Half an hour before the polls closed, finding a seat at Indian Wells Tavern in Amagansett, where Republicans gathered Tuesday night to watch the election results, was already a chancy proposition. By 9 p.m., when most of the wristbands entitling the wearer to free wine, beer, and food (chicken wings, cold shrimp, roast beef or ham-and-cheese sliders, pigs-in-blankets) had been distributed, the problem was just getting in the door.

    It was a high-spirited crowd, everyone anticipating a big victory, except for some grousing over the ballot machines. “I put mine in and the thing spit it back out,” was a common complaint. Lack of privacy was another. “Everybody can see everybody else’s vote,” someone yelled. “Long as they were all for Republicans,” came a voice from the crowd.

    Incumbent Supervisor Bill Wilkinson was easy to spot, the only man in the place wearing a jacket, shirt, and tie. He looked tired and did not join in the general glad-handing. Councilwoman Teresa Quigley, whose seat is safe for two more years, also stood out; she is 6-foot-2. Early on, they exchanged brief words.

    “You feel out of it?” Mr. Wilkinson asked.

    “No!” Ms. Quigley exclaimed, looking surprised. “You?”

    “A little,” said the supervisor.

    Steven Gaines and Richard Haeg, the G.O.P. candidates for town board, kept pretty much to the tables-and-chairs section of the restaurant, letting well-wishers come to them rather than chance the maelstrom swirling around Steve Lynch at the bar. Mr. Lynch, whose wide grin never left his face once the numbers started coming in, was the hero of the evening, not just because he was challenging a two-term highway superintendent in a hot potato of a contest that involved charges of racism against the incumbent, Scott King, but because it was clear almost from the get-go that he would prevail, and by a comfortable margin.

    There were four big screens over the bar, two of them showing football and hockey games and the third, News 12 Long Island, with early results from Nassau County. The fourth, which didn’t come to life until 9:25 p.m., was the one all eyes were on.

    Town trustee numbers trickled in first. “Stephanie’s got 112,” someone shouted. “She’s going to kill everybody!” He was right; Stephanie Forsberg Talmage, a Republican, wound up high atop the list of 18 trustee hopefuls with 3,686 votes.

    Deborah Klughers also posted solid numbers early on, which were less well received. “Klughers is doing good,” grumbled a large man in an East Hampton American Legion jacket. Though absentee ballots may tell a different story, it appears she was elected as well, one of only two Democrats to secure a seat on the nine-member board.

    Len Bernard, East Hampton’s budget officer, stood close to the screen, keeping a wary eye on the districts reporting. “Sag Harbor’s always a lost cause,” he said to himself. “There’s almost straight Democrats. Montauk — 18 and 10 are real good, 19 is 50-50. Wainscott. We lost by one. That’s not bad.”

    Mr. Wilkinson was trailing his Democratic opponent, Zachary Cohen, in the very early returns. Most of the crowd, including everyone in the dining area, could neither see nor hear the television, but the news spread fast and the roar dwindled to a dull rumble. “What?” said a bass voice. “Wilkinson’s behind? You got to be kidding me. They’re all brain-dead out here.”

    The supervisor himself was not watching the screen. A few minutes later, at 9:40 p.m., he cut a path through the pack. “What’s going on?” he asked Mr. Bernard. “You’re up by 50.” Mr. Wilkinson nodded, turned, and went out the front door.

    Meanwhile, the crowd around Mr. Lynch, among them a number of Highway Department employees, swelled every time his numbers were posted. At 9:55 p.m. he was leading Mr. King by 700 votes, clearly on his way to victory. With not much else to cheer about as yet, the cheers for him only got louder. The man of the hour sat at the bar shaking hands, grinning, rubbing a hand over his buzzcut, pumping a fist. He was the happiest man in the place.

    By 10, Mr. Bernard was looking grim. “This is going down to the wire,” he remarked to no one. “The Democrats probably have two board seats. It’s not going well. Bill’s only ahead by 80.”

    Ten minutes later, Mr. Wilkinson was leading by 300 votes with three districts still to report. At 10:20, with Mr. Lynch already sipping a glass of Champagne, he was ahead by 270 and an arrow on the screen pointed to him as the winner.

    The room was subdued as the supervisor called for quiet. “We haven’t seen all the totals yet,” he cautioned. Then, saying he was “proud of the entire team,” he presented his wife, Pat Wilkinson, with a big bouquet of white roses. “Ah, Billy,” she said, kissing him.

    “It’s the women in this town” who do the work, Mr. Wilkinson then informed the crowd. “Any guy can’t do it without a right arm. I’ve got some [red] roses up here, and I want every woman to come up here and take a rose.”

    “Johnson Nordlinger is the real person who runs this town,” he added. Ms. Nordlinger is Mr. Wilkinson’s executive assistant.

    Mr. Wilkinson took a parting shot at Mr. King before closing his brief remarks. “Next year, it’s going to be a real pleasure to have an actual conversation with the highway supervisor,” he said. Then he paused, and, speaking slowly, almost as an afterthought, added, “It seems like the same people push the cart uphill. I want to thank you as we go downhill a little bit.”

    On Election night at the Main Street, East Hampton, law offices of Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin, and Quartararo, Chris Kelley, a longtime Democratic party member, presided over the hopeful vigil for Zachary Cohen, the Democrats’ town supervisor candidate, and the party’s candidates for town board, trustees, justice, and highway superintendent.

