At the prodding of her guidance counselor, Johanna Salazar first volunteered for the Hamptons International Film Festival during her freshman year at East Hampton High School.

    Though she didn’t realize it at the time, the proximity to the festival would make a big impact later.

    A lifelong storyteller, Ms. Salazar, 32, is now a documentary filmmaker.

    During the Hamptons International Film Festival, which kicks off next week, Ms. Salazar will work to help bridge the gap between local residents and festivalgoers.

    Though teachers and students have long participated in past festivals in a piecemeal fashion, a new program titled Filmmakers in the Classroom hopes to expose the community’s youngest residents to the riches of cinema.

    “Growing up here, there’s not a lot to do and kids can get bored,” said Ms. Salazar, who is responsible for reaching out to local community groups on the festival’s behalf. “By bringing filmmakers into the classroom, the possibilities are just endless.”

    Filmmakers in the Classroom is funded by a $20,000 grant the festival received from the Long Island Community Foundation, based in Syosset. According to David M. Okorn, its executive director, besides showing films and hosting conversations with filmmakers, the program also aims to teach conflict resolution through the vehicle of documentary films.

    Vivian Treves, a resident of East Hampton, is helping to coordinate the films being shown at South Fork elementary and middle schools. Marianna Levine, a resident of Sag Harbor, is responsible for coordinating the films being shown at local high schools.

    “For years, the film festival has wanted to figure out how to reach out to the community,” said Ms. Levine, whose daughter attends Pierson Middle School. “With the cuts to school budgets, we saw there was a need to bring the arts back into the schools. I’m so happy that students will finally have these resources available to them.”

    Though the details were still being finalized, filmmakers and producers will participate in school-wide assemblies or visit individual classrooms to discuss filmmaking and the subject matter of their films.

    Amagansett School students will watch “Ocean Keeper,” a short documentary about the Amagansett Life-Saving Station.

    At East Hampton High School, students will preview a film titled “Beyond Right and Wrong.” Sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade students from East Hampton Middle School will attend a private screening of six separate short films and preview “Brooklyn Castle.” Finally, John M. Marshall Elementary School students will preview “Dumbleweed” at an all-school screening.

    Students at Springs Public School and Sag Harbor Elementary School will also preview “Dumbleweed,” Montauk Public School is also slated to preview “Ocean Keeper,” and students at the Ross Upper School campus will watch “Anosmia.”

    In most cases, directors and producers will visit the schools alongside their films, though the details were being worked out.

    Advanced math students at East Hampton High School will be offered free tickets to see “A Beautiful Mind,” the feature film about John Nash, the Nobel prize-winning mathematician, who will be in attendance at the festival. Further, all students with a valid student identification card can purchase tickets to any of the festival’s films at a discounted rate of $8.

    For Linda Fuller, who taught English for 35 years at East Hampton Middle School and High School, every fall means “festival.”

    Each year, Ms. Fuller would walk hundreds of middle school students down Newtown Lane in order to kick off the festival. Lacking a budget for bus transportation, she encouraged her students to bring an umbrella.

    “It’s taken 20 years but it was like seeing a dream come true to watch what it’s now become. It’s just amazing.” said Ms. Fuller.

    “To know this is going to be in the classes and available to children who wouldn’t have otherwise had this opportunity is a great moment for the children of this community and for the 20th anniversary of this festival,” said Ms. Treves, whose daughter attends East Hampton Middle School. “Who knows if a filmmaker won’t come out of our community?”

    Karen Arikian, the festival’s executive director, was similarly excited by increased outreach to South Fork schools.

    “With the students, it’s a way to introduce them to a critical way of thinking about film and to build an audience from a younger base — which is essential to our business,” said Ms. Arikian. “It’s a great opportunity and especially on this, our 20th anniversary year.”

    “I hope they do this again,” said Paulette Balsam of Amagansett, smiling on board the Peconic Bay Water Jitney as she returned from Greenport to Sag Harbor’s Long Wharf on Saturday. As the company’s temporary permit is set to expire on Sunday, many of those riding the ferry over the weekend were wondering if it would be their last chance.

    Adding to the excitement of the ride that day was the Coast Guard’s ship Eagle a few feet away upon departure from Mitchell Park during Greenport’s maritime festival.

