Following community, staff, and school board discussions with Raymond Fell, a superintendent search consultant with Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Education Services, the Springs School Board announced at its meeting on Monday night that it plans to adopt a new administrative model for the district when its current superintendent retires at the end of the school year.

    The superintendent position would become a part-time one and the school’s principal, Eric Casale, will get a full-time assistant principal.

    “The administrative demands at the building have increased exponentially in the last few years given our ever-increasing school population, the implementation of the new Common Core Learning Standards in English language arts and math, the annual performance testing in grades three through eight, as well as the ramifications of Race to the Top and the annual professional performance reviews,” Kathee Burke Gonzalez, the school board president, said in a statement handed out during the meeting. “The part-time superintendent, full-time principal, and full-time assistant principal administrative leadership model should serve to increase administrative support and coverage while saving the district money.”

    Michael Hartner, the outgoing superintendent, has been with the district for three years.

    “I’ve never been asked to talk about this model before,” Mr. Fell acknowledged on Monday night. But, he said, with close to 700 students at Springs, “it might benefit the school to reinforce some of the administrative structure in the building. Having a part-time superintendent with a full-time assistant principal is ideal, if it can be done without increasing cost.”

    Ms. Gonzalez said yesterday that a formal vote on establishing the new model wouldn’t be held until after the district budget is passed, most likely in June. “At that time we would vote to abolish the full-time position and establish a part-time superintendent position,” she said.

    Mr. Casale referred to the widespread speculation that he might step into the superintendent’s shoes. “I want to thank the board for considering me,” he said. “But this is my seventh year in Springs, and I truly enjoy being the principal. I’d like to continue being that person,” he said, adding, “I’m looking forward to working with the new administrative team.”

    The three biggest issues that a new superintendent will have to face — according to the information Mr. Fell gathered from staff and community — are the continuing relationship with East Springs students as they move into a different educational institution,” space needs, and the changing demographics, notably the increase in English language learners and special education students.

    “The new person needs the skills to deal with this,” Mr. Fell said.

    A preferred professional background for the ideal candidate would include experience in the classroom, in running a building, and central office experience, with a strong business background. Perhaps most important, the candidate would need to have experience in dealing with other small, preferably rural, schools.

    The board will advertise for the position toward the end of this month, and will accept applications through the end of February. The new superintendent would need to be available on July 1.

    Raymond Wojtusiak, a sixth-grade teacher, added his concern about the unique challenges facing Springs to Monday’s discussion. “We’re seen as a high-spending district,” he said. “The public doesn’t necessarily understand that this district is booming. Our density is higher than East Hampton or Montauk, and we need to educate everyone regardless.”

    Reconstruction has begun on Sag Harbor’s crumbling 19th-century Bulova watch factory. The factory, on a 2.3-acre parcel facing Division Street, with its broken and boarded-up windows, is to become a “luxury” condominium complex. The conversion, estimated to cost $60 million, is likely to be the biggest construction project the village has ever seen.

  Plans include 65 living units, a fitness center, a swimming pool, dining areas, courtyards, and an underground parking garage. Sixteen of the units will be in seven new town houses adjacent to the historic building. The work is expected to take between 18 months and two years.

    Cape Advisors, which has taken on the project, plans to retain the character and architectural detail of the building. The firm is no stranger to large-scale projects, having developed several hotels in New Jersey and the Mondrian Hotel in New York City. Its investment was made possible by a partnership with Deutsche Bank, announced in the fall, after the owners had been challenged to find a construction loan due to the credit market halt. On Oct. 25, Cape Advisors paid the Village of Sag Harbor just over $200,000 for its initial building permit, and the property is now alive with activity.

    The factory dates to 1881, when Joseph Fahys built it to make watchcases. One-hundred years later, after it had long been the Bulova watch factory, it was cited for having released semi-volatile organic compounds and heavy metals into the soil and groundwater. It was listed as a state Superfund site, and Bulova was required to do remediation.

    Cleanup responsibility was included in Cape Advisors’ agreement to purchase the property from Patrick Malloy III. “The developer is required to install the mitigation measures before the development is occupied. We expect that they will occur at the same time as the development is constructed,” Lisa King of the State Department of Environmental Conservation said on Tuesday. Engineering controls will be required to prevent the intrusion of vapors from the ground into residential areas, and certain restrictions will apply, such as a prohibition of vegetable gardens.

    In addition to financing problems, the reconstruction was delayed by controversy over how the developer would meet a Suffolk County requirement that a certain number of units be affordable. Eventually, Cape Advisors agreed to put more than $2.5 million into the village’s Community Housing Trust. The money is guaranteed by a covenant that would apply to any subsequent owner of the property. A payment schedule includes $582,500 in five equal installments prior to, or at the closing of, the sale of the first five units.   

    Sag Harbor Mayor Brian Gilbride has said the housing trust will work closely with the Long Island Housing Partnership to implement affordable housing in the village, once the necessary funds are received. A panel including planning board members and representatives of Sag Development Partners is to keep tabs on the construction to assure the safety and well-being of residents.

