Forming a tiny circle between her forefinger and thumb, Elizabeth Reveiz indicated the size of her department’s budget within the East Hampton School District.

“It’s very small,” said Ms. Reveiz, who is director of ELL/Bilingual Programs. Yet, in a school district with 326 students classified as English Language Learners, the department’s impact is substantial.

At last week’s school board budget workshop, Ms. Reveiz presented her department’s 2017-18 budget as $45,000, out of an overall budget of more than $66 million. The largest piece of that relatively small pie goes to the John M. Marshall Elementary School, where one-third of the students — 161 children — do not speak English as a first language.

“Do you have enough funds in your budget to handle this?” asked Jacqueline Lowey, a board member.

“Yes,” replied Ms. Reveiz, adding that her department employs such cost-effective strategies as co-teaching between regular classes and English as a New Language (ENL) classes. She requested no increase in her budget from last year.

Such strategies are now, in fact, required by the New York State Education Department, which implemented a new set of regulations in 2015 for public schools with ENL/ELL students, covering everything from how those students are identified to how classrooms should be structured. Most notably, schools with ENL students are required to have an English language teacher present in a general education classroom, replacing the previous system of “full immersion.” Under the new regulations, “It is not permissible to assume that unsupported immersion of ELLs into an English-speaking environment will enable them to succeed academically.”

The regulations are a broad effort to improve the academic standing and progress of English learners, who are far behind their peers. Statewide, only 34 percent of the segment graduate on time, less than half the rate for native English-language speakers.

For Ms. Reveiz, who has worked in East Hampton for four years, one of the biggest challenges comes from another group of ENL students, known as SIFE: Students With Interrupted Formal Education. As required by law, the high school regularly admits students under the age of 21 who have not received a formal education for several years. Recently, a 17-year-old student arrived at the school speaking no English and having not attended school since fifth grade.

“It’s always a challenge to provide them the best opportunities that will yield the best results,” she said. “We want them to leave East Hampton High School feeling as though they have some tools in their repertoire that will enable them to succeed outside of these walls.”

Within the school’s walls is another department, Pupil Personnel Services, described by its director, Cindy Allentuck, as responsible for the “social, emotional well-being of students.”

At last week’s board meeting, Ms. Allentuck announced that “the need for psychological therapeutic services in our school district has increased,” although, like Ms. Reveiz, she reported no increase in her department’s overall budget of $2.1 million, despite an increase in services for students with emotional disabilities.

She too was asked if her department’s funds were sufficient. “I can do it,” Ms. Allentuck told the board. “We can make it work.”

For Ms. Allentuck, who was a social worker before becoming a school administrator, the well-being of students has always been a high priority. In the East Hampton School District there are approximately 20 students who receive therapeutic services funded by her department, she said, adding that her focus should never be about money. “But services cost money,” she said.

There has been an increase in students with learning disabilities in all three schools, she said, a diagnosis that can ultimately affect their emotional health. She also pointed to a “slow and steady increase of general education kids who require psychological evaluation, especially in the high school,” citing factors such as substance abuse problems, pressure to succeed, and life in a small town with little for teenagers to do as possible reasons for the spike.

But Ms. Allentuck was quick to point out that the district is well equipped to face these challenges, with three full-time psychologists, one in each school, and “hyper-aware principals.”

Her department is also responsible for children classified as special education students and those deemed emotionally fragile. For this group, the schools receive funds from the state’s Boards of Cooperative Educational Services. Until June 2015, East Hampton paid the Child Development Center of the Hamptons for 15 to 20 students classified within the special education category. After C.D.C.H. closed last year, the district absorbed the students but saved the money it had been paying for them, keeping the bottom line unchanged.

The public could soon be invited to the Foster family’s new vodka distillery to sample and buy vodka, as the Sagaponack Farm Distillery’s application for a tasting room is poised for approval by the Southampton Town Planning Board.

The distillery is on the former Kaminsky farm on Sagg Road, north of Montauk Highway and outside Saga­po­n­ack Village. The tasting room would be located on the first floor of an existing farm building, with office and storage space on the second floor. Dean and Marilee Foster, siblings whose family has a long tradition of potato farming on the South Fork, have expanded the family operation to include distilling vodka from their own crops.

