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.

    As a chowder judge it’s best to coat the stomach early in the morning with a basic, old-world foundation such as oatmeal with a bit of honey and milk that might have come from a cow in the backyard. Then it’s wise to fast until the tasting begins at the annual East Hampton Town Trustees Largest Clam contest and chowder competition. 

    Chowder has deep roots in the Northeast, especially here on Long Island. It should be taken seriously. Not only has the flesh of quahogs been a bountiful and ready source of food for hundreds of years, but, as though in homage to their innate value, beads made from the lustrous, white and purple lining of their shells were turned into wampum, coin of the Native American and early settlers’ realm.

    For centuries, clams have been raked from the bottom of bays and harbors in early fall, plump from a summer of filtering only the finest phytoplankton from our fresh tides. They have been steamed open, their meats chopped into pieces of a size to fit a chowder maker’s design. Clam liquor, the liquid essence of the quahog, is collected and put aside. (More about this fundamental ingredient to come.) And, from the garden or the I.G.A, fresh vegetables are picked, diced, and added. In this neck of the woods chowder is not chowder without a hunk or two of salt pork. Herbs and spices are sown into the soup according to the chowder maker’s palette.

    In New England white chowders rule. In New York and elsewhere, red, tomato-based, Manhattan chowders define the dish. East End chowder makers, as though caught between the two traditions, serve up a clear concoction, not white, not red, more of a thin chowder or fat soup stripped of tomatoey bells and milky whistles — a pure, tart, celebration of the quahog.

    Fred Overton’s house chowder, served by the vat each year at the Largest Clam contest, is such a creation. His is a Bonac chowder based on a tried and true, handed down recipe that can be found on the Food page of today’s Star. 

    It is against this backdrop and Mr. Overton’s extremely high standard that the chowder tasting began during Sunday’s competition on Bluff Road in Amagansett.

    Although fewer in number, this season’s chowder submissions were by and large bolder. There were five reds and four whites judged in five reds and four whites judged in separate categories by this reporter, his wife, Kyle Paseka, and East Hampton Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc. A fourth judge, Julie Stone, had to be brought in to break a tie in the red chowder taste-off.

    There are various schools of thought when it comes to deciding a good chowder. A common mistake is to over-stuff chowder, especially a red chowder, to fill it with a veritable garden of vegetables until it resembles a “Bloody Mary without the vodka,” as Mr. Van Scoyoc put it. Speaking of which — and this comes to the point — Peter Beard of Montauk favors Bloody Marys using only vodka and Clamato juice. Clam juice is the magic ingredient, and it’s one that, alas, some chowder makers submerge in vegetation. In many a New England chowder, the salty, tart essence of our embayments is buried in butter. For shame.

    In this judge’s opinion, two of the chowders entered in Sunday’s competition, one red, one white, committed the clam juice sacrilege. Most were very good, but in the end, Jim Sullivan’s two entries — one of them a juicy, slightly piquant, and not-overly-vegetated red, the other a classic and clammy New England — took top honors in each category. 

    As usual, trustees provided bushels of neck-size quahogs that were opened and served to the hundred or so who attended the event and washed the clams down with bowl upon bowl of Mr. Overton’s chowder. The town shellfish hatchery provided an educational exhibit on seed clams, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension had a setup demonstrating the importance of eelgrass to the area’s bivalves, while the biggest bivalves themselves waited patiently beside the scales and calipers to be judged.

    As usual, Napeague Harbor seemed to produce the biggest clams. Linda Calder was the overall winner with a monster two-pound-nine-ounce chowder clam dug from Napeague Harbor. In the adult competition, Henry Flohr scratched around Accabonac Harbor before coming up with the 1.15-pound winner.

    The first place Lake Montauk clam was a hefty 2.8-pounder dug by Nancy Peppard. Clifton Keyes won for Three Mile Harbor with a 1.1-pound clam.

    In the junior competition, Avery Charron found a 1.7-pound clam in Accabonac Harbor. Edward Hoff III dug a very large 2.54-pounder from Napeague to be that harbor’s top junior digger and the top overall junior clammer, and Joe Hawkins’s 1.67-pounder took top honors from Three Mile Harbor.

