Legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele with Assemblyman Steve Cymbrowitz and State Senator Tony Avella, is giving hope to fans of East Hampton's mute swans, who are a picturesque presence on Town Pond and other local water bodies.

Earlier this year, New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation proposed a plan to eradicate the state's mute swan population of 2,200 by the year 2025, saying that the non-native birds displace native wildlife and destroy habitat, among other things.

People were upset by the D.E.C.'s plan to hunt and destroy mute swans and their eggs, and eventually the D.E.C. agreed to revisit the plan.

The bill put forward by Mr. Thiele, Mr. Avella, and Mr. Cymbrowitz, which has passed in the state house and senate, requires that the D.E.C. hold at least two public hearings with proper public notice in mute swan areas, after which there must be a public comment period of no less than 45 days. Any resulting management plan would have to give priority to alternative and non-lethal actions, provide a scientific explanation of the threat of future populations and current populations, with additional public education and answer to public comment. The bill will be reviewed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who must sign it for it to become law.

"Many wildlife experts, rehabilitators, and environmentalists do not agree that exterminating the mute swan population is justified," Mr. Thiele said in a release. "In addition, there is debate amongst such experts about whether the planned eradication of the mute swan population is even minimally beneficial to the ecosystem or to our environment."

"This legislation will enable D.E.C. policy to follow the science regarding mute swans," State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle said.

The owner of a house where an 11-year-old boy drowned earlier this month will have to appear in court over building code violations town officials found after the boy's death.

David Betts, the director of the town's public safety division, said a citation was issued to Elizabeth Bianco, the listed owner of 508 Route 114 in East Hampton last Thursday when a follow-up inspection revealed that several previously reported issues related to pool safety had not yet been fixed properly.

East Hampton Town police Detective Sgt. Greg Schaefer has said he did not believe the any of the building code issues contributed to the boy's death. A family friend who was with him saw him go out into the pool area, he said.

Mr. Betts and Tom Preiato, the town's chief building inspector, said they had given Ms. Bianco, and her husband, Joseph Bianco, ample time to correct violations of the New York State Property Maintenance Code as it pertains to pools. While the homeowners were cooperative, 11 days after the drowning, three doors leading from the house into the pool area still didn't have alarms on them and five gates leading to the pool were not self-closing or self-latching, the officials said.

Derek B. Smith, an 11-year-old from Brooklyn, was visiting the house on June 1 with a family friend who reportedly works for one of the Biancos. The woman, whose name police did not release, found Derek at the bottom of the pool after he was out of her sight for just three or four minutes while playing with a ball around the pool. He was not breathing, and despite resuscitation efforts, he was pronounced dead at Southampton Hospital.

After his initial inspection, Mr. Preiato reported five of the doors leading out to the pool were not outfitted with alarms and five exterior gates were not self-closing and self-latching. Also, he said, a section of the pool fence that was approximately 8 feet long was only 36 inches high where 48 inches is required and a section of lattice fencing had spacing between it that was greater than the 1 3/4 inches that is permitted.

Officials said that immediate efforts were made, but some were "temporary solutions."

Mr. Betts said town officials are following normal procedure in issuing a summons since all of the issues were not taken care of in a reasonable amount of time. "I'm sure they will rectify all the issues," he said. "We have an obligation as well."

In late 2001, Mr. Preiato inspected the property before the certificate of occupancy was issued in 2002. It met code requirements at that time, he said.

Ms. Bianco, who could not be reached for comment, is due in East Hampton Town Justice Court on July 7.

In a four-way race for two seats, Robby Stein and Sandra Schroeder were victorious during Tuesday’s election.

Mr. Stein, the only incumbent running this time around, was the top vote-getter, taking in 308 votes to win a fourth term in office.

Ms. Schroeder, a former village clerk who retired in 2010, was elected with 270 votes. She worked for the village for 21 years, but came out of retirement to run for mayor last year, and lost by 11 votes to the incumbent, Mayor Brian Gilbride.

She said she had not planned to run again this year because she did not want to run against Mr. Stein or Kevin Duchemin, but when Mr. Duchemin decided not to seek re-election, she said he called her and asked to reconsider.

John Shaka, a Save Sag Harbor board member who has lived in the village for 15 years, received 219 votes.

Mr. Stafford, a former member of the village board who was ousted in a three-way race with Mr. Stein and Mr. Duchemin in 2012, finished last with 124 votes.

