The State Department of Environmental Conservation is accepting comments on the possible closing of the diamondback terrapin season. The diamondback terrapin lives in brackish waters on Long Island as well as near the Hudson River and New York Harbor. The law now allows them to be taken with a commercial license from August through April.

Declines in terrapin populations have prompted some states to ban their commercial harvest and, according to the D.E.C., a single intensive harvesting season has the potential to endanger the species. The D.E.C. is proposing to end the harvest of diamondback terrapins and to give the species the same protections as other native turtles in New York.

The notice of proposed rulemaking can be viewed at dec.ny.gov. The public comment period will be open through June 9. Comments must be submitted in writing to Kathy O'Brien, NYSDEC, 625 Broadway, Albany 12233-4754 or to [email protected] with "Terrapin Regulation" in the subject line.

East Hampton Town finished 2016 firmly in the black with a positive balance of $29 million, a historic high, according to town officials.

The town's annual financial update, filed recently with the New York State comptroller, reflects an increase during 2016 in the standing fund balance, or surplus, in all of the town's major funds, of $6.7 million.

"The town has come a long way since those very difficult years in 2008 and 2009 when it fell into a $27 million deficit," Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at a board meeting on Tuesday.

To go from that deficit -- which the town had to cover by issuing bonds, under state legislative authority -- to a surplus of more than the deficit amount, was remarkable, Mr. Cantwell said. He called it a "testament to a lot of people's hard work," on a bipartisan basis, including town department heads and staff ,and Len Bernard, the town budget director,  and to "some good decision-making by boards."

The town's two major operating funds "were the two funds decimated eight years ago, but since then the general funds have gone from having a combined deficit of over $27 million to a combined surplus of over $21.7 million," Mr. Cantwell detailed in a release. A surplus has built up in the other major funds as well, the highway, sanitation, scavenger waste, and airport funds.

In order to build its financial standing and credit rating, the town had enacted a policy of achieving an end-of-year surplus of at least 20 percent in all the major funds, but the surplus in each fund at the close of last year surpassed 35 percent.

"The town has achieved its largest surplus ever and is in a very strong financial position," Mr. Cantwell stated in the release. "The town, in my opinion . . . has recovered from its financial crisis. . . ."

The airport fund surplus increased by more than $600,000 in 2016, ending the year at more than $1.8 million.

"The town board is keeping its commitment to maintaining a safe and economically viable airport without cost to taxpayers and without taking Federal Aviation Administration funds," said Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the airport liaison, in the release. The "strong budget performance demonstrates that the town can invest in infrastructure and defend against litigation from the helicopter interests, more specifically the Friends of East Hampton Airport, and still make a robust contribution to fund balance."

The annual financial update document is the first report issued each year that provides a detailed picture of the town's financial performance for the previous fiscal year. It can be obtained from the town Finance Department, or seen on the town website, ehamptonny.gov. An annual independent audit will be released in late June.

Diana Weir, a Wainscott resident who has held both elected and appointed East Hampton Town positions, has a new post. She will become the director of housing in Southampton Town's Land Management Department on June 1, in connection with Supervisor Jay Schneiderman's efforts to create more affordable housing.

The town board approved her appointment on April 25, pending Civil Service requirements, in a 3-to-2 vote. Councilwoman Christine Scalera and Councilman Stan Glnka voted against the appointment, concerned about the budget. The position, which has been vacant, will pay $110,000.

The councilwoman said her no vote was in no way a reflection on Ms. Weir, whom she called very credentialed, but as a result of the budget process. Mr. Glinka agreed. She also said the position was unwarranted as the town has a three-year contract with the Southampton Town Housing Authority.

Mr. Schneiderman, in his state of the town address last week, said Ms. Weir would help the town accomplish his goal of more affordable workforce housing.

