The Sag Harbor Village Board on Monday tabled a law that would bring its code in line with state laws and allow bowhunting on private property with an owner’s permission. The decision came after hunters challenged a ban the board had enacted two years ago. 

On advice of counsel, the village board had proposed a law that would allow hunting on private property as long as the owner is the one hunting or he or she has given written permission to someone to hunt there. The proposal states that it is in the village’s best interest to be consistent with New York’s Environmental Conservation Law. Hunting with firearms remains prohibited.

In recent years, the State Department of Environmental Conservation amended its own regulations on bowhunting by reducing the setback for the discharge of a long bow from 500 feet to 150 feet from a house the owner of which does not consent to the hunt. 

But, responding to complaints from residents about hunting in the village, where houses are often close together and there is not much open space, in 2015 the board passed a law that prohibited all hunting. There was a law on the books that dated to 1932 outlawing hunting, but it did not specifically mentioned bow-and-arrow hunting. 

Concerns from Hunters for Deer, a not-for-profit that arranges for insured and proficiency-tested bowhunters to hunt deer on private property, came up immediately, and a lawsuit was threatened based on the state regulations. The group was told at the time that the law would not be enforced while the village considered whether the state law pre-empted the village law. No decision was ever made and no further discussion took place, until earlier this fall, when a bowhunter who had been given permission to hunt on private property behind Oakland Cemetery through Hunters for Deer was subsequently warned by police to stay away. Court papers were filed, and while the village was given time to justify the law, the hunter went back to the property, off Suffolk Street, and was later arrested.

The Village of East Hampton requires that bowhunters obtain a permit through its office with a valid D.E.C. license and permission from the property owner, according to Rebecca Molinaro, the village administrator. North Haven Village also requires a permit. The Village of Sagaponack has no laws on the books regarding hunting.

Wendy Chamberlain, who recently moved from Bridgehampton to Sag Harbor, and who is a co-founder of the Wildlife Coalition of Eastern Long Island and a member of the Southampton Town deer protection management board, said the legal advice she has received says the village is under no legal compunction to conform to the D.E.C.’s laws. 

“I want to know what you’re going to say to the first family who loses a child walking through the woods,” she said. 

“I do not want to be that family that there is an issue,” said Jennifer Joly, who has an autistic child and lives across the street from where the hunter was arrested in October. She does not believe that hunting should be allowed in residential areas and agreed with a point Ms. Chamberlain made that the law should at least include a mandate that any property being hunted be posted so people can avoid the area. 

John Linder, the property owner on Suffolk Street who had allowed the hunting in the fall, called it a humane way to manage the population. “We have eliminated their habitat; we see them on the road,” he said. He told the board the hunters “come at 4 a.m. Oftentimes they’re gone by daylight.”

Mayor Sandra Schroeder said she thought the state law allows hunting only during daylight hours. 

Mr. Linder said that they come early to set up. “I don’t like how these people have been portrayed as irresponsible. They aren’t.” 

When the discussion turned to the board, Ms. Schroeder said, “I’m totally against it. I think it’s dangerous.” 

Robby Stein, the deputy mayor, made a motion to table the law for further review until the January meeting. While the rest of the board agreed, the mayor voted against doing so. “I’d like to see it disappear. I think it’s dangerous,” she said. 

David J. Gilmartin Jr., the village attorney, said he would prepare a memo for the board, which will meet again on Jan. 9 at 5 p.m., instead of the usual 6 p.m., to hear a presentation on water quality.

East Hampton School District officials, following weeks of community criticism over a proposed school bus depot in a residential district off Cedar Street, are now exploring a different location, the town-owned former scavenger waste facility, and is considering using a town and village-owned refueling facility on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton.

Two school board members and two administrators met with town officials shortly before Thanksgiving to discuss the three-acre site, which has been rehabilitated and cleared for redevelopment. At a Dec. 6 school board meeting, the board directed Superintendent Richard Burns to ask the town for a price.

Supervisor Larry Cantwell confirmed yesterday that the town and the school district are in talks about the property, but declined to discuss its value. 

“I have, with the town board’s knowledge, spoken to representatives of the school regarding the potential availability of that property and our interest in selling to them if they would like to pursue the purchase of it,” Mr. Cantwell said. “I’m not going to get into the details of negotiations.”

