The first step in what is expected to be a long process of site plan review of a controversial plan to convert the old East Deck Motel at Ditch Plain, Montauk, into a private club is scheduled to begin before the town planning board at East Hampton Town Hall at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

Because of widespread interest in the project, the board had considered holding the meeting at the LTV Studios in Wainscott, a much larger venue. However, John Jilnicki, the board’s attorney, explained that the session could not be moved because legal notices had already been posted for a public hearing on another matter, a Wainscott subdivision, to be held at the same meeting.

This week, as opposition continued to mount, Lars Svanberg and Scott Bradley, who have served as spokesmen for ED40, the limited liability corporation that now owns the property, spoke out through a public relations firm. In a joint statement, they said, “We believe this is the lowest density and most environmentally friendly use as permitted by town code. We are totally committed to the protection, preservation, and enhance?ment of the environment and character of the Montauk community.” 

In response to speculation that the club would be able to accommodate 539 people at a time, as indicated by the plans for the septic system in documents submitted to the planning board, the men argued that the system was designed to meet Suffolk County regulations and would have far less use, perhaps accommodating as few as 20 or 30 people a day rather than 539.

Meanwhile, an online petition against the proposal, at ditchplainsassociation. com, had gathered almost 5,000 signatures as of yesterday morning. As interest continued to mount, Eric Schantz, a planner for the town’s Planning Department, reported that a memo he was preparing on the application for the club, which is in a six-inch-thick file, would not be available seven days in advance of the first planning board meeting, as he had hoped. He promised board members that it will be ready before the weekend.

Also being scrutinized is the strategy being used to set up the club. Mr. Jilincki has given ED40 a green light to separate the operation of the club from the ownership of the land on which it sits in keeping with the requirements ofthe town code, which states that such clubs must be nonprofit, and that their activities “shall be limited to club members and their guests and shall not be extended to the general public.” It goes on to read, “The lease of land to a club by any person shall be deemed to constitute operation of a recreation facility on that lot for all purposes of this chapter.”

Of the application, Mr. Jilnicki said,  “Nothing has been received. No documentation. It is, at this point, a first look. We are, by no means, close to done. We have just begun the process.”

Plans for the facility include an Olympic-size swimming pool, a hot tub, a large outdoor jaccuzi, showers, a restaurant, game room, exercise room, spa, and several lounges, as well as storage areas. A large area of below-grade parking on the eastern edge of the property is planned at what is now a driveway onto the grounds. This area is to go to a depth of six feet and be covered with a trellis. It is also to serve as the entrance for trucks, which go to the end of the parking area, then turn right into the lower deck of a two-story pavilion, under which loading docks would be located.

Of Wednesday’s meeting, Reed Jones, the planning board chairman, said yesterday that the public should understand “this is not a public hearing. There will be an appropriate time and place for a public hearing.” Rather, he said, it was an opportunity for the board to begin the very extensive process of exploring a complex site plan.

A tractor trailer carrying sand flipped over onto its side in Bridgehampton Friday morning, spilling its contents all over the road and injuring the driver. 

The accident reportedly occurred as the driver was making a left from Scuttlehole Road onto Brick Kiln Road just before 9 a.m. The Bridgehampton Fire Department's rescue squad was called to respond, but Chief Charles Broadmeadow called them off after the driver got out of the truck with help from bystanders.

The department's ambulance responded, and advanced life support was also requested. The driver was airlifted to Stony Brook University Medical Center. The helicopter landed at the Bridgehampton Fire Department ball field. 

Brick Kiln Road was closed as the sand was cleaned up. Scuttlehole Road remained open while the Southampton Town police and fire police remained on scene.

Last Thursday, Sgt. Paul Fabiano walked out of Sag Harbor Village police headquarters for the final time to a small procession including a bagpiper, fellow officers, and community members he has touched during his 27 years on the job.

One noticeable absenttee was his brother Tom, who, as the chief of the department, was his boss. Chief Fabiano was ill, but his 19-year-old daughter, Siena Remkus-Fabiano, was there in his place, and when Sergeant Fabiano turned and saw his niece, “that’s when I lost it,” he said of his emotions.

Although the two brothers had their fair share of squabbles, Sergeant Fabiano said he has always looked up to his brother, and even ended up in law enforcement in part because of him.

A 1984 graduate of Pierson High School in Sag Harbor (he grew up just outside the village), Sergeant Fabiano had dreams of becoming a marine biologist but quickly realized he didn’t excel in chemistry and math. He toyed with the idea of joining the military but ultimately decided to pursue a career like that of his brother, 11 years his senior.

