A plan to divide a 43,000-square-foot Ditch Plain parcel into two lots, one of 20,000 square feet and the other of 23,000, was broached for the first time at an East Hampton Town Planning Board meeting on July 25. Judging from board members’ reactions, it could provoke divisive debate.

    The property, at the pivotal location where Ditch Plain Road does a sweeping hook and becomes Deforest Road, opposite the busiest beach-access parking lot in Ditch, has an odd shape, similar to a triangle with a curved edge. An existing house there pre-dates zoning, but its location is odd as well, visually, sitting on the eastern border of the property, close to the neighboring house, leaving most of the land, which was cleared many years ago, unused.

    The current owners, the Sullivan family, seek to break off the western part of the property to form a 23,000-square-foot triangle, with the house remaining on what would then become a rectangular lot.

    The challenges presented by such a division are apparently daunting.

    “Why is this being brought forward at this time?” asked Reed Jones, the planning board chairman. “Is the property for sale?” (There were two large Saunders Realty “For Sale” signs posted there yesterday.)

    “I don’t like it when we’re asked to jump through hoops,” said Diana Weir, a member of the board. The proposed division would require multiple variances from the town zoning board.

    Other board members expressed concern that a new driveway might create lowered visibility and increased traffic. “This [beach] is one of the main attractions in Montauk,” said Nancy Keeshan. “This is a busy corner.” She remarked that the hearing could be the start of a prolonged process, whereupon Ms. Weir said, “I have a problem with selling off pieces of larger property. There are a lot of hoops to go through. I am uncomfortable with it.”

    “To be truthful, I don’t see a compelling reason for this that makes sense,” said Mr. Jones. “I think you’re trying to do a little too much on this parcel of land.”

    The board agreed that any such division would eventually be required to go through a public hearing.

    There was also a hearing that night for Amagansett Estates LLC, a parcel of land that totals about 120,000 square feet. The parcel, at 93 and 103 Montauk Highway in Amagansett, near Windmill Lane, is currently divided in two, with seven nonconforming houses on the two lots.

    Kenneth Yerves, a developer, wants to combine the two lots and re-divide them into four lots, three each of 40,000 square feet and the fourth of 23,000 square feet. The fourth lot required approval from the zoning board of appeals, which was obtained after a hearing on June 5.

    The Town Planning Department advised both the Z.B.A. and the planning board that the proposal decreases the housing density on the land and would therefore be beneficial. Nobody spoke in opposition, though one neighbor, Tom Pierce, did suggest that the screening vegetation used near his property be changed to one that could withstand the lack of sunlight caused by his large shady trees.

    A State Supreme Court decision dismissing a lawsuit by the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion and several individuals over the adoption almost two years ago of an updated master plan for  East Hampton Airport is being hailed as a “major victory for the town” by East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the town board’s airport liaison.

    “It clears the air,” Mr. Stanzione commented this week. “It settles a lot of the claims made by airport opponents, and permits us to finally move forward.”

    Justice John J.J. Jones Jr. found that the town had followed proper procedures in adopting the plan, an accompanying airport layout plan, which is a list of projects for which the town could seek Federal Aviation Administration funding. Mr. Stanzione said this week that the resolution of the suit in the town’s favor will pave the way for it to ask the F.A.A. to fund projects outlined in the plan, such as runway and taxiway repairs and a second fueling station.

    “We can have F.A.A. funding, and pursue restrictions on helicopters at the same time,” he said.

    Accepting F.A.A. grants requires “grant assurances” from the town, by which it agrees to run the airport according to federal rules. This has been a source of increasing contention for decades, with ways to control airport noise fueling the debate in recent years. Those pressing the town to move ahead with F.A.A. funding include the East Hampton Town Republican Committee. Others have asserted that the only effective control will come when the town is free to set its own restrictions on airport access.

