There are many ways to respond to “Other

People’s Money,” which is being performed

at the Center Stage of the Southampton Cultural

Center through Feb. 6 under the direction of

Michael Disher.

The first knee-jerk reaction might be “too soon.”

It’s a play about Wall Street fat cats manipulating

the stock and good name of small companies to take

them down for their own profit, thereby ruining the

lives of their workers, who might actually have been

creating useful, tangible products.

Maybe those who are still lying in the ruins of the

past decade’s real estate bubble and the Wall Street arbitragers

who pushed the market to its edge and then

over the cliff do not want to see a play about how an

honest man running a family business has to fend off

greedy invaders just for running a positive balance

sheet.

The other immediate response might be “how

quaint.”

While the 1989 play touches on themes that were

similarly resonant at the end of that decade’s go-go

market, it almost seems innocent in the face of the

complexities of today’s financial market machinations.

Derivatives were barely in the national vocabulary

back then, reserved for back office analytical eggheads.

They were the ones who were beginning to see how

something of little to no value — junk bonds of companies

with no assets in the 1980s, or in today’s version

subprime mortgages — could be spun off into

something maybe not of value, but at least marketable.

And those seeing the folly could even invest in those

new securities’ failure, having no other stake in the

outcome of the failed enterprise other than their own

investments.

Here, the plot is more basic. Andrew Jorgenson, a

Jimmy Stewart character if there ever was one, was

played in the movie by an apt substitute, Gregory

Peck. He’s an honest but not terribly dynamic man

who has inherited and run a company left to him by

his father sometime in his youth.

Terrance Fiore is terrific in the role, appropriately

wooden and dull when required and fired up and even

wily at other times. His Jorgy, as the character is called,

is a product of a different era and different region’s value

system than the modern New York City represented

by Lawrence Garfinkle, or “Larry the Liquidator”

as he is known on “the Street.” Jorgy is headstrong

in his conviction that he is on the right side of

things and that honest hard work and good deeds will

be rewarded.

He’s not a saint, however. He has relied on and even

possibly taken advantage of the good nature and affection

of his loyal assistant Bea Sullivan, played by

Mary Ellen Roche, since he hired her decades ago.

The two have been in love for many years, but Bea,

now a widow, was married and had a child through

most of her association with Jorgy and his company.

New England Wire and Cable, based in Rhode Island,

has muddled along, slightly outdated by the materials

it’s been manufacturing but ready to shift focus

to meet a new demand in the marketplace, when Larry

the Liquidator comes calling. He’s buying stock in

large amounts and his interest has been noted by

William Coles, the number two in charge at the company

who has been waiting patiently for Jorgy to retire

so he can take the mantle he’s been promised.

Things begin in a civil fashion, but it soon becomes

clear that Larry’s intentions are not benign. He wants

a “restructuring,” which in the parlance of the day

means taking the company apart to sell off its more

valuable assets to maximize the shareholders’ value,

which as Jorgy notes, “sounds like going out of business

to me.” This is a move that would leave his employees

out of job, the area out of its sole economic

driver, and his family without a legacy.

Played by Daniel Becker, Larry is a shark, a weasel,

a snake, and a sleaze. He has been doing what he has

been doing for so long, he no longer sees anything bad

about it, “it’s just doing business.” It is not personal,

he says, he just wants what every stockholder wants.

Jorgy is not convinced and won’t make a deal with

Larry, nor does he believe that the core investors in his

company, mostly local people, would ever cede their

    On Saturday at 4 p.m. Alec Baldwin will bring the words of Mark Twain to life in a reading of “Huckleberry Finn” at BookHampton’s East Hampton shop.

    Adults and children are invited to participate in the event, which the store said is designed to introduce classic literature to kids and serve as a reintroduction to adults, who will understand these books from a different perspective than when they were first introduced to them, a store representative said.

    The book has been the subject of continued controversy, including a recent rewrite to expurgate language that has been questioned for decades. It was chosen by Charline Spektor, a co-owner of the store, prior to the latest clamor over its content. The goal of the series is to make the classics less scary. Last year, Mr. Baldwin read from “Moby-Dick.”

One of art’s sharpest, most dedicated personalities, Lee Krasner (1908-1984) was fiercely determined to produce paintings that pushed the envelope, and she was fiercely devoted to the work and career of her husband, Jackson Pollock. While acquaintances totally respected her intellect, most also regarded her as fiercely no-nonsense and direct.

