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.

       Funding for the East Hampton Library’s expansion and renovation, which is nearing completion, was substantially augmented on Monday with the actor Alec Baldwin’s donation of $1 million for the new children’s addition.

       Mr. Baldwin’s donation, made through the foundation that bears his name and on behalf of his family, will underwrite completion of the Baldwin Family Lecture Room within the library’s 6,800-square-foot expansion, allowing space for children’s programs, film screenings, poetry readings, historical lectures, and author and book events. It will also help the library’s principals realize their plan to install a simulcast system through which lectures from the New York Public Library and other institutions throughout the world will be streamed live to a 7-by-12-foot screen.

       With the donation, which Mr. Baldwin discussed in a conference call on Monday, the library has raised $5.7 million of its $6.2 million target.

       “I like the chance to finish something,” said Mr. Baldwin, who donated $250,000 to local libraries last autumn and is honorary co-chairman of the East Hampton Library’s annual Authors Night fund-raiser. “I want to do what I can to help them get to the finish line.”

       As a result of Mr. Baldwin’s donation, “we’re now in the home stretch,” Tom Twomey, the library’s chairman, said on Monday. “Alec’s generous foundation gets us close to the finish line in this marathon. The community will have one of the finest small libraries in America.”

       Mr. Baldwin, who lives in Amagansett and New York City, hinted at more donations to come. “This is not a one-shot thing. My support is ongoing,” he said.

       Libraries, he told The Star, remain an important resource, both for a community and for him personally. “The idea of going to a place, the sanctuary a library provides, is still real for me,” he said. “A dedicated place to read, turn off my phone, and disconnect with the everyday world, which is hard to do, is always worthwhile.”

       He recalled the bookmobile that parked near the house in which he grew up, in Massapequa, and confided that he purchased it when its use was discontinued. “I don’t know why I bought it, I have no idea. I just had to have it,” he said. “But that was a time when everything was print . . . a time with no Internet, no cable.” It is important to a community, he said, “to have an updated, high-speed connectivity at the library.”

       Since 2010, Mr. Baldwin has funneled earnings from his advertising campaign with Capital One Bank through his foundation. Most of the proceeds, which he said would ultimately total $15 million, go toward the arts, but various groups on the South Fork have benefited. This year, recipients have included Guild Hall, the Group for the East End, the East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, the Amagansett Fire Department, the Peconic Baykeeper, East End Hospice, the Peconic Land Trust, Bay Street Theatre, and the Amagansett Presbyterian Church.

       “In some sense, you want to put your money on the winners, help out the people doing something great,” Mr. Baldwin said of the East Hampton Library and other local institutions such as Guild Hall and Ashawagh Hall, in Springs. “The only obstacle was money, and I was happy to help provide what I could.”

       With the completed expansion, the library will feature a cutting-edge audio-visual infrastructure. Streaming events live from the New York Public Library, said Sheila Rogers, the library’s executive vice president, “is something that has never been done here before.”

       Mr. Twomey promised a “new, innovative design that no one has ever seen in a library. We’ve invested heavily in that.” New equipment, he said, “gives us a portal to stream simulcasts from any place else in the world.”

       In addition, said Dennis Fabiszak, the library’s director, films and computer presentations will be features of the 60-seat Baldwin Family Lecture Room.

       The addition of a second elevator, Ms. Rogers said, will make the entire library handicapped-accessible, and, Mr. Fabiszak added, easier for parents with strollers to navigate.

       Mr. Fabiszak said that he hopes the Baldwin Family Lecture Room will be completed by year’s end, and the children’s addition by early spring. The children’s addition, he said, will feature a small-scale windmill, boat, and two lighthouses.

       Don Hunting, the library’s president, said that the children’s addition will have a private entrance from the newly enlarged parking lot, “which is going to make the adult part a lot quieter and private, as Mr. Baldwin likes and as we like.” Mr. Baldwin, he said, “has been very gracious in affording the library his time, talent, and his treasure, and we are most grateful.”

       “Cautiously optimistic” was the term being bandied about as the East Hampton Republican faithful gathered Tuesday night at Indian Wells Tavern in Amagansett to await the results of the town elections.

