School budget votes and board elections results have begun rolling in, with voters approving budgets in East Hampton, Amagansett, Montauk, Bridgehampton, Sagaponack, and Wainscott, whose polls all closed 8 p.m.

Polls in Springs and Sag Harbor closed at 9 p.m.

East Hampton

The East Hampton School District's $68.3 million budget proposal, a slight increase over last year but still under the state's cap on tax levy increases, was approved by a vote of 291 to 53. 

Voters also approved, in a vote of 241 to 96, a proposition allowing East Hampton to establish a capital reserve fund for future districtwide improvements related to growing enrollment, property acquisition, and the replacement of technology and telecommunications equipment, infrastructure, and software. Spending for specific projects will be subject to voter approval.

Jacqueline Lowey and John J. Ryan Sr., who were running uncontested to keep their seats on the school board, got 278 and 302 votes, respectively.

Amagansett

In Amagansett, where interest in the budget and the school board race intensified in the last week, voters approved the nearly $10.7 million budget for the 2017-18 school year. The budget was approved, 146 to 59.

With three board seats available and only three candidates on the ballot, the race for school board was business as usual until last week, when two more candidates announced that they would mount write-in races.

Patrick Bistrian III and Dawn Rana-Brophy were running to keep their seats, and Anna Bernasek was seeking a seat for the first time. Mary A. Eames and Claudia L. Quintana announced after a school board meeting last week that they, too, would like to take seats at the table.

Mr. Bistrian and Ms. Quintana were the top two vote getters, with 122 and 115 votes, respectively. Each will get three-year terms on the board. The next highest vote getter, Ms. Rana-Brophy, got 111 votes and will serve for a one-year term.

Voters also approved a proposition authorizing the expenditure of $400,000 from the 2015 renovations and upgrades capital reserve fund for a new gym ceiling. The vote was 179 to 25.

Montauk

There were no surprises in Montauk, where the $18.8 million budget for next year was approved by a vote of 115 to 8, and Kelly White, an incumbent running for her third five-year term, won it with 112 votes. 

The budget is down more than $155,000 from this year's.

Bridgehampton

Bridgehampton's $14.36 million budget sailed through with 102 voting for it and 74 voting no. The budget is up $578,024 over this year.

On the Bridgehampton School Board, Kathleen McCleland, an incumbent, was returned to the board with 136 votes, and Markanthony Verzosa, a newcomer, received 116 votes to take the other seat. The races were not contested.

Also approved Tuesday was a proposition allowing the district to redistribute the balance of a previously approved capital reserve fund to install and maintain a geothermal heating and cooling system as part of a planned school addition. Taxpayers will not incur any additional costs as a result. The vote was 84 to 41. 

Sagaponack

Sagaponack voters unanimously passed the school's $1.7 million budget proposal, with 19 votes for and none against.

Sagaponack voters also approved a one-year contract with East Hampton and Sag Harbor School Districts for instruction services for fourth through sixth grades. The district already has a five-year contract with both of these districts for 7th through 12th grades.

Brian Villante, the school board president, was re-elected with 19 votes. There were no challengers. 

Wainscott

The Wainscott School District's $2.95 million budget for the 2017-18 school year was approved with 31 votes in favor and none against. It is lower than this year's budget.

David Eagan, the incumbent school board president, who ran unopposed, was re-elected with 29 votes. One vote was cast for someone else, and one ballot was left blank.

A Volkswagen sedan rolled over on Accabonac Road, just east of East Hampton Village, on Wednesday afternoon. Police at the scene said they were not sure what caused the accident, but that the car had beed headed east on Accabonac Road and hit a utility pole and a tree before landing on its roof. 

The driver, whose name was not released, was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital as a precaution. She was reportedly conscious at the scene of the crash. 

Emergency personnel were called to the one-car accident in front of 76 Accabonac Road at about 3:20 p.m. The East Hampton Fire Department responded, but its heavy rescue truck was not needed to remove the driver. She was the sole occupant.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association transported the woman to East Hampton Airport to meet the medevac helicopter. 

Police are investigating what caused the crash. No charges were expected. 

