A landowner planning to subdivide 20 acres on Cedar Street in East Hampton has renewed a push to have his land removed from the prime farmland category in the town code, which imposes restrictions on how it may be developed.

    John Talmage told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday that the soil classifications in the town code are no longer consistent with those of the United States Department of Agriculture and should be revised. The U.S.D.A., he said, no longer designates “Plymouth loamy sand, with a silty subsoil,” the type on his land, as prime soil.

    The town code was based on the classification of agricultural soils in a 1975 U.S.D.A. report, which has undergone updates since then. Laurie Wiltshire, a land planner representing Mr. Talmage, said on Tuesday that the code is now based on an “obsolete book,” which the agency itself has “acknowledged is faulty, and they no longer use.”

    Farming on his land had been abandoned, Mr. Talmage told the town board on Tuesday, because “it’s too sandy.” He said it has few nutrients, responds poorly to fertilizer, and has low moisture content.

    In order to preserve farmland, the town requires property owners seeking to develop agricultural land to set aside 70 percent of the acreage as an agricultural reserve. If held to this regulation, the Talmage family, who want to create four house lots, would have to leave 14 acres alone and cluster the lots on the remaining six.

    Calling the soils on the Talmage property “mediocre,” Ms. Wiltshire said that if freed of those requirements, the family could create “decent-sized house lots, instead of having to cluster.” There could, presumably, also be a greater economic return.         

    However, Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town planning director, reached by phone Tuesday, said that regardless of whether the Talmage land was removed from prime-soils designation, it would be subject to restrictions such as clustering house lots to preserve open space because it is in an agricultural zoning district.

     “My problem with your request is the impact to all the other properties,” Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said at the meeting. She had reviewed the matter two or three years ago, when first approached by Mr. Talmage, she said, and had decided that she could not support a code change.    

    “It turns out there is a slew of properties that are tied to this designation,” she said. Whether prime farmland is properly or incorrectly defined, she said, the town has, since 1975, based planning decisions on the code.

     “There have been 30 years of planning, 30 years of people purchasing property, of investing,” based on the current definitions and regulations, she said. Using an analogy, she said that even if town officials declared something not colored blue to be blue, “the fact that we’re wrong in calling this blue doesn’t mean our planning was wrong.” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc agreed with Ms. Quigley’s concerns about the potential wide-ranging impact of a code change.     Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said he, too, was concerned about “collateral damage” to other owners who may have decided about whether to buy property based on the restrictions of the current subdivision code and its definition of prime soils.

    According to Ms. Wiltshire, however, the number of properties with the same soil as the Talmage land is minimal, so a correction would not have wide-ranging effects. She said that a list the Planning Department had provided Ms. Quigley of properties containing prime soils as now defined by the town code includes not only lands in the U.S.D.A.’s top two farmland categories, which would remain labeled as prime even if the code were changed, but woodland or cemetery lots that are not farmed.

    Mr. Talmage said at the board meeting Tuesday that his family has seen an “erosion of at least 80 percent of my land value, because of what I would call improper zoning.” The property was once zoned for one-acre house lots, but was upzoned to two-acre minimum lots and then upzoned again for a minimum of five-acre lots, saying that the primary reason for the upzoning was that it was considered prime agricultural soils.

    “The whole thing just smacks of injustice to me,” Ms. Wiltshire said after the board meeting on Tuesday. The Talmage family, she said at the meeting, has been in East Hampton for generations. And, she said, “they have had their rights taken away over and over and over again based on misinformation.”

    Mr. Talmage urged the board to rectify the discrepancy. “You say it’s too much work. I say do the work. Are you going to take the high road, or are you going to take the low road?”

    Ms. Quigley suggested that the Talmages seek a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals allowing them to proceed with a standard subdivision. But, said John Jilnicki, the town attorney, variances from the open space subdivision chapter of the town code are not allowed.

    The councilwoman agreed to seek more information from the Planning Department about the townwide impact of a code change. But the board, she said, should pursue other “possible legislative corrections . . . without changing everything in East Hampton.”

