The East Hampton Town Board is trying to close what its members describe as a loophole in town law that fails to limit the number of people that can be on patios, lawns, or beaches at restaurants and nightspots. The aim is to alleviate the stress on Montauk residents from several popular clubs that have been attracting hordes.

    Town Councilwoman Julia Prince, who had pleaded with her colleagues on the board last week to take legal action, reported at a board meeting on Tuesday that neither of the two most problematic establishments — the Surf Lodge and Ruschmeyer’s — had amassed enough town code violations to support a request to a Supreme Court judge for an injunction to shut them down.

    While maximum indoor occupancy is set by fire code regulations, the traffic, parking, noise, and other problems that neighbors have been complaining about is engendered by crowds that exceed those limits and congregate outdoors.

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley announced Tuesday that the town attorneys had begun to research “a formula for, in some way, restricting the use of the outdoors . . . to get some level of control over what’s happening.”

    The Town of Southold, she said, where wineries often hold outdoor events, requires specific mass-gathering permits from the town whenever the number of people expected, either indoors or out, will exceed the maximum indoor occupancy set by the fire marshal.

     In East Hampton, the town board signs off on mass-gathering permits, but they are not required for everyday occasions at commercial businesses, even though troublesome gatherings have become routine at a number of places.

     Ms. Quigley, a lawyer, said that, although the state fire code only regulates congregations of people indoors, it nevertheless might be called into play. The state code sets standards for exits from interior spaces, which, she said, could perhaps be used to apply to gates or other entries and exits that funnel people in and out of outside areas. She said she also found a Suffolk County Department of Health law that regulates the number of people who can swim in a particular area based on to the square footage of surface water.

    Councilwoman Prince’s plea last week for the board to take a tougher stance as Montauk residents in particular feel the effects of a summertime party atmosphere, prompted comments at Tuesday’s meeting from Sylvia Overby, a Democratic candidate for town board.

    “This is becoming the difference between being a family-friendly atmosphere and being Coney Island,” Ms. Overby said. Some residents, she said, who rent their houses out in summer to try to make ends meet, will feel the effects if it becomes difficult to find tenants due to the disruptions in residential neighborhoods.

    Ms. Prince reiterated comments she made last week, about how a town law passed in recent years making all restaurants and bars eligible for permits allowing live music had changed the scene at many of them, exacerbating their negative impacts. She suggested that the board discuss issuing music permits only to establishments in commercial districts, eliminating live music at places in residential zones.

    “The biggest problem is the overcrowding of these places,” said Councilman Pete Hammerle, who was a board member when the music permit legislation was passed. “These places used to be small, low-key places to go have dinner. Now they’re being exploited to their fullest.”

    When the matter of enforcement of existing laws came up, Ms. Quigley noted that some of the problematic establishments had received summonses and are in court.

    Ms. Prince, who had asked the board last week to seek injunctions, confirmed that the number of summonses issued for the Surf Lodge and Ruschmeyer’s would not support such requests. And, she said, because many of the summonses issued had been for zoning code, not noise, violations, the town cannot invoke a provision in the law allowing revocation of a music permit after three noise violations occur.

    “It is egregious to have violations written every single day, but they are not the kind of violations that warrant shutting a place down,” Ms. Quigley said.

    “One thing that I respect is jurisdiction,” Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said. “So if the court has a jurisdiction over something, I am not getting into it. I think process is more important here than outcome.”    

    Residents in the areas around the cited businesses, many of which predate zoning that would now outlaw them but are grandfathered as pre-existing, should bear with the situation, he suggested. “These locations have been in existence as nightclubs for easily the 60 years I’ve been around,” he said.

    “We’re in the tourism industry,” he continued, referring to the difficult economic climate nationwide. “I think we should have a real big business summit about tourism to discuss what benefits the entire community gets from these things. We have to look at the ripple effect of all these things, because we are a four-month community.”

    The supervisor said in the last week he had received “outraged phone calls” from people who work at the Surf Lodge “or sell pizza to the Surf Lodge,” worried about attempts to shut such places down.

    “I agree with you, but it depends on the kind of tourism you want to attract,” Ms. Overby said. She noted that State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. had said “over and over again, our environment is our economy. You cannot destroy that environment.”

    “We all know we’re a tourist economy,” Ms. Prince said.  “That’s not the issue. Of course we want the businesses to thrive.” 

    “My major complaint is this: You have our resources, the town, writing the same violations for three years to the same owners. As a board, are we willing to take the next step in dealing with businesses that blatantly thumb their noses at the town code?” Councilwoman Prince asked.  Though she said town police and code enforcement officers were doing a good job, the town is “constantly saying, ‘You can’t do this,’ and they keep doing it. That’s what upsets me.”