While the school district’s initial plans for the bus maintenance depot on the Cedar Street side of the high school campus included a fuel pump, Mr. Burns said that “there could be communication and collaboration” for the district to use instead the fueling depot at the town Highway Department, nearby on the same road and co-owned by the town and East Hampton Village.

Indeed, Mr. Cantwell said, that idea is on the table. He said the fueling facility was capable of handling the additional capacity of school buses. “I think it would benefit all parties: the village, the town, and the school district,” the supervisor said. “To the extent that we can share services and assets to benefit the taxpayers collectively, we all need to do more of this.”

The town and the village would negotiate a cost-sharing agreement if the school were to come on board, he added. “It’s not a free ride.”

Christina DeSanti, vice president of the school board, said during the Dec. 6 meeting that she would be comfortable with the arrangement. “It will be a little more inconvenient, but it’s manageable, and we’d be splitting the maintenance,” she said. “It would take care of all the environmental concerns, and it would lower the cost of our project. . . . To me, it makes sense to take the fueling facility out of the Cedar Street project and use the town and village’s.”

While the school board seemed amenable to working out an agreement on the fuel depot, some members appeared reluctant to pursue the scavenger waste site, especially without knowing its price tag.

J.P. Foster, the board’s president, said he disliked buying more property because the whole idea was to save the taxpayers money: “I don’t want to add any more cost when we have a piece of property we can use. Maybe we compromise by not having the fuel there. . . .”

John Ryan Sr. had no problem with buses using the municipal fueling facility, but was opposed to buying the scavenger waste site. “It’s extra money. I believe the [bus depot] can fit on our property. We don’t have to pay rent or buy a piece of land.”

Jackie Lowey agreed. “Once you start talking about purchasing land to do construction on, you sort of erase any of the financial advantages of saving money,” she said. “If it’s not saving money, I don’t want to go ahead with a construction project.”

Purchasing the scavenger waste site rather than building on Cedar Street had strong support from district residents who attended the Dec. 6 meeting.

“If we spread out the cost of this, the taxpayers would be willing to pay the incremental increase. . . . I for one would approve of your spending $1 million, $2 million, or $3 million,” Lorne Singh said. “Down the road, it’s going to be worth it. I do think you need your own bus depot, but not on [Cedar Street].”

Charles John Collins said the scavenger waste site “makes so much sense,” as opposed to siting a bus depot on a mostly residential street. “It’s obvious a commercial entity should not be in that part of town. Meanwhile, there’s this property the town owns in a very industrial part of town,” Mr. Collins said. “We should explore that option a lot further.”

Paul Fiondella said the district should avoid building a bus barn on Cedar Street by contracting with the town to maintain and repair its buses at the highway department, in addition to using the town and village-owned fueling facility. “I would urge you to negotiate with the town,” he said.

The mill cottage on the Lion Gardiner home lot at 36 James Lane is going to become a museum devoted to 19th and early-20th-century landscape paintings, if plans described at a meeting of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday come to fruition. The board appeared likely to approve a special permit and variances that would be required. 

Speaking at the meeting on Friday, Robert Hefner, the village’s director of historic services, said, “The intent is to use this as a gallery of East Hampton landscape paintings of the 19th and early-20th centuries.” He called a museum “an appropriate use for this property that was preserved as a historic landscape as Lion Gardiner’s home lot.”

The special permit is required because the cottage is a pre-existing and nonconforming structure in a residential district. A variance to make alterations and eliminate nonhistorical components of the building would be necessary, as well as variances from required setbacks and parking spaces. The plan also will need approval from the design review board.

At the request of the village board, the Town of East Hampton bought the home lot, which includes the 1804 Gardiner windmill, in October 2014, using money from the community preservation fund. In December that year, the municipalities signed an agreement giving the village sole responsibility for the lot.

Plans call for the East Hampton Historical Society to be the museum’s curator, with the exhibition made possible by a grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. The grant, which he called “very significant,” will go toward the acquisition of part of the East Hampton Wallace Gallery’s collection. Contacted after the meeting, Terry Wallace said most of the paintings, which date from about 1865 to 1900, have been in his collection “for quite a while.” He said some would be a gift to the historical society.

