An armed man made off with cash after holding up a convenience store clerk at the Speedway gas station in Wainscott on New Year's Day. 

East Hampton Town police said a masked man holding what appeared to be a handgun confronted the clerk at the Montauk Highway gas station and convenience store at 11:37 a.m. The man demanded money from the register and left with an unknown amount of cash, police said. The man fled the gas station, the former Hess station, on foot in a northwest direction. The clerk was not injured during the robbery. 

Detectives described the man as Caucasian or Hispanic, wearing a dark-colored ski cap, facemask, and glasses, a dark-colored sweatshirt, and dark colored pants. 

Police are asking anyone with information about the robbery to call detectives at 631-537-7575. All calls will be kept confidential. 

Randall Parsons, a former Democratic East Hampton Town Councilman from 1980 through '87, was appointed this week to serve a seven-year term on the East Hampton Town Planning Board, through December 2023.

Mr. Parsons will replace Reed Jones, who had served as the board's chairman, and whose term has expired. He was appointed by former Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson.

Mr. Parsons, who founded LandMarks, a land planning firm that he later sold, stepped down recently from a post at the Nature Conservancy in East Hampton. As a conservation finance and policy adviser, he had worked on land acquisition projects utilizing federal, state, county, town, village, and private dollars. 

He "brings a wealth of planning experience," Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said, in announcing his appointment.

Town Councilman Fred Overton voted against the pick, saying that he supported the reappointment of Mr. Jones, who, he said, has "done a great job over the years."

Mr. Cantwell agreed, but said that some believed it was time for a change.

"It's a great community and I'm happy to give back," Mr. Parsons said Tuesday.

Job Potter, also a former Democratic town councilman, and a current member of the planning board, was tapped to serve this year as that board's chairman, and was sworn in at the town board's 2017 organizational meeting on Tuesday.

Mr. Potter also chairs the town's business committee and its community housing and opportunity fund advisory board.

Nancy Keeshan was appointed as the planning board's vice chairwoman for this year.

In addition to the planning board appointments, Theresa Berger was reappointed to the zoning board of appeals, with a five-year term expiring at the end of 2021; John Whelan was reappointed as that board's chairman, and Cate Rogers as the vice chairwoman.

The two men who police said robbed the Speedway gas station in Wainscott on New Year's Day, with one threatening the clerk with what appeared to be a gun before making off with several hundred dollars, were taken into custody Monday by the Riverhead Town police.

The arrest of Maximillian H. Bonilla, 18, of Mattituck and Joseph G. Worysz, 19, of Southold, was the result of the combined efforts of three departments' detective bureaus, aided by surveillance images taken from the three sites the duo are charged with robbing.

The crime spree began Dec. 28 at Gamestop in Old Country Road in Riverhead. Mr. Bonilla was the only one charged with armed robbery in that incident.

Then, early New Year's Day morning, police said Mr. Bonilla and Mr. Worysz threatened the clerk at the Bolla Market Mobil Gas Station on Middle Country Road in Calverton, brandishing either one or two handguns before making off with cash. That robbery occurred around 5:30 a.m.

Then, at about 11:30 that morning, Mr. Bonilla allegedly held up the Speedway gas station, East Hampton Town Police Capt. Chris Anderson said Tuesday. Though the captain would not confirm the details, it appears Mr. Worysz was driving a getaway car. The captain did say that one of the teens "has ties to the East Hampton area," but would not elaborate.

Detective Sgt. Edward Frost of the Riverhead department said that his bureau worked with East Hampton's detectives, as well as with the Southold detectives, in the lead-up to the arrests.

Mr. Bonilla has been charged with three counts of robbery with what appears to be a gun; Mr. Worysz faces two such charges. The pair were arraigned in Riverhead Tuesday, and have been transferred to county jail, unable to meet either the $80,000 bail Mr. Bonilla is being held on or the $10,000 required for Mr. Worysz's release.

The two men have not yet been charged with the Speedway robbery, although Captain Anderson said he expects that will be done through the district attorney's office. District Attorney Thomas Spota has until Friday to obtain an indictment on the Riverhead charges — in which the East Hampton charges would likely be added — or release the defendants, if they have not posted bail by that time. Both the captain and Detective Frost said that the investigation is ongoing, with more charges possibly in the offing. "We are looking into some of our open cases," Detective Frost said Tuesday.

