Emergency responders found the driver of a pickup truck unconscious after the truck rolled over onto its side in Amagansett on Thursday night, fire officials said. 

East Hampton Town police and the Amagansett Fire Department were called out to the accident on Old Stone Highway, just north of Albert's Landing Road, shortly after 11 p.m. The male driver was initially unconscious, but regained consciousness as emergency medical service providers arrived, according to John Glennon, the first assistant chief. The driver appeared to have been headed north on Old Stone Highway when he lost control of the white Ford pickup truck. The truck traveled up an embankment and rolled over onto the driver's side. No one else was in the truck, the chief said.

A medevac helicopter was requested to transport the patient to Stony Brook University Hospital, a trauma center, but the helicopter was not available. The Amagansett Fire Department ambulance transported the man, whose name was not immediately available, to Southampton Hospital. 

"Neither speed nor alcohol seemed to be a factor in the accident," Chief Glennon said. 

There were reports that the driver was trapped inside the truck, but no heavy rescue equipment was used. 

A Sag Harbor coach and substitute teacher died on Monday from a suspected drug overdose in Bridgehampton, Southampton Town police said Wednesday.

Michael Semkus, 28, an elite athlete, was one of the Pierson High School soccer coaches and worked as a substitute teacher in the Sag Harbor School District. Police have not said which drug is suspected in the overdose or where Mr. Semkus was at the time of his death.

Mr. Semkus participated in many community sporting events, among them the Katy's Courage races in Sag Harbor.

In a letter to the community on Tuesday following Mr. Semkus's death, the Sag Harbor School District said he will be remembered for his kind and generous spirit.

"We are truly saddened by the sudden passing of Michael Semkus, a Pierson alum, member of the coaching staff for our boys soccer team, and substitute teacher," Katy Graves, Sag Harbor's superintendent, said in a separate statement on Tuesday. "The board of education and administration extend our sincerest thoughts and heartfelt condolences to his family and friends during this difficult time."

The district said that while teachers and staff would stick to a regular schedule at school, counselors will be available to students who need help coping with grief. "Sag Harbor is a strong and close-knit community that stands together during difficult times," the district said in its letter. "Listening, understanding, and supporting our school family and the Semkus family are our priority."

Services will be held soon at Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in Sag Harbor, but specific dates and times have not yet been announced.

A hearing on proposed changes to Southampton Town’s taxi legislation that would require Uber drivers to obtain the same licenses required of traditional cab companies and drivers received support from local drivers on Tuesday night. However, the board decided to keep the hearing open another two weeks to allow Uber to finalize a proposal of its own.

Councilman Stan Glinka, who sponsored the legislation, has said it is meant to level the playing field. For example, the current town code only regulates taxis that wait for fares outside clubs or at train stations. It requires the annual registration of cab companies, cab drivers, and the cabs themselves, but vehicles that pick up prearranged fares, such as Uber’s nationwide ride-sharing service, have been exempt. Mr. Glinka began looking into the issue last summer when complaints flooded Town Hall about Uber drivers soliciting business on the streets. Some drivers, only here for the weekend, could be found sleeping in their cars between fares.

Under the proposed changes, livery vehicles, defined as any vehicle picking up a passenger for a prearranged trip, would be subject to licensing. Like cab companies and drivers, livery business owners would pay $750 for a town license, $150 per car, and $100 per driver. Given Uber’s business model, in which cars are owned and operated by independent drivers affiliated with but not employed by the company, each individual driver would pay $1,000 for all three of the permitting fees to operate legally in the Town of Southampton.

The only differences between taxis and liveries are that liveries do not need to have the taxi license plates issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles, nor must they prominently identify themselves, as cabs must. Uber drivers, therefore, could continue to operate in unmarked cars. 

Uber emailed its Southampton customers earlier this month saying that “new rules could prevent Uber driver-partners from operating in your town and take away your ability to get a reliable ride at the tap of a button.” Uber called the additional licenses that Southampton would require of its drivers under the proposal “unnecessary and expensive bureaucratic requirements.” The company urged customers to call the supervisor’s office.

After the board set a public hearing on Mr. Glinka’s proposed amendments, Uber management requested a meeting with him. Uber said it could stop its drivers from waiting for fares on the street or in front of restaurants and night clubs, and that it would ban any activity that was not pre-arranged through the ride-sharing app. The company could guarantee, it said, that the vehicles and those operating them were licensed, fingerprinted, and screened by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.

