John Michael Kennedy, a criminal trial lawyer who gained national attention representing Ivana Trump in her divorce from Donald Trump in the early 1990s, died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan on Monday of cancer. He was 78.

Mr. Kennedy and his wife, the former Eleanora Baratelli, lived part of the year in Kilkare, an iconic oceanfront house in the Georgica Association that was a location in the movie “Wall Street” and dozens of promotional campaigns large and small. The Kennedys also lived in Manhattan.

Though the Trump divorce earned him notoriety, the case was a departure for Mr. Kennedy. His legal career began in civil litigation, chiefly personal injury suits, but, according to a 1991 profile in New York magazine, two years in the Army during the Vietnam War era changed his views.

In 1969 he opened a private practice in San Francisco, taking counterculture figures as clients. He successfully defended Huey Newton of the Black Panthers on manslaughter and murder charges in Oakland. In San Francisco, he won acquittal for seven Mexican-Americans charged with murdering a police officer in the Mission District.

He also represented Rennie Davis, a member of the Chicago Eight who was accused of conspiracy and inciting a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and he was Mr. Davis’s lawyer before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He represented Bernardine Dohrn, a member of the radical group the Weathermen. He represented the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, whose most famous member was Timothy Leary. In Nebraska Mr. Kennedy won acquittal for a Native American charged with assaulting federal agents at Wounded Knee. In another case, he won acquittal for six men accused of raising money to buy weapons for the Irish Republican Army.

Perhaps his most famous trial was known as the “Pizza Connection,” which centered on accusations of drug money laundering through pizza parlors in New York City.

When the United States attorney put two warring mafia families on trial, the case played out like a drama between the Capulets and the Montagues, with Mr. Kennedy retained as chief council representing one of the godfathers, the Sicilian mob boss Gaetano Badalamenti, Mr. Kennedy’s friend Joanie McDonnell said.

He also won clemency from New York Gov. Mario Cuomo for Jean Harris, the private girls’ school headmistress who was in prison for the murder of her lover, Herman Tarnower, the “Scarsdale Diet” doctor.

During the 1980s Mr. Kennedy and his wife hosted meetings in New York City between the Nicaraguan Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and their influential friends. Mr. Kennedy was also special adviser to Miguel D’Escoto, who was the president of the United Nations General Assembly in 2008 and 2009.

He was born in Spokane, Wash., in 1937 and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in Northern California. After boarding school in Washington State, he attended the University of California at Berkeley and the university’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. According to the 1991 New York magazine profile, Mr. Kennedy received basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., graduating second-to-last in his class. His first marriage ended in divorce.

In the 1970s the Kennedys began to spend summers in Sag Harbor. They bought the Georgica Association house in 1976, which was described at the time as having fallen into disrepair.

Mr. Kennedy’s flair for confrontation — Ms. McDonell said he possessed both a quick Irish wit and a quick Irish temper — frequently put him and government officials at odds.

In 1984, according to The East Hampton Star, he “sued every level of government from the United States down to East Hampton Village,” seeking the removal of the three ocean jetties at Georgica, which he believed were responsible for eroding the beach in front of his house. Over the years, charges flew in the opposite direction, as well, with the Town of East Hampton suing the Kennedys for building a protective revetment without necessary permits. Mr. Kennedy eventually prevailed in court.

Ms. McDonell said that Ms. Kennedy was her husband’s most trusted associate and confidant, working behind the scenes on every case and becoming an unofficial voir dire expert. The couple often signed personal correspondence, such as holiday cards and invitations, with their first names run together as Michaeleanore.

Although the Kennedys eschewed the label “socialite,” they could be seen often at benefits for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Central Park Conservancy, and the United Nations. They gave as many parties as they attended and hosted book parties at Kilkare.

Besides his wife, he is survived by his daughters, Anna Safir of Manhattan and Wainscott and Lisa Kennedy of Healdsburg, Calif., and a son, Scott Hamilton Kennedy of Los Angeles. Three granddaughters and two grandsons also survive.

A funeral was held today at 10 a.m. at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church, 60th Street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan.

One current and one former Springs School employee have brought legal actions against the district, alleging discriminatory practices. Their claims bring pending actions to three, with Fran Silipo having already brought suit against the district claiming wrongful termination and a hostile environment.

Liz Tatiana Tucci, a native of Colombia who worked as a clerical employee  between October 2006 and September 2015, is seeking lost compensation and punitive damages for what she has said was “relentless harassment, disparate treatment, and discrimination predicated upon her race and national origin.” Ms. Tucci said the way she was treated caused panic attacks and other physical problems. “It’s very sad,” she said. “I used to visualize my retirement in Springs because I really liked being there besides the stuff that went on. I said if I stayed there things would get better, and I would make a difference. But it never got better. It got worse.”

 Gustavo Gomez, who is also of Latino origin, is a substitute custodian who had been a full-time employee between October 2007 and June 2010. He is also  seeking compensation for lost wages and punitive damages, and wants his full-time job back.

