The Surf Lodge saga in East Hampton Town Justice Court may finally be coming to an end, according to attorneys for both sides, who met in court on Monday.

     The court session began with Justice Catherine A. Cahill, in a very upbeat tone of voice, saying, “I see Mr. Horn is here, and I see Mr. Connelly is here.”

    “I believe Mr. Horn has a motion,” she said, as Robert Connelly, the town’s lead attorney on the case, stood up. Mr. Horn, the attorney since last month for Edgemere, the company that owns the club, made a motion to dismiss many of the 686 violations of the town’s code, as well as a single fire code violation.The justice then had the attorneys approach the bench, Mr. Horn wearing rumpled khaki slacks and a blue blazer, and Mr. Connelly in a dark suit.

    With the court microphone turned off, they apparently discussed various points about the motion and the possible follow-up, with occasional phrases being audible in the front row of the courtroom. The men then returned to their seats.

    “Counsel has provided a motion with some visual aids,” Justice Cahill said, “The people will have a month to respond.” She then adjourned the case until May 14.

    Mr. Horn explained on Tuesday that the visual aid referred to was a flow chart of the complex series of counts and interlocking requests for dismissal.

    On Tuesday, Mr. Connelly said Mr. Horn’s motion was for at least a partial, if not complete, dismissal of the charges, and he conceded that a partial dismissal could facilitate a settlement. He confirmed that a $100,000 fine suggested in October by the town as a settlement was still on the table.

    “I don’t think about this in terms of dollars. I think about it in terms of concepts,” Mr. Horn said. Both men sounded eager to work out a settlement, most likely before a return to court.

    In Mr. Horn’s motion, a copy of which The East Hampton Star obtained, he asks the court to dismiss multiple charges in cases where specific code violations were cited within the same week. He contends such citations violate state and town law. Yesterday, Mr. Horn elaborated on this. “There are only 12 to 16 violations that have repeated, based on the number of visits,” he said, intimating that many citations would have to be dismissed.

    Mr. Connelly noted that if Justice Cahill dismissed the multiple citations that occurred during the same week, a settlement would become more likely.

    The Surf Lodge will have a hearing in a different setting on Tuesday at Town Hall at 7:30 p.m., as Eric Bregman of Gilmartin and Bregman represents the owners of the club in an appeal to the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals. They are challenging a decision by Tom Preiato, the chief town building inspector, to deny the Surf Lodge a certificate of occupancy for an outdoor drinks station, which sits at the rear of the club, because it would constitute an expansion of the pre-existing, nonconforming status that allows the night spot to do business in a residential district.

   Mr. Bregman said yesterday that although the station has a soda gun used to make mixed drinks, and a butcher-block dry bar, it does not have permanent plumbing and could conceivably be moved elsewhere on the property. A food cart and wagons, which Mr. Preiato had also ruled were an expansion of the nonconforming use, will not be used this year, Mr. Bregman said. Mr. Preiato was reportd to be out of the country and not available for comment.

    After weeks of contention over a proposed sale of a piece of town alleyway that bisects the old Ronjo motel property in Montauk, East Hampton Town will get its own appraisal of the value of the land.

    A vote of the town board authorizing the appraisal at a meeting on Tuesday was unanimous, but took some cajoling by Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who offered the resolution and urged everyone to support it, despite some questions about its language.

    The board’s original vote to sell the alleyway at the seemingly random price of $35,000, which Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said he “pulled out of the air,” was split three to two, with the two Democratic members of the board balking at closing the sale without an appraisal and an evaluation of the section’s importance to the town for utilities or other access, for which the system of alleyways was designed.

    Mr. Wilkinson cited previous sales of town property at lesser prices, and without appraisals, which are not specifically required by the state municipal law. The law does, however, place a fiduciary responsibility on public officials to get the best price for land sales and avoid making a gift of public land to private individuals.

    After the board majority refused last month to pass a resolution presented by Councilwoman Sylvia Overby to place the sale on hold until after an appraisal could be made, the East Hampton Democratic Committee, which collected signatures on a petition to force a public referendum on the sale, got its own appraisal, which set the value of the 3,700-square-foot piece of alleyway at $184,000.

    An appraisal commissioned by Chris Jones and Lawrence Siedlick, the principals of the Montauk Beach House, new owner of the Ronjo site, came in at $22,500.

    Signatures on the Democrats’ petition are still being verified by the town clerk’s office. Provided the minimum number stand — likely, considering a margin of some 200 signatures beyond those required — the town board will either have to rescind the sale resolution or hold a special town vote on the matter on a date no less than 60 and no more than 75 days from the filing of the petition — between June 3 and June 18.

    Meanwhile, at the motel, where the grounds have surrounded and, some say, incorporated the area of the alleyway in question for decades, a full renovation continues, with the owners hoping to get the property opened in time for the summer season.