Ms. Weir, who served with Mr. Schneiderman on the East Hampton Town Board for four years, is on the East Hampton Town Planning Board, and she said she would remain on the board at least until her term expires at the end of the year. She is also the commissioner of housing and human services in the Town of Brookhaven. She will step down from that position at the end of the month after four and a half years. She previously served for a decade on the Long Island Housing Partnership, which creates affordable housing, and also is a former member of the Suffolk County Planning Commission, an unpaid post.

Her hiring is part of Supervisor Schneiderman's focus on long-range planning. He said the community is coming together to tackle the difficult affordable housing problem. "In Speonk, residents worked closely with the developer to gain support for a small housing development," he said. "Speonk Commons should serve as a model for other communities in our town that recognize the need for more affordable housing to help working families."

In his address on April 25, Mr. Schneiderman emphasized public safety and quality-of-life issues as a priority in the latter part of his first term. With Police Chief Steven E. Skrynecki taking office on Monday, the creation of a Public Safety Department has moved to the top of his agenda. The new department will consolidate the resources of code enforcement, fire marshal, and animal control, he said.

The town board has passed legislation to address quality of life issues, including limits on the hours of operations of noisy construction equipment on weekends. Mr. Schneiderman announced that he will propose legislation that limits the number of cars that can be parked on rental properties and another that mandates mass-gathering permits for private parties with more than 75 guests.

"We want residents and visitors to enjoy our community without having to deal with excessive noise, over-crowded, or unsafe conditions," Mr. Schneiderman said, calling the proposals "common sense measures."

The town is also getting ready to roll out an app that will give residents the ability to report and track non-criminal complaints and requests, from potholes to code violations.

In long-range plans, Mr. Schneiderman mentioned a proposal he has been working to add an organic farming easement for farmland preservation, and a plan for the town to reduce its carbon footprint through renewable energy sources by 2025.

In an attempt to make town government more accessible to the public, the supervisor said that meetings have been held throughout the community since he took office.

Financially, the town is on sound footing, the supervisor said. The town was recently given a Triple-A status by Moody's and Standard & Poors.

Art lovers, get out your calendars and cancel all appointments between next Thursday and May 13 because there is a good chance you could snap up an April Gornik or Charles Waller for the bargain price of $20.

 The Springs School Mystery Art Sale will return to Ashawagh Hall this year after a hiatus in 2016. Organized by the school’s art department and a committee of parents and faculty, the sale raises money for the school’s Visiting Artists Program.

It has a simple premise: Artists — famed, aspiring, students, or dabblers — submit original 5-by-7-inch pieces of work in a variety of mediums, which are then displayed anonymously and sold for $20 each. The signatures are hidden on the back and only revealed after the sale is over. Approximately half of the 1,200 pieces expected will be by professional artists.

Beginning next Thursday at 4 p.m., anyone can walk in and pick up a trophy for $20.

In the past, the school has raised $40,000 from the sale, prompting Lucas Hunt, a professional auctioneer who will preside over a live auction at the sale on May 13, to call it “one of the greatest fund-raisers ever.”

According to Colleen McGowan, who teaches art at the school and is the coordinator of the visual arts program there, all proceeds go directly to the school’s Visiting Artists Program, an art enrichment initiative for kindergarten through eighth grade that pays artists to visit the school and funds art-related field trips for students.

“It’s a really nice circular thing here, a closed loop. Money from the community is going straight back into the pockets of the community. We help artists who live out here as well as get students excited about the possibilities of art and maybe even become successful artists themselves,” Ms. McGowan said.

For Alex DeHavenon, who teaches art history to the school’s seventh and eighth graders, the importance of keeping art alive in Springs is key.

“It’s great to teach students about the historical heritage of art in Springs from Jackson Pollock to Willem de Kooning but it is equally important for them to learn that the contemporary art world is still vibrant in Springs, with many great artists still living here.”