“I feel discriminated against,” said Mr. Gomez, who filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He also has filed a grievance with the Springs School District’s custodial union.

Ms. Tucci was hired as a bilingual clerk, a Civil Service position. According to the complaint filed in United States District Court, she was reassigned as the principal’s secretary in 2010, with a heftier workload equivalent to that of a senior clerk-typist, but with no corresponding pay increase. In 2013, after John J. Finello became the district superintendent, the district determined that she was working beyond what the title of her job called for, and she took Civil Service tests for senior clerk and senior clerk-typist positions.

She failed to qualify for the senior clerk-typist position, and was told the school needed one. She claims the district could have appointed her provisionally. Instead, Ms. Tucci said, she was asked to train someone else, which was humiliating. She believes she was treated unfairly and that her ethnicity was the reason.

“They were mandated by Civil Service to either promote me or to remove my duties,” Ms. Tucci said. “They never offered me the promotion, and it took them more than a year.”

Ms. Tucci has also said she was paid about $15,000 less than her predecessor when she was made the principal’s secretary, and that she experienced retaliation after expressing interest in forming a union with other clerical employees and calling Civil Service for clarifications. She also claims that she did not receive a Christmas gift from Mr. Finello although her colleagues did. Following a trip to Colombia for her grandmother’s funeral in August 2013, Ms. Tucci said, employees harassed her, asking if she had brought back cocaine.

Mr. Gomez began working as a substitute custodian at Springs in 2001 and was hired full time in 2007. In March 2010, he was informed by Michael Hartner, district superintendent at the time, that his position was likely to be eliminated. Mr. Gomez said that later that year he received a letter stating that “any full-time employee who is excessed will be placed on a recall list, giving them preferred eligibility in the event of future vacancies.” He was laid off from the full-time role, but continued to work as a substitute custodian. However, he said in an interview this week, when a full-time custodial position became vacant through a retirement, the district told him he would be rehired. Instead, he was eventually considered for the full-time job along with two other candidates. In August 2015, the district hired one of the other candidates.

 Anna M. Scricca of Ingerman Smith, a law firm representing Springs, said Mr. Gomez’s complaint to the state Division of Human Rights “is entirely without merit.” She said the letter Mr. Gomez received about being recalled “was in all likelihood sent in error.” The district now believes his Civil Service employment class was not entitled to recall rights, she said.

Mr. Gomez has hired a labor attorney. Ms. Tucci is being represented by Steven Morelli, a Garden City attorney who is also representing Ms. Silipo, a former district clerk. That case is pending. Mr. Morelli also represented educators who sued Mr. Finello and two school board members when he was superintendent of the Huntington School District. The claims involved First and 14th Amendment rights, and the case eventually was settled. Mr. Finello was also named in a 2012 civil suit brought against the Huntington district by three tenured teachers who claimed the district had fired non-bilingual teachers who had more seniority than their bilingual colleagues. That case was dismissed.

Liz Mendelman, the Springs School Board president, said in a written statement Tuesday that the administration believes the claims of Mr. Gomez and Ms. Tucci “are simply without foundation.”

“When it comes to hiring, the district’s practices are defined by policies, procedures, and laws, which ultimately means we take our governance very seriously,” Ms. Mendelman wrote. “Those who have made claims or allegations against the district don’t share that accountability; they or their legal counselors can say anything they want to say, and have. But because we are protecting the interests of the district and its taxpayers, we cannot comment on these matters. . . . All I can say to our community is to be patient. We are upholding all of the principles of fairness and conformance to the law . . . and our genuine belief is that any claims made to date will be rejected by those charged with reviewing the facts.”­

The Rev. Gerardo Romo-Garcia always wanted to work with the poor and underprivileged, but as a young man studying at the Roman Catholic seminary in Guadalajara, Mexico, he could scarcely have imagined that he would one day be an Episcopal priest called to an area not known for pockets of need but for over-the-top affluence.

His mission at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton is to reach out to the Spanish-speaking communities on the East End. Eventually he will be based at St. Thomas Chapel in Amagansett. “It’s the Episcopal Church’s first Hispanic ministry in this area,” he said; the nearest is more than 60 miles away. His job, he added, is to serve people of all denominations, not only Episcopalians, and not only churchgoers.

Among the South Fork’s Latino residents, “It is very important to learn that there is no one culture,” Mr. Rom0 Garcia said. “There are many.”

The majority of Latin Americans he meets on the South Fork are from Ecuador, with Colombians a close second, followed, he said, by Costa Ricans and then people from other Central American countries. In Riverhead and Hampton Bays, Mexican immigrants outnumber Ecuadorians. He also has met a number of people from indigenous communities who speak limited Spanish as a second language and English as a third, or vice versa.

Mr. Romo-Garcia has spent the last few months getting to know the community and its needs, meeting people at church, on the street, at farms, even in the launderette where he took his own clothes before he settled in the rectory at St. Thomas and had a washer and dryer at his disposal.