    Among other claims, the Article 78 lawsuit challenging the master plan claimed the town should have considered the possibility and impact of asserting proprietary rights over the airport. It charged that the town failed to properly consider the noise impact of proposed projects, by relying on data obtained by using an F.A.A.-approved system of averaging noise over a period of time, versus measuring the extent and impact of actual, single noise “events.” The town did take single event data into account, the judge said, and he added that the use of an averaging system was not irrational, as the plaintiffs had alleged. The individual plaintiffs in the suit were David Gruber, Barbara Miller, Frank Dalene, Robert Wolfram, Barbara Wolfram, and Stephen Levine.

    In its response to the lawsuit, the town, represented by Eric Bregman, a former town attorney, had said that it was not required to prepare an environmental impact statement for the master plan, which the lawsuit claimed was insufficient. Justice Jones, although noting that the town code requires environmental review when adopting such airport plans, said the record showed that the town followed State Environmental Quality Review Act procedures.

    The East Hampton Aviation Association called the resolution of the lawsuit a “landmark decision” that “ends a 20-year battle to repair a runway needed for safe landings.”  

    But Jeffrey Bragman, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said Tuesday that “this fight isn’t going to be over in the first round. We always anticipate that the issues are complex, and probably merit some further judicial review.”

    The town’s own aviation consultant, Peter Kirsch, had recently made statements about measuring aircraft noise that backed up the committee’s position on the use of the averaging system, Mr. Bragman said. He said the group is likely to appeal.

    “The decision was very thorough, very well thought out, very well researched, and very right,” the town’s attorney, Mr. Bregman, said.

    In 2011, Steven Gaines, an author and radio and television host, ran for public office and, as a result, had what he called a life-changing experience.

    Mr. Gaines described his run for the East Hampton Town Board as the guest of honor at the Hamptons Sara Chapter of Hadassah’s annual summer lunch Friday at East Hampton Point restaurant.

    He said that he had written a book about being handed the Republican nomination by East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and what followed, but that his proposal has so far met with rejection from publishers. He was told, he said, that the book was “too local” and that it might be a better sell if he added some celebrities.

    Mr. Gaines rose to prominence here after the 1998 publication of “Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons.” He began his writing career as music columnist at The New York Daily News. He was among the key founders of the Hamptons International Film Festival. His “Sunday Brunch Live” from Sag Harbor’s American Hotel was heard for many years on the Southampton public radio station, WLIU.

    Reading from the book proposal, Mr. Gaines recounted the period leading up to his being named to the Republican slate, despite being, in his words, a gay, Jewish Democrat. He described a private lunch with Mr. Wilkinson at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton Village at which he was offered the nomination after a 90-minute conversation.

    Leading up to the fateful meeting, Mr. Gaines said, had been a quick sequence of events in which he had met Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and her husband on the beach. This led to a meeting with Trace Duryea, the then-Republican Committee chairwoman.

    Mr. Gaines said that he was struck during the lunch at Rowdy Hall that Mr. Wilkinson “didn’t seem to know anything about me.”

    When pressed, Mr. Wilkinson, a former Disney corporate human relations executive, said that he liked Mr. Gaines’s “brains” and the way he thought.

    “This seemed dicey to me,” Mr. Gaines said. “Is this the way he filled thousands of positions at Disney?”

    Mr. Wilkinson, apparently sensing hesitation, said, “Last call: Yes or no?”

    “Not a single virtuous thought came into my head,” Mr. Gaines said. “If I said no, I’d surely regret it. ‘Maybe I can do something,’ ” he recalled thinking.

    Mr. Gaines agreed to join the ticket with Mr. Wilkinson, who was seeking re-election, and Richard Haeg, whom he described as an “archconservative.”

    In a profanity-laced jest, Mr. Wilkinson told him that if he changed his mind, he would, “kill me.”

    Mr. Gaines likened the decision to “stepping into an open manhole.” Old friends stopped speaking to him. Some of his campaign signs were defaced.

    Mr. Wilkinson, he said, also took a degree of abuse for naming him to the ticket. There were “explosive shouting matches” in Town Hall, Mr. Gaines said. John Behan, a former town G.O.P. leader and disabled Vietnam War veteran who wanted his wife, Marilyn, to get the nomination objected in a heated phone call to the supervisor, he said. Ms. Behan went on the get the Independence Party nod.

