East Hampton Town police have made a second arrest involving the alleged under-age party house on Neck Path in Springs. At the same time, a bench trial has been scheduled for the owner of the house, Jefferson Davis Eames, on an unrelated charge on March 21.

According to the police, Robert Andrade, 41, acted as bouncer for at least two of the parties. In that role, he "collected currency at the door" as entrance fees to the house, said Rudy Migliore Jr., the assistant district attorney who handled Mr. Andrade's arraignment in East Hampton Town Justice Court Thursday. One of the parties, beginning the night of Dec. 2, police said, lasted about 30 hours. The other occurred on Dec. 9.

Mr. Andrade has been charged with four misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child. He was placed under arrest on Wednesday, and was released from police custody with an appearance ticket for Thursday's arraignment after posting $100 bail. Justice Lisa R. Rana agreed not to increase the bail amount. Mr. Andrade's attorney, Trevor Darrell, entered a not-guilty plea to the charges. Justice Rana issued an order of protection from the bench, requiring Mr. Andrade to have no contact with a minor whom the police interviewed. "I'm going to tell you now, if you violate this order, if you have any issues at all," she said, bail would be revisited.

Mr. Andrade said during his arraignment that he moved to Southampton two weeks ago, but had previously lived in Amagansett and graduated from East Hampton High School.

Speaking after the arraignment, Mr. Darrell questioned the strength of the people's case, saying that it was based on the testimony of a minor who seemed unsure of the dates in the complaint.

Mr. Eames was also on the court calendar Thursday. He was charged last Thursday with 13 misdemeanors, including 9 charges of endangering the welfare of a minor, and one felony related to allegedly providing a quarter tablet of Xanax to a 16-year-old girl at his residence. Besides those charges, he is facing five other sets of charges in East Hampton, the oldest of which is a harassment charge from 2015.

Before Mr. Eames was called, Justice Rana sat down for a private conference with Eileen Powers, who represents Mr. Eames in all but the oldest case, and Mr. Migliore to address the many charges Mr. Eames is facing. That discussion lasted well over an hour.

When they returned to the courtroom, Justice Rana announced that she would hold a bench trial on March 21 at 9 a.m. on the 2015 harassment charge.

"I strongly, strongly, strongly suggest that you get yourself into some kind of counseling," she said. The trial will have no effect on the other sets of charges against Mr. Eames. It was made in June 2015, after an alleged incident from April of that year in which Mr. Eames was said to have gunned the engine of a pickup truck in a gravel driveway, spinning his wheels to intentionally shoot stones and rocks at a Harbor View Drive house belonging to Kyle Cao. Michael Griffith is Mr. Eames's representative in that case. Because that charge is not a crime, but simply a violation, the trial will be conducted by Justice Rana without a jury. If convicted, Mr. Eames could be sentenced to 15 days in jail.

The five other more serious sets of charges in East Hampton will remain open and will be dealt with at a future date, Justice Rana indicated. An additional case, dating to December 2013, which involved an alleged road rage incident near Mr. Eames's house, was moved to Riverhead Town Court after both Justice Rana and Justice Steven Tekulsky recused themselves. The alleged victim in that case is the wife of an East Hampton Town police officer. Mr. Eames has since sued the town and its Police Department in federal court, claiming the town violated his constitutional rights. 

Only some students are getting a snow day on Friday, despite a winter storm warning in effect for the East End until 4 p.m.

The Montauk School and Pierson High School in Sag Harbor canceled classes. Pierson students already had a short day due to parent-teacher conferences already scheduled. The Sag Harbor Elementary School is open. The Montauk School administration decided to hold a conference for staff that had been slated for Monday on Friday instead. 

Other South Fork schools, including East Hampton High School, are open. The Springs School posted a note to parents that the school is open, but that they should check back for any announcements of an early dismissal.

Snow was expected to start falling overnight, but it was delayed by about five hours, meteorologists said. Four to seven inches is still expected, according to the National Weather Service. The heaviest snow would fall between 8 a.m. and noon. 

Members of an ad hoc committee of East Hampton residents opposed to the East Hampton School Board’s proposal to construct a bus maintenance and refueling depot on Cedar Street were heartened this week by the board’s strong interest in an alternative site.

At its meeting on Tuesday, Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said that the board has been in contact with East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell about a potential purchase of the long-disused scavenger waste facility on Springs-Fireplace Road, an option it began exploring seriously after loud objections arose to the Cedar Street plan. The scavenger waste location — which had for a few years been used only for the transfer of septic waste, before being closed for good in 2014 — would have an added convenience: There is a refueling facility, owned by the town and East Hampton Village, nearby on Springs-Fireplace Road.