    Job Potter, a former town councilman who bowed out of politics several years ago to pursue other interests but was drawn back to a more active role supporting the Democrats’ efforts this year, sat at the table entering the results into a spreadsheet on his laptop.

    About a dozen people stood by at first. The crowd grew as the night wore on, with some coming up to the office from the less formal Democratic headquarters at Rowdy Hall nearby.

    Starting at just before 9:30 p.m., results rolled in from various election districts, and the tallies quickly showed that the Democrats’ two town board candidates, Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, were top vote-getters.

    With 183 votes from District 17, in Springs, Ms. Overby got almost twice that of the least successful candidate in that district, Marilyn Behan, and Mr. Van Scoyoc garnered 194, compared to the closest competitor, Bill Mott, with 119.

    Jeanne Frankl, the chairwoman of the town Democratic Committee, read out the vote totals from paper ballots.

    “Your home territory,” she said, looking up at Ms. Overby, when Amagansett numbers came in. Ms. Frankl grimaced when reading off the numbers in the highway superintendent race, where the Democratic incumbent, Scott King, was ousted by a Republican, Stephen Lynch.

    “I’m nervous,” said Ms. Overby, who experienced a disappointing election night in 2001, when she failed to win a town board seat. “I forgot what this is like.”

    It was 9:45 p.m., and things were already looking good for her. Eileen Catalano, a town planning board member, stepped over to give her an excited hug.

    More results came in, and a hopeful current ran through the room. Looking excited, Mr. Van Scoyoc took a few snapshots to record the scene.

    “We’re going to stop here,” Mr. Kelley said at three minutes before 10 p.m. “Here’s what it looks like, everybody. We won the two council seats, and the supervisor’s race is looking very good — it’s too close to call right now.”

    With votes in 10 of the 19 election districts tallied, Mr. Cohen had 1,698 votes, and Mr. Wilkinson, 1,634. 

    Refreshments were broken out to celebrate the town board wins.

    Tallies in the supervisor race were consistently close, except in at least one Montauk district, where Mr. Wilkinson received 332 votes, versus Mr. Cohen’s 148, and a Sag Harbor district where Mr. Cohen’s tally, almost double that of his competitor, elicited some applause.

    “I’m so proud of you,” Ms. Frankl said quietly to Mr. Cohen at one point in the night.

    After results from all districts had been called in, the unofficial count showed Mr. Wilkinson ahead by 121 votes, a smaller margin than what official results eventually indicated.

    At 10:30 p.m., Mr. Kelley told the group gathered around the conference table that, according to calculations based on past results and other data, he expected that outstanding absentee ballots would put Mr. Cohen ahead. “The supervisor race is not over tonight. It’s just looking very good for us.”

    “This is an example of why we put in such an effort to get the absentee ballots out,” Mr. Kelley said.

    Through it all, Mr. Cohen remained placid. His wife, Pamela Bickett, looked nervously over the shoulders of those compiling results numbers from time to time, but he remained mostly at the outskirts of the action.

    Instead of worrying about the election outcome, Mr. Cohen was thinking about the proposed 2012 town budget, on which the town board is to hold a hearing tonight. He believes changes need to be made before its adoption.

    “I was nervous at the debates,” Mr. Cohen said, faced with the need to communicate well with potential voters. But the outcome was out of his hands at this point, he explained.

    “If it was up to me, I would have gone to bed,” he told a reporter. “I would have woken up at 3 a.m. and written the e-mails I needed to write” — in the case of a win, he said, one calling a meeting of the Democratic team at 9 a.m.

    However, he said, he wanted to be on hand to thank everyone who had helped with his campaign.

    That he did, in a short speech, at close to 11 p.m., just before the group was to head down to Rowdy Hall for celebratory drinks. “My father actually ran for four elections, and he never lost,” Mr. Cohen said. “But he had two advantages over me: one, he never talked.”

    And, he said, “He owned a restaurant. He would put out tons of food, and get up and say, ‘Hi, thank you for supporting me. Now go enjoy yourself.’ ”

    The supervisor candidate took the time to thank a number of people, including Representative Tim Bishop, who helped with strategy, and Betty Mazur, a Democratic committeewoman.

    Ms. Frankl “gave me the greatest counsel, and was so supportive.” She also, he said, was “an intellect” to hash things over with. “Which I think is going to be one of the big changes,” at Town Hall, he said, with a win for the Democrats. “We’ll actually discuss policy and ideas.”

    Mr. Cohen also thanked outgoing Democratic Town Councilwoman Julia Prince. “If she hadn’t helped me out for years and years,” he said, “I wouldn’t be here today.” The East Hampton Civil Service Employees Association “really came through,” and helped get out the vote, he added. “That one endorsement probably countered every other endorsement I didn’t get.”

    Although an initial endorsement by the Independence Party was challenged and eventually withdrawn, with the party’s regional leadership awarding its endorsement to Mr. Wilkinson, “The local party stuck behind me,” Mr. Cohen said.

    In speaking to the group, all three of the Democratic town board candidates stressed their affinity for one another. To applause, Mr. Cohen described the “total sense of ease between the three of us . . . total respect for one another.”