 

Shirley Ruch is a licensed Sag Harbor speech and language therapist and family coach who has always loved to bake. While there is nothing unusual about that, starting and managing South Fork Bakery while maintaining a private practice is another story. Especially a bakery that within five months of its launch in May had its products in 22 stores on the East End.

However, the road from therapist to entrepreneur is not as unlikely as it might at first seem. Ms. Ruch has specialized for 20 years in working with children and families affected by autism spectrum disorders and, having equipped her office with a small kitchen, has long used cooking and baking therapeutically.

“There are a lot of benefits to cooking,” she said, “among them following directions, auditory processing, the cooperativeness of it, working together on recipes. In a lot of families I work with, the kids are now in their 20s and do not have a lot of opportunities for meaningful employment. It just came to me one day that baking could be a great thing for them to do for work.”

She took the idea to a number of families she had worked with who had children in that age range, and they all supported it enthusiastically. “So we decided to go forward, and I did, with a lot of sweat equity” and seed money from herself and her husband.

She looked at a number of kitchens before deciding the spacious facility at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton would work best. “Hayground has been very generous. Space-wise it allows us to really divide it up into stations for baking and packaging. Everything is done in the kitchen.”

They have access to the kitchen after 4:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. While the number of workers varies according to the season, the average is 12. Most of them work one day a week, some for two hours, some longer, and several put in two days.

“Tuesday night is usually mixing and baking night. Wednesday is baking, with dough mixed the night before, and then packing. The kids do all the jobs.” Some of them, accompanied by job coaches, make deliveries. One young woman from Southampton has secured accounts for the bakery, while several other employees work in Ms. Ruch’s office doing business analysis and monitoring sales.

“I have some kids who, if you saw them in the community, would seem pretty impaired. One boy does every recipe perfectly. He went to BOCES for culinary training, and he has wanted to be a baker since he was 6 years old. I think he would love to make it a career.” 

Ms. Ruch said that many of the kids are disenfranchised. “I see them working at jobs in the community, but it’s not always a very integrated work situation. They’re often stocking or off by themselves. The bakery has created more of a working community than I ever imagined. The kids are starting to see each other outside of the bakery. One mother told me she could count on one hand the number of times her 21-year-old son has been called up to do something. Now there’s a boy who’s calling him, and they hang out. It’s unheard of.”

Ms. Ruch spoke to Kathleen King of Tate’s Bake Shop at the beginning of her undertaking. “She gave me some wonderful advice, including to keep it simple, start with a couple of recipes, and don’t try to do too much.” She started with four basic cookies — gingersnaps, chocolate chunkies, blondies, and oatmeal raisin.

While the bakery participated in four farmers markets last summer — Springs, Hampton Bays, Sag Harbor, and Hayground — and sells from its website, the business is mostly wholesale. 

“I approached a lot of people I know in the community who had businesses, and they were very gracious. They took our product and really marketed it, giving out free samples. Serene Green was wonderful, and Schiavoni’s I.G.A. has been carrying them from the very beginning.”

Readers eager to sample the bakery’s cookies will have to wait until mid-March. The operation doesn’t have enough year-round wholesale accounts to keep going throughout the year. 

“We hope that will change,” Ms. Ruch said. “These couple of months off will give me time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t and how to make it sustainable.”

The New Year is upon us. It may have been the warmest since weathermen and weatherwomen have been keeping records. New Year’s Eve was the day of the Orient bird count. As per usual, my group did East Hampton’s Northwest Woods, from Cedar Point Park to Barcelona Neck. It was partly overcast and a bit windy. There was a very thin layer of ice on rain puddles and pond surfaces here and there, but none of the tidal waters were frozen.

Cedar Point’s sand spit is traditionally the first place we scour. Both sides of it were drivable. My three companions had a hard time visualizing that the lighthouse, now at least 200 feet inland from the point, was built in 1868 out in the water beyond the point and was called the Cedar Island Lighthouse. The point itself keeps receiving sand eroding from the bluffs to the east, west of Three Mile Harbor. It seems ironic that the Montauk Lighthouse, more than 300 feet inland from Montauk’s easternmost point when it was erected more than 200 years ago, now stands less than 100 feet from the rock wall that keeps it from washing into the ocean, while the Cedar Point light gets higher and drier as the years go by.