A new depot is needed because the property on which the district currently stores and maintains its buses, at 41 Route 114, was recently sold by its owners, who had operated the Schaefer bus company. The district negotiated a new five-year lease for the property, but that is, “a stop-gap measure while planning for a long-term solution,” according to a fact sheet distributed by the board in November. When the present lease ends, in October, the annual rent for that site will rise from $106,000 to $200,000, with 3-percent annual increases to follow.

The proposed Cedar Street location, behind the playing fields on the East Hampton High School campus, has angered residents of Cedar Street and neighboring streets, such as Pine Street, who fear increased traffic, noise, and emissions from the buses. They formed a committee to oppose the plan, and many of its members were in attendance on Tuesday.

Consideration of the former scavenger waste facility as an alternative bus depot location, however, has similarly annoyed some residents of that area, some of whom have said, in letters to The Star, that their corner of town is already over-burdened with industrial activity and traffic, particularly trucks and other heavy vehicles.

“We have to pursue an appraisal” of the former sewage treatment site’s value, Mr. Burns said on Tuesday. In 2014, an engineering firm hired to assess its worth said it was not just of little value to the town — as a decommissioned waste treatment site serving only as a transfer station — it was, indeed, a financial “black hole.” It has since been cleared and okayed for sale for other purposes.

Receipt of a report assessing the potential impact of a bus depot under the State Environmental Quality Review Act is imminent, Mr. Burns said. “Obviously, if we’re going to make an offer to the town, we need that type of information,” he said.

Whichever site is chosen for the new bus depot, it will have to be suitable for vocational-classroom use, as well, Mr. Burns said. “There is stuff under the ground,” he said of the Springs-Fireplace location. “We have to be very careful about that property and we want to make sure it’s safe, because we certainly plan on building classroom space there if this is a proposal that we make to the community.” Those classrooms, he said, would be used for vocational programs for which students must currently travel to the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services facility in Riverhead.

The commute to BOCES, Mr. Burns said, robs students of instructional time. “Kids are cheated out of two to three periods a day. If we have something more localized, it would be fine.”

“Everybody needs to know that we have to put it somewhere,” said J.P. Foster, the school board president, of the proposed depot-and-classrooms facility. “This is going to go up as a referendum at some point. If it’s passed, it’s over; if not, we’re going to have to seek an alternative location,” possibly revisiting Cedar Street, he said. “We’re exploring every option we can.”

Initial hopes to hold a referendum on the topic in May are unrealistic, Mr. Burns and Mr. Foster agreed. “I can’t imagine anything happening before October,” the superintendent said.

In light of the direction taken during the discussion, members of the so-called Cedar Street Committee did not read a prepared statement. Instead, Vito Brullo, who lives on Pine Street, said, “Based on what we heard . . . we appreciate the fact that other [sites] are being considered.” The committee would discuss the matter and “have more to say” at the board’s next meeting. “Thank you very much for your help and your consideration.”

As the John M. Marshall Elementary School principal, Beth Doyle is around kids all day long, greeting them in the hallway, popping into classrooms, and joining in all sorts of school activities, but “the longer you’re in administration, the less connected you can feel,” she said on Friday, reflecting on what she learned by spending a day as a first grader.

Ms. Doyle and Russell Morgan, the school’s assistant principal, took part in the Shadow a Student Challenge last month, hoping that by seeing the school through students’ eyes, they might identify ways to improve the John Marshall experience.

Ms. Doyle spent the day shadowing Juliette Jimenez in Joanne Goerler and Laura Rosner’s class. Mr. Morgan was paired with Mike Luque, a fifth grader in Jeff Tupper and Linda Cameron’s class. Rather than observe the classrooms, as they do in their everyday roles, on their shadowing day they put away their dress shoes, took off their administrative hats, and immersed themselves in student life. What parts of the day were the most fun? The most tedious? What kinds of activities were they most engaged in? What did they wish there was time for?

“We sit on the floor a lot,” Ms. Doyle wrote after her day with Juliette, and “it’s jam-packed.” Teachers at John Marshall can have 24 students or more in a classroom. During her day in first grade, Ms. Doyle sat right alongside them on the rug, took part in the same lessons and games, and ate lunch with them, too. Mr. Morgan even went to a viola lesson with his student before the start of school, despite being somewhat musically challenged.

“It was exciting,” Mr. Morgan wrote, but “at the end of the day I’m so tired.”

The lessons there? Space is tight, and students do notice that, and a full day of learning can take a lot out of you.

Beyond the physical realities of the classroom, they saw that students like having opportunities to “do things that teachers would ordinarily do,” to be leaders in the classroom and in the school.

