Thanks to a Springs resident who has made a sizable donation to pay for landscaping, Ashawagh Hall, which is owned by the Springs Improvement Society and serves as a center for activities from concerts to art shows and civic group meetings, is sporting a new but natural look.

“It’s quite simple, and it matches the kind of unadorned, unpretentious look that Ashawagh Hall has,” Phyllis Kriegel said in an interview last week. Ms. Kriegel, who regularly attends art openings at the hall, said she had noticed a lack of foundation plantings around the building and offered to have landscaping designed and installed for the entire property.

“The interior is just so filled with the enormous energy and artistic spirit,” she said, “and it seemed to me that the exterior should just introduce you to what’s going to happen inside.” The plantings were kept simple “because of the spirit of the place,” Ms. Kriegel said.

Designed and put in by Marybeth LaPenna Lee of LaPenna Lee Gardens, the new landscaping creates “a kind of unadorned elegance,” she said.

A former editor of New Directions for Women, a feminist publication, Ms. Kriegel went to Italy to study painting when the publication folded. She has dedicated her time to being an artist, studying for many years at the Art Barge on Napeague, including this summer, and has shown her work at Ashawagh Hall.

Just over two decades ago, her son, David Kriegel, then a new architect, set his sights on the house on Old Stone Highway where she now lives. It had belonged to the Bennett family and was among a string of houses built in the days when that part of Springs was called East Side.

He planned to renovate it for resale. But, Ms. Kriegel said, “I decided it was so nice we should keep it in the family.” It became her summer home.

“I think that Ashawagh Hall is sort of the heart and the hub of the people in Springs,” Ms. Kriegel said. “It has so much history to it — the artists who have shown there, the Invitational. . . . I’ve been to concerts there, lectures, even memorial services.”

Realizing that Ashawagh Hall had “such meaning for people,” Ms. Kreigel said she decided that a donation for plantings would be “a way to give my thanks to the community.”

“The building doesn’t need to be dressed up, just augmented,” Ms. Lee said on Tuesday. She planted juniper, boxwood, and grasses around its edge, choosing natural looking and deer-resistant plants. Some daylilies, though attractive to deer, were added for color in corners where she hopes they may be protected and remain uneaten. Mostly, though, the palette remained “plain green and white — nothing fancy,” Ms. Lee said.

Along the Springs-Fireplace Road front, she planted a tricolor beech tree, about 12 feet high. When it takes root, it will fill a space that will be created with the removal of one of the two cherry trees that have been flowering, magnificently, each spring for years, as it is dead. The beech will become “a focal point,” Ms. Lee said.

To mask a box for heating and cooling equipment, she filled a bed with ornamental grasses and bayberry. She installed a pebbled corridor around the exterior walls, for access and drainage, then “neatened things up” with mulch and delineated planting beds around existing trees. Ms. Lee said she enlisted Jason Agudo of Aquaworks to install irrigation for ongoing care and maintenance of the plants.

The Springs Improvement Society undertook full repairs and renovation of the building several years ago, paid for through a fund-raising campaign, a bank loan, and a sizable private donation. There was nothing left for landscaping, however, Ed Michels, the president of the S.I.S. board, said yesterday. Ms. Kriegel’s donation was “very, very generous,” Mr. Michels said. “It was a very nice thing she did.” The board of the community center, he said, is “very appreciative, and can’t thank her enough.” 

When Laurie Cancellieri called this newspaper on Monday to report that a memorial plaque in honor of her son on a teak bench at the eastern Ditch Plain Beach was missing and presumably stolen, she had no idea the plaque would be returned before the issue went to print. But she did have a clue.

Max Cancellieri took his own life in 2007 when he was 18 years old. Devastated, Ms. Cancellieri donated the bench with the plaque attached. “Think Happy Thoughts,” it read.

The plaque went missing over the weekend. The family first noticed it on Sunday. Ms. Cancellieri, who is married to Rick Gibbs of Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe, put out a message on social media asking for help in finding it.