The Fosters purchased the Kaminsky property, just over 13 acres near the railroad tracks, a few years back and began experimenting and testing recipes a year after passage of the New York Craft Act, legislation signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2014 that eased regulations on small-batch producers.

They added on to a 1920s building to create a full distillery last year, according to Kieran Pape Murphree, an attorney with Burke & Sullivan who represented the distillery before the planning board.

Mr. Foster told the board during a public hearing last Thursday that this plan is “part of the organic growth of the whole farming industry.” His intention is to build “a world-class distillery from really world-class” crops.

The tasting room would offer clients a sampling of the product, but also a view into the distillery where it is made. The entrance will be improved and the building would have two bathrooms for the public. Cheryl Kraft, the Southampton Town fire marshal, would determine occupancy restrictions, according to Ms. Murphree.

The tasting room would not turn into a bar, Mr. Foster promised. “That is not our objective.” The distillery will sell bottles to the general public, but they are not to be opened on premises, he said.

The regulations for the Fosters’ tasting room are far more stringent than those for winery tasting rooms because of the strength of the alcohol, Mr. Foster said. “Three-quarters of an ounce is all that the patronage could taste per day,” he said. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets regulates farm distilleries, breweries, and wineries, and such facilities are considered protected farm operations.

One neighbor, Cindy Glanzrock, said she has some safety concerns. Having lived on the corner of Sagg Road and Narrow Lane for 18 years, she said speeding cars and increased traffic on a busy back road are already an issue. Motorists heading north over the bridge do so blindly. “They don’t drive over that bridge, they fly,” she said. “It’s a very very scary corner.”

The Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee did not have a chance to weigh in before the hearing because the Planning Department had not forwarded the application to the chairwoman, Pamela Harwood, until a few days after the committee’s February meeting. The group did not meet again until four days after the hearing, on Monday. Ms. Harwood asked that the application be held open for another month. Dennis Finnerty, the planning board’s chairman, declined to do so, though he said he hoped in the future that the Planning Department could get applications to the citizens committee in time for it to review them and weigh in prior to a public hearing.

At the citizens meeting on Monday night, Ms. Harwood said there seemed to be community support for the proposal. The problem, as she saw it, was that Wolffer Estate Vineyard, particularly its tasting room at the wine stand on Montauk Highway, has “gone astray” from its original mission between traffic, live music performances, and special events.

Several members of the committee said the scale of the operation needs to be maintained, and said some thought should be given as to how to buffer the residential neighbors from any additional activity at the distillery. “It’s a good thing if it’s not disruptive,” said Peter Wilson, a committee member.

The committee put off a vote, deciding instead to weigh in over email in the coming days. The public hearing before the planning board was closed last Thursday, but the board will accept written comments on the application through early next week.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee was poised to screen its final candidate to run for town board last night, just days after officially endorsing Gerard Larsen for one of the two seats.

Mr. Larsen, known as Jerry, was until recently the East Hampton Village police chief. He retired in late December after 13 years in the position and 32 years with the department.

A registered member of the Independence Party, he will run on the G.O.P. ticket with Manny Vilar of Springs, a sergeant with the State Parks police who is running for town supervisor, and, if all went as planned yesterday, Paul Giardina, an East Hampton resident with 40 years of experience with the Environmental Protection Agency, for which he was chief of the Radiation and Indoor Air branch in the New York regional office. The three have more than 100 years of combined public service and administrative experience.

Mr. Larsen, 52, and Mr. Vilar, 56, have known each other since 1984, when they went through the seasonal police academy together. Both grew up in the East Hampton area.

“I’ve always been interested in doing it,” Mr. Larsen said of a run for town office. “Now that I’m retired, I’ve got the freedom to do it.” His wife, Lisa Mulhern-Larsen, ran unsuccessfully for town board as a Republican two years ago. “I got hooked” on town politics after that, Mr. Larsen said.

He considers himself a moderate. Party affiliations are not important to him, and he is able to work with everyone, he said. He contacted all three political parties, asking to be screened, but as of yesterday had not heard back from the Democratic Committee. The Independence Party has not yet screened candidates.

“I don’t really have an agenda moving forward,” he said, adding that he is open-minded and willing to meet with people on all sides of the major issues facing the town.

“I’ve always done a lot for the community, I feel. This is just another way for me to keep doing things for the community.”