    “I would hope that code enforcement will continue doing its job and get enough evidence” for an injunction, Ms. Prince said.

    John Jilnicki, the East Hampton Town attorney, said obtaining the kind of injunction Ms. Prince sought would be difficult. “They’re very hard because you’re basically putting someone out of business. You have to show real damage to the town.” He said he could only recall the town’s succeeding at such an effort once, and the injunction was overturned by the court within one day.

    Earlier in the meeting, David Buda, a Springs resident, suggested a ban on another nighttime nuisance — backyard roosters. “I happen to enjoy the roosters,” Ms. Quigley said. “So, Mr. Buda, I am not in favor of a rooster ban. I’m not willing to say to people, you cannot live life the way you want to.”

    “That does not mean I’m in favor of having roosters bother people,” she added.

    In the next-to-last meeting before school starts up again, the East Hampton School Board on Tuesday was focused on forming committees, cafeteria food, changes to the Web site, and various possible savings.

    The timers, scorers, and chaperones at athletic games, who are paid $59 for a single game or $83 for a double, were the first issue.

    “I’m 100 percent in support of the athletic program,” said Jackie Lowey, a board member, “but the actual amount spent is in the tens of thousands. With so many parents that go to games anyway, is this necessary? Is this something volunteers could do?”

    “We need decent chaperones,” said Richard Burns, the interim superintendent. “The sanctioned Section 11 games have certain requirements.”

    Joe Vas, the district’s athletic director, was in agreement with Mr. Burns. “We do need people trained to deal with crowds,” he said. “Some of the games have in excess of 500 people. We’ve tried to cut back where we could.” He added that chaperones on the approved list, thanks to their training, once “saved a man’s life.”

    Mr. Vas was referring to the quick action of staffers at a junior varsity basketball game in 2008. With the help of an automated external defibrillator, they came to the aid of a referee who had gone into cardiac arrest.

    But Ms. Lowey was not swayed. Volunteers, either parents or other community members, could take up the mantle and save the district about $40,000 a year, she maintained.

    “Is there no way we could train a cadre of volunteers?” she asked. “The cumulative effect on the district’s budget is much bigger than the amount that goes into someone’s pocket — it’s death by a thousand cuts.”

    Lauren Dempsey, another board member, pointed out that anyone who volunteers for the school is required to go through a background check and fingerprinting, at a cost of around $100, which the volunteers themselves would be obliged to pay.

    “So we wouldn’t just be asking them to volunteer, but also asking them to pay for the privilege,” she said.

    Ms. Lowey suggested a pilot project, “to see if we can’t move to try and train a bunch of volunteers and halve this budget.”

    Mr. Vas was unconvinced, saying that the trained staffers “provide a safe environment. I don’t know if we can put a volunteer in that position.”

    Alison Anderson, a board member, suggested that the athletic committee look into it.

    On the subject of committees, six were formed with the new board members.  Pat Hope, Laura Anker Grossman, and Ms. Lowey will be on the academic committee; Ms. Hope, Ms. Lowey, and Ms. Dempsey on the finance committee; Ms. Anderson, Liz Pucci, and Ms. Dempsey on facilities; Ms. Pucci, Ms. Anderson, and Dr. Anker Grossman on the athletic committee; George Aman, Ms. Anderson, and Ms. Dempsey on personnel, and Ms. Lowey, Ms. Hope, and Dr. Aman on the policy committee.

    Ms. Lowey also outlined a meeting with Whitsons Culinary Group, which provides school meals. The idea, she explained, was to get more healthy food into the elementary and middle school cafeterias.

    “They were receptive,” she said. Nachos will no longer be offered, and cut fruit, which is easier for younger children to eat than an unpeeled orange, may be on the menu come September.

    Ms. Lowey also discussed the district’s Web site, saying it was not as user-friendly as it could be and was due for an upgrade. The board agreed that the site, ehufsd.org, could be used to post homework assignments for students, make announcements in a more timely manner, and in general be a useful place for parents and taxpayers to learn what’s happening at the schools.

    “We have enough talent among our students to make this sparkle and shine,” said Ms. Hope.

    Ms. Lowey acknowledged the expense of a Web update, but suggested that the cost could be offset in part by sending more materials by e-mail and fewer by paper.

    Speaking during the public commentary, Paul Fiondella voiced concerns over both the 2-percent tax cap and assessed values in the town.

    “Assessed value is probably 30 percent higher than market value right now,” he said. “If people start bringing their grievances to the assessors’ office, you’re likely to see the total tax base decrease.”

    Isabel Madison, the district’s business administrator, did not have a final number yet for the tax levy, when asked by Mr. Fiondella, who also brought up the Sandpebble lawsuit, urging the board to “not let it go.”