    Democrats considered him a turncoat, he said. Gays and lesbians called him a traitor, and he said fellow Jews called him an embarrassment.

    “ ‘Shame on you,’ people said to me in restaurants,” he said.

    “Believe me, there are terrible people on both sides.”

    Mr. Gaines reserved particular enmity for the actor Alec Baldwin, a part-time Amagansett resident and a founder of the East Hampton Conservators, a political action committee closely allied with local Democrats. He said Mr. Baldwin had “gained control” of the East Hampton Democratic Party through his sizeable cash donations.

    He also said he was ousted from the East Hampton Library’s Author’s Night roster and that the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Alliance would not return his call seeking its endorsement.

    Nor would the Suffolk Conservative Party give him its backing. Mr. Gaines described a grim meeting at Villa Paul, a Hampton Bays restaurant, during which his pitch was met with blank stares at first, then applause when he made a straight-up plea about why he would need their support in a six-way contest. The party endorsed his running mate, Mr. Haeg, but left its other line for town board blank.

    Once Election Day came and went, Mr. Gaines ended up in fourth place out of a field of six running for two open seats. The two Democrats, Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, had won, followed by Mr. Haeg, with Mr. Gaines just 20 votes back. Trailing him were Bill Mott and Ms. Behan, the Independence Party candidates.

    During the campaign, he recalled, he met plenty of decent people. What began as an admittedly “vanity run” for him ended up delivering an education and increased his belief in representative government and the good qualities of most people.

    “After so many years of writing and talking and thinking about East Hampton, I found its soul and heart by trying to win its votes,” Mr. Gaines said.

    “Ultimately, running for office was an inspiring lesson about how democracy manages to work, despite itself, even in a place where the grassroots are on manicured lawns.”

    Several residents who have roosters living in their neighborhoods appealed to the East Hampton Town Board last week to regulate the birds.

    “The rooster crows all day, starting at 3 in the morning,” Constance Kenney said at a board meeting on Thursday. “Please tell me if the area we are in is designated as farmland.”

    “There is an ordinance about dogs and barking,” she said, and urged the board to consider rooster rules as well.

    Guy Wiggins, who lives off Spring Close Highway in East Hampton, said that he had paid a neighbor $500 to relocate a rooster to a spot farther from his property. But, he said, “in spring when I came back, the rooster was back in its original habitat next to our house.”

    Grace Baumel, a Springs resident, expressed frustration about the board’s response to complaints — not only about roosters, but about illegally overcrowded housing, an issue that Springs homeowners have been bringing up for months.

    “I’m very concerned by this board,” she said. “Because my sense of this board is that the needs of Springs are not being met. I’ve had it, and I’ve had it with this board not addressing the problems of Springs.”

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said he had to defend the board. “This board is the first board that has ever really taken a look at population issues in this town, and realized that Springs suffers from density issues,” he said.

    “What are we doing? How are we addressing it?” Ms. Baumel asked. “What is it about the term ‘illegal’ . . . that ‘il’ means not legal,” she said.

    “What is it about the term ‘U.S. Constitution’?” Mr. Wilkinson retorted.

    “Don’t quote me the Constitution. I taught it for 30 years,” Ms. Baumel said. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says we can break the law.”

    “I take issue with you, that we are ignoring this problem,” Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said, referring to the housing issue. “We are following up every single complaint that we get.” However, “part of the problem is not our problem,” she said, referring to constraints of the law within which housing code enforcement must take place.

    “Ms. Quigley, I don’t want to see Springs in The New York Times again,” Ms. Baumel said. A recent story focused on the overcrowded housing issue.

    Diane McNally, an East Hampton Town Trustee, got up to defend the roosters. “Don’t mess with my birds,” she said. “This is a rural community. If you think I’m a fiercely independent trustee — mess with my chickens in my rural community.”

    As to the crowing way before daylight, she said, “there’s no rhyme or reason to why they crow,” she told the group. “And if they hear another one, they want to join in.”

    Montaukers had their sights set for the Surf Lodge on Edgemere Drive last summer, but this year their ire has shifted to Second House and Navy Roads, which are used as an alternate route in and out of the hamlet and where residents are blaming three nightspots for noise and traffic. One Navy Road resident has even posted a private speed limit sign. In bright red letters, it says the speed limit is 5 miles per hour and will be enforced by pitchfork.