Interviewed earlier this month in his office at St. Luke’s, he said the laundromat is very expensive. “One small machine costs $5. Drying costs $2.50. People who work for the day only and get $50 or $60 for the day and spend $30 doing laundry for themselves or for their family, that day they almost work for laundry.”

Mr. Romo-Garcia reached out to Laundry Love, a national movement that partners with laundromats and community volunteers to assist low-income families and individuals with their laundry. On the first Wednesday of each month, from 5 to 7 p.m., he and and a few volunteers visit the East Hampton Laundry in Amagansett to lend a hand. They provide money for the machines, while the laundromat provides detergent and fabric softener. He is also there to talk and listen. It is one small way he is working to build community.

People who are most in need are “the first we have to go and reach and bring the good news to,” he said. That principle has also taken him to the East Hampton train station, where laborers gather almost every morning looking for a day’s work. Earlier this month, he stopped there to offer sandwiches from a community dinner hosted by the East Hampton Clericus the night before. He went back on a bitterly cold day with doughnuts and hot coffee and plans to begin delivering brown bag lunches to the day laborers a few days a week. He has discussed this need with leaders of other congregations and has applied for a grant from the Episcopal Diocese for simple lunches.

 He is concerned that “people will be unhappy about it,” but he is undeterred. “Many people come from Hampton Bays or Riverhead hoping to get a job for the day and sometimes they don’t get it, and they still have to eat. A sandwich around the area they gather costs $10.”

 Wherever he goes “in my daily life, I stop to talk,” Mr.Romo-Garcia said. “When I get a phone number, I call.” These connections, however small, can be so important, he said, especially for people living in a new place who may feel homesick, isolated by language barriers, or otherwise alone or marginalized.

“There is a saying: I know how to give not because I have much, but because I’ve had nothing.” That is his story.

Mr.Romo-Garcia grew up outside of Guadalajara and studied at the seminary there for 12 years, planning to become a Catholic priest. The seminary “was very traditional, very conservative, and very high on academics.” He left the seminary and came to the United States, where he “met the Episcopal Church,” or Anglican Church as it is known in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking areas. He embraced it, and, he said, it embraced him. It is “more liberal than the Roman Catholic Church. It welcomes anyone that has the need of a church community, no matter their way of life or marital status.”

He returned to Mexico, and 11 years ago this month was ordained there as an Anglican priest. At first, he worked with the underprivileged in the Mexico City area. “Then I moved to England and joined the Society of St. Francis,” an Anglican religious order whose members take vows of poverty and serve the poor. He was in the order for four years, ministering among the poor and the homeless and in a community of people with learning difficulties or intellectual challenges in Canterbury. He then went to California to pursue parish ministry.

Last year, he received the call from Bishop Larry Provenzano of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island and, in October, started at St. Luke’s. The diocese plans to make its historic summer chapel in Amagansett a year-round base for its East End Hispanic ministry, but before that can happen the building must be winterized and a basement built, with space for offices, restrooms, and outreach services.

Mr.Romo-Garcia offered two Spanish-language services there before it closed for the winter — one on the Day of the Dead in early November and another just before Thanksgiving. A third service was held before Christmas at St. Luke’s. Six people attended his first, six more came to the second, and 25, including supporters from St. Luke’s, were at the third.

The numbers were small, but it’s clear that Mr.Romo-Garcia’s work here is not confined by church walls. “You bring the church where people need it rather than waiting in the church for people to come,” he said.

He is also working on the North Fork and in Riverhead, where the diocese has teamed up with the Rural and Migrant Ministry, a multifaith nonprofit organization that assists farm workers and laborers through youth empowerment, social-justice campaigns, and education. “I want people to know their rights,” Mr.Romo-Garcia said. “Even if they’re undocumented they have rights. If they’re useful to this country, then they have rights.”

He is also hoping to establish an English as a second language program and would like to sign on to a literacy program being promoted by the Mexican Consulate, “because some of the workers on the farms don’t know how to read or write.”

He will be at the laundry on Wednesday. Those interested in volunteering can reach him at the St. Luke’s offices.

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This article was revised to correct the spelling of

Mr. Romo-Garcia's name

A .12-percent cap on tax levy increases this year, which was recently announced by the New York State controller, is expected to put additional pressure on school districts around the state, including those on the South Fork, which are already under stress as they begin budgeting for next year. The near-zero cap is significantly lower than last year’s 1.62 percent.

Although some officials have said it is too early to tell just how the cap will affect their budgets, they agree that budgeting is likely to be tough. In an interview on Tuesday, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said he expects more districts to attempt to pierce the cap, meaning they will try to convince a 60 percent supermajority of voters to support a higher tax levy increase.

 “There is less of a penalty for school districts that do so. At 0.12 percent, if they put up a budget that pierces the cap and it fails, well, they only go from a 0.12 percent increase to zero.”

However, Katy Graves, superintendent of the Sag Harbor School District, said in an email yesterday that Sag Harbor has no plans to pierce the cap. “We have and continue to focus on capturing savings for the district. Even the smallest savings, shared service, or revenue generation can net large enough savings to maintain student programs,” she said.