       But with no supervisor candidate to anchor their ticket and a Democratic town board majority a sure thing, party members seemed resigned to the fact that they were fighting an uphill battle as they crowded around the bar and strained to see results that were constantly being updated on a large screen set up in the corner.

       Still, by 10:30 p.m., when it became apparent that Town Clerk Fred Overton, who was running for one of two open seats on the town board, and seven trustee incumbents, would be the party’s only apparent winners in contested races, the mood was decidedly upbeat among a core group of about 50 people who remained to listen to Mr. Overton give a short victory speech.

       The newly elected town board member thanked his supporters, offering special praise for Tina Piette, an attorney and Republican activist who managed his campaign, and had him focus on “people before politics,” and promised to serve the people who had entrusted him with their votes.

       Unofficial results provided by the Suffolk County Board of Elections Tuesday night had him as the leading vote-getter among the four town board candidates to join the Democrat Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and the unopposed Democratic supervisor candidate, Larry Cantwell, on the board, Mr. Overton admitted that coming into Election Day, he thought his chances were good.

       “I thought I would do well, probably come in second,” he said. “But I didn’t think I would be at the top of the board.”

       After 25 years of service as a trustee, assessor, and finally town clerk, Mr. Overton said he thought voters realized that he was the kind of candidate who would keep their best interests at heart and bring a valuable level of institutional knowledge to the board.

       Mr. Overton, a veteran of many election nights who had announced his retirement as town clerk, said this election was different for him. The decision being made by voters would not determine his livelihood, but whether he would be allowed to serve the community in a new position he had sought for different reasons.

       Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who was hoping for a second term, sat at a corner booth nibbling on some fried food as the first district results began to come in.

       “I never take these things for granted,” said a nervous Tim Bock who won his sixth term as a trustee.

       Elaine Jones, the chairwoman of the East Hampton Independence Party, which had endorsed both Mr. Overton and Mr. Stanzione, and Pat Mansir, a former East Hampton Town councilwoman, arrived with results from two voting districts. On the sidewalk outside Indian Wells Tavern, Ms. Jones predicted a close race.

       Cheryl Bloecker, whose husband, Joe Bloecker, ultimately lost his bid for town assessor against Eugene DePasquale, the Democratic incumbent, arrived and peered through the tavern’s front window at the screen where results were being posted.

       “What’s there to write about?” asked Mr. Stanzione, when asked for his thoughts on the election.

       When it became apparent that he was the loser in a four-way race, Mr. Stanzione offered his congratulations to the victors and made his way outdoors, where he was consoled by two wellwishers.

       “I’m really mad,” said a woman.

       “I’d like to thank you for the work you did,” added her husband.

       Mr. Stanzione, who found himself in the crosshairs of Democrats as the only Republican seeking election on what has become a fractious town board, declined to comment on the outcome. “I think that’s most appropriate,” he said.

       Conspicuous by their absence were Mr. Stanzione’s Republican colleagues on the board, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Therese Quigley, neither of whom sought re-election this year.

       Carl Irace, who ran a hard campaign for town justice only to be defeated handily by Steven Tekulsky, stood in the dining room, away from the crowd, looking stunned as family and friends consoled him.

       Mr. Irace insisted that he was not disappointed that his hard work had failed to pay off. “It was an awesome race. I got to meet so many great people,” he said. “When you enter a contest you have to give it your best shot and hope to win.”

       Mr. Bloecker, who sat at a front table, tabulating results with Bill Sagel and Bob Pease, rose quickly and made his way to a table in the back of the restaurant when the first results came in showing that he had lost to Mr. DePasquale in Montauk, where both men live.

       “It’s not looking good,” he told Mr. Stanzione and Trace Duryea, a former town Republican chairwoman.

       When asked about his prospects, he said. “It’s going to be settled in the rest of the town.”

       As Mr. DePasquale’s margin continued to grow, Mr. Bloecker and his wife called it an early night.

       Rowdy Hall, the East Hampton restaurant that served as Democratic headquarters on Tuesday night, was crowded and lively. Larry Cantwell, who ran unopposed for town supervisor, stepped comfortably into his role as political leader, serving as M.C. and announcing results as they became available.