Uber drivers must also take a physical exam, a three-day class and test on for-hire vehicle driving, and an annual drug test.

  “Drivers who partner with Uber in New York already go through an extensive process. We are hopeful that Southampton officials will recognize this,” an Uber spokesperson said yesterday. “The town has raised several valid issues and, given a mutual understanding, we are eager to come to a solution that works for everyone.”

While Mr. Glinka said he was considering Uber’s proposal, he has yet to see an agreement that would be legally binding. “At this time, I have no intention of abandoning this legislation, but believe it is smart to evaluate all options,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Speakers who were there supported the proposal, and some wanted to see it go even further. David Baz, who said he has been driving with Uber for three years and recently moved to Southampton, was among the supporters. He said there were too many vehicles for hire on the road, and called for a cap on the number of licenses issued, with local residents receiving them first.

“If I’m going to be paying all those things, I need kind of protection,” he told the board. “It’s like when you open a pizzeria in a strip mall, you don’t want another pizzeria right next store or right across the street.” After some tweaking, the latest proposal exempts limousines from having to comply with licensing the way that taxis and liveries would have to, by amending the definition of a limo. Under town code, it would mean any vehicle operating with a contract, such as for a wedding, funeral, or prom.

In another change since the proposal was first discussed in February, drivers who have already undergone background checks and fingerprinting with the newly formed Suffolk Taxi and Limousine Commission would not have to undergo the same check with the town. Carl Benincasa, an assistant town attorney, said the town had received assurances that the county will notify it of any changes to the driver’s record.

The hearing will be continued on April 12 at 1 p.m.

A hearing will be held next month on much-anticipated revisions to the Sag Harbor Village zoning code, including those that tie the size of a house to the size of a lot. 

The village has dialed back on the gross floor area regulation ratios following feedback from residents earlier this year when the proposals were first unveiled. Under the current proposal, houses could be about 400 square feet larger than initially suggested. The board instituted a moratorium last year on large-scale residential building projects in the face of a trend to tear down existing houses and replace them with larger ones, particularly in the village’s historic district.

New limits on house sizes began to kick in on properties that are 6,250 square feet. Smaller properties will be governed by the existing 20-percent-coverage rule. Initially, new limits would have affected all properties larger than 5,000 square feet.

However, the board did not budge on a maximum house size of 4,000 square feet without a special permit. “You get to the maximum of 4,000-square-foot house not at 30,000 square feet, but at 25,000,” said Fred W. Thiele Jr., the village attorney said.

In its research, completed by Inter-Science Research Associates, the board found the median lot area in the village is 12,905 square feet with the median gross floor area of a house being 1,590 square feet. Under the current code, a lot at the median size could have a house as large as 5,164 square feet, much larger than what the village believes is in keeping with its historic character. The proposed law would limit a house on a lot of that size to 3,032 square feet, which is still 1,442 square feet more than the current median dwelling size.

Looking at all 1,653 residential lots in the village, consultants found that only 9.3 percent of them have houses with gross floor areas in excess of 3,000 square feet, and only 42 of them have houses with gross floor areas greater than 4,000 square feet.

The village has seen a trend toward larger houses on relatively small lots. Of the 25 residential building permits and certificates of occupancy issued by the village in 2014 and 2015, 19 of them — or 76 percent — have a gross floor area greater than 3,000 square feet. Eleven of the 19 houses exceeded 4,000 square feet. Worth noting, the village collected $607,000 in permit fees over those two years.

Those who want a larger house and have a larger lot will have to apply for a special permit under the code revisions. At most, a 7,000-square-foot house would be allowed on a property larger than 62,500 square feet.

The proposal also tackles other zoning issues. A more definitive explanation of “demolition” is provided for houses outside the historic district, a request made by Tom Preiato, the building inspector. A number of changes were made with respect to the board of historic preservation and architectural review, including that even when only a discussion is being held, notice must be made to adjoining property owners, a practice Southampton Village has instituted.