After he studied criminal justice briefly at Clinton Community College in Plattsburgh, N.Y., a classmate’s father, Ted Stafford, a warrant officer for the Southampton Town police, invited him to be a traffic control officer in the summer of 1985. At 19 years old, he saw an opportunity to go to the Suffolk County Police Academy and graduated the following spring. The town police hired him as a part-timer, and after two seasons he left to work part time for the Sag Harbor Village police.

He never did go back to college. “I kind of regret it now,” he said. “The pay was good, and I had benefits, and at the time I was engaged — I was married at 21 years old,” he said, adding that it continues to be a dream to get his degree.

In October 1989, the village, where his brother was already a detective, hired him full time. He worked his way up the ranks, becoming a detective after his brother was made chief in early 2000. After four or five years as a detective, he moved up to sergeant. Though he had hopes of making lieutenant, that position on the small force was never filled after the retirement of Lt. Thomas X. Mackey in 2009. Sergeants Fabiano and Thomas Pagano have shared the responsibilities of the department’s executive officer since then.

Asked what he is most proud of, he recalled a time when he and Jon Schoen, also now retired, were flagged down on Main Street by the grandparents of a 5-year-old who had “burned the soles of her feet off” when she stepped barefoot onto the Shelter Island ferry. He placed gel packs on her feet and immediately called for a medevac helicopter, even before calling for an ambulance.

A week or two later, he heard from physicians at Stony Brook University Hospital who said the little girl would have lost the tissue on her feet had it not been for his quick thinking to send her straight to the burn center there. A year later, he heard from her parents that she was walking without assistance.

“It’s things like that, just making a difference,” Sergeant Fabiano said.

At 48, he decided it was time to spend more time with his family, including his wife, Linda Fabiano, a head dispatcher for the Southampton Town police, and his two children, Melissa, a chef, and Christianna, who is in her second year of nursing school. “All these years I’ve missed with my family,” he said. “Twenty-seven years of working rotating shifts, it started to wear on me.” He has already begun working as a consultant for Scan Security.

While he won’t miss the hours, Sergeant Fabiano said he would miss his colleagues and being a part of the Emergency Services Unit, made up of officers from across the South Fork. “I couldn’t work with a better bunch of guys — everybody brings something to the table.”

“If I had to do it over again, I would most likely do it over again,” he said. “I love my community and the people in it. It was a pleasure to work for them.”

There’s not much he would change — not even working under his brother. “Trust me, we butt heads. At the end of the day, we’re all on the same team. We know what needs to get accomplished. We have a different dynamic of what the normal cops and bosses have. He held me to a higher standard than the other guys, but it made me a better person for it.”

“I’m glad he’s gone,” Chief Fabiano joked without skipping a beat when asked to comment on his brother’s retirement. “No, I’m sad he’s gone. He did a lot of things around here. It’s a loss,” he said, adding that his younger brother was in the more difficult position of the two. “I think I was harder on him than anybody. Was it difficult? Sometimes, yes. But he was always there for me, and that I will never, ever forget.”

Starting this month, South Fork students will have access to a greater array of mental health offerings than ever before.

Besides an initiative to fund the hiring of a full-time social worker and an as-needed child and adolescent psychiatrist, earlier this summer, East Hampton High School received a large, anonymous donation that will help pay for psychiatric evaluations and counseling services.

“I keep pinching myself. I can’t believe it,” said Adam Fine, the principal of East Hampton High School, in a conversation earlier this week. “The money can’t be used for programming. It’s directly for students in crisis who are faced with significant social and emotional issues and whose families may not be able to afford assessment or follow-up care.”

Because the donor wants to remain anonymous, Mr. Fine couldnot disclose the precise amount, though he described the donation as “significant.”

Generally speaking, a psychiatric evaluation can run upwards of $1,000, with additional follow-up appointments quickly rendering treatment costly — particularly for those families lacking health insurance.

Across South Fork school districts, mental health has taken on increasing significance, particularly since David Hernandez, an East Hampton junior, committed suicide nearly two years ago. In May, a recent high school graduate became the fourth young person on the South Fork to take his or her own life since 2009.

On subsequent high alert, East Hampton administrators have seen an increasing number of psychiatric referrals and hospitalizations as a result. Last year, 15 students at East Hampton High School were hospitalized, according to Mr. Fine and Ralph Naglieri, the school psychologist. Since last week’s start of school, serious mental health issues have continued to surface, with some students requiring hospitalization as a result.

“A lot of things that happened during the summer tend to spill into the start of school,” explained Mr. Fine. “We want to provide students with the appropriate support programs to get them on the right foot during the school year.”

Mr. Fine and Mr. Naglieri are part of the South Fork Behavioral Health Initiative, a task force comprised of state and local legislators, school administrators, and community members to help increase mental health services. The group last met on Aug. 28.