    The disruption of parking during construction now seems to be the village’s biggest concern. Parking will be prohibited on Washington Street, from Church Street to Division Street, and Church and Sage have become one-way streets.

    At Tuesday’s village board meeting, Larry Perrine, a member of the planning board acting as liaison and speaking on behalf of “people who work, shop, and own businesses in the area,” called the “serious limitation of parking” on Washington Street a cause of concern. Mayor Gilbride said the village would monitor the situation. He shared the idea of limiting parking in the nearby village parking lot to two hours. Mr. Perrine noted that there had not been any restrictions enforced on Washington Street in December or so far in January. The board then came up with a compromise, allowing parking on Washington Street from Church to Division Streets on weekends. The resolution passed unanimously.

    Laura Grenning, who owns a nearby building on Division Street, which contains the Grenning Gallery and her residence, said on Monday that she was thrilled at the activity. “The pile drivers and bricks flying is music to my ears,” she said. Ms. Grenning bought her building four years ago in anticipation of the condominium conversion. In her opinion, Washington Street will soon be an added area of activity, with its art galleries and home furnishing stores a new anchor for a thriving year-round village. Of the community at large, she said, “The hope and positive energy in town is palpable.” 

    It is apparent that many residents are pleased that the factory, which employed 100 people during its heyday  as the industrial heart of the village, will have a 21st-century makeover.

    County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, whose office is on Washington Street, just steps away from the construction, is among them. He said he had had concerns about safety as the structure deteriorated. He now shares concerns about parking. His staff and guests have difficulty finding spots even now, he said, adding that he often has to move his car every two hours. Over all, however, he said he was pleased. “It had to happen, it has been an eyesore for a long time.”

Richard D. Threlkeld, a retired network television news reporter, died Friday morning in Amagansett when his Mini Cooper struck a Peterbilt truck hauling propane.

East Hampton Town police said Mr. Threlkeld, 74, had been driving in a northerly direction on Cross Highway when his car hit the truck driven by Earl Fryberger Jr. of Coatsville, Pa., in the Montauk Highway intersection. Mr. Fryberger, 57, was not hurt.

Mr. Threlkeld was pulled from the Mini Cooper and taken to Southampton Hospital by Amagansett Fire Department ambulance. He was declared dead by emergency room personnel.

Suffolk police remained on the scene for several hours. The Mini Cooper ended up on the grass in front of the American Legion building. Police did not say what caused the collision, and both vehicles were to undergo safety checks. Police have asked anyone who witnessed the accident to call them at 537-7575.

Mr. Threlkeld was a 25-year veteran of CBS News, its New York affiliate reported today, though he interrupted his tenure there with a stint at ABC News in the 1980s.

During his news career, he covered the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Tiananmen Square protests. His last assignment for CBS News was as Moscow correspondent. His wife, Betsy Aaron, was CNN's Moscow correspondent at the time.

Lesley Stahl, with whom Mr. Threlkeld anchored the CBS Morning News from 1977 to 1979, issued a statement Friday, calling Mr. Threlkeld "one of the best reporters, someone CBS sent to troubled spots to cover the big stories of the day. Richard was known for his integrity and his decency."

According to an online property listing service, Mr. Threlkeld had a house on Robins Way in Barnes Landing, East Hampton, not far from the site of the accident.

    “If Dr. King were alive today, I firmly believe he would be an ‘Occupier,’ ” Mark Naison, a professor of African-American studies and history at Fordham University, said this week.

    Speaking during the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend at a meeting of Occupy the Hamptons on Sunday, and in subsequent interviews, Dr. Naison said the Occupy movement had brought the issues of economic inequality that Dr. King had raised to the forefront of political discourse.

    “We all have to follow Dr. King’s example, and be drum majors for justice,” he said, after the group watched a video of Dr. King’s “drum major” speech. Before he was gunned down, “Dr. King was supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis and on the verge of leading a poor people’s campaign, which bore more than a little resemblance to today’s Occupy movements,” Dr. Naison said.

    Dr. Naison has been an activist since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. An eight-year resident of Springs, he suggested that Occupy the Hamptons include music at its events and focus on problems of local residents, such as housing foreclosures, the needs of veterans, and hunger. He said the Springs School did not have an adequate lunch program.

    Asked whether the Occupy movement was going to grow, Dr. Naison said, “This is just the beginning. These are the leaders of tomorrow . . . the problems are deep . . . we as a society need to do something.” He noted that the civil rights movement, shich he called one of the most important movements in American history, had begun with a student sit-in.

     Dr. Naison, a frequent guest speaker, was interviewed on ABC television when Occupy Wall Street first occurred and said he is able to address both advocates and critics of the movement. The major issues today, he said, are unemployment and the unequal distribution of wealth.