        The numbers slowly showed victories for Steven Tekulsky, the Democratic justice candidate, for Eugene DePasquale, an incumbent assessor, and for Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, a novice politician who pulled out what apparently was the number-two slot in the race for the town board. Several of the Democratic candidates for town trustee also won their races.

       As the night went on the tallies reversed a widely held assumption that Job Potter, one of two Democratic town board candidates and a former two-term councilman, would handily retake a seat. Debra Foster, a former town councilwoman and Democratic supporter, said at first that the numbers were breaking as anticipated, based on polls. But Mr. Potter’s numbers never took him above third among the four candidates for two town board seats.

       Ms. Burke-Gonzalez looked alternately relieved and anxious as people congratulated her and wished her luck with the outcome. She said that regardless of whether she won or lost, she would be happy.

       Later, at the end of the night when it was clear that she was victorious, Ms. Burke-Gonzales said, “This has been a bit surreal for me. It was grueling at times. . . .” She thanked her husband, Joe Gonzalez, for his support. Mr. Gonzalez is a bartender at Rowdy Hall and had returned to his familiar post at the end of the bar. She also thanked her two children.

       Ms. Burke-Gonzalez’s 13-year-old daughter, Nina, held up a phone to record her mother’s speech. She looked proud but rolled her eyes in a little embarrassment when her mother, in describing the rigors of the campaign, mentioned that while she was busy campaigning in August, her daughter had suffered a severe concussion. “I promise you that I will start cooking again,” she told her family. “That I will start doing laundry on a regular basis.”

       Her 15-year-old son, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said, egged her on during the campaign by providing a football metaphor, urging her to bring her all to the field.

       “There have been so many heavy lifters,” the soon-to-be councilwoman said. She spoke about “girl power,” addressing her daughter and the other young girls at hand. “When you have a dream and there’s something you really want to do, you work hard, and you can have it.”

       Mr. Gonzalez looked happy about his wife’s success.

       The numbers had come in slowly during the night. Upstairs in an office above the restaurant, Chris Kelley, the chairman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee’s campaign committee, and others counted election district results, going over them carefully and relaying them to those downstairs.

       As Mr. Cantwell looked over the first results, he added them up slowly, keeping the crowd on edge and prompting some friendly jeers. “You’re killing us, Larry,” someone called out. A few minutes earlier Mr. Cantwell had gotten a slew of results from polling places in Montauk, East Hampton, and Sag Harbor, giving Mr. Tekulsky a slight lead over his Republican opponent, Carl Irace.

       At that point, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez was leading with 1,391 votes, and Fred Overton, the ultimately victorious Republican town board candidate, was second with 1,353, Mr. Potter had 1,212, and Dominick Stanzione, a Republican incumbent, was trailing with 1,028.

       Mr. Potter spoke to the crowd at the end of the evening after it had been confirmed that he had come in third. Looking around the room, he said it was “great to see so many friends and people I’ve campaigned with, starting in 1992, on and off, people who are devoted to this town and to good principles.”

       “I think it’s going to be a great board,” he said. “Congratulations to Kathee, who so deserves to win. Congratulations to Fred Overton.” He added, “I’m not going anywhere. You’ll see me helping out with the campaign in two years.”

       Mr. Potter, who plays the guitar, accepted a hug from Inda Eaton, one of the local musicians with whom he often performs. “I was honored to serve on the town board for eight years,” he said. “I’m glad I had a chance to run again.”

       It had been noted earlier that 594 absentee ballots had been sent to registered Democrats, which were yet to be counted. “Kathee may well end up being the top vote-getter,” Mr. Cantwell told the crowd. A few minutes earlier, with results in from a half dozen districts, Mr. Cantwell said he felt safe calling the races for Mr. Tekulsky and Mr. DePasquale.

       “You’re good, you’re good,” he called out to Mr. Tekulsky, who was sitting at a nearby table with former East Hampton Town Justice Roger Walker. “You won easily,” he told Mr. DePasquale, seeing that he had handily beaten his Republican challenger, Joe Bloecker, in Montauk’s Election District 10, which was expected to be one of the closest districts in that race. “I could not be happier,” Mr. DePasquale said after the final results verified his win.    