As for the East Hampton School District, Richard Burns, the superintendent said Tuesday that it would try its best to stay within the cap. “Point one-two is a barebones increase,” he said. “There’s just not much room.”

For the districts that send students to the East Hampton district, Springs, Amagansett, Montauk, Wainscott, and Saga­ponack, the tax cap is adding pressure to a budgeting problem most already have: the effect of enrollment fluctuations on the nonresident tuition they pay East Hampton for students who have finished school in their home districts.

 Many local officials say that enrollment is unpredictable in part because year-round housing can be difficult to obtain and that families are sometimes forced to move between districts. The sending districts must find a way to pay for tuition, which usually changes every year. This year’s East Hampton High School tuition is just under $25,000 for general education students and just under $69,000 for those in special education classes.

Springs, for example, is paying tuition this year for 66 12th graders who are expected to graduate in June. However, its class of 8th graders has 77 students, indicating an increase in tuition even if 10th and 11th grade enrollment stays the same. This year, the district’s tax levy is about $24.45 million; a 0.12 percent increase would be $29,343. But with 11 more high school students alone, assuming they are in general education rather not special education and that high school tuition doesn’t increase much, Springs estimates that it will have to pay about $260,000 more next year.

 Southampton School District’s high school tuition is a little lower: $23,009 for general education and $66,632 for special education. Still, Dean Lucera, the superintendent of the Tuckahoe School District, which sends students to Southampton, said in an interview that “the tax levy increase, the enrollment increase, and the tuition system have put a tremendous pressure on us. It either forces us to go into our fund balance or pierce the cap, two things that are dangerous in this time.”

One effect of the way in which enrollment and tuition interact is that sending districts have found themselves over-budgeting. “We budget for extra students all the time. . . . Do we need all that money? Probably not. It goes back next year as fund balance,” Jack Perna, superintendent of the Montauk School District, said. “I think it causes us to over-budget out of caution. It’s a smart thing. You’d be foolish not to.”

Mr. Perna believes the East Hampton High School tuition rate is fair, especially given the 5 percent discount East Hampton has given sending districts in exchange for five-year agreements to exclusively send students there.

That East Hampton reduced tuition by 5 percent this year raised some questions about whether the sending districts were subsidizing East Hampton and whether the tuition could be further reduced. Mr. Perna said that is not the case. “Montauk a lot of times would say we subsidize them, but East Hampton people probably feel like they’re subsidizing us. I don’t think it’s either way.”

Tuition is a critical source of revenue for East Hampton, so much so that its administrators say the district actually does feel the loss of that 5 percent.  Mr. Burns said the idea that the tuition system yields flush coffers in East Hampton is a common misconception. In fact, he said, some years East Hampton takes a loss in revenue when it comes to tuition versus enrollment; like other districts, East Hampton is constrained by the housing market and enrollment fluctuations.

“The school board was saying, ‘We don’t know if we could really afford [the discount] with the tax cap.’ . . . I don’t think we can even cut pencils anymore,” Mr. Burns said. “It’s at the point now where it’s going to affect programs. We don’t have these deep pockets that people expect.”

Paying tuition to larger school districts is not the only way that small schools can provide education through the 12th grade. For example, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District educates students from 7th through 12th grades from four elementary school districts. The central high school district has its own school board and budget, but it is funded through taxes residents pay to each component school district, with residents getting  one school tax bill.

“What’s advantageous about it is that the high school district has the tax cap,” Dominic Palma, superintendent of the Merrick School District, one of Bellmore-Merrick’s sending districts, explained. “They’re developing a budget that is responsive to the cap, as opposed to . . . elementary districts that have the tuition they have to pay that may not be responsive to the cap.”

And then there’s the idea of consolidation. Patricia Hope and Chuck Hitchcock, organizers of the group SCORE, for School Cooperation Regional Effort, said this week that some form of consolidation should be considered by the leadership on the state, town, or school district level. Consolidation could occur, they point out, if only two districts join together, or districts could redraw their lines so that enrollment is more balanced. In addition, they say smaller districts could share superintendents to cut administrative costs, as has been done in Greenport and Southold.

“You’re going to run into immovable objects, irresistible force. . . . That’s what the tax cap is pushing us to,” Ms. Hope, a former East Hampton School Board president and teacher in the district, said. “The immovable object is the fixed costs in each district, and the irresistible force is the constraint applied by the tax cap.”

Asked whether the tuition system is sustainable given the tax cap, several East End school officials declined to answer. However, the Tuckahoe superintendent, Mr. Lucera, immediately said it is not. Assemblyman Thiele, who has several times introduced a bill in the State Legislature to exclude nonresident tuition costs from the tax cap, agreed with Mr. Lucera.

“For smaller districts that have fluctuations in enrollment, which is out of their control . . . I think over the long haul, it is not a sustainable system,” he said.