On Tuesday, she met with a reporter for a picture at the site, which is a popular gathering place for locals and surfers. She said that when Max was a youngster he loved to fool her by making things disappear and then leading her on wild hunts through the house to look for the missing items. When a hunt was over, the item would mysteriously reappear in a very obvious place, and he would have good laugh.

As Ms. Cancellieri was leaving the beach, she met a friend, Dalton Portella, a surfer and artist, and told him the plaque was missing. He said that he and John Chimples, another surfer, had found it sitting on the bench, minus its screws, the night before. Not realizing that she was looking for it, Mr. Chimples took it home to spruce it up and find new screws to reattach it, Mr. Portella said.

With tears in her eyes, she turned to a friend and said, “I knew it would show up.”

In February, Rose found herself at a police station with her young daughter in tow after a domestic abuse incident, confused, scared, and unsure what next steps to take. A social worker at the police station told Rose she could seek counseling, but Rose envisioned a scary gym filled with drug addicts and cots.

“I don’t want to go to that place!” she said she thought at the time, and she resisted calling any of the hotlines the social worker told her about. But the abuse escalated to the point where Rose believed her daughter’s father might kill her.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it,” she said, but she depended on him and found it difficult to leave. They had been together for a decade and he took care of the finances. When she finally realized she wanted to start her life over, the Retreat in East Hampton was the first number she dialed.

The woman who answered the phone patiently explained that things would be okay. Her calm and soothing tone eased Rose’s fear about seeking help. A taxi came to pick her up the next day to take her to the shelter, over an hour from her house. Rose and other Retreat clients interviewed for this article asked that their last names not be used.

To Rose’s relief, her taxi trip ended not at a cold warehouse with wandering junkies, but at a homey, one-story house with a small vegetable garden. The shelter has 18 beds and clients can stay 90 days. The Retreat offers other services aside from the shelter, including a transitional housing program, legal advocacy so victims can be accompanied to court, and educational programs for men and teenagers. It serves about 500 clients every year, who come to it mainly via police notifications and the hotline.

Another former client, Amy, attended meetings with her counselor every Monday at an undisclosed location for three years. At the time, in 2008, she had two toddlers and was financially dependent on her husband. They owned a Lexus, a BMW, and a nice house. After a house call, though, a suspicious police officer slipped her a card for the Retreat. She filed it away, thinking, “That’s for people who aren’t educated or have no money or aren’t strong enough to get through this.” But later she did call. The program provided her with an attorney who fought for full custody of her children.

“It felt like I had just won the lottery,” she said.

When Rose arrived at the shelter, she quickly became friends with Minerva Perez, the former shelter director who left earlier this summer. Ms. Perez turned into a mentor, often consoling Rose and taking the time to talk through her fears and anxieties.

Two days after her arrival, the staff bought cake, balloons, and snacks and held a party for Rose’s daughter. The staff showered Amy with presents as well. They bought her a Thanksgiving turkey and on Dec. 23 one year called her to come to the shelter; they had a surprise. There she found a 1986 red Ford Explorer waiting for her.

“It was my ticket to freedom,” she said.

There is both structured and unstructured time at the shelter. Rose fell into a routine, waking up at 7 a.m., an unheard of hour for her, and going to sleep 12 hours later. She looked for a job every weekday, a task that was supervised by staff. Weekends were for relaxing.

But times were not always happy and easy-going. Sometimes she would awake in the middle of the night from nightmares that her abuser was trying to murder her.

Then, shortly after her arrival, Rose’s daughter came down with a cold. There was a harsh snowstorm outside. The heat was not working at the shelter. Rose began to feel homesick and yearned for her own bed. She said she felt trapped at the Retreat. So she packed her belongings in an act of desperation. But the trains were not running and no cabs would drive her back home. Ms. Perez arrived to calm her down and she unpacked her belongings and waited out the difficult time.

Other tedious tasks nagged her.

“I’m not going to lie, I hated it at times,” she said. Part of the healing process at the Retreat is to take part in mandatory sessions, like counseling, group therapy, and legal advocacy information meetings, and to share chores with the other women, including cleaning the bathroom and cooking meals.