    Dr. Anker Grossman agreed, and said that the district’s new attorney, Kevin Seaman, would give a public report on Sandpebble at an upcoming hearing.

    Finally, the board and school staff acknowledged the death of Herman Stephens, a custodian and cafeteria worker for the middle school, who died earlier this month.

    “He was known for sneakers,” said Claude Beudert, a special education teacher at the middle school. The board discussed with Mr. Beudert and Eric Woellhof, the district’s facilities administrator, the possibility of building a box to house a pair of Mr. Stephens’s maroon-and-white  sneakers, with a plaque of remembrance underneath.

    On Tuesday morning, a public health sanitarian from the County Health Department went to the south end of Lake Montauk to test the water at the popular beach there, as well as the water in two streams that enter the lake nearby.

    The testing is related to swimming safety and not to the possible contamination of shellfish. East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson asked for the test last week and said he would use the results to decide whether the beach should be closed to bathers. Testing done by the County Health Department six years ago found contaminants in tributaries.

    Mr. Wilkinson said he understood that tests of the water where people swam were made at the time. “I’m interested in the whole south end,” he said.

    The State Department of Environmental Conservation closed the entire lake to shellfishing as a result of the heavy rainfall on Sunday and Monday. Normally, the south end (where the water was tested for swimming safety on Tuesday) is closed to shellfishing in the summer months, as are areas around the Montauk Lake Club, the east side of Star Island, and in Coonsfoot Cove in the lake’s harbor area.

    Tuesday’s test was one result of a well-attended Aug. 10 meeting of the town’s Lake Montauk Watershed Advisory Committee. During the meeting, Kim Shaw, a senior public health sanitarian with the Health Department and a county liaison to the Peconic Estuary Program, surprised some committee members by revealing that the Health Department had a record of swimming-related water testing until 2005.

    The data will be added to a recent study done by the Cornell Cooperative Extension that identified, through DNA, the sources — animal as opposed to human — of fecal coliform bacteria found in water around the lake.

    In a phone interview on Monday, she said the county had not tested the waters at “South Beach” since 2005 because that year the town stripped the beach of its lifeguard. Once a beach is no longer considered a certified bathing beach — with a guard and public toilets — the county stops testing.

    Ironically, the beach had been equipped with an advanced compostable toilet in the late ’90s compliments of a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency via the Peconic Estuary Program, according to Larry Penny, the town’s director of natural resources. But, without a guard, a swimming-prohibited sign went up.

    The sign was not meant to suggest the waters were unclean, he said, only that the beach was unguarded. Mr. Penny stressed that tests of water quality as they pertained to the risk of eating shellfish harvested from an area were different from tests to determine swimming safety.

    The State Department of Environmental Conservation uses the level of coliform bacteria associated with fecal matter to determine the relative safety of shellfish. The County Health Department looks for enterococcus bacteria, intestinal flora that can cause illness.

    Bill Hastback, a shellfish biologist with the D.E.C., said the difference in testing protocols was rooted in standards for bathing beaches that were changed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1986. In the past, the County Health Department tested for the presence of both organisms. 

    “Shellfish water quality standards are super strict. If areas are open to shellfishing, they’re probably suitable for bathing beaches,” Mr. Hastback said. But, if an area is closed to shellfishing, it does not follow that it should be closed to swimmers. When the presence of fecal coliform was used as a standard, the allowable limit for swimming was 200 parts per 100 milliliters of water, rather than 14 parts per 100 milliliters for shellfish safety.

    According to Mr. Penny, existing Health Department test results have shown the presence of enterococcus bacteria coming from a stream that enters the lake on its southeast end. There are three tributaries to the south end, the stream on the east, another stream on the west that flows from the Ditch Plain community, and a culvert that passes under Montauk Highway, also adding to the flow from the east.

    The Cornell Cooperative Extension’s study of 14 sites around the lake found that those located near the southernmost tributaries were the only ones to contain human fecal coliform bacteria.

    Mr. Penny stressed that while there were concerns about the lake’s south end, “all along people have been saying the lake water has improved. There have been no increased [shellfish] closures since the ’80s. There have been in other places — Three Mile Harbor and Hog Creek.”

    Kevin McAllister, the Peconic Baykeeper, is a member of the lake committee. He said on Tuesday that there remained “looming questions” about water quality. “Let’s be honest about these waters. With respect to bathing beaches, even unguarded swimming holes, they are recreational bodies of water. There’s kayaking, paddleboarding. Let’s see if they’re safe.”