The mill cottage is a timber-frame saltbox. Mr. Hefner said the village would restore it to its 1880s appearance, when Jonathan Thompson Gardiner renovated it. The artist Percy Moran, a nephew of Thomas Moran, lived there in the early-20th century. 

Referring to the Gardiner Foundation, Mr. Hefner said, “Their gift to the historical society to acquire this outstanding collection will make this, right away, into a very high-quality, small-scale museum.” The art will be displayed on the cottage’s first floor, with an office and storage upstairs.

The nonhistorical additions to the cottage, including porches and dormers, are to be removed, Mr. Hefner said, and its 1880 porch reconstructed. A kitchen wing would be reconstructed, providing an entrance and bathroom complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act. 

“We’re going to be removing the pavement in the front lawn to restore a grass setting between the mill cottage and the windmill,” Mr. Hefner said. The existing driveway from Maidstone Lane will remain and lead to four parking spaces. All parking would be directly behind the cottage, however, “to maintain that open vista from James Lane,” he said. 

The cottage’s floor area would fall by more than half, from 3,547 to 1,471 square feet. Paved areas would be reduced by 2,000 square feet. “When you stop and think that this 3.7-acre parcel could have accommodated a 10,200-square-foot new house,” Frank Newbold, the board’s chairman, said, “this is a good outcome.” The hearing was closed. 

In other news from the meeting, the application of the Maidstone Club for approval to build a bridge across the northern section of Hook Pond was adjourned at the club’s request amid growing criticism from the public and the Ladies Village Improvement Society. The hearing, which began in October, is scheduled to resume on Jan. 27. 

The board also announced two decisions on Friday. Gregory and Lisa Wilson were granted variances allowing reconstruction of much of their existing house and attached garage at 30 the Circle. Alterations and a walkway fall within the required front-yard setback. The variances were granted on the condition that the house’s roof be redesigned and constructed so that it is no higher than 21 feet. 

The board granted Graham Clempson variances to put a foundation under an accessory building at 56 David’s Lane that falls within required side-yard setbacks. 

It wasn’t St. Nicholas, but another esteemed figure bearing gifts who visited the board that day. Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. presented a daybook to each board member and thanked them for their “due diligence, caring, and examination of the oh-so-many exercises that come before you, especially over the past 12 months.” 

The village, he said, “is very dynamic, it’s diverse, and very much alive, well, and kicking. The important thing is that we maintain where we are today, having known where we came from, and looking ahead into the future.”

Voters in the Bridgehampton School District will head to the polls on Tuesday to decide the fate of the district’s $24.7 million bond project, which would finance a major school expansion and renovation.

School officials have released preliminary sketches showing a 35,440-square-foot addition to the back of the existing building, which was built in the 1930s. Bridgehampton is the only local school not to have undertaken major capital improvements since it was built.

• RELATED EDITORIAL: Two School Districts Go to Voters Next Week

On the table is a $24.7 million bond spanning 20 years that would come with an anticipated interest rate of about 3.5 percent. For a house valued at $1 million, that would mean an additional $241 per year in school taxes, or $4,820 over the life of the bond. School officials have called the 3.5-percent interest rate a “very conservative,” “worst-case scenario,” and predicted it would end up being lower. They also pointed out that should Southampton Town’s assessed property values increase, as has happened for the last few years, Bridgehampton residents would eventually see the bond’s tax impact decrease.

Voting is at the Bridgehampton School between 2 and 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Those who voted in Bridgehampton’s school budget vote in May, or on Election Day in Bridgehampton last month, are eligible to vote on the  referendum, provided they have not registered to vote elsewhere in the meantime. Absentee ballots, which were available beginning Nov. 1 and may be picked up in person at the school through Monday at 4 p.m., are due back to the district clerk’s office by 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

The proposition has not been without controversy. Despite the school’s informational mailings, two public forums, open tours, and monthly school board meetings — which were not well attended by members of the public — some community members have claimed that school officials rushed the process and were trying to push the vote through during a time when many residents are away for the winter.

In October, Jeff Mansfield, a school board member, said, “This is a big step for this district and, in my mind, long overdue . . . I feel very comfortable in bringing this proposed project to a vote and letting the people decide. That’s the way of our country, and the people will decide if they think this is a good idea.”