The idea for the event originated with Sara Faulkner, an artist from the United Kingdom who moved to Springs six years ago with her family and has two children at the school. In London a few years ago, Ms. Faulkner had been invited to the Secret Postcard Sale at the Royal College of Art, where attendees can bid on anonymous postcard-sized works by creative megastars such as Yoko Ono and Sir Paul Smith as well as rising talents at the school. The event, which still continues, attracts art lovers from all over Europe, many of whom camp outside the building the night before.

“Springs is like a modest version of that,” said Ms. Faulkner. “We are very conscious of the price point and we want this to be enjoyed by people in our community who don’t normally get a chance to visit an art gallery and appreciate all this great work.”

This year, there will be an added cultural twist. Forty pieces of student artwork from the Angela Landa Elementary School in Havana, Cuba, will be added to the sale. Irena Grant, a parent of a Springs eighth grader, was in Havana in February when she met Richard Robert Diaz, an art teacher at the school. Mr. Diaz told Ms. Grant about the school’s dire shortage of art supplies and lack of technology.

Upon returning to Springs, Ms. Grant spoke with Ms. McGowan and others at the school, and before long, a deal was struck. Mr. Diaz would provide artwork created by his students to be sold at the Mystery Art Sale, in exchange for the art materials he needed.

“We are taking them a variety of special art supplies, which the Golden Eagle artist supply store generously helped us with. I am also taking a laptop, as they don’t have one, and the art teacher is very eager to have his students go on virtual tours of the world’s museums and galleries,” Ms. Grant, who traveled back to Cuba with another parent this week to collect the student art, wrote in an email.

In Springs, the popularity of the Mystery Art Sale has forced the special committee to devise a plan to detract trained art hunters from swooping up the big names, leaving nothing for the amateurs still waiting on line. As a result, this year each person will only be sold three dots, each for $20, to be placed on their chosen pieces.

“If they want to buy another three dots, they’ll have to go back to the end of the line,” said Ms. McGowan, adding, “and last year the line went all the way from Ashawagh Hall to the General Store.”

Ultimately, the project’s team (who have pledged not to buy or provide insider tips) hopes that people will appreciate the entire body of art and not simply focus on what’s famous and what’s not. As collectors say, buy what you like. Even if you do not bag a big name, you could end up going home with a big name of the future.

The deadline for submitting artwork has been extended to tomorrow at 5 p.m. Instructions can be found online at springsmysteryartsale.com.

Paddle Diva, which has been under fire from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals for giving paddleboard lessons in Three Mile Harbor, can continue to operate this season, according to an agreement announced Tuesday between the town and the company, whose owner, Gina Bradley, had sued to stay in business.

Z.B.A. members voted 4-0 in October to uphold a determination by the town’s head building inspector, Ann Glennon, that Paddle Diva, which operates from the Shagwong Marina, had expanded the marina’s use beyond what is allowed under the town code by running classes and renting and selling boards and other items there.

The zoning board had wrestled with several issues during its deliberations, among them whether a paddleboard falls under the definition of a boat. Having concluded that paddleboards are indeed a form of boat, members then had to deal with the town code, which prohibits out-of-water storage of boats at recreational marinas, such as Shagwong. (Out-of-water storage is restricted to sites classified as boatyards.) Ms. Bradley has been running her business at the Shagwong Marina since 2012.

On Jan. 31, Dianne K. Le Verrier of the East Hampton law firm Jordan and Le Verrier asked State Supreme Court Justice Arthur G. Pitts to prevent the town from enforcing the zoning board’s decision until Ms. Bradley’s suit was adjudicated. Pending his decision, which is said to be months off, the two sides agreed that the lessons, rentals, and sales of paddleboards could continue.  “I’m thrilled I can be in business this year, to be an active member of the community,” Ms. Bradley said yesterday.

With the weather and the resort season warming up, the East Hampton Town Board turned its attention this week to proposed town code changes about seating at takeout food shops as well as outdoor dining at restaurants and on sidewalks in downtown Montauk.

