East Hampton Town’s finances got an A-plus from the outside auditing firm that finished a 2011 audit in mid-July. It was the earliest that one of the annual audits, which must be submitted to the state comptroller and other agencies by Sept. 30 of each year, has been completed — another positive sign of the town’s efforts to reorganize once-chaotic financial practices.

    Dave Tellier of the certified public accounting firm Nawrocki Smith said at an East Hampton Town Board meeting on Tuesday that “everything was met right on target,” in terms of providing the proper records for the audit, and that the town is in “generally a sound financial position.”

    Unlike in recent years following the wake of financial mismanagement under the previous McGintee administration, the auditors were able to give a “qualified opinion” based on “solid and accurate information,” Mr. Tellier said. Previous audits indicated that the results were “unqualified,” as the financial records were lacking.

    For the first time in recent memory, the auditors listed no “material weaknesses” or “significant deficiencies” in budget or accounting practices, nor any findings at all of noncompliance with accounting standards, nor did they have recommendations for improvement.

    A recommendation from two prior audits, to adopt policies to monitor spending on capital projects on a per-project basis, is being implemented, the most recent audit notes.

    Last year, the town brought in almost $10 million more than it spent, Mr. Tellier said in his presentation, despite a 5.6-percent increase in overall spending from 2010.

    All of the town’s major funds had surpluses at the end of last year, Mr. Tellier said. The whole-town general operating fund had a surplus of $6.7 million, or 26 percent of its total, up from a $2.8 million deficit at the beginning of the year, while the part-town general operating fund, which excludes services not used by residents of East Hampton Village and the East Hampton side of Sag Harbor Village, had a $1.4 million surplus. Town policy is to achieve a 20-percent surplus balance in all of its funds.

    During 2011, revenues of approximately $430,000 more than was expected, and included in the annual budget, flowed into the general fund, while spending from that fund was about $900,000 less than had been anticipated.

    The highway fund ended the year with a $2.5 million surplus, a decrease by $1.4 million of its previous surplus balance, as the board used some of that surplus for highway expenditures last year in order to reduce the amount needed from property taxes. The refuse and garbage districts fund ended the year with a $2.9 million surplus.

    The only fund with a deficit as of the close of 2011 was the sewer districts fund, with a negative balance of $118,000. That figure had, however, been reduced from a $219,000 deficit, according to the audit.

    All of the money owed from other town funds to the community preservation fund, which had been improperly raided to cover cash flow shortages during the past administration, has been repaid, as has a “significant portion” of the money owed from other funds to the town’s capital projects account, according to the audit.

     The rematch for the First Congressional District of New York is heating up, with a barrage of attacks and gauntlets being thrown down by both Representative Tim Bishop and Randy Altschuler, his Republican opponent.

    Mr. Bishop has been in the hot seat this week in the wake of ethical questions concerning donations his campaign solicited from a hedge fund investor this spring while the congressman was helping him to obtain permission for a fireworks display at his son’s bar mitzvah in Southampton.

    According to Politico, a Virginia news outlet that covers Washington, D.C., politics, Mr. Bishop “agreed to intercede. But before Bishop and his aides completed their work on his behalf, [Eric] Semler received a request from the congressman’s campaign staff [. . .] for a contribution of up to $10,000 to Bishop’s reelection campaign.”

    In a letter sent to the congressman last Thursday, Mr. Altschuler challenged Mr. Bishop to “publicly call for an official ethics investigation” into his own actions and those of his staff “in regards to the fund-raising e-mail solicitation sent to Mr. Semler while his fireworks permits hung in the balance.”

    On May 21, Mr. Semler turned to Mr. Bishop for help in obtaining requisite permits from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Village of Southampton for a Grucci fireworks display to commemorate his son’s May 26 bar mitzvah.

    According to the Politico article, two days later, before the permits had been secured, Molly Bishop, the congressman’s daughter and fund-raiser, e-mailed Mr. Semler saying she had received word from Robert F.X. Sillerman, a longtime supporter of her father, that Mr. Semler was interested in contributing to the Bishop campaign.

    Prior to June 26, the campaign could have accepted a donation of $10,000; after that date, federal campaign finance laws limited the Semlers’ donation to $5,000. Mr. Semler and his wife donated $5,000 to the campaign on June 26. The donation was equal to the cost of the brief Grucci Fireworks display at their son’s bar mitzvah.

    According to the Bishop campaign, it is common for the congressman to help his constituents navigate the bureaucratic labyrinth. Even his Web site says so: “I can help with any problems First District residents may be having with federal agencies, including problems with Social Security, labor issues, housing, passports, veterans affairs, and immigration.”

