A longstanding debate about whether East Hampton Town should accept Federal Aviation Administration grants for repair and upkeep of its airport got an infusion of information on Tuesday, with a presentation to the town board by Peter Kirsch, an attorney specializing in aviation law.

    Those pressing the town to act decisively to curtail disturbances to residents from aircraft, particularly helicopters in recent years, have long advocated that the town stop taking F.A.A. money and allow existing agreements that accompany the money, called grant assurances, to expire in order to gain more local control over the airport. Those assurances proscribe certain aspects of airport operation.

    However, Mr. Kirsch, whom the town has retained, said that the strings attached to the federal money, which can pay up to 90 percent of the cost of capital improvements at the airport, mirror federal laws that would remain in effect even if East Hampton turns down the grants.

    “Almost all of the grant assurances, with a couple of insignificant exceptions, simply echo federal law,” he said. The 39 standard grant assurances, or conditions to which the town must agree in order to receive the federal cash, are simply provisions of the law included as contract provisions and remain in effect from 20 years after a grant is issued.

    That way, Mr. Kirsch said, should an airport owner violate the provisions, the F.A.A. can undertake an administrative action for a contract violation versus initiating a lawsuit in federal court, a more difficult undertaking.

    The possibility for the town to gain federal approval to enact restrictions on use of the airport, such as a curfew during certain hours, Mr. Kirsch said Tuesday, “will change slightly, but only slightly,” after the grant assurances expire. “If the town wants to restrict operations, if you take grants or don’t take grants, it’s not going to substantially affect your degree of success.”

    The procedure that must be followed is the same in both cases, said Mr. Kirsch.

    An airport proprietor would only be allowed to enact restrictions on use of the airport if it can meet federal and constitutional standards requiring them to first prove that the restrictions are reasonable, based on the airport’s particular circumstances. It must also show that the restrictions are carefully tailored to the local needs and community expectations, based upon data that support the need and rationale, and are not unduly restrictive of interstate commerce, he said.

    That process, Mr. Kirsch said, can be lengthy and costly. In addition, “Your chance of success at that is going to depend on how severe the restrictions are,” he said.    

    “I can tell you that it is in fact legally possible to impose use restrictions on the airport,” Mr. Kirsch said. “What I’ve also said is it may not be practical. And you can’t do it halfway. You’re in for a dollar, you’re in for several million dollars.”

    Since the adoption of new federal laws in 1990, only two municipalities have attempted to enact restrictions on airport use, such as curfews or outright bans of certain aircraft, and Mr. Kirsch’s firm, Kaplan, Kirsch & Rockwell of Denver, Washington, D.C., and New York, represented both.

    The city of Burbank, Calif., spent almost a decade and $8 million and failed to gain Federal Aviation Administration approval for its proposal.

    In Naples, Fla., the court upheld the right to ban the noisiest type of aircraft, called Stage I and Stage II, which includes helicopters, after a four-year fight against five lawsuits filed not only by the F.A.A. but by airport users and tenants, at a cost of $4.5 million.

    “Would that principle be able to be sustained in East Hampton?” Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley asked. “Yes,” Mr. Kirsch said, “you would have a possibility of winning.”

    “Yes, it’s precedent-setting, but every lawyer will tell you that every case is based on different facts. It’s important to keep realistic,” he said.

    “Naples made the decision that they wanted to go to the ends of the earth on this,” he said.

    “So the F.A.A. doesn’t make it impossible — it just sets up the procedure,” Ms. Quigley said. “The federal law doesn’t in and of itself prevent a municipality from restricting aircraft.”

    The 1990 Airport Noise and Capacity Act was passed by Congress “with the purpose of making it enormously difficult to impose new restrictions,” Mr. Kirsch said.

    However, he said, while the act applies to airports that have taken F.A.A. money, the question of whether it applies to airports not beholden to grant assurances has not been addressed by the courts.

    New York City, which owns the East 34th Street Heliport, which was involved in a case (cited by airport noise control advocates) that upheld restrictions on flights, had never accepted F.A.A. money for the heliport, Mr. Kirsch said.

    A heliport in Southampton Town, where landing restrictions are imposed, is not part of the national air transportation system, as East Hampton Airport is, and so is not subject to the same federal laws, he said.

    Trying to impose restrictions on use of the airport is the “meat ax” approach, Mr. Kirsch said. A “scalpel approach,” to undertake a number of smaller measures could, he said, help the town achieve “75, 80, 90 percent” of the desired results. Among those might be strictly enforcing existing regulations such as noise ordinances, increasing pilots’ voluntary compliance with desired procedures by publishing the names of aircraft owners who flout a request not to land in the middle of the night, for instance, and installing an air traffic control tower, as is already planned.