    Dr. Naison has appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor,” the Discovery Channel’s “Greatest American Competition” (as Dr. King’s advocate), and on “The Dave Chappell Show” in a skit called “I Know Black People.” His videos can be seen online, including “The Palin Effect” and “Stimulate Me,” and he has written three books: “White Boy: A Memoir,” “Communists in Harlem During the Depression,” and “The Southern Tenants Farmers Union and the C.I.O.”  

    As a professor, Dr. Naison calls himself the Notorious Ph.D. His Fordham courses include “The Sixties: Years of Protest, Years of Change,” “The Worker in American Life,” and “From Rock and Roll to Hip-Hop.” He uses rap to connect with his students, he said.

    On Jan. 7, Dr. Naison was the guest speaker at a meeting of the Southampton Democratic Club at the Southampton Publick House. Ninety-seven people attended, of which 25 percent were first-time participants. “That percentage is a first,” Grania Brolin, one of the event organizers, reported in an e-mail.

Dr. Naison’s talk included statistics on economic inequality. He reported saying that the “Walmart C.E.O. makes $16,000 an hour while entry level workers make $6.50 an hour,” and that the income in New York of the 1 percent was now 44 percent of the total state income, up from 9 percent in the 1950s and ’60s.

 “In my opinion,” he said in an interview, “people thought trickle-down economics worked. Most people thought that the very wealthy were an essential source of jobs.” The Occupy movement is tapping into the anger and frustration of youth who can’t find jobs and are saddled with student loans, he said. “Their counterparts in other countries had been doing this for months prior.”

     With the housing market collapse and the economic crisis, “the whole rationale for trickle-down economics began collapsing like a house of cards,” he said.

Because of Occupy Wall Street, Dr. Naison said, “A damn burst and a new language to describe economic inequality took hold like wildfire, dominated by the image of the 1 percent and the 99 percent.” “Occupy” became a new metaphor. “The transformation has been nothing short of remarkable,” he said.

    “These young people who are protesting have found a way of forcing our society to deal with economic inequality in a way that scholars like myself have not been able to do. . . . The protesters are giving voice to a generation that is . . . no longer needed in this society even though they are educated and skilled. They are turning this into a reality that can’t be ignored.”

    Dr. Naison recently became a founding member of the Fordham University 99 Percent Club. He helped to write the organizing principles, which he said include disseminating accurate information about worldwide movements, providing support to local movements, taking action against economic inequality and threats to freedom of expression, and creating networks among supporters of the Occupy movement. He stressed that such clubs allow people to participate in a wide variety of protests.

    A post on his Facebook page says, “We need leaders among the people, not leaders of the people.” This week he said, “Nothing I have experienced in 40-plus years of activism, including my experience with the Occupy movement and the 99 Percent Clubs in the last six months, has convinced me this approach is wrong.”

    After extending through 2011 a deadline for businesses to comply with East Hampton Town’s regulations on outdoor lighting, the town board is expected to vote tonight on suspending enforcement of the lighting code for another three months, while revisions to the code are discussed.

    Commercial property owners had been given four years to change lighting that was too bright or otherwise violated 2006 “dark-sky” legislation, until October 2010, but the compliance date was pushed back after the board expressed a desire to change the lighting law.

    A new draft of lighting code revisions, spearheaded by Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, will be a topic of discussion at a meeting of environmental groups in East Hampton tomorrow. It drew some comments at a board work session Tuesday.

    “You need to stop calling it dark-sky legislation because it is decidedly not, since it increases light pollution,” Susan Harder of Springs, a lighting designer and the New York State representative of the International Dark Sky Association, told the board. A member of board-appointed dark-sky committees in towns including Riverhead, Brookhaven, and Southampton, she said later that day that the draft legislation would allow twice as much light as that permitted by a model code that town officials have said is identical.

    “The concern is that it is very poorly conceived and drafted,” Ms. Harder said of the town’s proposal.

    Changes to the town’s outdoor lighting legislation have been contemplated since early 2010, just after Supervisor Bill Wilkinson’s administration took office.

    The law, Councilwoman Quigley said at the time, “seems burdensome.” Ms. Quigley had also expressed concerns about the adequacy of the lighting that can be installed under the law.

    At two hearings on extending the original compliance date, business owners complained about difficulty in understanding the requirements, the cost and effort involved in complying with them, and the potential that town scrutiny of their lighting plans could lead to the discovery of other items not in compliance with the town code.

    But the majority of speakers, by far, told the board that the 2006 law, the result of extensive research and public discussion, should remain in effect, and business owners be made to comply. Residential-property owners had been held to the law’s strictures immediately upon its adoption.

    After a hearing on one draft offered by Ms. Quigley, which would have relaxed restrictions and eliminated a need to bring older fixtures into compliance with new rules, drew criticism, it was back to the drawing board.

    The new proposal, still in process, comes “verbatim” from a model lighting ordinance developed jointly by the International Dark Sky Association and the Illuminating Engineering Society, Ms. Quigley said Tuesday.