Mr. Larsen moved to East Hampton at the age of 8 and graduated from East Hampton High School in 1982. He started a career in law enforcement as a traffic control officer with the village the following year, and then worked as a seasonal police officer before getting hired full time. He rose through the department’s ranks, serving as detective, sergeant, and then lieutenant before being hired chief in 2003.

In addition to running the village’s Police Department, Mr. Larsen, who has a bachelor’s degree in public affairs from the State University at Westbury, also managed the Emergency Communications Department, which handles 911 calls for the East Hampton Town and Sag Harbor Village Police Departments and the fire and ambulance agencies from Montauk to Sag Harbor. He acted as the emergency manager for East Hampton Village, coordinating fire, police, and emergency medical services during natural disasters and special events, and he was an integral part in the formation of the village’s paid paramedic program.

Like Mr. Vilar, who has served for many years in leadership roles with the Police Benevolent Association of New York State, Mr. Larsen has union experience. He was elected president of the Police Association of Suffolk County, with more than 2,000 officers in its membership, in 2006, after holding other elected positions since 1995.

Mr. Larsen lives in East Hampton with his wife. They have six children between them. They have run Protec Security, a security and property management business, since 2005.

Sandpebble Builders, which won about $750,750 in damages last year following a jury trial in a suit against the East Hampton School District, filed an appeal in the State Supreme Court Appellate Division on Feb. 3 contesting that amount, according to Stephen R. Angel of Esseks, Hefter, Angel, DiTalia & Pasca of Riverhead, the builder’s attorney. The award comes to about $1.6 million when interest is included.

 The dispute goes back to 2002, when  Sandpebble, a Southampton firm, signed a contract for major renovations of the district’s three schools. The district subsequently signed a contract with a different construction company claiming the scope of the work had increased. The district sued Sandpebble, which in turn countersued the district, seeking $3.7 million in damages, plus interest.

The work had been estimated originally to cost $18 million, with Sandpebble receiving 5 percent of the total cost. In 2004, however, the district failed to ratify the agreement.  It had reportedly proposed that Sandpebble complete the project at a less favorable rate. Sandpebble balked and after more negotiations rejected the proposal. The school then contracted with the second construction company, and eventually the project wound up costing some $80 million.

After many years of motions and an 11-day trial, on May 26, 2016, a State Supreme Court jury in the courtroom of Justice Jerry Garguilo rejected the district’s claims and found for the defendant. Sandpebble was awarded $755,000, and the district was ordered to pay 9 percent interest on that amount dating back to 2006, when Sandpebble brought suit claiming the contract had been violated.

This is not the first time the case has gone to the appellate level. In an appeal decided in 2009, a divided court rejected the school district’s request that Sandpebble’s principal owner, Victor Canseco, be named as a co-defendant. The court ruled that he was protected as a corporate officer.

The school district has already paid the amount it was ordered to come up with, which came to about $1.6 million with interest. It also has already spent about $3 million on attorneys’ fees. It has been represented by Steven G. Pinks of Pinks, Arbeit, Nemeth of Hauppauge. Mr. Angel said it probably would be a year or more before the court considered the appeal.

Since New Year’s Day, when the East Hampton Town Police Department changed the schedule and squad makeup of its uniformed officers, arrests have skyrocketed by 45.5 percent, according to the weekly logs. The numbers were confirmed by Chief Michael D. Sarlo, who said the bulk of the arrests stemmed from traffic stops. As of midnight Monday, police reported making 211 arrests since Jan. 1, as compared to 145 over the same time period last year. In the same time period in 2015, there were 112 arrests.

Officers used to rotate through eight-hour shifts, moving from “day” to “night” to “overnight.” Now they are on a fixed schedule, working 12-hour shifts, either day or night. The change has allowed the department to trim down from five squads to four, which translates into more boots on the ground at all times.

“With increased staffing levels, during the off-season, our supervisors are able to place officers on directed enforcement details,” Chief Sarlo said in an email on Tuesday. That means “targeting the roadways that have the most complaints of speeding or accidents, so our traffic stops are much higher, with out compromising response time or investigative efforts,” he said.

The chief declined to cite particular locations, but Town Lane in Amagansett appears to be one of them. Residents there have long complained about reckless drivers along that narrow road. Abraham’s Path, a well-known route from Montauk Highway in Amagansett to Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton, is another.