Sean P. Ludwick, who was charged with vehicular homicide in the August death of a Noyac man, was sent to the county jail on Tuesday with no possibility of bail. The United States Marshals Service and Southampton Town police took Mr. Ludwick into custody last week on suspicion of planning to flee the country.

“I don’t think there is any amount of bail in this case, or bail package that I could set, that would ensure his return to court,” said New York State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho, whose courtroom was filled to capacity by onlookers and members of the metropolitan media. Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota himself was at the prosecution table, appearing very involved in the proceedings.

Mr. Ludwick’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, had suggested that the developer was the victim of an angry hotel con­cierge and an overzealous F.B.I. agent. “I guess the lesson of all this is, you never pick a fight with your concierge,” he said. The small hotel in Puerto Rico where Mr. Ludwick was staying apparently did not come up to his standards, and he informed its concierge “that he had built hotels, boutique hotels, and that some parts of this hotel were not maintained properly,” Mr. Brafman said.

The irate concierge Googled Mr. Ludwick, learned of the charges against him, and called Justice Camacho’s chambers. The call went into voicemail, and was later retrieved by the justice’s secretary. Both the secretary and the judge had trouble understanding the message, which, said Justice Camacho, was in “broken English.” At first they thought the caller was saying Mr. Ludwick was taking “singing lessons,” before realizing it was “sailing lessons.”

The concierge had arranged the lessons at Mr. Ludwick’s request. Here the developer ran into some very bad luck; the instructor turned out to be an off-duty F.B.I. agent, who, said Mr. Brafman, called “a detective from the Hamptons police department whom he knows personally, and tells him, you know, your boy Ludwick is down here in Puerto Rico, where he is talking about sailing lessons.”

Both Mr. Brafman and John Scott Prudenti, the prosecutor, agreed that the agent then became an active part of the investigation. Mr. Ludwick, it was said, asked him about the possibility of purchasing a boat in the $500,000 range.

Mr. Brafman explained this as the developer’s attempt to enjoy as much time as possible with his two sons, ages 9 and 12, before he is sentenced. He faces a minimum sentence of 102/3 years, a maximum of 32, if convicted of all charges against him, which include driving while intoxicated on the night of the fatality, dragging Paul Hansen’s body out of his Porsche and leaving it by the roadside, and fleeing the scene. “They might not see him for a number of years. Call it a wish list of things to do,” Mr. Brafman said.

It was the F.B.I. man who initiated a conversation about the possibility of paying cash for a big boat, not his client, the lawyer asserted. He went on to claim that at least some of the charges against Mr. Ludwick could be defended. “No witnesses saw the accident. There is no one to testify that Mr. Hansen was dead at the time Mr. Ludwick left. And the direction he was headed, less than a mile away, was a fire rescue ambulance station.”

Mr. Prudenti called that statement “offensive” and “incredulous.” He told the court that on Jan. 4, immediately after his arraignment, Mr. Ludwick had begun Googling topics related to fleeing the United States. He read out the Google searches he said had been obtained from the defendant’s cellphone:

“Seeking citizenship in Venezuela.

 “What is expatriate life like in Venezuela?”

“Is Venezuela safe?”

“Five countries with no U.S. extradition treaty.”

“Fleeing from justice — what can happen?”

“How do fugitives escape?”

“The nicest surfing villages in Venezuela.”

All this took place between Jan. 5 and Jan. 19, when Mr. Ludwick was taken back into custody. “I could have read hundreds more,” Mr. Prudenti said.

Mr. Ludwick, he told Justice Camacho, had already wired $385,000 to a Puerto Rican destination and was scheduled to return to the island, a U.S. territory, last Thursday to consummate the purchase of the boat, a 50-foot Beneteau single-handed sailing yacht. He was taken into custody the day before he was supposed to return to the island, at his Brick Kiln Road house in Bridgehampton.

Last February, Mr. Prudenti reminded the court, Mr. Ludwick had violated an order of protection issued by a New York City court, by purchasing a pump-action shotgun and 400 rounds of ammunition. Suffolk County sheriffs have since confiscated the purchases.

“When I set a million dollars bail and took his passport, quite frankly, I never contemplated some of the possibilities raised today,” Justice Camacho said after the lawyers finished. “If I am facing 30 years in jail, the last thing on my mind would be the purchase of a $500,000 sailboat.”

He rejected Mr. Brafman’s request that his client be sentenced to house arrest in his Bridgehampton house, wearing a security ankle bracelet, while he awaits trial. Mr. Ludwick’s next court date is April 14.

A Springs property owner has sued East Hampton Town and the Nature Conservancy to stop the public purchase of two lots next to his Squaw Road house. Two houses would be torn down by the conservancy, which owns the land, before the purchase, and the site left in its natural state. Money for the acquisition is coming from the town’s community preservation fund.

Richard Levin, who circulated a petition against the purchase before a hearing and vote on it last summer, asserts in a lawsuit filed last month that public use of the 1.6-acre site, for which the town is to pay $2.6 million, would “seriously affect the use, value, and quiet enjoyment of his residence.”

