Three days after work on a massive rock revetment in front of Mollie Zweig's oceanfront house at 11 West End Road in East Hampton had begun, the project was ordered to a halt in State Supreme Court in Riverhead.

Arguing in court over a cumulative five hours Tuesday and Wednesday, David Eagan, a lawyer representing the East Hampton Town Trustees, won a temporary restraining order to stop the project — which included removing a rock groin, building a dune with 4,000 cubic yards of sand, planting beach grass, and installing sand fence.

Late Wednesday, Justice Paul J. Baisley Jr. instructed Ms. Zweig and her co-defendants, the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, the Village of East Hampton and its Department of Code Enforcement, and the Town of East Hampton, and the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals as additional defendants, to appear on Nov. 27.

The defendants will be asked to show cause as to why the order prohibiting further action on the project should be lifted. The trustees say that most, if not all, of the property on which the work is taking place is within their jurisdiction and not on Ms. Zweig's land.

"The judge really didn't appreciate [Ms.] Zweig's approach to this matter," Mr. Eagan said in an interview on Thursday morning. "He called it 'untenable' for the applicants to unilaterally decide they are outside of what is traditionally a governmental agency's jurisdiction, or to think they have a right to build a project and sort it out later. We agree. We also agree that their claims to ownership of that property are at best tenuous. . . . We believe our analysis has shown that the trustees own that property."

Mr. Eagan repeated his advice to Ms. Zweig to seek a permit from the trustees and admonished her and her representatives for having "put themselves in this position and raised issues, not the least of which is village's boundaries, [on] which the judge disagreed with Zweig's attorney,"

Ms. Zweig has been represented by Stephen Angel of Esseks, Hefter and Angel. Mr. Angel did not return a call seeking comment.

"This is all a result of the fact that they unilaterally believe they don't have to go to the trustees. . . . If they were so certain of title, they had ample opportunities to come to the trustees. They never did that," Mr. Eagan said.

Previous coverage: Trustees Seek Stop-Work Order on Sea Wall

A sterilization program should accompany lethal methods used to cull the deer population in the Village of East Hampton, the executive director of the Village Preservation Society told the village board at its meeting Friday.

But that will not be a component of the program in its initial stages, Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, told Kathy Cunningham. Ms. Cunningham attended the meeting to inquire as to the planned culling program, which is expected to commence in February or March, and to advocate for inclusion of sterilization in conjunction with the use of sharpshooters to kill deer.

“The lethal option is something that the D.E.C. requires in order for a sterilization program to go forward,” Ms. Cunningham said. “We would like to support you in that outreach and in implementing such a program.”

Her organization has been in contact with representatives from other civic organizations “that we know have an interest in seeing this component of deer management folded in,” she said, asking whether the village had made a financial commitment. “We want to know where that is and when we can expect to see that in [the budget].”

The village has not yet formally committed to participate in a deer-management program, but, said Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach, “It’s safe to say this is the first of several disciplines that will take place trying to grapple with the population of the deer. As time goes forward and we enter into the culling program, I give you assurance, and the public assurances, that we are certainly open to other disciplines, some of which have been articulated by V.P.S. That’s a work in progress.” The cost of the program has yet to be determined, he said. He asked Ms. Molinaro to update the preservation society as to the time frame.

The Long Island Farm Bureau, whose executive director, along with a representative from the federal Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division, had pitched the board on a culling program on Sept. 30, is seeking commitments from participating municipalities by the end of the calendar year, Ms. Molinaro said. At that meeting, Joseph Gergela of the Farm Bureau and Allen Gosser of the U.S.D.A. had estimated that it would cost the village $15,000 to take part in its proposed program.

“Once commitments are made from the other municipalities, that will help the U.S.D.A. determine where they’re going to start [and] how long it’s going to take in each community,” Ms. Molinaro said. “Once we know where the village is going to be on that timeline, [that] will give us a better idea of when we want to look at other alternatives, especially once the culling program is finished in the first year.”

A sterilization program has to take place in the fall, Ms. Cunningham said, before does are impregnated. “We’ve missed the window of opportunity, but if we’re planning it for next year, that planning needs to begin now,” she said.

Should the village continue to participate in a deer-culling program beyond the first year, Ms. Molinaro said, “that will dovetail nicely into the next budget cycle.”

“Thank you for that, but we’re eager to see it,” Ms. Cunningham replied.

Residents, the mayor said, have been “somewhat supportive of the village’s posture in this,” based on feedback directed to Village Hall. “Again, we do it with a great degree of reluctance. It’s a very arbitrary step, but one we feel is appropriate and necessary at this time.”

Also at Friday’s meeting, the board added to the village code a law that will require the village to notify individuals when there is believed to have been a compromise of individual private information. The local law complies with a section of the state’s new technology law and had drawn no public comment when it was considered at a previous meeting.

The board also approved the village’s retirement system contribution for the 2013-14 fiscal year. A payment of $982,224 will be made to the police and fire retirement system, and $929,975 will go to the employee retirement system.

Noting the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, the mayor closed the meeting by sending the audience his and the board’s greetings of the season. “At the same time, let’s not forget the sacrifice that so many of the veterans have made who served in our armed forces, both men and women, and the folks who are in service now serving our wonderful nation,” he said.

A sterilization program should accompany lethal methods used to cull the deer population in the Village of East Hampton, the executive director of the Village Preservation Society told the village board at its meeting Friday.

But that will not be a component of the program in its initial stages, Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, told Kathy Cunningham. Ms. Cunningham attended the meeting to inquire as to the planned culling program, which is expected to commence in February or March, and to advocate for inclusion of sterilization in conjunction with the use of sharpshooters to kill deer.

“The lethal option is something that the D.E.C. requires in order for a sterilization program to go forward,” Ms. Cunningham said. “We would like to support you in that outreach and in implementing such a program.”

Her organization has been in contact with representatives from other civic organizations “that we know have an interest in seeing this component of deer management folded in,” she said, asking whether the village had made a financial commitment. “We want to know where that is and when we can expect to see that in [the budget].”