Takeout food shops are now classified as retail stores, and a number of delis, bakeries, and similar shops have seating areas. “The truth of the matter is, we have a number of retail food stores that have seating, and currently seating is not permitted,” Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at a board meeting on Tuesday. “It’s occurred, and it’s grown over time.” While he commented that such unsanctioned use “by itself shouldn’t drive our dec­ision,” he said changing the code was “something that we should do.”

From informal personal observation, Mr. Cantwell said, seats in certain food shops have not caused parking congestion or other problems. Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc agreed. “The practice has been going on, and with seemingly no impact” or complaints, he said. “It makes sense, it’s common sense. I think it’s time for this to happen,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the liaison to the town’s business committee, added.

In 2008, the town had recognized that seats were popping up in takeout shops and discussed legalizing them, but nothing came of it. Since then, however, the town has in general looked the other way.

No more than 16 seats would be allowed under the proposal, based on a Suffolk County Health Department rule. The seats could be set up indoors or outdoors, if the store has its own property to accommodate them. Seats on adjacent public land, such as a sidewalk or right of way, would not initially be allowed, although should the current proposal be approved, that would be considered by the business committee and the town board.

“By permitting this, we’re also setting some limits,” Mr. Cantwell said — particularly the 16-seat maximum. Once the guidelines are in place, he said, “I think we have a responsibility to enforce those limits.”

Lew Gross, an owner of 668 the Gig Shack, a Montauk restaurant, called the proposal “commendable,” but suggested that food shops with seats should be required to provide public restrooms. “If you’re going to give them the allowance . . . they should be contributing back to the community,” he said.

The code change would create a new definition of “takeout food store,” Beth Baldwin, a town attorney, explained on Tuesday. Tea and coffeehouses, ice cream shops, bakeries, delis, gourmet food shops, and the like would be included.

Outdoor seating at restaurants was brought before the board by Nancylynn Thiele, another town attorney, who said some clarifications were needed.

Under the law, a restaurant may have up to 30 percent of its seats outdoors, on its own property, without special permission. Ms. Thiele said the law should make it clear that a business could seek approval for a larger number of seats through the planning board’s site plan review process.

A code revision on outdoor dining on sidewalks in the Montauk downtown area, which is to get underway as a pilot program this summer, is also needed, Ms. Thiele said. While the town law includes a requirement that dining areas in a public right of way be partitioned if alcohol is to be served there, the State Liquor Authority precludes consumption of alcohol in such public areas.

Board members asked whether there was a way for a restaurant owner to obtain S.L.A. permission to serve drinks in sidewalk dining areas. “Being civil and having a glass of wine is one of the luxuries of sitting outside and having dinner,” Ms. Overby commented.

The liquor authority allows liquor consumption in places where the dining area is contiguous to the restaurant building, Michael Sendlenski, the town attorney, told the board. Some eateries may be able to meet that standard, while many may not, he said.

On its front page, The Independent, a weekly newspaper based in East Hampton, announced last week that it had a new owner, Ronald Perelman, a name well known here although the famously private Mr. Perelman is not. His estate on Georgica Pond, the Creeks, lies within a half-mile or so of the newspaper’s office in the Red Horse complex on Montauk Highway.

Mr. Perelman and Jerry Della Femina, who founded The Independent and whose outspoken column in it, “Jerry’s Ink,” is regarded as a chief attraction, have been friendly for decades, though their social circles rarely overlap. Mr. Perelman is the chairman, chief executive officer, and sole owner of MacAndrews & Forbes, whose holdings span a broad range of industries from the cosmetics giant Revlon, its flagship, to Siga Technologies, which develops innovative vaccines and drugs for lethal diseases.

 Mr. Della Femina is the advertising legend whose 1969 book, “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor,” inspired the AMC series “Mad Men.” The men met in the mid-1980s, he recalled this week, when Mr. Perelman’s Marvel Comics company was a client of Mr. Della Femina’s ad agency.

