An informal exploratory committee has been investigating the possibility of bringing paid emergency medical technicians to East Hampton Town to help stem the need for mutual aid assistance calls, where emergency units from outside fire districts are required to come in, in situations where a local crew is not immediately available.

    Even when the mutual aid system works as it should, the time span between a call and the arrival of a responder can be too great, and concerns have risen, as have the number of calls.

    The plan “would have to deliver on its goal, which is to support the volunteers,” Larry Cantwell, the East Hampton Village administrator and a member of the committee, said yesterday. He said that such a plan could work only in conjunction with the existing volunteer service.

    “It’s in the exploratory stage,” said Joe Dryer, chairman of the board of fire commissioners of the Montauk Fire District. The commissioners will meet next Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Montauk Firehouse to discuss the potential impact on the hamlet. The members of the East End Ambulance Coalition, which the exploratory committee is in talks with, might start such a program in the summer of 2014. The coalition includes the area from Montauk to Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor.

    “The funding would come the way it is now, by the different fire districts, and, in our case, the village,” Barbara Borsack, the deputy mayor of East Hampton Village, said yesterday. She stressed that the discussions were still tentative.

    One idea being explored is to hire a full-time emergency medical technician for each of the five fire districts in East Hampton Town, Ms. Borsack said. They would be in an emergency vehicle, ready to roll, during the day.

    “They would have a first-response vehicle,” she said. They would arrive on the scene and assist a victim until a volunteer E.M.T. unit could get there, Ms. Borsack said. She speculated that the hired technicians might be advanced emergency medical technicians.

    The advantages of having such a person in place would be huge, she said. Ms. Borsack herself is a regular E.M.T. volunteer. The workload for these volunteers is intense, she said.

    An advanced E.M.T. is certified to do many things that regular ones are not certified for. “They can give medications, they can start an IV, they can do an intubation,” she said. Lung intubation is the process of inserting a tube through the nose or mouth and extending it down into the lungs to remove or add fluids or air.

    East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson is also on the committee. While Mr. Wilkinson, a Republican, has had his share of political scuffles with Democratic board members, this is one issue he sees as apolitical — and important. “I’m in full support of [the committee’s] doing what it has to do, as long as it doesn’t detract from the great work that our volunteers do,” he said.

    That was a point that all committee members interviewed agreed with.

    Mr. Dryer said he hopes that the discussion might even spark a different solution. “It would be a moot point if we had the people to respond.” He’d like people to “realize the need. We’d like to stay as volunteer as possible.”

    If there were enough volunteers, paid emergency medical technicians would not be needed, but right now, not enough volunteers are coming into the program.

    Mr. Wilkinson also is concerned that bringing in paid workers could have a reverse effect. “If I’m a volunteer and I know there are paid responders, will I still volunteer?”

    There will be additional meetings in early April, Mr. Cantwell said, involving various Suffolk County agencies as well as representatives of local fire districts.

    Daffodil shoots are up and seasonal businesses are stirring again, bringing to mind, for some, the stresses of the summer season, when bars and restaurants will once again draw crowds.

    Zoning changes have long outlawed new businesses of that type in residential neighborhoods. Some, however, remain because they were built before the zoning code took effect, leading to season-long pleas from neighbors for town officials to do something to keep their neighborhoods from being overrun.

    The situation has been a perennial one, particularly of late in Montauk, where the popularity of certain businesses has exploded. But while the topic has been on the table for the past several years, the East Hampton Town Board has come up with few if any solutions.

    Speaking at a board meeting last Thursday, Bob DeLuca, the president of the Group for the East End, outlined for East Hampton officials a Southampton Town law that gives the town the authority to phase out businesses that no longer conform to zoning, should they continually create community problems.

    A law such as Southampton’s, Mr. DeLuca suggested, could provide “leverage” to the town in working with a business such as Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague to resolve outstanding code violations and address crowding, parking, and potential environmental problems caused by septic flow.

    Mr. DeLuca was one of two speakers making final comments that night on a request by the owners of the Cyril’s property, as well as an adjacent lot, to change the zoning of both parcels from residential to neighborhood business, before a hearing on the issue was closed. The change would lift Cyril’s pre-existing, nonconforming status and allow it to expand.

    A section of the Southampton Town Code describes the circumstances under which a “compulsory termination of nonconforming uses, bars, taverns, and nightclubs” can be required. The law allows officials to address nonconforming uses that “generate traffic, noise or pollution, or present unsightly development, thereby diminishing the value and enjoyment of neighboring residential uses.”

    Citing health and safety issues, over-occupancy, and construction without required building permits, the law calls the continued existence of bars, taverns, nightclubs, and cabarets that were established before 1957, when they were outlawed in residential districts, a “growing detriment to residential communities.”