    The timeline between contact and the congressman’s action creates a question of whether there is a violation of a House Ethics Manual rule which specifies that “a solicitation for campaign or political contributions may not be linked with an official action taken or to be taken by a House member or employee, and a member may not accept any contribution that is linked with an action that the member has taken or is being asked to take.”

    Politico obtained e-mail correspondence between Mr. Semler and the Grucci company in which Mr. Semler was critical of the Bishop campaign’s request, but in the Politico article, Mr. Semler was quoted as saying he was happy to support Mr. Bishop’s reelection effort.

    Mr. Bishop has since re-donated the Semlers’ contribution to three Long Island veterans groups, “out of abundance of caution.”

    But Mr. Altschuler is determined to not let Bishop off the hook so easily. In the same letter calling on him to request an ethics investigation, Mr. Altschuler restated criticisms that the congressman uses his office to financially benefit family and friends, “while demonstrating an inability to determine what passes the smell test and what doesn’t.”

    “The bipartisan Committee for Ethics and Responsibility views the congressman as someone who abuses his office,” Diana Weir, an Altschuler campaign spokeswoman, said yesterday. “It’s disheartening that when people are losing jobs and struggling on Long Island that these are the types of things Tim Bishop is involved in.”

    “If he wants a gratuity, he should go work at Gurney’s,” Ms. Weir said.

    In a telephone conversation on Tuesday, a Bishop campaign representative was determined to “stay on message,” attacking recent vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget plan, which calls for a Medicare overhaul, repeal of the health care reform law, and a federal cap on non-defense spending, and an extension of 2001-03 tax cuts. Mr. Bishop claims that Mr. Ryan’s budget is “intentionally vague about the specific changes it would make to tax provisions currently on the books.” But “the G.O.P. needs to go on record [with] what tax benefits for the middle class it will sacrifice to provide another rate cut for the wealthiest.”

    Mr. Bishop won his 2010 race against Mr. Altschuler by fewer than 600 votes, and it has long been known that the national Republican Committee is again targeting his seat. Once again, the congressman is looking vulnerable.

    In a July 31 poll conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, Mr. Altschuler led the five-term congressman by four points, with 47 percent of those surveyed supporting him. The poll indicates that 10 percent of voters were undecided.

    The election will be held on Nov. 6.

   After publication of this story, the Bishop campaign took issue with the Pulse Opinion Research poll. In an e-mail, Robert Pierce, a campaign spokesman, wrote that polling by Mr. Bishop's side showed him with the lead.

East Hampton Town police issued a missing-person alert yesterday for George Richardson, 50, an executive at Huntington Hospital, who was last seen at Hartman's Briney Breezes Motel on Old Montauk Highway in Montauk in the early morning hours on Tuesday.

"He is familiar with Montauk," Detective Sgt. Robert Gurney said yesterday. "He was vacationing there with his family. His routine is to walk the beach" in the morning, Detective Gurney said. On Tuesday morning, it is believed that he left for his early-morning walk. He hasn't been seen since.

Mr. Richardson has been described as white, 5 feet 6 inches tall, 150 pounds, with a small scar on his chin. He was last seen wearing running shoes and an orange baseball cap; the cap is seen in a photograph furnished by police.  In its alert, the East Hampton Town Police said he wears reading glasses.

Police have asked that anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts call the detective bureau at 537-7575.

    “This is even more exciting than I thought it would be,” said Eleanor Ehrhardt, the woman who is credited with spearheading the campaign to get the Montauk Lighthouse declared a National Historic Landmark.

    She was speaking on Aug. 22 to a crowd of some 300 invited guests, who were seated under a tent on the Lighthouse grounds for the official ceremony, at which she accepted the historic-landmark plaque from Robie S. Lange, a National Parks Service historian.

    A roster of politicians, local clergy, historians, and Lighthouse officials sat in a row on a stage built for the event, overlooking a wide span of the Atlantic. Richard F. White Jr., a Montauk native and the chairman of the Montauk Lighthouse Committee, welcomed the crowd, all of whom had contributed in one way or another to the occasion.

    Guest speakers reminisced about their Lighthouse memories, with East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson noting that he had driven from Connecticut to propose to his wife there. “Could you imagine if she said no?” he asked to laughter.

    Representative Tim Bishop said he “vaguely” remembered visiting the Lighthouse after his junior and senior proms, which also prompted giggles.

    Joe Gaviola, a member of the Lighthouse committee, reminded the crowd that the Lighthouse is lit with thousands of white lights at Christmas. The festive lighting ceremony, which is held over the Thanksgiving weekend, draws several thousand to the community, he said, “and boy, does she look good. We have become Long Island’s Christmas ornament.”

    Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. called Mr. White an exemplar of good citizenship. “If you need anything done in Montauk, all you have to do is call the Montauk Historical Society,” he said.

    Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo couldn’t make the event but sent the state’s Suffolk County representative, Scott Martella, who hadn’t yet arrived when Mr. White introduced him as a surprise speaker. Shortly after, he walked down Turtle Hill, looking a bit disheveled before he put on his tie and jacket, and then made a joke about how horrible the traffic was heading out to the easternmost hamlet.

    Mr. White asked him if he was returning west right afterward. “If you think getting out here was bad, just wait until you hit the trade parade going home,” he said.

    Mr. Martella read a statement from Governor Cuomo, saying in part that “the Empire State is fortunate to be home to many landmarks, and now Montauk is one such landmark.”

    The designation is the federal government’s  highest level of recognition for a historic site. The Lighthouse was authorized by Congress and President George Washington in 1792 and built in 1796. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

    The landmark designation was awarded after a long process, led by the Montauk Historical Society, that began in September 2006 when the Lighthouse committee sent the National Park Service a request that they study the Lighthouse for possible landmark status. The Department of the Interior asked for more information, including a description of the land before and after the Lighthouse was built, construction materials, ancillary buildings, documentation of its importance to navigation, a comparison to other lighthouses, maps, and photos.

    In November 2008, Robert J. Hefner, a historical consultant, compiled an expanded draft and sent it to Mr. Lange. The process continued through January 2010, when evidence was submitted that the Lighthouse was the most-important beacon for ships sailing from Great Britain and France to New York with the manufactured goods that were a major part of America’s growing economy.

    The National Park Service formally notified Congress in March 2010 that a study was under way to determine the potential of the Montauk Point Lighthouse to be designated a National Historic Landmark. Mr. Hefner prepared a 44-page document compiling all areas of research and submitted it to the National Park System Advisory Committee for formal review a year later.

    Two months later, a band of Lighthouse officials including Mr. White, Ms. Ehrhardt, Brian Pope, a site manager, and Mr. Hefner, who gave a PowerPoint presentation, drove together to a meeting in Washington, D.C., where an advisory committee voted unanimously to recommending landmark designation. From there, the application was forwarded to Ken Salazar, secretary of the Department of Interior, who signed on the dotted line and made it official in March.

    In presenting the plaque to Ms. Ehrhardt, Mr. Lange noted that the designation makes the Lighthouse eligible for tax cuts and grants. The plaque will be mounted and put on the northwest side of the building.

    The event ended on an emotional note when Renee Akkala, accompanied by the Jane Hastings quartet, sang “In Montauk,” which was written by Percy Heath, the jazz bassist who was a longtime resident of the hamlet and a supporter of the Lighthouse. There is a plaque dedicated to him on the Lighthouse grounds right under the historical beacon.

    While residents of the Northwest section of East Hampton have had fewer helicopters flying overhead in the weeks since seasonal air traffic controllers at East Hampton Airport began routing more helicopters along an alternate route over Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, Noyac, and North Sea, the residents of those areas are rising up against the increased noise in their neighborhoods.

    They have gained the attention of elected officials from both East Hampton and Southampton Towns and Representative Tim Bishop, who together will attempt to broker an equitable solution for all parties at a meeting on Sept. 10 at Southampton Town Hall.

    Hosted by Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne Holst and Councilwoman Christine Scalera, it will include East Hampton Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, Councilman Dominick Stanzione, and Jim Brundige, the East Hampton Airport supervisor, along with New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Congressman Bishop. Representatives of the Federal Aviation Administration, the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, and civic groups such as the Quiet Skies Coalition will also attend.

    “The effort is to figure out some way to alleviate the disproportionate burden that was placed, in the last month, on the residents of Noyac and over Jessup’s Neck,” Oliver Longwell, Congressman Bishop’s communications director, said Tuesday. “People are very upset.” The issue dominated a portion of a meeting between municipal and F.A.A. officials on Monday that was designed to acquaint attendees with a new, F.A.A.-mandated flight route along Long Island’s north shore, which came about as a response to island-wide noise complaints. The congressman has created a new e-mail address, helicopternoise@ mail.house.gov, to which complainants can write.

    “We are definitely back at the drawing board,” Mr. Brundige said this week.  “We rolled the map back out, based on the pushback we got from Southampton.”

    “I think the watchword is ‘flexibility,’ ” Councilman Stanzione said on Tuesday. He serves as his board’s liaison to the airport, which East Hampton Town owns. However, he said, discussion with federal officials at the meeting on Monday “made clear who owns the sky; who makes the law, especially when it comes to helicopters. And it’s not us.”

    A large group attended a meeting in Bridgehampton last Thursday organized by the Noyac Civic Council, the second forum on the issue within several weeks, with officials from both East Hampton and Southampton Towns in attendance, as well as Congressman Bishop.

