After more than 42 years in the East Hampton Town Police Department, Lt. Francis Mott will retire from the force on Saturday with the distinction of being the town’s longest serving officer to date.

    Since joining the force right out of high school in July of 1969, “I don’t remember a bad day,” Lieutenant Mott said Monday. He left the force only when drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War from 1971 to ’72, when he served as a military police officer, based at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

    When Lieutenant Mott was given a proclamation by the East Hampton Town Board at a meeting on Dec. 15, fellow police officers lined the walls of the Town Hall meeting room to honor him. Among his many awards, honors, and recognitions over the years, he was named Top Cop in 1977, 1982, and 2002. However, the true testament to his career, according to Lieutenant Mott, will be the success of those he has trained to follow in his footsteps. He said he hopes that those he has mentored and trained will hold themselves to the higher-than-expected standards that he always tried to, and “thinks he did.”

    A volunteer fireman, he was also chief of the East Hampton Fire Department from 1999 to 2001.

    Lieutenant Mott was a police sergeant for 17 years. His final post has been as commander of the department’s Montauk Precinct, where he has also supervised the police scuba team, of which he was a charter member. The dive team started in 1980 under then-chief Tom Scott. Before that, Lieutenant Mott said, the department relied on the boats of local fishermen when they could not wait for assistance from the Suffolk County police.

    Lieutenant Mott does not have firm plans for the future, but he will take the winter months to figure it out. His wife, Wendy, will remain employed by Carol Mercer at the Secret Garden, and his two daughters, Emily Dwyer and Patsy Gould, live nearby. He has a 1-year-old granddaughter, Lilian, via Ms. Gould, who will likely help to keep him occupied during any downtime. Also on the agenda may be an opportunity to dive somewhere with more than the 15 feet of visibility that local waters have allowed.

    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.”

    Large shad, their trunks corkscrewing skyward, quartz crystals sprouting from lichen-covered glacial erratics, tight stands of tupelos, the swamp-loving tree, large oaks and silver-barked beech overseeing their proprietary clearings, dense networks of denuded limbs in the surrounding understory, kettle holes, homes to sleeping newts and salamanders, canopies of hollies arching over the trail at points — are what hikers have come to expect from a winter afternoon spent on many of Montauk’s trails.

    Along with these wonders, trails recently cut within the 200-acre Amsterdam Beach Preserve have brought into view several natural sanctuaries, large depressions, tree-covered glacial slumps that fall away from the trail in places to reveal the hills and dales that in days of old were often bare but for waves of maritime grass.

    In the unseasonable warmth of New Year’s Day, the meandering Amsterdam Beach trails were alternately sunlit and tree-shadow dappled. Coats were shed, caps removed.

    The preserve, an area of what has long been referred to as the Montauk Moorlands, was created starting in 2006 by the Nature Conservancy, with money from town, county, state, and federal governments. The preserve grew in size two years later when Dick Cavett sold 77 acres of contiguous land to the Conservancy.

    The rolling expanse stretches from Ranch Road at Indian Field on the east to the Montauk Association houses (seven “cottages” designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White in the 1880s) to the west. It is bordered on the north by Montauk Highway and extends southward to the Atlantic Ocean.

    Speaking of which, when following the slow meander to the south, a hiker is tantalized by glimpses of the blue briny through the trees when the trail rises to the surface of the bramble. Then, it’s back down again into the holly and up again for a peek at the ocean before heading below on a switchback until finally hikers are delivered to the bluffs where they meet a vast panorama. To the east is the Montauk Lighthouse with Block Island in the distance. To the west the grand association houses seem to float in a rolling sea of gray bramble. Before you, the sea stretches Hampton Trails Preservation Society has honchoed the trail work with help from state park employees and a legion of volunteers. Mapping the trails began last winter when Scott Wilson and Andy Gates from the town’s Department of Land Acquisition and Management crawled around the preserve with global-positioning-system devices seeking higher, trail-worthy ground.

    “A lot of it is perched wetland,” Mr. Poveromo said on Tuesday by cellphone as he and volunteers continued to remove stumps from the trail. “We flagged their GPS points and got in there with chain saws and axes. There are not a lot of alternative routes.”