“Once the land becomes public it will attract swimmers and picnickers who will trash the property,” he said in a letter to the town board last summer.

Mr. Levin asserts that the town failed to consider the impact of the acquisition on his Squaw Road neighborhood, and of its residents’ quality of life, and failed to “produce any evidence to justify the proposed purchase.”

According to the board resolution approving it, the purpose of the land purchase “is the preservation of parks, nature preserves, or recreation areas.” In accordance with town policy, a management plan for the site will be developed, and a hearing held to solicit public comment on the plan before it is adopted.

“They never said what the land was going to be used for,” Mr. Levin’s attorney, Stephen Grossman of Sag Harbor, said this week. But, he said, in the  Nature Conservancy’s application to the town for a permit to demolish the residences, the future use was described as a “park.”

“Dropping a park” next to a residential lot has “a strong negative effect on the value of your house, and your privacy,” said the lawyer.

The property was tapped as a top candidate for preservation by a C.P.F. committee that advises the town board, in part to eliminate shoreside septic systems that could contribute to pollution of Three Mile Harbor.

Mr. Grossman disagrees. “To say this would have an effect on the quality of water in Three Mile Harbor is ridiculous.”

At a hearing on the purchase in August, some nearby residents said they would prefer to see houses on the land, particularly new ones that would have to adhere to current environmental standards. Several echoed Mr. Levin’s concerns about disruption from visitors to the public site. Others, however, strongly supported the purchase and the preservation of open space in their neighborhood.

In the lawsuit, Mr. Levin said he offered the Nature Conservancy $4 million for the land on Sept. 9, several weeks after a contract with the town was signed, and his offer was declined. The conservancy acquired the property from the late Robert Olson.

A response by the town and the conservancy to the lawsuit is due to the court by Feb. 11.

East Hampton Town’s shores were spared the brunt of a winter storm that grazed the East End last weekend, but the storm did take away a significant amount of sand from the downtown Montauk beach where contractors for the Army Corps of Engineers are building a sandbag wall.

The $8.3 million federal project, which will result in a 3,100-foot sandbag line, has been under way since October and is closely watched by a number of opponents, some of whom were arrested this fall in worksite protests and who have been sharing photos and information about the work.

Overall, “for the severity of the northeaster, the high tide, and the full moon, it held up quite well,” Alex Walter, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell’s executive assistant, said on Tuesday after a weekend post-storm assessment.

A finished section at the westerly end of the project’s length remained intact, said Mr. Walter, who headed out to Montauk with Mr. Cantwell on Sunday to inspect things firsthand. “The water didn’t get all the way up.” Most, if not all, of the sand cover topping the completed portion of the sandbag wall remained in place, he said.

Once the project is completed East Hampton Town, along with the county, will be responsible for maintaining a three-foot sand topping along the entire wall, and concerns have been raised about the cost of replacing that sand after storms.

On the beach near the Royal Atlantic motel, where work is still ongoing, the sea created “a cut up to the bags,” Mr. Walter said, resulting in “a lot of erosion in front of the bags. But the bags did what they’re supposed to do.”

While the bags are designed to hold the line on wave action sucking away sand along their flank and landward, they do not prevent that from occurring on the ocean side in front of the sandbag wall.

The waves in Montauk last weekend resulted in little to no dry beach area in front of the wall, and a cliff-like drop-off, similar to what has generally occurred over time in other places where sandbag walls have been installed.

Because the beach was so narrow, the Army Corps’s contractors in Montauk had already been forced to deposit extra sand along the water line in order to create an area out of the surf where they could work.

Additional sand will now be needed for that area to replace what the storm washed away, Mr. Walter said. “They’re going to have to build an area they can work in again.” Working at the eastern end of the project area, east of South Edison Street, will be challenging, Mr. Walter said.

A Dumpster at the South Edison beach that had ocean surf swirling around it earlier this week had been buried underground in the sand before the storm, Mr. Walter said, so the contractors could use it as a container for the sand and water slurry used to fill the sandbags.

Its exposure indicates just how much sand was chiseled away by the surf during the storm.

So far, said Mr. Walter, the contractors have had about 40,000 cubic yards of sand delivered from the Bistrian sand mine in East Hampton, the source selected by the Corps.

While town officials had made efforts to ensure that the sand to be used would be compatible in size and color with the natural beach sand, the Bistrian mine sand, which is orange-colored, was selected over another option that appears much closer in color and grain size to the beach sand in photos contained in Army Corps documents.

Mr. Walter, who spoke on the phone with the contractors on Tuesday, said that last weekend’s storm had not caused a significant delay. The work of filling and placing sandbags could be completed by the end of February, he said, and the entire project, it is estimated, could be done by the end of March.

When the Montauk project is finished, the entire area around the sandbags will be fenced off, and walkways will be installed about a foot and a half above the surface in several locations along the shorefront for pedestrians to cross the sandbag wall. If the level of the beach seaward of the wall has eroded, sand will be added so that the walkway remains the same height above ground level, Mr. Walter said.