    Barry Holden, an architect, along with a group of his Cedar Point Lane, Noyac, neighbors, have also organized to voice their opposition to the increased traffic and have collected almost 370 signatures on a petition calling for East Hampton Town to act to alleviate it as of early this week, according to Mr. Holden.

    He said he has received comments from people living in Riverhead and on Shelter Island and the North Fork who have similar concerns over aircraft noise, and will strive to include those residents in discussions of a solution.

    In an interview this week, Mr. Brundige described the process of settling on the primary route to be used by helicopters as a collaboration — a result of discussions among the air traffic controllers, who must abide by F.A.A. requirements regarding air traffic, airport users, including representatives of the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, himself, and others.

    Town officials can have a voice in the decision-making, he said, though “fundamentally, the F.A.A. has control of the airspace; they’ve always had control of the airspace.” Councilman Stanzione had been a part of some of the discussions, Mr. Brundige said, though not a party to the decision to reinstitute what’s being called the northern route, a path above power transmission lines toward Sag Harbor. That grew primarily out of the air traffic controllers’ federal mandate to keep fixed wing aircraft and helicopters separate, he said.

    The route-setting discussions result in a “letter of agreement” to be signed by all involved indicating a mutual consent to use the designated flyways. However, Mr. Brundige said, pilots who wish to vary from the agreed-upon route may seek permission from the control tower, and controllers are expected to allow them to proceed once they have determined the plan is safe.

    There is no designated “waypoint,” or particular spot where planes enter the 4.8-mile radius of controlled airspace around the airport. “And that’s a problem,” Mr. Brundige said.

    Certainly, he said, town officials could get involved in developing another route in and out of the airport. “That’s their prerogative,” he said. But, he added, along with pilots, “the tower has to be a part of that discussion.” And the sphere of influence extends only to the perimeter of the designated area that the F.A.A. has authorized its air traffic controllers to oversee. The controllers are provided by a firm called Robinson Aviation. They are paid by the town, but beholden to federal requirements. 

    “We all are working together to try to run the airport as safely as possible,” Mr. Brundige said.

    Mr. Brundige explained Tuesday that, contrary to what many laypeople believe, air traffic controllers at small airports do not use radar to track aircraft, but are required by the F.A.A. to visually track them. Radar equipment is not standard at such traffic control towers, but where it is available, according to an F.A.A. traffic controllers’ handbook, controllers may not rely on it, except in certain proscribed circumstances. However, Mr. Brundige said, a system called AirScene, which tracks planes by identifying their transponder numbers, shows East Hampton’s air traffic controllers the locations of planes on a screen. The regional New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, uses radar to track aircraft that use the larger airports.

    “I’ve been living here since 2005 and it was quiet back then,” Patricia Currie, a resident of Noyac and a member of the East Hampton-based Quiet Skies Coalition, said recently. “I used to love sitting out in my garden; it was peaceful. Now they [the planes and helicopters] drive me crazy. I can’t sit outside or enjoy the nicest parts of the day anymore. It’s terrible.”

    “After the route change, peace and quiet came to Northwest Woods, but at the expense of Jessup’s Neck,” said Bob Wolfram, who lives in Sag Harbor.

    “There is always some level of noise. It’s constant. There are planes and helicopters every five minutes and it really is damaging the community. My house value has dropped,” Mr. Wolfram said.

    “It’s the airport that has changed, not me,” he said. “We as a community would embrace the airport if it went back to the way it was even 10 years ago, when it was used for local aviation enthusiasts. Now jets and helicopters blaze in at 5 a.m., and 12 at night. It’s turning into Islip [MacArthur Airport.] We can’t sleep, and more importantly, it’s dangerous. There will definitely be crashes. Maybe then it’ll get the attention it deserves.”

    The potential for East Hampton Town to gain F.A.A. approval to institute its own airport-use regulations, such as a curfew, has been a central issue in disagreements over airport management for years. The town’s acceptance of F.A.A. grants ties it to F.A.A. control of airport rules.

    Airport noise-abatement advocates have been pressing for the town to cease taking money from the federal agency in order to gain more local control, while the town board has indicated recently, by initiating the process of applying for a new F.A.A. grant, that it will not eschew that money. Instead, the board recently voted to start compiling aircraft noise data that could support a bid to the F.A.A. to institute airport-use regulations designed for noise abatement.

    A number of Noyac residents were among those protesting against aircraft noise at the airport on Aug. 19 and again on Sunday, when a small plane crashed into the woods off the end of a runway after attempting a takeoff. That incident is reported on separately in today’s Star.

With Reporting

by Matthew Sprung

    Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in town on Friday to address supporters at an East End for Obama fund-raiser, held at the Ocean Avenue, Bridgehampton house of Matthew Mallow and Ellen Chesler.