    Courtney Sale Ross, who founded the Ross School in East Hampton more than 20 years ago, is officially plotting a new course.

    Going forward, she will spend increasing amounts of time moored not to East Hampton but enjoying the freedom of the open seas — as she plans to travel the world on a private yacht.

    In late January, Mrs. Ross, as she prefers to be called, convened a meeting with faculty and staff to inform them of her plans. For many faculty members, it had been several months since she had been seen on either the Lower School or Upper School’s campus.

    During her protracted absence last fall, rumors began circulating concerning a possible illness. To the relief of many, Mrs. Ross appeared in good health in January.

    While she did not specifically address any rumors concerning her whereabouts, she did share a picture of her yacht and in so doing, hinted at what was likely to unfold during the next chapter of her life.

    In recent years, though faculty members do not see much of Mrs. Ross when it comes to the day-to-day functioning of the school, she has remained an ever-present influence. Further, as not only the school’s founder but also its primary benefactor, Mrs. Ross’s forthcoming absence is but the latest ripple in an environment described by some parents as chaotic and unstable.

    At the staff meeting on Jan. 31, which convened in the Upper School’s lecture hall, she expressed confidence in the school’s leadership, intimating that she didn’t need to be there as often as she might have in years past. Also, while she planned to travel by boat, she assured faculty and staff members that she would remain plugged in and connected to what was happening at each of the school’s two campuses.

    Requests to speak directly to Mrs. Ross and to Gregg Maloberti, the interim head of the school, were both denied.

    Patti Silver, who chairs Ross’s board of overseers, serves on its board of trustees, and is also a parent, provided a statement through the school’s New York City-based marketing and communications firm.

    In the statement, she affirmed that a late January faculty and staff meeting had indeed taken place, with Mrs. Ross informing the group “that she plans to spend a great deal of time during the next few years traveling and revisiting her passion for exploring diverse cultures and environments, which were the genesis of the Ross School.”

    Ms. Silver said that she also discussed issues related to the “school’s fiscal and academic stability as evidenced by the school’s new leadership team, the expansion of the board of overseers, and the phenomenal start to the academic year at all grade levels.”

    She concluded the statement by noting: “Even though Mrs. Ross will be on campus less in person, as chairman of the board of trustees, she will maintain a digital presence through media and technology and continue to lead the school’s mission to be at the forefront of innovation and excellence.”

    At 64, Mrs. Ross appears to be making more than a few changes as far as her geography is concerned.

    A longtime resident of East Hampton, Mrs. Ross recently put her Georgia Pond estate on the market for $75 million. It is a change in location confined to not only the East End.

    Last spring, after being listed for several years, her Park Avenue duplex apartment on the Upper East Side finally sold for $52.5 million. It set a record for the most expensive co-op sale in Manhattan’s history. Three years ago, Mrs. Ross purchased a $7.3 million loft in Tribeca, preferring instead to live in a smaller apartment downtown.

    The Ross School officially got its start in 1991, when she and her late husband, the former Time Warner chairman Stephen J. Ross, started it as a sort of home-school experiment for their only daughter, Nicole, and two of her friends. It has since grown to serve approximately 500 students from pre-nursery through 12th grade — including a growing number of international boarding students.

    While faculty and staff have been informed of Mrs. Ross’s travel plans, parents had yet to receive any official notice.

    The handful of parents interviewed didn’t seem all that concerned by her shifting coordinates, saying that checks could still be written and that money could still be wired from aboard a yacht.

    Some even expressed a sense of relief, pointing out that her leadership often carried with it a certain degree of impulsiveness — whether evident in making Mandarin mandatory for all Ross students last year, delaying the distribution of computers after deciding that carpets suddenly needed to be replaced, or in the high rate of attrition among many of the school’s teachers and administrators.

    Despite expressing gratitude for Mrs. Ross’ largesse, nearly all parents expressed a desire for the school to achieve more sound and stable financial footing. Going forward, many hoped for an endowment that would help protect both the school’s growth and allow for expansion in the years to come.