All told, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle jointly secured $150,000 in state money, with Legislator Jay Schneiderman securing an additional $17,500 from the county. East Hampton, Hampton Bays, Sag Harbor, and Southampton School Districts each contributed $5,000 for the coming school year, with each district proposing another $5,000 in aid. In addition, the East Hampton and Southampton Towns have each pledged $25,000. Taken together, anticipated funding for phase one of the proposal totals $257,000.

For the coming school year, the Family Service League, which operates a clinic in East Hampton, will oversee the hiring of the two practitioners. The newly hired social worker will split her time between various schools — from Hampton Bays to Montauk — and will also be available during critical after-school hours for badly needed crisis intervention. The part-time child and adolescent psychiatrist will conduct as-needed consultations.

Still, the need is great and the practitioners are spread too thin. The second phase of the proposal would ensure the hiring of additional social workers and community health workers. It also proposes a mobile unit that could travel to areas of immediate need. The third and final phase would bring Stony Brook psychiatrists to Southampton Hospital as part of an expanded residency program.

Earlier this year, Kristie Golden, the associate director of operations for the neurosciences divisions at Stony Brook University Hospital, ran an analysis of the referral patterns to Stony Brook’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, which is designed for individuals experiencing a psychiatric crisis. More than an hour’s drive away, it houses the closest psychiatric facility.

“In looking at the data, we found that a number of South Fork towns fell within the top 20 percent of referring zip codes,” said Dr. Golden, who examined the first seven months of the year. She is also a member of the mental health task force.

In future years, both Mr. Fine and Mr. Naglieri dream of opening a clinic, housed directly at the high school. Longwood High School in Middle Island will unveil one such student health center later this month. State-funded and operated at no cost to the school district, the center will help ensure the physical and emotional well-being of its high school population. Third-year residents, one nurse practitioner, and a medical assistant, under the supervision of a Stony Brook University Hospital attending physician, will staff the clinic.

Back in East Hampton, both Mr. Fine and Mr. Naglieri are content with seeing increased services in an area previously constrained by a limited number of qualified practitioners.

“We both had to pinch ourselves at the last two meetings to check to see if the things we were hearing are real,” said Mr. Naglieri. “The message has gotten out there.”

Mr. Fine added, “We have kids in need and people are listening.”

A proposed East Hampton Town rental registry drew a number of property owners to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee’s meeting on Monday, many of them concerned about its potential impact.

Residents of the hamlet have long complained about overcrowded group houses in the summer, frequent turnover of tenants, and attendant noise, traffic, and other disturbances to the peaceful enjoyment of their own properties. The proposed law is modeled on Southampton’s registry, said East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee. Its intent, he said, is to allow better enforcement of “rentals that are currently, in many cases, illegal but difficult to enforce.”

The registry would require property owners to file a form with the town including the name, address, mailing address, and telephone number of the owner and any agent designated to act on their behalf, and the number of rooms and bedrooms in the rental property, as well as the bedrooms’ square footage. Also required would be an affidavit signed by the owner, a written certification from the architect or engineer stating that the property complies with town code and provisions, or an inspection by the building inspector. Property owners would be required to provide an affidavit attesting to the total number of persons who will occupy the property, the rental period, a valid certificate of occupancy, and an acknowledgment of responsibility for refuse removal.

The property would then be assigned a registry number that would have to be posted in any advertising. Should the proposed law be adopted, the town board would establish a registration fee. Failure to register would be punishable by a fine of between $150 and $1,500. For a first offense, a fine of between $3,000 and $15,000 would be assessed, $8,000 to $30,000 for a second. “This is a serious fine schedule, let’s put it thatway,” Mr. Cantwell said. Data on complaints received and prosecutions are kept according to hamlet, he said, and he expected to be able to provide such information at the committee’s next meeting.

“People have been renting their homes in this community as long as I’ve lived here,” he said. “It’s an important component of the community, people put their kids through college renting homes. It’s a long established way for people to generate additional income.” The intent of the proposed law, he said, is to “try to find a way to better police those tenants and/or landlords who are abusing residential neighborhoods and the existing codes in the town that are well established and we struggle with.”

If the town can’t enforce existing code, he was asked, “How are you going to enforce a new, more complicated one?” The law would create a database, he answered. “In addition . . . this sets forth very clearly for homeowners, tenants, and the town exactly what is a violation, what kinds of things can be presumed to be a violation,” such as two mailboxes on a property or multiple cars and services indicating more than one household within a single-family residence.

Southampton officials, Mr. Cantwell said, view the law as “an additional tool.” Compliance was initially slow, he said, with fewer registrations than hoped for, though that is building over time. “The truth is, this is not a perfect world. Can we predict exactly what the outcome of this will be? Is it going to solve all the problems? No, but is it another tool we could use? Yes.”