    It was passed after the town did a “nightclub study” to inventory existing businesses in residential areas and the potential quality-of-life issues for neighbors. The study looked at building and site conditions, including hours of operation, live entertainment, and indoor or outdoor seating, and examined ambient noise level readings as well as commentary from people living nearby.

    The town also analyzed the certificates of occupancy issued to the nonconforming businesses to see if they had been improperly expanded.

    “Certain of these establishments repeatedly violate provisions of the Town Code and the New York State Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code and appear summer after summer on the Town’s Justice Court calendar for the very same violations,” Southampton Town concluded in its legislation — a similar scenario to what sometimes happens here.

    The Southampton code calls the introduction of live music or DJs at an increasing number of bars and nightclubs an “intensification of use” that, in conjunction with a “resulting increase in noise, litter, excessive parking, overcrowding, criminal behavior and loitering has had an adverse impact on neighboring residential communities.”

    In general, Southampton’s town code concludes that it is “without doubt that nonconforming uses are problematic,” in that they hinder the overall goals of proper land use, under the present zoning code. The code also concludes that “zoning regulations cannot achieve the goal of phasing out incompatible uses unless nonconforming uses are eliminated.”

    When a nonconforming business poses problems in Southampton, the town planning board can be asked to issue a report detailing “prior and current town code violations and convictions, traffic and/or parking conditions that negatively impact the surrounding neighborhood; and complaints from multiple residential neighbors resulting in the use of municipal resources relating to excessive noise, litter, criminal activity, including under-age drinking or violations of the New York State Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code,” as well as information about any problems with site plan approvals or a certificate of occupancy, or noncompliance with Justice Court orders.

    With approval from the town board, the Southampton Town building inspector can issue a “notice of intent to amortize” or a “notice of termination” of a use to a property owner, or enter into a contract with the owner of a bar, tavern, or nightclub to terminate the use within a certain period of time. Owners may instead seek to mitigate the negative impacts by working with the planning board on a site plan review to address things such as parking, noise control, and screening, or apply to the Zoning Board of Appeals to change to another nonconforming use of the property.

    “The purpose of this section is to strike a better and more equitable balance between the rights of the property owner to continue the nonconforming use and the rights of the residents in the surrounding neighborhood to protect their property values as well as their safety, health and welfare,” the Southampton law says.

    Mr. DeLuca said that New York State courts have upheld similar laws. In doing so, he said, the courts have employed a “balancing test” weighing the private cost against the public gain.

    Debra Foster, a former town board and planning board member, also spoke to the town board last Thursday before the hearing on Cyril’s proposed zone change was closed. She noted that the town comprehensive plan, in its section on Amagansett and Napeague, calls for restricting commercial and residential development along the Montauk Highway, and for protecting Napeague Harbor.

    An ongoing effort to resolve outstanding building permit issues and bring aspects of the Chabad House on Woods Lane into compliance with village code, brought representatives of the orthodox synagogue, and some unhappy neighbors, to the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday.

    The property includes a single-family residence being used by Chabad Lubavitch of the Hamptons for worship services, a second house occasionally used by guests, and a two-story structure originally used as a garage and now housing a ritual immersion bath, known as a mikvah, a room for introspection and study, two bathrooms, and an unfinished storage space.

    The Chabad House’s application for area variances and a special permit to allow the buildings at 13 Woods Lane to be classified as a religious institution drew protests from two neighbors.

    While in the process of refinancing, Chabad applied for certificates of occupancy and discovered a prior zoning board determination that limited the garage to storage use only, said Leonard Ackerman, an attorney representing the organization. “That’s what brings us here.”

    Under orthodox religious law, Mr. Ackerman said, “you cannot have a temple — a shul — without having a mikvah. That’s why the mikvah was installed. . . . We’re here for a special permit because it’s a nonresidential use.”

    Mr. Ackerman asked the board to consider the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law enacted in 2000 that grants religious institutions a means to avoid burdensome zoning law restrictions. He asserted that there is no evidence of adverse impact on adjacent residences, the business district, or on the nearby Jewish Center of the Hamptons. “It’s the same house, same structure. We’re not changing anything, we’re not adding anything. The house is the same as it’s been for 70 years.”

    This assertion clashed with that of Jennifer Sibony, who lives at 8 Ocean Avenue. “I live next to the mikvah, which is one foot away from my property line,” she told the board. “As soon as the mikvah was built, we complained to Rabbi [Leibel] Baumgarten that the pool pump in the back made so much noise that our son couldn’t even sleep in his bedroom, because it went constantly, 24 hours a day. We asked them to enclose it, and to put a fence up.”