    He said he had spent over a year trying to convince the Village of Sag Harbor to monitor Havens Beach more closely. “The county kept saying it was safe, and I kept insisting that the water was not being tested after heavy rainfalls that bring in the pollutants.” His independent testing of “the pulses of rain,” in cooperation with Southampton College, finally convinced the village to take action.

    He said he wanted Lake Montauk to be subjected to the same kind of comprehensive testing. “If we’re not responsive to the rain event pulses, routine testing schedules will miss what’s really going on,” he said, adding that testing for pesticide and nitrogen from fertilizer should be put on the front burner.

    Tuesday’s testing was an example of how the lake committee had found its rhythm, Supervisor Wilkinson said that day. “The committee’s taken great leaps in the last couple of months. It’s started to click as a group of concerned citizens not individuals. The lake is the beneficiary.”

    He announced that a subcommittee had been formed, the Lake Montauk sustainability committee “to raise funds privately.” Mr. Wilkinson said the umbrella committee would decide on how the money raised is disbursed. “I think it’s great.”

    Bill Grimm, a commercial fisherman who helped organize the subcommittee, has suggested holding a fund-raising event at the Inlet Seafood restaurant before the end of the summer season.

    When Norris Acosta tied up his sailboat at the Harbor Marina in Three Mile Harbor over the weekend he was not out on a run-of-the-mill afternoon cruise. The adventurer was en route from Massachusetts to Brooklyn, which might not seem at all out of the ordinary except for one fact: His yacht is a 13-foot-long Sunfish more commonly used for short day trips.

    Mr. Acosta left Massachusetts on Aug. 9, sailed down Buzzards Bay and through the Cape Cod Canal. His itinerary went according to plan until he was stranded on the west side of Gardiner’s Island when fog and the prevailing wind kept him from rounding Montauk Point.

    The Harbor Marina’s Peter Mendelman said the sailor had stopped onshore along the way, camping. Instead of reaching the ocean at Montauk, he decided to go through the Shinnecock Canal after spending a night either at Cedar Point in East Hampton or Mashomack Point on Shelter Island. He said he then would continue off the South Shore to Brooklyn.

    “When he came into the store, he was dressed in a wetsuit top, shorts, and wetsuit booties. His hands were like prunes from being out on the water. He admitted that his stomach muscles were getting a workout from heeling out in the Sunfish,” Mr. Mendelman said.     Mr. Acosta is no stranger to adventure; he said he tries to do something exciting every year. Last year, he bicycled from Paris to Crete, although he didn’t elaborate on the Mediterranean passage, Mr. Mendelman said.

    The yachtsman sails with a compass around his neck and a navigation app on his cellphone, which he keeps in a plastic bag, also secured around his neck. He was gone from East Hampton yesterday and was perhaps out of cellphone range when a reporter called.

    An Aug. 13 and 14 rock festival planned for the East Hampton Airport that had alarmed some residents and sparked legal action will not be held after all.

     Citing poor ticket sales, Music to Know posted an announcement on its Web site Saturday. The first-time concert promoters, Chris Jones and Bill Collage, directed ticket-holders to check back next week to learn about refunds.

     The concert would have featured Vampire Weekend on the first night and Bright Eyes the second. Fashion boutiques and food kiosks were promised, as were shuttle buses to remote parking fields.

    The decision was not altogether unexpected. Summer traffic can make a drive to East Hampton from New York City drag on for up to four hours, and the area with its high-priced vacation houses is not deep in the demographic the promoters hoped would emerge.

     From its hasty approval in December for an initial site in Amagansett the festival was met with strong opposition from some would-be neighbors. After questions were raised about the way the East Hampton Town Board handled a permit for its first location, the promoters scrambled and found space at the end of an unused runway at the East Hampton Airport. It was briefly touch-and-go as the town and organizers waited for approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

     In their online statement Saturday, the promoters said they were deeply disappointed.

     Nina Katchadourian is a visual artist and sometime musician from Brooklyn whose sarcastic YouTube video “The Jitney’s Just a F*cking Bus” is well on the road to viral this week, having received 11,802 hits on Monday alone.

     The video begins with Ms. Katchadourian extolling the virtues of her native California in song, her voice very Joni Mitchell. The left coast was nice, but when she moved to New York City, she sings, “I saw my childhood had been hell.”

Click to See Video

     In California, “there were the redwoods, there was coastline, there was sun and there was skiing, there were cable cars and Vespas and ultimate frisbeeing. Oh sure there was Lake Tahoe, Big Sur, and Yosemite, but I never saw the Hamptons, and I never rode the Jitney.”

     “Would it be winged, supersonic, would it have gleaming polished sides, and if I got lucky one day, would I see it from the inside? I grew up dreaming of this Jitney but knew not what it was, so I was shocked and so surprised to learn” — (dramatic pause here, the songstress close to the lens) and in a droll, dream-shattered voice: “The Jitney’s just a f*cking bus!”