On the other hand, as long as the rock jetties are maintained around Montauk Point, the Lighthouse will be safe well into the future, but the three feet of sea level rise — which may come as soon as 2050 — will have waves lapping at the base of the Cedar Point light.

On the north side of the spit we were greeted by a large flock of white and black sanderlings that flew low over the water in a spectacular formation, twisting and turning, moving in a rapid straight line a foot or so above Gardiner’s Bay at 30 miles per hour, forming into a tight ball, starling-like, in less than a few seconds, and then making a U-turn back towards the shore while re-creating the straight line. Very impressive. We normally encounter 10 or 15 sanderlings wintering over on Cedar Point, but never as many as we saw on Saturday.

There were no starlings at the lighthouse for the first time in more than 10 years. The structure is presently undergoing a renewal, which may account for their absence. We did see four horned larks on the spit and, east of it, an immature eagle flew over the bluff crest from the east and came to rest 15 feet up atop a dead tree snag. On any normal day in the winter the herring gulls greatly outnumber other gull species, but on this day, the ring-billed gulls, the ones with the greenish legs and the black ring on their bills, outnumbered them. And there was not a single great black-backed gull to be seen.

The little freshwater pond captured by the building sand shoal that sits to the northeast of Suffolk County’s park headquarters had about 40 resting black ducks, two mute swans, and a teal of some kind. When we approached it, the ducks got up, as well as a great blue heron. Someone mused that while in most years all the great blues move south so as not to lose the advantage of fishing in non-frozen waters, a few take the chance that waters will remain open and come spring they will not have to fly north 500 miles or so to their nesting site. Most such blue herons don’t make it through January and February.

Ely Brook Pond had a pair of buffleheads, a merganser, and three black ducks. As the blinds on the spit and those along the pond were empty of hunters this day, the ducks were taking advantage of the respite. 

Perhaps the best bird of the day loomed 200 feet across the pond as we scanned the tree line on the west side of the pond. There, about 40 feet up on a tree limb, was a very large dark bird with a bright white head standing motionless looking straight into our binoculars. You guessed it, an adult bald eagle!

The park also provided us with about nine wild turkeys, and a flock of juncos, chickadees, cardinals, downy woodpeckers, tufted titmice and white-breasted nuthatches, several common crows, and a raven. Otherwise, small land birds were wanting throughout the rest of the territory. 

We did not see a single bluebird. It was not until we got to the old marina site at the foot of Mile Hill Road in Northwest that we found some field sparrows along with a tree sparrow. Then, as we left the Northwest Landing Road end, we came upon 20 or more male robins working someone’s yard on the east side of the road.

After we checked out Northwest Creek, over which a male marsh hawk (northern harrier) was hunting, we dropped in on Pat Hope. She is one of the few year-round residents remaining on the north side of Swamp Road, the Helena Curtiss, Staudinger, and Quigley houses having been removed following purchases of their lands by the Town of East Hampton. She provided us with a Carolina wren, more titmice, nuthatches, both white and red-breasted, another downy woodpecker, and a handful of mourning doves. That night a resident great horned owl hooted several times, the only one on our list.

Northwest Harbor is usually chockablock full of sea ducks, a.k.a. goldeneyes, three species of scoters, and red-breasted mergansers, but we could only find a small flock of old-squaw (now politely renamed long-tail ducks) and a couple of common loons. Northwest Creek, just in from the harbor, was similarly bare of waterfowl — one loon, six old squaw, and the only horned grebe of the day.

If only Victoria Bustamante, along with her telephonic eyes and ears had been free to accompany us, we may have set a record this time around. 

Nevertheless, for Arthur Goldberg, John Buchbinder, his companion and first-time bird watcher, Sam, and myself, it was a wonderful day and wonderful outing.

May your new year be a good and filled with nature!

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

A party at Page at 63 Main restaurant in Sag Harbor on Sunday will serve as a thank-you to the volunteer firefighters who battled the Main Street blaze a week before Christmas and a fund-raiser for the Sag Harbor Fire Department.

Joe Traina, the restaurant owner, offered to hold a cocktail party for the 150 firefighters from more than a dozen departments that showed up on Dec. 16 when a fire erupted on Main Street, Sag Harbor Fire Department Chief Thomas Gardella said: “It’s a really nice gesture on his part — giving away food and drink to the firemen and creating a comfortable atmosphere for them.”