    Pointing to Navy Beach, Solé East, and Ruschmeyer’s as popular nightspots, residents have been meeting with East Hampton Town Police Lt. Chris Hatch, the Montauk precinct commander, to discuss a strategy.

    “Unless you live there you can have no idea what we’re going through. It’s horrendous,” Kimberly Esperian said at a meeting of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee on July 9. 

           She was one of several neighbors who complained about blaring horns, mostly from taxicabs picking up patrons at late hours, and speeding vehicles.

       One resident, Anne Magli, asked East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the town board’s liaison to the committee, how many violations would have to be cited for such places to be shut down or have their music licenses pulled. Ms. Magli said she has called the police on several occasions about noise. Mr. Stanzione, who said he would be hesitant to consider lifting a  music license because of unresolved citations, noted that the town could take action after three.

    Another resident had a more dramatic complaint. Noting that every time the weekend approaches she virtually has a heart attack. She said that four young women wearing towering high heels had recently tried to get in her front door looking for Ruschmeyer’s. “They were stoned on something,” she said.

    East Hampton Town Police Chief Edward V. Ecker Jr. said this week that the Police Department had increased enforcement efforts in the area, with a focus on speeding vehicles, and that residents had reported some improvement.

On Saturday night, the department worked with code enforcement officers on Second House Road, ticketing about a dozen taxicabs for stopping in the roadway while picking up and dropping off fares.

    “Hopefully, this initiative will get the word out to cab drivers and their owners to become more vigilant in following the traffic law,” he said.

    A Springs woman watched in horror last Thursday as her beloved Shih Tzu lapdog was killed by a neighbor’s pit bull.

    The woman, Wendy Marks of Copeces Lane, huddled inside her car with her friend from New York City, Lynn Joffe, sobbing and screaming for help, as the pit bull alternately circled the car, trying to get at its occupants, then shook the lifeless Shih Tzu, Lola, clamped in its bloody jaws.

    The two women had just arrived at Ms. Marks’s house after a three-hour drive from Manhattan. As they stepped out of the car, Ms. Marks held her other Shih Tzu, Henry, while Ms. Joffe held Lola, whom Ms. Marks had adopted from the Animal Rescue Fund in 2007.

    “I was holding the dog that was murdered,” Ms. Joffe said Monday. “I dropped something. I put her down.”

    That is when Ms. Joffe saw the pit bull. “He was two to three feet from me. He was staring at me. He lunged at [Lola], took her away. He grabbed her by the back of her neck and flung her like she was a rag doll. We watched and screamed and cried. He was circling the car and wouldn’t leave us.”

    The women began honking the horn. Help came, far too late for Lola.

    Ron Balcuns and Dawn Flagg, neighbors, ran from down the street.

    “She was blowing the horn, screaming horribly,” Mr. Balcuns said Tuesday about Ms. Marks. He told Ms. Flagg to get into the car, and finally managed to corral the dog by its collar. The dog, reportedly owned by Christine Hawkins, was emaciated and smelled, he later said. Numerous attempts to speak with Ms. Hawkins this week were unsuccessful.

    Several neighbors alleged that the pit bull, named Thunder, Ms. Marks said, had been mistreated by its owner. According to neighbors there had been more than two dozen complaints registered with the East Hampton Town Animal Control Department about the animal and the conditions under which it and a second dog, a golden retriever, were kept. The Animal Control Department did not return calls for comment.

    “During the heat, they were kept in the garage. I never saw anybody walk those dogs. They would howl and bark all night,” Ms. Marks said.

    Mr. Balcuns echoed her remarks, adding that when the pit bull finally got loose, “it was frenzied.”

    Despite consistent complaints to the town, nothing changed.

    “There was no fence,” Ms. Marks said.

    Indeed, Kathryn and Gavin Menu, who live with their 3-year-old daughter across the street from Ms. Marks and Ms. Hawkins, were so concerned about the pit bull that they had a fence put in, enclosing their yard.