Under the headline “Letter to Our Readers,” Mr. Perelman promised “a beautifully redesigned paper and website,” starting on Memorial Day, with “many exciting new contributors.” Mr. Della Femina’s column will continue to be in its pages. In last week’s column, Mr. Della Femina wrote that Mr. Perelman had said, “We have a deal if you continue the column.”

The terms of the transfer are not known. There had been speculation here that Mr. Della Femina, who told Forbes magazine in 2011 that he was planning to sell “my houses, my advertising business, my newspaper, and my restaurant” because of Barack Obama and high taxes, might have let the paper go for a song. But apparently that was not the case. “We agreed not to reveal what the deal was,” he said, “but I can tell you that it was not a handshake. It was a good deal for everyone.”

True to his words, Mr. Della Femina sold his eponymous restaurant on North Main Street in 2011, and his eight-bedroom house on Drew Lane overlooking the Atlantic the next year, for $25 million. Piping plover nest protection had put an end to the annual July Fourth fireworks at Main Beach and to the Della Feminas’ legendary display-watching parties, which was said to be a factor in the decision to sell. (He used his Independent column to rage against everyone responsible, most of all the birds themselves.) The adman and his wife, whom he refers to in print as “the beautiful Judy Licht,” now own a house in Bridgehampton.

As chairman and chief executive officer of MacAndrews & Forbes, Mr. Perelman amassed a fortune by buying and building companies, chief among them Revlon, the multinational cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care conglomerate. In 1995, in what the publicity-shy mogul claimed was his first interview ever, he told the magazine Cigar Aficionado (Mr. Perelman’s cigar smoke is said to have perfumed many a leveraged buyout conference) that “I have stayed away from companies that I didn’t think I’d enjoy owning.”

More recently, in 2013, a CNBC interviewer stopped in the midst of a discussion about the stock market to ask him about the 60-acre Creeks, which he had purchased in the mid-1990s for $9 million, a sum that today might buy one pond-front acre. When he bought the place, Mr. Perelman told the interviewer, it was “so beat-up, so ugly. Everybody turned it down. It was on the market four years. It’s right across the street from the airport — nobody liked it.”

Mr. Perelman recently proposed that East Hampton Village upzone the Creeks to a new residential district with lots of at least six acres. His representatives assured the East Hampton Village Board, whose members appeared less than enthusiastic about the idea, that it would result in low-density development and allow him to maintain the multiple residences on his “family compound.” Mr. Perelman, 74, has 8 children and 10 grandchildren.

Some of those “multiple residences” were built and altered without benefit of building permits, as a building inspector discovered in 2012 following a fire on the grounds. Their status is in limbo in East Hampton Town Justice Court, but if the village adopts the new zoning he has proposed, the illegal buildings would be legalized.

Whether Mr. Perelman will use The Independent’s editorial columns to argue for the proposal remains to be seen. As Mr. Della Femina remarked on Tuesday, apropos of something entirely different — his mid-1990s war with the village, dubbed the Pumpkin Papers when a Halloween display of pumpkins outside the Red Horse Market, which he also owned, had him marched off in handcuffs for defying “signage” laws: “When you have a newspaper, you have a better way with authority.”

South Fork firefighters were busy last week, with three blazes damaging buildings and two brush fires. No injuries were reported.

In Montauk on April 19, a dilapidated fisherman’s shack on the grounds of 41 East Lake Drive was destroyed. Tom Baker, the East Hampton Town fire marshal who investigated the cause, said an overloaded electrical circuit was to blame.

Montauk Fire Department Chief Vincent Franzone said the small structure was a “total loss.” The owner of the property, which has several outbuildings, had left about an hour before the blaze broke out, the chief said. The owner is Else Bridgeford, according to town tax records.

East Hampton firefighters quickly put out a house fire in Hansom Hills, off Rote 114, last Thursday afternoon, but Chief Ken Wessberg said the department could not take all the credit. Swift thinking by Kim Hren, who co-owns the Groundworks @ Hren’s nursery in East Hampton with the owners of the house, Linda and Andrija Silich, helped firefighters save it, he said.