At about 1 p.m. Thursday, East Hampton Fire Department volunteers responded to a report of a barn on fire off Long Lane in East Hampton. The barn is apparently used by a landscaping company. An initial radio call identified it as 168 Long Lane, but that could not be immediately confirmed. Firefighters from the Springs and Sag Harbor departments were quickly called for help battling the blaze.

From a vantage point some distance away, black smoke could be seen rising above the roof. Flames were visible coming from the east side of the barn.

Thick coils of yellow-tinged smoke continued to come from the building's west wall as firefighters poured water onto the blaze. Efforts were being made to open skylights in the barn's roof to relieve some of the heat.

About an hour after the initial call, firefighters continued to work to get the blaze under control, with flames remaining in walls and ductwork.

    The East Hampton Town Police Department’s search for George Richardson of Dix Hills, who disappeared in the early morning hours of Aug. 28 from Hartman’s Briney Breezes Motel on Old Montauk Highway in Montauk, intensified this week. Police brought out teams of Suffolk County police dogs to comb the rocks and coves of Montauk Point and circulated updated missing-person fliers with new photos around the hamlet.

    “The family came out with four boogie boards,” Detective Sgt. Robert Gurney said Tuesday as he supervised the manhunt around the Lighthouse. “They took an inventory of all their possessions” that they had returned with from their three-day stay in Montauk.

    According to the detective, there were only four items that the family noticed were missing: Mr. Richardson’s reading glasses, which he used as bifocals, frequently wearing them while walking, the orange cap with a Montauk logo shown in many of the missing posters, a pair of dark-colored, thick-strapped sandals, and a red boogie board with stars on it. Police stressed that the board shown in the images circulated is not the actual board, but is very similar in appearance.

    Mr. Richardson, 51, who was scheduled to check out later that morning and return home with his three sons and his wife, Mary, was last seen by his family at about 1 a.m. He is believed to have gone for a walk before the family awoke.

    The surf was rough that day, and police will not rule out the idea that Mr. Richardson may have been washed out to sea.

    The dogs, sometimes called biosensor dogs, are trained to find the living and the dead. On Tuesday, they were used going from Turtle Cove at Montauk Point, working methodically west, sniffing out every nook and cranny along the rocky coast.

    One of the dogs deployed was Chase, a 4-year-old German shepherd who recently found a missing man, Dr. Jerome Nadler, 76, in Caleb Smith State Park Preserve in Smithtown after the doctor was lost in the woods for four days. The dog found him alive but badly dehydrated.

    Police have not given up hope that Mr. Richardson is still alive, and they continue to canvass Montauk, searching for anybody who might have seen him the day he went missing.

    The family, which has declined to speak to the press, has been active in the search, Detective Gurney said. Many details of the disappearance have been kept from the public.

    “We are reluctant to go with all the specific information because it really doesn’t help,” the detective said, stressing that police were mindful of the family’s anguish. While he would not disclose whether Mr. Richardson took his wallet when he left Room 25 at the motel in the dark that morning, the wallet was not listed by the family as missing, and was most likely left behind.

    The New York State Department of Health confirmed a third human case of West Nile virus in Suffolk County this week and is analyzing several other potential cases. Still, some Town of East Hampton residents remain skeptical of both the efficacy and the safety of the insecticides that were sprayed throughout the summer by the Suffolk County Department of Public Works’ Division of Vector Control.

    At the East Hampton Town Board meeting of Sept. 11, Deborah Klughers, a town trustee, referred to the recent spraying at Accabonac Harbor, Napeague Harbor, and Beach Hampton. She suggested that the town board exert “environmental home rule” and be more restrictive in what it allows the county to do.

    “I’m not speaking on behalf of the board of trustees,” Ms. Klughers told The Star, “but for myself, as a trustee. I don’t think a few cases of West Nile warrants spraying of our marshland with a chemical that is potentially deadly to arthropods and beneficial insects. There’s a whole environmental question. It is deadly to the insects that it is targeting as well as lobsters and crabs. The biggest thing in my mind is alternatives, and why we are not using them.”