Accabonac Road was shut down between North Main Street and Floyd Street in East Hampton while the scene was cleared. 

Fund-raising momentum is building for the purchase of the Sag Harbor Cinema property. Big names such as Billy Joel, who owns a house just a few blocks away, Martin Scorsese, an occasional visitor to the area, and Harvey Weinstein, who owns a house in East Hampton, have recently joined the campaign. 

The Sag Harbor Partnership, a community group that has inked an $8 million deal with the current owner to puchase the property, said that it will name the cinema's popcorn stand after Mr. Joel in honor of his donation. While the partnership declined to say how much Mr. Joel had donated, a $500,000 donation was listed as a naming opportunity for the popcorn stand on the partnership's website. 

“He knows exactly how much the sign and the cinema mean to all of Main Street," Nick Gazzolo, the president of the partnership, said. "It's so encouraging that he answered the call to help restore this landmark with such a generous gift. So many of his songs show his understanding of how much specific places mean to people, and we are so grateful that he agrees the Sag Harbor Cinema is a special place worth fighting for.”

In the days after the fire on Main Street in December, Mr. Joel paid tribute to the cinema during a concert at Madison Square Garden, playing Ennio Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso” on the piano.

The partnership has to raise the money to purchase the property and has until the end of the year to close. The group needs to raise about 75 percent, or $6 million, in donations and pledges by July 1. When the group announced that it had reached an agreement with Gerry Mallow, the current owner, in April, it already had $1 million from an anonymous donor. So far, $2.25 million has been raised.

Plans include rebuilding the facade and repairing the iconic Art Deco neon sign, and rebuilding and repurposing some of the space. The group wants to establish a Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center, a not-for-profit that would expand on the cinema's tradition of art house film programming with educational initiatives for school-age children and residents. The partnership's April Gornik said estimates for the construction project are $4 million to $5 million at a minimum.

Preliminary plans include creating two theaters and a private screening room, all with state-of-the-art equipment and a new sound system. The theaters are to feature projection ratios "that will allow film to be shown as it was intended, and give the house the ability to show digital, 35mm, and even 16mm with astonishing resolution, so that the viewer experience will be as the filmmakers had intended," the partnership said in a press release. "This will be a plus that few other art houses anywhere offer, and will make the emphasis on offering film history as well as contemporary movie-making a reality."

“I believe in the power of film not only to entertain, but to bring unsung heroes to life, and to change the world around us," Mr. Scorsese said in the release. "For as long as I can remember, the Sag Harbor Cinema has stood as a beacon of culture on Long Island. On the evening it was destroyed, the cinema was showing two European films, neither of which were considered blockbuster hits, but that wasn’t the point. This theater was about art, and the ability for film to inspire people to persevere in the face of adversity. I hope people from all over the East End will join in this fight to save Sag Harbor’s center of culture.”

An advisory board has been put together to help develop the plan for the cinema. Members include the Oscar-winning actress, singer, and author Dame Julie Andrews, Anne Chaisson, the executive director of the Hamptons International Film Festival, and Andrea Grover, executive director of Guild Hall in East Hampton.

All donations are tax-deductible and can be made online through sagharborcinema.org. All pledges will be canceled and all donations refunded if the campaign goal is not reached by the end of the year.

Recreational anglers will have a daily limit of three fish, with a minimum length of 19 inches, when the fluke season opens in New York waters on May 17. The changes are a dramatic reduction from 2016’s five-fish, 18-inch minimum. The recreational fluke season will close on Sept. 21. 

State regulators at the Department of Environmental Conservation had no choice other than to slash the previous year’s fluke rules. The National Marine Fisheries Service had demanded further restrictions after observing a coastal decline in the number of fluke, or summer flounder. “Consistent below-average reproductive success for the last five years may be one cause for the decline,” the D.E.C. said in a press release Wednesday. 

According to the D.E.C., New York initially faced a 70-percent reduction in fluke under a federal state-by-state allocation proposal. It is estimated that the limits announced this week will result in a 30-percent reduction to meet the National Marine Fisheries requirement.

The recreational and commercial catch limits are the lowest since 1993, when the fluke management plan was first put in place, the D.E.C. said. The other Atlantic states that have active fluke fisheries are also expected to cut the allowable size for sport-caught fluke and lower possession limits.