“It was a great stop, thanks to Kim Hren,” Chief Wessberg said. A woman cleaning the house, at 22 Fetlock Drive, heard smoke detectors sounding at about 2:30 p.m. and called Ms. Hren, who was already on her way over. She found the fire, which had already broken through a window, in a bedroom on the second floor.

“She got the dogs out and shut the door to the room. That was the perfect thing to do. It contained the fire,” said the chief. “If she had not done that, we would probably be having a different conversation.”

Ms. Hren did not stop there, he said. She grabbed a garden hose and pointed the nozzle up at the window from the ground floor.

When firefighters arrived, “We hit it quick,” Chief Wessberg said. “It was over quickly.”

The bedroom’s contents were destroyed. Mr. Baker, who investigated, blamed the blaze on a multi-outlet electrical strip that was tucked in between the wall and a mattress. “It either overheated or short-circuited,” he said. 

“We are so grateful to our business partner and best friend, Kimberly Hren, and the Town of East Hampton for taking such swift actions,” the couple said in a statement. “The volunteer firemen and community of East Hampton validate the spirit of our community that comes together in time of need. We are shaken but grateful nobody was hurt.”

East Hampton firefighters were back out again Tuesday morning when a poolhouse was engulfed in flames. A passer-by on Woods Lane called 911 about “a large working fire in the woods” on Georgica Road, just off Woods Lane in East Hampton Village, shortly before 5:30 a.m. Police found the poolhouse at 5 Georgica Road in flames.

The building, about 12 by 16 feet, had been burning for some time, fire officials said. They doused the flames within about 10 minutes, but the poolhouse was a total loss. “There wasn’t much we could do,” Chief Wessberg said. There was no damage to the main house, about 20 to 25 feet away. The property is owned by Catherine Fedeli and Bruce Crowle.

Ken Collum, the village fire marshal, said the cause of the fire was not clear, but that it did not appear suspicious.

   East Hampton firefighters also got together for a drill Sunday morning, which shut down a portion of Main Street. The department set up in front of the United Artists cinema at about 7:30 a.m. The drill was staged “with an eye on the recent Sag Harbor Cinema fire,” according to a statement, helping to determine water supply and truck placement should a blaze ever occur on that part of Main Street. Southampton firefighters conducted a similar drill on Main Street in Southampton early last week. 

In Amagansett, firefighters responded to two brushfires on April 18. The first was on Hampton Place just before 3 p.m., and the other was on Cross Highway, between Fresh Pond Road and the Devon Yacht Club, at about 5:40 p.m. John Glennon, who recently took office as chief, said the blazes were not suspicious, just coincidental. There were strong winds, he noted, and the ground was dry.

Fire marshals investigated the Hampton Place blaze but could not determine a cause. The fire on Cross Highway “spread pretty good — about 75 yards” into beach grass, Chief Glennon said. Both brushfires were put out quickly. 

With Reporting by T.E. McMorrow

National Grid Generation, which sells the electricity generated at its Long Island fossil fuel-based power stations to the Long Island Power Authority, plans to construct a five-megawatt battery facility on an undeveloped parcel on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton.

The utility has filed with the New York State Public Service Commission to lease property to East Hampton Energy Storage Center, a limited liability company jointly owned with a subsidiary of NextEra Energy and formed to own and operate the battery storage facility. LIPA selected the battery facility as part of a request for proposals to address the South Fork’s energy needs.

The battery, which will help LIPA meet peak demand, will also serve as the receiving station for the South Fork Wind Farm, a 15-turbine, 90-megawatt installation that is planned for a site 30 miles off Montauk.

The battery is to be housed in a 4,000-square-foot building on a site containing a LIPA substation and National Grid Generation’s oil-burning peaker plants, which typically run during periods of high demand. The substation will connect the battery storage system to LIPA’s electricity distribution system. National Grid is also planning a battery storage facility in Montauk.