     Fast switch to punk rage and fast, psychedelic cuts of the Jitney with Ms. Katchadourian screaming the refrain.

     Then back to the sweet Joni voice recalling how she traveled to the Hamptons to work on her tan when the Jitney was just a van. Now you need a reservation, she complains, “watch out for the vicious elbows,” whispered conversations on illegal cellphones, pretzels, party mix, and free wi-fi. “It’s the Concord of the 495, so over-the-top luxurious. It’s a bird, it’s a plane,” and then back to head-in-the-oven voice with the screamed refrain.

     The video’s sardonic wit might conjure Frank Zappa, or more recently, David Carr who opened his hilarious monologue at Guild Hall last month with a stab at the Hamptons bubble using the “f*cking bus” beneath the Jitney facade as a pin.

     Ms. Katchadourian’s video includes a postscript that reads:

     “Actually the Jitney is not just a f*cking bus. Founded by Jim Davidson in 1974, and owned by the Lynch family since 1988, the Hampton Jitney promotes and practices a wide array of environmentally smart policies and procedures.”

    Carley Shephard, a spokeswoman for the Hampton Jitney, said yesterday that the kindly postscript was “stolen from our Web site,” and that the company is not amused, and no, the video was not a clever marketing ploy. “It’s not okay with the people here. At one point you can see she was in our offices.”

    Legal action? “I don’t know,” Ms. Shepherd said. “Our president and vice president are aware of it.”

    “I’m not sure what the point was. Is it an attack on the Jitney? Is it another objectification of the Hamptons? Frankly I’m sick of that,” said Steve Haweeli of the WordHampton public relations firm in Springs.

    “But, if you take the view that all publicity is good publicity,” he said, “this is great. I’m grateful for the Jitney on the off-season. I’m not a rah rah guy for the Jitney, but I enjoy the service.”

    Reached yesterday, Ms. Katchadourian said: “The paradoxical thing is it’s actually not a song about the Jitney at all. It’s about my displaced California sensibility. I’ve been here for 15 years, but I still feel like a foreigner. For years I heard about the Jitney. I had this vision, this funny culture thing, summertime in the Northeast, the vacationing elite, and my own California self — a coming of age story, the kid moves east.”

    A friend sparked the idea when she said the Jitney was like a bus that wants to be a plane, Ms. Katchadourian said. The song was written and the footage shot last summer, she said, calling it, “a backburner project. I made it for fun.”

    “It’s interesting to have this minor viral moment. YouTube has this thing where you can see where people are watching it. I don’t know if people in Egypt know what a Jitney is.”

    Ms. Katchadourian said she had only ridden the Jitney four times. “I think it’s a well-run company. I was early  every time.”

Corrected 8/18/11

   With local politics set to move into high gear, East Hampton Democrats are struggling with campaign support, while the Republicans are deep in the black, having raised more than $90,000 for their top candidates in the first half of 2011 — nearly eight times more than Democrats brought in.

    According to July campaign disclosure statements filed with the New York State Board of Elections, the East Hampton Town Republican Committee began the year with a modest opening balance of $6,703 in its campaign account, but that has grown exponentially over the course of the year, bolstered by $89,355 in contributions as of July 11, including $8,000 in corporate donations alone. The Republicans also reported an impressive $40,388 in expenditures, paying more than $13,000 to Data Tech Solutions of Bohemia for campaign mailings as well as $5,000 in consultation fees to Strategic Planning.

    Trace Duryea, chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, said that while the constant pressure to raise money for the party is “not her favorite part of the job,” she also finds fund-raising immensely gratifying.

    “Obviously we get some very generous and affluent supporters and while all our contributors are important, the ones that are really important are people sending $10 or $25.” While Ms. Duryea supports the Republication agenda, she says that she largely believes that everyone in the community wants the same things, but the parties have different ways of trying to achieve those goals.

    “There are some expectations in politics with quid pro quo, but I think there isn’t too much of that here,” Ms. Duryea said. “Members of the town board are not politicians — they want to help the community during a difficult situation. They are making a big financial sacrifice — these are not part-time jobs.”

    The most significant contributions made to the Republican campaign in the first half of the year were by the real estate tycoon and former Metropolitan Transit Authority chairman Peter Kalikow, and his wife, Mary, of New York and Montauk, who each donated $5,000 to the G.O.P. The Kalikows were followed by Steven Tuma of Wainscott, who contributed $5,000, and Andy Sabin and David Seeler, both of Amagansett, who each donated $2,500. Charles Durkin Jr. of East Hampton and New York City, Stanley Arkin of Amagansett, Barry Bistrian of East Hampton, and Nancy McCaffrey of Wainscott each donated $2,000 to the campaign.