“Students like to be challenged,” Mr. Morgan said. He and Mike were most engaged during the same point in the day, when they broke into smaller groups for discussion, and “we got to be the teacher. We had these great conversations and were super engaged during that time.”

During their day as students, both administrators noticed that the more actively involved they were in class discussion, the more mentally engaged they were in the lesson. They saw that kids thrive when given an opportunity to take on leadership roles, they like it when teachers seek their opinion, and they relish the social moments in their day.

Ms. Doyle and Mr. Morgan are thinking about ways to use what they learned as a springboard for new programs at the school. Students already take on leadership roles at bimonthly all-school meetings, but what if they were enlisted to lead tours of the school or act as “school ambassadors,” Mr. Morgan wondered.

Being “involved in the community, in the school, builds school pride,” Ms. Doyle said.

“Our next takeaway was that kids need more breaks, and they need to move more,” she said. This year, the school has instituted what are called “brain breaks,” brief periods of physical activity during the instructional parts of the day. Even so, the principal observed, students often sit for the entire day. If it is raining or snowing and there is indoor recess, there is even less activity.

Earlier this year, “we looked at the schedule to see where the gyms are free during lunch periods,” Mr. Morgan said,  and, for next year, the goal will be to build a schedule that takes advantage of that so that kids have more opportunities to be physically active.

“We also talked about next year doing some enrichment during lunchtime,” Ms. Doyle said. She envisions brown bag sessions at which students might learn about, say, taekwondo or dance or cooking while they eat. “It’s not only the movement, but the socialization piece that is so important to the kids.”

Both administrators would like to figure out a way to teach a class a month. For Ms. Doyle it might be guided reading; Mr. Morgan might do something with math, his area of expertise.

The Shadow a Student Challenge was developed by School Retool, Ideo, and Stanford University’s K12 Lab Network with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is open to school leaders around the world.

While Mr. Morgan and Ms. Doyle would both like to repeat the experience next year, the initiative is also a lead-in to other opportunities. School Retool offers professional development fellowships to help school leaders “take research-based steps to foster deeper learning” at their school. On her shadowing packet, Ms. Doyle circled this suggestion and wrote “summer 2017

“It sounded like a bomb exploded,” Igor Vishnyakov said Sunday as he surveyed the wreckage of the house on Hayground Road in Water Mill he shares with his wife, Sasha Pivovarova, and their 4-year-old daughter. “The house shook. We were sleeping. It was 1:15 in the morning.”

The bomb was a 2006 Mercedes-Benz driven by Alec Wasser, 21, whose parents own a Fifth Avenue residence in Manhattan and a house on Swan’s Neck Lane, a cul-de-sac a little more than 100 yards away from the crash.

Mr. Wasser was driving at a high rate of speed north on Mecox Road, Southampton Town police said, when he failed to negotiate the fork at the intersection with Hayground Road. The car went off the road and crashed into the house, on a property at the southern tip of the fork.

Firefighters from several departments battled the blaze for about three hours in the bitter cold and high winds.

“It was an absolute miracle that no one suffered a serious injury,” said Sgt. Steve Miller, who was at the scene. “That includes the driver, his passenger, those in the house, and the firefighters.”

“There are no skid marks,” Mr. Vishnyakov pointed out later Sunday morning as he walked through broken glass and burned shingles of his house with two reporters. Also on hand and surveying the damage was Edward Burke Jr., an attorney for Mr. Wasser.

The car plowed through two fir trees, a fence and its concrete base, and a small house-like structure over a large Buddha sculpture before slamming into the main house. If not for the concrete, Mr. Vishnyakov said, he believes that he, or his wife, or his daughter, or all three would have been killed. The Buddha was knocked over but still intact. “Buddha saved our life,” Mr. Vishnyakov said, only half in jest.

“It was so surreal,” he said of the moment he opened his eyes. “Normally, I see the bushes, the sculpture, the little house.” Instead it was a blazing car about four yards from where he lay.

Mr. Vishnyakov pointed at the master bedroom. The car crashed through a wall, becoming embedded between the couple’s bed and their daughter’s playroom. He said Mr. Wasser stumbled out of the burning car, mumbling. At first he thought Mr. Wasser was talking to him, but then he realized that he was speaking to a young woman in the passenger seat.

Mr. Vishnyakov could see that the woman had an injured arm. They could not open the passenger-side door because it was too close to a wall, so Mr. Wasser got the woman out through the driver’s side. “They were drunk. The girl was drunk,” Mr. Vishnyakov said.