Rose did not look forward to the counseling sessions. One entailed writing down every bad memory on a piece of paper. The women went outside with their scribbled thoughts and were told to burn the scraps in order to let go of the pain. Another exercise included field-tripping down to the beach, picking up a rock, remembering the negative times while holding it, and then releasing it.

But, after her 90 days were up, Rose had grown attached and found a new dependency on her temporary home. She felt scared to re-enter the world and clung to Ms. Perez. The unknown whereabouts of her abuser terrified her and she had no clue where she would go first once she left. She pleaded for the staff to extend her stay.

She remembers Ms. Perez telling her, “ ‘If I let you stay here, it will be a crutch. I believe you can do it.’ ”

And she did do it. Now just several months later, Rose is juggling several jobs and has found an apartment.

“I’m not where I want to be, but I’m not where I used to be,” she said.  

The East Hampton School District is blaming the United States Postal Service for a delay in mailing back-to-school packets, which school officials said had resulted in parents’ flooding school offices with panicked phone calls.

During an East Hampton School Board meeting Tuesday, Richard Burns, the superintendent, said a staff member had brought four separate bulk mailings to the East Hampton Post Office on Aug. 12 and 14 and Aug. 25 and 27. The district only learned on Monday of the delay in sending the packets out of the building for processing.

The result, Mr. Burns said, was that teacher assignments, schedules, and important forms had not been received. Complicating the situation was that the Parent Portal, East Hampton’s online student information system, was experiencing problems.

Mr. Burns called the failure to deliver the packets a critical mistake. “We were caught in an unfortunate dilemma. That really threw us for a loop.” He said the district was told by a Postal Service official that a staff shortage in East Hampton was to blame.

Reached by phone yesterday, Ed O’Shaughnessy, the East Hampton postmaster, said that “bulk mailings aren’t guaranteed to go out at a specific time.” He said he could not comment on whether there was a staff shortage. “The situation has been rectified,” he said. Indeed, at least some parents reported receiving the packets on Monday.

The three school principals, Adam Fine, Charles Soriano, and Beth Doyle, explained during Tuesday’s board meeting that those parents who had provided the district with email addresses previously were able to see their children’s teachers and schedules online.

Use of the Parent Portal is enabled after the district verifies an email address for a parent, which is done through an emergency contact form — one of the documents in the back-to-school packets. The form is also available on the district’s website. School officials said that some parents already had access to the portal because their email addresses were previously used in Google Groups email blasts.

Most mail and packages brought to the East Hampton Post Office are sent first to Riverhead and then to the Postal Service’s processing center in Melville. Mail is then stamped with bar codes and sorted into trays to be delivered back to individual post offices.

 “East Hampton’s district mail was sitting in boxes until my phone call” on Monday, Mr. Burns said. “We had been hustling to bring everything over there in a timely fashion.”

Critics of the Postal Service have suggested that post offices may be overwhelmed by the additional mail they receive since taking on delivery of Amazon packages in November of 2013. Bloomberg Business reported in July that first-class mail volume dropped by 3 percent to 64 million pieces from 2013 to 2014. However, the news source said, the  Postal Service’s volume of packages increased by 8 percent, bringing its total to 4 billion packages, during the same period.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has moved to protect horseshoe crabs, which have experienced a decline, by giving the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation extended authority for two years to limit the harvesting of females, those at beaches where shorebirds feed on their eggs, and those that are mating, a prevalent practice. The D.E.C. already sets a quota on the taking of the ancient creatures, which has been 150,000 since 2009.

Horseshoe crabs have been a topic of discussion this summer at meetings of the East Hampton Town Trustees. “Anybody who spends time on the water has noticed a decline in horseshoe crabs,” Tyler Armstrong, a Democratic and Independence Party candidate for trustee, said at the panel’s July 28 meeting.

While he called the decline “a red flag,” he also acknowledged that baymen here rely on them for bait. Nevertheless, he asked the trustees to consider a seasonal prohibition in waters under their jurisdiction and to advise the town board to do the same for waters in Montauk, which are not. It was noted that the Brookhaven Town Board had asked the D.E.C. to ban the harvesting of horseshoe crabs in its waters, over the objections of baymen.