While the number of drunken-driving arrests in recent weeks on both roads has  increased, the new police figures also include less serious offenses such as expired inspection or registration stickers, unlicensed driving, and other traffic infractions.

With additional officers now on patrol, day or night, alcohol-related arrests are having far less impact on the number of police deployed all over town. Such charges can take the arresting officer, who is responsible for maintaining custody over the driver, as much as two and a half hours or more to process.

The procedure takes even longer where a felony charge is involved, Chief Sarlo explained. A felony drunken-driving arrest, he said, creates “the possibility of a vehicle impound, which includes complete inspection of the condition and inventory of the contents; and in such cases where the defendant may be transported to the hospital due to injuries in an accident, there is often a blood sample taken at the hospital which needs to be transported directly to the Suffolk crime lab. Leandra’s Law arrests and serious injury accidents take the evidence required and documentation needed up another level, making the process even longer.” (One arrest under Leandra’s Law was made last weekend and is reported elsewhere on this page.)

Arrests are not the only area of police work the chief sees improving. “We are also ensuring that our community policing efforts are being improved upon, as officers are getting out of their cars more often and participating at schools, and with business owners,” he said.

“Obviously, during the summer season, with the exponential increase in call volume, those additional officers will not have quite as much time for directed enforcement, but we hope to continue to maintain an increased presence in our problematic traffic areas to increase the safety of the community,” Chief Sarlo wrote. “Bike patrols in the summer, along with foot patrols in Montauk and Amagansett should also improve quality

Students at the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center are enhancing their vocabulary and spelling, as well as figuring out new ways to solve problems and work together as a team. They are learning all that while playing one of America’s favorite board games — Scrabble.

Six of the eight budding wordsmiths in the center’s Scrabble Club, all of them Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton School students in fourth or fifth grade, are taking their skills to the North American School Scrabble Championship at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., next month. They are still new to the game, and the tournament gives them an opportunity to play against kids they do not know in a competitive setting. They are paying their own way — $600 apiece to cover hotel and travel expenses for the weekend, plus food.

The center hopes to raise $5,000 to help offset the costs. “Reading and literacy are key to our children succeeding and being successful in the future,” said Bonnie Cannon, executive director of the Child Care Center. “Lack of vocabulary — I find not just our kids but all kids, need more. I know when I was a kid, Scrabble was a fun way of learning new words and finding new meanings of words.”

Kathy Hummel, who coaches the Scrabble Club members, has worked for the National Scrabble Association and has been teaching Scrabble to students in Hampton Bays, where she lives, since 2000. She is paid a small stipend for coaching. Along with two other staff members, she will accompany the students to Massachusetts for the Nationals, a two-day, eight-round competition starting April 21.

Players qualify for the championship by attending club, learning unfamiliar words, and practicing strategies that help make great plays, Ms. Hummel said. She gives them vocabulary lists and flashcards as homework. Two-letter words are a main focus, such as “aa,” a type of lava, and “za,” slang for pizza — the unofficial food for Scrabble players in Bridgehampton, Ms. Hummel said with a laugh.

“At this level, especially with this group because they are so new, sometimes they score 100, sometimes they score 200 points.” Say, for example, they have the letters C-H-A-R-M-E-D on their rack. It is age-appropriate, she said, that they might only see they have the tiles to spell “arm,” maybe “harm.” She will encourage them not only to find a longer word, but to look for suffixes and prefixes — “front and back hooks.”

“I’m just happy they find the best play they can at the time,” she said. Scrabble brings children of this generation back to the basics. For one thing, it is tactile, Ms. Hummel pointed out. “It’s a videogame. You have to touch the tiles. Move them around. You have to use a pencil to write down the score. It keeps them in the moment. You have to be present. . . . The thing about Scrabble, in general, is there’s a luck factor that’s involved. You can learn all the words you want; but if you don’t get the letters to make them. . . .” 

She tells the children the story of Joe Edley, the only person to have won the adult National Scrabble Championship three times, who lost 11 out of 13 rounds in one tournament, and hung the scorecard on his wall as a reminder. “When the kids get frustrated, I try to explain to them even the experts get racks where there is nothing.” She said she would rather the children be good sports and have fun than win.