Mr. Vishnyakov grabbed a fire extinguisher and attempted to put out flames coming from the car’s engine, “until my wife convinced me to stay as far as possible from the car.” The fire spread quickly to the house as it was whipped up in the ice-cold winds.

The couple are both artists. Mr. Vishnyakov currently has a show of his work at the Tripoli Gallery in Southampton. His wife is also a fashion model.

“We lost a lot of artwork,” Mr. Vishnyakov said, mentioning in particular a portrait of his wife and daughter that he had commissioned. “It was my favorite work.” Also destroyed were two closets filled with Prada clothing.

“Our daughter is traumatized,” Ms. Pivovarova said. The girl, who attends prekindergarten in the area, was at a friend’s house while her parents toured the wreckage.

There was at least one moment of relief. Alfred Callahan III, the second assistant chief of the Southampton Fire Department, found the family’s big black tomcat, Oolong, about an hour into the call. “The homeowner said the cat likes to hide around the kitchen, so when the smoke lightened up a little bit we did a search. I found the cat behind a toilet in a bathroom next to the kitchen.”

“It’s all the family was asking about,” Mr. Callahan said. “I’m just glad we were able to find it in time.” Chief Jeff White of the Bridgehampton Fire Department was in charge at the scene.

Most of the house was built in 1968, the couple said. The exception, a section dating back to Colonial times, was impacted the least. “But the doors don’t close anymore,” Mr. Vishnyakov said. The plumbing was wrecked, and there are now large holes in the floor. The stench of fire was everywhere on Sunday.

Mr. Burke told Mr. Vishnyakov that Mr. Wasser’s father, Gregg Wasser, a real estate developer, had sent him. “He wants me to relay to you that he looks forward to talking with you.” The intent, he said, is to repair the damage and replace what was lost.

Before traveling to the site of the fire, Mr. Burke had stood next to his client as he was arraigned in Southampton Town Justice Court. Mr. Wasser told Justice Deborah Kooperstein that he was a student at Marymount Manhattan College after having previously attended Bucknell University.

Justice Kooperstein told him she was suspending his license for one year because he had refused to take a breath test at police headquarters. “I have the ability to deem you a dangerous driver,” she warned him, which would leave him without recourse as far as his driving privileges are concerned. Bail was set at $3,000, which Mr. Wasser’s father posted.

Outside the courthouse, Mr. Burke said he had been speaking with the district attorney’s office, acknowledging that, given the extent of the damage, more charges may be in the offing.

Four fire departments responded to the blaze. The Bridgehampton department called for assistance from the Southampton, Sag Harbor, and East Hampton departments. Amagansett firefighters stood at the ready in Bridgehampton. The Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps and the Southampton Village Volunteer Ambulance company also assisted. A Southampton Town Highway Department truck responded to sand the roads because of icy conditions caused by the water used to fight the fire.

A second injury related to the crash occurred Tuesday afternoon, when a fire inspector walking through the house fell through the floor, getting caught in wires before landing six feet below in the basement. On Sunday, Ms. Pivovarova had warned those surveying the damage to stay off the floor near the playroom because it was sagging, but the family had returned to their Williamsburg residence by Tuesday, so the fire inspector was not similarly warned. The extent of his injuries were not known as of press time.

East Hampton Town followed through this week on its promise to take the fight over local control of the East Hampton Airport all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

Officials announced on Monday that town attorneys had filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn a lower court’s determination last fall striking down curfew restrictions at the airport. The town board adopted the restrictions in 2015 in an effort to alleviate the impact of aircraft noise on residents.

Whether the Supreme Court will review the town’s petition, filed by its appellate counsel, Kathleen Sullivan and David Cooper of the international firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, will not be known for three or four months. The court chooses to hear only a fraction of the thousands of cases submitted to it each year.

“The recent decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals stripped East Hampton and thousands of other local airport sponsors of their ability to manage their airports in the best interests of their residents,” Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the town board liaison for airport matters, said in a statement on Tuesday.

In April 2015, the town adopted laws instituting two airport curfews, banning takeoffs and landings between 8 p.m. and 9 a.m. by aircraft in a category deemed noisy, and by all other aircraft between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. A third law enacted a one-trip-per-week restriction on noisy aircraft.

The laws were immediately challenged by the Friends of the East Hampton Airport, a coalition of aviation interests. Noting that “it cannot be argued that the Town lacked the data to support a finding of a noise problem at the airport,” the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York upheld the overnight curfews, but enjoined the town from enacting the once-a-week trip limit.

The aviation interests appealed that ruling, and the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, reversed it, barring all of the airport restrictions.