Commercial harvesters are allowed to land fluke in state waters year round, subject to a daily limit of 50 pounds. The minimum commercial length is 14 inches. New York’s share of the region’s commercial quota is just over 432,000 pounds.

If fluke fishing is slow or sifting through all the small ones gets irritating, there is always porgy fishing. North Fork party boats, including the Peconic Star out of Greenport, are reporting decent catches on diamond jigs, with some trips landing keeper striped bass and bluefish. Cherry Harbor on the southwest side of Gardiner’s Island is a traditional spring hot spot for porgies, in case you were wondering.

On the ocean beaches, small striped bass were just about all that were to be had until Saturday’s bad weather put an end even to that. Surfcasters were landing tiny ones on bucktails until the weekend, with a couple of large bluefish mixed in. “It shut down since that blow,” Paulie Apostolides of Paulie’s Tackle Shop in Montauk said.

“These guys, they just have to go fishing,” he said, “Fort Pond has been really busy.” Apostolides said there were walleye, largemouth and smallmouth bass, crappie, white perch, and, for those wetting baits, beefy carp.

Harvey Bennett at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett seconded the freshwater observation and said he had heard the walleye were huge. Bennett’s report on bass included what he said were a few nice fish to the west of Montauk, around Gurney’s, White Sands, and at the Main Beach jetty in East Hampton.

On the bay side, there were small striped bass inside Accabonac Harbor and bluefish up to 15 pounds, terrorizing baitfish, at Gerard Drive and probably squid, out to Goff Point. “That’s been the entertainment,” he said.

Bennett said that the carp were likely to be in an amorous mood about now in Hook Pond, where their population has exploded. He said he wondered if these invaders had changed the nature of the pond’s aquatic vegetation. 

Looking to the weekend, both Apostolides and Bennett expected that the cold weather had held things back as far as fishing was concerned. A warmer trend should bring bigger bass and, at the same time, bigger bluefish will be replaced by  smaller “cocktail” blues, which will stick around for the summer.

Fluke, Bennett said, should be there for the picking in Gardiner’s Bay out to Napeague. 

Among the most notable fish reported in the past week was a 29-pound striped bass jigged up near Shelter Island, Rick Drew at Harbor Marina at Three Mile Harbor said. Drew said bluefish were feeding along our outer bay beaches from Jessup’s Neck to Accabonac and that the bunker had arrived as well. Coincidence? No.

Five short plays written and performed by East End middle school students will be presented at Stony Brook Southampton’s Avram Theater on Saturday at 7 p.m. as the culminating event of this year’s Young Artists and Writers Project middle school playwriting program. Playwrights for the festival were drawn from YAWP, as it is known, playwriting classes at Eastport South Manor, the Ross School, the Shelter Island School, and the YAWP summer conference.

The festival represents a collaboration among student playwrights, actors, and theater and writing professionals affiliated with Stony Brook Southampton’s masters program in creative writing and literature, which created and sponsors the YAWP programs. Professional directors stage the plays, which encompass an array of genres — from comedy to drama — with subject matter drawn from the middle schoolers’ own lives.

More than 100 students participated in the YAWP middle school playwriting residency this spring. Over the course of two months, students explored the basic elements of dramatic writing: how to develop ideas, characters, themes, dialogue, and scenes. One play from each participating class was then selected for production in the festival.

Students whose plays were not selected remain immersed in the program as actors, production assistants, and even assistant directors.

“Learning dramatic writing is a great way to improve overall writing skills,” Will Chandler, a screenwriter and YAWP’s program director, said, “but what we’re really teaching them is that each student has a voice, and we want to hear it.”

Mr. Chandler explained that when he works with young people and really listens to what they say, he finds that “they’re really checked in. They’re not as checked out as adults think, but you have to give them a voice and then listen to what they have to say,” he said. “One of the most consistent themes I’ve heard is about people misunderstanding each other.”

