An Amagansett man was arrested on April 24 and charged with forging Hampton Jitney tickets.

    Stratford Skalkos, 68, had just gotten off an Ambassador, one of the company’s luxury buses, when Southampton Town police arrested him at the Omni, the company transportation hub on County Road 39. The one-way fare on the Ambassador is $45.

    Mr. Skalkos has a 1999 conviction for felony grand larceny, according to records kept at the county jail, where he was held until yesterday. The records department at the jail could provide no other details about the previous conviction, for which he served a one-year term in county jail.

    Police said Mr. Skalkos had used at least 10 forged Jitney tickets before he was arrested. Employees on the bus became suspicious of the ticket he presented last week and alerted management, which contacted the police.

    Mr. Skalkos was said to be in possession of numerous forged Jitney tickets at the time of his arrest. Police said he was also in possession of several people’s “personal information.” They did not give specifics, but Southampton detectives are conducting an investigation as to whether Mr. Skalkos was using the information for criminal purposes.

    Court documents available online detail an embezzling scheme dating back to the 1980s in which a man with the same name, Stratford Skalkos, then working for Avon Products, used company funds to pay his own bills. As of noon yesterday, Southampton police would not say whether this was the same man. They have asked that anyone with knowledge of the case, or of past crimes involving Mr. Skalkos, call the Southampton Town Detective Bureau, 631-702 2230.

    Police would not speculate as to how Mr. Skalkos created the alleged forgeries, whether by himself on a home computer or with professional help. Forgery in the second degree is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

    He posted bail of $7,500 yesterday and was released. He has a date in Southampton Town Court on May 22.

    In other police news, Melvin C. Smith of East Hampton, who was charged with felony assault on April 10, was brought back to East Hampton Justice Court last Thursday, where Justice Lisa Rana set bail at $5,000, after the office of the County District Attorney agreed to reduce the charge against him to a misdemeanor. His attorney, Joseph Giannini, has maintained since the arrest that Mr. Smith is innocent.

    The attorney said that his client had testified before a grand jury in Riverhead for six hours in the days following his arrest, and that the grand jury then declined to indict him. That led to the reduction in the level of the charge. Mr. Giannini took exception to an article in this newspaper reporting that he believed race to be a factor in the arrest. He meant, he said, that race was a factor in the fight that occurred, not in the arrest. Mr. Smith is black; his alleged victim is white.

    Mr. Smith could not meet the $5,000 bail, and was returned to the county jail. He is due back in court today.

    “What should we have for lunch?” Arjun Achuthan asked the seven students seated around a wooden dining table on Monday at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton.

    Clio Halweil, 5, voted for minestrone soup, Stella Hopson, 8, requested lasagna, and Colin Heilman, 6, made a plea for “garlic cheesy bread.”

    After much back and forth, including a review of what they had just eaten, (pasta with lemon zest, roasted cauliflower, and a salad whose lettuces were grown in one of the school’s two greenhouses), students, who ranged in age from 5 to 11, discussed the elements of a balanced meal, the benefits of eating local foods, sustainably grown produce, and why deli meats, because of nitrates and high sodium, were to be avoided.

    Lasagna, three-cheese garlic bread, and a green salad were ultimately chosen. Soon, students wriggled free of their seats and quickly dispersed, each with a job to do.

    A handful of students paid a visit to the greenhouse to check on the kale and Swiss chard before stopping by the chicken coop, where they collected nearly three dozen eggs. Meanwhile, another group started chopping vegetables, setting the tables, and writing out the next day’s menu on a chalkboard. Scott O’Neil, who assists Mr. Achuthan in the kitchen, made a final dash to King Kullen for the remaining supplies.

    The kitchen quickly filled with the aroma of basil and more than 50 cloves of garlic. Students, wearing hairnets, gloves, and aprons, stood on step stools to reach the counter tops. Each helped assemble the lasagna — repeating layers of sauce, pasta, and cheese.

    “I just like to cook,” said Stella, who is in her first year at Hayground, having previously attended Southampton Elementary School. “It’s one of my favorite things.”

    “I like that I get to find new recipes, and I just like making food,” said her classmate Noah Topliff, 8, who is in his fifth year at the school.

    The culinary arts program, which was started in 2010, is an important part of the curriculum. While previously students brought brown-bag lunches, the 73 students now enrolled have a hot meal prepared by their classmates every day.

    Jeff Salaway, the late owner of Nick and Toni’s restaurant in East Hampton, was one of Hayground’s co-founders. One of his dreams, according to Mr. Achuthan, was that students might grow, cook, and eat their own food. In 2005, the school broke ground on Jeff’s Kitchen, named in Mr. Salaway’s memory. But apart from a few batches of cookies, it sat unused for some time. Now, one side of the kitchen is undergoing construction — an expansion on the 13-acre campus to allow more classroom and dining space.

    As a former classroom teacher, Mr. Achuthan, who runs the culinary program, appreciates being given two-hour blocks of time so that students can delve deeply into the tasks at hand. His own daughter, who is 5, attends the school, which he helped found. 

    In future years, Mr. Achuthan’s hope is for students to take increasing ownership of the planning and execution of the meals. He urges students to base menus around what the school has on hand rather than relying on trips to the supermarket.

    When meal-planning for 80 (students and some staff), a consideration has to be the potential workload. A recent experiment in making homemade ravioli is unlikely to be repeated, he said. Following each meal, leftovers either go straight into the compost pile or into the chicken coop.