    Also of concern, said Rona Klopman, president of the Amagansett East Association, is what she considers an inadequate effort by the county to notify residents prior to spraying. The county was spraying the Beach Hampton neighborhood via helicopter on Wednesdays at 4 a.m., she said, adding that residents were generally unaware.

    There will be no further treatments for adult mosquitoes this year, according to the county’s Pesticide Application Notification Web page, but actions will resume in June next year. The page also lists “steps you should take” ahead of aerial spraying, advising children and pregnant women to avoid exposure “when practical. If possible, remain inside or avoid the area whenever spraying takes place and for about 30 minutes after spraying. . . . If you come in direct contact with pesticide spray, protect your eyes. . . . Wash exposed skin. Wash clothes that come in direct contact with spray separately from other laundry. . . .”

    Also listed are the somewhat ambiguous “steps you may want to take,” which include thorough rinsing of homegrown produce before cooking or eating, and taking laundry, small toys, and pet food and water dishes inside before spraying begins.

    “We have a lot of wetlands here,” said Ms. Klopman. “I had a great deal of concern about that and what they’re spraying,” based on the aforementioned warnings on the county Web page. “They don’t do anything to notify communities,” she said of the county. “What they’re spraying — methoprene — kills fish, it’s been affecting the lobsters, and I’m thinking, ‘How safe is this for people?’ It concerned me enough that I spoke to the town board.”

    The State Department of Environmental Conservation authorizes the use of methoprene, a larvicide, and resmethrin, an adulticide, said Bill Fonda, a D.E.C. spokesman, but the county must submit an application each year. That application is examined by multiple departments, including those overseeing natural resources, wildlife, freshwater fisheries, and tidal wetlands. “When they are doing West Nile control operations, we go out and look at their operations, the product that they’re using, the legal certifications of people doing this, the area they are spraying, the personal-protection equipment, and reports of what they used so they’re not using more than they should be,” he said. “There’s a whole host of things we look at.”

    Dominick Ninivaggi, superintendent of the Division of Vector Control, explained that the county has used alternative products, such as BTi, a bacteria-based larval-control agent, for more than 25 years. “There is no magic bullet in mosquito control. BTi is a great material, it has a lot of good uses, but is not a cure-all. There are situations, particularly salt marshes, where it’s not that effective,” he said.

    Mr. Ninivaggi also disputes the assertion that West Nile virus is not found in mosquitoes that breed in salt marshes and therefore aerial spraying of salt marshes is unjustified. “Salt marsh mosquitoes are capable of transmitting mosquito-borne disease,” he said, including eastern equine encephalitis, “which we only see periodically, but they’re capable of transmitting West Nile virus. The Culex salinarius species is a salt marsh mosquito that’s been identified as potentially a very important vector for West Nile.”

    In July, Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection reported the discovery of residues of methoprene and resmethrin in lobsters harvested from Long Island Sound. “Whatever they found in the lobsters in Long Island Sound didn’t come from us,” Mr. Ninivaggi asserted. “When they were sampling, we had very minimal use of materials, very far from where they were found.”

    With regard to notification of the public, Mr. Ninivaggi conceded that outreach can be difficult. He maintains an e-mail list for people living adjacent to salt marshes. “The problem with notification for larval control is that we have to do it on short notice,” he added. “We have to get out as soon as we can after we find the larvae so they are still there and at the stage where we can control them. It’s hard to predict when the helicopter is going to arrive at the salt marsh, even the day, because it depends on what area we need to treat, how many areas we need to treat, and even things like wind direction. These things make it difficult to give people a meaningful time as to when the helicopter will be there.”

    Ms. Klopman was unmoved. “I don’t care if [the county’s spraying program] is a matter of safety, to me it’s about communicating, being open, and letting the residents know,” she said. “After all, we pay their salaries and the budgets of their departments, and they’re not informing the people of what’s going on. They know it’s dangerous; it’s on their Web site.”