    Only pool reporters, a limited group pre-approved by the White House, were allowed in. According to the pool report, furnished by Washington and written by Rohma Abbas of The Press Newsgroup, 300 people attended the outdoor event, including the actor Nathan Lane, who hosted it; the folk signer James Taylor, who performed, and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. Representative Tim Bishop of the First Congressional District, which includes the South Fork, was there as well. Several unnamed sources reported that the vice president was late showing up.

    Tickets ranged in price from $500 for “young professionals” on up to $10,000. Of a half-dozen attendees contacted by The Star, none wanted to discuss what happened in the tent in any detail.

    Mr. Biden was introduced by his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, who talked about jobs, the economy, and the challenges Congressional Democrats face when they attempt to work with Republicans, according to the report.

    The vice president expressed compassion for the many Americans confront by tough times and stressed the need to grow the country’s middle class, the report stated.

    “There are lot of people going to bed tonight staring at the ceiling wondering whether they’re going to be living in that house a month from now,” he reportedly said. “There are a whole hell of a lot of people who’ve made that long walk up a short flight of stairs to their kids’ bedroom to say, ‘Honey, we can’t live here anymore,’ and most of these people lost it all through no fault of their own. None.”

    “You know it’s not enough. We know it’s not enough,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the 150,000 jobs per month, on average, gained in the private sector over the last 29 months.

    “[Republicans] basically totally obstruct anything that would help the country,” he said. “And they characterize themselves as bold and gutsy and new. I don’t see anything bold about seeing to it that you all get an additional tax break beyond what’s there while at the same time you eviscerate Medicare. I don’t see what’s gutsy about going out there and deciding that you’re going to knock 19 million people, 200,000 kids off of Medicaid and Head Start. I don’t see what’s bold and gutsy. I don’t see what’s new.”

    “We’re going to make a decision at this election about choosing two fundamentally different paths,” he said. “Fundamentally different. And I am absolutely, I am completely certain that if we have an opportunity to continue the path we move on, that this country is going to reach new heights and new capacities far beyond anything in its history.”

    The New York Post reported that the vice president had attacked Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan over their economic proposals and joked that Republicans love bumper stickers. He said his sticker would be “Osama bin Laden is dead and G.M. is alive!”

    Following the event, event hosts made their way to dinner at the Bridgehampton house of Chad Leat, passing protesters from Occupy East End (not to be confused with Occupy Long Island or Occupy Hamptons), who carried posters and wore T-shirts that stated their frustrations.

    “I’m here to raise public consciousness that the government is no longer in the people’s hands,” said Kyle Cranston, who was wearing a “99 percent” T-shirt, carrying an upside-down American flag, and holding a poster saying “The system is not broken; it’s FIXED.”

    “Both political parties are whores of Wall Streeters, transnational corporations, and 1-percenters,” said Terri Scofield, who is also a member of Economic Security Campaign, an affordable-housing advocacy group. “We don’t have representation; everything has already been decided before we enter the voting booth.”

    “The system is corrupt,” said Robert Shainwald, who waved a sign that said “Government of the 1 percent, for the 1 percent and, by the 1 percent.” “It’s obscene that billions will be spent on this election.”

    On the Republican side, The New York Times reported that Mr. Romney had held another fund-raiser on the South Fork, on Aug. 17, where he raised $7 million for his campaign.

    Also on Aug. 17, President Obama sent an e-mail to supporters headed “We Expect Mitt Romney to Outspend Us.” It stated that Republicans are spending double the Democrats on on-air advertising in most battleground states.

With Reporting by Carrie Ann Salvi

    The film “Kook Paradise” started as an inside joke between two veteran surfers who live, surf, and dodge the crowds at Ditch Plain in Montauk.

    “Some people have called it malicious, but it’s not. We are just revealing something that’s there. The tag line is ‘Remember, it’s all just a dream,’ ” said Danny DiMauro, who, with Tin Ojeda, wrote, filmed, edited, and narrated “Kook.” Mr. Ojeda chose the music, beginning with the theme from “The Endless Summer.”

    They plan to debut the film on Aug. 25 at Melet Mercantile, the space next to Moko Taxi just before the railroad tracks where Industrial Road meets Second House Road in Montauk. Show time is 9 p.m. Come one, come all.

    Yes, the film will compromise some egos, but the documentary footage of less-than-accomplished surfers doing their pre-session stretching, yoga, and arm pinwheeling, all in preparation to attack slow, knee-high waves, escapes condescension. The filmmakers have succeeded in revealing the slapstick that occurs when powerful fantasies fall short. If the kooks look foolish, so do we all in the grand scheme of things.

    “There was this obsession with stretching, and for tiny waves,” Mr. Ojeda said. “I said to Danny, ‘This summer is going to be Kook Paradise.’ That’s how it started. I went around with my cellphone getting footage of stretching. I said we should make a 20-minute trailer. Danny started writing. We did one vignette and it kept growing.”