“Everyone’s heard of the Hamptons. That’s, like, your mom’s friend who wears pearls,” says Kyle Cooke, a Manhattan entrepreneur whose startups include a product called Birddogs (“gym shorts for free-balling crotch crusaders”), as a montage rolls of rear ends being slapped with towels and tanned bodies twerking on stand-up paddleboards. “My group of friends, we go to Montauk. Montauk is, like, your mom’s friend’s daughter who’s a little promiscuous. And by a little I mean a lot.”

The word “nipple” is heard repeatedly in the trailer, and the word “wieners” is used in reference to something other than hot dogs. Trousers drop, drinks are thrown.

“Summer House,” a reality series debuting on Jan. 16 on the Bravo network, focuses on the romantic hijinks of a group of nine 20 and 30-somethings who live and work in New York City but spend weekends at their share house in Montauk — although, technically speak­ing, the house where the cast lived and was filmed is not in Montauk but on the harbor side of Napeague.

Temperatures may have run high last summer, but the show’s producers, Left Hook Media, got a frosty reception in the Last Resort. As was reported widely at the time, the trouble started when photographs and video made by James Katsipis, a hometown photographer well known in the hamlet, were used in early promotional materials without his permission. “Then they offered me a job shooting for them on their show,” Mr. Katsipis said yesterday in an email. “I told them not a chance. They said, ‘We get it. We’re the bad guys. But we’re just doing our jobs.’ ”

After that, several business establishments — including 668 the Gig Shack, Swallow East Restaurant, and Shagwong — publicly refused entry to the cast and crew, not wanting to be associated with the show. The effort was spoken of as a boycott. “They were taken aback,” Mr. Katsipis said of the producers’ reaction. “They tried to take the approach of saying, ‘We are here to help Montauk.’ ”

Steven Weinstock, the show’s executive producer, responded in an email today with a more positive takeaway: “The communities and businesses that granted us access were great partners, and the Montauk and Hamptons residents who participated in the show also gave us terrific feedback. Production, cast, and crew all had very positive and respectful interactions with the community. . . . ”

On Tuesday, however, as the video of the trailer spread on Facebook, the reaction in Montauk was again resoundingly negative. One commenter wrote that “lowlifes” were “making my town look horrible.” Another chimed in: “Is this satire? This has to be a joke.” Several others compared “Summer House” to “The Jersey Shore,” the infamous reality show that made “mind condom” and “sandy tits” household words in some circles. “It’s actually worse!” complained another social-media critic.

Jacqueline Lowey, a resident of Northwest Woods, was hiking along Napeague Harbor Road toward the Walking Dunes last summer when she came upon an unexpected scene: “I saw some action and a security guard posted outside of the house,” Ms. Lowey said yesterday. “After talking with him, I figured out what the show was they were filming.”

The house can be plainly seen in the show’s trailer. It is currently listed with Corcoran Group as a seasonal rental for summer 2017 for $165,000, with July and August still open, according to the online availability calendar. The listing does show the East Hampton Town registry number required for all rentals. However, despite the fact that it housed nine adults during “Summer House” filming (only two of whom, a pair of sisters, are immediate family), the four-bedroom structure cannot legally be rented as a share or “group house.” Group rentals (with more than four people who are not family members, as family is defined under town code) are illegal in the Town of East Hampton.

Coming as it does just as East Hampton Town is attempting to rehabilitate Montauk’s image as a peaceful family destination rather than an out-of-control party city, the debut of “Summer House” — while greeted with amusement more than disdain in some quarters — is not proving popular in Town Hall.

“The production company asked for a filming permit, which is required for filming in public places, whether town-owned or not, and that was denied,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell said yesterday. “We were aware that they might go ahead and try to film at various public locations around town anyway.”

Cast members and cameras turned up on the party circuit in Southampton (including scenes at 75 Main, Kozu, and AM Southampton), and they were spotted in the I.G.A. in Amagansett at one point, but it remains to be seen what public or private shoots were actually done in Montauk. “It is not a real representation of Montauk, and we do not embrace it,” said Laraine Creegan, executive director of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce. “For one thing, group houses are illegal. Plus, they’re saying they’re in Montauk, but they’re really not.”