    But, he told the board, “the policy problem is, you’re not going to see results overnight the way you would if you said, ‘We’re going to ban helicopters.’ It’s an incremental approach.”

    Advocates of airport noise control have pointed to an agreement between the F.A.A. and the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion as an opportunity for the town to enact stricter airport regulations. In a lawsuit settlement, the F.A.A. agreed that as of 2014 it will no longer enforce 4 of 39 grant assurances that the town has agreed to — most of which remain in effect until 2021.

    “Those four are important — they’re not just minor and insignificant,” Mr. Kirsch said Tuesday. One that will expire in just over two years is the requirement to have an up-to-date airport layout plan, or map showing existing conditions at the airport, on file with the F.A.A. The others that are expiring, he said, “essentially say you will not discriminate” regarding who can use the airport, or “impose restrictions on use that are unreasonable.”

    “That expires in 2014, but federal law doesn’t,” he said. So for instance, should the town attempt to enact a ban on helicopters without first following the required procedures to justify its actions, under the grant assurances the F.A.A. would likely file an administrative action against the town.

    If there were no grant assurances in effect, he said, the F.A.A. would have to sue the town in federal court for violation of the parallel federal laws, and would probably seek an injunction to prevent the town from enforcing the ban.

    But, he said, “if you have grant assurances . . . it’s a double gotcha,” allowing the F.A..A. to challenge a town action both administratively — for breaching the “contract” of the grant assurances — and in court.

    Kathleen Cunningham, a member of the Quiet Skies Coalition steering committee and former chairwoman of the town’s Airport Noise Abatement Advisory Committee, questioned Mr. Kirsch about whether the town could petition Congress for the airport to be exempted from the Airport Noise and Capacity Act rules, as that act was designed for application to larger airports.

    “Absolutely,” Mr. Kirsch said. In fact, about half a dozen airports in the country have successfully done so, he said, and his firm is making such an application for Burbank.

    Mr. Kirsch characterized the town’s options for how to address the airport noise problem as lying along a continuum.

    “Some restrictions are so hard to get — such as banning helicopters outright — that I would advise you’re wasting your time,” he said. Then, he said, there are “those that are so easy to get, I don’t know why you’re not already doing it.”

    Some airports, the attorney said, are developing “prophylactic rules” — regulations designed to prevent airport problems from getting worse — which he said are “somewhat easier to impose.”

    “I think we’re all on the same page, in that we all want an airport that doesn’t have an inordinate nuisance value attached to it. As a town, I don’t know that we’ve ever taken a considered approach,” Ms. Quigley said. “We’ve just been reacting to lawsuits.”

    She suggested starting with the “scalpel” approach,  “and simultaneously look at the larger approach and try to work toward resolution, such that we keep the airport and yet alleviate the most egregious issues that are affecting the community.”

    The New York State Supreme Court has not yet ruled in the lawsuits brought by oceanfront property owners on Napeague against both East Hampton Town and its town trustees, but the town board’s perceived wishy-washy response to calls for its commitment to public beach access is causing concern and stirring the pre-election political pot. 

    The question at the heart of the lawsuits, filed in 2009, is whether a 4,000-foot strip of beach from Napeague Lane east to Napeague State Park will remain public or be privatized.

    CfAR, an acronym for Citizens For Access Rights, was formed in the wake of the two lawsuits. Members accuse the town board of failing to make a formal alliance with the town trustees and to protest more strongly against the privatizing of beaches.

    Except in Montauk, the trustees own, on behalf of the public, beaches, bottomland, and some roads, based upon pre-Revolutionary writs given to East Hampton settlers by King James II of England. There are, however, sections of town where the trustees sold off their interest. Plaintiffs in the beach suit claim the 4,000-foot-long stretch on Napeague is one of them; lawyers for the town and the trustees dispute this.

    Concern that the town board might be caving in to pressure from the plaintiff property owners by staging a lackluster defense was sparked as long ago as March, before CfAR existed, during a meeting between Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his deputy, Councilwoman Teresa Quigley, with concerned beachgoers.

    Tim Taylor, now CfAR’s president, said they had been heartened during an earlier meeting with the town trustees. “They expressed a strong position. They were very forceful in their defense of public access,” he said.

    Mr. Wilkinson’s and Ms. Quigley’s “tune was different” in a subsequent meeting, said Mr. Taylor. “They said they were not sure the case was winnable, and basically said the board would have to consider a compromise or settlement, that they would need to explore that angle a little more.”