Also of note, it will be harder to get approval for solar panels and alternative energy systems in the historic district. The A.R.B. had set a policy not to approve them if they are visible from an adjacent street or property, and the village added the guideline to its code. “That virtually kills solar in Sag Harbor Village, doesn’t it?” Ed Deyermond, a village board member asked. “Only in the historic district,” Mr. Thiele said, adding, “there’s always an appeal.”

The board also put forth a second proposal for public hearing that focuses on pools. Changes to pool setbacks originally caused a stir, and the village backed off early on, announcing in January that it would not change the current 15-foot setbacks. The village will eliminate a restriction on pools in  front yards and require that they have drywells to combat groundwater contamination. The only additional change since the January meeting, Mr. Thiele said, is that applications for pools must go before the A.R.B., a stipulation long in the zoning code but not spelled out in the chapter dealing with pools.

The hearings will be held during the village board’s regular meeting on April 12 at 6 p.m.

The owner of a 28,000-square-foot oceanfront property on Surfside Avenue in Montauk was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday seeking a permit for a 10-year maintenance program for a rock revetment on the property’s eastern border.

John Ryan, who has owned the house since the 1960s, has made major efforts in recent years to fight erosion. His house, atop a 40-foot clay bluff, borders Shadmoor State Park to the east. In 2003, he was granted variances and permits to tear down an existing house on the site and build a new one farther away from the receding bluff, toward Surfside Avenue, and in 2011 he received a special permit to construct the rock revetment that is the subject of the current application. A 2014 application to build a 185-foot-long stone revetment at the bottom of the oceanfront bluff still awaits a required analysis under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

“I’m continuing to have damage to my property caused by the town,” he told the board during a two-and-a-half-hour public hearing on his application. The town, he said, dug a drainage channel through the edge of Shadmoor to the ocean many years ago, creating a gully and causing erosion on his eastern border.

Brian Frank, the Planning Department’s chief environmentalist, told the board there was a problem with the application, in that what was being proposed appeared to be not maintenance, but an enlargement of the revetment.

“It remains unclear if the additional stone is proposed to repair damage to the structure that may have occurred since the revetment’s installation in 2011-2012, or if it is proposed to address a deficiency in the revetment’s design,” Mr. Frank wrote in his memo.

In the past, when appearing before the board, Mr. Ryan has had the engineer who designed the revetment by his side, and a lawyer as well. This time he made the presentation himself.

He held up aerial photographs from over the years depicting the erosion on his property. He told the board that the plan now was to place smaller stones between the massive boulders that make it up.

Cate Rogers said the idea appeared to contradict the original design.

“The rocks drop down. That is a good thing,” Mr. Ryan responded. “The object is to increase the stability.”

This left Ms. Rogers still uncertain. Examining the engineer’s letter from the 2011 application, she said that “the idea is that gaps in the large boulders was so that water would run through there.”

The interaction of ocean wave action with the revetment was a concern for Thomas Muse, a Montauk resident, who spoke against the application. “The project was designed to fail,” he said of the 2011 work. “Drew [Bennett, the engineer] said it would be 50 years before the revetment would see wave action. It was only two or three months.” He then asked for more monitoring of any work done.

Board members also asked how all the work would be staged. The 2014 application called for access to the site via a cut to the beach from South Essex Street. Is that even possible now, given the extensive work on the downtown Montauk beach by the Army Corps of Engineers, they asked?

Mr. Ryan had one speaker on his behalf, Gregory Donahue. Mr. Donahue, who is on the Montauk Lighthouse Committee and has worked for many years on the revetment that protects the historic structure, told the board that the placement of smaller stones between the boulders, as proposed, was needed to stabilize the revetment and prevent the boulders from crashing down onto the beach.

John Whelan, chairman, indicated that if the board were to approve a maintenance permit it would be on a year-to-year basis.

In the end, the board found the application essentially incomplete. Ms. Rogers suggested that Mr. Ryan work with Mr. Frank to prepare another, addressing the board’s many questions. The record was kept open to allow him time to do so.

An overnight curfew on takeoffs and landings enacted at East Hampton Airport last summer had the hoped-for effect, consultants told the town board on Friday, not only quieting the hours during the curfew but curtailing the use of the airport by aircraft defined as noisy and reducing complaints about them.

A curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. went into effect on July 2, along with an extended curfew, from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m., for planes that meet the industry standard as noisy.