    Ms. Sibony said that after numerous requests, Rabbi Baumgarten installed a fence, but the noise issue remained. “I would ask that there is a fence put up around that, maybe with insulation on the inside. We’ve also asked for a fence between the mikvah and the end of our property line, so we don’t see people walking back and forth, strangers, all the time.”

    The pool filter is uncovered, said Frank Newbold, a Z.B.A. member. “To get the [certificate of occupancy], it necessarily will be covered,” he told Ms. Sibony, before informing Mr. Ackerman that landscaping that will satisfy the neighbor’s privacy and noise concerns will be required in order for the application to be granted.

    “We’re going to work together,” Mr. Ackerman told Ms. Sibony.

    Robert Petrozzo, who lives across from the Chabad on Woods Lane, complained about the many cars parked on the road, which he said sometimes overflow to the other side of the street, in front of his house and those of his neighbors. This, he said, makes it difficult to get in and out of his driveway. “If this is going to be opened up to official religious establishment, there will be more people coming,” he said. “It’s a safety issue, and also, aesthetically, it looks horrible. . . . My concern is that on any given Friday or Saturday you can drive by 13 Woods Lane and there are a number of cars on the road.”

    If the special permit is granted, Mr. Newbold wondered, is the use going to change dramatically?

    “Maybe not practically speaking,” said Linda Riley, the village attorney. “But what it is now is a one-family residence. By granting this special permit, you’ll be granting a permit for the entire property to be used as a synagogue. The only permitted use on this property at this time is a one-family residence.”

    Mr. Ackerman told the board that he will follow up with the neighbors to address their concerns, and the hearing was closed.

    Also at the meeting, the board approved Lumber Lane Associates’ application to build affordable apartments on the second floor of a commercial building on Lumber Lane. The request, by Pat Trunzo, a contractor and co-owner of the building, had prompted the village board to adopt a code amendment eliminating a requirement that anyone who cannot provide mandated off-street parking pay a $10,000-per-space fee to the village’s parking fund, provided the property owners are creating affordable housing.

    The approval is conditional. Lumber Lane Associates must record a declaration of covenants and restrictions stating that the apartments will remain as affordable rental units in perpetuity and that the warehouse space in the building not be converted to any use without the board’s approval. The owner will also have to install landscaping approved by the village’s design review board.

East Hampton

    The Methodist Church has scheduled a prayer walk to begin at 5 p.m. tomorrow in the sanctuary, with seven prayer stations. Visitors can come for as long or as short as they like, but silence has been requested. Easter Sunrise will be observed at 6:30 a.m. at Main Beach in a joint service with the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. Breakfast will be served at the church at 7:15 a.m. Morning worship will be at 10; an egg hunt for children will follow.

    Most Holy Trinity will hold a bilingual Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 8 p.m. today. Tomorrow’s Good Friday observances include prayer at 9 a.m., Stations of the Cross in the church cemetery on Cedar Street at noon, and a 3 p.m. Celebration of the Lord’s Passion in English and one at 8 p.m. in Spanish. On Saturday there will be 8 a.m. prayer and blessing of the food, confession at 10 a.m., and an Easter vigil at 7 p.m. in English and at 9 p.m. in Spanish. Sunday’s Masses are at 9:15 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. and at 7 p.m. in Spanish.

    An all-night prayer vigil begins at 8 tonight at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Morning prayer tomorrow is at 8, and a Service of the Passion is at noon and 7 p.m. Stations of the Cross is at 3 p.m. A Great Vigil of Easter service will be held at 8 p.m. on Saturday. Easter Sunday Holy Communion is at 8 a.m. and a choral Holy Eucharist is at 10 a.m.

    Maundy Thursday will be celebrated with a 7 p.m. service at the Presbyterian Church. The Good Friday service tomorrow evening is at 7. On Easter, the congregation joins that of the Methodist Church at Main Beach at 6:30 a.m. There will be a Celebration of the Resurrection at 10 a.m., followed by an egg hunt on the lawn.

Amagansett

    Maundy Thursday services will take place today from 5 to 7 p.m. at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, with a potluck meal, foot washing, communion, and stripping of the altar. Tomorrow, a Good Friday service begins at 5 p.m. The Easter Sunday service is at 11 a.m.

    Easter Sunday Mass will be celebrated at St. Peter the Apostle Church at 9 a.m.

    At the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, a Maundy Thursday service happens tonight at 7 and will include serving of communion and the washing of feet rite. On Good Friday, a service will be held at 7 p.m. On Easter Sunday the congregation will have a sunrise service at Atlantic Avenue Beach and an 11 a.m. service at the church. This will be followed by an Easter egg hunt for children, to which all have been invited.

Sag Harbor

    The Old Whalers Church will commence Holy Week services tonight, Maundy Thursday, at 7:30 with a communion service in the chapel. Tomorrow, Good Friday worship and meditation will take place there at noon, and a service with readings and music by Sue Vinski, a guest soloist, will be at 7:30 p.m.