    While in the kitchen, students are engaged in what Mr. Achuthan describes as an “authentic endeavor. The more real the job is, the more focused they are.”

    On Tuesday afternoon, he finally sat down to enjoy a few bites of lasagna with venison sauce, made from a local deer that a parent had donated. The venison is the only meat that Hayground’s students have been served the entire school year.

    Meanwhile, students waited in line for second helpings, passing around trays piled high with garlic bread.

    Thirty minutes later, the next group of students raced into Jeff’s Kitchen to plan the next day’s lunch: quesadillas made with spinach and mushrooms.

    “I’ve noticed that a lot of other schools have gardens and get momentum, and it often kind of fizzles,” said Mr. Achuthan, who emphasized the ongoing energy and commitment the daily program requires. “We don’t have that problem. The problem we have is if it ever stopped, we’d be hearing about it from the parents and the kids.”

    The Hayground School is now 17 years old, having been founded in 1996 by several adults who had been associated with the Hampton Day School. A number of the founders remain active, each with an apparent sense of passion and purpose — dedicated to a school that teaches to life, not the test.

    The school prides itself on its diversity. While annual tuition is $21,500, between 55 to 60 percent of students receive some financial aid, according to Jon Snow, a co-founder. The Hayground Camp, which offers programs each summer at a cost of $900 a week, helps offset as much as 60 percent of the school’s total costs.

    “We wanted that full diversity, really a public school demographic,” said Mr. Snow. “It was really important to us not to be about privilege.” Of the continued involvement of many of the founders, he said the school was “a very compelling place for teachers to do what they got into teaching to do.”

   Set on a slight rise, with a big lawn in front of it, the house at the corner of Ditch Plain and Deforest Roads, there since the days when Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were quarantined in Montauk, is hard to miss if you’re headed to the beach.

    But the one-acre property could be in for some major changes if the East Hampton Town Planning Board approves a plan to divide it in two.

    At a hearing on April 10, neighbors and their representatives weighed in, questioning where a second house could be placed and suggesting that the town buy the property, which its owners, Mark and Joan Sullivan, have had on the market for over a year.

    “It’s iconic,” said Rita Bonnicelli of the Brill Legal Group, representing Mary Ann Concillio, who lives just north of the property.

    Cal Stewart, a neighbor, pointed out the historical importance of the site, as well as the high-volume recreational use of the area, and suggested that the town purchase the property and turn it into a park. There are photographs showing Roosevelt, then a general, leading his troops on horseback with the house in the background, during their month in Montauk following their return from Cuba and the Spanish-American War.

    Opposite the larger Ditch Plain beach parking lot, the property is shaped almost like a triangle. While zoning there would allow for a subdivision, owners of adjacent properties questioned, among other things, how such a split would be apportioned.

    “The lot is clearly a triangular lot,” Ms. Bonnicelli said, pointing out that the zoning code encourages the board to create rectangular lots when it approves a subdivision. In this case both the proposed lots would be triangular.

    “After a storm Ditch Plain Road is often underwater for days at a time,” said Ms. Bonnicelli. Her family had a house on Deforest Road and she grew up going to Ditch Plain beach. She questioned how much landfill would be needed to construct a house on the proposed new lot, and whether that would cause flooding of neighboring lots.

    Walter Galcik Jr., another neighbor whose family has lived on Ditch Plain Road since the early 1970s, had similar questions. “The only buildable spot is right is where the house is now. Everything else is below grade.”

    A survey in the planning board’s file shows the existing house sitting on an 18-foot ridge. The property slopes down toward the road from there. Mr. Galcik fears that raising the grade and further developing the land would force even more water onto neighboring lots.

    To divide the land so that another house could be built on it would be a detriment to the neighborhood, Ms. Bonicelli said.

    Nancy Keeshan, the board’s vice chairwoman, said early last week that the planning board had already sent a letter to the East Hampton Town Board asking it to consider placing the property, which she called “the gateway to Ditch Plains,” on a list of prospective acquisitions for the town.

Montauk Highway roadwork, set to resume as pre-summer laborer and delivery traffic reaches its peak, will slow drivers through East Hampton Village until at least May 20, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Transportation said.

Long tie-ups are possible between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. during lane closures, according to Eileen Peters, a public information officer for the Department of Transportation’s Region 10.

Additionally, Ms. Peters said this week that an agreement with the contractor allowed its workers to close Woods Lane in both directions from Toilsome Lane to Main Street during the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. window. Traffic will be detoured onto Toilsome, Buell, and Race Lanes while the project is under way.

The resurfacing of the badly potholed and cracked roadway had been set to take place in thefall but was put off after Hurricane Sandy struck the region on Oct. 29. Department of Transportation roadwork the length of Long Island was suspended to keep all lanes open for the removal of debris and rebuilding efforts, Ms. Peters said.

According to a press release from the Department of Transportation, a 2.3-mile-long section of Montauk Highway between Stephen Hand’s Path and Buell Lane is to be replaced. Workers diverted traffic briefly beginning last week while the old surface was ground up and removed to be stored for eventual recycling, Ms. Peters said. During the first phase of the project, eastbound morning traffic was bumper to bumper nearly to Bridgehampton as early as 8 a.m.

Drivers were advised in the release to use alternate routes through the area.

Ms. Peters said that the best way to avoid the potential bottleneck, especially during the period when Woods Lane was to be closed, was to try to get through the area eastbound or westbound by 7:30 a.m.