    The project is under scrutiny, and excavation of a basement under one of the motel buildings prompted the town building inspector to issue a stop-work order for that portion of the project, which did not have a permit.

    Because the motel is in Montauk’s central business district, it is a “pre-existing, nonconforming use” and may not expand unless given a use variance by the town zoning board of appeals.

    After a meeting early last week, it was determined that the property owners would seek site plan approval for the basement from the planning board, indicating that the town’s chief building inspector, Tom Preiato, had determined that the addition of the basement does not constitute an expansion.

    Mr. Preiato reportedly suffered a minor medical incident following the meeting on April 9 at the town offices, and was taken to the medical center nearby. He was unavailable for comment, and is reportedly taking a vacation until May 1.

    The site plan application for the basement has been submitted and was on the planning board’s agenda last night.

    Although that application is pending, a building permit was issued last Thursday allowing buildings at the motel to be “rebuilt to previous dimensions” depicted on a certificate of occupancy issued in 1990, as well as the construction of a 1,076-square-foot office lobby and 222-square-foot storage building.

    The permit gives temporary approval to construct the footings and foundation walls for the basement even as the planning board considers whether to approve it. Mr. Jones provided an affidavit attesting to his acceptance of the permit “with the understanding that the completion of this structure without site plan approval shall vest no rights in its continued existence as a ‘basement’ structure.” He agreed to be bound by the provisions of any site plan approval, and accepted any liability related to “the construction of this structure without site plan approval.”

    Richard Hammer, a Montauk attorney representing the Montauk Beach House in its planning board application, said on Tuesday that placing a basement beneath the motel building had been recommended for structural reasons.

    Since the hole has been dug, he said, the only way to proceed is by putting in the footings and foundation walls. “Once you excavate for the foundation . . . you can’t just say ‘put it back,’ ” Mr. Hammer said.

    He said the motel renovation was designed to avoid the need for a site plan review, as the business owners are working under a time limit in order to open for the season. However, he said, seeking site plan approval for the basement is “reasonable in light of all the circumstances. There was a real effort to get this resolved as quickly as possible,” he said.

    The political divisiveness engendered by the sale of the alley, which Democrats have cast as a favor by the openly pro-business supervisor to a friend and supporter, drew the attention of regional media this week, including The New York Post.

    That divisiveness was on display during the short discussion by the board on Tuesday before the vote on Mr. Stanzione’s resolution authorizing an official town appraisal.

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley complained that the appraisal commissioned by the Democratic Committee had not been submitted to the town, although the one commissioned by the hotel owners had.

    “We should have a professional look at both appraisals and give an opinion as to why they are so disparate,” she said. “The fact that that appraisal is out there — the other one is getting brushed off as if it didn’t exist,” she said. “Unless it’s just a farce.”

    Democratic Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc pointed out that neither appraisal had been ordered by the town. “We might be getting a great deal or we might not,” he said.

    “Why are we getting held against this $184,000 appraisal?” Mr. Wilkinson asked heatedly. “Why is it getting so much attention, Peter?”

    “We don’t have an official appraisal, that’s the whole point,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. Before voting to approve the resolution authorizing a town appraisal, both he and his Democratic counterpart, Ms. Overby, questioned some language in the resolution, including a phrase stating that the objective was “to confirm” that the proposed $35,000 price is “fair and reasonable.”

    “I’m trying to resolve competing interests here,” Mr. Stanzione told them, before eliciting a unanimous vote.

    A new pump house and irrigation pond for the golf course at the Maidstone Club drew a crowd to an East Hampton Village Zoning Board meeting on Friday.

    Maidstone Club Incorporated needs a special permit, a freshwater wetlands permit, and area variances to modernize and expand the existing irrigation system for the 18 holes of the west course and 9 holes of the east course.

    The freshwater wetlands permit is required because some of the irrigation lines under the turf come as close as three feet to the wetlands, where the minimum required setback is 125 feet.

    The private Maidstone Club golf course, listed last year in Golf Digest as one of the nation’s top 100 courses, was designed in the early 1920s by Willie Park Jr., and originally consisted of two 18-hole courses, but after the Hurricane of 1938 this was reduced to 27 holes.

    “Maidstone’s 27 existing golf holes have an antiquated irrigation system,” said David Eagan, the attorney for the applicant. “Some parts of it go all the way back to 1930. The goal is to make it the most efficient with the best technology available.”

    The water comes from three existing wells, and is proposed to go into a new 10-foot-deep, half-acre pond in the middle of a vegetated area north of Further Lane and east of Egypt Lane. An 850-square-foot pump house would also be placed in the one and a half acres that are to be cleared within that area.