    Clearing the trails mapped by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Gates began in earnest in early November. “We have been coming back every Tuesday and alternate Saturdays and Sundays. There’s been six to eight people every day,” Mr. Poveromo said, adding that the few bridges and boardwalks needed to traverse wet spots would be built with money included in the town’s 2012 budget.

    The Amsterdam Beach trail system is composed of the new trails that join much older ones whose derivation was a mystery, Mr. Poveromo said.

    “Did you see the holly arbor?” he asked. “This place is something you don’t find anywhere else. To see this, you have to be here. It’s not even work,” he said of the trail clearing. “It’s a labor of love.”

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals wrapped up the year with a decision that should allow for construction of an approved convenience store on North Main Street in East Hampton and another that gives retroactive approval to a boardwalk through the Atlantic Double Dunes in Amagansett.

    In a unanimous vote, the board agreed to uphold the certificate of occupancy for 148 North Main Street issued in March by Tom Preiato. The C of O, which allows for a convenience store to share the Empire gas station property, was challenged by a neighbor, Jeffrey Slonim. He claimed that East Hampton Town Code does not allow for a retail store to occupy the same property as a filling station, and said that Mr. Preiato’s certificate of occupancy included former retail uses on the property that been abandoned. He also said that the new certificate of occupancy mistakenly allowed for uses that were not previously  permitted on the site.

    Mr. Preiato said the retail use on the site pre-existed the town’s prohibition on retail stores sharing property with filling stations; nevertheless, he also characterized the gas pumps there as an accessory use rather than as a filling station as defined in town code.

    “I did not see any reason myself to vacate his decision,” Don Cirillo, the board’s vice chairman, said Tuesday. “I see this mainly as a timeline issue. It’s all going to hinge on dates, and if it’s applicable at those times. Was it pre-existing and not subject to these regulations? Mr. Preiato says yes.”

    The board had asked Carl Irace, a deputy town attorney, to research what existed on the property in December 1994, when the town code was amended to prohibit a retail use on the same site as a filling station. Mr. Irace said Tuesday that his review of the public files on the property did not reveal anything beyond the information the board already had in hand. He did, however, address one issue that he said was a “reoccurring mistake throughout the record.” The date of the change in the town code was December 1984, not 10 years later as previously thought. “In that 1984 overhaul of the town zoning code, they added all of these definitions. A review of that showed the definition of a filling station was merely the same,” he said.

    Among the businesses occupying the property in 1984 were a bait shop and a car rental business. There was some uncertainty as to whether a car rental business constituted a retail use in accordance with the code in 1984. “It’s probably more relevant to discuss what happened to that bait shop over time,” said Alex Walter, a board member. “The 1984 bait shop was replaced by Iron Works, then a garden shop, and in 1991 the barber shop came in. What was between ’84 and ’91? We don’t know the years or the sequence.”

    Mr. Slonim’s attorney, Michael Walsh, had pointed out previously that town code defines a barbershop as a “personal service shop.”

    Mr. Cirillo questioned whether there was any retail use on the site in 1984. “Now the question for me, to us, is whether or not we have a way to say that that was abandoned? I don’t see that from the record. I see transitions from one business to another,” he said.

    Mr. Irace directed the board to ponder whether the barbershop counts as a pre-existing, nonconforming retail use, as indicated in a memo from Mr. Preiato to John Lycke, a former planning board chairman. Lee White, a Z.B.A. board member, offered his understanding of maintaining previous use: “The law is pretty low for keeping pre-existing nonconforming alive,” said Mr. White.

    “If we can establish when the rules changed, and there was retail there, is the board within its rights to say the barbershop, which might sell hair products, is not retail?” Mr. Cirillo asked. “I find it hard to vacate that, I have no evidence to show they didn’t do it.”

    “These particular structures have been in town and have always served a particular use. The gas station was there, these two particular buildings were there. In the ’80s it was a lot looser for retail businesses or neighborhood businesses. What transpired in these buildings was probably considered a retail use then. I’m just going by what I can say about the past,” said Philip Gamble, the board’s chairman.