Those keeping tabs on the project have questioned whether the construction adheres to original specifications, which called for more than 14,000 sandbags — geotextile containers filled with the sand slurry — to be piled along the beach.

The bags themselves differ from the original design, Mr. Walter said. They are bigger than the ones that were anticipated, so the estimated total number of bags that will be used along the shore is now 11,000, he said. So far about 6,000 bags have been filled and placed.

“It’s just a mess out there,” Steve Resler, a retired deputy bureau chief for New York State’s coastal management program, said this week.

Mr. Resler, who remains an occasional consultant to the state, is among those who have been closely watching the Montauk work, and has weighed in on the project and others that he says are counter to federal, state, and local coastal policies.

 Those policies, Mr. Resler has testified, advise retreat from the shore and ban the use of structures along the ocean.

“All they’re doing is exacerbating the problem,” Mr. Resler said about the Army Corps project.

This week’s storm-related wave action “scoured the fronting beach,” Mr. Resler said. “The Corps of Engineers’ own manuals recommend against these things in highly dynamic oceanfront areas,” he said. “They cause scouring and erosion.”

“It should be terminated. Stop and get those bags out of there.”

“Everywhere I’ve seen these things, the bags rip open,” he said. “The beach becomes a mess. They never work, ever.”

“There’s no way you can design these things appropriately,” he said. “You’re not allowed to do them. It’s prohibited.”

The Montauk project moved forward under an “emergency” exemption in coastal law, with the funding authorized by Congress under a post-Hurricane Sandy provision. Officials have said the sandbags are to be removed once the Army Corps begins an alternate beach restoration project under its Fire Island to Montauk Point coastal plan. A draft proposal for that long-term project, more than a half-century in the works, is slated for release next month; it is unclear what will be proposed for Montauk.

“To say that this is an emergency and has to be done now — over a three-year period . . . is outrageous,” Mr. Resler said on Tuesday. The claim that the sandbags are temporary and can be removed is “outrageous,” he said, because to do so “you have to destroy the beach.”

The Towns of East Hampton and Southampton are under a state of emergency due to blizzard conditions Saturday. 

The South Fork is forecasted to get 12 to 18 inches of snow, with winds gusting 30 to 55 miles per hour. Whiteout conditions and hazardous driving are to be expected. By midmorning downed trees and power lines were already being reported, and volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel were being called in to stand by at their headquarters. 

Residents are being encouraged to stay off the roads. Vehicles parked in the roadway should be moved so that snowplows can clear the snow. Road closures from flooding in low-lying areas are expected later on Saturday. Heavy winds and a lunar tide expected to be 3 to 4 feet above normal will result in moderate flooding. 

“Our Highway Department is busy plowing roads but residents should stay inside and off the roads and allow our plows to do their jobs and let emergency vehicles pass safely when they are called to emergencies," Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said Saturday. 

Emergency operations centers in both towns have been opened to field emergency calls related to the storm. The Town of East Hampton's center, which opened at 9 a.m. and will be kept open throughout the storm, can be reached at 631-324-0288. For immediate emergencies call 911.  

Southampton Town's center can be reached at 631-728-3405.

Power outages should be reported directly to PSEG-Long Island at 888-730-3774, town officials said. In the event of a power outage, warming centers will be opened in the Town of East Hampton at the Senior Citizens Center on Sprongs-Fireplace Road and the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. No word yet where the warming centers would be in Southampton. 

Check back for more information as it becomes available. For a list of cancellations and closures, click here.

Have a photo you want to share with us? Email [email protected] , Tweet us at @EHStar, or tag us on Instagram @easthamptonstar. 

Schools across the South Fork will have delayed openings on Monday due to the impact of this weekend's snowfall.

The East Hampton, Amagansett, Sag Harbor, Bridgehampton, Wainscott, Sagaponack, Montauk, Springs, and Southampton School Districts will all begin classes two hours later than usual. The Ross School will also have a two-hour delayed start. 

In Amagansett, classes will begin at 10 a.m. Montauk's prekindergarten class will begin at 10:30 a.m. For Springs, classes will begin at 10:20 a.m. but there will be no before-school academic support, music, or morning pre-kindergarten at Most Holy Trinity

In Sag Harbor, there will also be no morning pre-kindergarten classes. The district has also announced winter bus stops are in effect, the locations of which may be found on the district's website at sagharborschools.org.

The blizzard may have kept a lot of people inside, but emergency personnel, many of them volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians, didn't have the luxury of hunkering down over the weekend. Departments responded to fires, car accidents, diabetic and seizure calls, and even when the snow stopped, the calls did not. Late Sunday afternoon, rescuers were called to pull people out of a Jeep that partially sank into the water at a Bridgehampton beach while its occupants were surveying the snowstorm's damage. 