    “Sylvia finally said, ‘Well, you know, Zach, you’re a nerd with a heart,’ ” Mr. Cohen told those assembled, with a laugh. All three, Mr. Cohen said, have an abiding care for the people of East Hampton, and a commitment to intellectual discussion of the issues.

    “If I do squeak through — and I do believe in probability; tonight I’m going to be home working the numbers,” said Mr. Cohen, who is a mathematician. “You’re going to see a fabulous group.”

    “We owe this election to all of your support,” Ms. Overby said when it was her turn to speak. “Our message was clear. We will represent all the people of the town. Not just those who voted for us, but everybody,” she said, to applause.

    “I’m looking forward to doing a good job for East Hampton,” said Mr. Van Scoyoc. “The place means so much to me, the people mean so much.”

Amagansett firefighters were called to a house fire on Fresh Pond Road in that hamlet at about 3:30 p.m. Friday and were fighting the flames as the sun began to set.

Additional help was called from the East Hampton and Springs departments. East Hampton sent an engine and an ambulance, and water tanker trucks were requested from Springs, East Hampton, and Montauk.

Radio transmissions from firefighters battling the blaze indicated apparent difficulty getting enough water to the scene.

The Sag Harbor Fire Department’s rapid intervention team was also called in.

The initial call was for a house at 68 Fresh Pond Road. While this could not be immediately confirmed, a house at that address was listed as recently sold on a Corcoran real estate Web site. It was described as a four-bedroom post-modern on 2.4 acres. It is in a wooded area near the South Fork Country Club golf course.

    November is offering up some hopeful news in the closely-related worlds of both commercial and recreational fisheries.

    The scallop season in state waters began on Nov. 7, and while scallopers say their harvests have not been quite as robust as they were last year, it might not follow that the scallop population has dwindled because there are considerably more scallopers working this year. It could be the pie is even bigger, but the slices are smaller. Town waters open to scallopers on Monday.

    The population of Peconic Bay scallops has yet to recover from the brown algae blooms that decimated it beginning in the mid-1980s, but it has become clear that spawner sanctuaries created by Long Island University, in cooperation with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Stony Brook University at Southampton, and Suffolk County, have spurred overall growth.

    “Cooperative Extension grows them and we do the science,” said Steven Tettlebach of Long Island University. “The sanctuaries have added unequivocally to the populations. It’s making a big difference.”

    While the delicious bivalves no longer carpet the bottoms of local bays and harbors, there are enough to support a “derby” fishery, the name for a short, gold-rush type of harvest. This puts a strain on shuckers and can glut the market, but retail prices were holding steady this week at about $25 per pound.

    Mr. Tettlebach noted that the scallop meats seemed to be bigger this year. “Usually there’s between 50 and 52 meats per pound. This year its 40 per pound.”

    The promising news, according to Greg Rivara, a shellfish specialist with the Cornell Cooperative Extension, is the nearly 10 to 1 ratio of bug (juvenile) scallops to adults. “Don’t count your scallops too soon, of course; a lot can happen in a year, but some of the bugs are big enough to harvest now.”

    He explained that the presence of bigger bugs was important for a few reasons. If left alone, they have a better chance of surviving the winter. Mr. Rivara said it was a counterintuitive fact that if the currently warm Peconic Estuary should remain unseasonably warm through the winter, scallops will have a harder time. “You want cold, even ice, on the bays because you get more hibernation,” the marine biologist said. Warm water makes them use energy reserves only the bigger scallops may have.

    Bigger bugs also have the potential to help the overall stock due to their greater fecundity. “The bigger the animal the more eggs he/she has, in the case of scallops. And, bigger bugs are known to spawn twice in a year,” Mr. Rivara said. 

    In other fisheries news, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the federally empowered body that oversees migratory stocks along the coast, voted to postpone any change in the striped bass management plan despite calls by New England states for a harvest reduction.

    The A.S.M.F.C. also voted to delay until Jan. 1, 2013, a 10-percent reduction in the southern New England lobster harvest, a position the East Hampton town Baymen’s Association advocated. It was a far better outcome than the 75-percent reduction or even a total fishing moratorium, which was threatened earlier in the year.

    “Commercial guys are not against management when a stock is in trouble, but wiping out a whole gear type with one stroke so that a fishery becomes valueless is not good management. This was a good-as-can-be outcome,” said Arnold Leo, secretary of the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association. Mr. Leo traveled to Boston for the commission meeting on Nov. 7.

    As for striped bass, the annual young-of-the-year index surveys conducted by the states bordering the coast’s bass nurseries have found close to record-breaking levels of baby bass. Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina report numbers well above average in the Chesapeake Bay. Delaware’s survey met the average mark, as did New York’s Hudson River survey.

    Mr. Leo said news of the great numbers of baby bass had only just been reported and was not included in a coastwide striped bass stock assessment announced during last week’s commission meeting. Without the good tidings figured in, managers had concluded that by 2017 — assuming average “recuitment” (juvenile fish entering harvestable age) — the number of bass aged 8 years and older would sink close to a threshold below which reductions in catch would be needed.

    “The record young-of-the-year projection has thrown those concerns into irrevelence. By 2017 there should be a huge number of fish from the 2011 year class,” Mr. Leo said. 

    He said the current assessment put the total stock of striped bass at 168 percent above the action threshold even without adding the 2011 young-of-the-year data. The commission’s striped bass committee decided that any further action to amend the striped bass management plan would be postponed until after completion of a benchmark stock assessment due out in June of 2013. 