    Another rider on the top deck of the Sag Harbor-bound ferry was Kendal Kelly, a first-timer from Riverhead who said she hadn’t been to Greenport in years. “It was far more simplistic then . . . no honky-tonks and very few art galleries,” she said. She headed out to the North Fork for the pleasure of a boat ride around Shelter Island, to revisit views and memories of younger days filled with sailing and cocktails. Now, she said, she misses being on the water.

    A gander at Sag Harbor during the day would be interesting, too, she said, having been there only occasionally in the evening to go to the theater. She screamed in excitement when the passenger ferry passed through a sailboat race before its arrival on the South Fork. Passengers wore grins and cameras on the warm, sunny, slightly windy day. A Phil Collins tune played as background to the striking views and minimal engine noise.

    Sag Harbor Village Mayor Brian Gilbride said on Tuesday that he had enjoyed a trip as well, early in the summer season, along with Sag Harbor Police Chief Tom Fabiano, Dee Yardley, the superintendent of the Department of Public Works, and Beth Kamper, the village clerk. “We had lunch and a beautiful ride back,” Mr. Gilbride said.

    He has heard nothing negative, he said, and has received “many favorable comments from a lot of people.” As for the future, “I don’t know what their plans are moving forward.”

    Jim Ryan of Response Marine, who embarked on the trial venture with Geoffrey Lynch of Hampton Jitney, had an answer on Saturday afternoon: He wants to do it again, and earlier in the year, if the two villages and the county let him. Acting as captain on the 2 p.m. trip to Greenport from Sag Harbor that day, he said he had 51 reservations for the 53-passenger boat, which was not uncommon on a Saturday, “or even a sunny Tuesday.” Those using the service were mostly traveling to eat and browse in one of the two sister villages.

    There were a few commuters who rode this season, too — those from Sag Harbor who have worked in Greenport since the recent opening of the Blue Canoe restaurant, for example, said Jason Lindiakos of Rocky Point, a Peconic Jitney employee. “A lot of repeat business, familiar faces,” he said, whether for lunch, dinner, or a pleasure cruise. “Everybody loved it . . . especially on top.” They also liked that the captain took both routes around Shelter Island, so they could see both sides. There were some who had a few drinks later in the evening — “better than driving,” he said.

    The ferry almost always adhered to the published schedule, Mr. Lindiakos said, although service was shut down early one day last week, when it was “pretty rough” and there was a high-wind advisory. There were no reservations and only one one-way passenger all day.

    The season’s trial contained an engine problem or two, resulting in the use of Jitney buses and both the North and South Ferries to get across Shelter Island. Bridgford Hunt, the manager of the North Ferry Company, said on Saturday that the passenger-only Peconic Jitney was a pleasurable option for visitors to the area, and that his company was happy to help when necessary.

    “I look forward to the continued talks regarding either seasonal or year-round ferry service,” Greenport Village Mayor David Nyce wrote in an e-mail. “The information that I have gathered from the merchants in the village is that it was a huge success.”

    “I want to go out and enjoy life,” said Pat McArdle, who was all aboard with her three rescued dogs on Saturday, “to take a ride and go around Greenport.” She drove from Islip to Sag Harbor and strolled over to Long Wharf for a look.

    She sat in a cushioned seat in the cabin looking out at the scenery through large windows, with photographs above of historic Sag Harbor and Greenport, including one from the 1950s, when a ferry regularly landed at Long Wharf.

    Faced with the possibility that the Georgica Association will deny them access to Georgica Pond so they can periodically open the pond to the sea, the East Hampton Town Trustees are contemplating a license agreement with the association, and will discuss it at their meeting on Tuesday night.

    The trustees have not been comfortable diluting their authority in the past. The current standoff between the two groups — perhaps the oldest public/private-rights debate in town —  could be decided by Mother Nature.

    The beach between Beach Lane in Wainscott and the narrow isthmus that separates the coastal pond and the sea is one of the few beaches in East Hampton whose private ownership predates the formation, in 1686, of the town trustees. Their founding Dongan Patent declared beaches to be common land.

    Since that time, trustees have opened the pond in the spring and fall, as did their Native American predecessors, to allow spawning fish to enter and exit. More recently, high water levels have occasionally flooded pondfront properties, making the biannual openings, or lettings, popular among pondside homeowners. And, trustees have sold sand excavated from a sand flat at the pond’s mouth to property owners who wish to rebuild eroded beach and duneland. So by not allowing trustee access to the Georgica Pond gut, the association has presented some of its own members with a quandary.