    “They also told us the trustees knew that it was not a winnable case. That’s when we decided we would need to form a group both to educate the public [that there were two lawsuits, not just one] and to have a movement behind protecting beach access.”

    Mr. Taylor said the meeting with the two town board members coincided with the plaintiffs’ move for summary judgment. Such a ruling would have closed the beach to the public at the start of the summer.

    “It seemed like an imminent threat. It’s why we started meeting.”

    In a letter to The Star’s editor that will run in next week’s edition, CfAR lays out the history of its attempts to have the town board pass a sense-of-the-board resolution supporting the trustees’ position in no uncertain terms.

    At times, CfAR worked with the trustees to arrive at language acceptable to both boards. Both the town board and the trustees have discussed how to best defend the suits in closed-door executive sessions, but sources say attorneys for each body are on the same page in arguing for the public’s right to access.

    In April, CfAR drafted wording for a resolution and presented it to the town board. “We were told they couldn’t pass it because of concerns over possible conflicts [with the trustees] over jurisdiction, and about money. They didn’t want to give money to the trustees for the defense,” Mr. Taylor said.

    “We made revisions, but the [town] board wouldn’t work with us. We presented another resolution in August. Still nothing back. On Sept. 17 we sent board members a letter by certified mail, with a deadline to respond to our resolution by Oct. 1.”

    Mr. Taylor said the date was chosen as an accommodation to the town board, to keep the issue out of election politics. “We said that with the election nearing, we would like to see in writing your support for the [defense of the] lawsuit, and for public access.”

    Mr. Taylor said the letter was received and signed for by a public official. In addition, each member of the town board was sent a letter, and a phone call was made before the Oct. 1 deadline to get a response. “They said they never received the letter. That’s why we wrote a letter to the editor. They had a chance to approve something [on Tuesday] and didn’t do it. Anything from here on out is just to get votes,” Mr. Taylor said yesterday.

    During Tuesday’s informal town board meeting, Julia Prince and Dominic Stanzione, board members, attempted once again to gain the support of the supervisor’s and deputy supervisor’s support for the CfAR resolution.

    John Jilnicki, town attorney, assured Mr. Wilkinson that CfAR’s draft did not raise jurisdictional concerns.

    “I support access to and use of non-private beaches, but I think that the resolution somehow implies that we haven’t been doing anything,” Ms. Quigley said. “This says we’ll support the trustees, but doesn’t say we’ll support our obligations to our constituents. The town’s position is parallel to the trustees’, but I’d like to see it more fleshed out. I’d like to have it be more strong about us defending our obligations.”

    “There’s no doubt it’s getting into the political season for this crap,” Mr. Wilkinson said, adding that he himself had been fishing on the beach with his dog and his truck. “To say we are not embracing not just driving, but full access to beaches, is just plain silly.”

    “This has been before us since April, just to take the whole political season out of the equation. It’s just asking that we support a pledge, and I think we should,” said Councilwoman Prince.

    Her effort may have come too late. CfAR’s letter to the editor concludes, “CfAR will view any further belated attempt by the town board to address our resolution as political theater.”

    In a related matter, the town trustees agreed during their Tuesday night meeting that plans, already discussed by the town board, to create a new bathing beach on Napeague — accessed from Montauk Highway via Dolphin Drive — should not go forward until the Napeague beach suit is concluded.

    Bamboo. Just the word can connote so much to so many: a serene Eastern ornamental, a sustainable building material, food for the endangered giant panda. But in East Hampton Village, and other nearby towns and villages, the inexpensive and fast-growing plant is often considered an invasive species and a noxious weed.

    Several Dayton Lane residents sent letters to Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, and communicated with Tom Lawrence, the village’s code enforcement officer, about the encroachment of bamboo onto their properties. Their letters were accompanied by photographs showing the extensive damage to walkways and driveways, especially at the residence of Uwe Kind, where a neighbor’s bamboo plants have been growing unchecked.

    “It’s spreading so fast, it’s like something out of a horror movie,” another neighbor, David DeSilva, said in a letter to the village.

    The issue of a possible ban on bamboo was discussed at last Thursday’s East Hampton Village Board work session.

    Bamboo is a favorite plant, worldwide, for screening. There are over 1,400 species in two categories — “clumping” bamboo, which tends to cluster and spread slowly, and the highly aggressive “running” bamboo, which is legendary for its sprouting ability. One type of bamboo was measured growing 39 inches in a 24-hour period.