Krasner looked to the evolving currents of 20th-century abstraction to arrive at her own style of painting, as seen in “Image Surfacing,” above, from 1945, and “Igor,” below, from 1943.

So what would she have thought of Gail Levin’s probing, thoroughly researched, and well-documented biography?

Speculations about any negatives make a rather short list: Like most artists, Krasner preferred to be known primarily for what she achieved in the studio. Second, she probably would have felt that her very subjective, ever-fertile thoughts about life’s existential character should resist confinement in a hardcover biography.

Yet Krasner’s keen mind understood and appreciated accomplishment, so it is likely that she would have admired Ms. Levin’s investigative efforts, including the detailing of the education of an immigrant girl growing up in early-20th-century Brooklyn and the detailing of financial struggles made worse by the Depression. Most certainly she would have been pleased by the interweaving of seemingly every document relating to her art career and by the solid review of the ideas that influenced artists of her generation. She probably would have welcomed the description of liberal attitudes toward sexual relationships, and welcomed the attempt at clarifying the desire to be modern and to rebel against traditional religious constraints.

Human-interest factors contribute to the book’s flow, but a broad, serious look at social issues provides shape to most chapters. The goal, early on, is to define a real person striving in a real world. There is plenty of context, and much introspection.

All the key elements of the Krasner-Pollock legend are here, including the couple’s permanent move to a farmhouse in the Springs section of East Hampton in 1945 and Pollock’s fatal car crash on Springs-Fireplace Road in 1956. Ms. Levin expands the history through the perspective of Krasner, bringing in the artist’s emotional drive and offering some rationale for her decisions in life.

Krasner’s roots in a traditional Jewish, Old World family are portrayed as a formative influence that remained part of her story long after she struck her independent path. One particularly interesting point emerging from the discussion of the artist’s siblings is the role her brother, Irving, played in introducing her to the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche while she was still a high school student.

Issues of anti-Semitism and issues related to widespread discrimination against women are part of this full saga. Pushing further, Ms. Levin — who first interviewed Krasner in 1971 while still a graduate student — has sifted through and added the artist’s occasional remarks about the range of feminist causes. In Krasner’s experience, it was acceptable to be a female artist enrolled in New York art classes and later at the Works Progress Administration, but everything changed once the European artists established themselves here during the war era, dominated the scene, and brought a change in attitude toward equality.

Perhaps the headiest social insights come from the section on New York’s avant-garde politics in the ’30s, when creative people and progressive ideas merged to launch important careers, new publications, and new alliances among artists. Ms. Levin’s treatment of the immigrant attraction to Communism is especially revealing. While not a party member, here is Krasner, engaged in the activist pursuits of the Artists Union. And here is Krasner agreeing with Meyer Schapiro in his argument (published in Art Front in 1936) against nationalism in art, against American representational art, and against fascism in art. Here is Krasner, about the same time, taking a role beside Ad Reinhardt, Ibram Lassaw, Balcomb Greene, and others in the American Abstract Artists group.

A very substantial portrayal of Krasner’s project responsibilities while involved in the W.P.A. and other federal support programs for artists provides valuable information. Interactions among project artists are well covered, and so are the specifics of mural assignments and the possibilities of fitting abstraction into the program. The seeds of Krasner’s interest in exploring the possibilities of abstraction on a very large scale are here, providing an illuminating thread leading to the sizable canvases she began decades later, after she turned Pollock’s barn-studio into her work space.

After Pollock’s death, people frequently looked to Krasner for further understanding of the couple’s life and work. She gave numerous interviews and must have become increasingly conscious of her participation in history. Ms. Levin, who has written biographies of Edward Hopper and Judy Chicago, has been diligent in studying this material and generous in inserting citations. For example, in discussing Krasner’s “Little Image” paintings, begun in 1946, the author brings in supporting information from at least seven sources.

Ms. Levin’s own very thorough oral history process includes interviews with scores of people who were involved in the artist’s life. Thus the sensitive issues surrounding Krasner’s handling of the Pollock estate take their proper, thoroughly interesting role in the biography. There are contracts, and then new contracts. Relationships develop. Relationships end.

An experienced art historian, Ms. Levin gives careful attention to the evolving stylistic adjustments in Krasner’s painting and integrates the information smoothly into the text — an approach that always helps in fully understanding an artist’s life. The view of Krasner’s developing interests is crucial, for we see them here in the context of her contacts with others in her New York circle. She cared about Picasso’s picture plane, Matisse’s color, Kandinsky’s rhythm, Mondrian’s space, and Miro’s synthesis, and she discussed turning them into a new visual language. It was her outstanding grasp of visual possibilities that enabled her to recognize Pollock’s path to genius.