    “A kook is someone who lives in a fantasy,” Mr. DiMauro said during an interview last week at Mr. Ojeda’s studio, a quick walk from Ditch. The fantasy in question was, Mr. DiMauro said, that “Ditch Plain is a surfing mecca.” It may be surf city, the prime destination for city surfers on safari, he said, but it was not, is not, and will never be a world-class surf spot like Malibu, the iconic West Coast break.

    The movie’s humor is based on the underlying truth that the popular spot’s lack of good, consistent surf has not prevented Ditch from becoming the kind of magnet for beachy hipness, celebrity, and merchandizing that Malibu was in the 1960s. This explains the tongue-in-cheek “paradise” part of the film’s title.

    The “kook” part is more painful perhaps. The word derives from the Hawaiian “kuk” with a long “U” between the “Ks.” Kuk comes from Kukai, the word for shit. When Hawaiian surfers saw someone with a beginner’s squatty stance, they would say he’s taking a kukai. He’s a kuk.

    Now, if you take the two aforementioned elements and combine them with Mr. Ojeda’s editing and Mr. DiMauro’s Bruce Brown style of narration, Mr. Brown’s classic “Endless Summer” becomes a side-splitting “Endless Bummer” from which no one, not even the filmmakers, escapes.

    “It’s funny,” Mr. DiMauro said. “People come here with an ‘Endless Summer’ mentality. It’s not an accident we did it in the syle of that era.”

    He was referring to the 1950s and ’60s, the era known as the birth of modern surfing promoted by Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and made possible by the transition from heavy wooden boards to lightweight fiberglass models. It didn’t hurt that California had by then become a short hop from Hawaii by jet, and Malibu — one of the premier point breaks in California — was only a stone’s throw from Hollywood.

    It wasn’t long before the proud Hawaiian sport of kings was Hollywooded into “Beach Blanket Bingo,” “Ride the Wild Surf,” and “Gidget.”

    “Surfing has always had peaks and valleys,” Mr. DiMauro said. “Two things are responsible for Ditch Plains’ transformation into a kook paradise,” he said, “the rebirth of the longboard and the online revolution.” He explained that would-be surfers are now able to first check surf conditions online, and swarm the highlighted breaks. Then, because longboards (and standup paddleboards) have greater flotation — an advantage to beginners — they’re able to paddle into the lineup despite lagging far behind on the learning curve.

    “There are 30 and 40-year-olds, midlife groms,” he said, “grom” being surf lingo for neophyte surfer. Traditionally, “grom,” or “gremmy” status was applied to those who caught the surfing bug in their early teens.

    The film stars a few local stalwarts including Lili Monahan, whose Ditch Witch food wagon (Mr. Ojeda calls it the “epicenter”) fuels the surfers at Montauk’s most popular beach. She is seen unwrapping a lollypop, dipping it in Costa Rican hot sauce, rewrapping it, and giving it to a child.

    Jim Goldberg, ding repairman to the stars, also makes an appearance. In one scene his darker side takes a chainsaw to a board he has agreed to repair. Despite the damage he wreaks, the kook doesn’t blink at the $1,500 bill.

    Remember, it’s all just a dream.

_

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    In the time-honored tradition of journalists leaving the field to become public relations consultants, Bridget LeRoy has jumped ship.

    Starting in September, Ms. LeRoy will be the East Hampton School District’s communications adviser. For the past year and a half, she had covered education for The East Hampton Star.

    At Tuesday night’s meeting of the East Hampton School Board, her contract was unanimously approved. It is a new position for the district.

    “Over the past decade, there’s been this general feeling that the school was doing things behind closed doors,” said Ms. LeRoy, 48, who displayed nervous excitement just before the vote was cast. Her middle child attends East Hampton High School.

    “This particular administration and this board are extremely aware of the fact that they’re dealing with $64 million a year in other people’s money,” she said, referring to the district’s annual budget.”

     While Ms. LeRoy said her appointment signaled a new era in transparency and accountability for the district, the added job also comes at a time when the district has faced difficult financial decisions following a budget shortfall of nearly $3 million earlier in the year.

    As for her salary, which Ms. LeRoy described as a “drop in the bucket,” she will make $25 an hour at a maximum of 32 hours each week — or about $3,200 each month. The position comes with no health insurance and no retirement benefits.

    Richard Burns, the district superintendent, sees it as a way of informing the community and parents about events happening within the district.

    As is the case with other contract employees, Ms. LeRoy’s position lasts until June 30 of next year. Mr. Burns said the money for her salary came from various sources. “Part of the money is new money, but part of it is not,” he said, citing leftover cash after the elimination of the district’s arts director.