    Michael Hartner, the Springs School superintendent since 2009, has tendered his resignation to the school board, effective June 30, 2012.

    Mr. Hartner, who has spent the last 38 years in education, according to Kathee Burke Gonzalez, the school board president, gave the board his letter of resignation on Nov. 7. The public announcement of his decision came at Monday’s school board meeting.

    According to Ms. Gonzalez, Mr. Hartner had informed the board at the beginning of the year of his possible plans to retire before the end of his contract in 2013. Mr. Hartner’s wife, Ann Marie Hartner, a registered nurse, has recently retired, and his youngest son, Daniel, graduates from high school in June.

    Although Mr. Hartner took heat early last year from teachers angry about his $20,000 raise while they were working without a contract, he was credited just a few months later with saving taxpayers $3.2 million over the life of the district’s newly-negotiated high school tuition contract with the East Hampton School District.

    Among other accomplishments mentioned at Monday’s meeting, Mr. Hartner instituted an initiative for pre-kindergarten at Springs, lengthened the school day, and expanded the campus to include the former Most Holy Trinity Elementary School building in East Hampton and the town-owned youth building on school property off Old Stone Highway.

    “He will be sorely missed,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “Mike set the bar incredibly high.”

    The next step, she said, is interviewing executive search firms to find one that will aid in the process of finding his successor.

    “We will also listen to input from parents, the community, and staff,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “But it will be the board that ultimately makes the decision.”

    Mr. Hartner recalled sitting in his car in the school parking lot during his first year, “next to a lopsided generator and a green trailer up on blocks, and thinking to myself, ‘If I do nothing else during my time here. . . .’ “ The board and audience laughed.

    Mr. Hartner also praised the school’s staff, educators, and board. “This board is like no board I have ever seen,” he said on Monday night. “They deserve your gratitude.”

    Springs will mount its superintendent search at the same time that the East Hampton School District is conducting its own search for a permanent superintendent. Richard Burns has been acting as interim superintendent there since Raymond Gualtieri departed this summer.

    Also at Monday’s meeting, Eric Casale, the school’s principal, and Adam Osterweil, an English teacher, offered a presentation on the Renaissance Learning Star Reader program, a computerized model that allows teachers and parents to track the reading habits of individual students from grades four through eight through a series of quizzes that the students answer based on books they have read.

    “I’m always amazed to see how far ahead we are at collecting data, something we’ve been doing for the past six or seven years,” Mr. Casale said. The program is state and federally approved, and in line with the soon-to-be-mandated Common Core Learning Standards.

    “We can graph a student’s progress over one year or over several years, from pre-K to eighth grade,” Mr. Osterweil said. The program is different than the one used at East Hampton High School, which is not state approved, according to Mr. Casale. “We can send them off to high school with a convenient folder,” he said.

    The district’s traffic safety committee is taking another look at parking around the school, and is studying the possibility of moving the fence on the back side of the gym in order to accommodate as many as 25 cars.

    “Obviously we would go to an architect or engineer,” Mr. Hartner said, “but in the meantime John Gibbons’s class [computer lab] has been submitting designs with ideas.”

    The town-owned parking lot behind Amagansett Main Street has 157 spaces, but shopowners have long said more are needed, especially in summer but also on spring and fall weekends. In 2009, an East Hampton Town Planning Department study concluded that the hamlet needed 90 more spaces, or, if two vacant lots and five that are zoned for business but now contain houses were all commercially developed, as many as 346 more.

    The town is now eyeing vacant land north and east of the municipal lot, owned by the Bistrian family, for possible expansion.

    “We have opened discussion with the Bistrians about how to get up to three acres to expand the parking lot,” Councilman Dominic Stanzione told Monday night’s meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee. “They are excited about the opportunity.”

    On and off over the years, going back some three or four administrations, the town has talked with the family about acquiring all or part of their 30-acre parcel, to no avail. Britton Bistrian told the advisory committee last month that community preservation fund money might figure into the current discussions, and Mr. Stanzione confirmed it on Monday.

    “The town is looking to buy the development rights,” he said, adding that while the talks are “in a very early stage . . . nothing is off the table. Every idea will be explored.”

    Deer have been as problematic in Amagansett as anywhere else in town, and Mr. Stanzione, who is the town board’s liaison to its deer management committee, gave a brief rundown on the committee’s progress. It is close to achieving a “critical compromise” between “the non-lethal group” and “others,” he said, meaning hunters and those of like mind. A five-year program that would include, in its initial stages, “emergency action,” and “over time, non-lethal action” is under study.

    Mr. Stanzione did not elaborate on what kind of “emergency action” is contemplated, but made it clear that the issue has become urgent. Townwide, there have been three cases of babesiosis, a serious disease spread by deer ticks, in the last 90 days, he reported. “Many think deer fencing is essential,” he said. “Others say it’s changing the community.”    

    The councilman noted that a public hearing is scheduled for Dec. 1 at Town Hall on whether to put deer fencing around the perimeter of East Hampton Airport, where there were one or two deer-versus-plane incidents last summer.

    “We could have a vote to close the airport,” he remarked jokingly.

    “Could we put all the deer in there first?” shot back Kieran Brew, ACAC’s vice chairman.