    Easter Sunday offerings will begin at 6:30 with a sunrise service at Marine Park. In the event of inclement weather, the service will be held at the church. At 7, it’s a continental breakfast in the church’s social hall, and then a 10 a.m. festive worship with music, including the church’s choir, bell choir, organ, and brass.

—

    St. Andrew’s Catholic Church will offer Holy Thursday prayer this morning at 9, and then a Mass of the Lord’s Supper and procession tonight at 7:30. Tomorrow at 9 a.m. will be Good Friday morning prayer, and a Liturgy of the Passion and Death of Christ will be at 3 p.m.

    Morning prayer on Holy Saturday will commence at 9, and the Great Easter Vigil will take place at 7:30 p.m. Easter Sunday will be celebrated with morning Masses at 8:30, 10, and 11:30.

—

    The Christ Episcopal Church will celebrate Maundy Thursday with a Seder supper today from 6 to 8. Good Friday Stations of the Cross observances will be offered at noon and 7 p.m. tomorrow, with the latter including a Eucharist service. On Easter Sunday, a quiet 8 a.m. service will be said, with 10 a.m. worship to include music from the choir and the option for attendees to bring a flower from their centerpiece to add to the creation of a community cross.

—

    All have been welcomed to attend a Good Friday service at the Community Bible Church at 7 p.m. tomorrow and an Easter Sunday service at 10 a.m. The church is at 2837 Noyac Road.

—

    A nondenominational service will take place at the North Sea Community House on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. at which New Thought themes will be explored and celebrated. The congregation meets the last Sunday of each month for discussion, with this month’s topic to be that of faith. Visitors are welcomed, and more information can be found at godasme.com

    What started out on the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board’s agenda as a request by Gerard Wawryk, the owner of Page at 63 Main restaurant, to add seating behind his restaurant for those waiting for a table or takeout, transitioned into a request for a “beer garden,” as Neil Slevin, the board’s chairman, called it.

    The application, which was reviewed by Timothy Platt, the village building inspector, referred to a seasonal use of the outdoor area of the restaurant, with “no service proposed” there. But through questioning and discussion at the Tuesday night meeting, it was revealed that tables for those seeking a lobster roll or a draft beer were part of the application — bar patrons could step outside with their cocktails.

    The area in question is now a driveway that can be accessed from Division Street between Murf’s Backstreet Tavern and the village police headquarters. Mr. Wawryk seeks to renovate it with vegetation, tables, and chairs, in the process improving the aesthetics from the road, which he said is “coming alive.”

    Rich Warren, an environmental planning consultant, mentioned parking spaces that would be eliminated, asking that there be a good reason for doing so.

    Dennis Downes, the attorney representing Mr. Wawryk, answered that those spaces weren’t required. They’re used for deliveries to the restaurant, Mr. Wawryk said, and those drivers “will just use the street.”

    “I know in my heart that this is not something we should approve without public input,” Mr. Slevin said, “and I will insist on it.”

    “We need someone beyond this group to consider the implications,” he said, adding that he had no personal objections to the plan, and that some of his fondest memories involve beer gardens.

    “We have tables outside,” said Jack Tagliasacchi, a planning board member who owns Il Capuccino restaurant in the village. “To be able to serve alcohol, we have to send an application to the liquor authority.”

    Denise Schoen, the village attorney, confirmed this. “The liquor authority trumps local municipalities as to where and when you can serve liquor,” she said. “There is nothing in the code that prohibits it from happening.”

    “What is the difference between us doing it and Muse doing it on two sides?” Mr. Wawryk asked of another restaurant on Main Street. “Why do I have to go though a different routine when they just walked through?”

    Ms. Schoen said that Mr. Platt would make the determination regarding the application, which before the next meeting would be amended by Mr. Downes as to the elimination of parking spaces and whether the change would be an appropriate accessory use.

    East End Ventures was also on the agenda Tuesday, and if all goes as planned, after the next meeting the company will be set to complete the condominium complex at 21 West Water Street. The board required clarification on three items since the 2006 approval of the site plan: planting and irrigation, revised lighting to comply with dark skies standards, and an update to the lot coverage with regard to a gravel outdoor eating area that was eliminated.

    In other old business, Juan Castro believed his application for an accessory apartment on Brandywine Drive was complete, and so did the planning board, as it was approved on Nov. 27, but Ms. Schoen told the board that the building inspector strongly believed that a revision was necessary to prevent a future owner from using the house as a rental property. The words “owner occupied” will be added to the special exception application.