    The Republican Committee received $1,000 donations from Thomas Knobel of Holbrook, a former East Hampton G.O.P. chairman; Michael Myers and Irving Paler of Wainscott; Ed Nash, Mary Ella Moeller, Jane Talmage, Marie Duryea, Alexander Laughlin, Harvey Horowitz, and Joseph Perella of East Hampton; Michael Miglino, Tina Piette, and Kent Miller of Amagansett; Donald G. Schrage of Springs, and David Lee of Sag Harbor.

    In terms of significant corporate donations, Montauk Lake Club and Double K Management Corp., both of Montauk, each gave $2,000.

    Bill Wilkinson, the Republicans’ candidate for supervisor, reported $750 in contributions for his political committee, Wilkinson for Supervisor, in the first half of this year, $500 of which was donated by Perry Duryea of Montauk. In addition, Richard Haeg, a Republication candidate for town board, raised $2,479 for his political committee, Friends of Richard Haeg, with Michael Meyers of Wainscott giving $1,000, the maximum allowed to a candidate’s committee. Steven Gaines, the other Republican town board candidate, raised $1,010, with $500 coming from Laurence Kirshbaum of New York and Wainscott.

    Their Democratic rivals, Zachary Cohen for supervisor, and Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc for town board, had not set up their own campaign committees as of mid-July. “We’re very much a cooperative group — the money gets put in and we use it as we see best,” Mr. Cohen said.

    So far, however, the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee and its separate campaign committee, Campaign 2011, do not have much to work with.

    The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee began the year with about half the opening balance of the Republicans, approximately $3,500. In the first half of the year, the Democratic Committee and Campaign 2011 raised $11,975. Of that, the Democratic Committee gathered $7,995, while Campaign 2011 brought in $3,980, more than half of which was donated by the committee’s treasurer, David Gruber of East Hampton.

    July found the Democratic Committee $4,318 in debt, due to $15,738 in expenditures. Of those, $3,333 went to the Suffolk County Democratic Committee in Bohemia for consulting, having spent $15,738 in the first half of the year, according to the July campaign finance report filed with the New York State Board of Elections. Of that, $3,333 went to the Suffolk County Democratic Committee in Bohemia for consulting and $3,081 was spent on campaign literature. Campaign 2011 reported a balance of $2,041 as of mid-July, after spending $1,939 in the first half of the year, $1,460 of that on a campaign mailing.

    Zachary Cohen, the Democratic candidate for town supervisor, explained that at this point fund-raising is not the focal point of his campaign or the Democratic Party in general. In the early part of the election year, Mr. Cohen concentrated instead on face-to-face meetings, working to garner support and future funding through fostering of personal relationships.

    “I’ve never run before,” Mr. Cohen said. “I don’t have that sort of group of standard contributors that you would normally call up. I haven’t avoided fund-raising, it’s part of my responsibility, but often it’s just about meeting with groups of one or four or eight — people who are very issue-oriented — and setting the stage for them to possibly donate.”

    The most significant direct supporters of the Democratic Committee, other than Mr. Gruber, were Richard G. Davis of Amagansett and Charles A. Ehren of East Hampton, who both gave $250. The remaining contributions ranged from $10 to $200.

    Mr. Cohen said that he wasn’t happy with the direction that the town has taken under the current supervisor and Republican majority, especially what he called a growing nonchalance toward environmental issues and the preservation of open space.

    Supporting the pursuit of these policies as well are the East Hampton Conservators, a political action committee that has thrown its financial backing behind Democratic candidates in the past several elections. The Conservators raised nearly $60,000 between Jan. 15 and mid July.

    The PAC's biggest contributor was its founder, Alec Baldwin, who gave $6,000 in the first six months of the year. Charline Spektor of Amagansett was close behind Mr. Baldwin, donating $5,000. William Rockford of Scottsdale, Az., and East Hampton, Robert Rifkind of Wainscott and New York City, and Peter Morton, who gave a Los Angeles address, all contributed $2,500. William Ford of Detroit donated $2,000. Giving $1,000 were Peter Handal of East Hampton, Melville Strauss, Stuart Match Suna, Katherine Rayner, Joseph Rice, Carol Leibenson of East Hampton and New York, Ken Landis of Wainscott and New York, Elizabeth De Cuevas of Amagansett and New York, Ann Mallouk of Greenport, and Madeline Pachella, Sophie Pachella, and Bruce Bozzi, all of whom gave New York City addresses.

    Corporate contributions came from Marders of Bridgehampton, which donated $2,500, and the Daniel and Joanna Rose Fund of New York City, which gave $1,000.