    “Neighbors would not be able to see any of these structures,” Mr. Eagan said. As far as the replacement of the irrigation lines, he said, “It’s important to understand that it’s not expanding, just putting plastic pipes in the ground. We think the scope of the disturbance is minimal,” he said. “We’re just digging a hole and filling it back in.”

    It was Linda Riley, the village attorney, who asked, “If you add more water to the surface, is that going to carry nitrogen-loading fertilizer closer to the wetlands?”

    John Genovesi, the Maidstone’s golf course superintendent and grounds manager, said, “In my professional opinion, no. I think it’s actually going to be safer. The water will get deeper. With a two-inch rainstorm, you can bet you would get leaching, but there’s less chance of that because I can control the water.”

    Brian Blum, a hydrogeologist with Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, who was hired by the Maidstone Club, said that the club already has a permit from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to pump as much as 25 million gallons of water a year from its wells “on the basis of it having no impact on Hook Pond.” Currently the system draws approximately 9 million gallons of water a year, according to Mr. Blum.

    Andree Dean, who has a house on Hook Pond, said she is “concerned with the toxins getting into Hook Pond, but I have great faith in John Genovesi.” She suggested, however, that the Maidstone Club be required to pay for regular testing of the pond, with the results then made available to the Hook Pond Association, of which Ms. Dean is a member.

    Andrew Goldstein, the chairman of the zoning board, adjourned the hearing until May 11, to allow for additional public comment and give the board time to obtain independent verification of the potential effects of the new irrigation system on the village’s natural resources.

    Fred Doss of Bridgehampton has been associated with buildOn, a nonprofit group that teams students in the United States with global school construction projects, since 2001.

    BuildOn has paired schools in the Bronx and Detroit, among other places, with villages in South America, Haiti, and Africa that have no formal education to offer the children there. The U.S. students get involved in every facet of raising awareness and money for the school project, and their efforts culminate with a group of them setting off to spend a week at that village, assisting the locals in laying bricks and mortar.

    Now, through Mr. Doss, East Hampton High School will become one of buildOn’s stateside schools come September.

    The impact on the small overseas communities, which prior to buildOn’s involvement sometimes school their children in temporary shelters, if that, cannot be understated, Mr. Doss said. “Their needs are very simple. Life is much simpler,” he said. “Their expectations are easily met, and a little bit goes a long way.”

    His first experience with buildOn was life changing, he said. “The mission spoke to me.”

    “The villagers spend weeks with no food, no water, digging in the hot sun all day, all to build a school for their children,” he said. “You can’t help but be moved by that.”

    Returning back to his former job with General Electric, Mr. Doss talked to the company about providing funding and offices for the growing nonprofit. Over a decade later, G.E. still provides offices free of charge to buildOn.

    Mr. Doss, who is also the co-chairman of Paddlers for Humanity, was quick to point out the “dual mission” of the organization. “It also gives American kids self-empowerment and self-confidence,” he said. “They learn to give back. They learn that they can make a difference.”

    Before a single brick is laid, buildOn requires that villages form a gender-equal leadership team for the construction project. All villagers involved in the project are required to sign a covenant between buildOn and the community that outlines each party’s obligation: buildOn agrees to provide the engineering, materials, skilled labor, and project supervision, and the village contributes up to 3,000 volunteer work days and a promise to send girls to be educated in equal numbers as boys.

    BuildOn also works with each country’s education department. “It’s very tightly run,” he said, adding that 90 percent of all donations to buildOn go into the programs.

    Paddlers for Humanity, which has recently focused its fund-raising on projects that benefit children and youth, donated $30,000 in 2009 to buildOn for a school in Nicaragua, and is donating $15,000 to jump-start the high school program in East Hampton. A fund-raiser is also in the works for November, although there are no details as of yet.

    The plan, Mr. Doss said, is to target a location and for the East Hampton students to have the project on its feet by March of 2013. Although buildOn has traditionally been associated with inner city schools, Mr. Doss believes that East Hampton students will benefit just as much as kids from those other schools.

    “Privileged or not privileged, it’s an opportunity to go and see a totally different way of life,” he said. “You sit down with these people, you share a meal, you hang around at night and talk.”

    “People who have no opportunities deserve a chance,” Mr. Doss said passionately. “Global education will hopefully save us all.”

An East Hampton Town justice issued a restraining order last Thursday against a Jamaica, Queens, man who had spent the night of March 31 in the music mogul Sean Combs’s bluff-top vacation house in East Hampton.

Quamine T. Taylor, 30, was arrested on April 1 after a property manager for Mr. Combs discovered him there, town police said.

Mr. Taylor had been in Suffolk County jail in Riverside since his arrest, unable to raise the $2,000 bail on petty larceny and criminal trespassing charges set at his April 2 arraignment.