Another parallel thread, the subconscious as an ever-present meaningful resource, runs throughout the book. It emerges in the form of Krasner’s dream content, as a long-term interest in psychoanalysis, and in her own comments about her belief in the intuitive, the subjective, the undiscovered or unknown. She was attracted to the words of writers like Rimbaud, whose philosophical insights lent comfort to her search.

Clearly many routes to abstraction were part of Krasner’s creative process, and of her world. Possibly some will regard the tale of this world as the book’s most significant contribution since it underscores Krasner’s role in Abstract Expressionism. Yet the full saga, with its multiple messages of 20th-century stress and achievement, makes a biography worth celebrating.

—

Gail Levin, a professor at Baruch College, lives part time in Bridgehampton.

Phyllis Braff is an art critic who has a house in Springs.

Who is to say what can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary? Certainly vision helps, and when three visionary entities join forces it is bound to cause a commotion. When the source of the marvel is a common everyday object, it makes for an even greater spectacle.

    Such was the phenomenon of “Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts,” from the collection of Joanna S. Rose, on view last week at New York’s Park Avenue Armory.

    Ms. Rose, an East Hampton resident, is known for her philanthropy as well as an ability to cause a stir. In this case, she created a sensation.

    “I always think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” she said on March 29, after more than 12,000 people from all over the world had seen the exhibit, which was up only from March 25 through 30. “I was the only person not surprised at the overwhelming response.”

    Part of the exhibit’s punch came from the sheer volume of “turkey red” quilts — 650 according to the brochure, but 651 in actuality. (The red color was derived from madder root and was colorfast, which made it popular, she said.) Also striking were the “infinite variety,” referenced in the exhibit’s title, and the installation itself.

    The winning design, by a firm called Thinc Design, a sort of reflection on the theme of a quilting circle, featured rounded helixes and circular patterns, allowing viewers to get close to the quilts, while also seeing them as a collection.

    It was Ms. Rose’s 80th birthday wish to see all of these quilts together for the first time and to provide that opportunity to the people of New York City. Her husband, Daniel Rose, who is part of a New York City real estate dynasty, had the means to provide that wish. His donation to the Armory allowed the show to be open to the public for free.

    The American Folk Art Museum, which is slated to receive 50 of the quilts as another gift from the family, had the scholarly interest and resources to put the show together. It will also result in a book on the collection, written and researched by the show’s guest curator, Elizabeth V. Warren.

    Ms. Rose and the museum’s curators wanted the show to be perceived as a whole, but they also wanted to provide visitors with intimate encounters with its separate pieces.

    Ms. Rose emphasized that she is not a scholar, or a collector, even though in conversation she does reveal a lot of background information she has gleaned over the years. “My interest is in patterns and social history.” She called her trove of objects an accumulation and said she sees herself as a treasure hunter who found most of the quilts in and around East Hampton at antiques shops and flea markets.

    “I didn’t keep records,” she said. “What I liked were the variation in patterns and how the women could use their imagination” in creating them. The quilters drew on nature, the kitchen, even battle plans in history books.

    While Ms. Rose bought many of the quilts on the East End, she said many had New England or Mid-Atlantic themes. “I usually can’t tell where it’s from.” She had initially estimated her quilts would total only a couple of hundred, not the 650 red and white, as well as the rest in other colors that bring her total collection to more than 1,000 quilts.

    Ms. Rose was given her first quilt when her first child was born. It was a double wedding ring pattern. Her interest was piqued, though, once she began buying furniture for her East Hampton house. She found that the stores would wrap larger pieces in old quilts to protect them during delivery, and she became fascinated by the patterns.

    She doubted that she would have started collecting had she not had a house on the South Fork. “It’s a wonderful treasure hunting place.” And she is still “out there finding things.” At the time she started buying the quilts, they could be had for as little as $5 or $10. When they were at that price, “you could say yes or no very quickly. Now, I have to think before I buy.”

    Over the years, she has placed her quilts on beds or used them as table coverings for parties. She said her favorite quilt was also a gift, one made by her sister-in-law and niece from squares collected from all of her friends and relatives and given to the couple on their 50th wedding anniversary. “It’s my husband’s favorite object of all.”