    The evergreen grass also increases its numbers by using rhizomes, or runners, which are strong enough to pierce through hardy plastic liners and likely to pop up in a neighbor’s yard.

    Sag Harbor Village recently drafted a proposal to ban bamboo entirely, including tendering notices to owners to remove what is already growing on their properties or face fines or even two weeks in jail.

    One option discussed by East Hampton was limiting bamboo to no less than 10 feet from a neighbor’s property line. “East Hampton Village has asked the village attorney to draft up some options about regulating or possibly outlawing bamboo,” said Mr. Cantwell.

    “We’re not planning on closing,” said Murphy Davis, the artistic director of the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, which will allow its lease to run out at its current location in May of 2013.

    Mr. Davis and Tracy Mitchell, the theater’s executive director, broke the news to the Sag Harbor Village Board on Tuesday night. “We felt it was our responsibility as a village entity,” Mr. Davis said. The current lease will see the theater through its 2012 season next summer, but after that the organization will be searching for a new spot for its stage productions, workshops, comedy performances, movie nights, and more.

    The Bay Street Theatre has occupied the space on the wharf for 20 years, renting from Malloy Enterprises, which is owned by Patrick Malloy III. The lease was temporarily renegotiated last year for three years, but after that, said Mr. Davis, it’s time for the theater to find a more permanent home.

    The yearly rent for the not-for-profit theater is holding at around $200,000 a year, but with the slowed economy, Mr. Davis said, it is harder to meet that goal without a major capital campaign each year.

    “Having a permanent place that the theater owned would be a great help to our capital campaign,” he said. “We just need to find an alternate space in Sag Harbor.”

    He pointed out that the theater brings “an enormous amount of income into the town. We have 150 to 300 people per night” during the season. “Those people want to eat, to shop, to see the sights.”

    There has been an offer to Bay Street from Mark Epley, the Mayor of Southampton Village, to take over the lease on the Parrish Museum building. Mr. Davis acknowledged the generosity of the offer. “We are certainly keeping all of our possibilities open,” he said. “But our goal is to stay in Sag Harbor. We love this town and love being a part of it.”

    Candidates for Suffolk County Legislature had a lively and at times combative discussion during a League of Women Voters debate at LTV Studios in Wainscott Monday night, when the incumbent Jay Schneiderman of Montauk faced off against Cornelius Kelly of East Quogue.

    Mr. Schneiderman, a former Republican turned Independence Party member who was first elected to the Legislature in 2003, is also running on the Democratic ticket. Mr. Kelly is on the Republican and Conservative lines.

    Mr. Kelly, 39, earned an M.B.A. from New York University with a double major in finance and economics and owns a title agency. He said the County Legislature needs to stand up to special interest groups, insisting he would not be beholden to any if elected. He says he is running for office because the “finances are in disarray, and they don’t need to be,” explaining that next year alone, Suffolk faces a deficit of $150 million to $250 million.

    Mr. Schneiderman’s initial comments focused on his long experience in local government — his two terms as East Hampton Town supervisor and his work to create 11 consecutive budgets at the town and now county level without raising property taxes.

    Asked about whether he would continue the county’s bus service on Sundays year round, Mr. Kelly said that while the bus, which runs from East Hampton to Orient Point, was supposed to be self-sufficient, it has been losing money — close to $20,000, he said. If elected, he would try to create more train service, which he believes would help the environment and the economy, bringing “folks out from the city without clogging our streets.”

    Mr. Schneiderman explained that he has struggled to find a way to pay for this Sunday service because, while all public service is subsidized, there was no available state or federal money. Initially, he thought he could raise the rate from $1.50 to $2, but it wouldn’t cover the entire year, so the Sunday service ran from July through Labor Day. Next year, the S92, which he said transports a significant portion of the East End’s work force, will run on Sundays throughout the season.

    Mr. Schneiderman also said that he has a bill in the works to fund an interconnected system of Sunday routes, linking 10 of what he believes are the most important routes in the county and joining up with the Nassau bus system. He said that if the bill does pass, it will give the county year-round Sunday service, at least on the S92.

    The candidates then discussed the possibility of creating a Peconic County, which both men said would be wonderful in theory, but was unlikely to happen.

    Mr. Schneiderman explained that there are 18 legislators for Suffolk County broken up by population and that this district is the largest geographically.

    “It’s a constant battle,” he said. “They don’t understand that our buses and clinics are jammed. Our median income is less than the rest of the county and the cost of living is higher. And I’m fighting for us to get our fair share. We collect a third of the sales tax that funds the county and we collect about a third of the property taxes and we get back a very small percentage. It would be a lot easier if we had Peconic County, but I don’t see it happening.”