On Thursday, two Sheriffs Department officers brought Mr. Taylor, restrained in handcuffs and ankle shackles, before Justice Catherine Cahill for a pretrial hearing. He was represented by a legal aid attorney.

Melissa Aguanno, a Suffolk assistant district attorney, told Ms. Cahill that her office wanted Mr. Taylor to serve at least eight months on the charges.

Mr. Taylor was then told by Ms. Cahill that a restraining order had been issued and he was to stay away from Mr. Combs's property.

    As officers began to lead Mr. Taylor away, he paused and asked Ms. Cahill if he could speak. Ms. Cahill nodded, indicating that he could.

Mr. Taylor spoke softly. “Can I get a new attorney?” he said.

Ms. Cahill asked him to repeat his question.

 “Can I ask you something? Can’t I just pay a fine?” he said.

After he repeated the question into a microphone, Ms. Cahill told him that would not be possible. Unable to make bail, he was returned to jail.

Log entry, April 15, 0800, entering the Gulf of Mexico

    Eagle’s crew at attention on the waist swaying in unison to the ship’s motion like wheat in the wind. Flying fish flee our wake, their silver sides flashing in the morning sun. They must be nature’s most hopeful creatures, the way they flee their natural element to escape, not unlike sailors.

    Yesterday, a 278-foot Coast Guard cutter passed us going the other way toward Key West with a number of Cuban refugees whom a smaller cutter had intercepted. They will be processed and flown back to Havana.

    Admiral Chuck Michel of the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South has joined Eagle. The head of drug-interdiction efforts, he hasn’t been on her deck since his academy days. He climbed to the main cross-trees yesterday to become reunited. He talked of cocaine’s destructive power. “Eats at the fabric of society. It’s not the growers’ problem, it’s ours,” he said of our nation’s demand.

    His aide is an Army major who said his wife told him to take care because he’d made it out of Iraq alive.

    Oil rigs in the distance. The ghost of BP’s Deepwater Horizon. New Orleans and the ghost of Katrina. The Coast Guard’s prominent role in both disasters.

    Capt. Eric Jones tells the crew to gather ’round. He reads a message he’s received from Admiral Robert Papp, former Eagle captain and now the Coast Guard’s commandant. The message reveals the names of the two coasties shot and killed in Kodiak, Alaska, yesterday for reasons unknown. A number of officer candidates aboard have served in Kodiak.

    “Our job is too difficult for this kind of thing to happen.” Their families will need help and our prayers, Captain Jones says.

    Increasing wind out of the southeast. Eagle sails under courses, her four headsails, staysails, upper and lower topsails. T’gallants and royals will be set after quarters.

                                                                      * * *

    The United States Coast Guard’s sail training ship Eagle will turn 76 in June. On April 17, she arrived in New Orleans after a 10-day passage from New London. This summer, she will visit ports along the Gulf and East Coasts as part of a bicentennial commemoration of the War of 1812 and will train Coast Guard Academy cadets in the process. New York, New London, Conn., Boston, Newport, R.I., and Greenport are on her schedule.

    Eagle will be joined by other vessels involved in Operation Sail. OpSail is a not-for-profit sponsor of fleet gatherings and parades of sail in ports around the world since 1964.

    In New Orleans, Eagle tied up just off Canal Street in the French Quarter alongside two other school ships, the Guayas from Equador, a barque like Eagle, and Dewaruci from Indonesia, a barkentine.

    There is always a large turnout when Eagle docks and offers up her weather deck to visitors, who learn she was built as a training ship by Hitler’s Germany in 1936, that the Coast Guard took her as a war prize, that she is just under 300 feet long with a beam of 39 feet. She was built of Krupp steel in the tradition of the last commercially viable sailing ships that carried bulk cargo, like wheat and guano, in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

    She trains future Coast Guard officers and petty officers in seamanship, teamwork, navigation, and most important — her captains like to stress — engenders humility. The sea is foreign and powerful and yet there are ways to live with it, but only if one first confronts and accepts its superiority.

    Eagle, and the very few remaining ships like her, was built to live with the sea using a language and technology that took centuries to perfect. She’s called America’s Tall Ship, and those who visit her when she’s tied to a dock, her sails furled, cocooned, can be forgiven for viewing her as a kind of ornamental re-enactment. She is not.

    When Eagle emerged from the dockside chrysalis soon after leaving New London — it takes more than 60 people and upward of an hour to set Eagle’s sails depending on the saltiness of the crew — she came alive.

    It’s hard to think of a 1,784-ton assemblage of steel, cable, miles of rope, and 22,300 square feet of Dacron cloth as a living thing, but there is no other way to put it, especially as she approaches her 17-knot hull speed pressing over and through six-foot seas, her deck a gracefully rolling hillside.