East End fishermen use horseshoe crabs as bait for channeled whelk (conch) and eels. Elsewhere, they are harvested for a compound in their blood that is considered invaluable for the pharmaceutical industry. A quart of horseshoe crab blood, which turns blue when exposed to air, is apparently worth an estimated $15,000.

Horseshoe crabs, which have existed for more than 300 million years, typically come ashore to spawn at high tide during the full and new moons. “That’s a time when overharvest could occur,” Deborah Klughers, a trustee, said. “That would be an easy way to limit the take. We want them to be able to lay their eggs.”

Mr. Armstrong said the species is overharvested particularly in the spring. “We should at least have a season on their harvest.” 

At the trustees’ Aug. 25 meeting, Diane McNally, the clerk, told her colleagues and Mr. Armstrong that she had spoken with Arnold Leo, secretary of the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association. He told her that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission did a stock assessment of horseshoe crabs in 2013, she said, with the result that a number of states, including New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, enacted some restrictions.

The next assessment is to be completed by December, she said, and Mr. Leo had recommended waiting until the results were available before taking action. “Only harvesting males makes a lot of sense,” she said.

“That’s what I was going to recommend, after I read the governor’s bill,” Mr. Armstrong said. “It does put good restrictions in place.” Mr. Armstrong also suggested the town’s shellfish ordinance include a distinct section on horseshoe crabs. “They’re a unique animal,” he said.

Ms. McNally asked Mr. Armstrong for his assistance in drafting a proposed amendment to the shellfish ordinance for review by the trustees, who would pass it to the town board for adoption.

Any protection of horseshoe crabs would be a positive development, Carl Safina, an ecologist and author, said. “There does seem to be widespread depletion of horseshoe crabs,” he said. “The data shows it, and anecdotally almost everybody who can remember being a kid decades ago remembers they were much more abundant.” Napeague Harbor in Amagansett, he said, “used to be really a great horseshoe crab habitat,” but has suffered from overharvesting. In the past, 10 or 12 years ago, he said, “I went on a full moon in May and saw hundreds of them, but also saw guys taking as many as they could get. Within about two years, I was finding zero adults breeding.”

Fortunately, he said, “It seems they respond well to protection: In the places where they have had better protection, populations have recovered.” He cited a 2007 ban at West Meadow Beach in Stony Brook, “where a pretty meager population has built up into a really abundant, robust population in the last five to seven years.” 

On Tuesday, following a Sag Harbor Village Board meeting last Thursday at which officials resolved to forge ahead with plans for a waterfront park that would require condemning three private properties, a Manhattan-based real estate development company announced that it was teaming up with the owner of the three parcels to develop condominiums there.

“We really feel our boutique luxury aesthetic is beautifully aligned with the intentions of this residential development,” said Jeffrey Simpson, head of Greystone, which according to its website has developed over $1 billion in residential and mixed-use properties.

The parcels in question, owned by East End Ventures, are 1, 3, and 5 Ferry Road, on the Sag Harbor side of the bridge. There have been several plans over the past decade to develop them and demolish the abandoned buildings there, making way for condos.

Village officials have something else in mind. They want to acquire the properties, using money from Southampton Town’s community preservation fund, and combine them, along with another, village-owned parcel, to create an expanded waterfront park that would include direct beach access, a space for recreation, and more parking. The new facility would be named for John Steinbeck, the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who was a longtime resident of Sag Harbor.

After the unanimous resolution was passed, Dennis Downes, a Sag Harbor attorney who represents East End Ventures, rose to object. His client’s property, he told the board, “is not for sale,” he said, adding that his client was “going full steam ahead” with a plan, long in the works, to develop. “As far as using the C.P.F. money, that’s not going to happen,” Mr. Downes said.

The lawyer told the board that the village had been offered the three parcels some years ago for $7.5 million, but that the village turned it down. (In fact, officials never took a vote on any such offer, Mayor Sandra Schroeder told Mr. Downes.)

