it would be disallowed in certain spots such as residential areas where businesses might be pre-existing, nonconforming uses that predate zoning and thus are allowed to continue but not expand.

    According to the draft legislation presented by Ms. Quigley, the number of people allowed to gather outdoors at a particular site could not exceed one person per seven square feet of “usable space,” with that definition to be spelled out.

    On a quarter-acre, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby commented, that could equal 1,500 people.

    “What you’re saying is people can’t have people outside,” Ms. Quigley said. “I believe that people should be able to have people outside.”

    “I agree with that,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said, “but it shouldn’t be able to impinge on other people’s rights to enjoy the outside.”

    “We’re a tourist economy; we must provide for them,” Ms. Quigley said. “I see this in a bigger picture, not just [about] overcrowding,” she said.

    The board must balance the needs of the entire community, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “We balance, eight months of the year we balance,” Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson replied.

    Besides being a tourist destination, Ms. Overby said, East Hampton is also a second-homeowner community. “They want a place that is quiet, and they’re not going to spend their money out here if they can’t have quiet enjoyment.”

    “That may be our generation, Sylvia,” Ms. Quigley said. “But there is another generation that wants to go out.”

    Ms. Quigley said she had taken the entertainment permit approach because the town attorney had informed the board that there was no existing town code provision through which it could control the numbers of people in the outdoor areas of businesses.

     But Mr. Van Scoyoc said that he believes the outdoor gatherings held at some bars and restaurants are activities for which the owners should have to seek individual mass gathering permits from the town board.

    “This is a more liberal ability for the business owner,” Ms. Quigley said of her proposal.

    With the number of complaints last year, the board would have begun enforcement actions against offending businesses if possible, she said. “I’m hearing our attorneys saying there’s nothing illegal about the use.”

    “I have a problem with rejecting counsel’s advice,” said Councilman Dominick Stanzione. “The legal department has rendered an opinion; it’s not mine to question,” Supervisor Wilkinson said.

    “I’m not rejecting what counsel has said,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said, “but I do understand that there’s more than one way to skin a cat, if you will; different approaches to solving a problem.”

    Instead of the “codification-legalization, if you will” of what’s been happening, “perhaps there are ways to reduce the impacts,” he said.

    “I don’t want to find ourselves in two months with nothing,” Ms. Quigley said.

    Local regulations restricting chain or “formula” stores — never enacted here despite a longstanding general belief that they exist — are becoming a topic of discussion with the introduction by New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. of state legislation that would make it clear that municipalities can limit such stores, and East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby’s plan to ask the town board to consider formula store rules.

    Towns and villages in New York have refrained from putting chain store laws in place because of questions about whether the state law that gives localities zoning powers allows such regulations.

     Until recently, land use restrictions in East Hampton Town’s zoning code, as well as market factors such as the cost of real estate and the size of the population here, have prevented the establishment of the chain stores seen increasingly in communities across the nation.

    There are few locations, for instance, where a fast food restaurant, as defined by the town’s code, could be sited.

    But a new 7-Eleven store in Montauk and continual rumors about other chains looking to open stores or restaurants here prompted the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee to take up the issue.

    In a letter sent last month to its town board liaison, Councilman Dominick Stanzione, and copied to Assemblyman Thiele, the group asked that the councilman “bring up the subject of regulating formula stores in our community,” research the use of regulations used in other towns, and work with state officials “to see what can and can’t be done.” 

    In a response sent to Lisa Grenci, the Montauk committee’s chairwoman, Mr. Thiele said that “a growing number of towns across the nation are enacting policies that restrict the proliferation of ‘formula businesses,’ ” which are described as “stores and restaurants that have standardized services, decor, methods of operation, and other features that make them virtually identical to businesses elsewhere.”

    The assemblyman’s draft legislation describes such businesses, which have 10 or more locations in the United States, as “formula retail” uses, and provides that local zoning regulations “may include the regulation, restriction, or prohibition of formula retail uses . . . pursuant to a comprehensive plan and a valid public purpose.”

    Noting that “many formula retailers and restaurants are increasingly locating in downtown and neighborhood business districts,” often arriving “en masse,” Mr. Thiele wrote in his letter to the Montauk committee that the result can be a “speculative run-up in rents” and “long-term economic consequences as the downtown or neighborhood business district loses its distinctive appeal or historic character.”

    Some towns, Mr. Thiele wrote, have adopted ordinances that either prohibit formula businesses, cap their total number, or require that they meet certain conditions. In New York, however, only the village of Port Jefferson has done so, and, according to Mr. Thiele, it has failed to enforce the law.

    Mr. Thiele says that, in several cases, a court ruled that restricting formula stores does not violate the Constitution’s Commerce and Equal Protections Clauses, but is a legitimate way of preserving distinctive community character.

    Councilwoman Overby suggested at a meeting Tuesday that the board discuss the issue at its work session next week. Before being elected, she said, she had researched and compiled information about the issue, and covered it in a “Guestwords” column for The Star.

    She told board members that she had distributed the information to members of the press, prompting criticism that quickly became partisan from both Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley.

    “I find it just totally duplicitous,” Mr. Wilkinson said, complaining that the information had not yet been made available to the board. Ms. Quigley seconded that comment.

    “It is to start the discussion,” with both the board and the public, Ms. Overby replied.