    There’s a feeling that life’s many challenges, shoreside entanglements, and gravity itself have been overcome, a sense of freedom, symbiosis, and pride shared by Eagle — a sentient being under sail — and the people who have brought her to life for the past 75 years.

    On April 13 in the Florida Straits, there was a burial at sea. Eagle’s permanent crew and officer candidates stood at attention in the waist. Officers gathered on the boat deck in dress uniform. Captain Jones read a letter from the man’s wife about their love, and about his love of the service. His ashes were put over Eagle’s side, under way, under sail. It was his wish.

—

    Russell Drumm has sailed aboard Eagle many times, beginning in 1994. His book about Eagle’s history, “The Barque of Saviors,” was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2001.

    Parking, the concerns of the East Hampton Town and Village Disabilities Advisory Board, and the health of the groundwater were all discussed at the East Hampton Village Board work session last Thursday, along with a law that would make creating disabled access a little easier on the wallet.

    “My wife was hit by a car 29 years ago,” Gerry Mooney, a member of the disabilities advisory group, told the village board. “It sensitized me to an issue that I had no knowledge of.” Mr. Mooney, along with Glenn Hall, the chairman of the disabilities advisory board, commended the village for its implementation and enforcement of the American with Disabilities Act laws, but hoped that actions would be taken to remind businesses in the village that compliance with the law is not a choice, but a requirement.

    “We want to sensitize people in the village, especially store owners,” Mr. Mooney said. “There are people out there, lots of independent, single, disabled people, who would love to shop and use their services but who can’t gain access.”

    In particular, the group was seeking additional curb cuts and loading zones in the interest of removing barriers. “People want to do the right thing,” Mr. Mooney continued. “But sometimes you have to push them a little, to remind them.”

    Mr. Hall congratulated East Hampton for being “possibly the only town and village with the A.D.A. requirements built into the code.” However, he echoed Mr. Mooney’s thoughts: “Sometimes it takes a certain amount of pressure to get people into compliance.”

    All renovation and new construction must comply with the A.D.A. requirements, and grandfathered properties must comply if it’s “readily achievable.”

    “You’ve got to put up a sign,” Mr. Hall said. “If you’ve got a step, and it’s not going to break the bank, adding a ramp would work, putting grab rails in the bathrooms — that’s all readily achievable,” he said.

    The board agreed to issue a massive notification to all village businesses with a reminder of the disability requirements. “We’re doing it for everybody. It’s good business,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said.

    Later in the meeting, the board voted to hold public hearings on two local laws — one that would exempt all modifications designed to improve handicap-accessibility from building permit fees and the other to exempt those improvements from setback and coverage restrictions.

    Kevin McAllister of the Peconic Baykeeper, a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to keeping the local waterways healthy, spoke about the “crucial issue” of wastewater in the village.

    “There are tens of thousands of septic systems here,” he said, adding that he was “not asking the village to do anything today, just be aware of the imminent threat” that the wastewater could pose to the drinking water and estuaries.

    “Nantucket is already in crisis mode,” Mr. McAllister said. “And the nitrogen in our aquifers is increasing at an alarming rate.” He called some of the septic systems in use “archaic.”

    “I’m not trying to be cute here,” he said. “But we spend more money on Belgian block trimmings for our driveways than on suitable wastewater systems.”

    Also last Thursday, the board revisited the community forum on parking in the village, agreeing to look at the possibility of adding some 15-minute spaces in the Schenck’s parking lot and changing the time limits on some parking spaces at the upper end of Newtown Lane and by the post office on Pantigo Road.

    The board also reiterated that a letter would go out to all local businesses, perhaps in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce and the East Hampton Business Alliance, encouraging employees to park in the long-term lot.

    “We are hoping to get a good degree of cooperation with the store owners,” the mayor said.

    A seemingly innocuous sale of 3,700 square feet of a town-owned Montauk alley that for decades has been surrounded by the grounds of the old Ronjo motel in Montauk has turned into a thorny morass raising hackles all around. At issue is the transfer of the alley from East Hampton Town to the motel’s new owners, who are trying to complete a ground-up transformation of the property in time to open for the season.

    A divided town board approved the sale for $35,000 over the objections of the two Democratic board members, who called for an appraisal of the land first, and an examination of the public’s interest in the alley and, perhaps, maintaining an easement over it for future municipal use.

    The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee collected signatures seeking to force a public vote on the sale, casting the deal as a pro-business favor by Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson to Chris Jones, a hotelier, and his partner, Lawrence Siedlick, a Republican donor, who bought the old Ronjo site for $4.2 million in February.

    They are trying to finish a complete renovation in order to open a new, stylish hotel to be called the Montauk Beach House but were hit with a stop-work order issued by the Town Building Department last week covering an excavation needed to build the motel office.