The child care center is a not-for-profit organization, for the most part serving, though not limited to, the African-American and growing immigrant populations in Bridgehampton and surrounding communities. Its Scrabble club began in October, with practice every Monday night. The members are among more than a million students in over 20,000 schools nationwide playing organized Scrabble games.

Hasbro, the company that makes the game, and the National Scrabble Association launched the National School Scrabble Program, for fourth through eighth graders, in 1991. It has been credited with improving a wide range of skills that will help children far beyond the game itself. 

Club members will also take part in a tournament in Ridgefield, Conn., this weekend, as well as games against Hampton Bays students in early April, to prep for the national tournament.

Contributions to help with their travel and other expenses can be made payable to the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center. Students would need the money by April 15. Next year Ms. Hummel plans to bring in adult players to give the students even more experience. Those interested had best brush up on their vocabulary.

Corrections: Joe Edley lost 11 of 13 rounds once, not 14 out 15 as originally reported. Also, this weekend's tournament is in Ridgefield, not Ridgewood. 

Whether in Montauk, where I grew up, or in New York City, where I was born and lived for 20-plus years, St. Patrick’s Day never conjured Ireland for me, or much of anything about it. Instead, I thought of the plastic bowler hats and vests of uncertain, cheap material, each a gaudier shade of green; of wasted 20-somethings on daylong benders in the city; of rivers of vomit running in the streets (and puddles of same on the floors of unfortunate taxis), and of the occasional, or frequent, fistfight. Is this something to be proud of?

‘To be Irish is to know the world will break your heart.’ 

                                                                             Daniel P. Moynihan

I long ago formed a resistance — of one. On a typical St. Patrick’s Day, I would come home from work in New York and put on “Irish Heartbeat,” a magnificent collaboration of the Chieftains, purveyors of traditional music from the old country, and Van Morrison, the pride of Belfast, in the Occupied Territories.

To this day, some of the songs on “Irish Heartbeat” bring tears, and I’m reminded of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s observation that “to be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.”

“On Raglan Road on an autumn day, I saw her first and knew,” Van the Man sings on “Raglan Road,” lyrics by the poet Patrick Kavanagh. “That her dark hair would weave a snare, that I might one day rue/I saw the danger, yet I walked, along the enchanted way/And I said let grief be a falling leaf, at the dawning of the day.” Are you getting misty?

I never took much of a liking to stout, so to this day, on the 17th of March, I forgo a pint of Guinness in favor of something that might instill even more pride, or dismay, in my departed ancestors: a glass of Jameson Irish whiskey, neat. Maybe two. Possibly three. Okay, one more, but 16that’s where I draw the line.

By then, it will be late, and I will slip into melancholy to the strains of “Carrickfergus.”

My childhood days bring back sad reflections

To happy times spent so long ago

My boyhood friends and my own relations

Have all passed on like the melting snow

But I’ll spend my days in endless roving

Soft is the grass and my bed is free

Oh, to be home now in Carrickfergus

On the long road down to the salty sea

Every once in a while, however, this carefree youth turned cynical wet blanket smiles anew, when a memory of “happy times spent long ago” is jarred. Ah, “the long road down to the salty sea,” that is where I will begin.

The Montauk Friends of Erin was established in 1962, four years before my birth. Although The East Hampton Star puts the first Montauk St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 1947, when four men marched from the Blue Marlin restaurant to the Montauk Tavern, now known as Shagwong, the Friends of Erin held its first in 1963. Mike Egan was grand marshal.

I was not there, of course, or at the next few. But I recently came across a few Kodacolor prints of a long-ago parade, and while the date stamped on the back of each has faded, I think they say 1969. Montauk has been something of an Irish haven since the early 1900s, when Irish and French fishermen and their families emigrated from Nova Scotia and established what was known as the Fishing Village on Fort Pond Bay. It was wiped out in the 1938 Hurricane, but people named McDonald and Burke and Grimes have been there ever since.

I remember most if not all of the parades through the hamlet when I was a kid at the Montauk Public School, throughout the 1970s. I was in a few of them, as a Cub Scout or member of the school’s nascent marching band.

As spectator or participant, what stands out is just how simple and small everything was. In those pictures from the late 1960s, the building now occupied by Chase Bank is under construction. The hardware store, on the same block, is there, but only green grass stands between it and the bank building on the corner. There appear to be no spectators at all on that side of Main Street.