    “I find it absurd, the number of things that happen behind closed doors, that somehow is okay because it’s a particular party,” Ms. Quigley said. “I do things with your approval and somehow they become ‘secret meetings.’ ”

    “Are you suggesting that board members shouldn’t put out to the press an initiative that they want to pursue?” asked Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc. The argument continued and became heated, with each side complaining of improper behavior by the other.

    As to the question of regulating formula stores, however, Ms. Quigley said, without knowing exactly what Ms. Overby would propose, she did not see a need to do so.

    Decisions about East Hampton Airport — if, how, and whether the town should seek to impose restrictions on its use to try to cut down on aircraft noise — have been fraught with questions about what authority the town may actually wield, under both federal laws and the town’s contractual agreements with the Federal Aviation Administration, and about the potential repercussions should the town overstep its authority.

    Aviation-specialty attorneys consulted by both the town and by private groups such as the Quiet Skies Coalition, formed to address the problem of airport noise, have outlined the applicable laws, but painted different pictures about the possibility of a successful outcome if East Hampton tries to limit use of the airport during certain hours or by particular types of planes.

    Now, for the first time, the Federal Aviation Administration has provided answers to direct questions about the town’s standing as far as controlling the airport.

    The answers, in the Quiet Skies Coalition’s view, demonstrate that, when certain grant assurances expire at the end of 2014, the town will be able to enact new airport regulations that could reduce noise. The assurances — contractual obligations to the F.A.A. — are set in place when the town accepts federal grants for the airport.

    Representative Tim Bishop, acting on a request from the Quiet Skies Coalition and other parties, submitted a list of questions to Michael Huerta, the F.A.A. acting administrator, in mid-December, and distributed the responses last week.

    After Dec. 31, 2014, the F.A.A. wrote, “unless and until the F.A.A. awards a new grant to the town, the F.A.A. will not initiate or commence an administrative grant enforcement proceeding in response to a complaint from aircraft operators. . . .” about airport use restrictions such as a nighttime curfew.

    The expiration in two years of several grant assurances, the result of a lawsuit settlement between the F.A.A. and the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, a private East Hampton group, has been hailed by airport noise control advocates as an opportunity for the town.

    They opposed the town board’s recent submission of a grant application for money to design and plan the installation of a security fence around the airport. Taking new money from the F.A.A. will set all of the grant assurances in place again for a new 20-year period.

    Unless extended by the town’s acceptance of new grants, the rest of the existing grant assurances will expire in 2021.

    Peter Kirsch, the town’s airport attorney, said in a presentation to the town board in December that “there is considerable legal uncertainty about what would happen in 2021 with no new F.A.A. grants. Resolving that uncertainty would cost millions in litigation.”

    Mr. Kirsch described for the board the extensive efforts made by several other municipalities to get the F.A.A. to approve airport use restrictions on certain types of aircraft, including helicopters, under a federal law called the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990.

    But in its responses to the questions submitted by the congressman, the agency notes that in East Hampton’s case, “the F.A.A.’s agreement not to enforce also means that unless the town wishes to remain eligible to receive future grants of federal funding, it is not required to comply with the requirements under the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 [. . .] in proposing new airport noise and access restrictions.”

    “Beginning January 1, 2015, the Town can impose reasonable, non-arbitrary, and nondiscriminatory, hours of operation, curfews, and other access limitations in order to protect the community from demonstrated airport noise,” the Quiet Skies Coalition wrote in its press release.

    “This clarification by the F.A.A. makes clear that the only F.A.A. risk from imposing reasonable noise limits is the ineligibility for F.A.A. financial subsidy, which the town will not need anyway, if it operates the airport on a sound, business-like basis,” said Charles Ehren, a member of the coalition’s executive committee, in the press release.

    Kathleen Cunningham, the organization’s chairwoman, added, “Finally! We have unequivocal clarification from the very organization the town’s been afraid to challenge. Being free of ANCA regulations is something we’ve been dreaming of for a while now. Surely now, the town will recognize the benefits of exercising their rights as proprietor, while still operating a safe airport.”

    However, the F.A.A. writes in its response to Mr. Bishop, “should the town of East Hampton propose any restriction that denies access on fair and reasonable grounds or is unjustly discriminatory [ . . . ] federal and constitutional law would provide a basis for aircraft operators to prevail in seeking a declaratory judgment and injunction.” In addition, the F.A.A. could also bring suit.

    But the agency acknowledges that airport proprietors are “vested [only] with the power to promulgate reasonable, non-arbitrary, and nondiscriminatory regulations that establish acceptable noise levels for the airport and its immediate environs.”

    “Should the town and the F.A.A. have a difference of opinion concerning whether proposed restrictions exceed this limitation, it is an open question whether the United States could and would initiate” a lawsuit against the town, even after the grant assurances expire, the F.A.A. wrote.

    In conjunction with seeking the new F.A.A. grant for the airport fence, the town board has embarked, with Mr. Kirsch’s assistance, on a multipronged plan to mitigate airport noise, with initial measures based on pilots’ voluntary compliance with town rules.

    Meanwhile, court review continues of a new lawsuit from the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion challenging the town’s adoption of an airport master plan, on the basis that the impact of airport noise was not properly addressed. The group also sought an injunction to prevent the town from signing a new grant agreement with the F.A.A.