Before the online rental service Airbnb, said John Broderick of the committee, “people did quite well renting their homes, so I don’t see that this legislation is going to pull the bottom out of that market and make it collapse.” The proposed law, he said, is analogous to recent legislation pertaining to taxis and crowds at Indian Wells beach in Amagansett. “Just the fact that we’re talking about it means there’s a problem,” he said. “On my street it’s out of hand. I’ve seen a house rented four times in the last month-and-a-half.”

Mr. Cantwell also updated the committee on the plan to install a public restroom in the parking lot north of Main Street. He presented a preliminary blueprint of a structure with separate entrances for men and women that is consistent with the hamlet’s architecture. The structure will require the elimination of some parking spaces, he said, but the parking lot’s layout is also to be redesigned, with a resulting net increase in spaces. A decision will have to be made as to the building’s footprint and the number of parking spaces to be sacrificed to it. He asked that two or three committee members come to a meeting next Thursday at Town Hall to assist in making that determination. “This is not going to be complicated,” he said. “It’s a question of getting it down to what is needed and what looks nice.”

In the spring of 1806, an advertisement appeared in The Suffolk Gazette, a short-lived broadsheet published in Sag Harbor:

The public are informed, that a SCHOOL will be opened in the family of the subscriber, about the 15th of June next, for the instruction of young ladies in the branches usually taught in boarding schools, such as Reading, Writing, Grammar, Geography and History, Needle-work in its various branches, Drawing, and the French language. A number of pupils can be accommodated with board in his own family.

East-Hampton, May 3, 1806

Lyman Beecher

The “subscriber,” who at the time had been minister of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church for seven years, may have placed the ad, but it was his wife, Roxana, who would run the school, with the help of her sister Mary. That such a little-known enterprise existed during the Beecher family’s relatively short stay here adds an engaging chapter to the history of the Beecher House, now East Hampton Village Hall.

According to Jan Whitlock, the author of “American Sewn Rugs,” there were as many as 40 of these “female academies” along the Eastern Seaboard between 1805 and 1839, from Maine to Tennessee. The Beecher School was one of the earliest. It seems to have been established more out of necessity than inclination: The Beechers had four children by 1806 (Harriet, of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fame, was not born until 1811) and not enough money. The Rev. Dr. Beecher’s salary of $400 a year, paid in part with firewood, furniture, and food, was apparently not enough to keep him in the style his congregation expected of him as a graduate of the Yale Divinity School and a man of the cloth. The boarding school was a genteel effort to help pay the bills.

Sewing and embroidery were considered, in the early 19th century at least, as important to the education of well-brought-up young ladies as reading and writing, and affluent families paid well to have their daughters taught these skills. In fact, Ms. Whitlock writes, to educate a girl could cost them as much as three times as it did a boy, “owing to the cost of materials suchas imported silks, linen, and framing” necessary in needlework. With very few exceptions, then, the hand-sewn rugs that have come down to us from this time — a time when rugs were used for display as stool covers, hassocks, and the like, rather than workaday floor coverings — were created by upper-class girls whose families could pay the price.

The minister’s wife, Roxana Foote Beecher, came from a prosperous Connecticut family. The East Hampton historian Averill Dayton Geus, whose pamphlet about the Beecher House is available at Village Hall and Home, Sweet Home, described her last week as “an extremely enterprising, ambitious, and accomplished woman” with an eye to the grindstone, in contrast to her husband, whose head, said Mrs. Geus, “was always in the clouds.”

Dr. Beecher was diligent about paying calls on his parishioners, and “every place he went, they gave him a cordial,” she said. “I think he was kind of loopy.” His daughter Catherine Esther, reminiscing about the school in the 1864 “Autobiography of Lyman Beecher,” put it perhaps more diplomatically: “With his house full of young people, father’s constitutional mirthfulness developed itself more freely than ever afterward.”

Indeed, in later life Dr. Beecher preached fierce sermons against the evils of alcohol, becoming a leader of the Temperance movement. History judges him one of the most influential ministers of his time.

Between 1806 and 1810, when he was called to a new congregation in Litchfield, Conn., the Beecher School had 11 students that we know of. Two of them with familiar local names, Sarah Isaacs Payne (a sister of John Howard “Home, Sweet Home” Payne) and Mercy Huntting, must have been day students; the rest were boarders. One young woman came all the way from Honduras, accompanied by her piano, reportedly the first ever seen in East Hampton.

A yarn-sewn wool-on-wool rug featuring hoopoe birds, created by Mercy Huntting while a pupil at the Beecher School and recently sold for $18,000, came to light in 1951 and was featured that May in The Magazine Antiques. Ms. Whitlock credits the rediscovery of Mercy’s rug with having “brought to light a new understanding of rugs and the schools that taught this work.”