Joining Mr. Chandler at the helm of the program, as executive director, is Emma Walton Hamilton, a children’s book author and a co-founder of Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

“Dramatic writing and production skills give young people unparalleled lessons in communication and collaboration,” Ms. Hamilton said. “They build confidence and have a direct impact on young people’s abilities to become engaged and compassionate citizens in later life. This project represents a wonderful synergy between all the creative disciplines and values about which we are passionate.”

Saturday’s performance is free. Reservations and more information can be had by emailing [email protected].

The East Hampton Town fire marshal’s office is investigating a Friday brush fire in the woods near the railroad tracks off Spring Close Highway in East Hampton.

Firefighters from the East Hampton Fire Department were called at about 2:30 p.m. for a fire about 400 feet into the woods, along the edge of property that runs along the tracks. It is owned by the Bistrian family. Gerry Turza, the first assistant chief, said a “sizable area” of brush about 100 by 100 feet was ablaze.

The department’s brush truck was out of service after sustaining mechanical damage at a brush fire in Amagansett last week, so a brush truck from Amagansett was called in to help. In the meantime, East Hampton firefighters stretched hose lines into the woods and had most of the fire knocked down when Amagansett’s brush truck crew arrived to extinguish the rest.

Just shy of 3,000 gallons of water were used to put out the flames. A couple of big trees had to be cut down, the chief said. Conditions were dry and there was a slight breeze, the chief said, but he could not pinpoint a cause.

Tom Baker, the fire marshal investigating the fire, said on Monday that no cause had been determined so far.

The great big smiley face is back on the east side of the former Oceanside Beach Motel, known affectionately in Montauk as the Smiley Motel. Now, however, the smile is combined with a wink, as new ownership seeks site plan approval from the East Hampton Town Planning Board for an ambitious redo of the resort, which it is calling the Hero Beach Club.

Their plan calls for a bar-restaurant, described in the application as a “wet retail” area, as well as a common meeting room in the northeasternmost of the three structures on the grounds. The partners in the project are Jon Krasner, already a principal in two Montauk eateries, the Salt Box and Shagwong, and Teddy Wasserman, a financier.

The property, just under an acre, is somewhat unusual for downtown Montauk. Unlike many of the resorts to the east, it was built behind the dune, not on it. Parts of it date back to the 1950s.

The planning board got its first look at the site plan on May 3. Although the partners have applied to the State Liquor Authority for a license to sell alcohol, Mr. Krasner said during an impromptu tour of the grounds on Tuesday that they had no interest in creating another nighttime destination for Montauk partiers, like the Surf Lodge. He has two children and Mr. Wasserman has one, he said, and their intent is to create a family-oriented business.

Sometime next year, they propose to entirely gut the easternmost building, reducing the number of rooms at the resort from 34 to 30. Several hundred feet of decking would wrap around what they are calling a “wet retail” store and common room, as well as 515 square feet of second-floor decking. The space would have a small kitchen with a six-burner stove, with prep space in the basement.

The common area, combined with the restaurant and kitchen, would cover over 1,400 square feet. Mr. Krasner said all the walls would display artwork. “We have to support the arts and artists,” he said.

The designation of “wet retail” raised some eyebrows on the board, as well as among town planners. Eric Schantz, a senior planner, suggested that the applicants had not provided a “narrative” as to how that building would be used. The narrative, he said, would be key to understanding how the owners view retail use versus restaurant or bar use. The floor plan for the “wet retail” store, for example, depicts four tables. This, he said, is prohibited for retail stores under the town code.

Britton Bistrian, who is shepherding the application, remarked that she expects food and wine to be available when she checks into a resort. “It is a pretty long haul down Montauk Highway to get to a restaurant,” she said.

Though she did not bring up the Beach House, during that establishment’s site-plan process several years ago, the town ultimately accepted the argument that a restaurant and-or bar catering to a motel’s guests was a legal accessory.

“I am concerned with parking,” Nancy Keeshan said. “Your narrative is going to have to answer a lot of questions.”

“It seems quite large for a retail space,” Ian Calder-Piedmonte observed.  “Your intent can be great,” but, he added, the planning board had to think long term.

“Thank you for investing and upgrading and making it a little more upscale,” said Diana Weir, another board member. “The ‘narrative’ will explain everything.”