The village has not yet formally committed to participate in a deer-management program, but, said Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach, “It’s safe to say this is the first of several disciplines that will take place trying to grapple with the population of the deer. As time goes forward and we enter into the culling program, I give you assurance, and the public assurances, that we are certainly open to other disciplines, some of which have been articulated by V.P.S. That’s a work in progress.” The cost of the program has yet to be determined, he said. He asked Ms. Molinaro to update the preservation society as to the time frame.

The Long Island Farm Bureau, whose executive director, along with a representative from the federal Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division, had pitched the board on a culling program on Sept. 30, is seeking commitments from participating municipalities by the end of the calendar year, Ms. Molinaro said. At that meeting, Joseph Gergela of the Farm Bureau and Allen Gosser of the U.S.D.A. had estimated that it would cost the village $15,000 to take part in its proposed program.

“Once commitments are made from the other municipalities, that will help the U.S.D.A. determine where they’re going to start [and] how long it’s going to take in each community,” Ms. Molinaro said. “Once we know where the village is going to be on that timeline, [that] will give us a better idea of when we want to look at other alternatives, especially once the culling program is finished in the first year.”

A sterilization program has to take place in the fall, Ms. Cunningham said, before does are impregnated. “We’ve missed the window of opportunity, but if we’re planning it for next year, that planning needs to begin now,” she said.

Should the village continue to participate in a deer-culling program beyond the first year, Ms. Molinaro said, “that will dovetail nicely into the next budget cycle.”

“Thank you for that, but we’re eager to see it,” Ms. Cunningham replied.

Residents, the mayor said, have been “somewhat supportive of the village’s posture in this,” based on feedback directed to Village Hall. “Again, we do it with a great degree of reluctance. It’s a very arbitrary step, but one we feel is appropriate and necessary at this time.”

Also at Friday’s meeting, the board added to the village code a law that will require the village to notify individuals when there is believed to have been a compromise of individual private information. The local law complies with a section of the state’s new technology law and had drawn no public comment when it was considered at a previous meeting.

The board also approved the village’s retirement system contribution for the 2013-14 fiscal year. A payment of $982,224 will be made to the police and fire retirement system, and $929,975 will go to the employee retirement system.

Noting the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, the mayor closed the meeting by sending the audience his and the board’s greetings of the season. “At the same time, let’s not forget the sacrifice that so many of the veterans have made who served in our armed forces, both men and women, and the folks who are in service now serving our wonderful nation,” he said.

There were 33 casualties reported Sunday morning in a three-vehicle accident on Old Montauk Highway, including one woman who was declared dead at the scene, yet still had dinner with her parents that night.

A miracle of medical science? No. It was a mass-casualty drill for first responders from across the East End, involving hundreds of firefighters, emergency medical team personnel, and police.

While the event began at 9, three months were spent preparing for the exercise, designed to simulate the potential for chaos when disaster strikes. Three venerable vehicles were rolled over and positioned on the north side of the highway, just west of the aptly named Cemetery Road.

“We have a work van, a minivan, and an old bus,” said Springs Fire Chief Ben Miller.

The “victims” were students at local schools, including East Hampton and Pierson High Schools and East Hampton Middle School, as well as some relatives of first responders. Each was assigned specific wounds and placed in and about the “wrecked” vehicles.

“All right, I want to hear some moaning,” a supervisor shouted to the “blood-covered” young people, who were painted with red. One had a branch protruding from her stomach.

The weather was perfect, an unusually warm November day, and the teenagers were laughing before the exercise began. But once it did, they bit into their roles with gusto.

“I had a broken neck, a broken back, and a wounded wrist,” Liana Paradiso, 13, a student at the middle school, said yesterday. “I was ejected from the bus, and I was on top of it.” Ms. Paradiso had heard about the event from her cross-country coach, Diane O’Donnell, who was one of the supervisors on Sunday.

The scene was so realistic that Ricci Paradiso felt a sense of panic as she looked for her daughter in the carnage. She had been instructed to run through the crowd, searching for Liana, right after the faux accident occurred. “Getting to the scene, seeing all those bodies, and you know your daughter is one of them,” she said.

It was acting, but it was acting out a parent’s worst nightmare.

First on the scene came the police, two East Hampton Town officers who drove up in squad cars. Their role in an actual accident is mostly to keep the area sealed off as trained emergency workers arrive.

Because the drill took place in the Montauk Fire District, Richard Schoen was in charge of the firefighters. Montauk trucks came roaring down Cemetery Road, while Amagansett’s force arrived from the west, followed quickly by trucks from Springs, East Hampton, and Sag Harbor. East Hampton Village’s mobile communications van was there as well, as were ambulances from across the East End. Mary Ellen McGuire, East Hampton Village Ambulance Association chief, directed that aspect of the operation.

About 10 minutes after the exercise began, the young Ms. Paradiso was being treated. “They came onto the roof,” she said. She was strapped into a stretcher with a neck brace, rushed to an ambulance, and whisked away. “It was pretty cool,” she said.

Chief Miller explained what onlookers were seeing. While fire crews were extricating the “bodies,” using equipment from heavy rescue trucks to cut open the vehicles, the medical teams were performing triage. As each “victim” was examined and treated, wristbands were placed on them.

“Green means ambulatory, yellow needs assistance, red is the most serious,” said the chief. A black band means the victim is deceased. A young woman wearing a black band played her role dutifully, though eventually she sat up and put her face in the sun.

A Suffolk County helicopter buzzed the scene, then landed on the Route 27 overlook near Cemetery Road. A critically injured “patient” was flown out, not to Stony Brook Medical Center, but to the staging area near the Amagansett Firehouse, her day as victim done.

The Suffolk County MERV-1 — major emergency response vehicle — arrived. Purchased with funding from the Department of Homeland Security, “It is capable of transporting multiple persons during a medical evacuation,” said a supervisor.