       At 10:20, Mr. Cantwell said, “I’ll go from the top. “Larry Cantwell for supervisor.” Mr. Overton, he said, got the most votes, at 3,216, “followed very closely by Kathee Burke-Gonzalez,” who got 3,125 votes. Mr. Potter got 2,764 votes, he announced, and Mr. Stanzione, 2,293.

       Mr. Tekulsky also spoke to the crowd, thanking his family. “I’m not the easiest guy to live with and a campaign does not make it any easier,” he said, joking. “The only good thing about it is I was out of the house more. Larry Cantwell . . . supported me throughout,” and kept him calm throughout Election Day, he said. He also thanked the Democratic committee members.

       “Everybody who voted for me . . . they’re going to get the fairest and the best judge they’ve ever seen — except for Roger Walker,” Mr. Tekulsky said.

“I know as a public official how important it is to listen to people’s concerns . . . about where we need to go in the future,” Mr. Cantwell told the crowd. “Work hard for what you want and treat everyone the way you want to be treated, and that’s the type of government we want to bring to the Town of East Hampton for everyone in East Hampton starting in January.”

       “This is an important win for the Democratic Party,” he said.

       As the room emptied, Andy Harris, a new and active member of the Town Democratic Committee from Montauk, wondered aloud about Mr. Potter’s loss, preparing, it seemed, to deconstruct the campaign strategy for lessons to be learned. Mr. Potter, he said, had been the most experienced, knowledgeable, and forward-thinking candidate.

       With reporting by Carissa Katz

       A study of the East Hampton Airport commissioned and paid for by airport users and businesses, has deemed the facility a “vital transportation asset” for East Hampton and an “economic engine” for the East End. The study was conducted by New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management in collaboration with Appleseed, a New York City economic development consulting firm.

       It concludes that the “second-home owners and visitors who use the airport are central in making the Town of East Hampton more attractive as a resort destination and a place to call home for year-round residents.” According to a public relations firm promoting its findings, the study was bankrolled by “a coalition of airport users and businesses like Sound Aircraft and the Eastern Region Helicopter Council.”

       The Quiet Skies Coalition, a local airport noise control group, said this week that the study was commissioned “to pave the way for unlimited helicopter traffic into and out of East Hampton Airport.”

       The coalition had the study evaluated by several professors and an urban policy and planning expert, and called it “scientifically flawed” and its conclusions “grossly misleading.”

       The study reviews East Hampton Airport data, such as the number of annual flight operations, which are concentrated in the summer months, the cost to the town of operating the airport, and revenue generated by it, primarily through sales of aviation fuel, and the operation at the airport of two businesses, Sound Aircraft Services and Myers Aero Fuels, as well as the two car-rental agencies there.

       The report calls the airport “a substantial enterprise in its own right.” Quoting a conclusion in a 2010 New York State Department of Transportation study of New York State airports, it says that a total of 65 employees in airport-related jobs there earn wages of more than $4.4 million.

       The airport’s “real value to the town’s economy is rooted in the support the airport provides to East Hampton’s leisure and hospitality industries, and in particular to its second-home sector,” the report says.

       According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Local Employment Dynamics data, the report says, just over 19 percent of the town’s workers are employed in “leisure industries,” and another 12.8 percent in retail.

       The report names construction as another important East Hampton industry, citing the construction business generated by second homes here, and claims that the airport, in enabling fast access by helicopter or plane, “plays an important role in maintaining East Hampton’s attractiveness as a second home location.”

       It assumes that each flight into and out of East Hampton carries an average of three passengers, who stay for an average of three days, spending an average of $500 a day — concluding that lo cal spending by airport users in 2011 totaled nearly $48 million.

       It extrapolates from that that the spending by airport users supported 647 “full-time-equivalent jobs” here, or “about 7.3 percent of all employment in East Hampton in 2011.”