“It’s several weeks of inconvenience,” she said. “It is going to be a big improvement, with a fresh, safe, smooth road.”

“I tell people to try to focus on the end result,” she said.

Looking toward the fall, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has been among a group of public officials who have been pressing the Department of Transportation for a $12.5 million project to repair a separate section of Montauk Highway, from County Road 39 in Southampton to Stephen Hand’s Path.

They made their initial pitch for the funding in a letter co-signed by local mayors and town supervisors, as well as Representative Tim Bishop, State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, and County Legislator Jay Schneiderman. Barring another hurricane, Mr. Thiele’s office said last month, the work would begin after Labor Day, if the money is added to the state’s transportation improvement plan, as expected.

    When she first took the bench in 1993, said East Hampton Town Justice Catherine Cahill, “they would come into court and think I was the clerk. Then I’d put my robe on, and there would be this look of panic.”

     After two decades, Justice Cahill, the first woman ever to preside over the local court, has decided to step down. She will retire on Dec. 31.

    “I had a difficult time with the decision,” she said on Monday, explaining that for several months she’s been weighing her love of the job against a very real feeling that 20 years was enough.

    Much has changed in town court during that time, she said. In the early days, the court’s two justices would split the month: two weeks on, two off. Now, study and research make it a full-time job. Ms. Cahill keeps a pad of paper on the night table next to her bed, handy for making notes when she wakes up at 3 in the morning with the next day’s docket running through her mind.

    “It’s a much more sophisticated bar now,” she said. “People with influence, money, they want to paper you to death. Some of them have two lawyers. The higher the attorneys’ fees, the more they’re expected to do.” At the same time, said the justice, the prosecution is frequently represented by younger, less experienced attorneys.

    “My role is to be the gate-keeper,” she said — to see that the defendant represented by Legal Aid gets the same break as someone who can afford a high-priced attorney. “Nobody comes to a court because they want to. They show up pretty ticked off. A parking ticket written in August to a doctor from New York? You have no idea what you’re about to hear.”

    Justice Cahill has watched many people turn their lives around after a brush with the law, one of the most gratifying aspects of the job, she said. “There is no way to overestimate the satisfaction you get from touching a life. The other side of the coin — the “underbelly,” she called it — is passing sentence on repeat offenders. “You sometimes have to be the bad guy. If everyone likes you, you’re probably not doing a good job.”

    The justice sees a possible connection between the kinds of offenses coming through the court today and the changing demographics of the town. When she began her tenure, she remembered, the court had one day a month set aside for Spanish-speaking defendants. Now a translator is present for every court session, and two of the seven court clerks speak Spanish.

    Justice Cahill sees the immigration reform bill that is slowly progressing through Congress as a hopeful sign of change and a rare example of the political system working. Too often, she said, it doesn’t. “Gun control is a perfect example of our political system gone awry.”

    The justice was first drawn to the law as a child. “When I was a little girl, my mom worked for the Family Service League,” protecting the powerless and the vulnerable. The young Ms. Cahill wondered what kept people that way and why the laws did not work better. “What is a law? How does it work?” she remembers asking.

    She shared a homeroom at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx with another future judge, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whom she remembers as an outstanding scholar. After a spell at Westchester Community College, where Ms. Cahill was at the top of her class, she was awarded a full scholarship to Southampton College. Her family had a summer house in Springs, but that was her first year-round experience of life on the East End.

    After a year at a Los Angeles law school (“I hated L.A.”), she came back to the East Coast, getting a degree from Pace Law School. Next came a job with New York City’s Division of Real Property, which auctions off seized assets.

    The city in the mid-’80s had bounced back from the depths of the 1970s, but was not yet the gentrifying metropolis it is today. Ms. Cahill recalls the biannual auctions as chaotic, bizarre, and exciting. “All different ethnic groups. Hasidics, blacks, Latinos, all competing to buy pieces of the Big Apple, all milling around One Police Plaza with satchels filled with cash. You had to have ten percent cash on hand. Fights would break out, and the police would have to be called in.”

    Around that time she met Marvin Hyman, an attorney with a practice in East Hampton. “He would come into the city when he could, and I would come out here when I could. After two years, we got married.” After the birth of their first son, Zachary, the couple gave up their SoHo apartment. “I went from Mercer Street to Cedar Street,” said the justice.

    She found she was not cut out to be a stay-at-home mom, especially not 100 miles from the city. “What am I doing here?” she asked her husband.

    Mr. Hyman encouraged his wife to apply for a job in the office of the Suffolk County District Attorney. She had her doubts, but sent in a résumé, and was hired as an assistant D.A. for the East End, a modern-day circuit-rider traveling from jurisdiction to jurisdiction each week to handle local prosecutions: “Eight different justice courts. Eight different personalities.”

    One North Fork justice, whom she wouldn’t identify, was particularly mercurial. “You never knew what you’d get,” she said of her weekly visit to that court.

    Early on, in a case where the defendant had bitten off part of another man’s nose (“I was so confident I was going to win”), the young prosecutor learned a valuable lesson. It had happened at a bachelor party, where strippers were performing and booze was flowing freely. At the end of the trial, the jury went out, then came right back in.

    “I thought they wanted to ask a question.” Instead, they turned in the verdict: not guilty.    