    The largest climate rally in the nation’s history happened in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, and the movement to mitigate climate change has Dan Asselin to thank for some of the estimated 50,000 attendees.

    Mr. Asselin, a musician who grew up in East Hampton and has performed at venues including Neoteric Fine Art in Amagansett, served as a volunteer bus organizer for the Forward on Climate rally, which was spearheaded by the groups 350.org, the Sierra Club, and the Hip Hop Caucus. One hundred fifty buses brought approximately 7,500 people from 30 states to the rally, said Mr. Asselin, with buses leaving from locations throughout New York City and Long Island. One, he said, carried a contingent from Hurricane Sandy-ravaged Far Rockaway, Queens.

    “Sunday was pretty amazing,” Mr. Asselin said of the rally. “At one point, we were standing in front of the White House, the entire mass of people was coming down Pennsylvania Avenue, and it was endless.”

    The rally, he said, “is about showing the Obama administration and, really, the entire U.S. government that this is important to us. It may not be on their radar, but it’s on ours.”

    At the forefront of the climate change mitigation movement, said Mr. Asselin, are efforts to halt the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would transport synthetic crude oil from Canada to multiple points in the United States, and a campaign, beginning with colleges and universities, to divest from fossil fuel companies.

    Mr. Asselin pointed to Bill McKibben, an author, activist, the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont, and founder of 350.org, as a primary inspiration for his activism. “350.org is decisively leading the way in advocating for a sane response to climate change,” he said. “They’re responding to some really discouraging political apathy and avoidance across the board. People, citizens from all across the country, are responding to that.”

    Mr. McKibben, said Mr. Asselin, “kind of wrote the book on climate change.” Indeed, Mr. McKibben’s books include “The End of Nature,” an early warning about climate change published in 1989, and “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet” from 2010. “The idea of a climate that was warming due to human causes had been around,” Mr. Asselin said, “but he put it on the map in a real way.”

    Mr. Asselin, who lives in Brooklyn, referred to his roots on the South Fork as another motivating force behind his passion for environmental activism. “Growing up in a rural environment is what makes me feel so connected to this issue. I know, just from doing outreach, that a lot of people in the city don’t see the connection,” he said.

    Similarly, he and some others of his generation — Mr. Asselin is 26 — are sometimes frustrated by their peers’ apathy. “That’s why things are how they are,” he said. “My generation is politically apathetic. And I was too, until this issue lit me up. I know that state very well. It’s a sad place to be.”

    But, he added, “it’s not completely their fault. They see the political system is really corrupt. They think their voice doesn’t matter. The relationship between corporations and the federal government is messed up. But this generation is really capable of organizing itself. We had 112 on two buses; all of them paid online and were ready to come down at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. So there’s some hope.”

    And while 50,000 is a modest figure relative to some previous rallies in Washington, that number is both a milestone and one that may be surpassed as 350.org carries out its mission to build “a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis,” according to its Web site. 

    For Mr. Asselin, the Forward on Climate rally was personally fulfilling as well. “I’ve been so completely immersed in the coordination and planning for the buses,” he said, “and all the responsibilities that go along with that, that being there was a very personal experience.”

    Among the big-ticket items included in the Springs School District’s preliminary budget for the next school year are 50 new computerized devices, a propane-powered school bus, a school-wide security overhaul, and a wireless infrastructure upgrade.

    Thomas Primiano, the district’s treasurer, went over the numbers on Feb. 13 during the first of three budget workshops. This one dealt with buildings and grounds, transportation, technology, school board expenses, and other contractual items, and the maximum allowable tax levy for the next school year — just over $23.7 million, which would represent a 3 percent increase over this year’s tax levy. Certain items are exempt from the tax cap.

    Last year, in order to stay under the state-mandated 2-percent tax levy cap, $791,969 in cuts were made to various programs — an excruciating fate the district is hoping to avoid this time around.