    The presence of equipment used in the excavations, and the stockpiling of sand on Georgica Beach, as well as possible liabilities associated with the lettings, prompted the association’s access ban, according to Mark Graham, its president. Mr. Graham suggested that a license agreement would settle issues that the association’s legal team identified as “price, insurance, and indemnification,” during a phone interview last week.

    The trustees can attempt to access the pond from West End Road in East Hampton, across the public beach on the east side of the gut. Or, they can let the chips fall where they may by abiding by the association’s ban, in which case the pond could flood its banks. At their meeting last month, members said they would try to avoid the latter alternative in the interest of the pond’s health, but that the association may have tied their hands.

    On the other hand, it would seem the association has tied its own hands, because only the trustees can authorize the opening of Georgica Pond.

    John Courtney, the trustees’ attorney, said yesterday that this was not the first time the Georgica Association had asked the trustees to sign a license agreement involving the pond. The board had decided not to sign one in the past.

    Mr. Courtney would not discuss a possible legal remedy to the standoff, other than to point to the ongoing court proceding in a case brought against the trustees by beachfront property owners on the ocean side of Napeague. The case, now in the State Supreme Court, involves a challenge to the trustees’ claim of public access.

    The property owners’ request for summary judgment was denied earlier this year after Justice Melvyn Tannenbaum decided there were questions of fact that were not readily determined by law. One of the questions was whether the trustees had “proscriptive” rights to the beach, by virtue of its unobstructed public use for 10 years or more.

    Trustees have been traversing Georgica Beach to open the pond for many decades.

    The World War II veteran probably didn’t know it at the time, but his simple act of kindness sparked a lifelong obsession for Victor Kerpel, an East Hampton artist. As a boy, riding a bike around his Manhattan neighborhood, Mr. Kerpel would pretend to shoot down German and Japanese aircraft.

    “Hey kid,” the veteran asked him. “What are you doing?”

    “I’m shooting down enemy planes!”

    “Come over here, I’ve got something for you.”

    The gift was the veteran’s A-2 flight jacket from the Army Air Force, issued to pilots and crew. “This thing was huge on me, but I would not take it off,” Mr. Kerpel said last week. “That was the cat’s pajamas. It lived on me 24/7.”

    Manufactured for the Army by contractors such as Aero Leather Clothing Company, the Cable Raincoat Company, and Perry Sportswear, authentic A-2 jackets are currently valued between a few hundred and several thousand dollars, depending on condition, customization, and verification. For Mr. Kerpel, his neighbor’s gift led both to the aforementioned obsession and a “glorified hobby.”

    Using channels such as eBay, swap meets, and flea markets, Mr. Kerpel has been buying and selling authentic A-2 jackets for some 25 years. Though the available supply is dwindling, the Internet, flea markets, and word of mouth have brought him in contact with a global community of collectors.

    Most A-2 jackets were made of horsehide, Mr. Kerpel said, and some are goatskin. To the trained eye, it isn’t too difficult to separate the genuine article from a reproduction. “You see guys walking around in the mall with jackets that kind of look [authentic], but if you look closely, you’ll see that they’re big enough to cover their gut, or are weirdly patched all over the place. Remember, guys in 1940-45 generally weren’t ‘workout’ guys, and in order to squeeze into cockpits, even in the big planes, they were about 5 foot 6, 5 foot 8.”

    The jackets, he said, are “not exactly form-fitting, but they’re not loose, floppy garments. They’re very straightforward, no frills, purely utilitarian. They were designed to take some beating.”

    On a sun-filled deck at his house, Mr. Kerpel displayed several A-2 jackets, some with patches on the front, some sporting an airman’s name, and some customized on the back with the image that decorated a particular plane’s fuselage. “The Belle of the Brawl,” an illustration in the style of the era’s pin-up art — a voluptuous woman, bombs cascading down on either side of her — decorates one. “These were 18-year-old kids,” said the collector. “Sometimes there was somebody with real talent, and they painted beautiful stuff on them. Other times it was pretty crude or rough. You had a bomber group of 10 young men who became very close-knit, kind of a team. They wanted a team reference, thus they would name their plane, and create some kind of art depicting that.”

    Some of the patches adorning jackets were Army-sanctioned, he added, but others were unofficial. “Some were a bit risqué.”

    In the 1960s, while a student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Mr. Kerpel had a studio at Bleecker Street and the Bowery. At the time, he recalled, when “the Bowery was the Bowery, full of winos and really a wreck,” many down-on-their-luck veterans sold their worldly possessions, including their A-2s, to secondhand stores. “They could be had for 10 or 15 dollars,” he said. “That ended.”