    However, in a Dec. 11 letter to Supervisor Wilkinson, Leo Smith, the Northeast regional director of the International Dark Sky Association, said that “the proosed amendment substantially does not reflect the model lighting ordinance. . . .”

    Although the town code draft, like the model ordinance, contains separate rules for different lighting zones, the number of lumens (a measurement of light output) allowed in each is considerably larger in the town proposal.

    In addition to other differences, the proposed town ordinance does not address or require analysis of glare or light trespass over property lines, and, unlike the model, would allow unshielded light fixtures, and “uplight,” or light that extends above fixtures into the sky.

    In contrast to the model law, which calls for phasing out fixtures that don’t comply with the rules, the town proposal would allow anything put up prior to a new law’s adoption to remain unless other major renovations or property use changes take place.

    Ms. Quigley said recent comments on the draft town legislation by the planning director, Marguerite Wolffsohn, are yet to be discussed.

    In an e-mail, Councilwoman Quigley also pointed out that the model legislation must be tailored to address specific issues in East Hampton, such as dealing with lighting along the waterfront.

    “These properties in particular must be particularly careful about lighting, inasmuch as light reflecting off of the water can be seen from great distances,” she said, “. . . and has impacts on the life forms habitating the waters.”

    “On the one side are the concerns noted above,” she said, “and on the other side is the very real and completely opposite concern of our active and used marinas. They are typically used at all hours of the night and are in need of good lighting, and they are filled with inherent dangers such as ropes, slippery surfaces, heavy traffic, etc. That issue is thorny and cries out for a creative solution, one which I continue to pursue.”

    “What we have on the books; it’s been working,” Ms. Harder said. Legitimate concerns or problems for businesses trying to comply with the code can be addressed, she said, by allowing the Planning Department to issue variances from some of the standards in certain cases, for instance.

    The levels of overall outdoor lighting allowed by the adopted town lighting code, she said, mirror those endorsed by the Illuminating Engineering Society.

    “Our current law provides for plenty of light,” Ms. Harder told the board on Tuesday.

    But Ms. Quigley said that complaints about the current law have come from both the Planning Department and “constituents who have to deal with it.”

    “Our law . . . didn’t work,” she said. Lighting that complied with it, she asserted, “actually consumed more energy, and produced more light.”

    Even the model code is problematic, Ms. Harder said. That draft is the subject of controversy among those in the field, she said, and has not been adopted by any municipality. She said it is needlessly complex, and “has holes in it you could drive a truck through.”

    Ms. Quigley noted that work on the overhaul of the lighting code began with discussions among members of an advisory group that included Planning Department staff, business owners, and business organization representatives.

    She said she has continued to work on “how best to effectuate the goal of reduced energy consumption, increased dark sky, and a more workable and user-friendly code.”

    “It is unfortunate that that goal keeps getting lost in the rhetoric,” she added.

    Ms. Harder and Ms. Quigley also differed on Tuesday over the involvement of a well-known architect, Jacquelin Robertson, who helped design Celebration, Fla., a planned community built by the Disney company, which is Mr. Wilkinson’s former employer. Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson have said that he has served as a consultant in developing the proposed lighting code.

    Speaking to Ms. Quigley on Tuesday, Ms. Harder said that she had spoken to Mr. Robertson, and “he’s never met you nor spoken to you.”

    He met once with Mr. Wilkinson, Ms. Harder said, “and at that meeting, he said, and I quote him exactly, ‘I know nothing about lighting,’ which makes sense since architects do not study outdoor lighting — they pass it on to lighting designers.”

    Ms. Quigley said in her e-mail that, “at the suggestion of a constituent,” she and Supervisor Bill Wilkinson had met with Mr. Robertson in the supervisor’s office “well over a year ago.”

    “He was touted as an expert in planning all aspects of a community and in particular on lighting. He was an accomplished man,” she said. She did not elaborate on the discussion.

    “I’m very upset that Mr. Robertson forgot,” Ms. Quigley replied Tuesday, joking that she must not be memorable. “We sat there, the three of us, in a room for an hour and a half.”

    The East Hampton School District’s ongoing legal battle with Sandpebble Builders — a contentious fight over building contracts for the multimillion-dollar school renovations — had its day in appellate court, the school board reported at Tuesday night’s meeting, but while the court decision may have been on everyone’s minds, it was not on their lips.

    “Counsel has cautioned the board to not discuss the case,” said George Aman, who led the meeting in the absence of Laura Anker Grossman, the board president.

    When pressured by audience members to at least alert the crowd of the outcome, which is a matter of public record, Jacqueline Lowey, a board member, answered, “There were four different decisions. Two came out in our favor, two are being sent down to lower court.”

    But Stephen Angel of the law firm Esseks, Hefter, and Angel, which represents Sandpebble, said yesterday morning that three of the decisions had been in favor of Sandpebble.