“We also were concerned about use of the residence and the number of people that might occupy it,” the supervisor continued. “Enforcement personnel were well aware of the situation, patrolling that location, including at night. . . . There was a rental registry issued for that property, and it was registered to five individuals, two of whom were related. According to the number of people who were registered, they met the requirements. [The producers] had attorneys involved, and they were instructed as to what the town’s code says. They weren’t breaking the law in any obvious way.”

Mr. Katsipis considers the reality-television treatment of Montauk to be a a slur on his hometown’s reputation, as well as a case of exploitation. “Look at the sizzle and what they are trying to represent our town as,” he said. “These producers have one thing in mind: to make money. At the end of the day, they pack up their show and leave.”

Or, as a cast member says, incredulously, in the aforementioned trailer: “That happened in our Jacuzzi?!” 

The East Hampton Town Board and a senior town planner agreed at a work session on Tuesday that the anticipated East Hampton satellite of Southampton Hospital should be located on the Little League fields at Pantigo Place. Support for the site followed a presentation in which it was said the size of the property would be adequate and after a discussion about parking.

Preliminary plans call for a building of between 54,000 and 64,000 feet, which would include emergency, treatment, and waiting rooms, as well as an imaging center, lab, and offices for primary care doctors and specialists. The cost has been estimated at between $35 million and $45 million. In a second phase, a 10,000-square-foot addition could be built. The hospital has said it receives 17,000 visits per year from patients from East Hampton Town.

For the satellite to be on Pantigo Place would require rezoning the 4.5-acre site from parkland and conservation designation to commercial and industrial use. Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said Tuesday that such rezoning might also require special legislation from New York State, since the land, which he said may have been intended for affordable housing, was purchased by the town with money borrowed for parkland.

“However, later the town decided it would be more appropriately used for the ball fields,” Mr. Cantwell said, “and then the town borrowed funds and authorized it for use for recreation purposes. In terms of its current zoning and what the town borrowed the money for, there are alienation issues that have to be addressed.”

A sticking point was whether the 140 parking spaces proposed would be adequate. A detailed traffic study is forthcoming, but Eric Schantz, a senior town planner, said the on-site parking was likely to be sufficient because vehicles could be diverted to nearby town property.

“It’s frustrating that we don’t have the traffic study when we have to make this decision. It’s going to have a huge impact,” Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said at Tuesday’s session. “Conceptually, it makes sense to site it here and potentially use the Wainscott property for two ball fields.”

The town board may pass a resolution as early as next Thursday’s regular board meeting to formally designate the Pantigo Place parcel the official site for the satellite, rather than a Wainscott site that had also been a candidate. Although the hospital already has received a $10 million commitment from the state for the project, the designation is necessary, Mr. Cantwell said, so that the hospital can finalize its state application by the end of the year.

All the town board members expressed support for Pantigo Place, with Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc saying it has several good attributes: “It’s located next to the East Hampton Healthcare facility now, all those offices, and it’s centrally located geographically . . . closer to Montauk than the western site would be.”

When Mr. Cantwell asked Mr. Schantz for his expert opinion on the location, he said, “There’s going to be a lot of hurdles and a lot of things we need to do as far as design and planning,” Mr. Schantz replied, “. . . but I do feel that this is the appropriate site for it.”

There were three bad car crashes in town in recent days, all of them followed by misdemeanor charges of driving while intoxicated or high on drugs. 

At about 8 a.m. on Sunday, according to East Hampton Town police, Renaldo Valentino Barnes of East Hampton, 20, smashed through one of two brick and concrete pillars demarking the Lion Head Beach Association in Springs and then tried to outrun police on a skateboard. Mr. Barnes, a 2015 East Hampton High School graduate, is said to have been high on drugs.

Police had received a call reporting a car crash near 5 Isle of Wight Road. An officer arrived in time to see Mr. Barnes walking away from a wrecked 2005 Chevrolet, which had apparently rammed the pillar at a high rate of speed. Both pillar and car were destroyed, along with a concrete lion atop the pillar. 

Spotting the officer, Mr. Barnes started skateboarding down the street, then jumped off and ran into the woods, police said. He reportedly resisted before being handcuffed.