“The town board engaged in a lengthy public process to craft three reasonable restrictions to bring much-needed relief from aircraft noise,” said Ms. Burke-Gonzalez on Tuesday. The appeals court’s decision “radically reversed decades of [Federal Aviation Administration] practice,” she said, “and the accepted interpretation of federal aviation law, by prohibiting any airport from making local decisions, even when the airport proprietor does not receive federal funds.”

“We relied on [the] F.A.A.’s assurances to then-Congressman Bishop that if the town elected to forgo federal funding, we could be free of federal regulation,” she said.

“We followed the F.A.A.’s advice and elected to forgo federal funding so that we could protect our residents,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell said this week in a press release. “We engaged in a lengthy public process to identify meaningful but reasonable restrictions, and the District Court agreed that we met that test. But, with the stroke of a pen, the appeals court decision has federalized our airport and stripped us — and the thousands of similarly situated airports — of the ability to exert local control. We cannot let that decision stand.”

At a meeting last Thursday, the town board voted to submit a home rule request to the state legislature. It would subject future decisions on accepting federal grants that come with an obligation to follow F.A.A. strictures for a period of 10 years or more to a referendum. The potential for a “significant long-term impact” on the community, by binding the town to “adherence to federal aviation law and regulations,” according to the resolution, makes it “a decision that should have extended public review, afforded by the permissive referendum process.”

“The Second Circuit’s decision subjects us to an onerous and costly F.A.A. review process that places the solution to the noise problem in the hands of the F.A.A. That is unacceptable. We have fought long and hard to protect our quality of life and it is too important to let the Court of Appeals undermine that,” said Ms. Burke-Gonzalez.

“The effect is an unprecedented expansion of federal regulatory authority that basically federalizes every airport in the United States. We could not let that stand,” she said.

Ms. Burke-Gonzalez added that “the town board is pursuing all avenues for redress — both in the courts and in Congress,” and that the town “will continue the fight until we regain local control of East Hampton Airport.”

President Donald Trump’s calls for increased enforcement of federal immigration laws and memos issued last week by the Department of Homeland Security outlining a broader focus on finding and detaining anyone who is in the country illegally have members of the East Hampton community on edge.

Oswaldo Palomo of East Hampton, the pastor of the Vida Abundante church in Wainscott, said church members had been turning to him for information and assistance over the last few weeks.

“People are afraid. People are very scared. We have people crying every day. They don’t want to go out. Every single day we get phone calls, and go visit them, and [help them] find good lawyers.”

“We’re working with the people,” he said. “We’re trying to give them right advice.”

Mr. Palomo, who came here from Costa Rica in the late 1980s and is now a citizen of the United States, said that while he understands the need to maintain a secure country, “you’re hurting people so bad.”

America’s immigration laws need an overhaul, he said. “We have people here, 20 years living in the country, and they have no chance to do anything. Instead of giving people a chance to see if they can apply, they’re going to penalize them.”

“It’s not easy,” Mr. Palomo said. “Whether the government likes it or not, we are here. There is a real problem in the country that they haven’t been able to take care of. They don’t want to.”

While New York State has taken the stance that immigration enforcement is a federal endeavor, state motor vehicle law makes it impossible for undocumented immigrants to legally obtain driver’s licenses.

 Under the new immigration enforcement push, he said, those who find it necessary to drive, even without a license, are fearful of being pulled over for a traffic infraction and finding themselves held and deported.

In the last few weeks, Mr. Palomo said, people have been staying out of their cars, instead carpooling with a documented, licensed driver, or seeking help from Mr. Palomo and others from his church who have been driving children to school or family members to work.

“In this town there are a lot of scared people,” said Sandra Melendez, an East Hampton attorney specializing in immigration, tax, and criminal law. “Everybody’s always afraid, but now it’s worse.”

The increase in the number of immigration cases called to court since President Trump’s executive orders on immigration has “been crazy,” she said.  She has been representing clients in court virtually every day of the week, before judges who are calling up to a hundred cases a day. But before going before the judge, she said, clients are asking “Are you sure I’m going to be able to come back if I go to court?”

 Like others offering support to the immigrant community, she encourages undocumented immigrants with children to make formal legal plans in case they are detained for immigration violations and separated from their U.S.-born citizen children. “A power of attorney should be granted to someone who is a legal resident or a U.S. citizen,” she said.

“There is a lot of concern about families being separated; it’s heartbreaking.”

And she keeps abreast, daily, of updates from the Immigration Lawyers Association. “I wake up with it and I go to bed with it because everything’s been changing. It’s a mess right now,” she said. The situation calls for analysis on a “case-by-case basis.”