    After much discussion, the board ultimately decided that a retail use had been pre-existing on the property.

    The zoning board’s decision appears to clear the way for the S&A Petroleum Group Inc., which owns the property, to proceed with plans for a new convenience store there. The company received town planning board approval for the store in October 2010.

    In a phone interview yesterday, Mr. Slonim said he plans to appeal the decision. “I feel the code is extremely clear that a beauty salon and barbershop are not a retail store.”

    The board also voted unanimously to allow a mahogany boardwalk to remain on Nature Conservancy property in the Atlantic Double Dunes in Amagansett.

    The 620-foot long walkway had been built by Windsor Digital Studio and Larry Gagosian, owners of two neighboring properties, with the Nature Conservancy’s nod of approval. At a hearing on Dec. 6, there were questions as to who exactly had permission to build the walkway and whether it was a replacement of one that existed there previously.

    Jonathan Sobel, who owns property to the west of the Nature Conservancy land, opposed the boardwalk and claimed it was not in accordance with the deeds granting the land to the Nature Conservancy or with town code, which protects the beach habitat.

    “Both parties at end of night said, ‘We don’t know when it was constructed.’ If it was constructed after 1984, no one in the town cited them for construction of this. You have to assume, you can’t say one way or another, both parties said it’s not our burden; it’s their burden,” said Mr. Walter.

    Mr. Sobel had said that if a natural resources permit was granted for the walkway there would be a proliferation of boardwalks in the area. “I don’t know if you can grant that conclusion,” Mr. Walter said. “Maybe there would be. Possibility there would be. I can’t agree with that assumption. There are five properties using this one boardwalk. . . . We should have structures that people should use for multiple properties.” Larry Penny, the town’s natural resources director, said that earlier aerial photographs did not show a wood walkway in that location, but the Nature Conservancy’s attorney, Richard Whalen, claimed that the walkway could have been obscured by sand.

    “If you look at the aerial photos, back to ’38, you’ll see the walkways were well-established at that time. People used it for access to the beach, in this instance, it was used by multiple property owners. I believe this particular structure was in place, and the way it was constructed, it could be obscured by sand. I believe it was pre-existing,” said Mr. Gamble.

    “They have rights to an easement, they could do this 10 feet wide if they wanted,” Mr. Cirillo said. “It was always the intention of the people who owned the property originally that the Nature Conservancy could use it.”

    A proposal to regulate boat fueling at town-owned docks was the subject of an East Hampton Town Board hearing last Thursday. Setting guidelines for, or even banning, diesel deliveries by truck has been discussed for several years, but after the town’s insurance provider expressed concerns about the town’s liability should a spill or accident occur, the town board drafted legislation covering the issue.

    The proposed law would bar fueling over town docks in Montauk, where there are private marinas with fuel pumps that all kinds of boats can access, but would allow fueling from trucks at the town’s Gann Road commercial dock in Three Mile Harbor, where larger boats with deeper drafts cannot get to marinas’ docks.

    If a “legitimate liability and environmental concern exists” in Montauk, then wouldn’t those concerns apply to fueling at Three Mile Harbor, too? asked David Buda, a speaker.

    Zachary Cohen, who lost his bid for town supervisor by 15 votes this fall, suggested allowing commercial fishermen in Montauk to buy fuel from trucks at the town docks. The savings, and faster pumping from trucks, could help them, he said. “They pay to have a slip at the commercial dock,” he said, “but they can’t get fuel there.”

    Carl Darenberg, an owner of the Montauk Marine Basin, addressed the issue of fueling from trucks in general. While he said he has 200 feet of boom on hand at the marina to contain a spill should one occur, trucks cannot carry enough boom to do the job. Should something go wrong, dispensing fuel from a fixed pump, he said, provides additional safeguards, such as the ability to cut the fuel source off from an office computer.

    According to Richard Etzel, who also spoke at the hearing, Riverhead and Southold Towns both completely prohibit fueling from trucks. He questioned the East Hampton Town fire marshal’s position on the issue.