    Ms. Cahill realized that the case she’d been prosecuting was, in the eyes of the jury, just “a bar fight,” and understood that she needed to do a better job of assessing facts, to look more closely at witnesses, to size up a case before it got to court. “Assaults. A drug deal gone bad. ‘This is going to be a disorderly conduct conviction.’ ”

    Her work and integrity caught the eye of former East Hampton Town Justice James R. Ketcham. “ ‘You have standards. You don’t just give in,’ ” he told her.

    “He was sort of my mentor,” she said.

    With Justice Edward Horne about to retire, Justice Ketcham urged Ms. Cahill, who had now been in the D.A.’s office for five years, to run for the bench. On the Democratic ticket or the Republican? “It was a tossup, the D’s or the R’s.” But when Mr. Horne, a Republican, changed his mind and decided to run again, she aligned herself with the Democrats.

    Her late husband was a Republican. “Over the years, he became more Democrat and I became more Republican.”

    Despite the changes over 20 years, East Hampton is still a small town, and being a justice here, she said, does produce an occasional awkward moment. Sometimes she’ll meet someone socially who will stop and stare at her. “Where do I know you from? they’ll ask me.” She knows exactly where: when they pleaded guilty to a speeding ticket last week.

    Now a young 58, Justice Cahill is uncertain of what the future will bring. She’s tripled the size of her garden in Springs, but she also keeps a small apartment in the city where she likes to spend time. Travel is a possibility as well; she’s been thinking about Myanmar (Burma).

    Whatever her future holds, it will certainly include her Boston Terrier, Yogi, who has made the trip to court with her for the past five years. The courthouse staff, the justice predicted with a laugh, will “miss Yogi more than they’ll miss me.”

    She’s leaving the court in the good hands of her fellow justice Lisa Rana, she said, adding, “I feel close to her.” The two have worked together for the past 10 years.

    She is also close with the staff of guards and court clerks, whose jobs, she said, “take a special mentality. The morale in the court office is always wonderful.” She particularly singled out her clerk of many years, Jennifer Anderson. “She’s super,” Justice Cahill said. “She is as smart as any of the lawyers who come in here.”

     Ms. Anderson returned the compliment. “She is so caring and loving,” the court clerk said of the retiring justice. “Those are going to be very big shoes to fill.”

    On Tuesday night, three contenders for the vacant seat on the court screened with the Independence Party for its nomination. They are Steven Tekulsky, an East Hampton attorney who will probably win Democratic support, Carl Irace, a former town attorney who has the Republican nomination sewn up, and Joe Giannini, a former marine and veterans’ advocate.

   No fewer than 18 residents of East Hampton Village and surrounding hamlets delivered impassioned pleas to the village board on Friday asking it not to add further restrictions to dogs on village beaches.

    Over the course of lengthy and sometimes combative remarks, the board listened quietly as speakers cited a deep bond with their pets and “the old bucolic, wonderful ways of East Hampton” as grounds to table a measure they called misguided and pointless. It was even suggested that board members retire or be voted out of office should they act to further regulate dogs’ presence on village beaches.

    The proposed amendment would require that dogs be on six-foot or shorter leash within 500 feet of any beach road end in the village. Already, dogs and other animals are forbidden from village beaches between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. from the second Sunday in May through Sept. 30, and people are required to clean up after their pets or risk ticketing.

    But, according to the introduction to the proposed amendment, “animal waste left on the beach continues to be a frequent problem, notwithstanding the signage alerting dog owners to clean up and the availability of plastic bags for use in cleaning up.”

    On Friday, speakers including Sara Davison, executive director of the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, and Jennifer Berkeley, a co-founder of the volunteer group beachdogs11937, accepted the leash legislation but objected to the 500-foot requirement, calling 200 feet a reasonable compromise.

    “I urge more official enforcement, more scheduled patrols,” of village beaches, Ms. Berkeley said. “We as residents and volunteers can increase our presence over the summer.”

     A leash requirement upon entry to the beach is sound, Ms. Davison said. “It’s reasonable to scope out the area, make sure your dog is not going to interfere with a picnic. However, we do feel that the 500-foot measurement is truly unrealistic.” Like Ms. Berkeley, Ms. Davison promised her organization’s educational outreach, “so that beachgoers with dogs know exactly what the regulations are.”

    Quickly, though, speakers focused on what they called ambiguous wording in the proposed amendment. While asserting a dramatic improvement in dog owners’ self-policing efforts and the resulting cleanliness of the beaches, Michael Dickerson and subsequent speakers called a particular phrase in the amendment both confusing and troubling.

    “It’s that little thing that says ‘at all other times’ that people think might be used in the future to drive us from the beaches or further restrict us,” Mr. Dickerson said.

    If the board feels the need to change the law, said Bob Hoguet, he asked that it remove “the ambiguity, at least, in the language, which implies the opportunity to extend the regulations year-round.”

    If that is indeed the board’s intent, said Norbert Weissberg, “I’m really dismayed, because if this legislation’s purpose is to protect picnickers and other people who use the beach, I can testify from many years of experience that there are none” in the off-season. He urged the board to make its intentions clear.

    Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. asked Linda Riley, the village attorney, to respond. “Frankly, I think it’s a fair comment, that ‘at all other times’ is probably open to interpretation,” she said, adding that it would be easy to modify the wording.

    The change would not require a new hearing, as it would not add restrictions to the proposed law.