While declining to identify himself, he was happy to walk reporters through the shiny new vehicle, a customized bus. In its rear, stacked three high along the walls, were stretchers, each holding a young “victim.” The MERV can car?ry? up to 24 stretchers, with seats toward the front for another 16 or so victims.

Matthew Feyh of the Amagansett Fire Department patrolled the perimeter, pointing a thermal imaging device, an object shaped somewhat like a pistol, that can find a body, living or dead, lying near the road in brush or woods. There were none this time.

“We like to throw a monkey wrench into the drills,” Chief Miller said. In a past exercise, for example, a girl’s “body” was found with a “bomb” attached.

“Thirty victims, three D.O.A.,” East Hampton Town Police Sgt. John Claflin said, writing it down.

The supervisors then gathered for a critique by Suffolk County officials, who were impressed.

“Everybody worked really well,” Chief Miller said.

The idea for this latest drill came from David Kay, first assistant chief of the Springs Fire Department. It culminated in Sunday’s event, from which all but one walked away.

Manny, the police mannequin sometimes seen in a patrol car by the side of the road, was among the deceased, pinned under a bus. Finally freed by rescue workers, he sat by the side of the road, lifeless, unable to enjoy the beautiful day.

With scallop season barely under way, an 8,000-square-foot scallop sanctuary on the east side of Napeague Harbor, one of two shellfish sanctuaries in East Hampton Town waterways, was breached last week. The buoys delineating its perimeter were dragged aside and the bottomland, which had been abundant with mature and juvenile scallops as well as eelgrass, uprooted.

Created in 2009 in what is considered a successful effort to reseed local waters with bug scallops after a precipitous die-off in the mid-1980s attributed to brown tide, the sanctuaries are off limits to commercial and recreational fishing.

John Dunne, director of the town’s shellfish hatchery, which implemented the program with the consent and assistance of the town trustees, discovered that the sanctuary had been vandalized on Friday around 2 p.m. There were “buoys all over the place, people walking around where it had been,” he said of the shallow protected area. The Marine Patrol, he said, had been “making their presence known, and it seemed to me [the perpetrator] probably waited until they left and traipsed right in there.”

Joe Bloecker, a trustee, filed a report with town police on Monday. “I went down there on Saturday to go scalloping,” he said. “I got in the water, made my way down there, and what I saw was pretty disconcerting. There were dredge marks all through there, and there was nothing in there — no bugs, no scallops. I’m very disappointed. It’s such a shame that someone could ruin a whole year’s worth of scalloping in Napeague Harbor.”

Nat Miller and Sean McCaffrey, both trustees, had given the Napeague sanctuary an extra layer of protection. “We went above and beyond — placed a buoy every six feet and roped it up in a circle to keep people out of it,” said Mr. Miller, a bayman. “We’ve had this problem before, in Three Mile Harbor. It’s not the first time, but like everything else, you keep trying to do something, and it just takes one bad apple to mess it up for everyone else.”

Ed Michaels, the town harbormaster, believes the incident took place last Thursday. “We’re trying to find out what guys were in the area,” he said, meaning commercial fishermen, “and see if they saw anything.”

Mr. Michaels cautioned against assuming intentional sabotage. “Those things aren’t marked,” he said of the sanctuaries in Napeague and Three Mile Harbors. “It’s possible it was a mistake. Probably not, but there’s a chance that someone didn’t know what they were looking at.” Anyone fishing in the vicinity should know not to enter a shellfish sanctuary, he said, but, “it’s a double-edged sword: if you mark them, they know what’s in there.”

Those obtaining a shellfish license from the town clerk’s office are given a booklet with the rules governing shellfishing and maps of open and closed shellfishing waters. “Some people, believe it or not, don’t always read the handbook,” said Stephanie Forsberg, a trustee. “These shellfish sanctuaries are marked out on maps. It’s beyond unfortunate that somebody goes into the area.”

Under the shellfish hatchery’s Bay Scallop Restoration Project, funded by the town and grants from the state and the county, scallops are grown and over-wintered at the hatchery, in Montauk. The following spring, low-traffic areas of Napeague Harbor and Three Mile Harbor are seeded with the bugs and cordoned with buoys. (An effort to reintroduce scallops and eelgrass at a third site, Hog Creek in Springs, was unsuccessful and abandoned.)

Scallops are “broadcast” spawners that emit sperm and eggs into the water, and a highly concentrated population is needed for fertilization to result, Mr. Dunne said, hence the creation of protected sanctuaries. Shellfish hatchery officials document spawning and monitor survival from May to November each year.

The sanctuaries have more than doubled the prevalence of spat, the scallop’s “just-after-juvenile” stage, said Ms. Forsberg. “The idea is you have this really dense, concentrated area, and no one can take from it. Once they reproduce, it overflows into the harbor. I love that we’ve been seeing those sort of numbers. That’s why, as trustees, we want to keep supporting the hatchery and their work on this.”

“We do ‘survival’ dives,” Mr. Dunne said of his agency’s monitoring efforts. “We saw that there were lots of bugs in the sanctuary. The problem with people walking through there, stepping on bugs — those bugs are just as, if not more, important than the stuff they took.”

Hatchery officials had also seeded a section of the Napeague Harbor sanctuary with oysters. “It’s just as disappointing that those were kicked around,” he said.

Mr. Dunne and town trustees pointed to last year’s bumper scallop crop as evidence that their efforts have been worthwhile. “It seems to be working, and we’ve been backing it up with spat-collection data,” Mr. Dunne said. “Every year that spat number was going up. We had that stellar harvest last year in Napeague. It seems to be that the only harbors in town with scallops are the ones that have sanctuaries in them.”

Diane McNally, the trustee clerk, said the trustees had received encouraging reports of “scallops traveling outside the sanctuary area, to be harvestable.” Trustees have expressed “a lot of frustration, a lot of anger” about what happened last week, she said, and they are considering offering a reward for information leading to identification of a perpetrator.