    “I’m just saying, if we have to spray, use something different,” said Ms. Klughers. “If we have alternatives, why are we allowing the county to impose something which should be our choice? I feel like we should challenge them.”

    County Legislator Jay Schneiderman said yesterday that municipalities could establish a local vector control program in lieu of the county’s program.

    To the question of overruling the county, there are options, said Ben Price, the projects director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, based in Mercersburg, Pa. The organization assists communities in establishing the greatest degree of self-government possible, Mr. Price explained. “Certain prohibitions are put in place within local laws that protect the rights that are enumerated. The community would assert its rights not to be trespassed on. The general way we go about it is not to simply go to elected officials and beg them to adopt our draft ordinances. We get together with people, not to advocate but to assist in drafting, so they can be their own best advocates.”

    The defense fund takes a rights-based approach, Mr. Price added. “The community has a right to access clean water, air, and food without being poisoned. Those causing those harms would be charged with violating fundamental rights.”

Following more than eight years of legal back-and-forth, the East Hampton School District’s ongoing battle with Sandpebble Builders will finally get its day in court. During Wednesday night’s school board meeting, Richard Burns, the superintendent, announced that a trial is set to begin on May 4.

“It’s the earliest date available based on courts, witnesses, and attorneys’ schedules,” he said. The board had previously expected the trial to begin later this fall. “It’s out of our control. It is what it is.”

In 2006, Sandpebble Builders, a South?ampton firm owned by Victor Canseco, sued the district for $3.75 million. The district had entered into a construction contract with Sandpebble for major renovations of the district’s schools, but before the work began the school board dropped Sandpebble in favor of another builder. Sandpebble contended the district had terminated its contract wrongfully and the two sides have been deadlocked ever since. The project was initially estimated at $18 million, but costs eventually ballooned to upwards of $80 million.

Over the years, legal costs have continued to mount. In the fall of 2012, George Aman, then school board president, estimated the district had spent $2.8 million on the lawsuit. With the prospect of a jury trial in the spring, costs will continue to rise. Since 2006, Stephen Angel of the Riverhead firm Esseks, Hefter & Angel has represented Sandpebble. Numerous calls for comment to Mr. Angel went unreturned. Calls to Mr. Burns and Isabel Madison, the assistant superintendent for business, also were not returned. 

Earlier in the board meeting, Joseph Kehm, a member of Toski, Schaefer, and Co., an accounting firm that conducted a recent external audit, presented its findings, giving the district an “unqualified opinion,” the highest level a third-party auditor can make. Describing the district as “financially strong,” the firm issued three separate reports, with “exceptional news all the way down.”

Robert Tymann, the assistant superintendent, noted at the meeting that Project Most, which runs an after-school program at John M. Marshall Elementary School, now has over 100 students enrolled. As a result, the district announced that it plans to hire an additional teacher to stay late and provide homework help at a maximum cost of $6,000 between now and the end of the school year. The added teacher will help lower class sizes and provide targeted instruction.

Also mentioned at the meeting is that the board, citing security concerns, is continuing to pressure the Suffolk County Board of Elections to change polling times and places so that they do not overlap with school hours or are in school facilities.

 During the sparsely attended meeting, no public comments were made. The first budget work session takes place in late January, but before the budget cycle begins several board members expressed an interest in hearing from community members about their ideas and priorities. The board will next meet on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., when an education forum will convene.

    Angered over a bungled drainage-basin project begun by East Hampton Town on county-protected farmland, Suffolk County this week served notice that it may sue the town and demanded the restoration of the prime agricultural soil that was hauled away.

    It was discovered in July that the town had not consulted the county nor obtained permits for the work. The town reportedly allowed Keith Grimes, the contractor, to keep and sell the topsoil.

    The project was designed to alleviate a longstanding flooding problem in a residential area across Route 114 from the farm fields that stretch between that road and Long Lane in East Hampton. To preserve the agricultural lands, the county has purchased development rights over much of that acreage.

    Solutions to the flooding have been put forward over several town administrations, and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley most recently took up the issue. An engineering company was paid $35,100 to design the drainage basin, and Mr. Grimes was hired to do the work.