    She was thrilled with the response to the show. “It was a happy thing. Everyone was smiling.” And although for years interest in antique objects has been said to be on the wane, she said it seemed to her that there were as many young people as older people walking through the Armory. One of her grandchildren even excitedly pointed out a quilt that had been on a bed he slept in when he visited her.

    “It’s fun and it’s a good time to do a show like this. The world is in such turmoil. It makes people feel good.”

    The show was also used as part of a private benefit on March 29 to raise money for the American Red Cross to help aid Japanese earthquake and tsunami victims.

Representative Lee Zeldin, state and municipal officials, environmental organizations, and business leaders will hold a press conference Friday at 10 a.m. at the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead, where they plan to present a unified front against the Trump administration’s plan to open most federal waters to oil and gas exploration and drilling, including the Atlantic Ocean’s outer continental shelf.

In a statement on Tuesday, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. denounced the Trump administration’s decision. Mr. Thiele lent support to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s request to the federal government to exempt New York State from the offshore drilling plan, and said that, barring action by the secretary of the interior, New York’s congressional delegation should enact legislation to remove the state from the initiative. 

“All levels of government on Long Island are engaged in intensive efforts to improve the quality of our surface waters,” Mr. Thiele said, noting that New York is home to 3 of the 28 estuaries of national significance, including Peconic Bay, Long Island Sound, and New York Harbor. “Our Long Island South Shore bays are designated as an estuary of state significance,” he said. “Tourism and fishing are major New York industries that depend on clean water and pristine beaches.”

“In summary, both our environment and our economy depend on clean oceans, bays, wetlands, and beaches,” Mr. Thiele said. He called on all Long Island residents to work in solidarity to defeat the Trump administration proposal.

Concerned Citizens of Montauk will announce its partnership with the United States Geological Survey as well as a joint initiative intended to restore the water quality of Lake Montauk, where high bacteria counts have made some of it unsafe for swimming and shellfishing.

In collaboration with the Surfrider Foundation’s Blue Water Task Force, C.C.O.M. has measured high levels of enterococcus, indicative of fecal waste, in Lake Montauk during the last four years. Elevated nitrogen levels from aging and failing septic systems also have promoted harmful algal blooms.

The U.S.G.S. will use advanced scientific analysis, known as microbial- source tracking, to establish a baseline of pollutants. The goal is to help achieve measurable improvements in Montauk’s ground and surface water, Laura Tooman, the C.C.O.M. president, said.

The project is expected to cost approximately $75,000 and will be funded by C.C.O.M.’s donors as well as a $13,000 contribution from the Town of East Hampton. 

“I was assessing what we do as an organization, what programs we’re trying to implement, and how to reduce pollution loads,” Ms. Tooman, who joined C.C.O.M. in May after being on the staff of State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. for six years, said on Monday. “With all the work the town and county are doing to do septic upgrades, we know there’s a problem, but we don’t have a lot of data to prove that there’s a problem, nor a system in place to monitor potential improvements. We’re doing all this work to reduce nitrogen, here and at the town and county levels, but we don’t have a good handle on the nitrogen and pathogen problems in Lake Montauk.”

Stormwater runoff and groundwater seepage are seen as pathways of contamination. According to the U.S.G.S, she said, “It is suspected that pathogens may come from shallow groundwater discharge, as much of Montauk still relies on onsite wastewater disposal systems, such as cesspools and septic systems. A clear understanding of the relative magnitude and geographic origin of sources, such as submarine groundwater discharge and stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces, of pathogen loading and the host organisms from which they originate,” whether human, mammal, or bird, “is needed to help shape regulatory efforts aimed to improve water quality in the lake.”

The study is intended to identify the sources of bacterial contamination, characterize nitrogen sources and transport mechanisms, and estimate pathogen loads in summer and winter during both wet and dry conditions and during periods of concentrated bird activity. 

Data collection is to begin in the next month, Ms. Tooman said, and continue next year, with a final report expected by September 2019. The report, she said, will provide data that will point toward specific recommendations. 

Lake Montauk is one of six project areas the U.S.G.S. is to study across Long Island, and will contribute the easternmost data. Sag Harbor, Patchogue Bay, Port Jefferson Harbor, South Oyster Bay, and Hempstead Harbor will also be studied. “It’s a regional project that we’re allowing ourselves to jump on and take advantage of,” Ms. Tooman said. “We need it, the town needs it, and regionally, we all need a better indication of our pathogen loadings and how it’s getting in.”