    Mr. Kelly said Peconic County was “not feasible,” and called Mr. Schneiderman an “army of one,” insisting that he has failed to get initiatives passed because he hasn’t joined up with fellow legislators. “You’re going to get your head caved in if you go into the rugby field alone,” he said.

    Mr. Kelly also accused Mr. Schneiderman of running an unethical campaign, taking money from the Association of Municipal Employees.

    “My opponent’s campaigns are funded largely by special interest groups,” said Mr. Kelly. “He is charged on behalf of negotiating with these groups by taxpayers and I find that unethical.” When Mr. Kelly urged the audience to look at the campaign finance disclosure reports, Mr. Schneiderman countered that he was proud to take money from the municipal employees union and invited the audience to look at the reports as well.

    “I’m proud that they want to support me. . . . I owe my allegiance to the people I represent,” Mr. Schneiderman said.

    As for facing the budget shortfall, Mr. Schneiderman exlained that if the county went into next year and didn’t raise taxes or cut services, it would be as much as $200 million dollars short of paying the bills. He said that the county has been looking to sell things, but the recession, which stripped the county of nearly $100 million in sales tax revenue, has rendered the gap very difficult to close.

    Mr. Kelly criticized Mr. Schneiderman’s recent bill that would move to sell off the county jail and then lease it back from a new owner. He cited a similar situation that occurred with Attica Prison in New York, quoting then-Gov. George E. Pataki, who said, “it was one of the worst gimmicks the state ever did, which led to the state having one of the highest tax burdens and lowest credit ratings.”

    Mr. Schneiderman tried to explain that the county is in a fiscal emergency and it “might make sense,” insisting that the county will get the space back after 20 years and will still receive 90 cents on the dollar.

    The candidates closed the debate with a short but fiery discussion on the preservation of open space on both the North and South Forks with Mr. Kelly saying again that he believes Mr. Schneiderman is costing the South Fork precious land because he has has not built coalitions in the Legislature.

    Mr. Schneiderman said while he would agree that the county has to play a bigger role in land conservation, he has helped secure $48 million for preservation and has recently secured funding for a 140-acre plot in Quogue.

    Mr. Kelly shook his head, implying this wasn’t enough.

    “If we don’t fight for it now, it’s gone forever,” he said. “We have a small window here to get the job done. It’s the beauty that causes people to come here year after year and support our economy.”

    Richard Haeg, who is running on the Republican and Conservative tickets for East Hampton Town Board, is a man of interesting parts. A decorated Vietnam War veteran who loves to paint and a devoted Republican who also believes a politician is just a voice for the people, Mr. Haeg has a gentle disposition despite a hard-nosed career background — he served as a plainclothes police officer and detective in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Narcotics Squad and Rackets Bureau for over 15 years.

     In 2005, Mr. Haeg ran for town justice, believing his background in law enforcement and knowledge of the court system had given him insight into perspectives of both the defense and the prosecution.

    “I think it would have been great to end my career as a referee,” he said. “But I also knew going into it that it was an impossible race. It’s so difficult to unseat an incumbent justice, especially when we have great justices.”

    He initially rejected Republican supervisor Bill Wilkinson’s request that he run on the Republican ticket this year. “My first reaction was, ‘I don’t think so,’ ” he said, laughing, “because it’s a tough position to run for and there is an element about politics these days . . . people tend not to like politicians. But Bill pointed out some things the board could use that I have, and as I thought about it, I realized that most of the things I had done in life have brought me to a place where I could really add something to the board and the town.”

    “It’s about the community and the people,” he said. “If I can help make this a better place, then I can give four years to do that. That’d be wonderful.”

    Mr. Haeg’s entire career has been in service to country or community, he said, beginning with a four-year stint in the Marine Corps starting in 1966. He earned a Bronze Star with a V for valor and the Conspicuous Service Medal from New York State.

    “I went to France, Italy, Spain, it was outrageous,” he said. “I was only 19. But I got to meet a lot of different military people from all over Europe. It was a pretty amazing experience.”

    A native of Mattituck, Mr. Haeg returned to his hometown when he was discharged in 1969 and the following year received a call from the Suffolk County Police Academy. He had taken exams for the Washington, New York State, and Suffolk County Police Departments on a whim, while still in the Marine Corps, but had forgotten about them.