    The project, however, required not only permission from the county as the development rights owner, but State Department of Environmental Conservation permits and an okay from the county farmland committee, which would have included an examination by soil and water conservation district representatives as to whether the proposed design and placement of the basin was acceptable.

    Ms. Quigley and Supervisor Bill Wilkinson have said that they approached Elizabeth Fonseca, the landowner, who agreed last September to grant the town a drainage easement over the property. Her authority to do so, however, since the county had purchased the development rights in 1988, is in question.

    The town never filed that easement with the county clerk, County Legislator Jay Schneiderman said Tuesday. That led the county to reject the town’s application for permission to build the basin, which was not filed until the problems came to light and the project was suspended.

    In a release issued this week, County Executive Steven Bellone said, “The unlawful excavation and removal of topsoil rendered the land in question unusable for farming and substantially diminished the value of the land, which was paid for by Suffolk County taxpayers. We believe the flooding issue can be addressed without alienating farmland and at far less cost to the taxpayers.”

    In addition, “for the County to grant any entity the approval to alienate farmland for which the development rights have already been purchased (and thus, protected from development), would require a countywide referendum,” stated Mr. Bellone.

    “The county takes farmland preservation very seriously,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “These are taxpayer dollars — not exclusively town money.”

    Paul Tenyenhuis, district manager of the Suffolk County Soil and Water Conservation District, who works closely with the United States Department of Agriculture on local erosion and flooding issues, said in the release that “the drainage basin the town wants to install would attempt to collect all the runoff water in one location, whereas accepted farming practices, such as planting a winter cover crop, changing the direction in which crop rows are planted, or terracing, would go a long way to reducing and eliminating the problem.”

    “There are much cheaper and more environmentally sound ways to resolve the flooding issue than by hauling away for sale some of the finest agricultural soil in the State of New York,” said Suffolk County Director of Planning Sarah Lansdale in the release.

    According to the county, more than five feet of soil, sand, and clay was excavated.

    Mr. Schneiderman said he had suggested that the town “listen to the county planning director, and maybe make some modifications.”

    If the basin is designed not only to capture runoff from the fields, but also from non-farmland property, the county farmland committee “doesn’t have the legal authority to approve it,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “Somebody’s going to have to make that determination.”

    Town officials did not respond yesterday to a request for comment. But at a meeting in August, both Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson expressed dismay at the delay in fixing the flooding problem.

    Ms. Quigley said then that changing the recharge-basin design to one suggested by the county would be “more disruptive to farmers” and would cost more. “My question about that is, who pays?” she said, pointing out that people whose houses had continually been damaged by floods from the fields had sued and won, and were awarded damages. “The county didn’t pay,” Ms. Quigley said. “The town paid. The county is either a partner in this with us or not.”

    “While I recognize that we should have reached out to them, that’s a different issue,” she said last month.

    Mr. Grimes, the contractor, has been paid $69,140 of a $293,000 contract for the work already done. The town has also spent $35,000 on engineering fees. Stopping the project, returning the soils, and restarting the work would add an additional $25,000.

    The town board resolution hiring Mr. Grimes makes no mention of the disposition of the valuable farm soils. However, according to the town purchasing agent, his bid was the lowest of a number from different companies, and the deal included the topsoil. 

    During the town board discussion of the issue in August, Mr.Wilkinson complained about the county. “I am — to tell the public — pretty frustrated; to tell you the truth, pretty disappointed with the county,” he said. “This town gives a lot of money to the county, and doesn’t get it back in services.” The county, he said, looked at the situation “purely as an exercise that the county had a right to that particular property, and we violated it.”

    “They just have to go through the proper procedures,” Mr. Schneiderman said of the town, earlier this week. “I certainly understand the severity of the flooding. I will do everything I can to help achieve a solution that’s permissible by law.”

    This is the first time he can think of, he said, that the county was poised to sue a Suffolk municipality.

    An off-duty fireman driving near 168 Long Lane in East Hampton last Thursday afternoon spotted smoke coming from a barn there, went to investigate, and called in an alarm which ultimately involved the East Hampton, Springs, Amagansett, and Sag Harbor Fire Departments.