Mr. Dunne said he was disappointed but not surprised. “I think it’s been happening, pretty much, every year. I’m disappointed for the people following the rules and respecting the fact that the sanctuaries are providing a service, because it’s pretty well proven that the sanctuary is making a huge difference.” But, he said, “Neither we, nor the baymen following the rules, nor Marine Patrol can be at all places at all times.”

They came out on a cold November evening to challenge the enemy, but the enemy stayed home.

An hour or so into Monday night’s standing-room-only meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, following a spirited discussion of the future of the hamlet’s centrally located Balasses House building (reported elsewhere in this issue), it was time for the main event: a discussion with the Connecticut developers whose proposed luxury senior citizen community at 555 Montauk Highway would permanently remake Amagansett’s eastern face.

Additional coverage:

Opponents Confront Board on

Timing and Motives

That the East Hampton Town Board’s Republican majority might vote on Dec. 19, following two last-meeting-of-the-year public hearings, to create the new high-density zoning district that 555 requires, and then rezone the project to that classification, is considered a very real possibility. The hearings, which were requested by the developers, are expected to be contentious, and Monday’s audience was clearly hoping for a trial run.

It was not to be. After Kieran Brew, the committee’s chairman, turned to the second item on the night’s agenda — 555 — there was a pause. People looked around for Francis P. Jenkins III of Putnam Bridge, the developer, who had addressed the group in April when the complex was first proposed. No one came forward.

“They were planning to come tonight and they’re not here,” Mr. Brew said.

A ripple of disbelief ran through the room. “That sends a message,” somebody shouted.

Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who lives in Amagansett and is the town board liaison to the committee, began to describe the proposed new complex, for the benefit of a number of people who seemed unfamiliar with it. Its proposed 79 units include 63 stand-alone houses priced at about $1.5 million and up, and 16 apartments, eight of which, at $550,000, would be “affordable,” at least according to the developers. A big community swimming pool is planned, but each house, said Ms. Overby, could have its own pool as well. (Here there were audible gasps in the audience.)

Would it be a gated community, someone wanted to know. No, she said. Would it be like Peconic Landing, the upscale assisted-living community on the North Fork? Again no. “This is for active seniors” 55 and over, said the councilwoman. “You cannot progress through the aging process,” as at Peconic Landing.

“If the units don’t sell, what happens?” asked Rona Klopman. “They can be rented,” Ms. Overby answered, adding that sales could be made either as condos or co-ops.

That led to a discussion of real estate taxes, currently $40,000 a year on the 23.5-acre undeveloped property, formerly the Principi family farm. Mr. Jenkins had told the committee in April that once 555 was in place the annual taxes would rise to almost $2 million, but it now appears that the number could be far below that. Ms. Overby said that Jeanne Nielsen, a town assessor, had told her the complex would probably pay more like $70,000 to $116,000 a year.

“Taxes on [condos or co-ops] are generally less than on single-family residences on freestanding lots,” the councilwoman explained. “As a condo, it’s assessed differently. One [certificate of occupancy] for the entire site.”

“With 70 people, just like the rest of Amagansett,” cracked Mr. Brew, a real estate broker who has seen his share of summer share houses, drawing laughter that relieved the gathering gloom.

“I think the Planning Department will call for a cost analysis,” Ms. Overby said of the numbers. “You put 70 houses there and get $70,000 to $116,000, you have to wonder what’s the impact. Is it worth it? Will the taxes cover the cost of town services?”

Under current zoning, with a 70 percent agricultural reserve, the 555 property could support 32 to 36 affordable housing units and six or seven houses, as well as “limited business” uses — art galleries, antiques shops, and the like — bordering Montauk Highway to the west, between a gas station and an empty building once rumored to become a 7-Eleven. Citing those figures, Michael Cinque asked the audience to “look at the whole picture.”

“They can put in seven or eight Farrell houses right now and a hedgerow across the highway,” he said, suggesting that the 555 complex would be far preferable.

Like others in the room, Sue Avedon, who lives in East Hampton, was angry that no one from Putnam Bridge had shown up to speak. “It inconvenienced much of the community who were planning to get answers straight from the horse’s mouth,” she said. “This is not just about Amagansett. This [new senior housing district] can move to other parts of town.”

J.B. DosSantos, who heads the East Hampton-Sag Harbor counterpart of the Amagansett advisory committee, agreed. “To those of us who worked to get the comprehensive plan adopted, this is a slap in the face,” he said. “We need to look at the precedent.”

In August, JoAnne Pahwul, the town’s assistant planning director, had written to the town board that the zoning change, if adopted, “would allow for a relatively significant increase in density that is contrary to a number of goals in the town’s comprehensive plan.”

Britton Bistrian, a consultant to the developers, rose to account for their absence. She had not intended to speak, she said, but had changed her mind. “They didn’t know the hearing would be as soon as it is,” she explained, and “the hearing seemed like the more appropriate place to have the discussion.”

Ms. Bistrian took exception to the tax numbers offered by Ms. Overby. “I would challenge the tax implications,” she said, stressing that no children would live at the complex, “so, no impact on the schools.” She lauded 555’s proposed energy-saving septic system, earlier said by Mr. Cinque to be a “killer system,” as “net-zero wastewater.”

Speaking of the overall project, Ms. Bistrian said, “There’s a big difference between ‘do we want it’ and ‘do we need it.’ ”

“Don’t say we don’t need senior housing because of the Fire Department,” Carl Hamilton told the room, noting that the average age of Amagansett Fire Department volunteers is 58. “We need everyone we can get.” His remark followed a sharp exchange between Ms. Bistrian and Ms. Overby, who had commented that “we need affordable housing for young people.”

As the hour neared 9 p.m. and a few people began leaving, Jeanne Frankl suggested that the advisory committee ask the town board to postpone the Dec. 19 hearing. “It’s the wrong forum and the wrong time,” she said. “It’s keeping the community and the board from working together under the comprehensive plan.”

“They’re going to say no,” said Mr. Brew.

“But it makes a record,” said Ms. Avedon. “There may be a lawsuit.”