The author of that 1951 article was a friend of Ettie Hedges Pennypacker, a direct descendant of Mercy Huntting’s and the owner of the rug at that time. Her husband, Morton Pennypacker, established what is now the Long Island Collection at the East Hampton Library. And today, on the second floor of Village Hall, what was once the schoolroom of the privileged young gentlewomen of the Beecher School is now the office of East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr.

The Village Preservation Society of East Hampton handed the East Hampton Village Board $100,000 last Thursday, which it had raised to spay deer, a program it had suggested. Kathleen Cunningham, the group’s executive director, who was accompanied by Joan Osborne, chairwoman, and John McGuirk, president, told the board that, along with the $30,000 the board had appropriated, spaying would be able to take place this winter. The board authorized Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. to execute a contract with White Buffalo Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Moodus, Conn., that will do the job. 

“I’ve done a lot of fund-raising in my day, and I’ve never seen so much money come in so quickly,” Ms. Cunningham said. “I think you can take this as a vote of confidence” in spaying. Mayor Rickenbach thanked the group for its “very gracious check,” which he said “will go into the appropriate line item in the village budget process and be used specifically for that purpose.”

The number of deer that could be spayed with the money was not mentioned at the meeting, although some have estimated the cost at $1,000 per deer. Nor was the fact that culling is to go along with the program.

Ilissa Meyer of Equine Sport Science, whose husband is Dr. James Meyer, a large-animal veterinarian, criticized the program and questioned who was being hired to carry it through. They have spoken with other veterinarians in East Hampton Town and Village, she said, “who are very concerned about who you are going to bring in to do these experiments.” The mayor, noting the village was working with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, said, “We’ll be as transparent as necessary.”

The village needed “to provide the public with the names and state license numbers of every veterinarian involved with this program,” Ms. Meyer said. That information was not yet available, Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, said.

Ms. Meyer asked that she and her husband be notified at least seven days before the program begins “so that we can inform the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets as to our recourse for what you are about to do.”

After the meeting, Ms. Meyer called spaying both “highly expensive and ineffective,” and said it would have no impact on revegetating the woodland or reducing ticks and tick-borne illnesses, both of which have been cited in support of a reduction in the deer population.

“The animals they’re going to be experimenting on cannot be used for food,” she said. “We have perfectly capable hunters that can do the same thing. . . . Why are you sending the money away? It can be used for food right here.”

Turning its attention to other matters, the board considered an amendment to village code regarding mass-assembly permits, which it plans to schedule for a public hearing. In addition to an existing provision requiring a permit for assemblies of more than 50 people, a separate permit would be required for use of village property for such things as parades, bicycle rides, or events on the beach. They would require security deposits to cover any damage to village property, indemnification of the village, and the ability to seek reimbursement for village personnel. There would be no application fee.

Further, Ms. Molinaro said, “It is at the discretion of my office that if a certain event warrants either public works or police presence, the applicant would be responsible for the additional costs.” She suggested insurance coverage of $1 million per person and $2 million per occurrence for property damage.

In other business, the board heard about a request that the speed limit of Mill Hill Lane be reduced from 30 to 25 miles per hour. The mayor added Meadow Way, which runs parallel to and feeds into Mill Hill Lane, to the discussion.

“We have a bifurcated speed limitation program within the footprint of the village,” the mayor said, noting that motorists driving east on Montauk Highway can turn left onto Toilsome Lane, which has a 25 mile-per-hour speed limit, or right onto Baiting Hollow Road, where the speed limit is 30. He suggested that the board propose an additional five-miles-per-hour reduction there to create uniformity on secondary roads.

A blanket limit of 25 miles per hour is prohibited under state law, said Linda Riley, the village attorney. Chief Gerard Larsen told the board that it had “to articulate a reason you want to lower the speed limit below 30.” The two speed limits, he said, resulted from truck routes, which were designated as 25-miles-per-hour zones. “We were trying to cut down bypasses,” he said, adding that Mill Hill Lane is used as a bypass to avoid the traffic light at Woods Lane. “It would make sense — it’s a real narrow road — and I agree also with Meadow Way. We could pick out more as we go.”

“Are we working toward a village-wide 25-mile-per-hour limit, going in the back door?” Barbara Borsack, the deputy mayor, asked. “It seems that way,” the chief answered. The board decided to schedule a public hearing on the matter.

In the wake of an East Hampton Town Board forum on aircraft noise that drew almost 400 people to LTV Studios on Aug. 27, the East Hampton Village Board unanimously voted in favor of a resolution last Thursday urging the town board to adopt a comprehensive aircraft noise-limitation policy that would include evening and weekend curfews. On Tuesday the Sag Harbor Village Board did the same.

Almost all the East End municipalities — the Southampton, Shelter Island, and Southold Town Boards and the North Haven Village Board — have already passed similar resolutions.