    Beginning in the 2014-15 school year, New York State will mandate that students in third through eighth grades take computerized assessments. While legally required, the burden to comply will fall on schools, with no additional state money.

    Timothy Frazier, a school board member and principal of Southampton Intermediate School, along with several parents, expressed frustration at yet another unfunded mandate.

    “Number two pencils are a heck of a lot cheaper than tablets,” said Kathee Burke Gonzalez, the School Board’s president. “We don’t have the infrastructure to have a couple of hundred kids taking a test on a tablet,” she said, noting that areas of Springs School still lacked basic Internet connectivity.

    In order to comply with such a requirement, Springs School will need an additional 150 to 250 devices, whether laptops, tablets, desktop computers, or some combination. For now, the school plans to phase in approximately 50 devices each year. Also at issue is increasing availability of building-wide wireless access.

    For the 2013-14 school year, Springs will also see a projected increase of $189,822 in state aid, the bulk of which concerns $87,100 in charter school transition costs that the school overpaid for last year. For every student living in Springs that attends the Child Development Center of the Hamptons, a charter school in East Hampton primarily for children with special needs, the school is required to pay $22,500. Last year, the district budgeted for more students than ultimately enrolled.

    “The 18-percent change in state aid for this year is an unusual year, and we shouldn’t be expecting that in the future,” Mr. Primiano said. “We need to save and maintain our reserves.”

    Besides leasing a new propane-powered school bus, which the district would eventually own, the preliminary budget also includes $55,000 to transport a student with special needs to Westhampton Beach. The trip, provided by an outside company, requires not only a driver, but also two monitors to accompany the student.

    In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, Springs is also planning for a security overhaul by replacing all locks, implementing an intercom system, and installing security cameras. The locks alone are projected to cost $5,000.

    Last week’s meeting was sparsely attended, and included only a handful of parents.

    “We would like to invite the public to come out and participate,” said Ms. Burke Gonzalez.

     Two more workshops are planned in the coming weeks. A second session is scheduled on March 6 to tackle instructional programs, interscholastic sports, and field trips. A third, on March 20, will address tuition to East Hampton High School, the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, employee benefits, administration, and the overall projected budget and tax rate. All convene at 6:30 p.m. in the school’s common room.

    The East Hampton Town Republican Committee voted on Feb. 13 on its nominees for town supervisor and highway superintendent, and although it is not making its choices public yet, its chairman said Monday that the committee had only screened one candidate for each of the positions — Jay Schneiderman for supervisor and Steve Lynch for highway superintendent.

    Also on Feb. 13, the committee interviewed two potential candidates for town justice — Carl Irace, a former town attorney, and Robert Kouffman, an attorney who has run for the job in the past. The G.O.P. screened candidates for town board, town trustees, assessor, and town clerk as well at that meeting, its chairman, Kurt Kappel, said Monday.

    As expected, Republican Councilman Dominick Stanzione met with the committee members to make the case for a second term and Fred Overton, the town clerk, was interviewed to run for town board after 14 years in his current position and 12 before that as a town trustee and town assessor.

    “I’ve heard a lot for the past 14 years sitting with the town board,” Mr. Overton said. “Not that I have all the answers, but I think I have a lot to offer. . . . I think I have an insight. I’ve lived it for 14 years.”

    If Mr. Schneiderman, a county legislator who was town supervisor for four years, is chosen to lead the ticket, “I think he’ll be a great candidate,” Mr. Overton said yesterday. He was first elected town clerk the year that Mr. Schneiderman was elected supervisor and has worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations since then.

    He said he’s had good feedback from the committee, but added, “When you’re in politics for as long as I’ve been, you realize nothing is for sure until all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted.”

    “I think we really have a strong slate this year,” Mr. Kappel said. “There are a lot of people who are pretty energized who want to run.”

    Carol Brennan, the deputy clerk for many years, is eyeing Mr. Overton’s position and was the only one to meet with the committee last week, Mr. Kappel said. Mr. Overton said he had full confidence in her ability to run the clerk’s office, something she did often in his absence over the past year.