    “Honestly, it was never something I had an interest in,” he said. “I had passed all the exams, but Suffolk County called me first. By that time I was married, and [the Police Department] offered insurance benefits, the pay was pretty good, and having grown up here, I wanted to work nearby.”

    After retiring, he worked as a private investigator. He also lectured at Suffolk Community College and served on the college’s advisory board for over a decade.

    It wasn’t until 1999 that he moved to the South Fork, but he had always loved the area, he said, and its landscapes had been the inspirations for many of his paintings.

    “I do love to paint. I find it very calming,” he said. “I’ve done it since high school and that’s one of the reasons I came out here, but life tends to get in the way and you don’t always get to do what you want to do.”

    These days, he is spending much more time dealing with politics than paints. In addition to his current campaign and his run for town justice, he served as a vice chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee.

    Mr. Haeg said he would approach issues with a spirit of compromise and believes that everyone should be able to sit down together and move forward “as friends.”

    “I’ve worked with victims and defendants for a long time and there is no bigger compromise than that in life,” he said. “The issue of overcrowding in Springs — I have friends that have worked on those problems successfully.  They’ve done it in Farmingville and again in Riverheard. They’ve decreased the population and the density in these areas. The prior boards and zoning have created that problem because they weren’t thinking about the future.”

    Mr. Haeg said that he has learned there is an unfortunately long lag between what society needs and what the legislators are putting into the pipeline. He believes that the Republican Party, helmed by Mr. Wilkinson, is aware of that lag and is working to shorten it.

    “What we are going to legislate is not going to affect the future citizens of the town in a negative way,” he said. “You have to be able to anticipate the changes. It’s like a chess game.”

    The campaigning process has been surprising, rewarding, and challenging, he said, with most of his surprise stemming from the fact that finances seem to have strayed from the center of voters’ radar.

    “I was also surprised at the amount of work and how draining being a candidate is,” he said. “I have so much respect for all the candidates that are stepping out there. It takes a lot. I’ve been on 2,500 job interviews for a part-time job. Whether you win or lose, it’s an amazing process.”

    A 2012 East Hampton Town budget  totaling $65.6 million was submitted by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson on Friday. It calls for a slight increase in spending of 2 percent, but would result in a tax decrease for residents of both the town and the village.

    Should the budget be passed as proposed, the tax rate for town residents would be $26.58 per $100 of assessed value, a savings of $2.32 for a house with a $500,000 market value, and a savings of $8.12 for owners of a $1.8 million market-value house.

    Village residents, who are not taxed for all of the town services, would see a 9.3-percent tax decrease next year under the proposed budget, at a rate of $11.10 per $100 of assessed value — a $46 tax savings for a $500,000 house and a $161 savings on a $1.8 million house.

    The budget calls for staff and service cuts enacted this year to be maintained, including the discontinuation of the Highway Department’s leaf-pickup program and the closing of the Springs-Fireplace Road recycling center one day a week.

    It eliminates over $1 million budgeted this year for the operation of the scavenger waste treatment plant, anticipating that the town will stop operating the plant itself, through an outside contractor, and instead lease it out to a private entity.

    The increase in spending, according to the supervisor, is due primarily to increased employee costs.

    Payments toward debt  from bonds issued to cover a $27.3 million deficit incurred under the previous administration accounts for over 6 percent of the tax rate for town residents and over 8 percent of the tax rate for village residents, according to the proposed budget.

    The budget uses surplus money in the highway and sanitation funds to provide needed revenue. Of a projected highway fund surplus of $2.1 million at the end of this year, next year’s budget would appropriate $705,000, leaving $1.4 million as surplus. In the 2011 budget, $1.1 million of the department’s accumulated surplus was appropriated for spending. That appropriation was questioned by Scott King, who is running for re-election as highway superintendent on the Democratic line. Mr. King has said that, with a moratorium this year on capital budget spending, extra money outside the department’s operating budget could be needed to replace aging equipment.

    In his budget message, Mr. Wilkinson said that in the coming months he plans to propose a three-year capital improvement plan and budget “to address plant, equipment, and the future infrastructure needs of the town.”

    In next year’s Sanitation Department budget, $1.1 million would be appropriated from a surplus that is projected to reach $3.5 million by the end of this year — 61 percent of the department’s overall budget.

    The budget proposal notes that the state comptroller has advised that surplus money not used for annual expenses should be maintained at “reasonable levels,” and otherwise used to reduce the tax levy. The town has a policy of maintaining a 20-percent surplus in each fund, and, according to the budget message, the surplus appropriations in the highway and sanitation funds move the totals closer to that level. The Highway Department’s surplus, anticipated to be 37 percent of the department’s budget at the close of 2011, would be at 26 percent at the end of next year.