“We meet next month . . . ,” Mr. Brew began.

“Next month is too late,” someone said.

Ms. Frankl pressed on. “We’ve barely scratched the surface tonight. This isn’t a realistic time frame in which to do all this work.”

She moved that the committee write the board to ask for time “to consider a different option that will meet the needs of the comprehensive plan.” With only committee members voting, the motion was passed 9 to 4, and it was decided that Ms. Frankl and Mr. Brew would write the letter together.

Word of a concerted effort to encourage public comment and opposition to a proposed new senior housing zone in Amagansett, which would pave the way for a developer’s vision of 79 units of luxury senior citizen housing on the former Principi farm on Montauk Highway, apparently reached East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley during a town board meeting on Tuesday.

The two, along with the third outgoing member of the board’s Republican majority, Dominick Stanzione, had voted on Nov. 7 to hold a hearing on a law submitted by the developers that would create the new zone at the last board meeting of their tenure, on Dec. 19 — and at the same time hold a hearing on rezoning the developers’ property to the new zoning category.

The town’s present zoning code does not, in any category, allow development as dense as that proposed by Putnam Bridge, a Connecticut developer, and the property in question is currently zoned for three-acre house lots on 19 of its 24 acres, with one-acre residential lots, affordable housing, and limited business uses allowed on the remainder.

Fearing that the outgoing majority has fast-tracked the hearings in order to vote on enacting the two zoning changes before leaving office, dozens of residents concerned about the development proposal met Sunday at a private residence in Amagansett to strategize a public response — in hopes of deterring a board vote for the measures or, should that occur, creating widespread public support for their reversal by the incoming administration, according to an account of the meeting. The Town Planning Department has said that the zoning changes are counter to the town’s comprehensive plan and not beneficial to the need for affordable housing for senior citizens.

The incoming board, with Larry Cantwell as supervisor and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez in one of the two vacated town board seats, will have a Demo?cratic majority. Fred Overton, also a new board member, will be the sole Republican. Mr. Cantwell has spoken against the proposed development, known as 555, as has Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, and it is assumed the rest of the new board would take a more thorough look at the zoning request before acting.

Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley did not run for re-election; Mr. Stanzione lost his bid to retain his seat. “It’s absolutely disgusting what’s going on here,” said Mr. Wilkinson on Tuesday after reading from an e-mail that questioned the motives of the three Republicans in pushing the Amagansett proposal to hearing.

“This is purely the politics of personal destruction,” Ms. Quigley began before standing to deliver further heated descriptions of her perception of what is going on. After being advised to stop by Mr. Wilkinson, she stalked out of the room, and the supervisor called a recess to the meeting.

Upon re-adjourning, he read from a letter that suggested the three board members had a hidden motive for their actions and proposed an investigation. “Bring it on,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “Bring all the investigations you want. Bring it on — the attorney general of the United States; the attorney general of New York.”

“Put your money where your mouth is,” he said angrily. “Stop hiding behind your little texts and tweets. For a public hearing — what is inappropriate about listening to the people of the Town of East Hampton?”

Mr. Van Scoyoc and Councilman Sylvia Overby, in voting against holding the hearings, had complained that the proposed zoning law was submitted by the developer who would benefit, and had not been discussed or revised by the town board. Nor, they said, had the board discussed the Planning Department’s analysis of the law and the property rezoning request.

According to state law, rezoning may be accomplished by a town board through either of two different procedures: enacting a local law or enacting an ordinance. The requirements for each procedure differ, according to a spokesman for the State Department of State, Laz Benitez.

Under either, however, he said, rezoning must be done “in accordance with an existing comprehensive plan” and must comply with all “applicable local regulations.”

Mr. Benitez said that, given the various provisions of the laws that could come to bear in a rezoning procedure, the Department of State was unable to definitively conclude whether the town board’s public hearings and a subsequent, potential vote the same night on both the new zoning category and on rezoning the property, are permissible.

However, according to New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who also serves as the Sag Harbor Village attorney, there is no prohibition against the board holding a hearing to rezone a property to a zoning category that has not yet been created.

But, he said earlier this week, there can be no vote to place a property into that category unless and until the local law creating the new district has been enacted after filing with the state secretary of state.

Consequently, he said, should the board actually vote to approve the new senior housing zoning district law drafted by the developer after the Dec. 19 hearing, it could not also vote to rezone the Amagansett property that night.

In an e-mail to The Star, Mr. Benitez said that zoning legislation that has been adopted by local law procedures and is then filed with the secretary of state could normally take 20 days to go into effect, unless an earlier effective date is written into the law.

East Hampton’s zoning laws are adopted by local law procedures, Carole Brennan, the assistant town clerk, said yesterday.

If a new board disagrees with resolutions adopted by the outgoing board, it could vote in January to rescind them.

       East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and Margaret Turner, the executive director of the East Hampton Business Alliance, expressed outrage at a work session of the town board Tuesday morning over being kept in the dark by Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who has proposed several amendments to the town’s lighting law without discussing them with the board first.

       Ms. Quigley said she was upset that Ms. Overby had bypassed a committee chaired by Ms. Turner that had spent the better part of a year reviewing the law and had submitted its own revisions to the town board last spring. No action had been taken, however.

       At issue was a series of amendments that Ms. Overby, working with Susan Harder of Springs, a member of the Dark Skies Society, and Richard Kahn, a retired Montauk attorney, had drafted, along with Marguerite Wolffson, the town’s planning director. These amendments were referred to the town attorney’s office, which returned them to board members late last week in the form of revisions to the law that the committee had proposed.

       “One is a law by the people, by the town board, the other is by a select few who think they know better,” Ms. Quigley fumed.

       “We have asked you several times for input. Nothing, absolutely nothing,” Ms. Turner said. “It’s so disrespectful.”

       For her part, Ms. Overby said she had eschewed discussing the proposed amendments with the committee because she feared it was intent on gutting the law. “We should be able to fix the current law, not throw it away completely,” she said. “Trying to start from scratch can lead to unintended consequences.”