He suffered serious though not life-threatening injuries, said Capt. Chris Anderson, and an ambulance was called to take him to Southampton Hospital. En route, however, the decision was made to fly him to Stony Brook University Hospital’s trauma center instead, where he was admitted. At the hospital, Captain Anderson said, Mr. Barnes consented to have blood drawn. It will be tested by Suffolk County medical examiners to determine if he had drugs in his system at the time of the crash. 

In addition to the charge of driving while ability impaired by drugs, Mr. Barnes, who has since been released from the hospital, faces a felony charge of criminal mischief for destroying the pillar, and a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. He is to be arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Wednesday. 

The driver in another Sunday crash, David A. Steckowski, also fled the scene, police said, reporting that shortly after sunset, driving a 2014 Ford pickup truck on Long Lane near the high school, he had swerved from his lane to pass a 2014 Porsche whose driver, Tina Georgopoulos, had slowed down as she went by the high school. The front of the Ford hit the rear of the Porsche, damaging the truck’s right front tire and causing significant damage to both vehicles. 

Mr. Steckowski then kept going, according to police, whipping around the dog-leg corners that connect Long Lane to Newtown Lane. He got as far as Gould Street, close to his Cedar Street residence, where the truck broke down.

“I had two margaritas in Sag Harbor,” he told the arresting officer. “I hit another car on Long Lane. The other car was going slow, so I went around them. Are the other people okay?” Each driver had a passenger with them; none of the four required medical attention.

At police headquarters in Wainscott, Mr. Steckowski agreed to take the breath test, which reportedly produced a reading of .16, double the .08 number that defines intoxication. Besides the charge of D.W.I., he was charged with leaving the scene of an accident. 

He was released the next morning without bail, in recognition of his lifetime roots in East Hampton, but with a future date on Justice Steven Tekulsky’s criminal calendar.

Drunken driving was also the charge against a Springs woman, Alexandra Moret, 47, who crashed into a stopped car at the intersection of Springs-Fireplace Road and Fort Pond Boulevard at about 5:10 p.m. on Nov. 30. The driver of the other car, Wendy Verity of Springs, complained of back pain and was taken to Southampton Hospital, where she was treated and later released. Both vehicles were badly damaged and were towed away.

Police said that when an officer arrived, Ms. Moret was standing outside her 2016 Volkswagen. “I had one glass of wine,” she said, but the officer said she failed roadside sobriety tests and refused to take a breath test, both at the site and later at headquarters. Besides the D.W.I. charge, she was charged with unsafe lane-changing.

Two ambulances were called, but Ms. Moret declined medical attention. 

She was arraigned last Thursday before Justice Lisa R. Rana. Her lawyer, Edward Burke Jr., entered a not-guilty plea on her behalf. His client had been returning from a trip out of town at the time of the accident, he told the court.

The prosecutor, Rudy Migliore Jr. of the district attorney’s office, acknowledged that Ms. Moret had never been in trouble with the law before, but pointed out the serious nature of the incident, adding that she had only moved into the area recently. He asked that bail be set at $1,000, an amount Mr. Burke said Ms. Moret was ready to post.

Justice Rana told the defendant, whose job is in sales, which normally requires driving, that she was not eligible for a hardship license because she had refused the breath test at headquarters, and warned her not to drive while the charges are pending. A hearing at the Department of Motor Vehicles over her refusal to take the test is scheduled for today. The administrative judge who hears the case could suspend Ms. Moret’s license for the next year.

Early on the morning of Nov. 30, code enforcement officers, with the assistance of the East Hampton Town Police Department, executed a search warrant at 64 Woodbine Drive in Springs and filed 29 charges against the owner of the house, Gerard Picco, alleging that he has added two bedrooms and an illegal two-bedroom basement apartment to his three-bedroom residence, all without the necessary permits. 

Mr. Picco, speaking outside the house on Friday, denied the charges. “There is no illegal apartment here,” he said. He claimed to have registered with the town under its rental registration laws.

According to code enforcement, “The lower level apartment had a full kitchen and a full bathroom, walls, and plumbing, as well as electrical outlets, all of which had been constructed and installed without any building permits or inspections, as required by the town code.” 