    “The intention of the [accessory apartments] law was to create affordable apartments . . . an attempt to allow families who have been here a long time to gain use of their homes, whether it be their children or neighbors’ children,” Mr. Slevin said.

    “Sag Harbor is unique in that it doesn’t require covenants,” said Ms. Schoen, adding that the additional wording will also help to ensure an owner’s caretaking of the property. “I will help him through the process,” she said in agreeing to draft the document.

    On March 19, the day before a meeting of the Sag Harbor Village Board to discuss the village’s budget, Police Chief Tom Fabiano said he had been “blindsided, once again” by Mayor Brian Gilbride’s proposal to lay off a full-time village police officer. “It destroys the schedule, it leaves us in a dangerous situation as to coverage, manpower,” he told The Star. “We lost one officer already,” he said, referring to Michael Gigante, who took a job with another force last year, fearing for the one he had.

    “Coming into the beginning of the summer season, there is no need for this,” said the chief.

    “I don’t like to be in this position,” the mayor said during the next day’s meeting, but “the numbers are the numbers.” He said the village had saved nothing by Mr. Gigante’s departure, although the chief disputes that.

    Public safety, the village’s largest expense, which includes police salaries, was cut 11.3 percent in the tentative budget, from $2.6 million in 2012-2013 to $2.3 million, a decrease of $295,704.

    With Mr. Gigante gone, Chief Fabiano said yesterday, the force is already down to 11. The 11th man, he said, fills in when others are on vacation, ill, or disabled. Having only 10 officers on the team, he said, would make that arrangement untenable.

    It is crucial, the chief said, to have two officers on per shift. “You can’t come into an empty headquarters off-hours with a prisoner and no backup.”

    Two weeks ago, for example, just outside the village on North Haven, Officer David Driscoll arrested a drunken driver who had his young child in the car. (Southampton Town police were too busy that night to respond to that report.) Soon after Officer Driscoll brought the driver to headquarters and as he awaited pickup of the child, another call came in. He could not have responded to it without a backup, he said last week.

    “If we kept an officer, how would that affect the budget?” asked Edward Gregory, a board member, at the March 20 meeting.

“We would probably go over the 2 percent cap,” responded Eileen Tuohy, the village treasurer.

    The police budget is “roughly 40 percent of the entire village budget,” said Mayor Gilbride. “It’s not so much what it’s costing us today, but the cost two, three, and four years down the road. . . . The last two years, with no increases in the police budget, the benefits, retirement, and medical has increased 21 percent.”

    “We’re allowed to go to 4.1 [percent.] “Right now, we are at 2.4,” the mayor said. “We can’t take any more out of it.”

    Adding to the difficulty is the lack of a current police contract, as Mayor Gilbride noted when Patrick Milazzo, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, asked the board to consider alternatives before letting an officer go. Robby Stein, a board member, agreed with the mayor. “We don’t know what the settlement numbers are,” he said.

    “The state said we need 13 officers,” said Mr. Milazzo, who asked that a committee be named — himself, Chief Fabiano, and a board member, he suggested — “to collaborate to see if we don’t have to remove a position.”

     “We have till June, we put a man on the moon, maybe we can make something happen,” Mr. Milazzo said. Neither Suffolk County nor East Hampton Town, even in dire financial straits, had ever let a police officer go, he added.

    “Nobody wants to see anybody lose his job,” said Mr. Gregory, but “we’re looking down the road . . . just because Suffolk County is stupid doesn’t mean we should be.” The mayor then told Mr. Milazzo his speaking time was up, as he is not a village taxpayer.

    Citing other concerns, such as Havens Beach remediation and dock repairs, Mr. Gilbride said, “Without any changes, this is where it’s going to be. We don’t have wiggle room.”

    Jeffrey Peters inquired about the addition of a part-time employee in the justice court, at a salary of $25,000.

    “The judge has requested a part-timer,” said Mayor Gilbride. “We brought the part-timer in.” He said the position, which Chief Fabiano said was usually staffed by the village police department, would be extended through the summer and into the off-season, adding that “the revenues from court offset that increase.”

    Mr. Peters also inquired about the elimination of a highway department position, originally budgeted at $36,000, which Mayor Gilbride confirmed. Mr. Peters congratulated the board for its efforts.

    Chief Fabiano, who was unable to attend the board meeting, submitted a letter asking that the village keep the 11th police officer’s job in the budget. “It is vital for the department’s staffing and scheduling needs,” he wrote. “There can be no dollar amount put on the value of safety, a life saved, and the quality of life we have all come to appreciate.”

    The general fund’s budget from early March showed $410,520 in expenditures for employee benefits, an 18.4 percent increase. In total, the general fund, which includes public safety, health services, transportation, culture and recreation, home and community service, and employee benefits, details a proposed 2.99 percent increase, from $5.8 million to $8.2 million.