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According to Beth Kamper,  the village clerk, 468 people voted by machine, while 43 sent in absentee ballots. There were also four write-in votes; two for Scott W. Smith, one for Mary Anne Miller, and one for Margaret Bromberg.

The Town of Southampton has earned the highest rating possible from Standard & Poor's Rating Services, it announced on Tuesday.

The town received an upgrade from AA+ to AAA, meaning that S&P believes it is “likely to keep its economic score very high for the foreseeable future."

Standard & Poor’s looks to many factors to determine the rating, including the town's economy, management, budgetary flexibility, liquidity, budgetary performance, debt and contingent liabilities, and institutional framework, all of which it identified as "strong" or "very strong." The town was also assigned a "stable" outlook due to strong economic factors.

"Likewise, Southampton's management is strong, and we therefore do not foresee any managerial changes that would likely have a negative impact on the rating. The town's financial factors are either strong or very strong, and - at least in the short term - on an upswing, in our opinion," the report stated.

"This rating is the result of the past four years of fiscal discipline throughout Town Hall operations, and extraordinary guidance and hard work on the part of our financial staff," said Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst in a release. "Five years ago the Town was facing multi-million dollar deficits, an economic downturn, and escalating pension and insurance costs. Today we are a textbook example of the tangible results achieved through strong financial management - a change we have accomplished while maintaining and ever improving constituent services."     

In August 2009, Southampton was five years ago, when it was placed on a credit watchlist, in danger of losing its Aa1 long-term general obligation unlimited rating. In February 2010, Moody's rating agency lowered the town's rating a half-step to Aa2 due to issues with its fund balance reserve policy, which had been reduced from 25 percent to 15 percent two years before.

Tuesday’s announcement comes after the town, including the supervisor and the comptroller, Leonard Marchese, and Michael Kelly and Richard Halverson of the town's budget and finance committee, made a presentation to S&P in Manhattan on June 2.

The Town of East Hampton does not use S & P for ratings, according to Len Bernard, the budget officer. It has always used Moody's, he said. In August, East Hampton’s rating was upgraded from A1 to Aa3, indicating a "stable outlook."

Housing in East Hampton is more expensive than in any other East End town and more out of reach for working people, a housing committee reported to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

While median home prices here have risen 215 percent since 1999, the median family income here has risen only 43 percent, it was reported. Compared to most other areas of the East End and Suffolk County, more homeowners and renters here are “greatly burdened” by housing costs.

Using data from the 2010 census as well as from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and other sources, a newly reconstituted Community Housing Opportunity Fund committee is working to update a plan for the creation of affordable housing in East Hampton. The first step, committee members said during their presentation, was to get a handle on available housing, its cost, and affordability.

Sixty percent of housing here is occupied seasonally rather than by year-round residents. Last year, according to Suffolk Research Services, the median price of a house was $907,000 — almost 13 times greater than the annual median household income of $74,895.

That figure is lower than the median elsewhere on Long Island. According to H.U.D. estimates, the 2014 median household income in Nassau and Suffolk Counties is $105,125 for a family of four. In East Hampton Town, 25 percent of households earn less than half of that. Among households that rent, 45 percent earn less than half the Nassau-Suffolk figure.

The total number of housing units in East Hampton Town, which includes a section of Sag Harbor, rose between 1990 and 2010 from 17,068 to 21,038, although the numbers declined in Sag Harbor and in Montauk, where there were 149 fewer housing units in 2010 than two decades earlier.

However, if future development is consistent with current zoning, the town could see a 13-percent increase in the number of existing housing units, the committee reported.

There are three times more owner-occupied housing units than rental units, the committee found. Rental units are distributed unevenly throughout the town, with the majority in a neighborhood defined as “East Hampton North,” followed by Springs and Montauk.

In general, said Eric Schantz, a committee member and town planner, “the demographics vary very, very widely,” among the various hamlets. Springs, the report notes, has a “significantly larger” average household size among both its rented and owner-occupied houses.

Records of housing code violations “provide some insight” into substandard housing conditions here, the committee reported. Nearly half the cases handled by the ordinance enforcement department between 2011 and 2013 involving housing violations, 281 out of 566 cases, involved property in Springs, the records show.

Based on a burgeoning Springs School population, “We really would not be recommending any significant affordable housing in Springs,” Job Potter, the housing committee chairman, told the board.

The committee will continue with an analysis of factors such as real estate assessed value, tax rates, and school taxes in order to help the board decide where best to locate affordable housing in the future.