   Of the total $34,155 expenditures the East Hampton Conservators reported as of July, more than $20,000 of it was spent with public relations firm, Mullen and McCaffrey of Springs, to raise public awareness of the PAC’s causes.

   Both Ms. Duryea and Mr. Cohen said they expected upcoming events to significantly bolster their campaign funds. Ms. Duryea says that while the Republican Party isn’t directly targeting a younger demographic than previous years, she believes that younger voters are just beginning to really “get it.”

    “The level of concern has intensified,” she said. “Now it’s really affecting their lives, because for the most part they are middle class and it’s harder and harder for them to exist here.” The Republicans’ Sept. 9 party at East Hampton Point should appeal to this younger contingency of voters, Ms. Duryea said.

    The Democrats are throwing their own big fund-raiser on Sept. 2 at Linda James’s house on Hook Pond Lane in East Hampton — one of several upcoming events that Mr. Cohen believes will bring in “five figures” in contributions to the party and help to dramatically shift the playing field.

    While the Democrats are decidedly the underdogs in fund-raising this year, Mr. Cohen is optimistic the situation will improve. “I think the standard is that the incumbent takes the lead and then the challenger will catch up and then hopefully, takes the lead instead.”

On Thursday, for the second time in five days, the dive charter boat John Jack returned to Montauk with the body of a diver who died while on a shipwreck exploration cruise.

Timothy Barrow, 64, a veterinarian and experienced diver from Reading Pa., made it to the surface, according to published reports, but succumbed to an apparent heart attack. Mr. Barrow was diving on the wreck of the Norness, a tanker sunk by a German U-Boat in 1942. The ship lays 250 feet down and about 60 miles southeast of Montauk.

East Hampton Town police said Friday that Mr. Barrow had completed a dive and was following an anchor line to the surface when he ran into trouble. Surfacing in distress, he lost consciousness as the John Jack crew lifted him aboard. Attempts to resuscitate him on the boat were unsuccessful.

Mr. Barrow's body was brought to the Montauk Coast Guard Station aboard the John Jack, where it was turned over to investigators.

On July 24, the ocean liner Andrea Doria claimed her 16th deep-diving victim, Michael LaPrade, 27, of Gardena, Calif. East Hampton Town Police Chief, Edward Ecker was reported as saying the young man became separated from his dive rope. Deep divers say it is not uncommon to become disoriented at such depths. The Andrea Doria was rammed by a Swedish liner, the Stockholm, on July 25, 1956. She sank the next day in more than 200 feet of water.

    As Congress bickers over raising the debt ceiling, the prospect of the United States defaulting on its obligations for the first time in its history looms, with the potential for a downgrade of its credit and the higher interest rates that would inevitably follow.

    Representative Tim Bishop said on Tuesday it would be a catastrophe for Long Island and the nation.

    “If we don’t raise the debt limit at all, that means we are going to be able to do approximately 60 percent of what we normally do,” he said in a telephone interview. “That’s about the revenue that comes in monthly; it covers about 60 percent of what the government normally spends. We’d be engaged in triage. Do we pay the interest on the debt we already have; do we not pay a certain number of Social Security checks? Perhaps Gabreski Airport [in Westhampton Beach] can’t make payroll. Veterans at Northport [V.A.] Hospital might not get serviced.”    

    Mr. Bishop slammed Republican presidential candidates for their stubbornness on raising the debt limit.

    “The Michele Bachmanns and Tim Pawlentys of the world are talking about defaulting on our debt, not paying Social Security benefits, closing veterans’ hospitals — this is what they’re talking about when they say they won’t raise the debt ceiling. . . . Extremists want those things to happen.”

    Asked how he would solve the stalemate, the congressman backed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s proposal, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated cuts the deficit by about $2.2 trillion over 10 years and raises the ceiling through the end of 2012.

    “The Reid proposal is not perfect, but it basically meets the two demands that the Republicans have said they absolutely have to have. One is that there be at least a dollar-to-dollar relationship between the amount cut and the amount we increase the debt limit. [It also] meets the requirement of no new revenue.”

    Mr. Bishop explained his opposition to the bill that is before the House right now, Speaker John Boehner’s proposal, which raises the debt limit in stages over the next 18 months, largely because of threats from Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, rating agencies that have threatened to strip the U.S. of its gold-plated AAA bond rating, which has never happened before.

    “I oppose the Boehner proposal,” said the congressman. “First, substantively, the rating agencies are already saying that a temporary increase in the debt limit may not be enough to hold off a credit rating downgrade. A credit rating downgrade would be enormously difficult for our economy; it would increase the cost of borrowing; credit card rates, car insurance rates [and] mortgages would go up. This would be a tax on every single consumer in this country.”