       In an interview Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Overby said she had sent the amendments to the town attorney’s office for review but had not requested that they be incorporated into a revised version of the law. Ms. Overby also said that she had met with Ms. Harder, Mr. Kahn, and Ms. Wolffsohn only once, with follow-up conversations with Ms. Wolffsohn.

       The existing lighting law was passed in 2006 and was intended to reduce light pollution by, among other things, requiring that the wattage of outdoor fixtures be limited, that they be directed downward, and that their light not be allowed to spill onto neighboring properties. That law had drawn complaints for being overly complicated and difficult to interpret, Ms. Turner said on Tuesday afternoon.

       Ms. Quigley said she had agreed to take on the task of revisiting the law from Councilwoman Julia Prince, when she left office at the end of 2012. Ms. Quigley’s efforts to revise the law bogged down amid conflicting visions of its scope, and she turned it over to a committee.

       “I don’t really give a flying F,” Ms. Quigley said of her own involvement. “I have no interest in lighting. I’m only trying to do what’s right for the town.” She said her biggest gripe about the 11th hour amendments offered by Ms. Overby was that it violated the spirit of the political process.

       The discussion at Tuesday’s work session, which grew heated as snowflakes swirled outside the Montauk Firehouse where it occurred, did not dwell on specifics. Ms. Turner, however, said she was concerned that Ms. Overby’s proposed revisions stripped the authority of the planning board to review minor lighting changes, giving that review to the Planning Department.

       “This is a dictatorship,” she said.

       Ms. Overby responded that allowing the Planning Department to approve minor changes on an administrative basis would save time for applicants, who would not have to wait for the planning board to schedule discussions.

       Ms. Quigley took exception to another change in the Overby proposal that would require a property owner to prove that nonconforming lighting pre-existed the original law. “In practical reality, it doesn’t grandfather anyone,” she said, adding that the burden of proof would be difficult for many people to meet.

       Another brush fire was started when Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc questioned whether the lighting committee had ever been officially sanctioned by the town board. That drew an angry rebuke from Ms. Quigley, who said she did not care if the board passed a formal resolution creating the committee or not, but that she was certain it had been given the green light by the entire board and had been acting in good faith.

       Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, saying there was simply not enough time for any action to be taken between now and the end of his administration, tried several times to end the discussion.

       “If you have had these for a year, why are we just getting them now?”  Ms. Turner asked Ms. Overby of her revisions. “I don’t actually believe in what you are doing,” Ms. Overby said.

       “So if you don’t believe in it, start another committee, Mr. Wilkinson said, shaking his head.

       After the session adjourned, Ms. Turner, Ms. Overby, Mr. Van Scoyoc, and Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell huddled in the meeting room. The gist of that conversation, Ms. Turner said, was that all parties would get together after the new year in an effort to hammer out an agreement.

       “We all want the same thing,” she said. “People want to cooperate. People want to comply. People don’t want a lot of bright lights around.”

        After nearly 20 years in Springs, Dana Dolan, an artist, moved to Miami Beach three years ago. When the glitz of her condo on Collins Avenue failed to move her, she sought the desert life in Santa Fe, N.M. But when she awoke one night to find a five-inch centipede in bed with her, she decided to return to the South Fork.

        Alas, prices had gone up and Springs was “unaffordable.” So she did what increasing numbers of the financially challenged are doing: bought a house in Flanders.

        Flanders?

        Located in the Town of Southampton, it is decidedly the most unHamptony Hampton imaginable — the place most of us know as the place we have to pass through on our way to Riverhead. And, of course, it’s the home of the Big Duck. Indeed, the 11-square-mile hamlet was once predominately duck farms.

         But before that, in the hamlet’s heyday starting in the 1870s, it was home to nearly a dozen tony summer hotels and boarding houses. According to its historical society, the “very exclusive Flanders Club, a sportsmen’s club,” with a membership of “wealthy N.Y.C. businessmen,” was built there in 1891 and would “eventually control 10,000 acres of marsh and upland. . . .”

         These days Flanders is mostly a warren of tiny lots dotted with Monopoly houses, the Jersey Shore in the Hamptons’ backyard. Yet, with it not unusual for a property to go for less than $200 grand, it is attracting first-time homebuyers and others from more expensive areas farther east. Could it be the Williamsburg of the Hamptons?

         Ms. Dolan’s house, a roughly 900-square-foot ranch with a fireplace and deck on slightly under a quarter acre, sold in the low 200s. Did we mention that it commands water views? It’s not directly on the water, but there’s a vista over marshland. The northern perimeter of Flanders is jagged coastline, bordering on various bodies of water that empty into Great Peconic Bay. Waterfront views abound. However, there’s a catch: Much of the coastline was heavily battered during Hurricane Sandy. Ms. Dolan cannot get flood insurance.

       “I have had people gun-shy because of Sandy,” said Sherry Patterson, a broker at Tuccio Real Estate in Riverhead. “There was damage, but people are coming back and rebuilding.” This time, she said, many houses are going up on stilts. “There are a lot of good deals now because a lot of people want out” because of Sandy. Flanders “has always been an untapped spot, part is the name, the connotation . . . but there’s woodland, parkland, waterfront.”

       Ms. Dolan’s house sold in the mid-400s during the boom, then went into foreclosure during the downturn. A savvy buyer purchased it, jazzed it up with new appliances, and flipped it. “When the market went south there were a glut of foreclosures,” said Ms. Patterson. But they’ve been “cleaned up . . . when the market was doing well Flanders was booming with everyone else . . . it’s still in the process of recovering.”

       Probably the first pioneer in the current wave of Flanders gentrification was Gloria Kisch, a well-known sculptor who had a solo show at Guild Hall in 2010. Fourteen years ago Ms. Kisch, who owned a house in Bridgehampton, was looking for a place to fabricate her work and required a great deal of space. She found a 40-acre former duck farm in Flanders. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” she said.