    Mr. Stanzione’s comments were preceded by a discussion of “modern parliamentary procedure” presented by Bill Di Scipio, secretary of the advisory committee (William J. Di Scipio, Ph.D., as he signs the minutes of meetings). “We are not just advisers,” he maintained at one point. “We are a professional committee.” Dr. Di Scipio, who had clearly put a lot of time and effort into drawing up what he called “a system to enhance the workings of the committee,” ran down a list of proposed rules dealing with and defining “ordinary motions” (to adjourn, to recess, to amend, etc.) and “special motions” (point of order, to appeal, to rescind, etc.) in the course of a 20-minute slide show that had a few in the audience muttering, though most listened politely.

    After Councilman Stanzione’s remarks, Dr. Di Scipio returned to the fray, though this time there was scattered vocal opposition. “We don’t need these hard-and-fast rules,” said Tom Field. “They limit discussion. The chairman takes care of it.”

    “We have 34 [committee members] with different ideas,” Dr. Di Scipio responded. “I don’t want to put all the power in the chairman’s position.”

    “No one does this,” protested Sheila Okun. “If we have all these rules we’ll never get anything done. We’re all here for the same reasons, we’re here for Amagansett.”

    Dr. Di Scipio pressed valiantly on. “There has to be a quorum,” he said. “And this brings in the issue of proxies. The federal government and the state government —” Here, the muted groans became audible.

    “Part of your right to vote is your punishment to be here,” said Joan Tulp. “I am absolutely against proxies.”

    “I’d like to make a motion that everyone in favor of proxies raise their hand,” said Elaine Miller.

    “I move to rescind that motion,” said Dr. Di Scipio.

    “He hasn’t got a second for that,” Mr. Field observed, and Kent Miller, the chairman of the committee, declared the meeting over.

    “Okay,” said Dr. Di Scipio. “I’ll still be your secretary.”

    During the first week of an emergency dredging of the Montauk Harbor Inlet, a number of boats struck the 12-inch diameter pipe that transports sand from the dredge on the east side of the inlet to the beach on the west side of the harbormouth. At least one vessel was damaged.

    During the same period, the buoys marking the channel that boats are meant to use during the dredging were not lighted properly at night. At times, fishermen returning to the harbor were told to wait outside the inlet for upward of an hour, or they were unable to contact dredging contractors on the specified V.H.F. frequency for instructions.

    East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson convened an emergency meeting of fishermen with the contractor, North American Landscaping, Construction, and Dredge Company, and the contractor’s Army Corps “quality assurance” overseer, Jeff Ice, at the Montauk Coast Guard station on Monday afternoon. Army Corps headquarters in New York City attended the meeting via conference call.

    Montauk Coast Guard’s senior chief petty officer, Jason Walter, said the station had been monitoring the confusion as well as informing the contractor that both their buoy configuration and lighting were not meeting navigation standards.

    “The pipe was impossible to see during the storm,” Mr. Walter said, referring to the gale that blew through on Saturday. Mr. Walter also noted that the pipe had been rising off the bottom, apparently because it was not properly anchored, and was endangering Coast Guard boats as well.

    Captain Rick Etzel said the propeller of his boat was damaged when it struck the pipe, and his boat drew only three feet of water. Dragger captains, whose vessels draw up to 12 feet when returning to the harbor with fish, said it was imperative that they knew the pipe was safely on the bottom well before they made the turn into the inlet. It was impossible for bigger boats to turn around once they entered, said Capt. Vinny Carillo.

    “These are federal codes,” Ed Michels, the town’s senior harbormaster, told the contractor.

    “How many warnings do there have to be before the dredge project itself becomes a hazard?” asked Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

    According to the contractor’s representativessentatives, fixing the physical problem appeared straightforward. But fishermen said they were not satisfied that the communication problem was being addressed. The Army Corps New York office suggested boat captains communicate with the contractor directly to learn the status of the pipeline when entering, or to voice other problems.

    “No,” Mr. Wilkinson said emphatically. “I want a central source for complaints.” He suggested that source be the Army Corps representative on the scene. Mr. Walter said his office would monitor the needed corrections and take complaints, which would then be passed along to the Army Corps New York office.

    Yesterday morning Mr. Ice, the Corps on-site overseer, said that the contractor was well along on the needed corrections.

    “The sunken line is set,” he said, and in the process of being anchored. The “floating line” — the section of pipeline that runs from the dredge itself to the point where it is submerged to the bottom — had been marked with yellow flashing lights, as prescribed. The two points at which the pipeline descends to the bottom, and, after snaking its path across the channel, comes back to the surface, have been marked with the appropriate red flashing lights, Mr. Ice said. He added that an Army Corps representative would be on station through the nighttime hours.

    “The Coast Guard has been a great help monitoring boat traffic while we have been setting things back up, a really big help,” Mr. Ice said.

    “Bill Wilkinson did a good thing getting the people together,” Ms. Brady said yesterday, “but why did the meeting have to be held? This was completely on the Army Corps shoulders.”

    Despite the political acrimony so prevalent in the final weeks of the campaign season, the candidates for East Hampton Town Supervisor stuck pretty much to the issues when they met at The East Hampton Star last Thursday to discuss their platforms, their plans, and the future of East Hampton as it emerges from financial crisis.

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, a Republican running on the Conservative and Independence Party lines, is seeking  his second term against Zach Cohen, a Democrat.