My parents, brother, and I surely took the Buick and the long road down along the salty sea from Hither Hills to town, and stood on Main Street with, I guess, many if not most of Montauk’s year-round residents. There were police and fire brigades in dress uniforms, and fire trucks, and majorettes, and a clown or two, distributing candy to the children.

I don’t remember anything else. Certainly not drunken revelers, spilling out of Long Island Rail Road cars by the thousands, as would characterize parades to come. Back then, the police were free to march. I’m glad the town has taken steps to minimize the chaos and restore the day to something resembling its family-friendly origins, albeit on a far larger scale.

In the mid-1980s, I came to know many Irish of my generation here in Montauk. Some 20 years earlier, young adults had started coming to Montauk for the summer when Mary Gosman, who was born in Ireland, hired two of her nephews to work at Gosman’s restaurant. Over the years, word spread about summertime employment, and more and more Irish came to work at Gosman’s and elsewhere. Some never left.

Those with whom I worked, at Gosman’s Clam Bar, and socialized, often at the nearby Tipperary Inn, were among the most kind and gentle people I have known. Still in love with education but weary of schooling, I quietly neglected to return to college one year, instead flying to Shannon Airport, destined to drink hugely (but responsibly, more or less), hitchhike around the Emerald Isle more than once, run out of money halfway into the expedition, behold breathtaking, terrible beauty, enjoy the company of countless godly souls who easily and cheerfully befriend strangers, and, at the same time, begin to know myself. Ireland was simpler and far smaller, and landing there felt like going back in time.

Like the dates stamped on the back of those prints, my memory has faded. I can’t remember who it was, but I recall a discussion about St. Patrick’s Day with one of those summer visitors from Ireland, and how it was observed in the old country. “We look at you in America,” the Irishman said.

I cannot attest to it, but according to yourirish.com, which offers history and information about Ireland, he spoke the truth. The day in the old country is for church and a family meal, followed by watching televised parades taking place in other countries. “Alcohol was rarely consumed on this important day and it wasn’t until the 1970s when pubs were allowed to open by law,” the site says. The annual parade in Dublin began only in 1995, and only to boost tourism.

And we in America, of all ethnicities, imbibing irrepressibly in our plastic bowler hats. Please excuse me while I reach for “Irish Heartbeat” and a quiet glass of Jameson.

Steven Lee, the former manager of the Poxabogue Golf Center in Sagaponack, was found not guilty of a felony charge of unlawful surveillance by a jury in Riverside on Thursday.

Mr. Lee had admitted to taking a cellphone photograph in July 2015 of a teenage girl seated on a bench outside his office with her legs spread, revealing her underwear. The girl, waiting for her parents, did not know she was being photographed because the window Mr. Lee was shooting through was opaque. He was arrested that October.

James O’Shea, an attorney for the 47-year-old Mr. Lee, told the jury at the beginning of the trial on March 16 that what his client did was "distasteful, stupid, but not illegal."

Mr. O’Shea pointed out to reporters that day that Mr. Lee had turned over his cellphone voluntarily to Southampton Town police. They then obtained a search warrant and examined the entire contents of the phone. The image of the girl was apparently the only photo they found that was salacious in nature.

The defense also challenged the way town police and the town government had handled the case. The Poxabogue Golf Center is a public course owned by the Town of Southampton, which contracts for its management. It was temporarily closed after Mr. Lee’s arrest in 2015.

His trial lasted three days, including the lawyers’ summations. The jury, which included an equal number of men and women, was in its second day of deliberation Thursday when its members sent a note to New York State Supreme Court Justice John Toomey saying that they were deadlocked on a verdict, according to the district attorney’s office. Justice Toomey urged them to resume deliberations. They eventually requested a readback of the charge they were considering. Another hour went by before they delivered their verdict.

Jefferson Davis Eames, 48, of Springs was indicted by a grand jury seated in Riverside on Tuesday. The extent of the charge or charges contained in the sealed indictment will be revealed during his arraignment next month in county court in Riverside.

Mr. Eames was arrested by East Hampton Town police on a felony charge of grand larceny while appearing at East Hampton Town Justice Court on separate matters last Thursday afternoon. Unable to make the $20,000 bail set by Justice Lisa R. Rana, he was taken to the county jail in Riverside, where he remained as of yesterday afternoon.