    “We know that something catastrophic with the electrical system occurred,” said Tom Baker, an East Hampton fire marshal, said Tuesday. “It was an underground service to the building.  Something happened in the exposed area of cable,” he said, explaining that a three-foot section of exposed conduit disintegrated in the combustion.

    The burning barn presented an obstacle to East Hampton Fire Department Chief Tom Bono and those deployed at the scene. Normally firefighters try to surround a burning structure and fight the fire from different sides. But in this case, Mr. Bono said, “It was kind of hard to get to the fire. There were trees on one side and a Quonset hut on the other.”

    The company deployed its ladder truck, getting over the top of the burning roof, and blasted water straight down. They brought the water in from both an older electric well nearby, and also ran a hose to the nearest hydrant, 3,000 feet away.

    In the end the roof of the barn was destroyed, as was much of the second floor, which was used by a landscaping company. The first floor was saved, however. It took nearly three hours to put the fire out.

    Mr. Baker is still searching for the cause, working with an insurance inspector and consulting with outside agencies. He said that even though much of the first floor was saved, the building may have to be demolished.

    Sag Harbor sent down its rapid-intervention-team  truck, used to extract firefighters from perilous circumstances, which, fortunately, was not needed. Firefighters from Amagansett were deployed in the fight. The Springs truck was kept in reserve.

    A second fire this past week happened in the Clearwater Beach section of Springs, at 180 Waterhole Road, a little before 5 a.m., Sunday morning. Stanley Dalene and his family were awakened by a fire that crept up the side of the house, toward the roof. Mr. Baker, who is a Springs fireman, was on the scene, first with his fire hat on, then as fire marshal.

    Mr. Dalene, who used a fire extinguisher on the blaze and then, when the canister was exhausted, a garden hose, may well have saved the house, said Mr. Baker.

    In searching for the cause of the fire, Mr. Baker said he had found some remnants of cigars. Mr. Dalene is a cigar smoker, and a smoldering cigar, which can stay lit for a long time, may have blown out of an ashtray on the second-floor deck and fallen to the base of the siding, eventually igniting a flame, Mr. Baker indicated.

    A $118,000 bill for legal services by Peter Kirsch, an aviation attorney hired by East Hampton Town for advice on airport matters, was set aside last week when members of the town board requested clarification about the work being done.

    A resolution offered by Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the board’s airport liaison, who has been working closely with Mr. Kirsch, was tabled. By Tuesday, when the board briefly discussed the matter again, the bill grew to more than $135,000, reflecting services dating through the end of July.

    The question, said Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc on Tuesday, is “the correlation between the bill and the direction of town policy.”

    “I think there is an issue here . . . as far as, what are we paying for,” Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson concurred. And, he said, “Before I sign off on this bill I want to know why it took us nine months to pay this bill.”

    Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who raised the initial questions, suggesting further discussion by the board, said earlier this week that she was not questioning the quality of services provided by Mr. Kirsch, nor his accounting of them.

    “All of these are quite legitimate,” she said of the itemized bills. But, she said, some of the work performed by Mr. Kirsch and his firm, Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell, might not be crucial, or specifically targeted to what the town board hopes to achieve.

    For example, she said, portions of the bills are for consultations between Mr. Kirsch and Eric Bregman, another outside attorney hired by the town, who is defending East Hampton in a lawsuit over the airport master plan. Anthony Pasca, an attorney for the East Hampton Aviation Association, was included in those discussions.

    “The focused objective was noise abatement, and [the Federal Aviation Administration] versus no F.A.A.,” Ms. Overby said, referring to an effort to pin down how much control the town could wield over use of the airport should it continue to accept F.A.A. grants.

    Certainly, Ms. Overby said, the town board should be discussing and directing the scope of the attorney’s work. Board members heard a presentation from Mr. Kirsch earlier this year about noise abatement and federal funding, and told him to continue work on a multi-faceted airport management plan.