    “My husband and I now carry our daughter to the car,” she said Tuesday.

    The killing of Ms. Marks’s dog brings to mind a spate of similar incidents on June 23. In that case, a German shepherd and a husky mauled and either killed or injured several house cats on Oakview Highway in East Hampton after being allowed to roam free by their owner, Claudia Solares. Those two animals have since been destroyed, a fate that Ms. Marks has been told awaits the pit bull.

    “There are no leash laws,” another neighbor, Dawn Flagg said. Ms. Flagg has written to and addressed the town board about the issue directly.

    According to Ms. Marks, an East Hampton Town animal control officer informed her that Ms. Hawkins agreed to have the dog euthanized last night.

    Ms. Marks has placed a memorial in her front yard, on the spot where the dog was killed, consisting of flowers, a tennis ball Lola liked to play with, and a photograph of the dog.

    “She was all love,” Ms. Marks said.

    Lee Hnetinka, the alleged party-house scammer, was arraigned in Southampton Justice Court last Friday, charged with 59 infringements of the Southampton Town Code. The charges, most of them misdemeanors, stem, police said, from a scheme he perpetrated on unsuspecting homeowners, telling them that his company, Hamptons and Sons, was renting their houses for “family reunions” when in fact it was hosting high-school graduation and prom parties attended by up to 100 teenagers. The company was separately charged with 24 code violations.

    Mr. Hnetinka, dressed in a well-tailored navy blue pinstriped suit and wearing Gucci loafers, stood before Justice Deborah Kooperstein with an attorney, Michael A. Gajdos, whom he’d hired 24 hours earlier. When the court asked him what he did for a living he first answered that he was in real estate, but then said he was an “online entrepreneur,” and finally that he was an employee of Hamptons and Sons.

     “If he doesn’t want to tell me what he does for a living, that’s fine,” remarked Justice Kooperstein.

    Michael Sendlenski, a Southampton Town attorney, asked that bail be set at $10,000, saying that Mr. Hnetinka had no ties to the community, “other than engaging in criminal endeavors.” Seven houses in Southampton were allegedly rented by Mr. Hnetinka under false pretenses, and at least two in East Hampton Town.

    Mr. Gajdos argued that his client was not a flight risk, since the court would have jurisdiction over him if he remained in Jericho, where he lives.

     “Actually, that is not in my jurisdiction,” Justice Kooperstein said. “I’m just a town judge.”

    She set bail at $10,000. It was met, and he was released.

    As serious as the charges against Mr. Hnetinka are now, they could become worse if allegations by two women, Eileen Weiner of Commack and Katy Carlin of Chicago are proven.

    Both women maintain that Mr. Hnetinka ran a bait-and-switch operation, using a house at 2212 Noyac Road in Sag Harbor as the bait. Ms. Weiner, whose son Jordan, then a senior at Commack High School, had asked her to arrange a prom party for 35 teens, went to see the nine-bedroom house in February. Mr. Hnetinka, who showed it to her himself, “talked the talk,” she said. “He knew exactly what to say.”

    She liked everything about the place, not least Mr. Hnetinka’s assertion that there would be two security guards on the scene, one of them a retired police officer and the other a teacher. They turned out, instead, to be two hired employees of Alpha One Security, which has offices in several locations.

    Ms. Weiner signed a contract on Feb. 12, putting down a deposit of $5,000. She paid the balance, $14,000, in April, plus a “security” fee of $20 per person.

    The day before the prom, she said, Mr. Hnetinka called with bad news: Neighbors of the Noyac Road house had complained of noise there, and he had to change the site of the party. It would now be at 20 Parrish Pond Lane in Southampton, which was his personal home, he told Ms. Weiner, and “much nicer” than Noyac Road.

    It proved anything but for the 35 students, as it had only four bedrooms. “They were falling over each other,” Ms. Weiner said.

    Police knocked at the door at 7 a.m. on June 23, the day after the group arrived. The security guards, whose instructions were never to open the door to the police, were fast asleep, and a student let them in. The party was shut down.