    The sewer fund, which includes home and community services and is budgeted separately, has a projected increase of 3.44 percent, from $341,191 to $523,653.

    The tentative budget will be discussed, perhaps for the last time, at a public meeting on Wednesday at 4 p.m. at Village Hall. 

    Sharon McCobb said goodbye and David Lys said hello at an East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals work session on March 12, Mr. Lys’s first as a member of the board.

    Mr. Lys, whose term will run through the end of 2017, replaces Ms. McCobb, leaving the board with no female members, but the two have some things in common. Both are personal trainers, both live in Springs, and Mr. Lys will be the board’s Springs representative, as Ms. McCobb was.

    Mr. Lys is best known for helping found Citizens for Access Rights, an organization dedicated to preventing the privatization of public beaches in the town. “Our mission is to protect unfettered access to our public beaches,” he said in an interview last week. “It was a very grassroots thing. I love the beaches.”

    The organization is currently weighing in on the side of the town and its trustees, fighting a suit by Seaview at Amagansett Limited, which claims that the beach in front of the White Sands, as well as other beachfront in the town, is privately owned, Mr. Lys said. He also serves on the board of the Amagansett Life Saving and Coast Guard Society.

    Like many on the South Fork, he has two jobs, prescriptive athletic training as well as running Weekend Warrior Tours and Outfitters, whose clients tour the area by kayak, paddle board, and bike. Born in Southampton, he graduated from East Hampton High School in 1994, but his academic career was delayed when he was diagnosed in 1997 with Ewings sarcoma. He won his battle, though he needed a hip replacement, then graduated from Penn State in 2000 with a degree in kinesiology, the study of human movement. He and his wife, a physical therapist with a practice in Montauk, met in England after college and now have three daughters.

    When one of his daughters asked him after his appointment why he was going to be working at night and appearing on LTV, he told her, “I want your home town to be what I had when I grew up.”

    An LTV junkie for the past few years, Mr. Lys said he often watched the board meetings on TV. “Now I’ll be able to use my voice,” he said. “I want to find out the full story [of any appeal], before I make my determination.”

    Mr. Lys’s name was put forward by East Hampton Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc on March 7, with Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, also a Democrat, and Councilman Dominick Stanzione, a Republican, voting for his appointment.

    “They replaced one fitness person with another,” joked Ms. McCobb, who has served on the board since the middle of 2007. She turned serious, though, as she reflected on her time on the board.

    “I think the thing I was most leery of was revetments,” she said. “That’s the one thing this town has to be careful of. I’m not completely against them,” she said, but added that she had seen too many cases where one neighbor can afford a revetment, while the other neighbor cannot. The one who cannot, she said, eventually watches part of his or her land get washed away, an unintended consequence of revetments.

    Ms. McCobb, an experienced triathlete, is the athletic director of i-tri, an organization dedicated to helping teenage girls with low self-esteem find themselves through the rigors of the triathlon.

    “We have 45 members now,” she said. Launched at Springs School as a pilot program, it has grown exponentially and may expand again next year into Southampton.

    “There is a learning curve,” she said of Mr. Lys’s near future on the board. Though she anticipates him fitting right in, Mr. Lys has his work cut out for him. His first hearing on March 12 was three hours long and involved the controversial Dunes Retreat, a residential drug and alcohol treatment facility on Bull Run in East Hampton.

    Whether the Dunes East Hampton, a drug treatment facility on Bull Run in Northwest, must undergo a lengthy site-plan review is soon to be determined by the East Hampton Zoning Board of Appeals.

     A March 12 hearing, well attended by both supporters and opponents of the facility despite a steady rain outside, produced thunderbolts from both sides. At the heart of the matter, as Alex Walter, the board’s chairman, remarked during the three-hour session, is whether the Dunes is a semi-public facility. If so, it will require a special permit and a full review by the town planning board.

    Joseph Campolo, an attorney, appeared on behalf of the owner, Safe Harbor Retreat, a company headed by Joe McKinsey. Mr. Campolo told the Z.B.A. that the facility is private; that residents must go through a screening process, and that “you couldn’t just walk in.” Jeffrey Bragman, representing Citizens for the Preservation of the Northwest Woods, which he said was a group of about 40 neighbors, countered among other things that if you had $42,500 for a month’s residency you would get in; i.e., that the facility is open to the public, as long as the public has the money.

    On the face of it, the Z.B.A. was considering a challenge by the Dunes to a September 2011 determination by the town’s head building inspector, Tom Preiato, that the facility is not a family unit.”

    Mr. McKinsey contends that the residents of the 3.9-acre property function as a single family, despite some of their stays being short-term. Mr. Preiato agreed with that view at first, in letters dated March 2010, and April 2011. Once the building inspector gave his blessing to the project, Mr. McKinsey signed a lease, with an option to buy, with the site’s owner, David Yoder.