    Along with the dwindling supply, fervent collectors have bid prices stratospherically high in recent years. There are collectors in the United States, Britain, China, Greece, Italy, even the Middle East, but some of the most avid are Japanese. “They still have this idea of the bushido,” the code of honor of the Japanese warrior class.

    Though it has become more difficult to find authentic A-2 jackets, the recession spurred many people to sell unnecessary possessions, said Mr. Kerpel. “These things ebb and flow,” he said. “There are folks that have unlimited resources and can buy whatever they want whenever they want. For the rest of the world, in order to buy something to just have it . . . you have to consider that.”

    Most serious collectors know one another, if not personally, then by reputation, “and reputation counts a lot,” he said. “There are some rascals who try to sell garbage, and jazz up a jacket to look like something it’s not. Newbies are taken all the time.”

    A tentative budget for 2013 released this week by East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson calls for a $3.3 million increase, with total spending of just over $69 million, up from this year’s $65.6 million budget.

    The draft budget not only includes money for union employee pay increases dictated by contracts but, for the first time in several years, calls for a 2 percent pay increase for elected and appointed officials, as well as town department heads.

    If adopted as proposed, the supervisor’s budget would result in a 4.6-percent tax rate increase for East Hampton Town residents not living in the incorporated villages, and a tax rate decrease of 1.7 percent for residents of East Hampton or Sag Harbor Villages.

    The budget exceeds the state-imposed tax increase cap of 2 percent, but stays well within the state-calculated cap for East Hampton Town. Because town taxes saw a 1.7-percent decrease last year, the state allowed a credit toward this year’s cap, allowing East Hampton a total increase of up to 4.1 percent. The tax levy that would result from adopting the tentative budget would be 3.1 percent higher than last year’s.

    Tax rates would be $27.86 per $100 of assessed value for properties in the town and $10.93 per hundred for properties in the villages.

    Town board members received copies of the budget early this week. On Tuesday, Mr. Wilkinson suggested scheduling a board discussion of the budget at an Oct. 16 work session, followed by a Nov. 1 public hearing and adoption of the budget by Nov. 20.

    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby suggested allowing time for two board discussions of the budget by including it on the agenda for a work session on Tuesday.

    It also contains money to add staff to the Justice Court office, and to increase the hours of its employees. That would allow the court office, which has been closed to the public one day a week so that a reduced staff could complete its tasks, to be open every weekday.

    The budget increases funding by 9 percent for the Harbors and Docks Department for water safety promotion, and includes a 180-percent increase for ocean rescue and marine public safety programs, according to the supervisor.

    It also continues funding for community organizations such as the East Hampton Day Care Center, the Family Service League, and Phoenix House, for a substance abuse counseling program.

    A contingency fund has been included in the budget, setting aside $559,000 for unanticipated expenses.

    In a message released with the tentative budget, Mr. Wilkinson pointed out that over $1 million, or almost 33 percent, of the $3.3 million increase over this year’s budget is attributable to expenses for the town airport and scavenger waste treatment plant. Included in the budget is money to repay funds advanced from the refuse and recycling fund to cover costs for the plant this year, as well as money to operate it as a transfer station for the first three months of 2013.

    Mr. Wilkinson did not include funds in this year’s budget, prepared and adopted last fall, to operate the waste plant beyond the first few months of the year. A board majority voted late last year to solicit proposals from private companies that would lease or buy the plant. Only one proposal was submitted, and a majority of the board, excluding the supervisor and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, found it unacceptable.

    That decision, and others involving the waste plant, has been a bone of contention on the board ever since. In his budget message, Mr. Wilkinson attributes the need to levy property taxes for the scavenger waste fund to the board’s rejection of the private company’s offer.

    The tentative budget applies money from surplus funds to budget lines including the airport fund, eliminating the need to levy taxes for those lines; however, if surplus is exhausted, that may have to be done in the future for ongoing expenses.

    The supervisor also noted that even with the proposed increase, a drop in spending and tax rates since taking office in 2012 — when the budget adopted by the previous administration was $71.1 million — still holds. He credited that to restraint in capital borrowing, zero-based budgeting, staff reductions through attrition and voluntary termination programs, and “reorganization and streamlining staff structure.”