    Joe Bloecker, a town trustee, screened for assessor, and for trustee the committee interviewed Dennis Curles and Mike Bottini last week. Earlier, it had screened Tom Cooper and six incumbent trustees who plan to run again — Diane McNally, Nat Miller, Stephanie Forsberg, Tim Bock, Sean McCaffrey, and Deborah Klughers, who was elected on the Democratic ticket. On Feb. 13, the committee voted to re-nominate the five Republican incumbents, leaving four spots to fill on the trustee ticket. The committee will interview and vote on additional candidates at a meeting on Wednesday.

    It expects to name its full slate by the end of the month, Mr. Kappel said. This despite the fact that Republican Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has not yet indicated whether he wants to run for a third term. Mr. Wilkinson has run for office three times, winning in 2009 against Ben Zwirn and beating out the Democratic candidate, Zachary Cohen, by just 15 votes in 2011.

    Mr. Cohen is among this year’s potential candidates for the top job on the Democratic ticket, but the Democratic Committee is still in the process of screening. Larry Cantwell, who is retiring from his 30-year position as the East Hampton Village administrator, has said he is pondering a run for town supervisor. He served on the East Hampton Town Board before taking his job with the village. Mr. Cantwell is rumored to have the party’s support, but Democrats will not name their slate until March and perhaps even April.

    Members of the Montauk Fire Department are on a mission to upgrade the hamlet’s hurricane shelters and raise money for a generator for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center, one of the designated shelters in the easternmost hamlet, along with the Montauk School and the Montauk Downs, but the only one that does not have a generator.

    The Montauk Firehouse is also a shelter, but for fire department members and their families only. A former Fire Department chief, Peter Joyce, who is leading the charge, explained that in an emergency situation volunteer firemen would be better able to respond if they knew their families were taken care of.

    Mr. Joyce has been visiting various organizations asking for their help. When he appeared before the Montauk School Board in January, he also asked for a list of equipment the school might need in case it was required as a shelter. A committee of firefighters has been formed and is focusing on shoring up the community should another storm the magnitude of Sandy hit and force an evacuation. The committee plans to apply for funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    The fire department hopes to raise enough money, or have a benefactor come forward with a large enough donation, to purchase the generator, which will cost about $300,000.

    “Montauk has always been a community that can move mountains to help people. And we have to stay that way and work together to get this thing going,” Mr. Joyce said.

    At a gathering on Feb. 12 at the firehouse, Mr. Joyce and Chief Richard Schoen sat around a spread of maps identifying the areas that would be hit hardest in a storm surge similar to the one that wiped out whole neighborhoods during Hurricane Sandy, causing millions of dollars in damage. Mr. Joyce said the hamlet could become an island of its own.

    With that in mind, he said, the fire department is creating an evacuation plan as if East Hampton did not exist, since one of the worst trouble spots is the Napeague stretch. If flooded, it would cut Montaukers off from the rest of Long Island.

    When Sandy struck, the only evacuation center open was East Hampton High School. East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson wanted to open the Playhouse during Sandy but found the plan unworkable, as there were no Red Cross volunteers available to manage it. Luckily it was not needed, but it could be before long, said Mr. Joyce, who has taken it upon himself to drive through the hamlet and has identified over 600 houses that are in danger zones. The zones are highlighted on the maps, which are available for all to see at the firehouse

    There are three places most vulnerable to a sea breach, said Mr. Joyce: Napeague, downtown Montauk, and the Ditch Plain area, especially the oceanfront trailer park known as Montauk Shores Condominiums. “They are definitely in danger,” Mr. Joyce said. The dock area is also a low-lying zone and could suffer great damage from flooding.

    A fireman for over 30 years, Mr. Joyce was born and raised in Montauk. He remembers stories he heard from his mother, Peg Joyce, who lived in the old fishing village on Navy Road when it was almost wiped out during the Hurricane of 1938. “I know this can happen,” he said.

    A 1997 book by Peg Winski of the Montauk Historical Society described the conditions after that hurricane. Utility poles were downed, houses were destroyed, and boats upended. “Very few buildings were left intact,” she wrote.