    In the town’s two general operating funds, the administration says it expects a $3.1 million surplus at the end of this year, and a $3.3 million surplus at the end of 2012. Anything above a 5 percent surplus must be used to pay down the bonds issued to cover the deficits in those funds.

`    Mr. Wilkinson’s proposal also calls for the sale of East Hampton Town’s 50-percent share of the Poxabogue Golf Center to Southampton Town, its partner in the $6.4 million purchase in 2004.

    The $2.2 million sale will enable the town to make payments on the debt for the property of about $180,000 a year for four years, and then to pay off the bond in full. That will save the town $100,000 in interest, according to the supervisor.

    The town board is expected to pass a resolution authorizing the sale at its meeting tonight. Southampton Town will use its community preservation fund to buy East Hampton’s half of the site, thus ensuring its preservation.

    The town board, which has not yet held a public discussion of the supervisor’s budget, must prepare a second draft, or preliminary budget, on which it must hold a hearing by Nov. 15, and adopt a final budget by Nov. 20.

    As Election Day nears, endorsement announcements in the East Hampton Town race are beginning to trickle in, with the big news of this week being State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle’s and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele’s support of the incumbent supervisor Bill Wilkinson, a Republican.

    Mr. Thiele, an Independence Party member, is also endorsing Bill Mott, an Independence Party candidate, for town board.

    Also this week, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Democrats of Suffolk County weighed in on the local race, endorsing the Democratic slate, Zach Cohen for supervisor and Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc for town board, as well as Scott King for highway superintendent, and Sima Freierman, Stephen Lester, Samuel Kramer, Rona Klopman, Nanci LaGarenne, Loretta Sears, and Deborah Klughers for town trustees.

    In an interview yesterday, Mr. Thiele said that typically, state politicians do not get involved on such a local level, but “given the depth of the crisis in East Hampton,” he and Mr. LaValle, a Republican, decided it was necessary. They have found Mr. Wilkinson a “good partner” in tackling the town’s fiscal troubles. Mr. Thiele says Mr. Wilkinson’s competence in working to reduce the $27 million deficit he inherited is the crux of the reason he chose to support him for a second term. Mr. Thiele and Mr. LaValle also endorsed Mr. Wilkinson in 2009.

    “Our decision really had to do with the work I’ve done with Wilkinson in regards to town’s finances,” he said. The state lawmakers worked with Mr. Wilkinson on two pieces of legislation — a deficit financing bill and another giving the town athority to finance a voluntary employee separation incentive bill — and have seen him produce “two balanced budgets. Finances, fiscal policies, and budgeting from the federal level to the state on down is going to continue to be the big issue for the next two years.”

    Mr. Thiele said that both he and Senator LaValle believe Mr. Wilkinson deserves to finish the good work he has done on straightening out the town’s finances.

    Steve Henaghan, chairman of Gay and Lesbian Democrats, explained that his group’s endorsements were based on candidates’ responses to a questionnaire addressing issues that directly affect the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community from marriage equality and the civil rights of transgender individuals to abortion and hate crime legislation.

    Mr. Henaghan explained in an interview yesterday that although the candidates running for these particular offices would not likely have to address these issues directly, it was of utmost importance to understand the candidates’ individual stances on these controversial topics.

    “Obviously we were concerned about marriage equality,” he said. “We wanted to know if the [candidates] personally support this law and would they speak out against those who want to weaken or overturn it. We also wanted to make sure they were supportive of transgender issues. Would they personally support a bill called the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which will grant the basic civil rights the everyone else has. These folks were very supportive of all of these issues.”

    A letter that will be sent to the two East Hampton Town justices asking them to do more to crack down on problems at the Surf Lodge restaurant was unanimously approved by the Montauk citizens advisory committee at a meeting on Monday.

    Written by Jay Fruin, a committee member, the letter asks Justices Lisa R. Rana and Catherine A. Cahill to take on the Surf Lodge, which, according to Pat Gunn, an assistant town attorney and the administrator of the town’s Public Safety Division, has been cited some 640 times since June for alleged code violations. The citations are for an outdoor bar and a food wagon that is parked outside the business.

    Lisa Grenci, the committee chairwoman, said she met with Rob McKinley, who runs the Surf Lodge, and told him he should remove the offending items. “If it’s an awning, get rid of it. If it’s a food truck, get rid of it. We’ve had enough, and we’re fed up with it,” she said she told him.