The town supervisor’s office released a statement following the search. A warrant was issued, according to David Betts, the town’s director of public safety, because Mr. Picco had declined to allow an inspection of the house. “If we get a report that there is a basement apartment in a particular house, we go to the conditions,” Mr. Betts said on Monday. “We see if there is a finished basement, if there is living space, if living there is permitted, sleeping there is permitted. In this particular case, we ended up going to get a search warrant because we were unable to verify information.” 

Mr. Betts declined to say how the town learned about the allegedly illegal apartment, but Mr. Picco recalled that a police officer, apparently investigating an unrelated complaint of domestic violence, had come to the door a few nights before the raid, asking if there were an apartment in the back. “You come to my house, it’s 10 or 11 o’clock at night, we’re all sleeping. I don’t know,” Mr. Picco said he told the officer, adding, “We didn’t call you.” Then, he said, “the whole thing escalated.”

According to Mr. Picco, the basement apartment was there when he and his wife bought the house. “All we did was put windows in,” he said. “We redid the shingles, Sheetrock, we cleaned it up, we dressed it up, we didn’t do anything. Technically, it is cosmetic.”

The town, however, has a different take. Kelly Kampf, assistant director of public safety, was on site during the dawn raid, and reported that the two basement bedrooms lacked windows large enough to escape in case of fire and were too far off the floor even had they been of legal size. In addition, she said Monday, the ceiling was under the required minimum height of seven feet. She also noted a lack of smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, and said there were exposed wires.

Many of the charges are unclassified misdemeanors. Mr. Picco, a senior director at Avison Young, an international commercial real estate firm, is scheduled for arraignment in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Jan. 16.

When he bought the house, he said Friday, no inspector came to update its certificate of occupancy. The original C of O was issued to Bertha Quackenbush in 1967. It appears from the records on file with the town’s building department that a fire caused damage to the structure at some point, long before Mr. Picco purchased it for $575,000 in 2007.

“All I know is, when we bought the house there was an apartment down there,” he said. “There was a bathroom, a kitchenette, it was all there. That is one reason we bought the house.” 

He compared the visit from the code enforcement officers to a SWAT team. “Scary. We have little kids here. It sounds like I am an evil person. I thought I was doing [the town]. a service. A nice apartment. It’s not like I’m some kind of . . .” he trailed off. “I live in the house.” 

He acknowledged that the town had tried to inspect the premises at least once before, and that he had turned them away. “They showed up on a weekday. I was on a conference call. My wife was out, I am watching two kids, I couldn’t let them in. The day before Thanksgiving. We were ready to leave.” 

Mr. Picco said the tenants in the apartment want to stay. “They have only been here for 30 days,” he said, adding that he wanted to work with the town: “I am sure it is a total misunderstanding. Issues, let’s address them. And if you tell me at the end of the day, that it is not grandfathered, you can’t have an apartment, that is okay with me. We’re not criminals.” 

“Illegal and unsafe basement occupancy creates the potential for tragic consequences for occupants, overcrowds neighborhoods, and must be strictly enforced,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell said in last week’s release.

Soil tests at the East End Community Organic Farm on Long Lane, which were taken in October at the behest of East Hampton Town, have shown a 33-percent drop in average arsenic content from levels in 2005. The result is consistent with what the cooperative farm’s board members say were their own test results, which have been called into question over the years.

The results were reported at a work session of the town board on Tuesday by Kim Shaw, the director of natural resources, and Mellissa Winslow, an environmental analyst. It was welcome news for the farm’s board members, some of whom said they hope the new results would put to bed any lingering community fears that there was a hazardous level of arsenic there.

Soil samples were taken on Oct. 12 by American Analytical Laboratories. The average arsenic concentration was 27.1 milligrams per kilogram, a decrease of 33.25 percent from the 2005 result of 40.6 milligrams per kilogram. Individual samples taken in October ranged from 10.6 to 31.8 milligrams per kilogram.

In addition to the soil samples, two vegetable samples — a squash and a pepper — were also collected for testing. They had “non-detectable” levels of arsenic.