Though three buildings were destroyed, including the Sag Harbor Cinema, and three others damaged, the firefighters stopped the blaze from spreading further under strong wind conditions and frigid temperatures.

Any fire department member who responded to the fire that morning, along with emergency medical service personnel and police officers who were there, have been invited to Page for hors d’oeuvres, beer, and wine starting at 3 p.m. From 5 to 7 p.m., the doors will open to the public to raise money for the Fire Department. A free-will donation will be accepted at the door.

Photographs shot by Michael Heller, an East Hampton Fire Department photographer and the staff photographer at The Sag Harbor Express, will be on display and available for purchase, with proceeds to be donated to the department. Hampton Photo Arts in Bridgehampton has given him a discount on the printing of photographs ordered that night; prices will range from $35 to $75.

The money collected that night has not been slated for any one purpose yet. The department’s governing body, the board of wardens, will determine how the money is distributed.

Money raised goes into the department’s community charities fund, which it uses to fund scholarships and support other organizations like the Boy Scouts and charitable groups like the Suffolk County Burn Center. Chief Gardella said that in September, the department sponsored members and their families to participate in the Tunnel to Towers 5K race in New York City and donated $5,000 to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation in memory of one of the heroes of Sept. 11, 2001.

The money raised on Sunday will not be used to purchase firefighting equipment and trucks, something the Village of Sag Harbor does through taxes and contracts to provide services to hamlets outside the village.

The chief said the department has received “quite a few donations from people and thank-you letters — not just checks — thank-you cards, expressing their gratitude.”

“I’m proud of the guys and the job they did — all the departments. Everybody worked together really well. It’s a credit to those chiefs as well.”

Donations may also be sent to the Sag Harbor Fire Department at P.O. Box 209, Sag Harbor 11963. Credit card donations are not being accepted at this time.

Commercial fishermen on the draggers seen offshore last week took advantage of calmer seas and the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s raising of the daily limit on fluke from 70 to 210 pounds. The higher limit was in effect from Dec. 18 through Friday as the state’s annual quota for the fish, highly sought by commercial and recreational fishermen alike, had not been reached.

Nonetheless, the annual catch limit for the greater Atlantic region, as set by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is needlessly small and based, fishermen say, on flawed and outdated data. If NOAA’s recently announced 2017 and 2018 limits are not revised, fishermen will be further restricted with respect to fluke, or summer flounder.

Last Thursday, Senator Charles Schumer called on the United States Department of Commerce to pressure NOAA to conduct a new, science-based assessment of annual quotas for the fish. Mr. Schumer was reacting to NOAA’s release the day before of 2017 and 2018 catch quotas. He called for an updated benchmark assessment to be conducted as soon as possible.

NOAA’s 2017 commercial quota for fluke will be 5.66 million pounds, a figure revised from an earlier 7.91-million-pound limit. The agency, citing declining stocks, also revised its 2018 commercial quota downward. Recreational harvest limits were also revised downward for 2017 and ’18. The 2017 revisions reduce the quota by 29 percent, and the 2018 revisions by 16 percent.

With New York holding just 7.65 percent of the overall mid-Atlantic states’ commercial fluke quota, Mr. Schumer said, these reductions, from 621,244 pounds this year to slightly less than 433,000 pounds in 2017 and barely 288,000 pounds in 2018, “would be devastating to the many communities who rely on this important fishery to survive.”

Mr. Schumer said that the catch limits are based on an outdated benchmark assessment completed in 2013 that must be replaced with one that more accurately reflects the present stock. “These reductions would have a major impact on the livelihoods of many New York fishermen both recreationally and commercially, as well as the shore-side businesses that rely on this important fishery,” he wrote to Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA’s administrator, and Penny Pritzker, secretary of the Department of Commerce. “Therefore, I urge you to revisit and amend the final rule to the current 2016 quota levels until a new summer flounder benchmark assessment is completed, which will help ensure that decisions of this magnitude are based off the best and most up-to-date science,” Mr. Schumer said.