The East Hampton Village resolution refers to “excessive aircraft noise from the ever-increasing traffic of jets, seaplanes, and other propeller aircraft and helicopters approaching and leaving the East Hampton Airport” that “for years has interfered with the East End residents’ peaceful enjoyment of their properties.” A copy of the Sag Harbor resolution was not available Tuesday night.

The East Hampton Village resolution, like those passed in nearby municipalities, asks the town board to “refuse to seek any further Federal Aviation Administration funding,” which allows that agency a degree of control over East Hampton Airport. Bruce Siska, an East Hampton Village Board member who read the resolution aloud, said the Village of Southampton has done that with respect to the heliport at the end of Meadow Lane. A noise-limitation policy, Mr. Siska read, would seek “all other reasonable airport access restrictions” in addition to curfews, including limiting numbers and concentrations of flights and banning the noisiest aircraft to the extent allowed by law.

Several of the F.A.A.’s grant assurances that give it control over East Hampton Airport operations are set to expire on Dec. 31. The village board’s resolution asks the town board to plan to operate the airport as “a self-sustaining enterprise,” and to provide the village board 60 days’ notice of “any future change in airport policy that might have an adverse impact” on village residents and their properties.

Moving aircraft routes is no solution to excessive noise-impact burdens from ever-increasing air traffic, Mr. Siska said, “as exhibited by the 40-percent increase in helicopter traffic this season alone.”

Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said that he supports the East Hampton Airport, which he called “an asset to the community.” Nonetheless, he called the resolution “a culmination of listening to others” and “the right statement that we go on record as providing at this time.”

“It’s what’s happened over the last number of years, specifically as it relates to the helicopter traffic and just the sheer number” of flights into and out of the airport, he said, that prompted the resolution.

Kathleen Cunningham, director of the Quiet Skies Coalition, which seeks to reduce the noise and air pollution resulting from the airport, told the mayor that her group also supports the airport’s existence. “Closing it has never been our intention,” she said. “We just want to rein it in a little.”

When Robert Scott Elley started working as a part-time emergency dispatcher in East Hampton in 1981, things were certainly different. If there was a fire or people needed an ambulance, they called a seven-digit phone number for the fire department and a single dispatcher manning the phone line would push a button alerting emergency workers, then make up a report on a typewriter.

Sitting in front of four screens with highly specialized applications like customized GPS mapping and tracking systems, Mr. Elley ended his 33-year career by signing off over the townwide paging system during a regularly scheduled radio test at noon on Friday, which happened to be his 55th birthday.

Using the old call letters used for East Hampton townwide fire “K-E-E-2-6-1” and “K-R-X-4-0-2” for the Bridgehampton Fire Department (East Hampton Village Emergency Communications stopped dispatching for Bridgehampton several years ago), Mr. Elley’s voice cracked during his seconds-long goodbye.

“This is dispatcher number 18 signing off permanently,” he said in front of a small crowd of onlookers who cheered for him when he was done.

What he got back, over the air, were congratulations, thank-yous, and well wishes from chiefs and officers throughout the six fire departments and two ambulance agencies the village has toned out over the years. Dispatchers elsewhere in the county also called in, and his cellphone did not stop buzzing.

“I’ve been listening to you since I was 3 years old,” East Hampton Fire Department Chief Richard Osterberg Jr. said. “That’s a Roger,” Mr. Elley plainly replied in his signature way.

Many of the officers calling in referred to Scottie or Elmo, a nickname that goes back to the late 1960s when at 11 or 12 he cut lawns in the Oakview Trailer Park. He was always hanging around and the owner of the park, Dick Corwin, joked that he was like the pesky next-door neighbor named Elmo in the comic strip “Blondie” who was always at Dagwood Bumstead’s house. The name just stuck, he said.

Growing up in Freetown, he always wanted to become a New York City firefighter. “But, guess what? I’m afraid of heights,” he said. His father, also Robert Elley, was a 62-year member of the fire department and a HAM radio operator, so scanners, pagers, and citizens’ band radios were always making sweet noise in his house. “You used to have to move your antenna around the house to get a signal. But you could talk to anybody on the CB,” Mr. Elley recalled. “That’s kind of how I got into the dispatching end of that.”

After he graduated from East Hampton High School in 1978, he joined the fire department. He served as chief from 1994 to 1995, and an assistant chief from 1991 to 1994, and then again from 1999 to 2002. He is still a member.

After working four years as a part-timer, he became a full-time dispatcher with the East Hampton Fire Department in June of 1985. When the village’s Emergency Communications Building was built (it was completed in 1991), the fire and police dispatching departments combined. There was talk them of combining with the town police dispatchers, a discussion that is still going on all these years later.