    Asked to look beyond the town’s current financial situation now that the deficit-financing bonds are in place and to consider whether some popular programs that were cut might be reinstated, Mr. Wilkinson said, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s never a good time to take your eye off the ball. . . . Unfortunately, you can slip back in very easily. You have to take care of the town’s money like it’s your own checkbook.”

    Now is a time to “move into other things within the organization, that we have to make enhancements to,” he said, pointing to the importance of “performance management.” Town employees should have goals, a timetable in which to achieve those goals, and “measurements and assessments against those goals.”

    The supervisor also said the community has to be rebuilt after the financial blow it was dealt, and part of that is including “disparate thought.” East Hampton, he said, still ranks third in the state in debt per capita.    

    Mr. Cohen said he has been pushing to minimize the debt the town  assumes because of his concern about its ability to finance capital projects down the road. Although he acknowledged that cuts were necessary, he said, “You have to realize that quality of life has value itself, when you look at ‘do you cut a program or don’t you cut a program.’ ”

    People may be willing to shoulder more taxes to reinstate certain programs, said the Democrat. “You pay out of both pockets . . . if you lose a service and have to pay out of your checkbook for it.”

    He would look at whether the private sector picked up where the town stepped away, and examine what it cost people to lose those services. “Are there needs that didn’t get covered?”

    Mr. Wilkinson acknowledged that in ightening the financial belt, “we cut the budget to a lot of social agencies in this town,” but said that “a new public-private partnership paradigm” had emerged from it. The town board had been criticized for approving the controversial MTK festival, originally proposed for Amagansett, then moved to the East Hampton Airport, and ultimately canceled due to poor ticket sales. But MTK offered an opportunity to support local charitable organizations, Mr. Wilkinson said. The organizers of the aborted two-day music festival had promised $100,000 to various local charities, he noted.

    “I knew damn well we’d have traffic tied up. But those charities could have used $100,000,” Mr. Wilkinson said. He learned from that, he said, adding that part of a supervisor’s role is to “bring your body of knowledge to a position and hope that what you’ve learned in the past” helped you make better decisions.

    Mr. Cohen said it was important to get input from others. “The wisdom resides in the people,” he said. He admitted there were times when a supervisor had to act unilaterally, but said he preferred a system that sees action as consensus.

    Both candidates discussed the subject of employment. Mr. Wilkinson said he would like to do more to brainstorm about “high-tech, low-density” year-round jobs for the community. “In the next cycle,” he said, the town had to focus on lobbying for business opportunities.

    “If the finances are in order, that should give us the opportunity to take up some long-range planning,” Mr. Cohen said. Jobs are one thing, but jobs that pay enough for people to live here are another, he added. He said there should also be a focus on affordable housing and improved regional transportation for workers who cannot afford to live in East Hampton.

    Down the road, “I’m very concerned that our biggest problems could be related to water,” Mr. Cohen said, pointing to erosion and pollution.

    Mr. Wilkinson had the same concerns. He said he was frustrated by the scope of the Army Corps of Engineers Fire Island-to-Montauk Reformulation study, which looked at erosion and shoreline protection issues but fell short when it came to anything in the easternmost part of the study area, particularly in Montauk. “They basically said downtown Montauk did not support the amount of money required to shore that area up.”

    In Montauk, where the downtown is two to five feet above the water table, he said he has been pushing for years for sewage treatment and trying to convince people that the associated water-quality issues should be separated from any potential zoning issues.

    As a recent success, the supervisor pointed to the reorganization of the Lake Montauk Technical Advisory Committee, which draws its members from sometimes disparate organizations and interests, all of whom are, he said, now working together to improve the health of the lake.

    In response to a question, Mr. Wilkinson, who has held two business summits and a deer summit, said he would consider an environmental summit as well, but added, “I don’t want to be the summit czar.”

    Talk is good, Mr. Cohen said, but after that, one has to take action. He said there were some practical ways of controlling deer that were discussed at the deer meeting but never acted upon. For example, the deer population could have been reduced had the town helped two or three neighbors agree to combine their lands into the legally required 10 acres to allow for hunting. “We wanted a lawyer to draw a draft agreement, but nothing ever happened,” he said.

     Both candidates spoke about the planning and zoning application process, acknowledging that many people are frustrated by the slow pace of review for new projects. The Democrats “have said that the level of planning should match the complexity of the issue and the impacts to the community,” Mr. Cohen said. There are some proposals that should only require administrative review, he said. For instance, an applicant shouldn’t incur $22,000 in consulting costs to put in a $26,000 freezer.

    Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Cohen then talked about their varying views on the autonomy of appointed boards and how much their decisions should reflect the wishes of the town board majority.

    “I’ve always looked at recruiting people that have smart minds,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “I’ve never intervened . . . I’ve only said I’m unhappy with the pace of play. I’m only concerned about process; I’m never concerned about outcome.”

    “We are not orchestrating a new path to Venus,” he said. “We have templates. Don’t frustrate the resident. If you’re going to say no, say no up front or give them a time period. I have been unhappy with residents saying, ‘I’m getting killed in the process. It cost me $80,000 and six years.’ We’ve got to set targets. I don’t care about the outcome. Say no to everybody, but be efficient.”