While the total number of takeoffs and landings, a.k.a. operations, in the period studied, from July 2 until Sept. 30, increased by 4 percent, the number of noisy aircraft flying in or out went down by 11 percent. Complaints about noisy aircraft decreased by 25 percent, but complaints about other planes, including seaplanes, went up considerably, by 61 percent.

Nevertheless, the town board “should be happy,” Peter Kirsch, an aviation attorney who helped the town develop the restrictions, said last week. “The nighttime curfew was extremely successful. The extended curfew was also extremely successful,” he said, and “the restrictions did not have significant financial impact to the town.” A complete review of what happened is “very important,” he said, so that the town can say, “Okay, did we do it right?”

 “We’re in pretty good financial shape right now at the airport,” Len Bernard, the town’s budget officer, told the board. By adding about $400,000 from surplus funds to the revenue side of the annual budget, he said, the airport was able to break even on  operating expenses. Once accounting is complete, he added, the airport fund would show a 2015 year-end surplus of $1.2 million.

A number of capital projects are funded and under way, Mr. Bernard said, including the installation of an automated weather observation system, the removal of runway obstructions, and pavement examination and repairs.

 Mr. Kirsch also reviewed the status of seven pending lawsuits related to the airport, including those against the three  restrictions, which were initiated by the Friends of East Hampton Airport, a coalition of aviation interests. The implementation of one of those restrictions, which would have limited noisy planes to one round-trip per week into and out of the airport during the summer season, was suspended after an injunction was issued. All three cases, against both the town and the F.A.A., over the regulations are on hold pending an appeal on the injunction. Arguments are to take place in the fall, Mr. Kirsch said, with a decision perhaps in early 2017.

Mr. Kirsch recommended against making any  significant changes in airport use laws since the injunction has been appealed. “When the Court of Appeals rules on whether the district court was correct in issuing one injunction and not issuing another,” he said, “we will have greater certainty.”

Key, though, the lawyer said, is that the judge “affirmed the town’s  for adopting the restrictions. The court found that the two curfews were reasonable under the circumstances.”

Decisions by the Federal Aviation Administration are expected at any time, he said, in an administrative case challenging the curfews and restricted uses filed by the National Business Aviation Administration, as well as in lawsuits by the Friends of East Hampton Airport over maintenance and fee increases and an action initiated by Sound Aircraft, regarding those increases.

  Mr. Kirsch also outlined what he called significant developments since last spring: the establishment of an airport management committee, and  the development, in coordination with the Eastern Region Helicopter Council and the air traffic controllers who are on duty during the summer season, of flight procedures designed to limit helicopter noise, which pilots are asked to follow voluntarily. He also cited Representative Lee Zeldin’s effort on legislation that would prevent the F.A.A. from blocking local regulation of the airport.

 Citations and Complaints

Michael Sendlenski, the town attorney, also made a presentation on Friday. During the time the two curfews were in effect, he reported 65 citations were issued for violations, most of which occurred within the hour before or after one of the curfews. Court actions are pending.

Sixty-five violations is a “remarkably small number,” Mr. Kirsch said, especially because the curfew information was disseminated by the town rather than by the F.A.A. The effort to educate aviators was “an enormous success,” he said, noting that there would likely be even fewer curfew violations “going forward as more pilots understand the restrictions in place.”  

Ted Baldwin of Harris Miller Miller & Hanson, the firm that analyzed the season’s data, also spoke. “The operators responded exactly the way we wanted them to respond,” he said. Takeoffs and landings by noisy aircraft were shifted outside of the restricted hours. In the first few hours after the extended curfew expired each day at 9 a.m., “there was a rush to take off,” Mr. Baldwin said, with “a big jump in operations” between 9 and 10 a.m.

The 4-percent increase in takeoffs and landings in 2015 over the previous year, represented 14,750 operations compared to 14,240 operations in 2014, Mr. Baldwin said.That complaints about noisy helicopters went down was undoubtedly due to the fact that helicopter companies substituted quieter craft last summer, with 22 percent fewer takeoffs and landings by those deemed noisy.

The number of operations by “non-regulated helicopters” — those not subject to the extended curfew because they are quieter than others — rose from 300 in 2014 to 601 in 2015, or 202 percent, and complaints about them shot up as well, by 250 percent.