       She designed and built a modern house filled with many of her sculptures, including a stainless staircase railing, that looks out over a private pond (one of three) surrounded by high reeds. Dozens of her sculptures dot the rolling hills of her landscape, which overlooks another 82 acres of wildlife preserve.

       “When I moved here it was a dangerous place to live.” She admits to having been “terrified.” But now, with her career achieving new heights, “I give this place all the credit.” Ms. Kisch paid a song for the property, less than a tiny house in Springs would cost today.

       Near Ms. Kisch is a road called Pleasure Drive. “I can’t tell you what a dump it was 14 years ago,” she said, pointing out that front yards were filled with “old cars and refrigerators.” Now the road boasts large lots with houses on a couple of acres valued in the 400s. There’s even a horse farm on the road.

       Dhonna Goodale, an actress and producer who grew up in the city but spent summers in Flanders as a child, has lived for many years with her family on Iron Point, a cape that juts into Flanders Bay, a finger of Great Peconic Bay. “Flanders has always been the stepchild of the Hamptons,” she said. “But we’re starting to see something . . . there’s money coming back in.”

       There is one aspect of Flanders real estate that isn’t a deal. Taxes. With a low population — 4,472, according to the 2010 census — the hamlet is part of the Riverhead School District. So homeowners pay taxes to both Southampton and Riverhead Towns. The taxes in Flanders are “higher than other places in Southampton,” Ms. Patterson said.

       Meanwhile, Ms. Dolan and Ms. Kisch are more than happy with the location, a less-than-five-minute drive for each of them into downtown Riverhead with its growing number of trendy restaurants. Then there are the area’s big-box discount stores. The big excitement: A Costco is being built nearby. And the local Stop & Shop gives points for gas.

       Speaking of gas, prices there can be 50 cents less than prices out east. The city is 90 minutes away. And the Hamptons are close too, but who needs ’em?

       As soon as she heard the startling news last week that German police, searching a dusty Munich apartment owned by a 79-year-old recluse named Cornelius Gurlitt, had stumbled on a treasure trove of some 1,400 artworks confiscated by the Nazis during World War II, Barbara Lipman-Wulf of Sag Harbor thought of the story her late husband, the sculptor Peter Lipman-Wulf, had told her.

       Peter and his brother, Hans, Berlin-born of comfortable, assimilated Jewish parents, were in their 30s when they left Germany in 1933 to live in France. “They had read ‘Mein Kampf,’ ” Ms. Lipman-Wulf said tersely. Their parents, Fritz and Lucy Lipman-Wulf, stayed behind.

       Nine years later the parents were eking out a precarious existence in their flat, now full of displaced co-religionists who slept wherever they could find space. A minor Nazi functionary, with whom the couple were on good terms, lived in the same building. This official “took Fritz aside one evening,” said Ms. Lipman-Wulf, “and told him, ‘I want to warn you, this week this house will be made judenrein, and you must go to the bus station.’ ”

       Late that night, the story goes, Fritz took the family’s art collection off the walls and brought the paintings, wrapped in sheets and paper, across the street to the apartment of a family friend — one Wolfgang Gurlitt, a cousin of Cornelius Gurlitt’s father and, like him, an art dealer.

       Wolfgang “promised to save it for Peter and Hans in an air raid-safe place,” Ms. Lipman-Wulf said. Wolfgang Gurlitt probably helped Fritz Lipman-Wulf carry the artworks.

       The next evening Fritz and Lucy Lipman-Wulf committed suicide. They were in their 60s.

       Who were these Gurlitts, whose lives and those of the Lipman-Wulfs intersected so fatefully?

       Cornelius Gurlitt, who dropped out of sight after the news of his hoard was revealed to a stunned art world, told Bavarian authorities he had inherited the works from his father, Hildebrand. Father and son came from a long line of artistic forebears: composers, musicologists, architects, painters. Many paintings by Louis Gurlitt, Hildebrand’s fa ther, were found in the flat among the masterpieces by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Renoir, and some of the great German Expressionists. The German weekly newsmagazine Focus, which first reported the find, estimated its value at $1.3 billion.

       Hildebrand Gurlitt had been a collector and dealer in Renaissance and early 20th-century Modernist art, the latter denounced by Hitler as “degenerate” and ordered removed from state museums in the late ’30s. Hildebrand was reportedly a member of the National Socialist Party early on, before it came out that he had a Jewish grandparent; under the Nuremberg race laws, he was struck from the rolls as being one-quarter Jewish. Years later, though, he was recruited by Joseph Goebbels, chief of Hitler’s propaganda ministry, to market confiscated and stolen works of art abroad, the Nazis having determined, as Goebbels wrote in his diary, to “make some money from this garbage.”

       Hildebrand Gurlitt was arrested as a Nazi collaborator at the war’s end and his collection came into the custody of allied troops. He spent five or six years trying to recover it, stressing his Jewish roots and claiming to have been a victim of the times. Despite doubts about his wartime activities and his veracity (“He does not seem very open-hearted,” reported an American officer who interviewed him in December 1947), the entire collection, including a previously unknown Chagall painting, “Fabulous Scene,” was released to him by 1951. The Chagall was among the trove discovered in his son’s apartment, where officials also found a number of empty frames. Apparently Cornelius Gurlitt sold pictures as needed over the years. (The 1947 interview with Hildebrand, who died in an auto accident in 1956, can be found on the website lootedart.com.)

       Wolfgang Gurlitt’s role during the Nazi era is somewhat murkier than his cousin Hildebrand’s. He too was involved in marketing looted works of “degenerate” art abroad, and is known as well to have been a procurer of material for a planned “Fuhrermuseum,” to be built in Linz, Austria, near Hitler’s birthplace. “On the basis of various auctions in the Dorotheum in Vienna,” says Wikipedia, “it is clear that he was also involved with the sale of expropriated Jewish property.”

       Wolfgang took Austrian citizenship in 1946. By January 1956, he had become the director of the New Gallery of the City of Linz/Wolfgang Gurlitt Museum.             Peter and Barbara Lipman-Wulf found him there in 1961.