    Speakers attacked the proposed amendment from other angles. Randy Slifka, who addressed the board twice, said that he has had four back surgeries and three knee surgeries. “It’s very difficult for me to walk 200 feet, let alone 500 feet,” he said. The beach, said Mr. Slifka, is one of the only opportunities for his service dog to be off-leash. “For her to be pulling me 200 feet is potentially painful, can add to my disability, etc. Has there been any consideration for those individuals who have disabilities, or who have service dogs?”

    The board is cognitive of the Americans with Disabilities Act, said the mayor. “If there’s applicability based on the comments you’ve raised, we would certainly take them into consideration.”

    Several speakers expressed a fear of — and obvious disdain for — what they flatly called government overreach. Jarvis Slade said he has been a resident, taxpayer, and voter in East Hampton for 60 years, and has both walked dogs and ridden horses on the beach. “And the idea of 500 feet, maybe I could learn to understand that, but my dog wouldn’t. He likes to follow other dogs, and run with the dogs, and they have a wonderful time.”

    “Let’s not feel that you have to regulate everything, just like the federal government,” he said. “With all due respect, if the trustees feel we need more and more regulations, and change the whole nature of this village from what it used to be . . . we should let them retire gracefully and have people who really respect the old bucolic, wonderful ways of East Hampton.”

    “You people, to be perfectly candid, scare us,” said Mr. Weissberg, “because we know the power that you have. We’ve regarded that power in years past, and we are particularly attentive in seeing to it that we prevent you from tampering with our privileges.”

    Ultimately, speakers attacked the very assertion that there is popular support for increased restrictions. “We have this expression, ‘there have been complaints made,’ ” said Rick Nersesian. “Is it 1,000 complaints? Five hundred complaints? Is it two homeowners? Is there a groundswell of complaints to change the situation?”

    Kevin Reynolds, a former New York City police officer, admitted to “cynic’s license,” but suggested that the board was bending to the will of a handful of wealthy summer residents. “I have not heard any names” of those favoring increased restrictions, Mr. Reynolds told the mayor. Later, he continued his interrogation. “Mr. Mayor, how many people do you have that are against dogs on the beach?”

    “I can’t give you a specific number,” the mayor replied.

    “Can you give me a guesstimate?” Mr. Reynolds asked. “Over 10? Under 20?”

    “I would say over 20,” the mayor said. “I don’t want to get involved in this type of back and forth. We’re having a public hearing, and we’re listening intently to you folks today, okay?”

    The number is important, Mr. Reynolds said. “If you’re going to restrict us based on 10 or 20 people, I think the press wants to know that, and the people of East Hampton want to know that that’s how our government is operating. . . . The fact that you’re willing not to address it speaks volumes.”

    Dan Rattiner, who said he had been a dog owner and resident for more than 50 years, drew attention to the significantly greater restrictions he said the village of Southampton imposes on dogs with regard to beaches. “They also have revetments on the ocean, all kind of things that we don’t,” he said. “What they don’t have . . . is Bonackers, the local people. There’s a very high percentage of local people here compared to the summer people. . . . I wish you would consider that when you decide what you want to do.”

    Following public comment, which included multiple calls for greater enforcement of existing code and stiffer fines for noncompliance, Richard Law­ler of the board agreed that the language in the proposed amendment is vague. “I’m not certain that the board meant to make this restriction year-round,” he said. “Possibly, further discussion on that is needed.” He also suggested that Ms. Riley determine the parameters within which the village is limited by the state’s penal code to increase fines.

    In the end, the proposed amendment’s wording was deemed sufficiently ambiguous to warrant modification, postponing action. “We want everyone to feel comfortable when they leave that they were able to speak their mind,” said the mayor. “That is indeed good government, and that’s why we’re here listening this morning. . . . I hope you give this board a little bit of credit for listening.”

    After the meeting, the mayor said it was unlikely that any new restrictions would be in effect by July 4.

    With Earth Day just past and the number of second homeowners increasing as the calendar moves toward summer, The Star went on a fact-finding mission to find out how garbage is handled on the South Fork. Although recycling has been reported as declining on Long Island in recent years, officials in East Hampton, Southampton, and Shelter Island report their towns are doing a good job. Just what happens to the garbage collected by commercial carters is, however, less understood.

    According to Section 120-aa of the New York State Consolidated Laws, local municipalities are mandated to adopt laws or ordinances that require source separation and segregation of recyclable or reusable material from solid waste. The towns are required to have solid waste management plans approved by State Department of Environmental Conservation (rather amusingly known as SWAMP), plus a description of a “comprehensive recycling analysis.”

    The state says refuse and recyclables should not be commingled on carters’ trucks. Separate containers are to be used or pickup scheduled on different days. But commercial carters do not always comply. It has been explained that they don’t have enough trucks or appropriate ones to keep waste separated.

    Since the towns are responsible for enforcing their own laws, and since they require separation, commercial carters rarely use South Fork facilities. Southampton Town does not let them into its facilities at all. East Hampton and Shelter Island welcome refuse and recyclables from carters.

     According to an employee of East End Sanitation, based in Westhampton, most of the commercial carters take waste to a transfer station run by Eastern Resource Recycling in Yaphank, where it is sent down a chute and sorted. Winters Brothers (now Progressive Waste Solutions),  one of the major carters on eastern Long Island, uses several facilities. Even those carters that advertise recycling explain that the materials they pick up are sorted elsewhere. The Web site of Go Green Sanitation, for example, indicates that the company picks up metal, glass, and paper on different days, but it also states that the waste “is transported to a D.E.C.-regulated facility where it is sorted, processed, and recycled to the highest standards.” Dump on Us Recyclers is operated by Winters Brothers.