If you stopped in at the I.G.A. food markets in Montauk or on North Main Street in East Hampton this week, you may not have noticed anything unusual, but behind the scenes a big change was underway: As of Wednesday, Michael A. Bozzuto, the president and C.E.O. of the Connecticut-based Bozzuto’s Inc., a family-owned wholesale distributor of food and household products, is their owner. According to Forbes magazine, the company also operates the Adam’s Super Food Stores in Connecticut and Massachusetts. 

 Robert Stark became the owner of the Montauk I.G.A. in 1996 and the East Hampton one in 1998. “Basically, I’m retiring,” Mr. Stark said this week. “The owner of Bozzuto’s has been a friend of mine for 38 years; it’s a very amicable sale.” 

 Mr. Stark said he had the opportunity to sell the stores to others but made a deal with Bozzuto’s because it said it would keep the stores as they are‚ including maintaining the staff and I.G.A. affiliation. “I wanted to make sure that my people kept their jobs and I’ve been very proud to be an I.G.A. owner, and I want it to stay that way” Mr. Stark said.

Representatives of the new owner  had not responded to a request for an interview by press time, but Mr. Stark had the following message for his customers: “I hope that the consumers who’ve been happy shopping here know that nothing is going to change.”

The East Hampton Historical Society has hired Maria Vann as its new executive director, a position that has been vacant since October, when the previous director, who had been on the job for only about seven months, stepped down due to a family emergency.

Ms. Vann, who will start on Feb. 5, grew up in Port Jefferson Station and has been the director of education at the Albany Institute of History and Art since last August and was the director of the Maritime Museum at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass., for some two years. Before that, she was the director of the Iroquois Indian Museum, the New York State Historical Association, and the Fenimore Art Museum, all upstate. She had been one of the final two contenders for the East Hampton Historical Society job in 2016 and early 2017, during the recruitment process to find a replacement for Richard Barons, the society’s much-esteemed longtime leader, that had ended with the hiring of her immediate, short-lived, predecessor.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to bring the historical society to the next level,” said Ms. Vann, who mentioned adding more high-tech elements‚ “such as online exhibits and a greater social media presence,” to the museum mix. As head of the historical society, she will work with its board of trustees to run several museums: Clinton Academy, along with its small adjacent structures, the Town House and Hook Schoolhouse, Mulford Farm, the Osborn-Jackson House, which houses the society’s offices and administration spaces, the Marine Museum, and the Thomas Moran Studio. 

Ms. Vann, who has written on maritime subjects, including the role of female owners of slave ships, has in the past expressed “a passion for maritime history.” She also described herself this week as a “big fan of collaborations with local organizations” and said she looks forward to “bringing in community voices not just with stories of the past but stories of the present.”

“Maria is the consummate professional,” said Hollis Forbes, the president of the historical society’s board of trustees. “She’s well grounded in all aspects, and I can tell she’s really excited about the job.” 

One of the first projects Ms. Vann will have to tackle is the upcoming opening to the public of the house and studio of the painter Thomas Moran, facing Town Pond. “The Studio,” as the unconventional Queen Anne-style structure is still commonly called, became a registered national landmark in 1965 and is soon to be handed over to the historical society by Guild Hal, via the Thomas Moran Trust, the nonprofit group that had led the charge to raise more than $4.5 for its intensive restoration from ivy-choked shambles to resplendently eccentric doyenne of Main Street.

Moran was known for his paintings of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, as well as his East End landscapes, and is sometimes called “the father of the national parks,” said Ms. Forbes. “We want to get the right programming around the Thomas Moran home, and Maria is the perfect person to do that.” 

A grand opening of the Moran house is planned for the first week of July.

Men and women in blue lined the back wall of the East Hampton Village Board meeting room on Friday to watch their colleague Sgt. Kevin Duchemin‚ who is retiring from the police force after 27 years‚ receive a proclamation honoring his service. Michael Tracey, the chief of the department, credited Sergeant Duchemin’s career success to the bonds he forged with the community and with fellow officers. “The testament to that is the showing that you see in the back of the room here,” Mr. Tracey said. 

The hot topic of the meeting was the possible lifting of the ban on live music at village restaurants, while the good news came in a report showing that the village is in top financial position. 

When Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. opened the floor to a discussion about the music ban, Paul Fried‚ who is ardently pro-live music (even of the amplified variety)‚ lugged a guitar, a microphone, and a small amplifier up to the podium and sang a few bars of the Neil Young song “Old Man.”

“I was trying to demonstrate that we’re not talking about rolling out a wall of Marshall amps; it’s not going to disturb anybody‚“ Mr. Fried said.

Steven Ringel, the executive director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, told the board that the organization is in favor of lifting the ban. “I know that it will stimulate business. It will bring people into the village in the evening where they’re not now,” Mr. Ringel said, adding that businesses should be held responsible for music that is too loud.

Although at the last board meeting, Mayor Rickenbach had said that the members of the board “all agree that we don’t want to see amplification, period,” Arthur Graham, one of the village trustees, found some wiggle room. “I wouldn’t mind music inside with modest amplification as long as it was inaudible outside,” he said.

Mr. Graham was clearly in the minority, as his colleagues on the village board, Barbara Borsack, Richard Lawler, and Bruce Siska, voiced concern about quality of life issues that could arise. Mayor Rickenbach closed the discussion by saying that once the board got closer to crafting language for a possible new statute, the public would have ample opportunity to express opinion. 

The report on the village’s 2017 financial audit shows that it had revenues of $22 million, which exceeded projections by almost $1.6 million for licenses, permits, fines, and state aid, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of the increase. The expenditures amounted to $19.6 million, which came in under expectations by almost $600,000. 

As a result, the village was able to add $270,000 to the employee reserve fund, $300,000 to the capital reserve fund, and $1.6 million to the capital projects fund. The village now has an unassigned balance of almost $5.8 million, with roughly $6.3 million in unrestricted money. 

“Congratulations,” Frank Sluter, an accountant from the firm that conducted the audit, said. The village “is in a very strong cash position [which] puts the village in a very good light.”

People who drive Route 114 daily between Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton and Sag Harbor have gotten accustomed to dodging an ever-growing string of potholes that mar the road, some so big they force drivers to the shoulder in an effort to avoid them.

But despite lawmakers’ repeated calls for the road to be resurfaced between Stephen Hand’s Path and the South Ferry terminal on North Haven, the State Department of Transportation appears to have no plan to do so in the near future. “They’ve said, ‘It’s not in our five-year plan,’ ” State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said yesterday.

Late last month, six local officials led by Assemblyman Thiele and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle again called on the D.O.T. to repave the eight-mile stretch of state road, sharing their concerns in a Dec. 21 letter to Paul Karas, the D.O.T. commissioner, about “worsening potholes that pose an incredible safety hazard to drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike.”

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., Sag Harbor Mayor Sandra Schroeder, and North Haven Mayor Jeff Sander also signed the letter. “We fear that this roadway will not make it through another season with no resurfacing planned for the near future,” the officials wrote. This is their third request for the resurfacing in two years.

Rather than piecemeal pothole repairs, which have been done on that section in recent years, they called for complete resurfacing. In a release this week, Assemblyman Thiele’s office said the “D.O.T. should prepare now and authorize the paving of this road during the spring 2018 construction season.” However, on Tuesday Assemblyman Thiele said, “I don’t see any way that it will be done in the spring.”

The D.O.T. has not offered a timeline for the repairs, nor has it responded to repeated questions about when the section of road between Stephen Hand's Path and Sag Harbor was last resurfaced. In an email on Wednesday, its spokesman Stephen Canzoneri, pointed out other sections of Route 114 that have been resurfaced in the past three years, including near the South Ferry terminal and the two-mile section between Stephen Hand's Path and Route 27 in East Hampton. The latter was completed in the fall of 2016.

"We will continue to make improvements as needed," Mr. Canzoneri said.

Mr. Thiele could not recall the exact date for the last resurfacing of the section in question, but said it could have been as long ago as 2002. "It's overdue," Mr. Thiele said.

In East Hampton Village construction is underway on a roundabout on Route 114 at the intersection of Buell and Toilsome Lanes. That project is slated to be finished this spring.

As for the road between Stephen Hand’s and North Haven, “if the D.O.T. won’t do it on their own, we have the ability, as part of the budget process, to provide the funding and direct them to do it,” Assemblyman Thiele said Tuesday.

He believes the D.O.T. has “not taken into account the major amount of traffic Route 114 gets now, particularly in the summertime.”

“One way or another, we are committed to getting this done.”

--

Correction: The online version of this story originally appeared with an incorrect byline.