    An arrest on Cedar Drive in Springs last Thursday morning involving a stolen iPhone ended up triggering a mini-manhunt when the handcuffed suspect, Justin Cruz, 18, of East Hampton, escaped, outrunning police and disappearing into the woods.

    Suffolk County police dispatched a helicopter to aid in the search, and New York State troopers sent a German shepherd called O’Reilly from its K-9 unit, with his handler, Trooper Kevin Drew.

    Because they had no item of the suspect’s clothing to help the dog pick up his scent, it was sent into the woods to “pick up the freshest scent he finds,” Trooper Drew said about two hours after the manhunt began. The dog is trained to sniff the most recently disturbed ground cover in the woods, he explained. The area is dotted with forest cover, with residences scattered in.

    O’Reilly initially seemed to pick up a scent, but then lost it, doubling back to the house where the fugitive was initially taken into custody. The helicopter hovered low in the sky, patrolling back and forth. Police continued to comb the neighborhood, in cars and on foot, going house to house on many blocks, but did not find a trace of him.

    A little after midnight, Mr. Cruz, handcuffs gone, walked into the East Hampton Town Police headquarters in Wainscott and surrendered. He was at that point re-arrested, on the original charge of criminal possession of stolen property, plus an additional charge of escaping from custody. Both are Class A misdemeanors.

    It all began a little after 8 a.m., when two town officers, following up on a report of an Apple iPhone stolen the day before, pulled up to a Cedar Drive house. In the course of interviewing Mr. Cruz, who was visiting there, police activated the missing cellphone, which made a sound. According to the police report, it was found on Mr. Cruz’s person. An officer handcuffed him in the standard hands-behind-the-back position and placed him in the rear of the police car. The officer then went back inside to interview a resident of the house.

    Left alone in the rear of the car, Mr. Cruz, who is a wiry six feet tall, worked his hands down behind his back to his ankles, then under his feet. His shackled hands were now in front of him. He then, according to the police, climbed through the partition between the front and back seats and exited the squad car through an unlocked front door. The officers saw him sprinting away toward the woods.

    When an initial search proved fruitless, police called in the county.

    In court Saturday morning, Mr. Cruz, who had been arrested in April on a charge of trespassing, was arraigned before Justice Catherine Cahill. He told the court he had dropped out of school his junior year and was working part time, landscaping and building decks.

    “That’s what you dropped out for?” Justice Cahill asked.

    “I made a mistake,” he replied.

    She asked him about his living circumstances. He told her he was living with his uncle.

    “Where are your parents?”

    “My mother is incarcerated, and my father was deported.”

    He said he had lived in East Hampton for four years. “I said I was sorry to the officer I ran away from. I was scared,” he told the court.

    Justice Cahill asked him how he was doing with his previous commitment to the court stemming from the April arrest, to do 60 hours’ community service. He told her he’d done 20.

    “Are you kidding? The first time, it was 30 hours, and you blew it off, so it became 60 hours. Mr. Cruz, you’re going down the wrong road. You better get that community service done.”

    Justice Cahill set bail at $500. Mr. Cruz was taken away.

Phoenix House Incident

     In other police news, officers were called on Sept. 25 to the Phoenix House Academy juvenile drug treatment facility in Wainscott by the staff. According to the police report, an 18-year-old, whose name was redacted from the report, had, with another resident, blindfolded a 14-year-old boy as the younger boy asked for the cigarette he felt he was owed.

    The 18-year-old told the blindfolded 14-year-old to put out his hand for the cigarette and then spit in it. He then exposed himself, according to the report, and began sexually touching the younger boy, who pushed away and ran out of the room. The Phoenix staff notified their supervisor, who called the 14-year-old’s father as well as the police.

    Police  interviewed them, eventually placing the 18-year-old under arrest. He was charged with acting in a manner injurious to a child, as well as forcible touching, both Class A misdemeanors.

    Bail was set the next morning at $2,500.

    “Our first concern is the safety of the residents,” Traci Donnelly, the regional director for Phoenix House, said Tuesday. “We offer across-the-board help” for the victim, she said. “We assess the person’s needs. Do they want to stay in Phoenix? We work closely with the parents and spouses.”

    Phoenix House will try to find an outside treatment facility more appropriate for the accused as well, Ms. Donnelly said.

    In a closed-door session on Sept. 23, the Sag Harbor Village Board agreed to seek partial police patrols from the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department and to offer early retirement to eligible village police officers. The vote on an early retirement incentive was unanimous, but outsourcing police services was approved 3-to-1. Kevin Duchemin, an East Hampton Village Police sergeant who is the newest board member, cast the negative vote.