    Lynn Mendelman, who is an East Hampton Town trustee but said she was speaking as an owner of marinas on Three Mile Harbor, suggested that if the town board was to allow a “commercial” use of the town’s commercial boat dock at Gann Road, such as fueling, it should consider other uses, such as “the offloading of goods and tourists into Springs.”

    Another hearing held last Thursday night concerned some proposed changes to the home improvement contractors’ licensing law.

    “We assembled a group of contractors that represented each of the trades,” Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said, in describing how the revisions came about.

    “We would like to have participated in the discussions,” said Pat Trunzo, the chairman of the East End chapter of the Long Island Builders Institute,

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley apologized, saying she was unaware of the organization’s local chapter.

    “I knew. But I apologize,” Mr. Wilkinson said, adding that he felt those who participated in the discussions leading to the legislation’s overhaul were “a good cross-section.”

    The board agreed to Mr. Trunzo’s request to keep the hearing open so his group could formally submit comments. He raised several initial issues of concern, however, including the proposal to drop a requirement that contractors take five hours of continuing education courses annually. It is important to keep up with “building science,” including energy efficiency initiatives, Mr. Trunzo said, which “leads to protection of consumers.”

     Another builder, Wally Klughers, told the board that he disagreed with exempting from the licensing requirement those whose annual income from contracting jobs is less that $10,000.

Napeague Reserve

    Although last Thursday’s agenda also included a hearing on the removal of three Napeague reserved areas totaling some 16 acres from the list of town nature preserves, board members said during the meeting that they were unfamiliar with the circumstances surrounding the parcels.

    The land, which includes an oceanfront lot, was to have been deeded to the town according to the terms of the Beach Plum Park subdivision approval. Apparently a change in ownership of the entire subdivision, due to a foreclosure, included the parcels, and a title search commissioned by the town board last spring concluded they are not legally in town ownership.

    Two attorneys who commented at the hearing — Mr. Buda, a Springs resident who researched the property history, and Richard Whalen, a former town attorney who is a member of the town’s nature preserve committee — said the board should not delete the land from the nature preserve list, in order to better preserve the town’s ownership rights, which could be pursued through a “quiet title” procedure.

    Ms. Quigley said that though “the board should not unilaterally abandon . . . rights,” she believed that the lots should not retain nature preserve status, as only property the town owns can be so designated.

    Mr. Whalen said one reserved lot contains an old beach access road once used by haulseiners, who called it Napeague Station Road, in reference to a life saving station that was nearby.

    He noted that the legal procedure followed when property is to be deeded to the town pursuant to a planning board approval does not require title certification to be submitted immediately. Therefore, he said, “If the town folds on these things, then you endanger, probably, hundreds of these things. So there’s the underlying principle.”

    “Go back to whoever got the property in foreclosure, and tell them, we’d like a deed to the property,” he told the board.

    “We look forward to your actions in keeping this in the town’s hands,” said David Lys, who spoke on behalf of the group Citizens for Access Rights, formed in response to a private claim on ocean beach access on Napeague.

    “We are absolutely in accord,” Ms. Quigley said. “It’s town property. We don’t want to lose town property.” After discussing the topic at a subsequent meeting on Tuesday, the board agreed to leave the properties in nature preserve status.

    Roads in a subdivision off Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton that are not town property were the subject of another hearing last Thursday night.

    Using fees assigned to each property owner, the private roads were to have been improved bit by bit as the neighborhood developed and then taken into the public highway system, under East Hampton Town’s urban renewal plan.

    Flaws in the outcome of that plan, adopted in the 1970s, have long been a topic of discussion, as many of the roads never reached town highway specifications, leaving people living along them without the benefit of services such as snowplowing.

    After some help from New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., the town won the right to establish road improvement districts, a special tax district through which the cost of fixing the roads in a certain urban renewal area can be apportioned among the people living there. Before doing so, however, the town board has vowed to hold a vote of those affected.