       In addition, the report asserts that through “establishing and maintaining the value of East Hampton’s ‘brand,’ ” homeowners and visitors who use the airport “play a central role in making the town more attractive to a wide range of other part-time residents and visitors.”

       The establishment at the airport this year of a seasonal air traffic control tower, the report says, “should help make East Hampton Airport a more attractive option for corporate travel — and the town a more attractive business location.”

       The study was sent to The Star by a representative of SKDKnickerbocker, a public relations, communications, and consulting firm in Washington, D.C., New York, and Albany.

       The firm had sought to “roll out” the study, asking to place a summary by its author, Mitchell Moss, as an Op-Ed piece. His take on the study ran instead as a letter to the editor last week.

       According to Mr. Moss in his letter to the editor, “the interconnected character of transportation and economic activity and the vital role of aviation in emergency response infrastructure” would all be “severely impacted by the closure of or by limited flights to the East Hampton Airport.”

       Mr. Moss is director of the Rudin Center. The Quiet Skies Coalition claims in its letter that the helicopter council is one of the center’s “supporting affiliates.” The center’s board of directors, the organization says, “is made up almost entirely of representatives of the transportation industry and its allies.” And, the group notes, as one of three Appleseed partners, Mr. Moss works as “a private sector economic development consultant.”

       Local airport noise control advocates, including the Quiet Skies Coalition, have been consistently accused by the East Hampton Aviation Association and other airport supporters of seeking to have the airport closed, though they have continually said that is not their agenda.

       The noise-control advocates have supported enacting local regulations that could limit use of the airport in order to stem noise.

       In his letter, Mr. Moss acknowledges that noise issues are serious and must be addressed. However, he says, to “hold this vital economic infrastructure hostage . . . puts at risk the very economic and emergency response foundation of the entire region.”

       In the Quiet Skies press release, Vincent T. Covello, formerly of Columbia and Brown Universities and currently director of the Center for Risk Communication, called the Moss document “an intellectual deceit.”

       It is “an advertisement of the airport” rather than an analysis of the airport’s economics, said T. James Matthews in the press release.

       Mr. Matthews, a professor emeritus and former vice dean at N.Y.U. who lives in Northwest, takes issue with some of the report’s specifics in his own letter to the editor this week.

       Along with Peter M. Wolf, another East Hampton resident and author of several books on municipal planning who also reviewed the study, the reviewers “found the study replete with errors and baseless assumptions,” the Quiet Skies Coalition said.

       The report was released in the final days of the re-election campaign mounted by Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the Quiet Skies Coalition response noted, calling the councilman, who has served as the town board’s liaison on airport matters, “the darling of the helicopter industry.” Referring to Mr. Stanzione’s stance that the town should accept new Federal Aviation Administration grants for airport projects, which could minimize the town’s opportunities to enact airport use restrictions, the group says that Mr. Stanzione has pledged to “take actions surrendering the town’s proprietary rights to limit helicopter and other aircraft traffic for noise control purposes for another 20 years.”

        Last week Save Sag Harbor, a not-for-profit group of volunteers, was able to persuade the developers of the Bulova watchcase factory to stop cladding the exterior of the project’s town houses with synthetic materials. But it’s too late to do anything about the scale of the buildings, which they argued were out of sync with the village’s architectural vernacular.

        It was all in a day’s work for the members of the group, which was formed in 2007 to stop a national chain from putting a 17,000-square-foot pharmacy on Main Street. Their efforts paid off. Not only would it have “seriously impacted” the thoroughfare’s established drugstore, five-and-dime, and stationery shop, the group believed it would have destroyed, in one fell swoop, the character of the village.

       “We want to keep . . . a working village that’s more than a tourist destination,” said one of its board members, Myrna Davis, a writer who lives on Rector Street with her husband, the well-known illustrator Paul Davis. The group drummed up “overwhelming support” to prevent the potential debacle. It has since taken on other projects, notably the redevelopment of the Harbor Heights service station and a proposed condominium development at One Ferry Road. It has hired an attorney, Jeffrey Bragman, to represent it at numerous hearings.         

       The Bulova project actually wasn’t in their purview, Ms. Davis said. In fact, Save Sag Harbor had supported what they hoped would be a “first-class restoration of this important historic building and grounds.”