A new Jeep Wrangler pickup truck plunged into an icy hole on Scott Cameron Beach, near the opening of Mecox Beach, stranding its driver, Joe Farrell of Bridgehampton, a prominent luxury house builder, and his son, Joey.  

Johnathon Duran and his friend Brandon La Ponte were "checking out what the recent storm Jonas did to the beach and how the ocean looked afterwards," he said in an email Monday. They were standing on a dune when the Jeep circled round them. "We watched the Jeep drive straight into a huge sinkhole right next to the bay." They called Southampton Town police, who received the 911 call at 4:25 p.m. The Bridgehampton Fire Department was also called to take its boat to the beach for a possible water rescue.

The two inside the Jeep, which was now partially immersed in seawater, were panicking, Mr. Duran said. "They thought the best course of action was to swim across this sinkhole but we assured them that help was on the way and to get to the bed of their truck." The two followed Mr. Duran's advice. "They stayed safe and afloat until the police arrived." In one of the photos Mr. Duran shot with his cellphone Joey Farrell can be seen giving two thumbs-up as help arrived.

The police found a long wooden plank and ran it from solid sand to the bed of the Jeep, and the driver and passenger walked across safely. Mr. Farrell and his son were not injured.  The Jeep, with its motor filled with saltwater, was pulled out of the hole Sunday evening with a payloader, Mr. Duran said. Southampton Town Police Sgt. Michael Joyce said the vehicle was taken to Corwith's Auto Body Shop in Water Mill. 

Earlier in the weekend, another Jeep, this one a Cherokee, was damaged when a tree fell onto its trunk area as it was driving on Swamp Road near Route 114 in East Hampton at around 8:45 a.m. The driver was not hurt. East Hampton firefighters helped to close the road. 

The accident off Route 114 was one of just four accidents East Hampton Town that police responded to over the weekend, none of which resulted in serious injuries. "Over all, our call volume was much lower than usual, and consisted largely of alarms, road hazards, wires down, and fire chief's investigations," Police Chief Michael Sarlo said. The day shift on Saturday saw the highest volume of calls over the weekend, with about 40 calls over eight hours, he said.

"We appreciate the public limiting the driving and taking it slow," Chief Sarlo said. "Between preparing for the worst accumulation possibilities and working with the [Emergency Operations Center] and the Highway Department, Marine Division keeping tabs on the coastal erosion out in Montauk and some flooding issues like Gerard Drive, it was a busy weekend, of course, but we made out fairly well, all things considered." 

On Saturday afternoon, though, Montauk firefighters got busy all of a sudden. The department was called to two houses within five minutes. Chief Joe Lenahan said a high-voltage wire snapped at the base on the road, falling and causing an electrical fire next to a house on East Lake Drive around 1:30 p.m. The pole snapped from the wind and weight of the snow. "Winds were gusting about 50 miles per hour at the time of both calls," he said. 

The second call came in at 1:35 p.m., when a chimney fire broke out Miller Avenue, near Ditch Plain. Chief Lenahan said there was minimal damage. About 30 firefighters were at the firehouse during the storm, allowing for a quick response. "My people are amazing," he said. 

Over in Sag Harbor on Saturday, while snow continued to fall a snowblower erupted into flames as it was being used around 10:30 a.m. on Harbor Watch Court. When firefighters arrived, the homeowner had covered it about three-quarters of the way with snow to put out the flames, according to Sag Harbor Chief Tom Gardella. A dry chemical extinguisher was used to extinguish the rest of the flames. 

A few hours later, at about 2 p.m., Sag Harbor firefighters had to take an engine for a ferry ride to stand by at the Shelter Island Fire Department's headquarters while firefighters from the island, with the help of the Greenport Fire Department, battled a house fire on Penny's Path. An emergency gasoline-powered generator was the culprit there. No one was hurt. 

Sag Harbor firefighters spent the Sunday afternoon clearing hydrants of snow. Then, at night, Sag Harbor firefighters and the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps were called to Harborview Drive when carbon monoxide alarms went off around 10:45 p.m. Chief Gardella said a toxic amount of the gas was found in the basement, but the family at home was all right. The problem was likely with the furnace, though the department could not pinpoint the problem and called the service company.

In the early morning hours on Monday, at about 2:40, the department was called to Pine Neck Avenue in Noyac, where there was smoke inside a house. A ceiling fan had sparked and was smoldering, Chief Gardella said. He said there was a problem with the voltage to the house, which may have been caused by high winds during the snowstorm. It could have resulted in a major fire, he said. "Luckily, it just started in the ceiling fan." 

While the temperature warmed up, ice was still a concern Monday morning, resulting in most schools having a two-hour delay. It would seem most used caution on the roads. Ice did cause one accident on Noyac Road near Locust Drive in Noyac at about 9:30 a.m. Chief Gardella said a passenger car and a truck were involved in a rear-end collision, and the driver of the car was taken to Southampton Hospital with minor shoulder and neck pain.

Correction: Joe Farrell's passenger in his Jeep when it sank on the beach was his son, Joey, not a female passenger as originally reported.