    “You have to be asking, ‘Are you still ensuring that the community is protected in the outcome?’ What might look like inefficiency to the applicant might be because of potential risks,” said Mr. Cohen. In the past two years, he claimed, there has been “at least the appearance of the interference of town board members” with the workings of the appointed boards.

    Asked if they thought residents might prefer to pay more in taxes and not be in debt rather than have taxes lowered via long-term borrowing, Mr. Wilkinson was the first to answer.

    “We have only borrowed to cover $23 million of the deficit and used surplus to pay that downward,” he said. “We’ve appropriated the right amount of surplus for 2012 based on the state comptroller’s recommendation. That being said, there have been a significant number of people saying they cannot afford a tax increase.”

    During the McGintee administration, Mr. Wilkinson said, he talked about the loss of the town’s surplus, and in the last election, he warned that the deficit would be far higher than the $15 million first mentioned. “Everybody was fat, dumb, and happy,” the supervisor said. “And then they were hit with two tax increases. These people have been burdened by a government that was too big.”

    Mr. Cohen took issue with many of Mr. Wilkinson’s remarks, especially with regard to the budget and financial advice from the state comptroller’s office, which he insisted is merely a guiding line. “Approval by the state controller doesn’t mean you’re doing really good finance,” he said. “It just means you’re not doing bad finance . . . something that might really imperil the town.”

    In terms of taxes, Mr. Cohen said the “best tax breaks are when you don’t eliminate a service and create a new efficiency in government. . . . But when you eliminate a service you have to ask what value did that have to the people who got a tax break?” In some cases, the people who got the least amount of tax relief were the ones most harmed by the cuts, he said.

    “I don’t like making cuts,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “I would love to have not inherited a financial disaster that was on the verge of bankruptcy.”

    Election night in East Hampton delivered clear victories to Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, the Democratic candidates for town board, as well as the Republican challenger for highway superintendent, the incumbent Republican town justice, and most of the G.O.P.’s trustee candidates. The race for town supervisor, however, was a nailbiter; the results may not be known until late next week at the earliest.

    The Republican incumbent, Bill Wilkinson, who was elected by a landslide in 2009 on promises to “right the town’s financial ship,” held a tenuous lead of just 177 over the Democrats’ Zachary Cohen as of yesterday, with absentee ballots still uncounted. The results were strangely reminiscent of Mr. Wilkinson’s first bid for town supervisor in 2007, in which he lost by a mere 104 votes to the now much-maligned Democratic incumbent, Bill McGintee.

    “I was really disappointed. I’m not disappointed from a leader’s point of view so much as I’m really disappointed in the community in which I live,” Trace Duryea, the Republican Committee chairwoman, said yesterday. “Here’s a man that brought this community back from the brink of bankruptcy. It’s incomprehensible to me that people could make this type of judgment.”

    In this election, not counting absentee ballots, Mr. Wilkinson got 3,066 votes to Mr. Cohen’s 2,899.

    According to Mr. Cohen and Christopher Kelley, a Democratic committeeman, the Board of Elections sent out 1,050 absentee ballots — 542 to Democrats, 288 to Republicans, 7 to Conservatives, 37 to Independence Party members, 175 to unaffiliated voters, and 1 to a Working Families Party member. As of Tuesday, the Board of Elections had received back 766 of those ballots — 399 from Democrats, 213 from Republicans, 5 from Conservatives, 127 from unaffiliated voters, 21 from Independence Party members, and 1 from the Working Families Party voter.

    Those ballots had not yet been opened or tallied. Absentee ballots had to be postmarked or dropped off in person at the Board of Elections no later than Nov. 7. Some of the 284 ballots that remain outstanding may still trickle in over the next few days and will be counted, provided they are postmarked appropriately and arrive at the Board of Elections by Tuesday.

    That said, neither candidate for supervisor was declaring victory. Asked yesterday whether he believed he would hold on to his lead, Mr. Wilkinson said only, “I anxiously await as you anxiously await” the final results. “It is what it is now, and we’ll see what happens.”

    Although the numbers of absentee ballots sent to Democrats versus Republicans would seem to tip things in Mr. Cohen’s favor, the Democratic candidate said yesterday that the results could still go either way. Armed Tuesday night with all the numbers, Mr. Cohen said he went home to study them and determine possible outcomes.

    “I can’t do precise statistics on it, but I can do scenario analysis,” he said. “What I come up with, because I want to be positive, I come up with more scenarios where I lose than scenarios where I win,” he said. “If I lose, it’s going to be probably by under 75 votes, and if I win, it will be by probably under 30 votes.”

    “I’m taking it more optimistic, but sober,” he said. “I’m too good a mathematician, it keeps me sober.” While Democrats requested and returned more absentee ballots than Republicans, Mr. Cohen said people who are calling the race in his favor are failing to take into account the 220 ballots sent to unaffiliated and third-party voters, 154 of which had been received by the Board of Elections. As well, he said, some Democrats may not have voted for him.

    Starting on Monday, the Board of Elections will begin its standard audit of 3 percent of the voting machines, and by midweek, election workers will begin to open and count the paper ballots.

    “In 2009, there was a 79 to 80-percent return rate,” Mr. Kelley said yesterday. On 1,050 ballots, that equals roughly 833. “To win, he’ll have to get 60 percent of the absentee ballots,” Mr. Kelley said of Mr. Cohen’s chances.