    Concerned about the future of the department, Sag Harbor Village Police Chief Tom Fabiano said on Tuesday that he had “no clue” how replacing the department’s 12 full-time officers with others from the Sheriff’s Office would work or “why that would be done.” He also said he was surprised that he has not been told the details of the early retirement offer. Village residents don’t know either, because the  board has been discussing, voting, and drafting legal documents in executive session.

    “The mayor has gotten some numbers for services from the county sheriff and East Hampton Town. The board has decided to move forward on this by having the village labor lawyer and myself research a retirement incentive . . . and an inter-municipal agreement for supplemental police services. No final decisions were made,” State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., the village attorney who was at the Sept. 23 meeting, said. Via e-mail yesterday, Mr. Thiele said, “I do not know what public input the board will seek on this. It’s up to the board.”

    Village police have been working without a contract for over a year after months of negotiation, with the standoff having gone to arbitration.

     “It’s ridiculous” that the board has not asked for his opinion, Chief Fabiano said. He was told months ago, he said, that the only reason for the possible abolition or reduction of the police force was the increasing cost of retirement and medical expenses.

    A Sag Harbor native with 35 years on the job, one thing Chief Fabiano said he is sure of is that “they are not going to get the level of service” and that he will be “extremely concerned about the welfare of the village.” That the change apparently is based on costs, the chief asked, “Have complaints been filed? Are people’s taxes too high?”    

    “People should be involved in the process,” he said. “They might have moved here because it is a “nice, safe place to live.”

    According to Legislator Jay Schneiderman, the County Legislature would have to approve any agreement reached.

“It will be quite a debate,” he said yesterday. “It will not go flying through, if it goes through at all.”

      The village police log during a typical off-season week includes several pages of calls that officers have responded to, including those related to motor vehicles — accidents, speeding, unlicensed operators, intoxicated persons found driving — as well as fire alarms, harassment charges, cellphone violations, elderly falls, miscellaneous injuries and illnesses, domestic issues, streetlight outages, and loud music complaints.

    Other calls requiring police presence in a recent week included a student’s attempted suicide and another’s hospitalization for difficulty breathing, along with civil disputes, assistance with a locked bicycle, fear of identity theft due to a frozen computer, a homecoming parade detail, and a loose dog.

    An informal sampling on Tuesday of local business owners and residents found that they were wary of the change.

    Mike Reilly, a manager at the Corner Bar, said, “Let the people decide . . . the public pays the taxes that pay the salaries. I don’t know anyone who minds paying taxes for a good police force.” He added, “We just paid for the new headquarters. It doesn’t make sense.”  And he expressed fear of what might happen in a disaster. “Lives depend on these people,” he said.

    Erling Hope, a resident who was seen speaking with a village police officer on Main Street on Tuesday, said he didn’t think using sheriff personnel was a good idea. Those who patrol the village should be “in touch with the community,” he said. The officer he was speaking with, Hugh Caulfield, a Sag Harbor resident who was formerly a New York City police officer, praised the force, saying they are “dedicated people who give a lot.”

    “I’m against it,” said Peter D’Angelo, owner of the Emporium True Value hardware store, while Rick Kresberg, an owner of Provisions Natural Market, said he is “in favor of having our own Police Department. They know our community better.”

    At the Wharf Shop, a word of caution came from Nada Barry, a longtime resident. “I don’t know all of the facts and figures to form an opinion,” she said, but then added that she felt comfortable with the police, having known many of the officers since they were children. Although North Haven Village has contracted with the Southampton Town force for police services, she said the Sag Harbor department responds to calls first.

    As for the public’s involvement, Chief Fabiano said “a chicken coop gets more attention than the Police Department.” Mayor Brian Gilbride did not return phone calls.

    At 2 a.m. on Aug. 17, 1862, one mile east of Montauk Point, the S.S. Great Eastern, the largest ship in the world at the time, struck a rock that would forever bear its name.

    It was the ship’s third passage to New York Harbor, with 1,530 passengers. Their combined weight, when added to the ship’s 18,915 gross tons and its cargo, increased the draft of the ship to 30 feet. The rock she hit lies 24 feet below the surface. The Great Eastern, originally called Leviathan by the newspapers of the day, was 695 feet long with an 82-foot beam. 