    Ms. LeRoy’s responsibilities will include updating the Web site and helping to publish the district’s quarterly pamphlet, The Observer.

    “It’s something that should have been in place long ago,” Ms. Hope said. “And now it finally is.”

    “On the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, there are more slaves today than any point in history,” E. Benjamin Skinner, a senior fellow at Brandeis University’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, said at a cocktail party in Bridgehampton on Aug. 10.

    “It is not the most lighthearted way to start a weekend in the Hamptons, but it is relevant,” said Oliver Niedermaier, who hosted the party with his wife, Constanze, to draw attention to the issue of slavery in the modern world.

    Also that weekend, a six-minute ferry ride away on Shelter Island, Marie Eiffel, who designs and produces clothing for her boutiques in Sag Harbor and on Shelter Island, held a fund-raising event to raise awareness of the same topic, and money to help defeat it.

    “Six hundred miles from the United States, you can bargain a human being down to the price of the cab fare to J.F.K. airport,” Mr. Skinner wrote in his book, “A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery.”

    While human trafficking and forced labor continue in the United States and around the world, there is also a modern-day abolition movement — dependent on people like the Niedermaiers and Ms. Eiffel — that works to help those who are “forced to work under threat of violence, with extraordinary consequences to them and their family,” Mr. Skinner said.

    “A Crime So Monstrous” details the journalist’s visits to 12 countries and his interviews with over 100 slaves, slave dealers, and survivors. Stories are told of slavery in New York City, where “hundreds of deaf and mute Mexicans were forced to peddle trinkets on the subway.” They were beaten or shocked with stun guns if they did not meet their daily quotas. The journalist also described children who are forced to work unpaid “from before dawn until deep night” and bore scars from beatings and burns inflicted by their captors.

    “These are the children who won’t look at you in the eyes,” he said.

    “Within 50 miles, or maybe within 5, there are people who continue to be enslaved,” said Luis CdeBaca, ambassador at large to the United States Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, who was also in attendance at the Niedermaiers’ party on Aug. 10.

    Acting on tips, Mr. Skinner and Mr. CdeBaca are inspired to continue their efforts by those they have been able to rescue, such as a 12-year-old girl in Miami, liberated from the suburban Miami house of Willy and Marie Pompee, who acquired her from Haiti and brought her to the U.S. to clean their house. She was fed garbage, forced to sleep on the floor, and treated as a “la-pou-sa-a,” or “there-for-that” sex toy.

    Despite the fact that it is illegal to hold slaves, 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, said Mr. CdeBaca. His department has been able to rescue some of them.

    Among them was a young woman in New Jersey. Her parents thought she was attending school, but instead she was forced for three years to work braiding hair, spending six to eight hours at a stretch on each client. Finally one of them asked if she was okay. Now, that young woman is receiving the education she was promised. Mr. CdeBaca called upon journalists, citizen activists, and business owners to assist in the fight to end human trafficking.

    According to the Department of State Web site, red flags that indicate someone may be working as forced labor include workers that live with their employer with multiple people in a cramped space and an inability to speak to others alone. If answers to questions appear to be scripted and rehearsed, this is another warning, as are signs of physical abuse or submissive or fearful behavior. The Web site also offers sample questions that might be posed to ascertain whether someone is being forced or coerced to work: “Can you leave your job if you want to?” “Where do you sleep and eat?” “Are you in debt to your employer?” and “Do you have your passport/identification?”

    Through her shops and events like the one she held at her house on Aug. 11, Ms. Eiffel raises money for the Katie Ford Foundation, started by the former C.E.O. of Ford Models to fight human trafficking. Ms. Ford, who attended the Aug. 10 and Aug. 11 events, has received an award from the United Nations for her efforts.

    In a telephone conversation last week, Ms. Eiffel said she had raised $42,000 so far for the foundation. The two women’s friendship began when Ms. Ford noticed a jewelry line at Ms. Eiffel’s shop whose profits supported anti-trafficking efforts. Now, the two are neighbors on Shelter Island.

    At her shops, Ms. Eiffel donates 50 percent of profits from shirts, tied in a knot, to the Katie Ford Foundation. Originally, the knotted shirt was designed simply to untie and wear without ironing, but now it represents slaves tied to their employers by the threat of violence. The shirt sells well, she said, and when people realize what it is supporting, they usually want to help.

    Ms. Eiffel also ensures that her own clothing is cruelty-free with regular trips to India, where she visits each factory where her designs are produced to be sure that workers are treated properly. “We’re not all lucky,” she said. “This can happen to any kid on the street, not only in India.”    