The New York State Department of Health has weighed in on whether the wood preservative on the utility poles recently installed by PSEG Long Island along a six-mile route in East Hampton Town, saying it poses no health or environmental safety risk.

Despite the state agency’s finding, however, Long Island Businesses for Responsible Energy, or LIBFRE, a group of residents along the transmission route from East Hampton Village to Amagansett, and other concerned residents, said this week through the organization’s co-chair, Rebecca Singer, that there are “very real concerns associated with the toxic waste sitting in front of our homes, and toxins in the air, soil, and probably water.” Ms. Singer distributed an analysis by Pamela Miller, the executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics, who serves on the steering committee of an international pollutants review board, and a rebuttal of the state’s findings by Peter Dermody, the principal hydrogeologist of Dermody Consulting, which LIBFRE had hired to test soil around the poles.

In a June 6 letter to East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Dr. Thomas  B. Johnson of the New York State Bureau of Toxic Substance Assessment cited Environmental Protection Agency findings that the use of pentachlorophenol, or penta, “will not pose unreasonable risks to humans or the environment.” In other letters to James Tomarken, the Suffolk County health commissioner, Dr. Johnson said “people would be unlikely to contact soil near the poles with sufficient duration and frequency to result in a significant risk for adverse health effects.” He said that would even be true “at the highest penta levels cited in the Dermody report.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Dermody responded. He noted that although the E.P.A. allows the use of penta, the agency listed it as a “probable carcinogen.”  He quotes an E.P.A. “hazard summary” that reads, “Pentachlorophenol is extremely toxic to humans from acute (short-term) ingestion and inhalation exposure.” He reiterated his finding that the concentrations of penta detected in the soil around the PSEG-installed poles exceed, by up to 300 times, the state threshold for soil cleanup.

“The conclusion in your letters that these concentrations are well below the levels that could be safely ingested by a child are inconsistent with the E.P.A.’s findings regarding penta’s toxicity, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s studies, and fail to account for the reason that penta was banned in 26 countries, and banned in the United States for all purposes except utility poles,” Mr. Dermody wrote. Mr. Dermody questioned the state agency’s assessment of odors around the poles as “nuisance odors,” with symptoms that dissipate quickly.

He cites the E.P.A.’s  own measures for the minimum concentrations at which the human nose can detect the chemical, (131 milligrams per cubic meter), and the much lower level (2.5 milligrams per cubic meter) at which the Centers for Disease Control’s National Institute for Safety and Health decrees airborne penta levels to be an “immediate danger to life and health” — a designation described by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as pertaining to something that “would cause irreversible adverse health effects.” Dermody Consulting, Mr. Dermody says, “noted strong odors emanating from the poles three to four months after they were installed. Therefore, the residents’ exposure to penta is ongoing.” Dogs who have stepped on soil adjacent to the poles, or have gotten penta from the poles on their fur, could then transfer it to humans.

Seepage of the chemical into the water table, or direct contact of the poles with the groundwater, is also a concern, Mr. Dermody said, noting that the poles have been installed in an area where the water table is about seven feet below grade.

Mr. Cantwell said yesterday that he would review the additional information from Mr. Dermody as well as Ms. Miller’s report. However, he said, the town has little standing to challenge a state health department finding, and that changing the agency’s recommendations regarding penta is something the town is “not prepared to take on.”

June 11 marked an exciting day for the Eastville Community Historical Society, when archaeological students from the University of Minnesota used ground-penetrating radar and mapping techniques to survey the 160-year-old A.M.E. Zion Cemetery. Dedicated to preserving the history of the Eastville area of Sag Harbor for some 30 years, the society has desperately needed money and help to maintain the St. David A.M.E. Zion Church Cemetery.

The church was built in 1839 by African-Americans in the community and the cemetery was founded for members of the congregation in 1857. Eastville itself is one of the earliest known working-class multiethnic communities and in the 1800s was made up of free blacks, European immigrants, and Native Americans. Both African-Americans and Native Americans are buried in the A.M.E. Zion Cemetery.

The historical society was awarded a site preservation grant by the Archaeological Institute of America in 2013. Even so, the grant could not cover all of the cemetery’s expenses, which included a much-needed GIS (geographic information systems) mapping session and a fence to prevent residential encroachment. Luckily for the historical society, Professor Katherine Hayes from the University of Minnesota stepped in to help. This June, the university ran a field school in archaeological survey methods at the Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, and a portion of the program was devoted to studying and mapping the A.M.E. Zion Cemetery.