In January, LIPA inked a contract to buy electricity from Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that will apply for federal and state permits to construct the offshore wind farm in waters leased from the federal government. The battery storage facility is scheduled to be operational next year, while the wind farm, if all goes according to plan, will be operational by the end of 2022. 

Upon completion, the Cove Hollow Road facility will be Long Island’s first large-scale energy storage battery. Efficient storage is an essential component of renewable energy due to the variability of wind and sunlight, allowing a constant output regardless of weather conditions.

In a related development, on Monday LIPA and PSEG Long Island, which manages the island’s electricity grid on LIPA’s behalf, issued a “historic game changer,” in the words of Renewable Energy Long Island’s executive director, in the form of its draft plan for Long Island’s present and future energy needs.

Among the highlights in the document, called the 2017 Long Island Integrated Resource Plan and Repowering Studies, are LIPA’s plan to build out a renewable energy infrastructure, and a downward revision of its long-term load forecast. The utility now predicts virtually no growth in demand through 2035, a 1,700-megawatt decline from its 2013 forecast, although continued growth in demand is projected on the South Fork. Electricity production at Long Island’s fossil-fuel power plants has declined since 1999, according to the document, a trend that is expected to continue as renewable energy has become cost-competitive with new or refurbished traditional plants.

“What we’re witnessing is the beginning of the end of fossil fuels,” said Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island, an advocacy group. “LIPA, which for more than 100 years has put all their eggs into the fossils fuels basket, is now saying, ‘We’re going to switch to renewable energy sources,’ primarily because they are now cost-effective and are going to be less costly than fossil fuels. That’s the tipping point we’ve all been pushing for, for the last few decades. It’s a big deal.”

The ascendance of renewable energy will help meet the mandate set forth in the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency’s Clean Energy Standard, which requires that 50 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo intends to go further. In his 2017 State of the State address, he set forth the long-term objective to meet 100 percent of energy needs through renewable sources. “We want to get 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030 and we are not going to stop until we reach 100 percent renewable,” he said, “because that’s what a sustainable New York is really all about.”

The state, Mr. Raacke said, is “taking a page from East Hampton’s playbook,” a reference to the town board’s 2014 vote to set the goal of meeting all of the town’s electricity needs with renewable sources by 2020. “That’s where this is going,” he said.

The state’s Offshore Wind Blue­print, issued in September, established a framework for development of offshore wind electricity generation. The document is a precursor to the Offshore Wind Master Plan, expected by year’s end.

An East Hampton Town Trustee was arrested on drunken driving charges early Saturday morning. Town police said they clocked John Tyler Armstrong, 30, driving a 1999 Subaru Legacy, at 62 miles per hour on Cedar Street, where the speed limit is 30 m.p.h., adding that the Subaru had been swerving across the road. He was stopped near Fieldview Lane at about 3 a.m.

Mr. Armstrong failed roadside sobriety tests, police said, before being taken to headquarters in Wainscott, where a breath test allegedly produced a reading of .13 of 1 percent. A reading of .08 or higher defines intoxication.

He was arraigned several hours later before East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana, who suspended his driver's license.

"How long is the suspension?" Mr. Armstrong asked.

"The suspension stays in place until the case is adjudicated," she told him. Noting that this was his first-ever brush with the law, Justice Rana suggested that he could be eligible for a hardship license that would allow him to drive to and from work.

She released him without bail, with a future date in court of May 25, warning him to be there that day or a warrant would be issued for his arrest. "You don't want that," she said.

"I sure don't," he replied. "I don't want any of this, but I messed up."

Mr. Armstrong is completing his first two-year term as a trustee after being elected in 2015 on the Democratic ticket, and is running for re-election this fall. A sign of his popularity in the community was his election in February to the whimsical post of Mr. Amagansett, a benefit event that is held every year. Mr. Armstrong is an Amagansett resident.