Mr. Schumer called for the 2017 and ’18 quota reductions to be put on hold until a new benchmark assessment has been completed. “The best available science should win the day,” he said in a statement issued last Thursday, “so my argument to the feds is to take a look at the science, update the model, and get 2017 back on the right track for this essential recreational and job-generating Long Island industry.”

Mark Phillips, who fishes on the Illusion out of Greenport, was once among the largest harvesters of fluke in the state, landing a few hundred thousand pounds per year, by his count. Last week, however, he was fishing off North Carolina. Today, “limits are so low that it’s not economical for me to catch New York fluke,” he said. “You can’t target fluke in New York anymore because quotas are so low.”

The problem, Mr. Phillips said, is that stock assessments are inaccurate because NOAA conducts surveys — such as with its ship the Henry B. Bigelow, which collects data in waters from Maine to North Carolina — when fluke are migrating from undersea canyons to inshore waters. “There’s so much fluke in the summer on Georges Bank, it’s unbelievable,” he said of the elevated area of ocean floor that has long supported coastal fisheries in the United States and Canada. “Back in the 1980s, you never saw fluke on Georges Bank; now it’s paved with fluke,” he said. “The population has shifted north and east. . . . Georges Bank is like our beach here. There’s one spot that’s nine feet deep — that’s inshore waters for fluke.”

Bonnie Brady of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association agreed that NOAA’s trawl surveys are incomplete and therefore producing skewed data. “If it all looks bad,” she said, “it might be because they don’t have enough information.” NOAA, she said, “needs to make decisions based on both fish and fishing communities.”

Next year’s scheduled 30-percent cut in the fluke quota, Mr. Phillips said, “is going to be huge” for commercial fishermen. Officials in NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, he charged, “don’t really care about fishermen. All they care about is job security.” What NOAA must do, he said, is “realize their surveys are all screwed up.”

A call seeking comment from NOAA’s sustainable fisheries division had not been returned as of noon yesterday.

East Hampton High School is about to become 1 of 17 schools on Long Island to offer an intensive college preparatory course called the Advanced Placement Capstone diploma, a new pilot program developed by the College Board.

School officials announced last week that the high school has been selected to offer the prestigious program, which is research and writing-intensive, starting in the 2017-18 school year.

“It’s quite an achievement for East Hampton High School,” said Richard Burns, the district superintendent, at a school board meeting on Dec. 20.

Teachers will receive training in the program next summer to begin giving courses in the fall. Students take the first course, A.P. Seminar, which “equips students with the ability to look at real-world issues from multiple perspectives,” as sophomores or juniors, and follow it the next year with A.P. Research, in which they design a year-long research project of their own and defend their conclusions in a 5,000-word paper and a public presentation.

A.P. Capstone diploma candidates must also take at least four other A.P. classes from among East Hampton High’s 20 offerings, and must score a minimum of 3 out of 5 on each final exam to earn the distinction.  Many colleges accept A.P. exam scores of 3 and above as substitutes for college credits.

“This innovative program gets a broader, more diverse student population ready for college and beyond,” Adam Fine, the high school principal, said in a release. “The program gives our teachers more leeway with curriculum choices so their students can access more challenging coursework and sharpen their reading and writing skills.”

A.P. Capstone bears some similarities to the International Baccalaureate program, a different model of college-prep coursework offered in high schools around the world that is offered at Pierson’s middle and high school in Sag Harbor. One key difference is cost: The Star reported in August 2015 that I.B. schools pay about $13,500 to apply for the program; about $8,000 for annual membership, and about $20,000 for teacher training. A.P. Capstone costs less, Mr. Fine said, with no application or membership fees. Training is $1,250 per teacher per year, with an anticipated four teachers to be trained next summer and three more for the 2017-18 school year. Students, however, bear the cost of the A.P. exams, which run about $100 per test. East Hampton will offer discounts for students on the free and reduced-price lunch program and students with other financial needs.

Any East Hampton High school student, regardless of prior academic performance, can enroll in an A.P. class. Many other schools reserve A.P. classes for honors students or those recommended specifically by a teacher, and the College Board, which administers the A.P. exams, recognized the open enrollment policy in selecting the district for participation in Capstone. About 650 schools in the nation and 1,000 worldwide now offer the program.

“It’s going to be an incredible thing for our kids here,” Mr. Fine said.

That children are entering school with increased separation anxiety, more problems with social and emotional learning, difficulties making friends, and other challenges are documented trends that Arlene Pizzo-Notel has noticed over the last few years among her charges at the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center.