      However, when several neighbors of the project approached Save Sag Harbor members with complaints, the board took action. In a letter to the Sag Harbor Architectural Review Board, the group called the new town houses being built in connection with the restoration of the old watch factory “more than disappointing.” The letter cites the scale of each house as “too big for the surrounding properties,” and calls the materials “inappropriate for a 300-year-old historic village that is a locally and nationally designated historic district.” 

       The letter goes on to say that past “approvals by the Sag Harbor Village Architectural Review Board are “inexplicable in light of the written criteria guiding its decisions, which expressly state that synthetic materials should be avoided. Such materials have not been approved for individual homeowners, despite hardships, and the larger the scale of the project, the more adverse the impact of disregarding the criteria.”

        Ms. Davis, along with Bob Weinstein and Susan Mead, attended the Oct. 28 meeting of the A.R.B., where the trio waited two and a half hours for Bulova to come up. While waiting, they inserted themselves into discussions of other proposals. When the owners of InHome, a shop at 132 Main Street, proposed installing a picture window, Ms. Mead said it could jeopardize other properties because it compromised the area’s designation as a historic district.

       Owners of properties near Bulova also attended the meeting, including Eliza Werner of Sage Street Antiques, who said she was there to keep an eye on what Cape Advisors, the project’s developers, were doing. Her shop is in an old house and, she said, she was concerned that the row houses are “towering over me.”

       By 7:30 p.m., when representatives of Cape Advisors began their presentation, anticipation had built to a peak. More than half a dozen people left their seats and hovered around the table where review board members were viewing drawings. The developers explained that they had met with some members of Save Sag Harbor earlier in the day and had agreed to various changes, including replacing fiber-cement siding with cedar shingles.

       When all was said and done, a woman was told that it was too late to read a letter from Carl Peterson, who works with Ms. Werner at Sage Street but was unable to attend. Ms. Davis, however, persuaded the board to hear the letter quoted above. 

       Some of the points made in Mr. Peterson’s letter were that the town houses are “too close to each other,” materials “appear to be plastic,” and the color combination  is “jarring.” He wrote that the overall effect was “creating a Disney Land-like horror show.”

       The meeting almost seemed redundant. Having already met with members of Save Sag Harbor, the developers appeared ready to make changes. “Clearly we need a strong A.R.B. as the first line of defense,” said Jayne Young, a board member who is former president and publisher of The Atlantic Monthly. “But many hands make an impact; it’s a collective effort.”

       Meanwhile, Save Sag Harbor is focusing on Harbor Heights. (The Sag Harbor Zoning Board will meet again on the station’s plans on Nov. 19.) “This is the first big test of the new zoning code,” which was established in 2009. Ms. Young called the planned 96-foot-long pump island and canopy, which had been reduced from 102 feet, “still a huge intensification of the property. . . . We now have a run-down country gas station that’s being converted into something on steroids.”

       “People on the East End have a great sense of place,” Ms. Young said. “If we want to keep what we cherish people do have to be involved.”

       Congress may soon provide relief to the owners of waterfront and low-lying properties here and across the United States who have been stunned to discover that their federal flood insurance premiums are rising sharply — more than doubling in some cases — thanks to a law that went into effect in October.

 The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Law affects homeowners in designated flood-hazard zones who have been facing huge increases in the cost of insurance from the debt-ridden National Flood Insurance Program. The program is operating with a deficit of approximately $25 billion, reflecting an increase of nearly 50 percent since Hurricane Sandy.

       Under Biggert-Waters rules, flood insurance subsidies for homeowners in high-risk flood zones are being eliminated. At the same time, redrawn flood maps require many more homeowners to buy the insurance, which is often required by banks as a condition of a mortgage.

       The upshot is that premiums commensurate with risk, assessed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, would at minimum and in most cases result in double or triple-digit increases for existing policy holders and high premiums for new ones.

       In a rare moment of Congressional bipartisanship, however, help, or at least temporary relief, may be on the way. The Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013, introduced last week, would delay implementation of Biggert-Waters by four years. It would require FEMA to study ways to make flood insurance rates affordable and deliver a report to Congress. Congress would then be required to act on FEMA’s recommendations.