East End Ventures had since spent nearly 10 years developing a plan, said Mr. Downes, much of that time fighting the village, including a few lawsuits. “I think it’s kind of late in the game for you to be asking the owner of the property to sell you the property,” he said. “I think you’re wasting all of your time trying to talk to the town about C.P.F.”

The new waterfront park would expand the Windmill Park area, which spans both sides of Route 114, “helping to frame the entrance to Sag Harbor from North Haven,” according to the resolution, which was read aloud by James Larocca, a new board member who helped spur the initiative. Windmill Park offers one of Sag Harbor’s few publicly accessible waterfront views, an important factor in the village’s longstanding local waterfront revitalization program.

Last year, the village unveiled updated plans for Cove Park, on the south side of the bridge. The park, on village-owned property, was to include a boardwalk that would connect the waterfront from West Water Street under the bridge to the Long Wharf windmill, and around to Marine Park on Bay Street. Ed Hollander, head of Hollander Landscape Architects and a Sag Harbor homeowner, had donated the firm’s time to design the park. The boardwalk expansion, if it happens, would be part of the hoped-for John Steinbeck park.

Fred W. Thiele Jr., the village attorney, told the board that while the village can pursue the purchase of the three contested parcels, it also has an obligation to continue to process the East End Ventures application for development. “The planning board still has the legal duty and the legal responsibility to process that application in due course, and I would fully expect the planning board to do that” said Mr. Thiele.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the properties at 1,3, and 5 Ferry Road were located on the North Haven side of the bridge.

The question of whether East Hampton Town should continue to bar bedrooms in basements with tighter rules than those in place under the New York State building code was discussed at Town Hall last week.

Some residents cast the prohibition as a needed hedge against excessive occupancy and crowding in residential neighborhoods, while others framed it as a burden to middle-class families whose members are faced with a shortage of affordable housing here.

After several years during which a provision in the town code banning bedrooms in basements has apparently not been fully enforced, the town board held a hearing last week on a law “to reaffirm” the prohibition.

While the state Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code allows bedrooms in basements, the town opted decades ago to enact its own ban. Under state law, municipalities may enact more stringent restrictions than those of the state, but they must be reviewed and approved by a state “code council,” and meet particular criteria.

Liz Vail, the East Hampton Town attorney, said this week that the basement bedroom ban, which has been a part of the town code since before March 1985, has not been vetted by the state council. “That would typically happen after it is re-codified,” Ms. Vail said in an email.

No East Hampton Town law is included on a New York State Department of State list of approved “more restrictive local standards.” Local laws governing areas covered by state laws, such as the building code, that are inconsistent with state law and are not on the approved list cannot be enforced.

According to a town board resolution setting the reaffirmation hearing, which took place last Thursday, the board “believes that a prohibition on bedrooms in cellars is essential for the protection of neighborhoods . . . the prevention of overcrowding . . . and for promoting health and safety. . . .”

The resolution states that “allowing bedrooms in cellars would run contrary to all of the town’s current zoning regulations restricting house size and location in proportion to lot size,” and that “excessive underground expansion of living space is detrimental to the character of neighborhoods as well, as it alows for a greater number of occupants than anticipated on any given lot.”

The town’s zoning code and 2005 updated comprehensive plan were developed on the basis that bedrooms were not permitted in basements, the resolution notes.

The board also said that, because a typical basement is not considered a “story” under the town code, the space there is not included in the “gross floor area” of a house. “Theoretically,” the resolution says, “an unlimited number of bedrooms could be installed in the cellar of any given residence, regardless of the gross floor area limits on that property.”

An increase in occupants increases water usage and sewage flow, the resolution states, and increased sewage flow could be “expected to be detrimental to water quality throughout the town.”

Michael Forst, the president of Forst Construction, spoke to the town board last week on behalf of the Long Island Builders Institute, a trade group, and submitted a letter to the editor printed in today’s Star outlining his position.

He said that using basements to provide space for bedrooms is a “good use of resources, to keep the overall footprint smaller, by efficient use of the space,” and is consistent with green building techniques.