“I don’t know where the time went,” Mr. Elley said, looking back at his long career and how much his job changed. “Now with the 911 system computerized, we can pinpoint exactly where you are. Back then, 911 was just a phone, and you’d pick up and go, ‘Hello, where are you?’ You look where it is now; it was so antiquated then. But we got help to everybody that needed it,” he said.

Dispatchers had to know every street, but oftentimes locals reported being at a local landmark and dispatchers rarely needed to even pick up a map. “People back then would give you a place. ‘I’m at Cliff Foster’s farm.’ Guess what? I know where that is.”

J.P. Foster, the senior supervising dispatcher for the East Hampton Village Emergency Communications Department, said Mr. Elley’s retirement leaves a void. “His knowledge of local history was key to the department. He certainly saw a lot of change in his years of service and he adapted well. He will be sorely missed,” he said.

Mr. Elley’s voice became so familiar on the air that firemen could tell by his intonation whether it was going to be a serious fire or not. “It’s that personal contact you have with the guys on the radio, and you need that,” he said.

In the days long before caller ID, you never knew who was going to be on the other end of the phone, but one thing has remained constant: Dispatchers are the first to render aid. Mr. Elley remembered taking a call from the wife of a fellow fireman who called in hysterics when their young son was having a seizure and seemed to be choking. “Still they say, ‘You helped save our son.’ Now he’s a big grown adult,” Mr. Elley said.

That’s what the past three decades have been about for him — helping the community. “People call up and they’re in duress, and I could be the calming voice at the end of the phone,” he said. “People think we just sit there, and we could be sitting there for 10 hours and not having anything, but when that one call comes in, bam, you’ve got to know what to do.”

Mr. Elley said he decided to retire after he built up 35 years in the New York State retirement system, having worked for the school before becoming a dispatcher. It was evident that dispatching was a job he loves and that has become a part of his life. What he will miss the most is the camaraderie, he said. But the dispatchers aren’t letting him slip away completely; they’ve already made requests for his famous meals. Some may remember that he cooked with Ina Garten on her Food Network television show “Barefoot Contessa” in 2012.

“You’ll be seeing me around,” Mr. Elley said to one Montauk officer who called in after his sign off.

“I don’t doubt it, but is anybody going to know what I’m talking about going forward?” the man asked.

“That they will,” Mr. Elley assured him.

 

Three hundred and eighty-five people from both the North and South Forks made plenty of noise last week at an East Hampton Town Board forum on aircraft noise. All but one of the 53 speakers at the meeting, which was aired live on cable in the East End towns, asked the board to reject Federal Aviation Administration grants and impose restrictions, such as curfews and a limit on the number of flights, that would reduce airplane and helicopter noise across the region.

The board has been collecting data to submit to the F.A.A., which must give its permission before a municipality can enact such restrictions.

The acceptance of federal money comes with strings attached — “grant assurances” that guarantee a degree of F.A.A. control over an airport. Several such are set to expire at the end of this year, and the town board has held off on seeking new grants. The previous board had taken the initial steps to accept new federal grants.

“This right, no other town board has had,” Frank Dalene, founder of East Hampton Helicopter Noise and a co-founder of East Hampton’s Quiet Skies Coalition, said of what many called an opportunity, come January, to make meaningful changes aimed at noise reduction.

The generally polite audience cheered and applauded Mr. Dalene after he declared that “people are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.”

“You can make it happen,” Margaret Skabry of Peconic told the town board. “You have a golden opportunity. Be the heroes.”

“This is a watershed moment for the aircraft noise-abatement movement. The people have spoken,” Kathleen Cunningham, Quiet Skies Coalition director, wrote in a letter to the editor this week.

The Southampton, Shelter Island, and Southold Town Boards, and the North Haven Village Board have all passed recent resolutions asking East Hampton not to accept new F.A.A. grants, and to address airport noise. Twenty-one elected officials attended last week’s meeting, which came on the heels of similar forums in Southold, Bridgehampton, and on Shelter Island.

“We’re on fire on this issue; we’re not going to let go of it,” vowed Shelter Island Supervisor James Dougherty.

“It’s an issue that transcends all bor ders,” said Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst. “How inspired we are by the difference [from] what we used to see,” she added, speaking of the previous East Hampton administration.

“We did try the voluntary compliance,” said Ms. Throne-Holst. (The airport management has been asking pilots to follow certain noise-abatement procedures on a volunteer basis.) “We know for a fact that didn’t work.”

Numerous speakers said East Hampton Airport should be, as it once was, a small recreational facility, rather than a base for commercial interests, as it has become. Helicopter ride-sharing services, easily accessible through an app, began this summer, during which airport traffic went up by more than 40 percent.