       “I think it’s got a good chance,” Representative Tim Bishop, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said on Tuesday. “This is something on which there is common ground,” he said, noting that similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate, also with bipartisan support. Passage, however, is likely to be months away, Mr. Bishop said. “I’m not sure how this is going to go, but there will be a significant effort to get this passed,” he said. Without the adoption of mitigating legislation, insurance brokers warn, the sharp increase in flood insurance premiums will negatively impact real estate transactions.

       For many homeowners on the South Fork, however, what is not included in the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act is significant: Its passage would not delay implementation of the Biggert-Waters reforms for second or vacation houses. “What it would do,” Mr. Bishop said, “is delay implementation for primary homes and for homes that have not previously filed claims. . . .”

       Properties in designated flood plains that carry federally backed mortgages are required to have flood insurance, with the National Flood Insurance Program usually the  insurer. “By and large, no insurance company will insure the perils of flooding on their own, so it’s the federal government that makes the market,” said Timothy Brenneman, executive director of Cook, Hall and Hyde in East Hampton. “Even if an insurance company is putting its name on a flood insurance policy, they’re just administering — it’s just not actuarially sound enough for an insurance company to be part of and bear risk.”

       Regardless of its passage, the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act reflects the consequence of recent extreme-weather events, which the scientific community has long predicted will become both more frequent and more violent, along with sea-level rise. Whether now or in four years, homeowners on the South Fork and in other flood-prone regions will bear the costs of the purpose of the Biggert-Waters legislation, which is to shore up the National Flood Insurance Program’s heretofore-unsustainable path, local insurance executives said.

       George Yates, president of Dayton Ritz and Osborn in East Hampton, said that recently changed flood zones had transformed many properties from low-hazard to high-hazard areas overnight. Parts of Wainscott and Sagaponack, he said, are an example. Premiums in designated high-hazard zones, he said, “might have been $450 for the maximum flood insurance available,” or $250,000 on the structure and $100,000 on its contents. Today, “I have one customer in that area whose premium will go to $7,000. . . . I’ve read of examples where the premium has gone up to as much as $40,000.”

       In the month since the Biggert-Waters legislation took effect, Mr. Brenneman had yet to see dramatic rate increases here. Some homeowners, though, are acting to obtain what is called an elevation certificate to substantiate their flood zones. “So far we haven’t seen any earth-changing increases. What we know is there will be major changes introduced over the next couple of years, and that they will impact second-homeowners in more flood-prone areas the most,” he said.

       Mr. Bishop also said he had heard little so far from constituents about flood insurance rate increases. However, he said, “The people concerned have every right to be.” 

       Like Mr. Bishop, Mr. Yates and Mr. Brenneman agree that reform is inevitable. The problem is how to soften the impact of modifying flood insurance rates to what makes actuarial sense. “What’s undeniable is the flood insurance program is woefully under-funded and that the number of flood events since, really, Katrina have put the thing into hopeless red ink,” Mr. Brenneman said. “There’s no question there needs to be different rates around it, but our feeling as brokers has always been that raising rates should be done in a consumer-friendly way, and that’s typically single-digit rate increases that are explainable and manageable and maybe even can be offset with changing deductibles. . . .”

       Mr. Yates likened the National Flood Insurance Program to “an insurance company that has no capital other than the full faith and credit of its parent organization, and has lost $25 billion, which is not an insurance company you as a shareholder would want to invest in.”

       But the precipitous rise in premiums, Mr. Bishop said, has to be mitigated somehow. The Biggert-Waters legislation, he said, “was a bipartisan effort to address a problem that was a significant drain on the federal budget.” At the same time, he said the increases “are simply way too high for the average homeowner to accommodate.” With the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, he said, “We’re looking for some breathing room and some rationality to what the increase would be.”

       “Clearly,” Mr. Yates said, “people have to factor in the cost of insurance in costs for their home, and if you see flood insurance rates go to crazy numbers, it seems people will be less eager to buy homes that have higher carrying costs. It may have an effect on the real estate market. It’s not the primary driver — that’s more the U.S economy — but flood insurance, and windstorm insurance costs, are a big part of the package of carrying a home.”