    Montauk students at East Hampton High School had to stay overnight with classmates, relatives, and teachers, although many were not able to sleep, what with rumors floating about that the Atlantic had swept in to meet Fort Pond Bay and Montauk was no more. “Thankfully, the rumors were only half true,” Ms. Winski wrote.

    Hurricane Sandy really put the focus on this project, said Mr. Schoen, who was scheduled to meet with Red Cross officials this week to unlock a trailer that has been sitting on the grounds of the Montauk Playhouse for almost three years. He planned to take the visitors to the other shelters to hear their recommendations as to what might be needed.

    Mr. Joyce said that in addition to a working generator, shelters must have blankets, cots, food supplies, and proper heating and ventilation. “You can’t put 500-plus people in a shelter without proper ventilation. We saw that happen with Katrina,” he said.

    Both firemen said a storm hitting in summer, when the population swells to thousands, was their biggest fear. Getting the word out early about an upcoming storm is essential, they said, so summer people have time to return to their other houses and locals can move in with relatives up west until it passes. “But the scope doesn’t always lend itself to an easy solution,” said the chief.

    In the next few weeks the town will host a Red Cross volunteer training session for people to become certified as safety managers in evacuation centers. A time and date for the one-day course will soon be announced.

    A Springs man, Samuel Spielberg, 31, was killed in a one-car crash late Friday night.

    First responders reported finding his 2002 Toyota 4Runner in woods off Red Dirt Road, just west of Old Stone Highway. The SUV, which had overturned, was engulfed in flames, said to be shooting 20 feet in the air.

    A call alerting East Hampton Town police to the crash was logged in at 11:27 p.m. The initial police report said the car had "failed to negotiate a curve in the roadway."

    After the Amagansett Fire Department extinguished the blaze, Mr. Spielberg's body was found in the burnt-out vehicle. Police said he was its sole occupant. Police are interviewing witnesses who saw Mr. Spielberg shortly before his death, and conducting a safety inspection of the car.

    In an interview last week, before the crash, Chief Edward Ecker pointed out that Old Stone Highway and its ancillary roads, unlike a number of other roads in the town that have the word "highway" in them, is just that: a main thoroughfare for traffic headed to Springs from Amagansett and Montauk. Speaking of Jeffrey Ahn, who was struck and killed by a taxicab as he walked along Old Stone Highway in June, the chief remarked that the roads in that neighborhood  are narrow and winding, and have no shoulder.

    Mr. Spielberg was the second road-related fatality this month in the Town of East Hampton. Kelly Anne Doroski, 23, of East Hampton died in a one-car crash on Route 114 on Feb. 7.

    Last year, town police reported eight deaths on the roads, the most in at least 10 years, even as the total number of reported accidents continued a 10-year trend of decline. Car accidents have declined in 9 of the past 10 years, from 1,055 in 2003, to 870 in 2012, a decrease of almost 18 percent.

    Chief Ecker, in the department's annual report, released earlier this month, put a heavy priority for the upcoming year on making the roads of East Hampton safer. He could not attribute any clear pattern to last year's eight incidents, an unusually high number.

    Town police statistics show that the number of fatalities has swung up and down over the past decade. Between 2003 and 2005, for example, there were a total of 17 road deaths, during years when there was an average of over 1,000 accidents reported per year.

    There were six fatalities on the roads between 2006 and 2008, and none at all in 2009. Two thousand ten saw four road deaths, with only one in 2011, before last year's number spiked to eight.

    Throughout the decade the number of reported accidents other than fatalities has declined steadily, bottoming out at 870 last year, the fewest in recent memory.

    East Hampton Town and the Peconic Land Trust will join forces to purchase the development rights over 9.5 Amagansett acres containing the Stony Hill Stables.

    According to a unanimous vote of the town board last Thursday night, after a hearing on the idea, East Hampton will spend $489,250 of its community preservation fund to preserve the stables. The land trust will begin fund-raising to acquire its portion of the $978,500 purchase price, Sara Gordon, a representative of the land trust, said Tuesday.