    Several who spoke at last week’s hearing supported the idea, saying it was the only way to deal with potholed, substandard roads. In letters sent to the town, two families “expressed dismay” about the cost, said Tom Talmage, the town engineer. Individual tax assessments would vary depending on fees already paid, but could be paid over a number of years.

    One speaker, who said he owns multiple lots in the area, said the project could cost him $50,000 or $60,000 a year, and that he would be forced to sell his land.

    Another speaker, who said he has built numerous houses in the area and paid over $100,000 already for road improvements, said most of the people that would be burdened by the plan “are blue collar workers.” A murmur of protest went through the room at his assessment of the residents. “I don’t think it’s fair. I’m terribly against it,” he said, adding that he would circulate a petition protesting the district. The hearing record is open for comments through Sunday.

    During another brief hearing last Thursday, two residents of the area near Damark’s Deli in East Hampton, commented on a proposal to make Soak Hides Road, now one way along its length, a two-way thoroughfare for the first 170 feet from its intersection with Three Mile Harbor Road.

    In reviewing a site-plan application from Damark’s, the planning board had asked the town board to consider the change to the road. A proposal calls for routing traffic out of a parking area behind Damark’s onto Soak Hides, from which it can turn onto Three Mile Harbor Road.

    The two residents said the change would make the area less safe, causing dangerous traffic conditions at the intersection.

    Also last Thursday, two speakers weighed in on the proposed 10-year extension of the town’s franchise agreement with Cablevision. The contract allows Cablevision to place its cables and other equipment along town rights of way in exchange for annual payments and other consideration. A previous 10-year agreement expired in February of this year, and negotiations have been ongoing.

    Joan Gilroy, Cablevision’s director of government affairs, provided an overview of Cablevision’s performance in the town.

    Martin Drew, a member of a town Cablevision committee, questioned why bi-annual joint reviews of Cablevision’s performance, as called for under the previous contract, have not taken place. Town Councilwoman Julia Prince and Ms. Gilroy said that informal discussions had taken place.

    Katie Casey said that “10 years is a long time,” and suggested that the town could have made certain issues affecting consumers — for example, the need to lease a cable box from Cablevision in order to access certain channels — points of negotiation. “People are being held hostage,” she said of the company, the only cable provider in town. Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said he had approached one of Cablevision’s competitors, Verizon FIOS, and that the company did not want to make the investment needed to provide service here. The lack of other cable providers in the town, Ms. Quigley said, “puts us in a spot where we don’t have much negotiating power.” The franchise agreement, Ms. Gilroy said, is not exclusive, and would allow another company to set up shop if they so chose.

    On Tuesday, the town board voted to approve the contract.

    A little pasta dinner can go a long way. The Star of the East Lodge No. 843 presented the Rev. Steven E. Howarth of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church with a check for $8,729 at the Masons’ Toys for Tots Christmas party on Friday. The group had held a spaghetti-and-meatballs fund-raiser at the Amagansett Firehouse on Nov. 19 to help rebuild the church’s Scoville Hall, which was destroyed by fire on Oct. 15. The Masons were one of several community groups that used the hall for meetings.

    “We presold 300 tickets, and then we had 225 walk-in tickets, and people donated money,” Alex Walter, a lodge member, said this week. “It was a great community response.” About 375 dinners were served, he said. “There was an influx of people overflowing the lobby. People were willing to wait a half-hour to eat. It didn’t seem to matter, everyone seemed to want to be there.”

    “The Southampton local lodge is allowing us to use their place at no cost,” Mr. Walter said. “That just shows you that the entire community really rallies to anyone who is hurt in some sort of catastrophe.” The Masons lost furniture, fixtures, and memorabilia in the fire. “We saved a Bible we had since 1903, which also made it through a fire in 1978, when the lodge was housed over the old V.F.W.”

    “They were wonderful,” he said of the Amagansett Fire Department. “We tried to give them a donation for use of the [firehouse] that evening, and they wouldn’t take it from us. They should be thanked.”

    “The outpouring of support at that dinner was so heartwarming,” Mr. Howarth said. “It was standing room only at the firehouse, with people from various parts of the community and beyond our community. They made it a point to say, ‘We’re here because we want to be supportive.’ And that was just so encouraging.”