Overall, however, there were 6 percent fewer operations by all helicopters last summer, and the total complaints about them dropped by 6 percent as well.

The complete report and analysis have been posted online on the town’s website and at an airport planning site, at HTOplanning.com.

Several speakers at last week’s meeting described “complaint fatigue,” which, they said, may have resulted in a skewed picture of how many people remain negatively affected by aircraft noise. Others questioned how many separate households called in the complaints, which could also affect the overall picture.

“Whatever the number of households calling in complaints,” Town Supervisor Larry  Cantwell said, “25,000 or 27,000 is a lot of complaints.” He agreed that the tally of complaints didn’t necessarily represent everyone who is impacted.

Groundwork for a study of the core commercial areas of each hamlet in East Hampton Town continued on March 16 with a Town Hall session focused on Springs and East Hampton. Earlier in the week, a team of planning consultants hired by the town had held sessions centered on Wainscott and Amagansett, and on the downtown and dock areas of Montauk, with residents and representatives of those hamlets.

In Springs, which has only scattered small business areas rather than an obvious commercial center, the consultants are working to define the area of study, which may include the residential neighborhoods. “What happens in the hamlet centers affects everyone,” Peter Flinker of Dodson and Flinker said.

The west side of Springs, along Three Mile Harbor, might be considered and examined as its own hamlet, Lynn Mendelman suggested.

Other Springs residents maintained that a planning study must include a look at the impact of school taxes on their hamlet, where Springs School taxes constitute a major portion of property tax bills. “Without a comprehensive review of how that school affects our life . . . without that, Springs taxpayers’ money going to this study is a waste, frankly,” Carole Campolo said.

Others expressed dismay that East Hampton Village will not be a part of the study. As a separate municipal entity, the village sets its own comprehensive plan and laws. However, the consultants said, because the village has the largest commercial center, its makeup and impacts will be among the considerations to be examined.

Job Potter, a member of the town planning board who is on a town-appointed committee that developed criteria for the business study, underscored another key element: home-based businesses. There has been no outlet for those business owners to express their needs, nor any ability to regulate them, Jeremy Samuelson said, adding that he thinks the consultants will find “a huge percentage” of businesses being run from residential sites. 

Mr. Potter also asked, “How do we think about sustaining year-round business?” He suggested the consultants look for ways in which the town, through zoning or other regulations, could ensure that commercial rents remain affordable for ocal businesses, not just for the high-end chain stores that now predominate in the village.

The village streets, said Bess Rattray, “are void of life, they’re soulless. They don’t serve the needs of the people who live in this town. They don’t serve the needs of visitors.”

“The question is, are there any legal mechanisms to address that, or not,” Mr. Potter said.

Other issues raised by speakers on March 16 included creating walkable hamlet centers and pedestrian-based ways to access them; encouraging affordable apartments and addressing the Suffolk County Health Department’s wastewater treatment approval system that creates obstacles to them; focusing on the needs of year-rounders as well as part-time residents; traffic patterns at the junction of Three Mile Harbor and Springs-Fireplace Roads as they lead to Springs, and the appearance of the commercial-industrial stretch of Springs-Fireplace Road, and established standards for consistent design in each hamlet.

The impact in Springs of sea level rise, where flooding is already an issue, in light of the town’s local waterfront revitalization plan, and other ongoing town studies looking at coastal issues, should be a consideration, said Rameshwar Das, as should the “tax differential” in school districts, especially as the Springs School talks about expansion, he said.

Another feature of Springs, he told consultants, is its artists’ community, which provides “significant economic input.”

Krae Van Sickle raised the issue of establishing mass transit through a mix of vehicles with connecting routes, and also spoke of commercial development. While the town has very few “blank templates” as far as land open for development, said Mr. Van Sickle, a real estate broker, sandpits in East Hampton and Wainscott could offer opportunities to do “something bold,” he said, in planning for commerce and residences.

Harry Dodson of Dodson and Flinker, Lisa Liquori, a former town planning director with her own firm, Fine Arts and Sciences; Russ Archambault of RKG Associates, and Ray DeBiase of L.K. McLean Associates gave an overview of the process before collecting the concerns of the audience.