    In an e-mail message on Tuesday, Mr. McKinley disputed what Ms. Grenci said. He accused her of playing both sides of the fence. “Lisa also has no problem taking our money for rentals,” he said.

    Ms. Grenci, a real estate agent, explained that she has a client who has rented employee housing to Surf Lodge. “I can’t discriminate.”

    Mr. McKinley said the restaurant had not removed the awning or food truck as they did not believe they were in violation. “That’s what our lawyer and East Hampton court will decide,” he wrote.

    “And frankly I feel no matter what we do the ‘committees’ will find bogus claims against us because we aren’t what they want in town. But guess what? We are doing a lot more that is right than wrong,” he wrote.

    In its letter to the justices, the committee wrote, “This is to alert you about a critical issue before you which has negatively compromised the quality of life in the hamlet of Montauk. For the third summer, the business known as Surf Lodge has flagrantly and repeatedly abused the privilege to conduct business.” The letter will also be sent to the town attorney’s office.

    It goes on to say that “at the peak of the season their ongoing flagrant disregard for the law has consumed valuable code and law enforcement resources from other important duties. Their pattern of behavior negatively impacts the community while hundreds of other businesses are able to successfully operate without violating the same town codes and regulations.”

    The committee asked that the justices not consolidate all violations into a single or reduced fine, nor rearrange their court calendar for the convenience of the defense attorney. It also requested them to apply the maximum penalty for each individual violation.

    Committee members charged that the Surf Lodge, which is owned by King and Grove, a corporate group that includes Jayma Cardoso and Rob McKinley, is gaming the system by delaying the charges until after its liquor license is renewed, reportedly in January.

    Members suggested letting the State Liquor Authority know about the number of violations against the club, which opened in May 2009 and has drawn huge crowds and popular musical acts to the lakefront establishment ever since, on the theory that the license might not be renewed.

    At the meeting, the town’s code enforcement office was hit with accusations that code enforcement in Montauk is questionable. Members said they have been complaining about the 7-Eleven sign, which is on a state right of way in front of the establishment, for over a year with no results. “We don’t have code enforcement,” said Linda Barnds, the committee’s secretary.

    “We need the guys from East Hampton Village. They get things done,” said Ray Cortell, a committee member.

    Mr. Gunn of the Public Safety Division took issue with those comments on Tuesday. In an e-mail message he rejected that assertion and wondered where such “unfounded information” came from. “It’s an insult to the hard-working men and women in the ordinance enforcement department for anyone to make a reckless comment like that,” he wrote.

    “Surf Lodge is an ongoing litigation and cannot be discussed by the town while charges are pending,” he said.

    Since January, the ordinance department has opened 191 cases in Montauk, a number that represents 20 percent of cases townwide, he said.

    Mr. Gunn said the 7-Eleven sign was out of his jurisdiction because it is in a state right of way, but noted that the convenience store had been charged for failure to obtain permission for the sign from the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board. He referred further questions to the town attorney’s office.

     Rob Connelly, an assistant town attorney, said yesterday that there were three charges against the Montauk 7-Eleven that were recently adjudicated in court, including the sidewalk sign. The store was found guilty, he said, and told to remove the sign.

    A long saga of legal challenges to a 1998 East Hampton Town law barring most ferries from docking here came to a close this week with a United States Supreme Court decision not to review the case. The decision was made on Monday morning, on the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term.

    The ruling means that a 2010 decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the town law, which banned vehicle and high-speed ferries, will stand.

    In a lawsuit filed in 2004, Paul G. Forsberg Sr. of Montauk’s Viking Ferry company, along with several ferry parent companies and a handful of Montauk individuals, claimed that the town’s law violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which prohibits unfairly restricting interstate trade.

    The appeals court had agreed with a ruling by a lower court that the local benefits of the ferry ban — avoiding an increase in traffic and its associated problems — outweighed any potential negative impact on interstate commerce.

    “The case is over. The town has complete victory,” Richard Cahn, who was the attorney for East Hampton Town in the suit, said on Monday.  

    Mr. Cahn, of Cahn and Cahn in Huntington, has represented East Hampton in legal challenges to its ferry law since 2004, when the Cross Sound Ferry company, later joined by the Towns of Southold and Shelter Island, sued to have the law overturned. That lawsuit was dropped in 2005.

    He said earlier this week that he had argued before the U.S. Supreme Court before — almost 30 years ago, in a case regarding reapportionment in Suffolk County. “It would have been a wonderful experience for me to argue again in the Supreme Court,” he said. “But I regretfully forgo the privilege to win the case.”