    In addition to what came in at the fund-raiser, “We’ve received a surprising amount of contributions from the community, which was unsolicited,” Mr. Howarth said. “It started with a community member walking up to me and handing me $1,000 cash on the day of the fire. We’ve been receiving checks ever since.”

    One donation made in the memory of the Rev. Clarence Scoville, whom the hall is named for, came from his grandson. A number of checks have come from members of the Alcoholics Anonymous group that held meetings in the hall.

    “It’s one of the blessings that come out of a tragedy like this,” Mr. Howarth said. “You realize, one, what the ministry of the church has meant to the community, and two, what a warm, caring community we are fortunate enough to live in.”

    As for the restoration plans, the church is still waiting to reach a settlement with the insurance company. “We’ve done our part. It’s not a quick process, but we can’t go any further until then,” Mr. Howarth said. The donation from the Masons will go directly into rebuilding.

    The insurance money “will not be sufficient to build a new building, especially one that will meet the needs of the community for the 21st century,” he said. “In order to rebuild something that would work for the various community groups, we’re going to need more money than the insurance settlement.”

    “We’re conscious of the fact that there is very little community meeting space here in Amagansett. We feel like it’s our responsibility to help meet that need for groups such as A.A., the Masonic Lodge, the food pantry, and the Hispanic Church of the Nazarene, who had worshipped there in the hall the last five years,” he said. “We’re looking to fund-raising, and the Masons’ dinner was a great first step to that.”

    At the Masons’ Toys for Tots party, which was held at a member’s house, the toys taken in will be distributed to families in East Hampton Town, Tim Walters, master of the lodge, said. The lodge members also collected $1,500 among themselves for a couple of local families.

    The purpose of a community forum at the Springs School — held on Dec. 14 and attended by parents, teachers, and taxpayers — was to work with Raymond Fell of the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services, who has been hired by the district to search for a superintendent to replace the departing Michael Hartner, and come up with a short list of what is most important in a candidate. But the evening, which lasted three hours, also brought up a philosophical question: Does Springs need a full-time superintendent at all?

    Pat Brabant, a parent of a child in the school, posed the question to Mr. Fell: “We have a $22-million budget and almost 1,000 kids. What do you think we need?” Mr. Fell has helped more than a dozen school districts in Suffolk in their quests for new superintendents.

    “I can’t answer that,” Mr. Fell said. “Only you can answer that question. What do you need in this district to best provide the best education for the kids?”

    Other administrative models were explored, besides the existing full-time superintendent, full-time principal model. One of the most popular seemed to be the model of a full-time principal-superintendent, similar to Jack Perna’s position in Montauk, with the addition of a full-time assistant principal. Another was the possibility of hiring a part-time superintendent, preferably a retired school administrator who lives in the area.

    There was some talk of Eric Casale, who has been the school principal for eight years, taking over both jobs. When several members of the audience turned and asked Mr. Casale directly if he had the proper certification to become a superintendent, the normally outgoing principal offered a barely perceptible nod.

    No board members were present, but Mr. Fell, who had met with the board earlier, said that they were considering changing the current administrative model.

    Some in the audience also said that it would be hard to choose a model without a cost breakdown. “You know what you’re paying for two people,” Mr. Fell said. “The question is, can you get two and a half people for less?”

    In coming up with a punch list of important qualities in a superintendent, some of the suggestions included a passion for education, a knowledge of how to keep programs in a fiscally challenged environment, an ability to settle employee contracts, political savvy, strong fiscal management experience, and an awareness of the diversity of the school population.

    A good relationship with East Hampton High School would be a big selling point, too. “We pay millions to send kids from Springs to the high school,” said Deb Foster, a former East Hampton Town councilwoman and a teacher for many years. “But we have no representation there.” Michelle Grant, a school parent, concurred. “It would be important to have a voice in the high school,” she said.