    “Change must take place,” Mr. Skinner said, and in some cases it has. After learning that some fishermen aboard foreign fishing boats had had their property seized and were being forced to work, often without pay, physically, verbally, and sexually abused, then hunted if they left, the prime minister of New Zealand banned foreign fishing vessels from his country’s waters.

    With help from the Schuster Institute, the fish were tracked to restaurants, wholesalers, and retailers around the world, including Walmart, Costco, Safeway, and Whole Foods, who stopped selling the fish after they were made aware of the situation.

    “It’s nice to have an effect on policy simply by revealing the truth,” Mr. Skinner said. The people who can make a difference, he said, are consumers, policy makers, and those who run businesses. Mr. Skinner said that he was partially inspired by President Bill Clinton, who “a week before the 2000 election, signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, “the first time an American president assumed global abolition as a national burden.”

    “President George W. Bush continued the fight to win foreign government support for emancipation,” he said, and now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton champions the cause, with Mr. CdeBaca in the key role.

    “People need to know that this could be happening in their backyard,” Mr. Skinner said. “Putting light on the problem will help; thinking it doesn’t happen will not.” There is a 24-hour hotline for reporting suspected human trafficking or forced labor, 888-3737-888, and a tip form is available at state.gov/j/tip.

    Residents of the Three Mile Harbor Trailer Park in East Hampton are moving ahead with the installation of a custom-designed septic system at the property close to the head of the harbor, even as the East Hampton Town Board is having the site appraised for a possible purchase using the community preservation fund.

    On Tuesday, a large truck from the DiSunno excavating company was on site, and a retaining wall had been built.

    The trailer park residents have been beseeching the town for years to follow through on a promise to pay for and install a septic system to replace the existing one, which often fails, sending waves of sewage above ground throughout the park.

    The town once owned the park, but sold it to a residents’ cooperative. At the time of the sale, officials promised to correct the septic problem, a difficult task because of the shallow depth to groundwater and soil makeup at the site. A $600,000 system was designed, and the project was listed in the town’s capital budget.

    However, a recent push by Councilwoman Theresa Quigley to borrow money to get construction under way was stalled when three board members, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilmen Dominick Stanzione and Peter Van Scoyoc, voted instead to look into buying the residents out and returning the land to its natural state. A section of the trailer park property is adjacent to the town’s Soak Hides nature preserve, which contains a dreen leading to Three Mile Harbor.

    They expressed doubt about the potential for the proposed septic system to work effectively, and proposed that a better route would be to help the 16 low-income families at the park relocate. That way, they said, the potential for septic pollutants from the trailers to reach groundwater and the harbor headwaters would be eliminated. Ms. Quigley and Supervisor Bill Wilkinson disagreed, but the three-member majority proceeded to order an appraisal.

    Reached by phone on Tuesday, Mae Bushman, the head of the trailer park residents’ association, would not comment. She said there is “nothing happening” at the park, then added, “nothing being done with the town.”    

    “We don’t want any information going out at this time,” she said in answer to a question about how the residents were financing the project.

    Because of the residents’ financial hardship, and after requests by Ms. Bushman, the town has been waiving fees for dumping waste pumped out of the park’s septic system at the municipal scavenger waste transfer station, absorbing the cost of having that waste removed to a treatment facility.

    Tom Ruhle, the town’s director of housing and community development, who has been involved in seeking a solution for the park residents for years, said yesterday that he believed that the residents’ association had been able to obtain a loan for the septic project from the Leviticus Fund, a nonprofit group through which investors can provide capital for “socially responsible means to serve low-income neighborhoods,” according to the group’s Web site.

    The three town board members who voted to have the park site appraised have also supported the idea of developing a comprehensive town wastewater management plan, in which an examination of the septic issues at the trailer park could be included.

    They voted last Thursday to request proposals from engineering firms that could coordinate the development of such a plan. Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson voted against that move. “Statements of qualifications” from firms will be accepted through Oct. 18 by the town purchasing office, which can provide specifications as to what is being requested.

    At a meeting early this summer, Ms. Quigley expressed frustration with a possible delay in construction of the new trailer park septic system.

     “We should probably inspect every single septic system along Three Mile Harbor. Let’s do that, and let’s hire someone to help us. It’ll probably take about five years, and who knows what it will cost us — but let’s study it. And meanwhile, what will happen to the health and safety of those people?” she asked.

    Kim Shaw, the town’s director of natural resources, said that she had inspected the ongoing work at the trailer park, and that the proper County Health Department and State Department of Environmental Conservation permits had been obtained. A town building permit had been issued for the project about a month ago, she said.

    Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc said early this week that they had heard about the septic system installation, but were unaware of the details. Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson did not respond to a request by e-mail for comment.  Mr. Stanzione, the board’s liaison to the community preservation fund committee, said that, in his view, the installation of a costly system would not necessarily preclude a future purchase of the land by the town.