    For those who self-haul the by-products of work and life to local recycling centers, Shelter Island’s center accepts the widest range of refuse and has the most user-friendly hours. It is open seven days a week, from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m., with an exception only for Thanks­giving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. While two of the four centers in Southampton Town are open seven days, its other two, and East Hampton’s, are closed Wednesdays and are only open until 4 p.m.

    Southampton and Shelter Island offer free recycling, with a per-bag or weigh-in fee for everything else. Bags range from $1.25 to $3.75 on Shelter Island, and $1.50 to $2.90 in Southampton, depending on their size. East Hampton charges householders $100 a year for the first vehicle, with reduced prices for others. Commercial users have an option of $25 per trip, or permits ranging from $150 to $250 annually.

    Plastic grocery bags have been banned for use in Southampton Town since April 2011, and East Hampton Village followed suit in February 2012. Hard tops of plastic containers are not recyclable, nor are plastics without a number in a recycling logo, nor any plastic or paper that has come into direct contact with food or bodily fluids.    East Hampton and Southampton Town accept only plastic identified with the numbers 1 or 2 within the recycling logo, while Shelter Island accepts number 1 through 7. Jay Lin Card, the Shelter Island commissioner of public works, said he gets less money for plastics coded 3 through 7, but bales and recycles them nonetheless.    

    It turns out that earth-friendly recycling provides the towns with some income. East Hampton Town’s recycling center runs on a surplus, according to Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who said that sales of recyclables totaled $169,570 in 2011 and an estimated $159,066 in 2012. 

    Southampton Town’s waste management program is based on the principle that expenses should equal revenues, said Christine Fetten, director of municipal works. Also with a break-even budget, Mr. Card said he nevertheless expects about $10,000 profit from the Island’s recycling efforts.

    Ms. Overby serves as liaison to East Hampton’s litter committee. She said its agenda recently included public service announcements to inform residents about recycling matters, such as free recycling of shrink wrap from winterized boats, and a recycling project for St. Michael’s new senior citizens housing complex in Amagansett. She is also working with the Montauk Chamber of Commerce on a pilot recycling program for Main Street, where businesses or individuals can sponsor recyclables bins to stand beside trash bins.    

     The best form of recycling is said to be reuse. “To reuse material for the purpose for which it was originally intended or to recycle material that cannot be reused” is second in the order of preference for management of solid waste according to the state solid waste management. Yet Shelter Island’s center is the only one among the three towns to have an area where residents can drop off goods that others may find useful. Southampton and East Hampton have discontinued theirs, citing the expense of monitoring the areas, safety and legal issues, and reporting that some residents abused the privilege by disposing of items unfit for reuse.

    Mr. Card argues that the overall benefit outweighs the hassles. He considers the service so important, in fact, that the town recently installed a roof over its “goody pile.” The Island also allows “pickers” to go through piles of refuse, providing they sign a liability waiver and wear a fluorescent vest, loaned by the department.    

    Unwanted clothes are accepted at all centers, collected in bins for St. Vincent de Paul or Big Brothers and Sisters, which pick up weekly.

    All three towns accept and process brush and leaves into mulch and compost, which is either sold inexpensively or given without charge to the public. Finely ground glass is offered free of charge at the Shelter Island center, to be used as fill or for the replacement of gravel in driveways. Mr. Card said he plans to recycle glass for use in lengthy, horizontal drainage projects in the future.

    An obvious solution to protecting the earth and water supply is keeping harsh materials out of the ground. All towns schedule STOP days (Stop Throwing Out Pollutants), yet only Shelter Island offers them on a regular basis, the first Saturday of each month from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

    Hazardous materials, such as automotive fluids, cleaners, pesticides, nail polish, paints (other than latex), and shoe polish, can be properly disposed on a STOP day, but on Shelter Island the center will accept these materials almost any day of the week as long as an attendant has the time to monitor what comes in.

    East Hampton has one or two STOP days a year, and Southampton has one per year at each of its locations, with dates that span from April through October.

    Waste oil from cars, on the other hand, a product that can be reused 20 times, is accepted year-round for free by all three towns, and recycled by companies such as Strebel’s, which loads its truck bimonthly in East Hampton, tests for halogens and cleanliness in Westhampton, and resells it. Electronic waste, described as anything with an on/off button, is accepted at no charge and resold by all three towns, as are metals of all kinds.

     Shelter Island’s recycling center will stage an annual green expo in May, where residents may bring paper to be shredded, and learn about earth-friendly options. Improvements to the center, which are expected soon, include solar panels over an improved sorting area. The work was accomplished with a grant.   

   Dashiel Marder, a 30-year-old world-class spearfisherman from Springs, disappeared on April 17 while diving off the coast of East Nusa Tengarra in Indonesia. According to his family, the owners of the Marders Garden Center and Nursery in Bridgehampton, the veteran free diver did not surface after a dive.

    Teams are expected to continue the search at least until the end of the week.

    The family was first told he had gone missing by his diving companions, who said the dive site and surrounding areas were being scoured by divers, both free-diving and using scuba gear, and with knowledge of the area’s tides, currents, and rock formations, as well as the missing man’s particular diving habits.

    The popular waterman is a free-diving spearfisherman who got into the sport fishing local waters for striped bass and tuna. It became his passion, and he has traveled the world to pursue it. The family said it was the remoteness of the waters off East Nusa Tengarra, southeast of Sumatra, and the exotic fish found there that drew Dashiel Marder.