“We’re going to be focusing our research on the things you think are important,” Mr. Flinker said. The study of the individual hamlets will include a survey of the economic climate and businesses in the town overall, and the consultants are hearing community members’ ideas about their business areas, shaped by the town’s comprehensive plan.

The goals of the plan, last updated in 2005, discuss preservation, future development, the economy, and more, and call for further detailed study and planning efforts, such as the one now underway.

After residents’ ideas and concerns have been pinned down, the consultants and community members will map out ways to achieve those goals — for example, how to “infill” downtown sites with new development in order to create walkable downtowns rather than extending developed areas; designing new streetscapes, or recommending town board consideration of zoning or policy changes.

“We’re going to try to come up with a vision,” Mr. Flinker said last week, “and test the implications of that vision for all the elements of the town, and try to come to a consensus again.”

“It may not be a matter of endless growth,” he said. “It may be a mater of fixing what’s there.”

Once a prototype is outlined, the question will be, “is there a way to get to that vision the way we’re going now,” or must changes be made, to the town code, to the physical environment, and so forth.

“Our environment, our natural setting, is our economy. You can’t really separate them,” Mr. Archambault said, citing the comprehensive plan’s goal of maintaining a successful balance between economic growth and environmental protection. He is leading the economic study component.

The planning process will be used “to determine what level of growth do you want to support in the future?” he said. Later in the spring, and in September, there will be two-day “charettes,” defined, the consultant said, as “an intense, multi-day workshop focused on producing an actual result,” to continue honing in on each hamlet.

Terry O’Riordan of the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance joined animal-rights activists at an East Hampton Village Board meeting on Friday in opposing the sterilization of deer to reduce the local herd.

Such programs conducted elsewhere have proven “ineffective and not cost-effective,” he said, referring to litigation by residents of Cayuga Heights, N.Y., where the village had to defend its sterilization program, albeit successfully.

The village does not have a current contract with White Buffalo, the organization that conducted deer sterilization here last winter as part of an expected five-year effort, but opponents nevertheless attended Friday’s meeting and repeated a prior request that the village abandon any plans to hire the firm again.

White Buffalo sterilized 114 does in the winter of 2015, returning in November to sterilize 95, including 50 bucks. The village has spent approximately $190,000 on the effort to date, and critics have argued that the process is cruel and ineffective, and have claimed that the surgery resulted in several deaths.

“Responsible, well-planned hunting is by far the most successful way to control the deer population within the village and would be in keeping with the deer management plan of its neighbor, the Town of East Hampton,” Mr. O’Riordan said. Drugs or chemicals used in the capture and sterilization process, he said, could “compromise the safety of the meat of a legal game animal . . . denying state residents of their right to harvest an animal to feed themselves, their friends, and their relatives.”

Members of the Group for Wildlife who had attended the board’s Feb. 19 meeting were also on hand Friday. Among them was Beverly Schanzer of Sag Harbor, who suggested that the 27-acre East Hampton Nature Trail be renamed the Mary Woodhouse Sanctuary. She said that a sanctuary “would be by definition a place where no experimentation, no intrusion, no bow hunting . . . nothing that interferes with their lives” would be permitted. (Mrs. Woodhouse donated the land that became the Nature Trail.)

The board was noncommittal, and Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said the effort to reduce the deer population remained a work in progress. “But again . . . the overpopulation of deer within the footprint of the village is a public health hazard with attendant tick-borne disease. It’s a public nuisance. We love those creatures just as much as any one of you out there, but it’s become a problem.”

“Respectfully, give the board of trustees a little bit of credit for trying to accomplish a goal,” he continued. “We still have a problem. I’m going to underscore that on behalf of the board of trustees and the residents that we serve, knowing it’s very sensitive.”

Also at Friday’s meeting, the board adopted two code amendments. With no public comment, the board voted to prohibit parking on the east side of James Lane between the driveway of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the intersection of Maidstone Lane. At its Feb. 4 work session, Mayor Rickenbach had told the board that the Rev. Denis Brunelle, rector of St. Luke’s, had expressed concern about sight lines for motorists entering and exiting the church’s parking lot, particularly during events at the church, Guild Hall, or the Home, Sweet Home museum. 

The other amendment eliminates the requirement for solid-sided enclosures around commercial Dumpsters. While such receptacles will still be required to have secure covers, the board found that side enclosures were regularly scraped and impacted by garbage trucks and other vehicles, rendering the enclosures more unsightly than the Dumpsters they were designed to obscure.