    Now, Ms. Overby said, “somehow or other, he’s now involved in the lawsuit — rightly or wrongly — and the F.A.A., with the [north shore of Long Island] helicopter route.”

    “Is he representing me? Because I haven’t asked him to do that,” the councilwoman said. “My concern is that he works for the town board.”

    She acknowledged that having Mr. Kirsch’s involvement in the whole panoply of airport issues could be important. But, she said, “if that’s the case, I just need to put that in my knowledge base, and we need to budget appropriately.”

    “Peter is the leading aviation counsel in the United States and is worth every penny we pay him,” Mr. Stanzione said yesterday. “He’s done a great job and made a significant contribution.”

    The councilman said that after years of a problematic relationship between the town and the F.A.A., it was important to have someone with Mr. Kirsch’s expertise on aviation management issues help to re-establish a positive relationship with the federal agency, in order, for instance, to get the town’s airport master plan update approved and obtain permission for the airport control tower. He said he welcomes inquiries by other board members.

    Ms. Overby also said that the balance due to Mr. Kirsch appears to exceed maximum expenditure amounts stipulated on various resolutions passed by the town board, hiring Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell.

    It also exceeds the amount budgeted for 2012 in various airport fund accounts from which, according to the resolutions, the fees are to be paid.

    An October 2011 resolution that stated the town board’s desire to continue receiving professional services from Mr. Kirsch did not set a cap on the amount to be spent, stating only that he and the associates at his firm would be paid according to a set fee schedule. A separate resolution passed the same day set a “not to exceed” amount at $35,000.

    According to John Jilnicki, the town attorney, the second resolution referred to a specific project, while the first, open-ended, one hired Mr. Kirsch to assist with general airport matters.

    Such agreements are normally renewed each calendar year. A bill totaling $120,000 for Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell’s legal services last year was paid in January 2012, Ms. Overby said.

    Information about previous invoices from Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell was not available by press time. However, Ms. Overby said that previous payments had included a stay at the 1770 House in East Hampton Village for Mr. Kirsch on a visit here. Now, she said, he stays at a Riverhead hotel when he visits.

    In March 2012, the town board approved a resolution to hire Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell, with charges “not to exceed” $35,000 from the town airport fund’s “outside professional” budget line. That resolution was amended in June to charge the fees to a different, “subcontractor” budget line. It also showed an increase in Mr. Kirsch’s hourly fee from $425 to $440 per hour. Partners at his firm were to be paid $365 and $390 per hour, according to the resolution; counsel, $315 an hour; associates, $265 an hour, and paralegals, $120 an hour.

    Unpaid invoices for work through June 30 totaled $118,441, according to the resolution that was offered but then tabled last week. The tabled resolution outlines the board’s wishes to continue to have Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell “advise and assist the town” in “matters related to the town airport and federal regulations, and the town’s efforts to gain greater control over air traffic from helicopters and other aircraft arriving and departing the airport.”

    It says that Mr. Kirsch and the firm are to be paid in accordance with an attached fee schedule (listing the attorney’s hourly fee at $425) from the airport’s subcontractor budget.

    It also authorizes payment of the $118,441, while also resolving that “further expenditures shall be capped at a total sum not to exceed $50,000 without further approval of this board.”

    The bill submitted between last week and Tuesday’s meeting included a $16,900 charge for work in July. “If this is the monthly bill,” Ms. Overby said, “then we need to budget for it.”

    The invoices submitted by Mr. Kirsch detail time spent on various matters and the charge incurred, for example, $1,000 for a telephone conversation with Councilman Stanzione and John Jilnicki, the town attorney, about “leasing issues and purchase options in the lease,” presumably pertaining to airport land, and “F.A.A. coordination and status of fence grant,” referring to an application made by the town for federal money to design a fence around the airport’s perimeter.

    A $440 charge pertained to “review[ing] letter to the editor and comments from opposition groups.” Mr. Kirsch also spent time preparing talking points for a meeting with Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Tim Bishop regarding helicopter routes along Long Island. Charges from February include a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal officials, along with Councilman Stanzione, for which the town also paid the councilman’s way.