    Two different appraisals, one commissioned by the Democratic committee and the other by Mr. Siedlick and Mr. Jones, placed widely differing values on the alley — $184,000 and $22,500 respectively — and have themselves become the subject of debate.

    At a town board meeting in Montauk on Tuesday, Kyle Paseka Drumm, who is the operations manager for the hotel, called the renovation “fabulous,” and decried what she described as a deliberate political effort to derail it.

    “Everyone in the community loves it,” she said. She urged town board members to do everything possible to help the project go forward “in spite of all the political aggravation and upsets that are going on. There is a time frame, and this has to get done for the benefit of our community, and the infighting has to stop.”

    “We don’t want to be dictated [to] by people in East Hampton telling us what we should or shouldn’t do,” she said. Within 24 hours, as of yesterday, she said, 150 Montauk residents had signed a petition she is circulating expressing support for the Montauk Beach House project and asking the town board to “make all reasonable efforts to support” it “so it can be completed by the peak summer season.”

    “I support this project,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby told Ms. Paseka Drumm at Tuesday’s meeting. “But I also want everyone to be on a level playing field . . . it’s about process.” Rather than actually hold a referendum, the Democrats have said they would accept the sale at a price based on a town appraisal.

    Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson provided a list of 20 sales of town properties, ranging from 1993 through 2005, under previous administrations, 19 of which took place without appraisals being conducted, he said.

    Referring to the prior sales without an appraisal, and advice from John Jilnicki, the town attorney, that the board could proceed without one, Councilman Dominick Stanzione said that “it’s not unreasonable of me to rely on that prior practice.”

    “At the same time, asking for an appraisal is not unheard of,” Ms. Overby said.

    “The economic ripple of these places is significant,” Mr. Wilkinson said of the hotel project, which he said “is going to do nothing but rise the tide for all of Montauk. There’s no hiding that I am pro-business, because it brings jobs,” he said.

    Ms. Paseka Drumm said yesterday that local contractors had been hired for the job, and were continuing work, except for construction of the office, for which the stop-work order was in place.

    Meanwhile, the town clerk’s office is working this week to verify the 630 signatures on the petition calling for a referendum on the alleyway sale, which was submitted by the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee last week. The number of signatures goes beyond the minimum required by state law, which offers the town board the option to rescind the resolution of sale should it wish to avoid holding a public vote.

    Carole Brennan, the deputy town clerk, said Tuesday that the last time a petition calling for a referendum was submitted was in 1999, calling for the town to purchase land in Stony Hill that became a golf course.

    “The referendum is causing the delay” for the hotel, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said at Tuesday’s meeting. She defended the originally proposed sale price as fair and comparable to similar sales. In fact, she said, she believes that the town may have lost its property rights for the section of the alley bisecting the Ronjo property through adverse possession.

    Two different appraisals, one commissioned by the Democratic committee and the other by Mr. Siedlick and Mr. Jones, placed widely differing values on the alley.

    “The fact that Mr. Wilkinson made a flippant comment — a joke — should not have given rise to this level of animosity,” she said, referring to the supervisor’s repeated assertion that he had pulled the $35,000 sale price “out of the air.”

    The alleyway portion, Ms. Quigley said, “cannot be used separately as its own lot.” So, she said, the value placed on it by the appraiser hired by the Democratic Committee “is completely off the mark.”

    “This could have been resolved much quicker if it hadn’t been for you and Mr. Wilkinson stopping the process,” said Rona Klopman, an Amagansett resident who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting. When a neighbor of town land on Blue Jay Way in East Hampton approached the town about buying a small strip of adjacent public land, “I remember Ms. Quigley saying she had to have an appraisal” before the $5,000 sale could go through.

    Ms. Quigley said that “an informal assessment by an appraiser” rather than a formal appraisal was done.

    “This place has been targeted in a political game, and it is completely inappropriate,” Ms. Quigley said to Ms. Overby on Tuesday. “I have been told by several employees that you are on the phone in your office several hours a day going over how to get the Ronjo.”

    “This whole thing is about a process,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “This whole thing is about a board that came in two years ago that had, probably, amongst ourselves, 90-plus years of corporate experience, that tried to bring in business practices. This is about the East Hampton Democratic Party seizing an opportunity to expose this, to go after Montauk’s growth, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

    “I have not been blocking it at every turn,” Councilwoman Overby said yesterday. “I have been trying to get it to go through. Absolutely I have asked for information on the project. I can’t support a project without the information, and she’s turning that into a negative,” she said in response to Ms. Quigley’s comments.

    “I supported Mr. Siedlick when he came to my office and asked for my help,” she said. “I thought it was gracious of Mr. Siedlick to reach out.”  Ms. Overby saw his offer to obtain an appraisal while the town board put the original sale resolution on hold as a way to resolve the situation.