Don Cirillo, an EECO Farm board member for the last 10 years, said during the work session that the farm had spent hundreds of dollars each year testing the soil and the water, and found them to be below acceptable European Union standards. New York State and the United States do not have such standards for arsenic, which is a naturally occurring element in soil, but which had been heavily applied as an agricultural pesticide in the past. 

“We’re very pleased that they found what we did,” Mr. Cirillo said after the work session. “Now it’s been officially done by an outside agency. It was random. The town got their own test group. Those are their conclusions. Nobody can blame us, it was all hands-off, and they pretty much gave us a clean bill of health and said we are no worse off than many other places on Long Island. This should be the end of it.”

Following the session, Alex Balsam, an Amagansett farmer and attorney who is also an EECO Farm board member, said the organization was “very happy and encouraged with what we heard today.” Calling EECO Farm “a huge community asset,” he said the positive attributes of EECO Farm “certainly are negatively impacted by an ongoing discussion about arsenic that is not always science-based. I’m hopeful that some positive, science-based analysis, which we saw today, will help alleviate some of the concerns regarding the parcel. . . . It was a good day for us.”

 Mr. Balsam said that over the last several years, EECO Farm had mitigated  arsenic levels by increasing organic matter in the soil through planting cover crops and composting. He called the new results “a testament to the good farming practices that are going on by all the growers and the gardeners at EECO Farm.” 

Sandra Menasha, a vegetable and potato specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, said the New York State Department of Health had concluded that “soil arsenic levels at EECO Farm do not pose an immediate health hazard.” She also applauded EECO Farm “for taking appropriate actions.”

Word that the test results were ready  had circulated in the community and brought Prudence Carabine, among others, to the work session. Despite the results, Ms. Carabine, who is the director of the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum, expressed lingering concern. She reminded those in attendance about what she said had been a suspected “cancer cluster” among East Hampton High School students several years ago. The school is also on former farmland on Long Lane.

“I must say that I’m sad to keep addressing this subject, because it’s painful to me, but the reality is that we have a wonderful farm called EECO Farm which has been continually tested — thank you — and still shows the presence of arsenic. I feel very strongly, and I’m going to say this three times, EECO Farm is doing the right thing by mitigating this poison . . . but the fact is that the poison is not going away within my lifetime and probably will not go away within the next 50, 60, 70 years.”

A Springs woman was charged with drunken driving on Wednesday evening after crashing into a car in the lane opposite the one on which she was driving. The collision occurred on Springs Fireplace Road, the intersection of Fort Pond Boulevard. The driver of the other car was taken to Southampton Hospital, complaining of back pain.

Alexandra Moret, 47, was driving south in a 2016 Volkswagen when she allegedly veered into the opposite lane at about 5:11 p.m., where a 2012 Chevrolet being driven by Wendy Verity of Springs was waiting to turn. Both vehicles were badly damaged and were towed away.

Police said that when an officer arrived, Ms. Moret was out of her car. "I had one glass of wine," she allegedly told the officer. She failed the roadside sobriety tests administered at the site and refused to take a breath test, both on the side of the road and at police headquarters. Besides the driving while intoxicated charge, she was charged with making an unsafe lane change.

Two ambulances were called to the scene, but Ms. Moret declined medical attention. Ms. Verity was treated at Southampton Hospital and released. The report indicated that she was conscious when police arrived.

After being held overnight, Ms. Moret was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court Thursday by Justice Lisa R. Rana. Ms. Moret's attorney, Edward Burke Jr., entered a not guilty plea on her behalf, telling the court that his client had been returning from a trip out of town at the time of the accident. Ms. Moret began crying when the arraignment was over.

Rudy Migliore Jr., from the district attorney's office, acknowledged that Ms. Moret had never been in trouble with the law but pointed out the serious nature of the incident, asking that bail be set at $1,000, an amount Mr. Burke said Ms. Moret was ready to post through a sister who was in the courtroom.

Justice Rana told Ms. Moret, whose job is in sales, which normally requires driving, that she was not eligible for a hardship license because of her alleged breath test refusal at headquarters. The judge warned the defendant that she could not drive while the charges were pending. A hearing at the Department of Motor Vehicles over refusal to take the test is scheduled for next Thursday. Depending on the decision of the administrative judge who hears her case, Ms. Moret's license could be suspended for at least a year.