Georgette Grier-Key, director of the Eastville Community Historical Society, felt especially thankful to Ms. Hayes and said, “This work would cost $8,000 or more, but because of Kat Hayes, we are getting it done in-kind.” The historical society also has the aid of Emily Kambic Button, a doctoral student at Brown University, and Allison Manfred McGovern, the archaeologist in residence.

According to Chris Brink, a student of archaeology at the University of Minnesota, ground-penetrating radar technology “takes a picture of what is in the soil by sending radar waves into the ground and returning anomalies that exist.” The data collected can then be used, in conjunction with GIS technology, to form a map of what is underneath the soil. This will be particularly useful to the Eastville Community Historical Society, as, without grave markers, it is unsure of how many people are buried in the church cemetery or how far out it extends. The ground-penetrating radar is completely nonintrusive and is therefore ideal for use in cemeteries.

“The aim of the survey,” as Mr. Brink pointed out, “is conservation and preservation, not excavation.”

In conjunction with the archaeological work being done, the Eastville Community Historical Society unveiled the new cemetery sign and hosted a “Sacred Spaces Symposium” on the same day. The new sign, which lists the names of all known people buried in the cemetery and where their graves are located, is a vast improvement on the old, which was wooden and read “A.M.E. Zion Cemetery” in worn letters.

In attendance was Gary Cole, whose great-grandmother Rose Johnson was buried in the A.M.E. Zion Cemetery. Mr. Cole’s grandparents lived in a 1925 house on Hampton Road that the Eastville Community Historical Society now uses as its headquarters. The house was assigned to the society in 1996 by the village of Sag Harbor. Wednesday marked Mr. Cole’s first visit to the house since his childhood, and the first time seeing his family plot in the Eastville cemetery.

Mr. Cole extended his thanks to the historical society and the University of Minnesota by saying, “As a member of the Johnson family I’m here to thank you, and to thank you on behalf of my family.”

Eunice Jackie Vaughan, president of the historical society, also spoke and said, “We’re just so glad that we reached this stage, because this poor cemetery had just been here for so long, and had been forgotten.”

Ms. Grier-Key then spoke about two cemetery upkeep programs that the society is implementing this summer. One, the Stone Cleaning Stewardship program, is designed for children, and will provide them with educational materials on cleaning headstones, as well as the tools to do so. The second is the Adopt a Grave program, which will encourage individuals and businesses to adopt a burial plot for a minimum of $50 and aid in its upkeep. The donations will go to cemetery improvement and hiring necessary contractors. The society is also working on an online database of their collections and the headstones in the cemetery.

After the new sign was unveiled, a “Sacred Spaces Symposium” was held at the Eastville Community Historical Society’s headquarters. The purpose of the symposium was to, as Ms. Grier-Key said, “bring like communities together, like Wantagh, Setauket, and Sag Harbor.” Both Wantagh and Setauket had multiethnic communities comparable to the community in Eastville. Denice Evans-Sheppard of the Long Island Native American Indian alliance, Katherine Hayes, Vivian Nicholson-Mueller, and Maura Doyle gave presentations on their respective fields of historic research.

The Eastville Community Historical Society is very hopeful about the future, and grateful for all of the recent help it has received. Kathleen Tucker, the society’s historian and one of the founding members, was not sure if the day would come when the society would have the money it needed for cemetery upkeep. “I really feel as if everybody who has contributed even a fingertip worth of work has added up to make this possible,” she said.

Come September South Fork students will have access to increased mental health services, with the hiring of a full-time social worker and an as-needed child and adolescent psychiatrist.

State and local legislators, school administrators, and community members formed a united front to fund the initiative. Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle jointly secured $150,000 in state funds, and Legislator Jay Schneiderman secured an additional $17,500 from the county. The East Hampton School District contributed $5,000 for the coming school year.

“It’s a testament to local politics working,” said Adam Fine, the principal of East Hampton High School, this week. “We can’t be more thankful. It’s long overdue and very badly needed.”

With constant psychiatric referrals and two students recently hospitalized, in addition to the suicide last month of a recent high school graduate, Tyler Valcich, Mr. Fine underscored the need for increased access to local services. Stony Brook University Hospital currently houses the nearest psychiatric facility.

“Everyone is coming together to try and make a difference,” said Mr. Schneiderman. “Next year is another story. I hope to get a larger allocation. For now, that’s what’s available, and we wanted to get things started.”