    Ms. Overby said she would like Mr. Stanzione, as liaison to the airport,  “to explain to the town why we need to continue” paying for that level of involvement by Mr. Kirsch, and wants to evaluate whether the expenditure is clearly helping the town achieve its goals. It was not obvious, she said, how some of the work performed by Mr. Kirsch on the town’s behalf “is clearly related to the town board’s articulated goals.”

    “How do I measure — [what is] the metric of success?” she asked. “We need to decide what is the rational expense.”

    Fees for Mr. Kirsch’s services have been charged to two different budget lines in the airport account — one for “outside professional” services, and another for “subcontractors.”

    Spending the money in the subcontractor budget line, or from an airport surplus fund, on legal fees could preclude its use on airport improvement projects, which, Ms. Overby said, “pushes the town into taking F.A.A. money.”

    Shortly after noon yesterday, Montauk was buzzing with the news that four Suffolk County Police Department K-9 units, accompanied by East Hampton Town police officers, were searching through the thick brush on Old Montauk Highway for George Richardson, 51, of Dix Hills, who has been missing since the morning of Aug. 28.

    Three hours later, however, when nothing had turned up, Det. Sgt. Robert Gurney of the town police called the action “routine,” explaining that the repeated search of the nearly impassible brush was part of a wider investigation. He said the dogs were there to search the roadside and oceanside edges of the brush. The dogs, which were used as a team, were given breaks on the hot, humid day in air-conditioned cars.

    The county sheriff’s department deployed its own dogs the day after Mr. Richardson disappeared, and search dogs are expected to return as leaves start falling, if Mr. Richardson is not found by then. Police are also continuing to canvass Montauk for possible witnesses.

    The last time Mary Richardson saw her husband was at about 1 a.m. on Aug. 28, in room 25 of Hartman’s Briney Breezes motel. They had been in Montauk for three days and were due to check out that morning.

    He was not in the room at 6 a.m., but his wife told town police he was given to taking walks along the beach, so his family waited for him to return. At about 10:45 a.m., Ms. Richardson called the police.

    There has been no sign of him.

    Mr. Richardson, 51, is a vice president of Huntington Hospital, in charge of its fund-raising operations. The Richardsons live in a hilly, cloistered section of Dix Hills, an easy five-minute walk to their three children’s schools and a 15-minute drive to the hospital.

    “We are following every possible lead,” Detective Gurney said yesterday. Handbills have been handed out with Mr. Richardson’s picture. He is white, about 5 foot 6 inches, about 150 pounds, with short gray hair and a small scar on his chin. The photo shows him wearing the orange cap in which he was last seen.

    The family has circulated missing-person posters as well, hanging them on various public bulletin boards. According to the missing man’s father, also named George Richardson, there has been no response.

    Police said they have contacted the managers and owners of Montauk taxi companies. Before Labor Day there were an unknown number of UpIsland independent cab companies here as well, many of them one-man operations.

    A Long Island Rail Road train left Montauk at 5:39 a.m. on the day Mr. Richardson vanished. The conductor, who was too busy getting the train out of the station on Sept. 4 to give his name, said that police hadn’t spoken to him, but he did see them conducting interviews with passengers. He himself hadn’t seen Mr. Richardson, he said.

    Room 25 is a corner room allowing for easy access to the beach, which is across Old Montauk Highway, down a six-foot-wide stepped cut through thick brush.       Low tide that morning was at about 1 a.m., when Mr. Richardson was last seen. High tide was at about 6:40 a.m.

    “The surf was up there” that morning, said Sergeant Gurney. “It was a heavy surf, the sweep was west to east, the wind was out of the north.”

    Under such conditions, a drowning victim would be washed out toward Montauk Point, and might come to rest at Ditch Plain, which was known as Dead Man’s Cove more than a century ago, because it was where lost fishermen and shipwreck victims tended to wash up.

    The family and police continue to believe that Mr. Richardson is alive, and the search continues.

    According to Jennie White, who has been managing the motel complex with her husband, Robert, for many years, it was the first time the Richardsons had stayed at Briney Breezes.