The board also issued a notice to bidders for a Hook Pond water quality improvement project that is to be implemented behind the East Hampton Methodist Church and by the flagpole to the north of Town Pond. Bids will be opened at Village Hall on April 12 at 2 p.m.

Approximately four to 18 inches of soil and silt will be removed from each area, both of which receive stormwater runoff that ultimately flows into Hook Pond, Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, said. “Whenever there’s a heavy rain, both areas flood because the stormwater can’t adequately seep down.”

The drainage course to be installed in each location, known as a bioswale, will remove silt and pollution from surface runoff, and the areas will be reseeded. Work at both locations will take one to two weeks. The county provided a $46,000 grant for the project, and the village budgeted 50-percent matching funds in its current budget.

Also on April 12 at 2 p.m., the village will open bids for the renovation of the Police Department’s jail and booking area. At the board’s Jan. 7 work session, Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer, had presented plans for the addition of polycarbonate glass panels in the holding area to improve security, as well as lighting modifications, floor resurfacing, new ceiling tiles, and additional furniture. The project will cost approximately $90,000, Mr. Bennett said.

The first day of spring is bringing snow that could make for a messy Monday morning, and most schools on the South Fork have prepared by announcing two-hour delays.

The Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Montauk, Southampton, Amagansett, Springs, Sagaponack, Wainscott, and Bridgehampton school districts have announced two-hour delayed openings for Monday in light of the weather forecast, which predicts four to eight inches of snow by the morning, according to a winter weather advisory issued by the National Weather Service.

In Sag Harbor, there will be no morning program, before-school child care at the elementary school, or morning pre-kindergarten session. Winter bus stops, which can be found on the district's website at sagharborschools.org, will be in effect. The delayed opening will not affect the timing of Monday's school board meeting and budget workshop, which is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m.

Additionally, the Ross School, Hayground School, and the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center will have a two-hour delayed start, and Our Lady of the Hamptons will begin classes at 10 a.m.

The Montauk School's pre-kindergarten class will begin at 10:30 a.m. An alert on the Montauk School's website notes that the delayed opening "can change in the morning depending on conditions."

Stony Brook Southampton will open at noon on Monday.

Also, all Southampton Town facilities will open on a two-hour delay. 

Please check back with The East Hampton Star for updated information as it becomes available.

A 52-year-old woman from Westchester County whose car crashed into a reviewing stand soon after Sunday's Montauk Friends of Erin St. Patrick's Day parade ended faces a felony charge of aggravated drunken driving.

The temporary stand, near Carl Fisher Plaza not far from the former O'Murphy's Pub, now called the Saltbox, had emptied out minutes earlier. Bystanders were quick to leave the route, given the day's raw, windy conditions.

Susan L. Colbath of Somers, N.Y., failed roadside sobriety tests, according to East Hampton Town police, and was taken to headquarters in Wainscott, where a blood-alcohol test reportedly produced a reading of .22. Because the woman has been convicted of driving while intoxicated within the past 10 years, the charge is at the felony level.

Ms. Colbath was held overnight for a Monday morning arraignment. It was her third arrest on a drunken-driving charge, East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana noted. In addition to the conviction, in 2010, she was charged in 1984 with misdemeanor D.W.I.

The district attorney's office asked that bail be set at $25,000, an amount that Brian Francese of the Legal Aid Society called excessive, telling the court that Ms. Colbath has never missed a court date. Justice Rana agreed, but only to a point, setting bail at $7,500.

She asked the defendant if she would be able to post that amount. Ms. Colbath, who told the court she makes only $200 to $300 a week, turned to look at two friends who were seated behind her in the courtroom. Both shook their heads no.

"You guys don't have that kind of money," Ms. Colbath said.

Justice Rana explained that in lieu of bail, she would be taken to the county jail in Riverside, and brought back to East Hampton tomorrow. Under state law, if she has not been indicted by then she will be released without bail.

As she was led away, one of her friends tried to approach her, but the officers guarding her cautioned that they needed to keep their distance. As Ms. Colbath was being placed in the police van to be taken back to headquarters, she began to cry, pleading with her friend, who was standing several yards away, "Please get me out."