According to Rudy Migliore Jr., an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Mr. Eames deposited an unauthorized check from a company called Leisure Tech. The company’s owner, Franklin Rosalia, lodged the complaint after Mr. Eames failed to reimburse him for the money from the check, which Mr. Rosalia told police had been issued accidentally. Mr. Rosalia had done business with Mr. Eames several years ago, he told police. Mr. Eames deposited the check into his own business account on Dec. 27, 2016, police said.

Mr. Eames was recently accused, among other things, of hosting teenagers at several parties with drugs and alcohol at his Neck Path house, where, police say, partygoers were charged admission at the door.

He has been arrested six times in the past six months on an array of charges, and was at the center of considerable controversy after an 18-year-old allegedly overdosed at his house in January.

He arrived at court last Thursday to answer multiple misdemeanor charges as part of a plea deal that he and his lawyers had made with the district attorney’s office. Following a brief court session last Thursday morning, he and one of his attorneys, Eileen Powers, went into a conference room to discuss a deal that would have had him pleading guilty to some of the misdemeanors, while the balance would have been dismissed. He would then have been incarcerated for eight months.

By 1 p.m., however, that deal was off the table when Justice Rana learned that there was a new charge. “I’m not inclined to enter into any plea right now until I know what’s coming down,” she was heard telling the attorneys as they huddled at the bench. “I’m not sure I’m going to want to go ahead with the sentence that has been agreed to.”

When he exited the conference room, Mr. Eames was arrested on the new charge and taken to police headquarters, where his mug shot was taken for the sixth time in the past six months.

During Mr. Eames’s late-afternoon arraignment back at justice court, Mr. Migliore asked for bail to be set at $50,000.

Ms. Powers asked that Mr. Eames be released without posting any bail.

“The purpose of bail is to ensure that Mr. Eames returns to court,” Ms. Powers argued. “Mr. Eames comes to court on a regular basis. If I tell him to be here, he is here. If the court tells him to be here, he is here. With respect to these charges, I’m not sure where the D.A. gets his information, but this check was written to Mr. Eames’s company; he deposited it, along with a series of other checks written to the company. . . . I had a conversation with the complaining witness’s attorney confirming Mr. Eames’s intention to pay the money back. They are working out the details.”

“The information that I read, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that he hadn’t done business with this company for several years,” Justice Rana said.

“I think it is just a form of punishment to put $50,000 bail on him. The court is well aware that Mr. Eames comes back to court,” Ms. Powers said.

“That he has been coming to court regularly is one of multiple factors to be considered when determining bail,” Justice Rana said. “And considering the fact that he is now looking at a potential sentence — just on the other pleas — of eight months incarceration and now he has this felony charge. . . .” Justice Rana pointed out that the check had allegedly been deposited in December, “and there have been no payments as far as I can tell made to the complaining witness.”

“I’m fascinated that you are taking a position that facts in the case, as stated by the East Hampton police, are gospel,” Ms. Powers said.

Long before these recent events, Mr. Eames had sued East Hampton Town and its Police Department in federal court claiming that the town had violated his constitutional rights in a 2013 case involving an alleged road rage incident.

“I’m not taking a side, but the paperwork has an allegation that is contrary to what you are saying,” Justice Rana told Ms. Powers. “This is now a class D felony, whether you like it or not. They are already apparently going to present it to a grand jury.”

Ms. Powers asked that Mr. Eames be allowed to speak to the grand jury Tuesday, “so they have a chance to hear his side of the story.”

“You can make an application to the supreme court or the county court saying that any bail I set besides [zero] is unreasonable bail,” Justice Rana responded, setting the $20,000 amount.

New York State law gives the 16 to 24 people seated in the grand jury room great latitude in terms of charges, not limiting them only to those made by police during an arrest. While a defendant is allowed to speak to the grand jury, he does not have the right to cross-examine or question evidence presented during the process, which operates in secret.

The fact that Mr. Migliore told Justice Rana that Mr. Eames’s case was going to be presented at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday signaled that his case has already been investigated by Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota’s office.

East Hampton Town police made six arrests on drunken driving charges in the past week, three of which involved crashes and almost all of which involved elevated levels of intoxication.