Larry Weiss, the senior vice president for programs at the Family Service League, which has a clinic in East Hampton, will oversee the hiring of the two practitioners. The social worker will split his or her time between the various schools from Montauk to Hampton Bays, and will also see patients in the clinic.

The hope is that the social worker will be a point person to assess crisis situations. Currently, school administrators shoulder the burden themselves. The part-time child and adolescent psychiatrist would conduct consultations, whether in person or using electronic media.

The question remains as to where the money will come from in the future and how the first stage might be expanded. The original plan, the first of a three-pronged project, proposed the hiring of a full-time child psychiatrist and two full-time social workers at an estimated cost of $320,000.

The second phase would hire additional social workers and community health workers, and would include a mobile unit that could go wherever needed. The third and final phase would bring Stony Brook psychiatrists to Southampton Hospital as part of an expanded residency program.

In other news, East Hampton School Board members, at their last meeting of the school year on Tuesday night, approved medical leaves for Karen Powers, Devon Grisham, Margaret Hatch, and Christine Roberts. Alison Fritzen will take a leave without pay for child-rearing purposes from early September until mid-February 2015.

The board also approved teachingand administrative positions for the district’s summer school. Classes begin July 7.

Jackie Lowey, a board member, later urged that schools maintain higher academic standards during the last month of school. “We can do a lot more with this last month of school than we’re doing,” she said, adding that the emphasis should be on making class time “more meaningful and relevant.”

Board members also discussed the lunch policy and the increasing costs of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Most people don’t grow up thinking, “I want to be an astronaut, but if that doesn’t work out I’ll be a real estate agent.” For the most part, on the South Fork anyway, agents got to their present positions by way of first careers. Some started as models. Think: Beate Moore, Jane Gill, Angela Boyer-Stump, and John Healey. Some began in marketing; Gary DePersia is a prime example. Quite a few were in teaching, finance, or the arts. There is probably only one former anchorwoman.

That person is Nanette Hansen of Sotheby’s International Realty. Ms. Hansen had a 19-year career as an Emmy Award-winning television journalist and anchorwoman for NBC, CNBC, and CBS. Her impetus for going into real estate followed the path of many others. She simply fell in love with life on the South Fork. After anchoring the national news at 4:30 a.m., she said she could be on the golf course by 1 p.m. on Fridays, but “dreaded going back Sunday nights.” She needed a way to support herself while enjoying the area’s lifestyle. Having always been “fascinated” by real estate — “the economy turns on the health of real estate,” she said — it seemed like a logical next step. Getting her license in 2005, she closed on two house deals within six months. “One universal thread you’ll find amongst the most successful brokers is that everybody brings different skill sets; the most successful are the ones with broad knowledge and experience,” she said. “Landing a seat at Sotheby’s is equivalent to landing at “60 Minutes.” They both have high standards, sophistication, and are as knowledgeable as it gets.” Does she ever regret her decision? “I feel it was the best choice I ever made. It’s also the hardest job I’ve ever had. It’s very competitive and makes on-air talent competition look tame.”

Myles Reilly of Saunders couldn’t have had a more different background. Directly out of school he became a dancer, performing around the world from the Lido in Paris to Broadway, where he was in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” When he retired at 30 he bought and renovated a house in Bridgehampton, which he sold in short order — making an impression onPaul Brennan, who recruited him for Braverman Newbold Brennan, his firm at the time. “People think I’m crazy when I say this, but I think show biz and real estate are similar,” he said. “You’re selling yourself in both.”

Almost all the brokers canvassed for this column went into real estate because they had fallen in love with the place and it was a career that allowed them to excel with the potential to earn a significant living. John Gicking, the brokerage manager of the Sotheby’s East Hampton office, spent 15 years in banking before he “burned out” and “wanted to escape New York and live out here.” He had just completed a course on architecture at Columbia University, but decided that architecture was not the career for him. When he purchased a house in Amagansett through Sotheby’s, a top broker there “put a bug in my ear about real estate.”

While in private banking Mr. Gicking had worked on a team that handled Ralph Lauren’s personal account. When he moved on to Bankers Trust he ran a commercial trading desk that transacted $1 billion daily. “Private banking taught me a language in dealing with high-net individuals,” he said. “Sales and trading taught me a language in dealing with the Wall Street population. Both became key drivers to my business.”