    At the time of the incident, he was hunting dogtooth tuna and other large pelagic species. Mr. Marder’s dive boat left from the Nihiwatu resort on the island of Sumba.

    Free divers do not use scuba gear. They dive as deep as 130 feet using weights on a single breath, often remaining underwater for as long as three minutes. On this particular trip, Mr. Marder had been fishing for three weeks before he disappeared. His family said it was possible that he had suffered what is known as shallow-water blackout, when a diver becomes unconscious at the end of a dive. His speargun was found, but the cause of his disappearance is still a mystery.

    The Marder family is working through the American, Indonesian, Swiss, and Australian Embassies. Family and friends are desperate for information, which, because of language difficulties and the remoteness of the area being searched, has been hard to obtain. A new search team was sent out in recent days to try to compile what is known and to follow up on any leads.

    Before a crowd of friends, family, and old colleagues from across the local political spectrum, Larry Cantwell, the East Hampton Village administrator, announced his candidacy for East Hampton Town supervisor on Friday night at the Highway Diner in East Hampton, saying he hopes to win support from the Demo­cratic and Independence Parties.

    The Democrats will not vote on nominations until mid-May. Although a number of Democratic committee people came out to support Mr. Cantwell on Friday, he still faces a challenge for the nomination from Zachary Cohen, the Democrats’ 2011 candidate.

    “This is likely to go to a floor vote,” Mr. Cohen said Monday.

    Mr. Cantwell, Mr. Cohen, and Nancy Keeshan, vice-chairwoman of the town planning board, will screen for supervisor with the Independence Party on Tuesday.

    The Republicans had chosen most of their slate last month, but were sent back to the drawing board when County Legislator Jay Schneiderman decided to run again for his county post rather than attempt a return to East Hampton Town Hall as supervisor. Ms. Keeshan said yesterday that the Republican Committee invited her to screen for supervisor, and that she would do so in the coming week. “I was honored to be asked.”

    Ms. Keeshan and her father, John Keeshan, are partners in the Montauk firm Keeshan Real Estate. She has served on the planning board for three years and has been president for six years of the Montauk Village Association, a civic group dedicated to the beautification of Montauk’s downtown. “I grew up here. I enjoy giving back to the community,” she said. “I love this town. . . . There are a lot of important decisions to be made and I think you need to keep a watchful eye on how things change to protect our beautiful town for future generations.”

    Before being asked to sit down with the G.O.P., she screened for councilwoman with the Democrats. She is not affiliated with a party.

    Fred Overton, the town clerk, who was chosen to run on the G.O.P. ticket for town board along with Councilman Dominick Stanzione, had contemplated a supervisor run instead. He decided against it.

    Meanwhile, Mr. Cantwell has assembled a strong group of supporters, inluding State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who introduced him at Friday’s announcement gathering, offering a biting critique of where East Hampton Town finds itself today, and strong praise for the man who hopes to change that. Mr. Thiele, now a member of the Independence Party, once endorsed Republican Supervisor Bill Wilkinson. The assemblyman has known Mr. Cantwell since high school.

    “East Hampton Town used to have a leadership position on eastern Long Island,” he said Friday. “East Hampton was the first, and other towns would look to see what East Hampton was doing. That’s not the case anymore.” The town, he said, needs to return to the kind of leadership it had under “Judith Hope, Cathy Lester,  and Tony Bullock” — all Democrats. “We need to go back to the future for the Town of East Hampton and to do that, we don’t need a DeLorean or a flex capacitor, we just need a leader.”

    To resolve the serious issues East Hampton is facing, Mr. Cantwell said, “we need a leader now more than ever who is a consensus-builder.”

    He offered a rough sketch of his platform. “We need to adopt a mitigation and recovery plan to protect against the threat of coastal erosion and sea-level rise,” he said. “We need a strong consensus to maintain a small, safe airport and a clear strategy to reduce noise impacts on residential neighborhoods. We need to invest in technology to make town government more efficient in serving the public. We need a long-term capital plan to address the town’s rapidly deteriorating infrastructure. We need a town supervisor who believes in and supports planning and zoning. We must protect our residential neighborhoods for the peaceful enjoyment of all residents, preserving open space and protecting our drinking water and harbors from pollution. We must support local businesses. Believing in planning and zoning and supporting local business should not be mutually exclusive.”

    He spoke of a “negative cloud” hanging over town workers, of neighborhoods “under siege with noise and overflow parking from nightclubs and overcrowded houses,” and said, “I will not play party politics to reward special interests while disregarding the rights of all our residents and the best interests of the community as a whole.”

    Mr. Cantwell, who will retire as village administrator this summer after 31 years, has been the village’s chief financial officer. “During this time the village maintained a budget surplus every year for three decades,” he said.

    He served on the town board and as a town bay constable before being hired by the village. He also ran unsuccessfully for town supervisor.

    “I worked on his first councilman campaign in 1976,” said Christopher Kelley, a Democratic committeeman who was at Friday’s gathering. Mr. Kelley said Mr. Cohen “is certainly a very qualified and able person and he did a great job last time,” but he is supporting Mr. Cantwell this time around “because of my history with him and because I think he would make a great supervisor.”