 In the most dramatic accident, a car shattered into three crumpled piles of twisted metal when it struck a tree at 5:43 p.m. on Sunday, a few hours after the Montauk St. Patrick’s Day parade had ended.

Alan R. Marcelino of Springs, 23, who was driving a 1999 Acura, had been headed west down the steep hill past the Hither Hills overlook when, according to witnesses, he began passing cars on the left. While it is legal to do so at the top of the hill, the broken yellow line becomes a double line farther west, where westbound cars enter a blind curve.

It was well past that point that Mr. Marcelino tried to illegally pass another westbound vehicle 100 yards east of the merge between Montauk Highway and Old Montauk Highway, according to an occupant of an oncoming car, Samantha Rodriguez. She said the Acura was speeding and just missed colliding with her car. It then skidded sideways off the road, hit the wet shoulder, and slammed sideways into a tree. Mr. Marcelino, the sole occupant of the Acura, was ejected, and debris scattered down the road to the south, toward Old Montauk Highway.

A police officer said that when he reached Mr. Marcelino, he smelled strongly of alcohol and admitted he had been drinking before the accident. Charged with driving while intoxicated, he complained of back pain and was flown by helicopter to the Stony Brook University Hospital trauma center. He will be arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court at a future date. Eddie Prado of Marshall and Sons, who has operated a flatbed tow truck for over 40 years and was called to remove the vehicle, described the vehicle as one of the worst wrecks he had ever seen. He wondered how anyone could have survived such a crash.

Another tree was sideswiped on Sunday on Daniel’s Hole Road near Montauk Highway in Wainscott at around 11 a.m. It was the second time in less than four years, police said, that Kiera Anne Egan, 29, of Sagaponack and the 2008 Pontiac she was driving were in an accident.

In both incidents, Ms. Egan’s breath test at headquarters produced a high reading, triggering a raised charge of aggravated driving while intoxicated. While a reading of .08 of 1 percent defines intoxication, it takes a .18 or higher level to trigger the aggravated charge. “I haven’t had any alcohol since 8 a.m.,” Ms. Egan allegedly told the arresting officer.

Ms. Egan had been convicted of D.W.I. as a felony in 2013, after having been convicted of D.W.I. as a misdemeanor in 2010. In addition to the new felony D.W.I. charge, she is facing a felony charge of driving without a license.

It is routine for defendants arrested around noon to be held overnight and arraigned the following morning. However, in this case, police asked East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky for an arraignment the same day, which he granted, at about 6 p.m. He set bail at $15,000.

Officers from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department escorted Ms. Egan to Stony Brook University Hospital for observation. She was eventually transferred to the county jail in Riverside, where she remained as of yesterday afternoon.

Another accident that included a crash and led to a D.W. I. arrest was that of Donald Goodale, who was driving a 2014 Jeep Wrangler on Old Northwest Road in East Hampton, near his residence, when he went off the road and hit a utility pole on Thursday. He was charged with misdemeanor drunken driving, after his breath test produced an alleged reading of .13. A longtime resident of the area, he was released without bail.

A third Sunday arrest was that of a Sag Harbor woman, Ashley E. Nill. Ms. Nill, who is 21, had a .21 reading on her breath test, police reported, leading to a misdemeanor charge of aggravated D.W.I. She was stopped while headed west in a 2004 B.M.W. on Montauk Highway on Napeague Sunday night for allegedly swerving across lane lines. She was released without bail the next morning by Justice Tekulsky, who also cited her longtime ties to the community.

Another woman arrested and charged with aggravated drunken driving as a misdemeanor was Lisa D. Narizzano, 50, of Springs. She was driving a 2005 Ford Explorer on Friday night when she was pulled over on Old Stone Highway in Amagansett for an alleged traffic infraction. She also was charged with an additional misdemeanor, possession of cannabis in a concentrated form. She, too, was released without bail the next morning because she has ties to the community, and she has a future on Justice Tekulsky’s criminal calendar.

The final arrest on a D.W.I. charge this week was that of Eddy Fernando Sangurima-Morocho, 21, of Southampton, who was pulled over on Montauk Highway in Wainscott early Friday morning. His reported breath test reading of .08 was the lowest reported this week, but still high enough to trigger the charge. He was also charged with driving without a license. Bail was set at $500 and posted later that day.