    Stony Hill Stables, which has 30 horses and offers riding camps and lessons in hunters, jumpers, and dressage, was established 50 years ago by the Hotchkiss family and remains under the ownership of Elizabeth (Wickety) Hotchkiss.

    An application to create a three-lot residential subdivision in lieu of the farm has been under town planning board review. But, Ms. Gordon said this week, the stables have “ardent supporters” who drew up a petition asking for them to be saved. That prompted the land trust to get involved and approach town officials about a plan.

    The trust’s Deborah Light Preserve, Quail Hill Farm, and Stony Hill properties are close to the stables, along Town Lane, Ms. Gordon noted. “It’s kind of in our backyard as well. It’s a community character preservation” effort, she said.

    Ms. Gordon said it could take several years to raise the money to proceed, but, “the alternative, because of the needs of the family, is a three-lot subdivision.”

    The town, said Scott Wilson, East Hampton’s director of land acquisitions and management, “will close whenever they’re ready.”

    “We’re confident that we’re going to succeed,” Ms. Gordon said, “and that it’s a good place to put our efforts.”

    Some potential donors have already come forward, said Maureen Bluedorn, the president of the Stony Hill Stables Foundation. “We’re just thrilled that the town is taking these steps to preserve the essence of what East Hampton is all about,” she said by phone on Monday. Preserving the acreage (an approximately one-acre area containing the family house will be excluded) will help maintain the pastoral and historic nature of the area.

     Stony Hill Stables is used by locals, Ms. Bluedorn said. With 28 employees, it has more than 230 students a year, she said. The foundation, she continued, was established specifically to provide scholarships to local children, enabling them not only to take riding lessons, but also to be assigned a pony for a summer riding camp and to participate in horse shows. At the hearing at Town Hall last week, Marc Lowlicht, the father of an 11-year-old scholarship recipient, read a letter she wrote about what it has meant to her.

    Also last Thursday, following a hearing, the town board voted to buy two lots on Lincoln Avenue in Springs, totaling a half acre, from Suffolk County for $7,920. The purchase will also be made with the community fund, to preserve open space.

    David Buda, the sole speaker at the hearing, called it a “welcome acquisition” that would add to adjacent vacant parcels that have also been purchased. It would be a “wonderful resource for Springs . . . if the town intends to make it a passive park.” The parcels, he said, were designated for use as a park in 1977 urban-renewal maps of the area.

    East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village, both facing a need to repair the aging fuel tanks and pumps where their police, highway, and other official cars and trucks gas up, are banding together to seek grant money for the construction of a centralized, shared facility.

    New York State’s Local Government Efficiency Program provides assistance and grants for the development of projects that achieve cost savings and improve efficiency through shared initiatives. With a March 13 deadline to apply for money, both town and village officials have been discussing the project.

    Up to $400,000 in grant money could be available, Larry Cantwell, the East Hampton Village administrator, said yesterday. “That might very well pay for most of the cost of a new facility,” he said, adding that the remaining costs would involve dismantling the existing facilities.

    The village’s fueling station at its Department of Public Works site on Accabonac Road is “23 years old or more,” Mr. Cantwell said at a village board meeting on Friday. “At some point we’re going to have to do a major upgrade of that system,” he said.

    Mr. Cantwell and Scott Fithian, the village’s superintendent of public works, have been meeting with East Hampton Town officials, including Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch and a representative from the town police.

    East Hampton Town has fueling facilities at its Highway Department and at the town police garage behind Town Hall, and shares a fueling site in Montauk with the Montauk Fire Department. The two main sites — both the underground fuel storage tanks and the fuel pumps — are “outdated, deteriorated, and in critical need of replacement,” Charlene Kagel, an accountant for the town, told the town board at a meeting on Tuesday with village officials.

    The village board had hired Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer, to do a preliminary report on the redesign of its facility, at an estimated cost of $3,900.