Ms. Melendez also advises clients to carry a file with vital documents — their children’s birth certificates, tax filings, “anything that they would need — who you are, what you’ve done here, what are your ties to this country?” That way, should they run afoul of authorities, a lawyer would have the information needed to help them begin to sort things out.

“That memo makes everyone a target,” said Ms. Melendez of the federal policy shift toward prosecuting anyone — not just people convicted of a crime or those who have deportation orders — who is here illegally.

People are “changing the way they live” out of fear, she said. They are staying off the roads, and staying in their houses, ordering food in rather than shopping, and staying constantly attuned to the latest word about what is happening in East Hampton, she said.

Ms. Melendez, who along with the others interviewed said she was not aware of generalized Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids or checks on the East End, tries to reassure clients and apprise them of their rights. “They need to be proactive, but not to go crazy,” she said.

“ICE has been active and agents have been here in East Hampton and in other East End towns regularly,” East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo wrote in an email this week.

As was affirmed last week by East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell and East Hampton Village Mayor Paul Rickenbach, neither town nor village police have taken, or will seek, an active role in immigration law enforcement. However, the departments do cooperate with ICE if a person on a federal list for detention is arrested locally.

While President Trump’s order, and subsequent policy memos from the Department of Homeland Security, “expand the parameters for detention orders and expedite the deportation process,” as Chief Sarlo explained, there have been no verified reports yet of ICE agents here doing other than what they had been doing — seeking out undocumented immigrants wanted for a crime or for ignoring a deportation order.

The Rev. Gerardo Roma Garcia, who leads a Latino ministry at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton, spoke this week of a young woman who answered a knock on her door in Springs to find ICE agents outside. They did not tell her who they were looking for, he said, and left when she asked them to show a court order.

It is a “very, very difficult time, not just for the Latino community, but for the immigrant community overall,” Mr. Garcia said. “Children are very anxious,” he said. “People so, so afraid of what’s going on — that has an impact.”

The reverend, with the help of other members of the East Hampton Clericus, passes out lunch several days a week to day laborers who gather looking for work at the East Hampton train station.

In the last few weeks some who are there regularly have been conspicuously absent.

Others in the immigrant community, he said, are carrying on as usual, even as the legal and social landscape shifts.

Mr. Garcia said it was “very good” to hear that local police will not enter into any agreement with the feds to act as immigration law enforcers.

“Most of the community is really concerned, and is really supportive of the immigrant community, which is very positive,” he said.

But many remain on edge. One church member, Mr. Palomo said, is boarding with a family that includes someone for whom ICE has a deportation order and “he’s scared to death” that he will be picked up along with the person the federal agents are seeking.

In conjunction with the clericus and the Organizacion Latino-Americana, and in coordination with East End schools, the East Hampton Town Latino Advisory Committee is organizing a meeting to be held sometime this month in order to distribute information to the immigrant community, Maritza Guichay, a member of the committee, said yesterday. “My main concern is to keep people calm,” she said.

In particular, she said, the group wants to help people designate powers of attorney for their children without having to seek expensive legal help.

The controversial residential drug treatment facility called the Dunes, at 26 Bull Run in East Hampton’s Northwest Woods, took center stage at the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting Tuesday night. The hearing, however, turned out to be just another act in a very long play, the end of which is still not in sight.

The facility primarily serves wealthy clients with drug addiction problems, while also offering grants to other residents with similar issues. It opened for business in November 2010, and within a year was met by opposition from neighbors. Some of them banded together to retain Jeffrey L. Bragman, an East Hampton attorney who specializes in zoning issues. In turn, Joe McKinsey, the owner of Safe Harbor Retreat, which runs the Dunes, hired the law firm of Campolo, Middleton & McCormick, L.L.P. For some five years now, the two sides have sparred in front of both the town’s planning and zoning boards.

The problem facing Mr. McKinsey is that the property, which covers almost four acres, is zoned for single family residential use only.

According to Mr. McKinsey and his legal team, William Wilkinson, who was then East Hampton Town supervisor, felt that they could, indeed, be considered to be operating as a single family house, and encouraged them to open under that understanding. Tom Prieato, then the town’s chief building inspector, Mr. McKinsey says, initially supported that interpretation, but rejected it after the facility opened, determining that Safe Harbor needed to obtain a special permit to operate the Dunes as a semi-public facility. Mr. McKinsey asked the Z.B.A. to reverse that determination. When the Z.B.A. turned him down, Mr. McKinsey took the matter to Eastern District Federal Court, claiming, in part, prejudice by the town against a protected class (that is, those suffering from drug addiction, which could be considered a disability). In 2015, the Eastern  District Federal Court in Central Islip rejected that suit, saying he needed to first exhaust possible remedies under town code before making his case to them.