    Mr. Kelley’s support at the convention in May will mean more than just one vote among 38. Two committee people represent each election district, but their votes are weighted according to the number of Democrats in their district who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Mr. Kelley’s district in Springs is large relative to others in the town and heavily Democratic, so he wields considerable power when it comes to nominations.

    Among the other committee people there to support Mr. Cantwell Friday were Bill Taylor, Phyllis Italiano, and Joe Giannini. Also on hand were Barbara Borsack, an East Hampton Village Board member, Bruce Collins, a former Republican town supervisor, and Roger Walker, a former East Hampton Town justice who ran for supervisor on the Republican ticket. “It’s very refreshing to have him in the race,” Mr. Walker said. “I will support him 100 percent.”

    “There will be a lot of campaigning on both sides,” Mr. Cohen said Monday, adding that he is “respecting the protocols requested by the Democratic screening committee to maintain silence during the nominating period.”

    He said he has not been invited and does not plan to screen with the G.O.P. “without consultation with the Democrats,” and even then, “I’d be doing it for cross-endorsement.” In 2011, the local Independence Party wanted to endorse Mr. Cohen for supervisor and even announced that it had, but the county party, headed by Frank MacKay, came out instead with an endorsement of Mr. Wilkinson.

    “A lot of East Hampton Independence voters were very upset at the action and frustrated that their choice . . . was taken away from them,” said Mr. Cohen.

    Elaine Jones, chairwoman of the Independence Party, said yesterday that she has called Mr. MacKay to say that if he planned to “interfere in this election, he should come down and screen with us. He told me he would endorse our choice for the 2013 election.” On the list so far to be interviewed on Tuesday for the town board are Mr. Stanzione, Mr. Overton, and Kathee Burke Gonzalez, who also screened with the Democrats.

    Many have questioned whether Mr. Cohen would mount a primary if he does not win the nomination. “Let the floor vote go,” he said, “and if I don’t get it, I’m going to go home and sleep on it.”

    The Independence Party has invited candidates wishing to screen for any town office to contact Ms. Jones in Amagansett or the vice-chairwoman, Pat Mansire, in East Hampton before Tuesday evening. Interviews will be conducted at Ashawagh Hall in Springs starting at 6 p.m. The public is invited to attend to watch the process.

   School board elections are heating up as unusually contested this year in East Hampton and Springs, with five newcomers and an incumbent battling for three openings in East Hampton and three candidates hoping to fill two places in Springs. They have a little less than a month to make their cases in time for May 21 elections and budget votes.

    The six East Hampton candidates are J.P. Foster, Nicholas Boland, Richard Wilson, Mary Ella Moeller, Wendy Geehreng, and Alison Anderson, the incumbent board member. Two other incumbents, George Aman, board president, and Lauren Dempsey, decided to step down. Last year, only two residents ran for two open seats.

    In Springs, two board members, Kathee Burke Gonzalez, board president, and Teresa Schurr, announced they would not run again. Vying for their seats are Jeffrey Miller, Adam Wilson, and Martin William Drew Jr.

    There are two people vying for one seat in Montauk, which is covered in a separate story. Two incumbents, John Hossenlopp, president, and Victoria Smudzinski, are running unopposed in Amagansett.

      In East Hampton, Mr. Foster and Ms. Geehreng, who are related through marriage, plan to campaign as a trio with Mr. Boland. According to Mr. Foster, they will hold events together and hope to infuse the board with new blood and fresh ideas.

    Mr. Foster, 42, ran unsuccessfully for the school board in 2005. He works as a supervisor in East Hampton Village’s emergency operations center, is a real estate agent with the East Hampton office of Town and Country, and is on the East Hampton Town Planning Board. He has two children at the middle school.

    Ms. Geehreng, 41, works as a part-time pediatric nurse-practitioner at Southampton Pediatric Associates and as a real estate saleswoman at the East Hampton branch of Brown Harris Stevens. In September, she will have one child at East Hampton High School, one at East Hampton Middle School, and two at John M. Marshall Elementary School.

    Mr. Boland, 48, is a former lawyer who moved to East Hampton in 1996. While he doesn’t have children in the East Hampton system, his wife is a first-grade teacher at John Marshall. Self-described as a “small-business entrepreneur,” he started a home improvement business and then a company called Fuel Renewal.

    Mr. Wilson, 73, is a retired Sag Harbor science teacher and a regular at school board meetings. This is his first bid at public office. A resident of East Hampton since 1968, he hopes to improve the district’s science program. He has four grandchildren who attend East Hampton schools.

    Ms. Moeller is also a regular attendee at school board meetings. Outspoken, she routinely sits in the front row. A former home economics teacher, she moved to East Hampton in 1996. She is a member of the East Hampton Town senior citizens advisory committee and of the Ladies Village Improvement Society, a volunteer at the East Hampton Healthcare Center, and a deacon of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. 

    At 75, she dismissed the notion that age might be an issue in a race where a majority of her competitors were much younger. “You’re only as old as you feel,” she said. “And I feel pretty young.”

    The incumbent school board member in East Hampton, Ms. Anderson, was still undecided about running again at last week’s board meeting. She is now on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

    Among the candidates in Springs, Mr. Drew graduated from the Springs School, and has worked as a carpenter. Mr. Wilson, vice president of the East Hampton Little League, has lived in Springs for 13 years. Mr. Miller, a lifelong Springs resident who also graduated from the Springs School, has been a member of the Springs Fire Department for many years. He is a deputy fire coordinator for Suffolk County and works in public works for East Hampton Village.