    And not only did Mr. Preiato approve, says Mr. McKinsey; so did East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, Town Police Chief Edward Ecker, and the head town attorney, John Jilnicki, all of whom, on July 9, 2011, signed a letter indicating their support.

    But two months later, in his September letter, Mr. Preiato stated that “it is now clear that such an operation is not permitted in a residential zone without site plan approval.”  That letter goes on to suggest that the Dunes “could possibly be classified as a semi-public facility,” and it encourages the corporation to apply for the necessary special permit.

    “My decision with regard to Safe Harbor Retreat in March 2010 was based on misleading facts as to what they proposed, and what actually ended up happening,” Mr. Preiato told the zoning board last week. He said he’d been told the house would operate something along the lines of a boarding school, but in fact, he said, “Rather than 11-month stays, the operation became transient in nature.”

    Mr. Campolo told the board 11 months was the suggested optimal stay for a recovering addict. Mr. McKinsey reiterated that point in an interview on Monday.

    Mr. Bragman, however, said at the hearing that the Dunes’s Web site advertises 90-day stays, at $42,500 a month. The price alone, he suggested, mitigates against long-term stays.

    “Do you have any statistics on the actual length of stays?” Mr. Walter asked Mr. Campolo.

    “Three to five months,” was the response.

    Mr. McKinsey said Monday that if asked, he would be happy to present the board with the statistics on the length of stays, with identifying information removed to preserve client anonymity. He speculated that the average stay was about 70 days. Residents do in fact behave as a family, he maintained, rising together in the morning, breakfasting, and doing group counseling, during which they plan their day’s activities, and end the day in group prayer and meditation.

    Mr. McKinsey himself is a recovering alcoholic. “I’ve been in recovery for 29 years,” he said. “At least 5,000 times I’ve heard ‘This is my family’ ” said of drug treatment centers such as the Dunes. “It’s a chance to start all over, to live in a family unit,” he said.

    Mr. Bragman scoffed at the idea that the Dunes was a “family unit.” “The Dunes set itself up as a very major business in a very quiet neighborhood in Northwest,” he told the zoning board.

    The facilities listed in the town code as semi-public, according to Mr. Bragman, include a geriatric home, a hospital, a clinic, and a medical arts building.

    Don Cirillo, a board member, challenged  Mr. Bragman’s contention that the Dunes is in fact a clinic, saying he believed the board’s verdict could hinge on that question.

    “Does a house have a clinical director?” Mr. Bragman asked. “No. A clinic has a clinical director,” he said, adding that the Dunes’s Web site identifies a clinical director of the program. “Their clinical director is supposed to be working there.”

    “It has a full clinical staff,” the lawyer said. “Did anybody tell that to the building inspector? No.”

    Mr. Bragman also critized, by implication anyway, a former town attorney, Madeline Narvilas (“I don’t mean to hammer Maddie Narvilas, but,” he said), saying that she left the town’s employ only to land, shortly after, at the Dunes, as its executive director.

    Mr. McKinsey countered that Ms. Narvilas had a keen interest in social work, having studied the subject in college, and as a friend of several years by the time he launched the Dunes, she was a natural for the organization.

    Mr. McKinsey said on Monday that no matter what, he and the Dunes were not going anywhere. “I’m not leaving. Let me make that that clear,” he said. He plans to exercise his option to buy within the next few months.

    In January 2012, the Dunes East Hampton launched a federal lawsuit against the town, charging it was a victim of discrimination, a violation of the federal Fair Housing and Americans with Disabilities Acts. The suit was later withdrawn to allow the two sides time to negotiate a settlement. It was withdrawn “without prejudice,” however, meaning that if no settlement is reached it can be reopened.

    At the end of last week’s hearing the zoning board agreed to close it to public comment, but allowed each side two more weeks to respond to each other’s documents.

    The Suffolk Planning Commission, in a letter received by the East Hampton Town Planning Department on Monday, has weighed in on a controversial request to relax the zoning on two residential lots on Napeague, calling it an attempt to create prohibited “spot zoning.” The proposed down-zoning would allow Cyril’s Fish House, a popular summertime bar and restaurant, to expand.

    Although the letter said the decision was a matter for local determination, there being “no apparent significant countywide or inter-community impact,” Sarah Lansdale, the director of planning, and Andrew P. Freleng, the county’s chief planner, warned that it “could set a precedent for other parcels in the area.” In addition, the county officials said, “If there is a townwide desire to create a node of commercial activity in this area, it should be pursued through a comprehensive plan/hamlet plan process.”