    “I was shocked that the board voted down suspending the resolution,” she said. Had that course of action, proposed at a meeting last month, begun, she said, the sale could be moving ahead by now at an agreed-upon price.

    “Everything we’re doing is above board,” Ms. Paseka Drumm of the Montauk Beach House said yesterday. “Time is of the essence.”

    The fifth budget work session of the Springs School Board, on April 4, made clear a few pertinent points; that the school board was going to make some cuts, and that the decisions were going to be emotionally charged for both the board and the community.

    Audible gasps, sighs, and groans issued from the crowd, which was not invited to comment since it was a board work session, and at one point a Springs School teacher raced from the auditorium in tears as her position was eliminated.

    After the dust settled, programs like Project MOST, summer school, and many extracurricular activities, along with participation in interscholastic sports, had suffered or been eliminated.

    Due to the recent guidelines sent from Albany relating to the new 2-percent property tax levy cap, the budget for 2012-13 is limited to $24.68 million, or $208,920 less than the current budget, due in no small part to decreased revenue. A budget reduction of $791,969 over what was originally considered needed to be achieved by cutting programs.

    “Districts all over the state are grappling with this,” Tim Frazier, a board member and principal of the Southampton Intermediate School, said. “We’re going to try to be as fiscally responsible as possible.”

    “Please understand that this is very emotional for everyone,” the board president, Kathee Burke Gonzalez, said in a quiet voice. “No one prepares you for this. We realize this will affect staff members and their careers, and we are not taking this lightly.”

    One piece of good news: Rather than the $2.9 million that the board originally thought was all that would be allowed for the programs being inspected, it was learned that an additional $400,000 could be allocated after Colleen Card, the school’s business administrator, was able to examine the State Department of Education’s recently released instructions for the implementation of the tax levy limit.

    The five-person board looked at the 25 programs that had been discussed during a community forum on Feb. 11, and went down the list line by line, taking a “show of hands” vote amongst themselves on each program, then discussing the pros and cons of cutting or keeping it.

    Prekindergarten, which had been on the cutting block, passed with flying colors to the relief of many parents in the audience.

    Mr. Frazier was the only holdout on the most hotly-contested item of the night — changing the sixth grade from its current elementary model, which has the students spending a half-day in their homeroom with rotations for math, social studies, and science, to a middle-school model, in which the students would spend their first period with the homeroom teacher, and then travel from class to class like the seventh and eighth-grade students. The change would realize about $200,000 in savings and would lay off three of the least-senior elementary school teachers.

    “I’m speaking as an educator. It is going to tear apart this school,” Mr. Frazier said. “It’s going to make a difference in the morale of the school and it will destroy all the hard work this school has achieved.” Mr. Frazier’s wife, Tracey, is a fifth-grade teacher at Springs, but her position was not at risk by the vote.

    John Grant disagreed with Mr. Frazier. “I have to put students first, taxpayers second, and the staff third,” he said.

    “But that’s exactly what I’m doing, John,” Mr. Frazier answered. “Students are going to get harmed by this in a way that’s going to affect the performance of this school.”

    “I have to respectfully disagree that this is going to harm kids,” said Ms. Gonzalez. “They’ll have the same art teacher, the same music teacher. Personally, I think our kids will thrive.”

    Mr. Grant pointed out that in many districts, sixth grade is a year when children move to another building. “This is kindergarten through eighth,” he said. “Everything will still be familiar to them.”

    Immediately after that, the board changed the schedule from a nine-period day back to an eight-period day, which saved $100,000 by having four middle school teachers go from full time to four-fifths time.

    Again, Mr. Frazier seriously objected to both the loss of teaching positions and to reducing math classes from 70 minutes to 48 minutes.

    After more heated dialogue, it was decided that the changes to the sixth-grade program and the shift in class periods would be left open for possible further discussion.

    Funding for Springs School in Action, a film program for second through eighth-graders, which won the Magna Award last year, was cut from $60,000 to $10,000. The board saw savings of another $100,000 by appointing only one teaching assistant for two first grade classrooms, rather than having one in each classroom.

    When it came to regular education summer school, the board vetoed the program, saving $65,000, with Mr. Grant as the holdout against the move. “I have a big concern about regression during the summer anyway,” he said.

    There was a tense moment as the board voted to eliminate one English as a second language teacher. Alexandra McCourt, the least senior E.S.L. teacher, left the room in tears, followed by several other Springs educators.

    The board also voted to reduce middle school sports by 30 percent, achieved by cutting all East Hampton intrascholastic sports — football, lacrosse, track, and cross country. “I realize this isn’t going to be popular,” Ms. Gonzalez said. Liz Mendelman agreed. “It’s a loss to the school, but there are other options, like Little League,” she said.