    Raymond Wojtusiak, a teacher, brought up the challenges the district is facing. “We’re a working-class neighborhood,” he said. “We’re dealing with a growing population without a change in the tax base. New houses aren’t being built, there’s just more people living here year round or moving into the community. We’re cash-strapped. With the tax cap coming up, we need someone who is going to know how to deal with it.” He pointed out that a recent conference showed that Springs has six times the population density of any other South Fork district.

    “The impression of Springs is that it is very rich,” said Mr. Fell, who seemed surprised by the numbers. “You probably wouldn’t be eligible for a lot of grant money — the district looks rich on paper.”

    It was agreed that someone who has been an administrator in a similar situation — a fiscally challenged but dynamic and artistic rural community — would be welcomed.

    Carol Saxe Buda, who lives in the hamlet, talked about the importance of having a superintendent capable of repairing the divide that exists in the community. Budget meetings at the school have been contentious in the past, with many taxpayers feeling that their concerns have not been acknowledged. “It’s not a good situation right now,” she said. “It shouldn’t be parents versus the community. We all believe in excellence in education.”

    Kristy LaMonda, a teacher at the school, suggested the wording: “The ability to educate the community about its resources and its needs and to repair the polarization that has occurred within disparate groups.”

    Mr. Fell said that after a suitable model was chosen, the board would place ads in trade magazines, along with possibly Newsday or The New York Times, and come up with a list of candidates.

    A new superintendent is expected to start on July 1.

    Montaukers and others traveling to see the Montauk Lighthouse in its Christmas finery might have noticed trucks and machinery at work near Deep Hollow Ranch, where state, county, and town employees, with the help of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, are opening up old trails and blazing new ones through the 200-acre Amsterdam Beach Preserve.

    The large public preserve stretches from Montauk Highway to the ocean and from the Montauk Association houses on the west to the dirt Ranch Road at Deep Hollow.

    The State Department of Parks is not only working on the preserve’s trails but is expected to complete a small parking area at Ranch Road’s intersection with Montauk Highway in January. In addition, the county plans to put up a kiosk for trail maps.

    According to Scott Wilson, director of the town’s Department of Land Acquisition and Management, the trails should be ready by spring.

    “The trails preservation group has had six or eight volunteers helping us. There had been one main trail that had grown over, over time. It has been rerouted out of wetlands. It now affords more views. It’s really half trail, half hike, with uphills and downhills and over small streams. This has been a long time coming. We’ve been planning it for about a year,” Mr. Wilson said yesterday.  

    The 200-acre preserve grew out of two land acquisitions. It was originally purchased by the state, Suffolk County, and the town, using money from the community preservation fund in 2005. In 2008, Dick Cavett, who lives in the Association area, donated an additional 122 acres.  

    Medical professionals in Haiti are still dealing with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck nearly two years ago, and two East Hampton women recently spent a week at hospitals outside of Port-au-Prince to help caregivers learn new ways to provide a little T.L.C. not only to others, but to themselves.

    Liz Lattuga and Mitten Wainwright attend the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy program, offered by Donna Karan’s Urban Zen Foundation in New York City. The yearlong therapy program, one of a number of initiatives sponsored by the foundation, brings students together one weekend a month at the Manhattan center for training in yoga, nutrition, and “contemplative care” such as meditation, use of essential oils, or aromatherapy, and Reiki.

    According to practitioners, these alternative modalities can help improve symptoms of illness such as pain, anxiety, nausea, insomnia, constipation, and exhaustion, as well as general well-being and health.

    (Of Reiki, an energy practice originally developed in Japan, Ms. Lattuga said: “The way I explain it is as a healing technique that works to balance your body. When your body’s balanced, you’re more relaxed, and it promotes healing.”)

    “A large part of the program is to practice self-care,” Ms. Wainwright said in a recent interview. “You can’t help others if you can’t take care of yourself.”

    She and Ms. Lattuga were among the first small group of students carrying the teachings to Haiti. Others will travel there biweekly through March. Ms. Wainwright is a yoga teacher at various local studios, including Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, which is run by Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman Yee, who serve as co-directors, with Ms. Karan (the fashion designer), of the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy program.