    In the town board races, there was no question about the winners. Mr. Van Scoyoc was the top vote-getter with 2,689 votes; Ms. Overby had 2,457. They were trailed by the Republican candidates Richard Haeg, with 1,738, and Steven Gaines, with 1,702, and the Independence candidates Bill Mott (1,610) and Marilyn Behan (1,331).

    “The slate did marvelously and I’m sure the reason they succeeded so well is that people know they’re going to get good government with this slate,” said Jeanne Frankl, the Democratic Committee chairwoman. “I’m very optimistic that Zachary will be elected supervisor. It really was a wonderful outcome.”

    Stephen Lynch gave the East Hampton Republicans something to celebrate Tuesday night. The challenger walked away with the vote for highway superintendent, winning 3,567 votes to the two-term incumbent Scott King’s 2,387. Mr. Lynch lost to Mr. King in 2007.

    Lisa R. Rana, the incumbent Republican town justice, easily won re-election over Stephen A. Grossman with almost 63 percent of the vote, and seven of nine Republican trustees were elected, including the incumbents Stephanie Talmage-Forsberg with 3,686 votes, Tim Bock, Diane McNally, Joe Bloecker, and Lynn Mendelman, and the newcomers Sean McCaffrey and Nat Miller.

    From the Democratic ticket, Stephen Lester won a spot on the trustees and Deborah Klughers appears to have won as well, although unofficial results gave her just 44 votes more than her running mate Ray Hartjen.

    Jeanne Nielson, a Democrat, and Jill Massa, a Republican, both incumbent town assessors and both running unopposed, got 4,509 and 4,047 votes respectively.

    In county races, Legislator Jay Schneiderman of Montauk handily beat his challenger, Cornelius Kelly, winning nearly 66 percent of the vote. The Democrat Steve Bellone, the Babylon Town supervisor, won the county executive seat, beating Angie Carpenter, the county treasurer, with 130,607 to 100,119.

    After several years of postponements, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals heard an application on Nov. 1 to revoke a certificate of occupancy for a non-operating gate flanked by two stone columns, located on a cul-de-sac at 17 Beverly Road in Springs.

    Tom Preiato, the town’s senior building inspector, claimed that the C. of O. was issued in error, since the East Hampton Town Planning Board never approved the construction of the gates on a private road, which is required by town code. The East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board did not approve it either, which was also necessary. In addition, Mr. Preiato noted that the gates are accessory structures on land that is separate from a principal structure. Finally, and perhaps most important, there is disagreement as to the ownership of the property where the gates stand.

    Lee Auerbach and Linda Levin-Maduri received an okay in February 2009 from the late Don Sharkey, then the town’s chief building inspector, to build the gates at the entrance of the cul-de-sac that led to their driveway. The couple purportedly acquired the land from the Hampton Bays United Methodist Church in June 2000, on a tax deed to Heaven Properties, L.L.C. However, Lance Pomerantz, a title examiner, said the sale was void, and that Eric Pearl and Jill Davis, who own the house next door to the Auerbachs’, are the rightful owners of the section of Beverly Road where the seven-foot-tall gates stand.

      Mr. Preiato told the Z.B.A. that “the C. of O. was offered under a different tax map. The ownership — I haven’t been shown a clear title. In the chronology of deeds from the title examiner, I’m not showing Heaven Properties, the applicant, as the owner. Therefore, any approvals or lack thereof, I feel a void.” Even if Heaven Properties owned both the Auerbach and Pearl lots, he said, the gates were still problematic. “I don’t feel that this gate, with its column and accessory structures, should be there,” he said. “I’m making an attempt to do it properly.”

    Mr. Pearl also addressed the board. “It wasn’t a neighborly thing, to build a gate on the road in the front of my house,” he said. “It is on our property. We had more than one person do the title research.” Mr. Pearl submitted letters from immediate neighbors who are opposed to the gates for reasons related to emergency-vehicle access, child safety, and aesthetics.

    Jeffrey Bragman, counsel for Mr. Pearl and Ms. Davis, said the question of ownership would “have to be worked out in the courts,” adding there was clear evidence that it belongs to his clients. “This gate, which is in the roadway, should have gone to the planning board as the acting board of review,” said Mr. Bragman, “The alleged owner . . . should have gone to the planning board. It did not.  And it should have gone to the A.R.B. for approval, and it did not.” He noted that “there was a false start in the A.R.B. At one point it was issued, and then rescinded.”

    The A.R.B. granted a permit for the gates in May 2008. After Mr. Bragman informed the board’s attorney of the “misrepresentation,” it was rescinded.

    Mr. Pearl told the Z.B.A. that “seven of the neighbors were against it. The Auerbachs and another family were for it.”

    “Building that gate there, cars drive up to it, stop at the gate, figuring it’s someone’s driveway, and then they back up into my driveway, which is unsafe,” he added.

    There was support for the gate from neighbors who live next door to the Auerbachs, at 18 Beverly Road. But “regardless of what neighbors have given permission, it doesn’t play into it at all,” said Mr. Preiato. “We’re code-driven. I don’t like the gate or not like the gate. I personally have no feeling about the gate. I have a feeling about my job. I have a feeling about bringing the code to fruition.”

    “I’m not asking for the gates to be torn down,” the building inspector concluded. “But I am asking for the gates to be put there legally. And I don’t know how that can be done quite easily, because it’s not a piece of property that lends itself to a structure.”