    “There are still issues to be determined,” Ms. Lowey said Tuesday night, meaning that the board needed to remain silent as parts of the lawsuit are still active.

    The school board initially brought a claim against Sandpebble. The firm fired back with a suit of its own for $3.75 million, after its construction contract was canceled in favor of another builder. Over the past four years, both sides have sent accusations back and forth through legal channels, and the attorneys’ bills have mounted. At last count, the district had spent more than $2.3 million on the case.

    A personal claim by the district against the owner of Sandpebble, Victor Canseco, in an action known as “piercing the corporate veil,” was dismissed in February, but was again on the docket when appeals decisions were handed down on Dec. 20.

    During this period, there was a changing of the guard in East Hampton as the superintendent, Raymond Gualtieri, left the school district, the faces on the school board changed, and new law firms were hired.

    What remained were four separate suits sent to Brooklyn’s Second Judicial Court of Appeals, three of them designed to show that the contract with Sandpebble was “void and unenforceable,” according to court papers.

    The significant question, according to the district’s attorney, Kevin Seaman, who spoke to the board about Sandpebble in September, was, “Did Sandpebble file a notice of claim within the required three-month period? Did they bring a timely action?”

    According to the courts, it did.

    In discussing the appellate court decisions yesterday morning, Mr. Angel said, “The school board brought action saying essentially that there was no contract, if there was it was canceled, and that there was a violation of good faith. . . . The court said there was a contract, no violation of good faith, and no termination.”

     Justice Emily Pines, who presided over past contests between the district and the firm, is no longer in charge of this case, “but Judge Pines’s decisions were affirmed in the appellate court,” Mr. Angel said.

    The appeals court said that there was, indeed, a valid contract. “The issue that Sandpebble negotiated in bad faith was thrown out,” he said.

    The second appeal, in which the school district moved that Sandpebble did not file its claim in a timely manner “was no good,” according to Mr. Angel.

    The third, which was the case against Mr. Canseco personally, had been amended by the school district “to bolster its claims against Victor,” Mr. Angel said. “It was an attempted end-run” which he called “ridiculous.” That appeal was denied.

    The fourth decision involved Deborah Mansir — the former school board president who allegedly signed a contract with Sandpebble and then submitted an affidavit claiming that she was not authorized, in her position, to sign the contract in the first place. Sandpebble’s case against Ms. Mansir went in the school district’s favor.

    According to Mr. Angel, it is nearing the time for depositions and moving forward with a trial date, most likely within the next year, if possible. Calls to the school district’s legal firm of Pinks, Arbeit, and Nemeth were not returned by press time; however, Mr. Seaman, the district’s attorney, said, “Nothing really was resolved.”

    “It’s not a scorecard kind of thing,” Mr. Seaman said yesterday. “Whether the contract with Sandpebble was effectively terminated has been sent back to the lower trial court, with no summary judgment.”

    “They’re asking for over $3 million, which is 4 percent of the $80 million that the project escalated to, but they were off the job before the first brick was laid,” he said. Initially, when Sandpebble was in negotiations with the district, the school renovations were to cost in the vicinity of $18 million.

    The lower court, Mr. Seaman said, would make the determination and take a look at the damages being sought by Sandpebble.

    In other business, the board discussed the progress on plans for a consolidation study with the Springs School District, one of the terms set out in a tuition contract the two districts signed earlier this year. “Part of the tuition rider is for Springs to find a funding source for a consolidation study,” said Mr. Burns, the interim superintendent. He added that there are government efficiency study grants available to schools. “The consolidation study will be funded through external sources, and we won’t have to contribute taxpayer money,” he said.

    A discussion about a rise in enrollment at the John M. Marshall Elementary School seemed to fizzle out without a directive from the board. Gina Kraus, who will soon step up as the new elementary school principal, said that the number of students has climbed from 612 to 622 since the school year began. “And two more are coming in the next two weeks,” she said.

    Dan Hartnett, a district bilingual social worker, was officially bumped up to his new position as the assistant elementary school principal. He drew applause from the audience, including his three sons.

    “I’m really excited to work with Gina,” Mr. Hartnett said after the meeting. As to his ease with the Spanish language, he said, “It’s critical to get parent involvement to improve students’ performance. I guess that’s where I can be most useful.”

    Eric Woellhof, the facilities administrator, acknowledged that the district is following up on a complaint from Gould Street neighbors about noise from the high school’s heating and air-conditioning units. “We’ve called the architect to come and check the decibels,” said Isabel Madison, the school’s business administrator.

    “We will continue on this matter until it’s resolved,” said Alison Anderson, a school board member.

    Patricia Hope, a school board member, said she was “still troubled” by the teen-night dances held at the Lily Pond nightclub the same night as school-sanctioned activities. The school has not contacted Lily Pond or the operators of the dances. Ms. Hope suggested that the school board send a strongly worded letter from Mr. Seaman “to say, ‘We know what you’re doing.’ ”

    A woman who would identify herself only as Alyssa harangued the board about the lack of follow-up on the swastikas drawn on a photo of the soccer team in the school’s locker room. “I’m shocked that no one has been arrested for this crime,” she said. “I was told it was the fault of this board.” Mr. Burns explained that the board was not the plaintiff in the matter.