That brought Mr. McKinsey back to the planning board, to ask to be issued a special permit to operate as a semi-public facility. Before the planning board can do that, however, Mr. Mc­Kinsey needs to obtain setback variances. Under town code, minimum setbacks are doubled for semipublic facilities operating in residential districts. As a residence, the setbacks on the site would be in compliance; as a semipublic facility, they would not.

Joseph Campolo told the board that Suffolk County has the highest rate of drug addiction in New York State. He said that opponents of the facility had engaged in “wild speculation and unsubstantiated accusations.”

“It is a home,” Mr. Campolo said. “Addiction is the only disease you can talk yourself out of.”

Mr. McKinsey spoke to the board on Tuesday, as well. He told them that he, himself, is a recovering addict. “I’m sober 33 years. I have a lot to give back.” The average length of stay for patients is two to four months, he said. Thus far, 18 East End residents with drug addiction problems have stayed at the Dunes, he said.

The devil, however, was in the details.

Eric Schantz, a senior planner for the town who is handling the proposal, said that the property was once granted a seemingly insignificant setback variance for a garage, which was built 32.5 feet from the property line, less than the 35 feet required under the town code for residential properties (a variance of roughly 7 percent). As a semipublic facility, however, that variance would signify almost 54 percent. Mr. Schantz pointed out that the property appears to be over-cleared. “There is a lot of revegetation that needs to be done to get into compliance,” he said. Cate Rogers, a board member, asked if Safe Harbor had sought clearance variances. Told it had not, she said, “They need it.”

Mr. Schantz also said that there were “numerous discrepancies” between the survey attached to the certificate of occupancy for the site and the survey presented to the Z.B.A.

Occupancy numbers, of clients as well as staff, were concerns for the board, too.

A traffic study prepared for the applicant and presented by Pat Dunne of Westhampton drew the ire of Mr. Bragman, when it came his turn to speak. He said that he and the board had received a 300-page document from the applicant just the day before the hearing; he asked that the hearing be continued to allow him time to review it and prepare his response. “This is a new ballgame. They owe us candor. They are half an acre over-cleared. This is not a hearing conducted by ambush,” he said.

Mr. Campolo objected to adjourning, saying that out of the 300 pages, “90 percent is not new.”

Board member David Lys did not at first see the wisdom in adjourning the meeting: “I really wish we would keep rolling through.” He said he had also received the 300 pages the day before, and had studied it.

The other board members did not agree, and Mr. Lys eventually joined them in voting to keep the record open and adjourn the hearing to a later date. Official notice will be given of the hearing’s reopening, and Ms. Rogers, acting as chairwoman in John Whelan’s absence, gave the two sides 10 days, before whatever date is eventually chosen, to respond in writing to materials presented.

Before the hearing was closed, Roy Dalene, a member of the board, asked that when the hearing reopens the applicant address “the true occupancy of the building. I haven’t heard that.”

Improvements to septic waste systems in downtown Montauk, in order to limit the release of pollutants that could have a negative effect on ground and surface waters, including Fort Pond, were a topic this week at a meeting of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee.

The downtown area — along with Montauk’s dock area and Ditch Plain — was targeted for advanced, centralized wastewater treatment in a town comprehensive wastewater management plan prepared by Lombardo Associates, a consulting firm, several years ago.

A letter was sent out in June 2015 to gauge interest and support for the idea among downtown property owners. It outlined the next steps that could be taken by the town, which would be the creation of an engineering map and plan and the establishment of a downtown Montauk water quality improvement district.

Those steps were never taken. However, in 2016, the town embarked on what it called a “hamlet study,” a planning survey of all of East Hampton’s business districts, for which reports are being prepared, and which could provide an underpinning for decisions on septic treatment.

Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, a liaison to the citizens advisory committee, reported this week that the committee would like the East Hampton Town Board to move forward with establishing a downtown sewer district in Montauk. “Given the fact that many of the systems are obsolete,” he said — and some no longer legal under current standards — “the only real way forward would be with a community system, or several properties grouping together in a system.”

The septic systems on up to 90 percent of the properties in the downtown area need improvement, the Lombardo Associates study found, but 73 percent of those sites lack the space for the installation of an upgraded system.

Lombardo Associates estimated that 57 percent of the properties in downtown Montauk use cesspools. Cesspools are illegal, under federal law, for use on properties that serve more than 20 people a day, and, on any site, are considered inadequate if they need to be pumped out more than a few times a year. Some downtown Montauk business owners reported that they needed to pump out their cesspools almost daily during the busy summer months.