    A week later, Ms. Carlin had a similar experience. She had found Hamptons and Sons online, and wanted to book a weekend reunion with 15 friends, coming from as far away as Colorado and London, in the Hamptons.

    “Hamptons and Sons,” she said. “They had beautiful mansions. He said his family owns these properties and rents them out.”

    A Catholic nun, visiting from Syosset, and a year-round Montauk woman were killed in unrelated accidents on local roads in the last eight days. Sister Jacqueline Walsh was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver on Rose Hill Road in Water Mill on Monday at 8:30 p.m. The Montauk woman, Suzanne Lavenas, was pronounced dead at Southampton Hospital on July 4 after a head-on collision on Montauk Highway between the Montauk Library and West Lake Drive. A passenger in her car was severely injured.

    Southampton Town police have asked for help locating a man they describe as a “white, Hispanic” person of interest in the hit and run. Anyone who might have information has been asked to call 631-702-2230. “We are dedicating significant resources to apprehend the person who caused the sister’s death,” William Wilson, the department’s chief, said. “We appeal to the subject to turn himself in,” he said.

    In a report, police describe the man as about 5 feet 7, in his 20s to 30s, with short, spiked hair. He was said to be wearing dark shorts and a white shirt at the time of the accident. Police were alerted to the accident by a caller saying a woman was lying on the pavement near 383 Rose Hill Road. An abandoned 2009 Volkswagen Touareg with front-end damage was found within a half mile of the scene, police said, and may be the vehicle involved.

    Sister Jacqueline, who was 59, was reported to have been on a retreat with other members of the Sisters of Mercy.

    Ms. Lavenas, who was 69, had been traveling with Frances Berg of Montauk, who is 88, at about 10 p.m. on July 4 when the two-vehicle crash occurred. A memorial service is to be held at the Montauk Community Church at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow. An obituary appears separately.

    Driving a 2007 Toyota sedan, police said, Ms. Lavenas began making a left turn onto South Fox Street, crossing the path of a 2012 Ford pickup being driven west by Thomas Gubitosi. The front end of the Toyota was pushed in, and a call went out for three ambulances. Mrs. Berg was taken to Southampton Hospital suffering chest injuries including five broken ribs.

    “I just got the word that she is much better,” her son, Phil Berg, said yesterday. Twenty-four hours earlier, he said, “I was really concerned. I tried to get her to drink some orange juice. She wouldn’t take a sip. Today, she gulped the whole thing down. She’s feisty as hell.” He reported that she was expected to be released from the hospital within a day or two and to go to a rehabilitation center UpIsland.    

    Mr. Gubitosi was taken to Southampton Hospital by an Amagansett Fire Department ambulance. Police said he was treated and released.

    East Hampton Town Police Chief Edward Ecker went to the scene in Montauk when he learned of the likelihood of a fatality. He said he was brought up to speed by the head of the Montauk precinct, Lt. Christopher Hatch. 

    A planned, three-day festival with live music, featuring Albert Hammond Jr. of the Strokes doing a D.J. set and others, to be held from Aug. 3 to 5 at the Solé East hotel in Montauk, has not received the necessary approval from the Town of East Hampton and one of Solé East’s partners has distanced himself from the plan.

    The Escape to Montauk event, at the hotel and restaurant on Second House Road, follows one its organizers held last year on the Shinnecock Reservation, featuring Patti Smith and other well-known artists. The Montauk version is to run from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day.

    A press release said there will be art, food, a fashion “pop-up village,” installations and performance art, films, yoga, a spa, and experimental programming in addition to music.

    Johnson Nordlinger, the assistant to East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, said yesterday that no permits had been granted for the event or applied for.

    The Escape events were founded and produced by Rocco Gardner, who said in a release that the Montauk event will be different from Escape 2 New York. It will be smaller and more suited to the local area, he said.

    “We work hard at Escape whether it’s with a tribe or beachside community to tailor our event to fit in with each of our hosts in an appropriate manner,” he wrote in an e-mail.

    Admission is to be free, although V.I.P. wristbands will be sold for $20 online at esca.pe. Those with wristbands will have priority access and receive discounts on kids events, retail sales, and food and drink.