    Mr. Bennett will now proceed with work on behalf of both the village and the town, to prepare a cost-benefit analysis for the joint project and to design the centralized facility. Its location has not yet been determined, though it would be placed on town or village-owned land.

    Mr. Bennett said at the town board meeting on Tuesday that he would evaluate whether two separate diesel fuel tanks maintained by the town’s Parks and Recreation and Sanitation Departments should be eliminated.

    Whether or not the new fuel tanks will be installed above or below ground will also be decided, the engineer said.

    The underground tanks now used by both the village and the town all date to the early 1980s, Mr. Bennett said. Though he “doesn’t anticipate any major can of worms” in their removal, “there’s always a risk of an accumulation of small spillage” of fuel that would have to be dealt with.

    The new fuel pumps would be equipped with a computerized recordkeeping system to log which vehicles are getting gas. Ms. Kagel said that the system could tie in to a regional fueling station concept under discussion by public officials countywide, which would allow vehicles from any municipality to fuel up at participating stations. Bills would then be sent out to various towns and villages, accordingly.

    The new site could include charging stations for electric cars and incorporate the use of alternative energy, Ms. Kagel said.

    She said that Shelter Island Town and its school district had received a state grant for a similar project, and that “the likelihood is good” that the East Hampton application would also be successful.

    Either way, Ms. Kagel said, for the town and village to pool their resources to build a new fuel facility “would make financial sense.”

    The joint project is “an indication of the changing times with respect to local government,” East Hampton Village Mayor F. Paul Rickenbach Jr. said last week. “The village is pleased to cooperate with the town in this inter-municipal undertaking.”

     “Shared services are not only good for the taxpayer, it’s a practical way to go,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said on Tuesday. He pointed to a recent successful example, when the town and village jointly operated an emergency operations center during the last two big storms.

    East Hampton Village has appointed a replacement for Larry Cantwell, the village administrator for the past 30 years, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. announced at a village board meeting on Friday.

    Rebecca Molinaro, the clerk-treasurer of the Village of Westhampton Beach, will assume the role on May 1. Mr. Cantwell and Ms. Molinaro will work together until Mr. Cantwell’s retirement in July.

    Ms. Molinaro has a master’s degree in public policy and 10 years of government experience as executive assistant to Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. She has served in her present role for the past three years. Ms. Molinaro said Friday that she and her daughter, Emma McGrory, will relocate from Remsenburg to East Hampton. Her starting salary, said the mayor, will be $95,000 per year.

    “Becky’s education and work experience is directly within the area of expertise required for the position of village administrator and this makes her an outstanding choice to carry on the tradition of good work by Larry,” the mayor said in a prepared statement.

    The incoming village administrator said after the meeting that she is “very excited” about the job. In governing on a local level, she said, “the response is tangible and almost immediate.” Working as a village administrator gives her “an amazing opportunity to become part of it,” she said.

    On Friday, Mayor Rickenbach and Ms. Molinaro discussed the considerable similarities between the villages, which include year-round populations that swell in size with an influx of summer residents and visitors, issues of storms and coastal erosion and, especially in recent years, the need to be familiar with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    The mayor, who said that he and Mayor Conrad Teller of Westhampton Beach share a similar career track, with each moving from law enforcement into government, described Ms. Molinaro as “a professional lady and a class act,” and predicted “an extremely smooth and transparent transition.”

    Ms. Molinaro departs from her present position amid a minor controversy that has been described as an accounting mishap in which village employees were overpaid by a total of $22,000. The error has been corrected, and Ms. Molinaro has recommended that the village move from a biweekly payroll schedule to a 24-week schedule to preclude a repeat of the error. Preparing the village budget is one of the village administrator’s many duties in East Hampton.

    Members of the East Hampton Village Board were aware of the situation, Mr. Cantwell said yesterday. “They took a look at it. The state comptroller’s office took a look. It was corrected. I think it’s the kind of mistake that could happen, and we didn’t feel it reflected on Becky’s competence or qualifications in any way,” he said.