Safety concerns are addressed in the state code, he said, which contains regulations such as those requiring proper ingress and egress from basements, and the installation of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

With affordable housing in short supply here, he said, the ability to have bedrooms in basement space is “needed to meet a cost-efficient housing need” for some families. It could allow younger adults to remain in the community, in parents’ houses, he said.

“It’s sad that you’re trying to limit more of our rights in our own homes, and what we can do in them,” Wolf Reiter told the board. “Not everybody in this town is rich,” he said. There are some, he said, who might need extra space for their families and cannot afford to build an addition onto their house.

“You’re going to make it impossible to take care of family members,” he said. “You’re taking away all of our flexibility, for people with limited means, basically.”

“What I think this is going to do is to force the ‘little people’ in town into situations of illegality,” said Tina Piette.

Britton Bistrian also said that adding bedrooms in basements would allow middle-class homeowners to expand their homes within their means.” Should it be illegal, she said, it will occur anyway, but without compliance with safety codes.

John Woudsma, a building inspector for the Village of Sagaponack, said that use of the basement area for bedroom space “allows me to limit the mass of a house.”

Issues of illegal overcrowding can be addressed, he said, through the enforcement of restrictions on house size, the total number of bedrooms, and enacting other requirements, such as having homeowners provide parking spots on their properties to correspond with the number of bedrooms. “Consider other mechanisms rather than just this Draconian prohibition,” Mr. Woudsma told the board.

David Buda called the board’s new commitment to enforcing the bedroom basement ban a “very significant and much-needed change,” to re-establish an “essential and reasonable limit to growth that was recklessly disregarded by a previous administration three years ago, without any change to the zoning code.” Mr. Buda had complained several years ago when, under the prior town administration, building permits were issued for several residences with bedrooms in the basements, despite the prohibition in the town code.

“The enforcement of this common-sense law was suspended,” Mr. Buda said. The policy was “to the profit and benefit of the building community, and to the detriment of the residents of the community,” resulting in increased density. It was an “important factor,” he claimed, in the Ross School’s alleged plan to have two large houses built in Springs to serve as de facto dormitories for its boarding students.

Mr. Buda has argued that the town has the authority to set the bedroom basement ban, not under a building code, which could be preempted by state law, but under the zoning powers entrusted to local governments. “It’s a matter of zoning policy to limit growth,” he said last week.

David Milne, a neighbor of one of the houses that was said to be slated as a Ross School dormitory, also endorsed the basement bedroom prohibition. Neighborhood complaints and a public discussion of that potential led the school to issue a statement saying that it would not be using those houses as dormitories. “If we want to have multi-family housing, we should zone for multi-family housing.” Allowing a large number of bedrooms in houses zoned for single-family living would in effect turn them into multi-family dwellings, Mr. Milne said. The law “preserves the residential zoning of our existing neighborhoods.”

According to the resolution setting the hearing, “any parcel having a valid building permit and/or certificate of occupancy specifically denoting the presence of bedrooms in a cellar as of the date of this local law shall be exempt” from the prohibition.

The board did not discuss the matter further after closing the hearing.

The East Hampton School Board has taken a three-pronged stance on affordable housing within East Hampton Town: Those projects are necessary, but their locations and therefore their impact should be spread out among the school districts, and the payments given to the district in lieu of taxes — known as PILOTs — should reflect the actual cost of educating the children who live in that housing.

The board discussed these concerns during its Aug. 18 meeting.

Representatives of the school district then sat down on Aug. 19 with East Hampton Town’s director of housing, Tom Ruhle, to discuss the board’s opinions ahead of the town’s plan to build 12 more affordable housing units within the school district’s boundaries.

Both Mr. Ruhle and J.P. Foster, president of the East Hampton School Board, said their conversation was productive, informative, and forward-thinking.

“I’ve never actually met in a formal way with someone from the school district and the administration to discuss issues that are common to us,” Mr. Ruhle said. “They brought up the fact that the bulk of the affordable housing is in their district, while simultaneously Wainscott is in the process of fiercely opposing an affordable housing project. They also brought up the fact that they are the largest employer in town and they have a problem with staff retention.”