    Immediately after the release was issued this week announcing the Escape event, Chris Jones, who is a partner in Solé East and an owner of the recently opened Montauk Beach House hotel in Montauk, issued his own press release stating he had nothing to do with it.

    He said that although he is a partner in the business, he had relinquished his operational role there in March to focus on the Beach House.

    “I have absolutely nothing to do with this event nor do I advocate it. I am unsure what the decision-makers were thinking, but it is clear to me that it has not been thought through,” he said.

    Mr. Jones was an organizer of the ill-fated three-day Music to Know concerts initially planned for a field in Amagansett last summer. After controversy erupted over the location, it was to be moved to East Hampton Airport. But the show never went on, squelched because of low ticket sales.

    Mr. Jones said this week that he has deep respect for the Montauk community and the need to conserve its quality of life.

    “I also have extensive experience in understanding what it takes to stage such an event. Such a gathering should not be held in a residential area and especially not in Montauk,” he said in his release.

    Dave Ceva, the managing owner of Solé East, did not return a call for comment.

    Less than a month after air traffic controllers set up shop at East Hampton Airport and began guiding flights into and out of just under 10 miles of controlled airspace, the impact of the control tower and motivation for its construction are being debated.

    Members of the Quiet Skies Coalition and the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion have expressed disappointment in the potential for the air traffic controllers to alleviate the impact of noise on those under flight paths, which was to be an added benefit of having controlled airspace over East Hampton.  Both groups have lobbied for the town to decline Federal Aviation Administration money in order to gain more local control over the airport. Restricting access, they say, is the only way to control aircraft noise.

      In the controlled airspace extending a 4.8-mile radius around the airport, pilots must follow prescribed routes, which could presumably spread traffic around instead of across the same areas over and over; in uncontrolled airspace, pilots determine their own approach.

    Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the town board’s airport liaison, says it is too early to judge. Because of a 30-day waiting period following the federal designation of controlled airspace around East Hampton, compliance with minimum altitudes issued by the traffic controllers will not be mandatory until July 26.

    Nonetheless, Mr. Stanzione pointed to a press release issued last week by the airport manager, Jim Brundige, citing helicopters’ increased compliance with voluntary minimum altitude suggestions from January through June. “We expect continued improvement,” Mr. Brundige said in the release.

    “I think the new tower will produce better results,” Mr. Stanzione said early this week. “Is there more work to do? Absolutely. But the early results are encouraging.”

    But on Tuesday, Kathleen Cunningham, the head of the Quiet Skies Coalition, which picketed Town Hall on July 5 to call attention to what it called a false promise that controlling air traffic would ameliorate noise, pressed Mr. Stanzione on what kind of noise mitigation measures are being taken. “I would like to know what the noise abatement policy is.” The town’s air traffic controllers, she said, “say they’re not managing traffic into and out of the airport according to a noise policy.”

    “Where are the noise monitors? How are we measuring?” she asked. A noise abatement plan, Mr. Stanzione said, is a component of an overall airport management plan that the board is developing with the help of a consultant. 

    “This comprehensive plan is the most thoughtful and insightful look at the airport in 15 years,” Mr. Stanzione said. Ms. Cunningham agreed but expressed frustration that measures are not yet in place.

    At an orientation meeting at the airport on June 30, an F.A.A. representative and the chief air traffic controller made it clear that the foremost goal of controlling flights is safety, members of her group said at a July 5 town board meeting.

    “We should name our new control tower ‘Stanzione’s folly,’ ” Susan McGraw Keber told the town board. She carried a sign with that phrase. “Duped Into Airport Expansion,” another sign said.  Another read: “$1 Million; Still No Noise Policy.”

    “I charge Councilman Dominick Stanzione with three things,” she said. “First, he duped everyone. Second, he has wasted over $1 million of town money. And third, I believe he is pursuing an agenda aimed at expanding our airport into a regional hub.” The first step, she said, was getting the control tower up, “enabling increased traffic.”

    Erecting a control tower and employing air traffic controllers during the peak summer travel season has long been the town’s plan, and financial plans for it have been included in capital budgets. It was first suggested by members of a town Airport Noise Abatement Advisory Committee, headed by Ms. Cunningham under a previous administration and disbanded by the current town board. Mr. Stanzione had worked over the last year to bring the control tower to fruition.