Ms. Pizzo-Notel, who spent 11 years as a teacher there before becoming its program director, is now leading the center in a partnership with Yale University’s Child Study Center and the State University of New York at Old Westbury with the goal of easing the negative impacts of these trends here. The partnership will rely heavily on getting parents more connected with what their children are doing at school and linking these efforts to what is happening at home. There will be parent surveys along the way to support research at the two universities.

“We are excited to be collaborating with Yale and Old Westbury on something that can be called a really progressive parent-involvement model that addresses the trends we’re seeing in children today,” Ms. Pizzo-Notel said.

She said the center has recognized for some time that children are facing new realities. “It’s something that I call new societal norms — what’s going on in society that’s different maybe from five years ago,” she said. “Harvard calls it increased economic instability, changing demographics in communities, a changing political environment. Parents are trying to navigate the world today with these major changes, and that’s affecting how children are growing. They’re coming to school with fewer cognitive skills, an increase in anxiety, and fewer social skills developmentally.”

The program with Yale and Old Westbury will involve a series of evening workshops with parents over the next six months addressing topics including language development, technology, health and wellness, parent advocacy in schools, and challenging behaviors. The workshops will be conducted in both English and Spanish, and are open not just to parents whose children are enrolled at the Eleanor Whitmore Center, but also to parents whose children are on the waiting list for seats there. Childcare will be provided while parents are in the sessions, which will be presented by teachers, university experts, and practicing clinical professionals.

The meat and bones of the program are classroom lessons for children that Ms. Pizzo-Notel wrote two years ago that incorporate social and emotional learning into the school day. The center then piloted a three-week version of the program to start getting parents involved.

“A year ago we said, ‘Hold on, we need parents to be on board with this kind of thinking,’ and this year we’re expanding it,” she said. “This is a center-wide effort.”

The study is being supported by a grant from the Long Island Community Council’s All for the East End program, and Ms. Pizzo-Notel attended related training at Yale.

“It’s time we all know what the research is telling us,” she said, pointing out the documented connections between early childhood education and students’ academic success later in life. “We all know what happens here has to do with what’s happening in the 10th grade. It’s time to say, ‘What can we do to help you?’ ”

Proposed changes to the East Hampton Town building code will be the subject of hearings before the town board at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall next Thursday. It is the second time revisions will be aired, after comments at an earlier hearing prompted some revisions.

A major change in the law calculating the size of houses according to their lot size sets the maxiumum gross floor area at 10 percent of the lot plus 1,600 square feet. In a resolution, the change is said to be intended “to preserve the town’s rural and historic character.”  An existing provision that also limited gross floor area to 20,000 square feet regardless of the size of a property would remain in place.

Provisions enacted in 2008 limited house sizes to 12 percent of lot size, plus 1,600 square feet, along with a maximum of 20,000 square feet, whichever was less. Restricting the construction of “monster homes” said to “threaten the character of the community” had been recommended in the town’s 2005 update of its comprehensive plan. “Regulating the residential gross floor area according to lot size would help to assure that new construction is more compatible with the scale and character of existing development,” the comprehensive plan says.

 The current town board “feels that large homes have continued to threaten the character of the community,” according to the resolution to be considered next week.

The second draft of the gross floor area regulation, written after questions were raised at a November hearing by people who had already begun house construction, will contain a grandfathering provision, as will other revised building codes.

Those who, as of Dec. 15, have a valid building permit, an application before or an approval from the planning board, zoning board, or architectural review board, or who have applied for a building permit that requires no other town approvals would be exempt from new restrictions, should they be approved.

Other laws to be heard again next week with the grandfathering provision added include a revised definition of cellar, prohibiting them from extending more than 10 percent beyond the foundation walls of a building’s first floor and restricting their ceiling height; an amended definition of the way coverage is calculated, to address raised buildings and overhangs, and a revised definition of the way gross floor area is calculated.

Cellars, attics, or spaces with ceilings of less than five feet would be excluded from the calculation, but stairwells and interior spaces with a ceiling height of more than 15 feet would be counted twice toward gross floor area.

Under a revised draft of that regulation, modified based on comments at the previous public hearing, that provision would apply only in residential, and not commercial, buildings.