The East Hampton School District’s concern over affordable housing stems largely from the relatively small dollar amounts it receives from the town compared to the number of children who live in those developments. For example, according to the school board, 30 students live in the Accabonac Apartments, for which the district receives a flat $30,000 each year. Eight students live in the Springs-Fireplace Apartments, for which the district receives $15,000. According to the most recent New York State School Report Cards, East Hampton spends $32,418 each year to educate each student in the district.

“Some PILOTs were fixed when $30,000 was a lot more money than it is these days,” Mr. Ruhle said. “Twenty-five years from now, someone’s going to say, ‘What?’ ”

Mr. Foster said on Tuesday that “with the tax cap, every penny counts at thispoint . . . even if it’s a $5,000 difference.”

“It’s that critical,” he said. “We’re dealing with a budget. So is the town, and the town pays the PILOT. So you have to look at the source of the income. They don’t have a lot to give us and we know that’s what we’re up against.”

But East Hampton’s current project, called Manor House, differs from previous projects. It will have three buildings, each containing a one-bedroom apartment, two two-bedroom apartments, and a three-bedroom apartment that will be available for purchase by eligible potential homeowners at prices around $200,000. Its eventual occupants will pay direct taxes on the value of their houses, rather than the town making payments in lieu of taxes on the whole development. Manor House is awaiting approval from the Suffolk County Department of Health.

“We need rental housing and ownership housing,” Mr. Ruhle said. “We are looking in other places besides the usual suspects. We live in a place where if you own property this is a great place, and if you don’t it’s a really difficult place to live. People look at affordable housing as if it’s some evil monster from afar. It’s for the people you see working here every day who don’t own a house.”

Mr. Foster said the district wants to work with the town “to be fair” about the number of affordable housing units built within school boundaries.

“We want to see more affordable housing, but we want to see it spread out around the town,” Mr. Foster said. “We’re not trying to stop it. No one in East Hampton wants to stop it.”

The same might not be said in Wainscott. The Wainscott Common School District says a 49-unit development that has been proposed there could cripple the school, which is a two-room schoolhouse with a maximum capacity of about 25 students spanning kindergarten through third grade. Its superintendent, Stuart Rachlin, has previously said the number of children who could potentially live in that development would overwhelm the school’s resources.

According to Mr. Ruhle, the plan for a 49-unit affordable housing complex has been modified by St. Michael’s Housing Association, the group that is proposing the development, and will be presented during the town board’s meeting on Sept. 15. Yesterday Mr. Rachlin said in an email that he had not been informed of any changes pertaining to the affordable housing proposal.

Sean P. Ludwick, the New York City real estate mogul charged with drunken driving following an early Sunday morning accident in Noyac that killed his passenger, is headed for jail, at least for the time being.

Southampton Town Justice Deborah Kooperstein arraigned Mr. Ludwick at the courthouse in Hampton Bays on Monday morning, setting bail at $500,000 cash or $1 million bond, the amount recommended by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office.

Despite objections by Daniel J. Ollen, a Wall Street criminal defense attorney representing Mr. Ludwick, Justice Kooperstein said she was concerned that the defendant, who likely faces more significant charges, would not return to court.

Paul Hansen, 53, was killed when he was thrown from Sean P. Ludwig's Porsche, after it crashed on the same block Mr. Hansen lived on with his two young children.

Mary Anne Miller

Mr. Ludwick was driving a 2013 Porsche convertible on Rolling Hills Court East when he hit a curb and crashed into a utility pole, Maggie Bopp, an assistant district attorney, told the court. Paul Hansen, a 53-year-old who lived on that block, was ejected from the Porsche and killed.Mr. Ludwick drove away, Ms. Bopp said, leaving Mr. Hansen lying in the road. 

"Those behaviors indicate a risk," Justice Kooperstein said, of not returning to court.