    The woman was not comforted by this. “You didn’t do one thing for the children of this community,” she said loudly. “The rabbis of this community didn’t even know about this. You’ve dropped the ball,” she said, adding that she had contacted the Anti-Defamation League. “They will be in touch with you,” she said.

    When conjuring up an image of a firefighter, a woman does not usually come to mind. The Springs Fire Department defies this stereotype with four female firefighters and seven female emergency medical technicians.

    Dale Brabant paved the way, joining the fire department 26 years ago, and becoming its first female interior firefighter about 15 years ago. “It was tough,” she said this week. “And it was easier then; it wasn’t as intense as it is now.” Ms. Brabant, 56, started off as an emergency medical technician after her children were born and decided later to become a firefighter.

    Karen Haab, 49, an interior firefighter and advanced E.M.T. who is an ambulance first lieutenant, is in her 11th year with the 80-person department. Ann Glennon, 56, an interior firefighter and former truck lieutenant, has seven years with the department. Dawn Green, 40, is the newcomer among the women firefighters, having joined up four years ago at the encouragement of a male friend.

    “I’ve never felt such incredible support,” Ms. Green said of both the men and women she volunteers with. Everyone in the department has proven to be a willing teacher. “I ask questions, and people don’t look at me like I’m an idiot. They answer me,” she said, “I’ve been treated like an equal. For me, that just blows my mind.”

    “When they see you showing up for the drills, to really learn and want to be involved, there is a whole respect there,” said Ms. Glennon, who was the department’s firefighter of the year for 2010. “I’ve never second-guessed myself, do I belong here. I’ve been very lucky with the department and the men I work with. If you put in the effort, they’re willing to teach you and back you up.”

    Ms. Green talked this week about the process of becoming first an emergency medical technician and then an interior firefighter. After being accepted into the volunteer department, she attended six months of classes, 12 hours a week to become a certified E.M.T., finishing with two required tests — one written and one to assess her practical skills. “You take blood pressure, use an automatic electronic defibrillator, and if there’s a trauma, you have to know which questions to ask,” Ms. Green said, “especially for the elderly and children.” She then trained to become an interior firefighter, learning how to go inside buildings to combat fires, how to carry hoses and conduct search and rescue for victims.

   At the Suffolk County Fire Academy in Yaphank would-be firefighters get hands-on experience. "We learned how to secure a ladder or chainsaw on the roof to ventilate it. You have to be able to bring the tools safely up to the roof and back down again, so they're not dropping on somebody," she said. They also master hose handling: "You have to know how to properly back somebody up. There's so much pressure going through it, you need someone to push on your back so that you can direct the water where to go. It's important to learn teamwork," Ms. Green said.

     Although she has never encountered sexism in the Springs Fire Department, she did see it at the fire academy. "There was one older gentleman who said to the other guys, 'Somebody go over there and help her roll that hose,' " Ms. Green recalled. "I said 'No, why are you asking him? If I'm going to take on the job of savings someone's life, I should be able to do the things that you, you, and you, are doing. If I can't do it, than I have no place being here.' "

     "I wouldn't be a firefighter if I didn't think that I couldn't take that. If I was faced with a 300 pound person, and I couldn't pull them out of a fire, then I have no right to be there," she said. That's not to say there aren't some physical limitations. "Facts are facts, men and women are built differently," she said, "But I am a very determined woman. From an emergency point, I don't see how I wouldn't be able to do it."

     Ms. Green's father contributed to her can-do attitude. When she got her license as a teenager in Michigan, she said, her dad gave her some tools, took her out in the car, broke it, and told her to fix it so she could get back home, saying " 'I'll never have a daughter who will be a stranded helpless woman on the side of the road. . . . That has pushed me through my whole life. From plumbing to fixing my own car, I can do it," she said. "He treated me as an equal, and I expect people to treat me as an equal."

     She also remembered a high school English teacher who saved her friend from choking on a hamburger. "He just walked right up, out of nowhere like some kind of angel. He did the Heimlich, and she was fine," she said. "I was in awe of this man, and I thought he could do anything."

     But she never thought she would become that "angel" to someone else. Then she realized the Springs Fire would train her, and she was hooked.

     "It's an adrenaline pump," said Ms. Glennon, who remembered holding the hose at her first fire. "The camaraderie, there's no fear at that time." She served as a truck lieutenant for a time, but with two jobs she was unable to devote the time that the position required and stepped down from that role.

     Ms. Glennon got involved with the department 13 years ago as the fire district treasurer. When her children were out of school she trained to become a firefighter. Even though she had been "petrified to hear the fire alarms," it was "Something I've always wanted to do," she said.