Officials and residents alike offered to back East Hampton Town in the face of potential lawsuits. The Eastern Region Helicopter Council and an aviation group called Friends of the East Hampton Airport have mounted an aggressive media and industry campaign to paint the noise-reduction efforts as an attempt to close the airport altogether.

Friends of the East Hampton Airport, in a recent newsletter, promised to sue if town officials did not meet with their representatives by the first week of September. No reply was received by press time to an email message to the group, which had rallied its members to attend last week’s meeting, promising “robust and aggressive counterarguments and a public relations strategy.” No one spoke on behalf of the group at the forum, however.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. suggested that those opposed to noise-reduction efforts “have narrower, self-economic interests than the general interest of the people of the East End.”

Christine Scalera, a Southampton Town councilwoman, said there was a “blatant disregard by certain people of the local population here . . . those who choose to profit, to the detriment of the residents.”

“The North Fork bears the brunt of the noise,” said Suffolk Legislator Al Krupski. And, he said, “absolutely, there’s no benefit at all.”

Adjusting aircraft routes only shifts the problem, according to many speakers. The solution, said Jim Colligan of Shelter Island, “is to significantly reduce the volume of flights into the airport.” The helicopter companies that are opposing restrictions, he said, “have underestimated the will of the people.” The issue “has galvanized the East End community like no other.”

“I know that the greedy aviation interests will probably file a lawsuit on Jan. 1 or 2,” said Patricia Currie of Sag Harbor. But, she said, “to the pilots in the room and the commercial operators who are making our lives hell . . . it is time for you to leave. Take your money and fly away home.”

Commercial interests are profiting, she charged, at the price of “our health, our well-being, the pollution of our environment, and the total destruction of our peace and quiet.”

Mr. Thiele acknowledged the airport’s role in the regional economy. “But,” he said, “the intensity of use has grown to the point where it is having an adverse impact.” East End residents, he said, have repeatedly affirmed their desire to protect the character and quality of life of their towns, for example by voting for the community preservation fund tax.

Barry Raebeck, the Quiet Skies co-founder, discussed East Hampton’s long resistance to overdevelopment. “The assault from the air is perhaps the most invasive and aggressive of all,” he said.

“Science tells us that aircraft noise is extremely disturbing to animals,” including humans, said Jim Mathews of East Hampton, a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. Numerous studies have shown, he said, that recurring aircraft noise “is a truly biological disruptive behavior,” affecting, among other things, adult cardiovascular health and children’s attention spans.

David Lichtenstein of Shelter Island, a clinical psychologist, concurred. “It’s not simply a quality-of-life issue or an economic issue, but a health issue to eliminate the helicopters,” he said. “Sleep disturbance has a demonstrable effect on immune response.”

Others spoke of near-misses in the air and safety concerns, particularly regarding helicopters. “Please consider the safety issue before we have a disaster,” said Henry Rossi of North Haven. “I think you have more traffic than this airport can handle.”

Although noise-reduction advocates have repeatedly insisted that aviation interests are wrong in saying there is an agenda to close the airport altogether, Peter Wolf warned that if reasonable noise restrictions are not adopted, “the next step will likely be a more strident effort to close the airport.”

Mr. Wolf, chairman of the East Hampton Village Preservation Society’s airport noise committee and a member of the town board’s committee, was applauded. He and Ken Lipper had written to their village neighbors, 300 of whom, he said, had responded favorably, in support of airport use restrictions to curb noise.

“As I see it, we only really have two choices here: shut it up, or shut it down,” said Tom MacNiven, vice chairman of the town’s airport noise committee.

Several people spoke emotionally of frustration, stretching over years, at having to live with disturbing aircraft noise, and of calling in complaints to the airport noise hotline to no effect.

“I just cannot call anymore; the stress level — I get so angry,” said Tom Maguire of Cutchogue. “I’m so sick of this; it’s horrible,” said Amy Greenberg of Mattituck.

“No matter where I go, I cannot escape the pounding noise,” said Teresa McCaski. “We on the North Fork have been inundated, all to accommodate the wealthy.”

“Complaint fatigue is a real issue,” said Ms. Cunningham, the Quiet Skies Coalition director.

Richard Prins suggested that the town encourage the Long Island Rail Road to provide fast, luxury rail service from Manhattan to the East End. “If they want to spend $500 to get here, then they can get here in a quiet way,” he said.

Tony Lambert from Bridgehampton was the sole speaker who did not see aviation noise as a problem. “Me personally, I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t care,” he said.

The East Hampton Town Board’s airport liaison, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, said the board was “absolutely committed to addressing the noise problem and finding a lawful solution.” However, she warned those assembled to “be realistic,” as the town must follow “a complex web of laws, procedures, and requirements” throughout the process.

In the coming weeks, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said, the board will prepare a detailed outline and timetable “for adopting appropriate rules to address the noise problem.”