The question of septic flow swirled around the table as board members sought to understand what is there now and what is proposed. “My understanding is that it would not be feasible to apply for a restaurant in this location because of the sanitary systems and the parking,” Job Potter, the chairman, said. “Wet retail is all you can apply for.”

The board concluded by asking the new owners for a detailed narrative, as well as a copy of their application to the liquor authority.

Mr. Krasner was in attendance during the discussion. “I think owners need to show up, instead of sending lawyers,” he said Tuesday. “We have to say hello to the people in the town.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that the owners plan to demolish the easternmost building on the property and build a new one in its place. They propose instead to gut the building.

As the Suffolk County Department of Health’s division of vector control began annual aerial application of methoprene, a mosquito larvicide, over salt marshes on the South Fork last week, a pilot program that would ban spraying over a study site next year began to take shape.

The East Hampton Town Trustees have long agitated for a ban on methoprene, which they argue is harmful to nontarget species, including lobsters, crabs, and fish. Suffolk officials have dismissed that claim, and the Legislature has consistently approved its use to control mosquitoes, which can carry West Nile virus, Eastern equine encephalitis, and other diseases.

At the urging of commercial fishermen, Connecticut prohibited the use of methoprene in coastal areas in 2013. Fishermen and environmentalists in New York have long advocated a ban, and the East Hampton Town Board has repeatedly voiced its opposition to its use.

  Growing opposition on the South Fork to the large-scale use of chemicals, however, prompted county officials, including Tom Iwanejko, the director of vector control, to meet with the trustees and County Legislator Bridget Fleming in December. The result is a trial ban.

Should the county approve it, methoprene would not be applied to a study area starting next year and lasting for one to three years. The trustees are focusing on a portion of Accabonac Harbor and are seeking approval from adjacent property owners. They plan to engage a third party to collect data this year to determine methoprene’s effectiveness in controlling mosquito populations and its impact on nontarget species.

“There is real movement, for the first time, on the part of the county’s vector control,” Ms. Fleming, who represents the South Fork, Shelter Island, and part of Brookhaven, said on Tuesday. “There’s a recognition . . . that the goal of reducing or eliminating methoprene is a good and valid goal. But with public health in mind, it’s nothing that can happen overnight.”

Long before the trial is to begin, however, some activists have found fault with it and are pressing the trustees and the county to go further. Kevin McAllister, the founder of Defend H2O and the former Peconic Baykeeper, has been campaigning for a methoprene ban for a decade. At a trustees meeting on Monday, he warned that “Suffolk County will go to great lengths to not allow any meaningful science to come forward.” He cited research by Michael Horst, a scientist at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center, among others, who have concluded that methoprene is deadly to nontarget species.

“I urge you, if there’s a no-spraying test, it is the entirety of the watershed,” Mr. McAllister said. “To try to partition off a section of a marsh . . . when you talk about drift, the complexities are just too much.” He predicted the trustees would not prevail in a scientific debate with the county. “Quite frankly, vector control, with respect to their program, bases their effectiveness and response to the number of phone calls that they receive relative to nuisance control,” he said.

If all of Accabonac Harbor became a methoprene-free zone, “I’m certain that, at the end of a summer, we’ll neither see incidents of disease or a notable increase in problems and phone calls,” Mr. McAllister said. “That’s based on this community’s connection to water resources and natural resources. That’s my recommendation to the board. I hope you take it into consideration as you start to tailor whatever review or study you’re considering.”

“We realize this project is minuscule,” Bill Taylor, a trustee, replied, “but we were in a situation where nothing was being done. After years of badgering vector control, we finally got them to move a little bit.”

Jim Grimes, Mr. Taylor’s colleague, agreed. “You’ve been at this a lot longer than we have,” he told Mr. McAllister, “so I can understand the level of impatience you have. But on our end, we asked for something, we did get some response. . . . I would think that we would do more damage to the case to turn around and walk away from that than we are by accepting it and moving forward.”

Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, said on Tuesday that, while Mr. McAllister’s criticism may be valid, “We should take what we have now. If it goes well we can either expand it, or take it somewhere else.”