    Four of the members voted to cut the school’s funding for Project MOST, a $40,000 cost. Teresa Schurr was the only vote to continue district funding for the popular after-school program, run by an independent nonprofit. “If it wasn’t for Project MOST, we wouldn’t have a greenhouse,” she said. “They have brought so much to the school. We voted no on intramural sports — that’s something Project MOST could pick up.”

    “We’re laying off teachers,” Mr. Grant responded. “We’re laying off staff, people I know and care about. I just can’t support something outside the school day.”

    Tim Bryden, the executive director of Project MOST, said on Tuesday, “Project MOST remains committed to supporting the academic goals of the school.” There is one state contract remaining for the program, after which, Mr. Bryden said, “There will be some reorganization.”

    “It’s a challenge to find resources, to make sure that kids that are at a disadvantage will be able to have the support they need,” he said. “All children who want one should have a quality after-school program available, as it improves academic performance, keeps kids safe, and supports working parents.” He added that the Project MOST board was committed to “sustaining this critical resource.”

    At the budget meeting, extracurricular activities — yearbook, journalism club, and student council among them — were cut by 50 percent across the board.

    “I’ve lost sleep over this,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “I’ve developed T.M.J. These decisions have been emotionally charged.”

    She addressed the audience. “Now you’ve seen democracy in action, warts and all,” she said.

Correction

    An article last week about the East Hampton School District budget incorrectly implied that funding for high school boys and girls lacrosse and boys volleyball programs were cut. Funding for the middle school second teams in those sports has been eliminated.

    The question of what kinds of restrictions East Hampton Town may be allowed to place on the use of its airport in an effort to control noise turns largely on whether the town seeks to restrict jets and seaplanes or focuses access restrictions on helicopters.

    Airport operators must comply with Federal Aviation Administration rules and may not unreasonably restrict access or discriminate against particular types of airport users. The scenarios and possibilities differ, however, depending on whether or not the airport has accepted F.A.A. money, to which a number of contractual obligations, or grant assurances, are tied.

    In a presentation to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday, Peter Kirsch, an aviation attorney working with the town on a comprehensive approach to airport management, said that the F.A.A. gives airport owners the authority to enact rules governing aircraft categorized as stage one and stage two, which includes helicopters, even under the grant assurances. However, the agency’s approval is required before enacting rules governing stage three or stage four aircraft, which includes jets and seaplanes.

    Should the town cease taking F.A.A. money, allowing existing grant assurances to expire in 2014, the agency’s approval would not be needed for rules on any kind of aircraft. The F.A.A. could, however, sue the town, challenging it to prove that its rules meet legal standards. The town would have to provide sufficient data to show that its rules were a reasonable reaction to a documented noise problem.

    Citing the degree of difficulty in successfully enacting access restrictions under the F.A.A. grant assurances, airport noise-control advocates, such as the Quiet Skies Coalition, had asked the town board to reconsider applying for new federal funds. Information provided by the F.A.A. to Representative Tim Bishop earlier this year, specifically stating for the first time that local regulations could be enacted without submitting to the F.A.A.’s review process should the town no longer take federal airport money, should be carefully considered by the board, the advocates said.

    In response, the board asked Mr. Kirsch to address the matter. “If the town were seriously thinking of restrictions on stage three [aircraft], that would be a big deal,” he said. But, he said, “I don’t believe it’s a big deal” under the understanding that the town is considering only rules to limit use of the airport by helicopters. The town board has not specifically discussed that option in public.

    Mr. Kirsch recommended that the board continue with a multipronged approach, under which federal funds would be solicited to pay for airport projects, but data collection supporting potential future airport restrictions would also begin.

    “I believe the comprehensive management plan takes all of these factors into consideration and positions the town to move forward with restrictions,” he said.

    In comments to the board before Mr. Kirsch’s presentation, Kathleen Cunningham, the president of the Quiet Skies Coalition, said that the F.A.A.’s assertion that it would not sue the town if it instituted access limits once free of the grant assurances, after 2014, “is a window of opportunity for the town to explore other options, and I would urge you to take advantage of that.”

    Those concerned about airport noise, she said, “are not interested in shutting the airport down. We are also interested in safety. What we are interested in is the town’s ability to limit access, which is the true noise-abatement tool, and the ability of the town to limit types of aircraft, and the times they will come in.”

    Also speaking at the meeting were a number of airport users, including Cindy Tuma, the owner, with her husband, of Sound Aircraft, which is based at East Hampton Airport. “Please maintain the airport as the asset that it is,” she said. “In order to do that, you need to accept federal funds.”

    Runway 4-22, which has been closed because of disrepair, is needed for safety and should be reopened, speakers said. Without federal money, they said they feared the airport would become too expensive for the town to keep open.