Ms. Bopp said Mr. Ludwick refused to take a blood alcohol test. At Southampton Hospital, police obtained a warrant to have his blood drawn and tested. The results are expected back from the Suffolk County Crime Lab later on Monday.

There was concern as well about Mr. Ludwick's criminal history, which includes driving while ability impaired, a violation, in 2009, and a record of failing to appear in court, Ms. Bopp said. He did not show up for a court appearance last year in connection with a harassment charge elsewhere, because, Mr. Ollen told Justice Kooperstein, he was out of the country on business.

The lawyer said he made prosecutors aware of the situation, and that the "assistant district attorney was actually okay with it." He said Mr. Ludwick was never charged with failure to appear, nor was there any bail-jumping, adding that he voluntarily appeared in court when he returned from abroad.

In objecting to the high bail, Mr. Ollen asked the court not to consider the possibility of upgraded charges, but rather look at his client's ties to New York. "A major real estate developer in the United States and across the world, quite frankly," Mr. Ollen said.

Mr. Ludwick is the principal in BlackHouse Development, a Manhattan real estate firm. Born and raised in Huntington, he splits his time between a townhouse on Sutton Place and a house on Brick Kiln Road in Bridgehampton. His wife, Pamela, was in the courtroom Monday morning, visibly upset. Mr. Ludwick has two sons, 13 and 11, one of whom attended school in Bridgehampton last year, Mr. Ollen told the court.

"He has zero reason to flee," the lawyer said. Even so, he assured Justice Kooperstein, "surrender of his passport will keep him here all the time." And, he added, with Mr. Ludwick's face "plastered all over the papers‚" and "being a well-known guy if you Google him," fleeing would be difficult.

Justice Kooperstein nevertheless set the high bail. She also suspended Mr. Ludwick's driving privileges, calling him a "dangerous driver."

While Mr. Ollen said his client could make the bail, it would take some time. Mr. Ludwig would be taken to the county jail in Riverside in the meantime.

Seated in the courtroom in the row in front of Pamela Ludwick were three members of Mr. Hansen's family, including his brother, Bob Hansen, flanked by Edward Burke Jr., a well-known defense attorney from Sag Harbor who was a childhood friend of the victim.

"It's a tremendous tragedy for the family," Bob Hansen said. He described his brother as a "great family man" a "tremendous friend," and a "great, great father‚" to his two sons, 14 and 11.

"He did everything for the boys," working any job he could to provide the best life for them, even driving a school bus for a time.

The victim was a real estate salesman with Douglas Elliman in Sag Harbor, and also a developer; his company was called Golden House Management. "The community of Sag Harbor is really going to miss him," his brother said.

Funeral arrangements have not been finalized.

A recent playdate in the park has inspired a communitywide effort to help local kids in need get new clothing for school this year.

During that playdate, when her daughter's friend became upset at the thought of not having anything new to wear to school, Kathryn Bermudez got emotional herself and decided to launch a communitywide clothing drive.

Ms. Bermudez, whose family owns VIP Hamptons Cleaning, has put out a call via social media and word-of-mouth for new or gently used clothing for school-age children. She is looking for pants in sizes 4T to 16 and shirts in sizes extra small to extra large.

"I was trying to help these two families at the park," Ms. Bermudez said. "It started off as something small and it got really huge. It's a big blessing."

Her goal is to help at least 100 families. She has reached out to churches, shelters, and social workers at the Family Service League, who have provided the ages and sizes of boys and girls who could benefit from the clothing drive. Ms. Bermudez plans to wash all the clothes, then wrap them in beautiful packaging for the kids to open.

"I went through a tough time once with my daughter," she said. "There's nothing wrong with a hand-me-down. It's very important to give back. I take children to heart because I have one of my own."

Ms. Bermudez will be collecting donations until Friday. Clothing can be dropped off at the Salty Canvas, at 94 Newtown Lane in East Hampton, which is owned by Nikki Payne, a friend whom Ms. Bermudez has known since her days at East Hampton High School. Contributors can also arrange for donations to be picked up by calling VIP Hamptons Cleaning at 631-324-1201.