     "I'm not afraid now. I found strength in me I didn't know I had," Ms. Glennon said. That strength carries over to other aspects of her life. "I can accomplish a lot more than I ever thought since I joined. Something that might have been out of my reach is now not," she said.

     Ms. Haab, who was also an E.M.T. before becoming a firefighter about four years ago, said that her work in the department has focused her life. "It brings all your craziness to a halt," she said. "It opens your eyes in the world. Helping people out is an amazing feeling."

     A surgical technician at Long Island Jewish Hospital in Queens for 18 years, Ms. Haab learned to think ahead in anticipation of a doctor's next move. "That helped me out as an E.M.T., and in fires. You need to think of the next step, and if everything is going smoothly," she said. In a life-threatening situation, this is crucial. "When you're in a fire, you have to protect yourself. There's no difference between women and men." Even so, she said "The men do protect the women a little bit. If we're first on the hose, they back us up." The gear alone weighs 75 pounds, Ms. Haab said, "It's a lot of weight that you have to carry." She exercises four times a week to stay in shape. "We help each other out, and you just pray that you have someone really good behind you."

     Ms. Haab runs her own property management business and is at the firehouse four days a week. "It's a lot of work, and keeps us out of trouble," she said.

     "Everybody works so hard and gives so much to the fire department," Ms. Green said. "It's really nice to see a community that pulls together so well."

     She stressed that more volunteers are needed. "I don't think people realize the amount of time we put in." She responds as both an E.M.T. and a firefighter, and is on call from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for seven days on a rotating weekly shift. There are also house committees, pancake breakfasts, and additional work as the department secretary.

     Regardless of the time commitment, Ms. Green said she feels "Blessed and honored to be part of the department. I'm not from here, I don't have family here; I'm a single mom with two teenage kids. And I've felt like family from the people out here. It's something very unique."

     Ms. Haab enjoys hearing people's reactions when she tells them about her "hobby."

     "It's a wonderful feeling, they say, 'Really, you're a firefighter?' " Her reply: "Yeah, we can do it, anyone can do it. As women, we should be very proud of what we do."

East Hampton Town police have released the name of a man who died Wednesday afternoon after driving his car over the edge of the bulkhead at the commercial dock on Gann Road and into the cold water of Three Mile Harbor.

He was Halsey L. Dickinson Jr., 90, an East Hampton resident. According to a Thursday press release from East Hampton Town police, Mr. Dickinson crashed his 2004 Subaru through a piling at the edge of the parking lot before it splashed into the water.

An emergency response included the East Hampton Town Police Department and its dive team and marine patrol, local fire departments, East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad, the United States Coast Guard, and a Suffolk County Police helicopter.

Mr. Dickinson's body was recovered from the submerged vehicle at approximately 4 p.m. East Hampton Town Police were able to remove the vehicle, and will conduct a mechanical inspection.

An investigation of the incident is underway by the East Hampton Town Police Department with the Suffolk County Medical Examiners office.

    The Ross School community was rocked as the academic year resumed this week by news that three of its top administrators will be leaving. A Dec. 16 missive from Courtney Sale Ross, the private school’s founder, to parents and faculty bid adieu to Michele Claeys, the head of school, announcing that she will leave at the end of the school year.

    Only two weeks later, two further resignations — that of Bill O’Hearn, the Middle School director, and his wife, Andi O’Hearn, director of college counseling and enrollment management, were revealed. The school, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, has campuses in East Hampton and Bridgehampton.

    “It is with great appreciation and complete understanding that the Ross Institute board of trustees accepts the resignation of Michele Claeys,” the letter from Ms. Ross read. “We were recently informed of her resignation and we support Michele’s decision to step down from this important leadership role in order to pursue other opportunities, including those here at Ross Institute.”

     Ms. Claeys has been with the Ross School for 16 years in many capacities, and became head of school four years ago. The school’s institute is devoted to the concept of global education and to spreading the school’s model to public schools.

    On New Year’s Day, a letter was e-mailed to Ross parents, faculty, and staff from Ms. Claeys, thanking Bill and Andi O’Hearn “for their many years of service and longstanding commitment to Ross School.” The couple had been offered, the e-mail said, “the opportunity of a lifetime to work in China.” Their resignations will also be effective at the end of the school year.

    “While Ross School has blossomed as an educational institution, I, too, have grown and developed as an educator and school leader in my 16 years here, and I am ready for a new challenge,” Ms. Claeys said when reached yesterday.

    “While I am considering numerous opportunities, I am very committed to the East End and Ross and am delighted that Ross Institute has asked me to stay on in a new role, the details of which are being worked out. It is a vibrant institution doing critically important educational work at Ross School and across the globe.”

    In their own letter to the Ross School community, the O’Hearns wrote, “We have been offered an opportunity to work together as senior administrators in Beijing, China, at the Beijing City International School.”