       The debate over whether to unleash drug-sniffing dogs at East Hampton High School cleared its last and final hurdle Tuesday night, with the school board unanimously voting to amend its policy.

       A packed house of parents sat close together, speaking as one in favor of the proposal.

       “I speak in support of this policy, as a taxpayer and parent of a young child in the district,” said Jeff Erickson. “I applaud the board. We all know that we have an epidemic on Long Island with oxycodone and prescription-drug use. It starts with alcohol and marijuana. If we have children using our facility to sell drugs or use drugs, let’s get rid of them. Let’s get them out, because they’re poisoning our children.”

       Mr. Erickson continued: “I’m pretty conservative on this. I have no problem with them sniffing our children.”

       Thunderous applause followed his remarks.

       “We have not heard one word against — not one,” said Patricia Hope, the board president, yesterday morning.

       The question of whether to use the dogs surfaced three weeks ago, when a Latino parent stood to address the board, saying that her child had recently been offered cocaine during lunchtime. A group of Latino parents interviewed later said that the high school bathrooms also posed a problem, and that some students hid drugs in the caps of highlighter pens.

       In a marked shift from most meetings, which are generally sparsely attended, both white and Latino parents turned out in equal numbers Tuesday. About 30 sat in the audience.

       “I’m so happy this program has come up. A lot of stuff has been going on at the school and it’s been worrying me,” said Ana Perez, a parent. “I think it’s a big problem.”

       “I would love to have the dogs here,” said Walther Quiroz. “The same day they check, can they also do it in the cars parked in the lot?”

       Ms. Hope promised to investigate.

       During the meeting, Adam Fine, the high school principal, explained that the school would go on modified lockdown once the K-9 unit was brought in, with students kept inside classrooms. Neither parents nor students will be notified of a search beforehand. “Students cannot be in the hallways,” said Mr. Fine. “Dogs cannot go near kids, only in the hallways to search near lockers.”

       Should illegal drugs be found, he said, the County Police Department’s K-9 Unit would defer to East Hampton Town police. Besides a possible arrest, the student would also face an automatic five-day suspension and a superintendent’s hearing, among other possible penalties.

        “The district already has enormous power under existing policy to search students whenever there is cause. This is a fairly minor change in the context of the tools that the district already has,” said Jackie Lowey, a board member.

       “It will provide a highly dramatic layer of deterrence,” countered Ms. Hope. “It’s a big deal to a little kid — even a medium-sized kid. And that’s one of its main values.”

       In other news, high school students who built a school in Senegal over the summer as part of buildOn, an international nonprofit organization, made a presentation recapping the trip. A student from East Hampton Middle School also spoke about the recently approved Surfrider Club, which works on environmental causes. The club’s first project will work to bring about plastic-waste awareness.

       The board voted to terminate Karin Gosman, a school bus driver, effective Oct. 18. Additionally, members voted to approve a shared sports agreement among the East Hampton, Bridgehampton, and Montauk schools. Board members also approved a new special education services contract between East Hampton and Wainscott, which will allow Wainscott students to participate in special education classes in East Hampton, rather than traveling UpIsland. 

       A contract for Michael Conte of Syntax Communication was approved from Oct. 17 to June 30, 2015, for the purpose of Web site design, hosting, and maintenance services. Richard Burns, district superintendent, said it is hoped that a new Web site will be unveiled by the spring, if not sooner. The board also approved the disposal of books from East Hampton Middle School, following an infestation of mold.

       Finally, during the second airing of public comments, Arthur Goldman, a teacher at East Hampton High School, urged the board to reconsider its decision to hold graduation on the evening of Friday, June 27.

       “The Friday date places an undue hardship on relatives traveling far distances,” said Mr. Goldman, explaining that the relatives would be forced to take the day off from work in order to attend. The change from Saturday morning to Friday night, he added, would alter the “family nature of graduation,” urging that the disadvantages greatly outweighed all possible advantages.

The Republican majority of the East Hampton Town Board voted 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.