    “The support for the tower was always generated by the promise of noise mitigation,” Ms. McGraw Keber said at the meeting on July 5.

    But at the orientation meeting, which was recorded by attendees, Charles Carpenter of Robinson Aviation, the company providing the traffic controllers, told the assembled aviators: “It’s not about noise. We’re about separating you guys, and making it safe for you.”

    The F.A.A.’s “principal obligation is safety. I think that is our principal obligation as well,” Mr. Stanzione said at that meeting. But, he said, while safety is the “most important function of air traffic control . . . having professionally controlled airspace can have a meaningful impact on noise in our community, and we’re hopeful that will occur.”

    And, he added this week, as to whether traffic is routed based on safety or shielding residents from noise, “maybe they’re not mutually exclusive.” Safety considerations, he said, include ground safety, which could mean directing aircraft over the least populated areas of town.

    Ms. McGraw Keber charged that the second part of Mr. Stanzione’s “not so hidden agenda,” was “to trick the town into taking a grant for a deer fence from the F.A.A. Accepting federal money would take away local control of the airport for 20 years,” she said. “Under F.A.A. control, the tower will surely support and encourage more air traffic, enabling the final part of Stanzione’s plan which is to turn a small airport into a regional hub.”

    “What could motivate such duplicitous and egregious behavior?” she asked. “May I suggest that we follow the money?” She asked the board to consider “who would have the most to gain. . . . Perhaps we might call on Mr. Ben Krupinski,” she said, pointing out that he owns a hangar at the airport as well as a private charter company and one that provides fuel and other aircraft services. “But I leave it to the board to put together those missing dots.”

    Dressed in red, white, and blue on July 5, Ms. Cunningham read the group’s “Declaration of Independence from the Federal Aviation Administration,” dated July 4: “The history of the F.A.A. is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all having in direct object the establishment of a tyranny over our town, our skies, and our good people.”

    “The F.A.A. and this town board have been deaf to the voice of justice and of conscience,” she read. “We hereby call for a moratorium on accepting funding from the Federal Aviation Administration that in any way restricts the ability of the Town of East Hampton to limit the number of excessively noisy aircraft, to limit the arrival and departure times of excessively noisy aircraft, set altitude limits for excessively noisy aircraft, and to ban excessively noisy aircraft from using the East Hampton Airport.”

    “This is our town; these are our skies,” the declaration concluded.

    Speaking at a town board board meeting on July 10, David Gruber, a member of the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, said that “it will be clear by the end of the summer” that a solution to noise disturbance will only be possible “when the town is willing to control hours of operation, numbers of aircraft operations, and aircraft types.”

    He predicted the control tower would be “an expensive failure” and would have no meaningful impact on noise problems. “I’ll be here to say ‘I told you so’ in September,” he said.

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley expressed doubts as well. “I’m not quite sure whether the control tower in and of itself is going to have much of an effect,” she said.

    “At no time was this control tower presented as a silver bullet,” Mr. Stanzione said, but rather it was “part of a package, an airport management plan to address noise.” The 42-point plan devised with the help of Peter Kirsch, an airport consultant, includes curfews and beginning a sound study that could provide data needed to make a case to the F.A.A. that local regulations are needed. To petition the F.A.A. for permission to enact its own rules, and to fight potential lawsuits against local rules effectively, Mr. Stanzione said, the town must demonstrate it has first tried other measures to mitigate noise, such as air traffic control.

    Ms. Quigley suggested that the board look to immediately implement other measures as well, saying that Mr. Kirsch had advised the board that it has the authority to enact restrictions on helicopters.

    For example, she said, if the airport runways were set up so that those arriving would have to exit through the airport terminal, the hours the terminal would be open would effectively limit when landings occur.

    In a press release and letters to the editor this week, the Quiet Skies Coalition asserted that the town should begin compiling noise measurement data in order to have a record on which to base future requests to the F.A.A. to institute restrictions, such as curfews and other airport access limits.