    “If not for our time at Ross, we do not believe that we would have been able to appreciate this endeavor to the extent that we do. It is because of our collective education at Ross that we approach this move with an appreciation of the importance a cultural understanding of China will be to [our daughter] Reilly as she enters the future work force.”

    “We see this as an opportunity that does not come often in life; however, we will leave Ross with heavy hearts as we both genuinely believe in the curriculum, the faculty, and in Courtney Ross.” 

    The school held a parents association meeting yesterday with Lower School parents and faculty to discuss the search for a new head. Another meeting is scheduled for this morning for the Middle School, along with a schoolwide meeting on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. Jennifer Chidsey, the Manhattan-based chief operating officer of the Ross Institute, will attend today’s meeting.

    After 17 years roasting and serving  coffee from their shop in Sag Harbor, the proprietors of Java Nation were notified by certified letter on Dec. 9 that they must vacate their rented premises by Jan. 31. The reasons behind the unexpected news are not fully known, although the space will, in the future, be rented by a local businessman associated with Collette Designer Consignments, a neighboring boutique in the Shopping Cove off Main Street.

    The Sag Harbor Express ignited something of an online firestorm when it reported two days before Christmas that the new tenant will create another coffee shop in the space, gutting it and renovating it to create what the current tenant was quoted as calling “a new upscale environment.”

    According to Andres Bedini, who runs Java Nation with his wife, Cheryl, the cove’s landlord, Bruce Slovin, has offered little by way of explanation. The Bedinis, who have had a month-to-month arrangement for the last four years of their long run, say they were assured by Mr. Slovin, “If you pay, you stay.” They say they have paid, but were not offered the chance to stay. They added that the business celebrated its busiest summer, fall, and holiday season on record; they are disappointed that they have only a few weeks to find an alternative location.

    The Bedinis say they believed they had maintained a good landlord-tenant relationship over the years, even having employed members of Mr. Slovin’s family. The only negative comment the couple said they could recall from Mr. Slovin was when, they claim, he remarked on the clientele he noticed during a visit when a few landscapers had stopped in for coffee. 

    Tisha Collette, who was elsewhere reported to be the holder of the new lease, said on Tuesday that there has been a lot of misinformation circulating, and that she has received hate mail as a result. She clarified that the new tenant is her husband, Shane Dyckman, who negotiated the rental agreement after learning that the landlord was intent on removing Java Nation. She said that Mr. Slovin had previously been in negotiations with another coffee company, based in New York City.

    In online comments posted on New Year’s Eve on The Sag Harbor Express’s Web site, Mr. Dyckman said that the anger directed at him and his wife is misplaced and that he is not a big-city interloper, as some may have inferred. He has lived in Sag Harbor his whole life, volunteering as a firefighter, operating a surf school, and raising children. He added that he and his wife employ more than two dozen residents through their various businesses.

    In addition to running Flying Point Surf School and Collette Designer Consignment, the couple have recently opened a boutique on Hampton Road in Southampton that offers consignment home furnishings and men’s clothing.

    Ms. Collette has had issues with the aroma and residue of coffee beans roasting that drifts on the air out of Java Nation. On Columbus Day weekend, she called the police about the situation, but there was no apparent course of legal action. The Bedinis say they tried to accommodate Ms. Collette by roasting off- hours whenever possible, but that the high demand from their wholesale customers — including local restaurants such as Tutto il Giorno, Dockside, Armand’s, and Breadzilla — sometimes made this impossible.

    “We are not doing anything wrong,” Ms. Bedini said. “We are meticulous about the maintenance of the roaster. It was made in California with the strongest E.P.A. standards, and we have never failed any inspection.”

    The backbone of Java Nation’s success, she said, is roasting, not serving lattes and espressos. “It is the reason our coffee is so good,” she said. “It is the reason people come here, and it is the mainstay of our business. Roasting also helps to manage the fluctuations in coffee prices.” Ms. Bedini glanced at the large menu above and added, “In 17 years, the coffee price has only gone up 60 cents.”

    Tuesday’s interview with Ms. Bedini was interrupted frequently by customers who wanted to voice their dismay. “I don’t want them to go,” said Mike Stern. “I have been coming here since I was 5 years old. I am getting choked up, it sucks.” Ms. Bedini greeted her customers by their first names. One sat knitting, another taught a child about planets on a computer; a police officer stopped in for his daily cup.

    John Monteleone, one habitué, expressed his opinion that the conflict was a result of classism. “Sag Harbor was a passionate town of artists,” he said. “It’s disgusting that landlords and businesses think they can buy it up and throw us out. People forget what founded this town. This business took years to build. . . .”

    What now? “We will go to another space, ideally in Sag Harbor, and roast coffee,” Ms. Bedini said.

    And, indeed — with the recent closings of Whalers Cleaners & Tailors, Vincenzo’s Pizza, Bikehampton, and other longtime stalwarts — the vacancy rate along Main Streetis at an all-time high. “There are plenty of spaces available,” she said. “We know exactly what we are doing.”