    In August, Dick White and Brian Pope of the Montauk Lighthouse Museum traveled to Maine to offer the winning bid, $7,500, on an exact eight-foot-long steel model of the Great Eastern. The scale model is intricately fashioned with decks that can be lifted to reveal two working kerosene-fired steam engines.

    The prior owner bought it from an antiques shop in Greenwich, England. But who built it, and when? The Lighthouse Museum, which had been tipped off to the auction by George Nama, a Montauk resident, artist, and collector, is now engaged in a search for the name of the artisan.

    Meanwhile, the model will be put on display at the museum, very likely next to a window that looks out on the spot where the great ship ran aground during the Civil War 150 years ago. Today, Great Eastern Rock is a popular fishing spot.

    No one was hurt when the Great Eastern struck the tallest of a number of high points in the rocky offshore leavings of the last glacier. The ship, bound for Flushing Bay, had weathered a gale the day before, and Capt. James Walker decided to wait off Montauk before entering Long Island Sound. A pilot was brought aboard at 1:30 a.m. As the ship moved forward, a rumble was felt. A check for damage revealed a leak that resulted in a slight list to port, but the Great Eastern was freed from the rock with only the loss of an anchor, and made it to New York.

    The collision had opened an 83-foot-long gash in the hull, but Great Eastern was not in danger of sinking. She was actually two ships, one iron hull inside another, with a honeycomb of transverse bulkheads between them to prevent flooding. She was the first ship to have this now-standard design.

    Her designer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, an engineer and bridge-builder who conceived of the Great Western Railway. Its tracks spanned Britain east to west, with transport continuing across the ocean via iron steamships of his design.

    Great Eastern’s business plan included competing with clipper ships, the fast, sail-powered freight carriers of the age. And, she was to take advantage of the growing popularity of trans-Atlantic travel, which included greater and greater numbers of European emigrants. To compete with the clippers, Great Eastern was powered by four coal-fired steam engines that drove 56-foot-diameter paddle wheels as well as a stern propeller over 20 feet across.

    The ship also carried six masts with both square-rigged and fore-and-aft rigged sails for a total sail area of 18,000 square feet. The sails did not work out, at least while the paddle wheels were turning. Hot exhaust from the ship’s five stacks tended to set the sails on fire. Nonetheless, Great Eastern could make 14 knots. 

    By August of 1862, the North and the South were nearly two years into the Civil War, which not only reduced the number of paying trans-Atlantic travelers but held up repairs to the Great Eastern. Back at sea, she made a number of round trips between the U.K. and America before being converted to a cable-laying vessel. The Great Eastern laid not the first trans-Atlantic cable, but the first one to last.

    In retrospect, except for her cable-laying, she seemed to have been born under a bad sign. A boiler explosion killed several hands on her maiden voyage in 1858, a contract to carry mail across the Atlantic fell through, and the Civil War destroyed her passenger trade. In the end she plied the Mersey River as a floating music hall and billboard for a department store.

    The Great Eastern was broken up in 1889. One of her masts survives, however, as a flagpole at the Anfield football stadium in Liverpool.

    Reached on Tuesday, Mr. Nama described how the model came to his attention. He admitted to being the type of artist who collects — “I’m a collector type of guy” — in this case, old illustrations, which included a number of intricate wood engravings that appeared in several publications around the time of the Great Eastern’s launching. “They include a lot of information,” Mr. Nama said. In fact, the prints offer photographic-like depictions of her great size, alongside sailing ships of the day.

    Mr. Nama said a friend he knew from The Old Print Shop on Lexington Avenue, a man who likes fishing with a father who lives on the North Fork, called and said, “‘You have a Great Eastern Rock out there. Do you know anyone who might be interested in a model of the ship?’”

    Mr. Nama said he informed Greg Donohue, a member of the Lighthouse Museum Committee, who passed on the details to Mr. Pope, the museum’s assistant site manager, and Mr. White, chairman of the committee.

    The model was previously owned by Friedrich von Huene of Phippsburg, Me., who bought it in England in the 1980s. Last May, Mr. von Huene’s daughter arranged for it to be auctioned at the Thomaston Place Auction Galleries in Maine.

    In a letter to the auction house, Mr. von Huene suggested that “the model is working and is ideal for a father with impressionable children.” Plenty of those visit the Montauk Point Lighthouse Museum each year. 