Edwina von Gal, founder of the Perfect Earth Project, which promotes toxin-free lawns and landscapes, is also skeptical of the county’s motivation. “There are many land mines built into the way they offered this,” she said. “Basically, it’s created to fail. . . . There is no indication of what they want us to test for that would convince them that they should stop spraying, because they know there isn’t anything we could come up with that’s conclusive.”

She echoed Mr. McAllister’s complaint about the usefulness of a trial area. “They’re not agreeing to include all of Accabonac. That’s not a scientific study, there’s going to be drift. It should be Accabonac versus Napeague: one test site, one control. That makes it poor science from the start.”

Ms. von Gal referred to a petition, at the website change.org, urging the cessation of methoprene application over Napeague as well as Accabonac Harbor. The petition, which had 649 signatures yesterday morning, is directed to DuWayne Gregory, the Legislature’s presiding officer, as well as other officials.

Ms. Fleming called criticism of the proposed trial “unfortunate and premature. I would really urge folks to take a deep breath here and recognize we’re on the threshold of change. Even though it may be incremental change, it’s good stuff. . . .”

“Everything is pointing in the direction of moving toward the reduction or elimination of toxic spraying,” Ms. Fleming said, “and I feel confident that we’re going to get it done. It isn’t going to happen overnight; this is public health we’re talking about, but I do believe we can make real progress.”

A Springs man was selling cocaine and ecstasy in the East Hampton area, including out of his house on Hollyoak Avenue, East Hampton Town police said. Officers with the East End Drug Task Force arrested Kody J. Knudsen, 28, on Thursday morning on six felony drug charges. 

"After police received numerous complaints about an unusually high volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic from his residence," Lt. Greg Schaefer said in a press release. The task force, a drug enforcement unit funded by Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota's office, was brought into the investigation. 

Mr. Knudsen was charged with four counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, one count of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the second degree, and one count of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the fifth degree, all felonies. He was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court Thursday and was remanded to the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverside. He was held without bail because he has at least two prior felony convictions. 

In the most recent case, he pleaded guilty in 2015 to driving while intoxicated and under the influence of drugs, a felony because of a prior misdemeanor D.W.I. conviction. He was arrested that summer after crashing a 2009 Mercedes-Benz into a utility pole on the Napeague stretch. He was also charged at the time with felony weapons possession, but the grand jury that indicted him ultimately dropped that charge.

Police are asking that anyone with information on the investigation contact the East Hampton Town Police Department at 631-537-7575. All calls will be kept confidential. 

Two last-minute candidates have entered the Amagansett School Board race, turning the district’s seemingly uneventful election into a highly contested one.

Mary A. Eames and Claudia L. Quintana declared write-in candidacies following a school board meeting on May 9 that was tense and, at times, accusatory.

Ms. Eames, a clerk in the school district, said during a phone interview that it was time for her to "either step up or shut up."

She was a vocal attendee at Tuesday's school board meeting, questioning things such as the need for a third administrator to help the superintendent and the school principal, at a rate of $350 a day. The money does not appear in the budget, according to Ms. Eames.

Despite her obvious frustration with what she believes is a lack of transparency, Ms. Eames insists she does not harbor any negativity towards the school but feels it is time for changes on the board. ”I decided to put myself on the ballot because I'm just not getting any clear answers,” she said.

The second write-in candidate is Claudia Quintana, a resident of Amagansett for the past 11 years. Ms. Quintana has one child attending the school and teaches at the John M. Marshall Elementary School. She is also pursuing a degree in bilingual education.

Ms. Quintana decided to throw her hat in the ring after noticing only one new contestant on the ballot — Anna Bernasek — and especially a lack of Latino board members. She believes "as a bilingual member I can be a real asset to the board in serving Amagansett's diverse community.”

Ms. Eames and Ms. Quintana will are seeking seats along with one newcomer, Anna Bernasek, and the incumbent board president, Patrick Bistrian III, on the ballot. Because Ms. Eames and Ms. Quintana did not submit petitions by the deadline for doing so, their names will not appear on Tuesday's ballot.

Amagansett’s budget is up by 1.96 percent this year to just under $10.7 million. Voting will be in the school gym from 2 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.