Terry Thompson of Douglas Elliman also hails from a background in finance. S-he was at Shearson Lehman Brothers when she was recruited by Paine Webber to work in its Southampton office in 2000 to specialize in retirement planning. But she decided to leave when she realized she “wasn’t happy going to work.” She was frustrated that she “couldn’t control what I was selling. I could present an investment but it could go down in value. It bothered me that the market was never honest.”

On the other hand real estate was a commodity you could “touch and feel.” She began by investing in houses, jazzing up the interiors, and turning them over. She started brokering real estate in January 2009, just when the market plummeted. “Everyone said, ‘You’re crazy, you’re never going to make it.’ “ She realized she had to differentiate herself from the crowd. So, coming from finance, she immediately “walked into mortgage companies” to pick their brains about the state of the market. “They all told her, “You don’t need to know that.” But when she approached Wells Fargo Private Mortgage Banking, Christine Curiale told her, “You’re the only agent who’s ever walked in here asking questions. I have all this TARP money and we need to give it out.” So Ms. Thompson found a niche working with “first-time buyers who nobody else wanted to work with.” Those customers begot more, catapulting her to the top ranks of local brokers.

Drew Green of Saunders spent eight years in New York in advertising, ending up at J. Walter Thompson. But he knew he didn’t want to continue in that career so moved to Southampton for the summer of ’93. “It was my last opportunity to be young and irresponsible,” he said. “I figured I’d hang out for the summer and worry about it in the fall.” While teaching tennis, he got his master’s degree and began to teach elementary and high school locally. One day his wife at the time showed him a commission check. “For one deal her check was basically my annual salary.”

But he doesn’t regret either earlier career choice. From advertising he learned how to “organize a presentation to justify the value of a property.” And from teaching he learned what might be the most important aspects of being an agent in the demanding world of Hamptons buyers and sellers: “nurturing and patience.”

On Tuesday night, by a vote of 240 to 145, Bridgehampton voters finally  pierced the state-imposed tax cap on a $12.3 million budget for the 2014-15 school year. The budget was before voters for the second time, and it passed by a supermajority of 62 percent, just over the 60 percent required. The same budget had been put before voters in May, when only 54 percent of voters were willing to pierce the cap.

Laura Spillane, the district treasurer, announced the results in the school’s gymnasium shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m. The mood quickly turned celebratory, with relief audible. About a dozen residents of different ages had filtered into the gym to cast their ballots before the polls closed. Lois Favre, the district superintendent, stood watching, saying she remained “hopeful” in the minutes leading up the count. All told, 385 voters turned out.

On May 20, when only 247 turned out for the first vote, the result was 134 to 113. Had the budget gone down a second time, Bridgehampton would have been forced to adopt a budget based on this year’s figures — with cuts amounting to nearly $800,000 according to Ron White, the school board president. He blamed complacency and low voter turnout for the initial defeat.

Douglas DeGroot, who has served on the school board for the past four years, said Tuesday’s revote left him feeling vindicated. “A lot of people thought we were arrogant to go out with the same budget, but we cut as much as we could,” said Mr. DeGroot. “It’s great to finally get this community support.”

“I’m very happy,” said Tamara George, whose son is in the first grade. Since relocating from Virginia, she said her son has received unparalleled individual attention, helping him catch up to his peers. “This is a wonderful school.”

Dorothy White, who has worked as a custodian for the past 20 years, cheered. “This is awesome,” she said. A graduate of the school, Ms. White’s four children also are graduates and her son is school board president. In addition, she has two grandchildren who are enrolled now. “As a hard worker, I just didn’t want to see anyone lose their job.” 

The Bridgehampton School enrolls around 170 students. It asked voters to okay a $1.1 million, or 9.93-percent, increase over the current year’s $11.2 million spending plan. The 2014-15 budget translates to a $10.6 million tax levy — or an increase of 8.8 percent. Under a state law that went into effect in 2012, the cap on property tax increases is either 2 percent or the Consumer Price Index — whichever is lower. This year, school districts faced caps of 1.46 percent. 

Bridgehampton was among four districts across Long Island that put forth cap-busting budgets. Only East Hampton, with 73 percent of voter support, was successful during last month’s vote. Budgets in West Babylon and Sayville were similarly struck down, and these districts put forth reduced budgets on Tuesday. They were approved by 73 percent and 76 percent of voters, respectively. The Bridgehampton School Board had unanimously  agreed to resubmit the $12.3 million budget.  As a result, Bridgehampton will see the biggest tax increase across Nassau and Suffolk Counties for the coming school year.