    He accused the G.O.P. of hypocrisy when it came to creating a friendly climate for business.    “Republicans say businesses are plagued by uncertainty, but their proposal to raise the debt limit in two tranches and, particularly, attach the second episode of lifting the debt limit to $1.8 trillion in cuts, dramatically increases the uncertainty. They are proposing a solution that exacerbates their description of the cause of the [broader economic] problem.”

    Mr. Bishop said his likely Republican opponent next fall, Randy Altschuler of St. James, who very nearly unseated him in the midterm elections last year, was ducking the issue.

    “To my knowledge he has not gone on the record on anything; HR-1, the Republican budget resolution [this winter], and to my knowledge he has not gone on the record on Cut, Cap, and Balance [the Tea Party-backed deficit-reducing bill] or the Boehner plan or the Reid plan. His response always is, there will be plenty of time for a robust debate.”

    Mr. Altschuler’s Web site indicates that he “opposes any increase in the national debt ceiling without significant spending cuts and comprehensive reforms like a presidential line item veto, a supermajority requirement to raise taxes and hard caps on federal spending,” putting him in the Tea Party caucus on the issue and indicating he’d likely have backed Cut, Cap, and Balance, the Republican bill that passed the House but is dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    Mr. Bishop maintained that Mr. Altschuler’s position “makes it virtually impossible to raise revenue because it requires a two-thirds majority of both chambers to increase revenue; their definition of increasing revenue includes closing oil and gas company loopholes that are impossible to defend. But if someone wanted to cut Medicaid for kids, we’d only need a simple majority.”

    He said Democrats had done all they could to meet Republican demands.

    “If we don’t raise the debt limit by Aug. 2, this is a problem owned exclusively by the Republican extremists in the House of Representatives.”

    Three East Hampton Town Highway Department workers have filed complaints with the New York State Division of Human Rights alleging discrimination by Scott King, the town highway superintendent. John Jilnicki, the East Hampton town attorney, confirmed the legal proceeding yesterday.

    The complainants, Wallace Trotman, who is African-American, and Luis Bahamondes and Ursan Bonilla, who are Latino, allege that human rights violations occurred within the past year. Department workers had complained to town officials last year that Mr. King was discriminatory in doling out work assignments, used racial slurs, and was abusive. A town investigation into these allegations, all of which Mr. King denied, resulted in his attending anger management sessions.

    East Hampton Town is named as the defendant in the case. It has been referred to an attorney appointed by the town’s insurance carrier, Steve Stern of Sokoloff Stern in Mineola, Mr. Jilnicki said. An extension of time has been requested to prepare and submit the town’s response. Mr. King said yesterday that he had been informed by the state agency of the allegations, but could not discuss the details. The three complainants could not be reached by press time.

    “It’s political,” Mr. King, who is running for re-election on the Democratic ticket this fall, said. “This is a vendetta by a couple of longtime employees. I’ve never discriminated against anybody.”

    Elaine Jones, an Amagansett resident who heads the East Hampton Independence Party, which has endorsed Mr. King’s Republican-line opponent, Steven Lynch, confirmed yesterday that she had helped the highway employees file the complaints.    

    “This is not political,” she said, expressing her opinion that Mr. King had shown himself to be racist and abusive. However, she admitted the prospect of Mr. King’s winning re-election was the catalyst for filing the complaints, “so it doesn’t keep happening again. Because it’s been going on so long, and it has to be stopped.” 

    When the first known complaints against Mr. King were made over a year ago, he said, he had put Kevin Ahearn, the deputy highway superintendent, in charge of assigning the men’s duties. “I distanced myself as soon as that investigation started.”

    “The bottom line is I’ve brought to the municipal world a work ethic from the outside, and it doesn’t go over big,” Mr. King said.

    “This is orchestrated by Elaine Jones,” Mr. King said. “She actually admitted she filled the paperwork on this. Steve Lynch married her niece. That’s the driving force behind this.”

    “The men came to me,” Ms. Jones said.

    “I guess I’ve been known to stick up for town employees.” Ms. Jones’s late husband worked for the town, and her son-in-law is now a town employee. She acknowledged that Mr. Lynch, whom her party endorsed, is married to a family member, but she added that, as far as the party was concerned, “We would endorse anybody but Scott King.”

    Mr. King expressed confidence that the allegations would be ruled unfounded. Although it had been reported that 11 department employees had already testified before the commission, he said other department employees would paint a different picture. “I’d really like someone to sit down and dig into this thing and start hammering away at what is the truth. I’m confident that I will be exonerated.”

    However, he said he had been warned that if the Division of Human Rights determines there is cause for further investigation, the legal process could last one to three years, well beyond this year’s election.