    The letter was not discussed during the town board’s work session on Tuesday, despite an encore appearance at it by the applicant’s attorney, Dianne LeVerrier, along with her clients. Ms. LeVerrier had rehashed the issue at a work session last week, following a public hearing on March 7. Because the hearing record was held open through today, the board allowed additional comments on Tuesday.

     Bonnie Dioguardi, one of the property owners, pleaded with the town board to steer her onto a clear path toward resolving the problems of parking, crowds, and an overburdened septic system, as well as the alleged, long-standing zoning code violations, which have resulted in numerous citations. “We have tried to satisfy. . . ,” she said, “but each time we were told of a new requirement.”

    Ms. Dioguardi said she and Cyril Fitzsimons, who rents the property and runs the eponymous business, are eager to do whatever it takes but have been caught between the different standards and regulations of the town and the Suffolk Health Department.

     At the heart of the controversy over the proposed change from residential to neighborhood business zoning are questions about whether it would comply with the comprehensive plan, is justified because of the potential to reduce highway parking and septic runoff, or if it would pave the way for a business that has flouted the law to expand.

    “All we want to do is operate,” Ms. Dioguardi told the board. “We just need to know who to go to just have the ability to operate.”

    “You have a right, by law, to continue your pre-existing, nonconforming use,” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc told her. The restaurant has been at the site since before the property was zoned for residential use, and can continue but not expand, according to the code. The problem, the councilman said, is “things were done since it became nonconforming.”

    “It’s a round-robin,” Ms. Dioguardi said, referring to some of the additions that prompted citations for zoning violations. “These are all items that are needed to run a business. You need a refrigerator. You need propane for your cooking.”

    “There’s no continuity,” she said, of the differing town and county regulations with which Cyril’s must comply. “I want you to understand this; we have been trying and getting nowhere.”

    “I apologize on behalf of the town. It is shameful,” Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said.

    A possible town decision was hinted at, however, when Councilwoman Sylvia Overby asked Ms. Dioguardi if Cyril’s would be satisfied with reverting to the site’s original legal use, with a 62-seat limit. “That would be fine,” Ms. Dioguardi said.

    The town attorney’s office will prepare an environmental analysis, as required by the State Environmental Quality Review Act, if the board continues its consideration of the zone change. If a majority of the board decides not to take the matter further, discussions will end.

    Msgr. Charles Guarino of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Parish in East Hampton said in an e-mail that he was “filled with joy and ready to return home to Montauk” on Tuesday, after being in Rome for the monumental occasion of the election of Pope Francis, the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

    He was in Rome for a course of study and was scheduled to return yesterday.

    Along with thousands of others, including dignitaries from all over the world, he said he was beyond thrilled to see Pope Francis wave and bless the crowd and incense the altar at his inaugural Mass on Tuesday.

    “I can’t begin to describe the feelings of excitement and genuine gratitude to have witnessed this historical moment in the life of our church,” he wrote on the church’s Web site. His experience included the moment when “the sfumata bianca was pouring out of the Sistine chimney” last Wednesday night, announcing that the conclave of cardinals had chosen a new pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina. He is the first Latin American pope, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first Jesuit.

    Monsignor Guarino said the ringing of the great bells of St. Peter’s informed those in the cold, rainy piazza that “our waiting was being rewarded and that indeed we have a new Pope whom we now know is Pope Francis!”

    “Blessed to be six rows from the Papal throne on Wednesday,” Msgr. Guarino said he heard languages from around the world which signaled the universality of a church that welcomed those from all countries.

    “What a beautiful way to begin!” he wrote, referring to the pope’s request for prayers for Pope Benedict XVI and for himself, while bowing in a posture of prayer. 

    Msgr. Guarino called his trip “both dramatic and historic,” and said it was hard to define the range of emotions that those present were feeling. He commended the former pope’s attempt to “bring about healing to a church wounded by scandals,” while admitting that “even by his personal high standards, nothing would be enough to begin that much needed healing.”

    The visiting priest also had some drama of his own during his visit to Rome — a three-day stay in the hospital with a bad case of bronchitis. The illness did not stop his appreciation of the incredibly blue sky in Rome he said. It comforted him as he watched as the Cardinals proceed into the Sistine Chapel to take their individual oaths of secrecy, chanting the “Veni Sancte Spiritu.” He wondered which one of them would be the new pope, and how they might bring healing and reform to the church.

    “It is a good and exciting time to be a Catholic and, yes, we all need to rediscover and recapture that pride in who we are as His church. We have been wounded but we are still alive. We have been disappointed and even scandalized but the church survives. Thus it has always been, thus it is now, and thus it will always be,” he wrote.

    After all is said and done, he said, he looks forward to leaving the Eternal City and returning home to assist the Mission Church of St. Peter the Apostle in Amagansett.