       “He claimed all the [Lipman-Wulf] art had been destroyed through air raids in the storage houses,” Ms. Lipman-Wulf said on Friday. “We had some doubts. We didn’t trust him. He may have given the art to his family.”

       Her husband, whom she said had “a photographic memory,” had been awarded $600 a month restitution in 1958 after submitting a list of his family’s lost property to the West German Federal Republic. “I think the list of the artwork must have helped,” said Ms. Lipman-Wulf.

       That list, she said, has long since been lost. Or has it? “All his restitution correspondence was destroyed in a fire many years ago in New York City,” said his widow, but that the list was among the papers is uncertain. Even if it was, there may be a copy somewhere, in the city, perhaps, or in Germany.

       If it exists, Ms. Lipman-Wulf, in light of the Munich discovery, is moving heaven and earth to find it. She has asked Frank Mecklenburg of the Leo Baeck Institute, an international center with offices in Manhattan devoted to the history of German Jewry, to comb through the archives of his father-in-law, who was Peter’s New York lawyer at the time he applied for restitution.

       “The institute has Peter’s papers and his artwork, which I gave them over the years,” she said. “So they are looking, too.”

       Last Thursday Ms. Lipman-Wulf e-mailed Meike Hoffmann, the German art historian who for the past 18 months has been cataloguing the Gurlitt trove, telling her the story of the Lipman-Wulfs and asking for advice. The historian, an expert in Modernist art, e-mailed back just hours later, providing the name of the municipal institution where Peter must have written for restitution and the names of two people who might be of help. The collection is now in a customs house at an undisclosed location near Munich, where Ms. Hoffman has been studying it.

       “We will also check with [Peter’s] Swiss daughter in Lausanne, maybe finding the original or a copy of the list,” Ms. Lipman-Wulf said. She remembers being told that the family collection included works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Max Beckmann, and “other avant-garde artists,” all of whom would have been on Hitler’s proscribed roster of “degenerates.” The cache found in Munich, in the bohemian Schwabing district where Hitler himself lived when he was an aspiring artist, is known to include at least one painting by Beckmann.

       As of yesterday German officials had not released a full inventory, despite worldwide pressure to put a list online. “What is frustrating is the drip-feeding of information,” the arts editor of the BBC commented this week. “There still seems to be a cloak of secrecy around the whole affair.”

       While Germany is said to have anticipated that people with a claim to ownership would contact the authorities directly, Focus reported on Sunday that Berlin had decided to send legal experts to Munich to help the Bavarian Justice Ministry resolve “myriad ownership issues.”

       Ironically, many of the paintings — once vilified by the Nazis, now reckoned almost beyond price — could be returned to Cornelius if the rightful heirs are not found.

       “We have had a shock,” said Ms. Lipman-Wulf, who is in her 80s, “but also a tiny bit of hope. We know how difficult it will be.”

       The Republican majority of the East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to consider changes to town law that could pave the way for a sprawling luxury development in Amagansett reserved for older residents.

       Two unusual simultaneous hearings will be held on Dec. 19, during the administration’s final meeting before leaving office. The first hearing will address a proposed new zoning classification and the second whether or not to apply it to a 24-acre site in Amagansett.

       Putnam Bridge, a Connecticut developer that purchased the former Principi family farm on Montauk Highway at the eastern edge of the hamlet, is proposing a 79-unit condominium community with prices starting around $500,000 for an apartment and in the $1 million range for stand-alone units. Such high-density development is not allowed under East Hampton Town zoning.

       In the vote Thursday, Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, and Councilman Dominick Stanzione agreed to hold a hearing on the creation of a new zoning category in the town — a senior housing district — which the developers have requested.

       They also voted to hold a hearing the same night on rezoning the developers’ property to that district, which, as proposed, would allow four housing units per acre, with a maximum of 100 units in any one development.

       The Amagansett property, which contains “prime” agricultural soils and is made up of three separate lots, is zoned for house lots of a minimum three-acre size on almost 19 acres of the parcel, with one-acre-minimum house lots, affordable housing, and limited business uses allowed on the remainder of the property.

       Although hearings on legislation and zone changes are held so that the board may hear and consider public opinion, it is possible that an after-hearing vote may be called on Dec. 19 to approve both measures before a new, Democratic-majority administration takes office in January.

       Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley chose not to seek additional terms in office and will return to private life at the end of the year. Mr. Stanzione, who lives in Amagansett, lost a bid for re-election on Nov. 5

       The board’s two sitting Democrats, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, whose terms will continue for another two years, voted against scheduling both hearings. The proposed zoning district was submitted to the town by the developers and not revised or reviewed by town attorneys or the board, they pointed out.

       Both Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc objected to formal consideration of a zoning district that had not been discussed or drafted by the board. “So we’re changing our code . . . based on a submission by the applicant,” Ms. Overby said.

       “Intellectually, I don’t understand your objection,” Mr. Wilkinson told her.

       “I don’t either,” said Ms. Quigley. “We’ve drafted a ton of laws that were completely messed up and wrong and filled with errors. So it’s frankly irrelevant to me who drafted it,” she said.

       While consideration of zoning changes is sometimes appropriate, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, “I haven’t heard any public outcry for this.”

       Ms. Overby also objected to the procedure of setting a hearing to rezone a property to a zone that does not yet exist, but Ms. Quigley defended the idea. “People who come to speak are going to speak on this particular project,” she said.

       “I find this to be totally reprehensible,” Ms. Overby said.

       Mr. Stanzione, who lost a bid for re-election on Nov. 5, remained silent and cast the deciding vote.

       Conceptual plans for the 555 development have been presented to the town planning board, as well as to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee.

       In a presentation to the town board earlier this fall, the Planning Department weighed in on the proposal in a lengthy memo, calling the proposed use of the property counter to existing zoning regulations that limit the density of development and to the town comprehensive plan, which calls for additional housing for senior citizens at affordable, not market value, rates.