    More than 80 students have graduated from the program as integrative therapists, so far. Ms. Karan’s desire to provide training to health-care workers in a variety of therapies reportedly grew from the experiences of her husband, Stephan Weiss, who died of lung cancer. Mr. Weiss benefited from the use of Eastern modalities in addition to his traditional, Western-medicine treatment, and had asked his wife to take care of the nurses who had cared for him.

    This year, Ms. Karan partnered with the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future to offer scholarships to nurses to attend the program. Ms. Lattuga was the recipient of one of the four awarded this year.    

    Beyond the weekend sessions in the city, students are expected to continue the meditation, breath work, and other practices at home. “It’s amazing, and it’s transformed me,” Ms. Lattuga said

    A nurse for 30 years, she works in the ambulatory surgery department at South­ampton Hospital’s Ellen Hermanson Breast Center and at the hospital’s dialysis center in Hampton Bays.

    She has also served at Memorial Sloan- ­Continued from A1

Kettering and St. Vincent’s Hospitals in Manhattan, in community health and hospice settings, in occupational health centers on Wall Street, and in the Southampton Hospital emergency room.

    Two graduates of the integrative therapy program have been practicing at Southampton Hospital. Others have brought the techniques to Montefiore and Beth Israel Hospitals, and the University of California at Los Angeles.

    “I would see them with the patients before surgery,” Ms. Lattuga said. “[The patients] were so much calmer.” She applied for the scholarship program the  day after first hearing of it, submitting a video documenting her daily routine as a nurse.

    “Nursing has always been in my blood,” she said. “Literally, since second grade, I knew I wanted to do this.” But, she noted, “caregivers have a real potential for burnout.”

    Passing along the integrative therapy techniques she is learning at Urban Zen “helps caregivers be more calm, mindful, and compassionate,” she said.

    “It has taken my nursing and self care to a whole new level. I know I’m a better nurse for what I’m doing. I’m a much better nurse — a much better person, really.”

    A majority of the patients she offers to guide through some of the techniques agree to give it a try. She said she hopes to eventually expand her services, perhaps volunteering to offer the therapies in community settings such as senior citizens’ centers.

    In Haiti, Ms. Wainwright and Ms. Lattuga worked at St. Luc’s Hospital and St. Damien’s, a pediatric hospital.

    “There are a lot of people living in tents, and it’s almost two years since the earthquake,” Ms. Lattuga said. Much has been rebuilt, Ms. Wainwright noted, but Haiti “just seems to have one disaster after another.” 

    Those working to help others there face a challenging road, and both women felt teaching them self-care techniques was particularly important “because of the burnout rate — they’re working so hard — and what they’re seeing,” Ms. Lattuga said.

    They offered five to seven classes daily for hospital workers, from doctors and nurses to administrators, social workers, and the housekeeping staff, as well as private sessions. They also held classes for international aid workers and child patients at St. Damien’s (as well as the children’s parents).

    “It was a very nice balance, with my yoga background, and Liz’s nurse’s background,” Ms. Wainwright said. “It was a way to respect the work that all of the people in the hospital did — and then they can go back to their work reinvigorated.”

    Among their pupils were people caring for children with cancer and children who have been abandoned, as well as two young American doctors in their second year of residency in Haiti, Ms. Wainwright said. “It’s very, very draining for them.” 

    Many patients, they said, would arrive at the hospitals in dire condition. “They would probably lose a baby a day in the E.R.,” Ms. Wainwright said. “I couldn’t even imagine handling that kind of pressure and anxiety.”

    According to Ms. Lattuga, one human-resources director told her, “People keep coming with bricks and mortar, but nobody’s coming to heal inside.”

    “When people came at the beginning of the week, they were a little tentative,” she said of the therapeutic classes. “By the end of the week we were getting smiles and hugs after the classes.”

    “It was life-changing,” Ms. Lattuga said. “It made me appreciate my own life and what I have.”

     “The value of the Urban Zen program is that they are committed to staying in Haiti” and helping the hospitals’ staff carry on the therapeutic work, Ms. Wainwright said.

    Both said that they would happily go back.