As proposed by Lombardo Associates, the downtown area that could be served by a community wastewater system would comprise 169 developed properties from South Eton Street to Essex Street, between Fort Pond and the ocean.

For a centralized system to be feasible, the owners of properties within that zone, representing at least half of the overall wastewater generated in the area, would have to sign on. Each property owner that connected to the system would pay a fee based on property size and wastewater flow.

Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount was “not pious platitudes but a call for action among his followers to respect those who are persecuted,” the Rev. Denis Brunelle of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church said last Thursday at an East Hampton Village Board meeting. “Or don’t forget the final judgment in Matthew: When I was hungry did you feed me? When I was naked did you clothe me? When I was homeless did you give me a place to stay? When I was a stranger did you welcome me? And when you did, you did it to me.”

These, he said, are religious values that the East Hampton Clericus, which he heads, is bringing to the immigration issue.

Secular matters were briefly sidelined when Mr. Brunelle delivered an impassioned and defiant statement against the federal government’s intention to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

Mr. Brunelle thanked Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. for his Feb. 24 statement in which he declared that the village government would not allow or authorize its personnel to become federal deputies in order to carry out immigration enforcement activities. His further remarks were akin to a sermon, however, encompassing religious teachings from multiple faiths, local and national history, and allegations of exploitation of laborers in an emphatic refutation of federal immigration policy as conducted by the administration of President Donald Trump.

“The policy is the policy,” said Mr. Brunelle, a first-generation American of French-Canadian descent. “But we as clergy have to deal with the people involved.”

He reminded the assembled that the Puritans came to the New World from England to escape religious intolerance. “Then other religions came over and the Puritans didn’t allow them to practice their faith,” he said. That intolerance returned during the wave of migration from Europe in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, he said, citing discrimination against Irish, Italian, and German immigrants. “Intolerance, unfortunately, has been a consequence of the history of this country in many ways,” he said.

That intolerance played out in East Hampton, as well, Mr. Brunelle said. “This village did not allow another religion to have another church until 1848,” he said. “From 1648 there was only one church allowed, the Presbyterian church — no offense against Presbyterians. It wasn’t until 12 Episcopalians got a little ticked off at always having to go seven miles up the road to Sag Harbor, and they said, ‘Enough of this,’ ” that they obtained the property on which St. Luke’s was built.

The Clericus, he said, seeks to bring people together and end intolerance. He confessed an aversion to the word tolerance, however, “because tolerance means I don’t have to respect you, tolerance says I don’t have to like you in any shape or form. I just will be in your presence. . . . I think it’s about respect, and dignity.”

Mr. Brunelle recalled how Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, another member of the Clericus, had reminded him and other clergy that it is “a blessing . . . to permit others to live among us in peace and security.” Rabbi Zimmerman, he said, had pointed to a teaching from the Torah: “When strangers reside with you in your land, you shall not wrong them. The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

“The premise of the Clericus as we approach the issue is one of respecting the integrity and the dignity of every human being that is in this village and in this town.” Parents should not be taken away in the middle of the night, leaving children behind, “and it has happened,” he said. “We want to respect the dignity and integrity of every human being when we know that there are contractors who go past the railroad station and hire people but don’t give them an opportunity to get lunch.”

The Clericus established a bagged-lunch program in which meals are distributed to the laborers who gather at the Long Island Rail Road station in East Hampton on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. However, Mr. Brunelle said on Tuesday, “we’re seeing a dramatic decrease in numbers” at the train station, as undocumented immigrants are too afraid to appear in public lest they be detained and perhaps deported by immigration authorities.

At the work session, Mr. Brunelle cited a report he said was given to Cantor Debra Stein of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons alleging that a contractor had refused to pay three documented laborers for three days of work.

The Clericus, through the Rev. Gerardo Roma Garcia, who leads a Latino ministry at St. Luke’s, has also implemented a program in which clothing is laundered free of charge on the first Sunday of each month. The program is not just for Latinos, Mr. Brunelle said, but also for “anyone trying to balance between the cost of laundry and food or medicine.”

The Clericus is also “trying to seek a way to provide legal help whenever we can,” and its members have discussed houses of worship that could serve as sanctuaries, although “that in itself does not protect” undocumented immigrants from detention or deportation, he said on Tuesday. Immigration agents, he said, “can still walk into a church and arrest people. They don’t because of the publicity it would render them.”

“We are working together to help address it from our spiritual point of view, from the Gospel mandate point of view, from the Torah point of view,” Mr. Brunelle told the board, “that no one is illegal, because that denies their likeness in the image of God. They may not be documented, and we may not like that, but they still deserve respect and integrity and justice.”