      Frank A. Hanna, 30, accused by the East Hampton Town police in the accidental shooting of a friend, Freddie Stephens, with a .44 caliber handgun on May 24, pled guilty in Suffolk County Court on Sep. 6 to one felony charge, reckless assault in the first degree.

     He was sentenced on Sept. 10 to a year in prison, with time already served counting towards the sentence. He will be eligible for parole in January, according to his attorney, Susan Menu.

     According to the police, Mr. Hanna had aimed the gun at Mr. Stephens and pulled the trigger, not realizing that the weapon was loaded. The bullet did severe damage to Mr. Stephens’s left arm. Mr. Stephens, who is now living out of the state, is still recovering from the wound, said his attorney, Stephen Grossman.

     A .44 caliber bullet is one of the largest made and causes potentially lethal injuries. The weapon used was not recovered.

    Signs limiting or excluding certain vehicles, and strict enforcement of traffic regulations, are imperative to reducing congestion on residential roadways around North Main Street in East Hampton, several residents insisted at an East Hampton Town Board hearing on possible changes to traffic rules in their neighborhoods.

    Speakers implored the board to ban through traffic and prohibit trucks over nine tons from accessing Cooper, Osborne, and Miller Lanes, Palma Terrace, and Sherrill Road from Cedar Street, Indian Hill Lane from Three Mile Harbor Road, and Miller Lane East and West from Oakview Highway. Trucks making local deliveries and personnel responding to an emergency would be exempt from these regulations.

    In addition, the amendments being considered would add stop signs at the intersections of Downey Lanes East and West with Miller Lanes East and West, and prohibit drivers from making a left turn from Indian Hill Road onto Three Mile Harbor Road.

    Chris Russo, a former East Hampton Town highway superintendent, spoke forcefully against the proposed amendments. Instead, he suggested, the board should meet with the operators of trucks, determine the routes they need, and then ban trucks from all other roads as part of a comprehensive, townwide policy.

    Erecting “no through traffic” signs, he said, “looks to me to be creating de facto private roads that are going to be publicly maintained.” He encountered this situation as superintendent, he said, explaining that, as in the neighborhood in question, motorists use streets including Town Lane, Further Lane, and Bluff Road to avoid busier roads and traffic lights. “If nobody can drive on [a street] except a resident or somebody that has business on this street, isn’t it a private road?” he asked. “I’m sure that’s what the people in this affected area want. They don’t want anybody on their street except them and their friends and the people working for them.”

    Mr. Russo suggested that residents who want to limit vehicular traffic in their neighborhood should petition the board to take the streets in question out of the highway system. “They can then do anything there. They can have a gate operated with a card, they can have guards, put speed bumps, have a 5-miles-per-hour speed limit. But it’s their road,” he said, and attendant expenses would become their responsibility.

    “The situation is now quite dangerous,” said Julia Mead of Miller Lane West, who delivered a petition that she said bore the signatures of 80 residents. “These are narrow roads, no sidewalks, no shoulders. The conditions there present a hazard to pedestrians and bicyclists,” she said. “Over the past decade, we’ve noted an alarming increase in truck traffic and speeding cars through our neighborhood.”

    The problem exists year round, Ms. Mead said. “Admittedly, it gets much worse in the summertime. But the real problem is during rush hour — in the mornings, late afternoons, and early evenings. People go to work all year round.”

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc predicted a gridlock situation if the town forces all traffic onto main arteries. “I’m extremely concerned about the safety issues, though, and the focus really should be on those,” he said.

    “My hope is that safety would trump convenience,” Ms. Mead said.

    “What if we do this,” asked Councilman Dominick Stanzione, “and it doesn’t work?”

    “If it doesn’t work we’re going to come back asking for sidewalks and a 20-miles-per-hour speed limit,” she answered.

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and other board members wondered aloud if a compromise, in which restrictions and exclusions are enacted during the morning and afternoon rush hours, would resolve the issue. Residents were skeptical. Mr. Russo, however, had earlier issued his own prediction. “You will be doing it 100 times next year if this happens,” he said. The board agreed to revisit the matter in a work session.

    After brief hearings, the board also approved the town’s acquisition of 5.9 acres of land at 41 Three Mile Harbor Road in Springs, at which it will establish a park, nature preserve, or recreation area, and a .44-acre parcel at 20 Gloucester Avenue and a .3-acre parcel at 117 North Greenwich Street, both in Montauk, to attenuate floodwaters, serve as a buffer against pollutants, and dissipate sediments in and around Lake Montauk.