Citizens frustrated with government spending, taxes, and debt rallied in front of East Hampton Town Hall on Friday, celebrating the traditional tax day with a Tea Party protest, one of many across the country.

Cars honked in support from time to time, and the brisk weather did not prevent the 10 or 15 activists from making their voices heard.

Lynda Edwards, the leader of a local tea party group that organized the rally, said it was her third consecutive annual event, and said she was "sick of the taxes, overspending, and the national debt -- it's out of control."

Indeed, a sense of loss of control -- of losing a grip on the future of an increasingly diverse and polarized country -- pervaded among those present.

Elaine Kohl, a Southampton resident and member of the Suffolk County Coalition and the Citizens Forum, was more concerned about immigration and security issues, as well as cultural ones. She said she is focused on "securing our communities and quality of life. Washington has lost sight of us, and we find ourselves at a crossroads." She said she was frustrated by an emerging disrespect for American culture, and considered it a duty to "honor the past in order to define the future."

Signs with slogans like "Spread your own wealth, Bozo" referred to President Barack Obama and his economic agenda. "Socialist" was the most common label used to refer to those in government, though it was not just the federal government that people were concerned about. Rising property and school taxes earned repeated mention, as well.

Pat Flynn, another attendee, said she had joined the tea party and 9/12 project, the brainchild of Fox News commentator Glenn Beck. She had been a member of the New York Conservative Party, but was dissatisfied with its current direction. An ardent fan of Ayn Rand and her objectivist, libertarian philosophy, Ms. Flynn pointed to President Obama as not having created this problem, but as having made it worse. She was also frustrated with what she said was a provision in "Obamacare," or the federal health care overall, that pays for abortion.

"If you can't find a ditch to dig in 99 weeks," you should not continue to receive unemployment benefits," Ms. Flynn said, concerned that free-riders were taking advantage of government services.

East Hampton, at the local level, under Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, was seen as flawed, but "at least they're trying," Ms. Flynn added. "They were left with one hell of a mess," she concluded, referring to the financial misconduct of former Town Supervisor Bill McGintee. Mr. Wilkinson honked and gave a friendly wave to the crowd when he passed by.

Turnout and passion seemed to have ebbed from this time last year. Ironically, this may be due to successes in winning seats in Congress and getting the Tea Party national recognition. These particular activists were instrumental in very nearly unseating Democratic Representative Tim Bishop, who won reelection by a tiny margin last fall.

    The Triune Baptist Church of East Hampton, which for some time has held services at the Neighborhood House on Three Mile Harbor Road, has begun meeting in a temporary home at St. David’s A.M.E. Zion Church in Sag Harbor.

    The congregation is trying to raise money and finalize plans to build its own church on Route 114, just outside the Sag Harbor Village limits. Its temporary home at St. David’s will be closer to the property it hopes to build on. “The Lord is leading us back there now, where we will be until we build our own church,” said the Rev. Michael Jackson, the congregation’s pastor, this week.  

    Mr. Jackson said he thinks that the move will create a better atmosphere for worship. “We will be in a church now,” he said. “Plus, it puts us closer to the land that we have. We are moving closer and closer to our final destination.”

    The congregation was first founded as Cooper Memorial Baptist Church in 1968, and has been struggling for more than 20 years to build its own house of worship. Services were first conducted at a house on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike owned by its founder and former pastor, the Rev. Minnie Cooper. When Ms. Cooper died in 1989, the house was reconverted to family use, and the group found itself without a place to meet.

    The Rev. Anges Dozier then became the group’s pastor. Some years later, after a health problem arose, Ms. Dozier had to leave the congregation.

    After fund-raising events, the congregation bought four wooded acres off Route 114 in Sag Harbor and submitted a preliminary site plan application to the East Hampton Town Planning Board in 1993.

    In the interim, services were moved to Ms. Dozier’s house for a while, then to St. David’s Church, and finally relocated to the Neighborhood House in East Hampton.

    In December 2003, the planning board approved the church’s site plan. In a 2006 interview, Ms. Dozier said that the church was waiting for its final approval from the Suffolk Health Department.

    With the Mr. Jackson in the pulpit at St. David’s for the time being, the congregation will be concentrating again on the process of building and settling in its own permanent home.

    “It has taken a long time, but it doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen,” Mr. Jackson said. “We are now in the midst of moving forward with all of the health codes, planning, and engineering. Hopefully we’ll start to see it move within the later part of this year.”

    Mr. Jackson said he doesn’t want to speculate on why the process has taken so long. “Only God knows,” he said. But he believes that now is the congregation’s time. “We are very excited, as a church, so we are getting ourselves prepared.”

    The St. David’s A.M.E. Zion Church was built in 1839 and is said to have been a stop on the underground railroad, with escaped slaves hiding underneath the pews in a space reached through a trap door in the main sanctuary.

    A fiery car crash in Noyac claimed the lives of two men Saturday afternoon, according to Southampton Town police.

    On Tuesday morning, Detective Sgt. Randy Hintze identified the men as Manuel Cunha, 58, of East Hampton and Thomas Wheeler, 43, of Sag Harbor. Initially Detective Hintze said the department was having difficulty positively identifying the victims and in a release attributed the delay to the "nature of the crash and the resulting fire."

     Police released additional information on Tuesday indicating that speeding played a part in the crash. Police are awaiting more information from the Suffolk County Medical Examiner's Office to determine if there were other factors that might have led to the accident.

     According to the police report, Mr. Cunha was driving Mr. Wheeler's 2006 Ford Mustang west on Brick Kiln Road at about 3:30 p.m. when he lost control of it, swerving out of the lane and then over the shoulder and into a tree. Police said the car burst into flames that quickly engulfed it. Both victims were transported to the medical examiner's office after they were pronounced dead at the scene.

     Sag Harbor Village police, who assisted Southampton police after the accident, reported that the Mustang was fully in flames when they arrived and that the two men were trapped inside.

   Sag Harbor Fire Department volunteers extinguished the blaze and closed a portion of Brick Kiln Road while Southampton police investigated the cause of the accident.

     Mr. Wheeler was an owner of East End Prime, a specialty meat and seafood shop in Sag Harbor, and worked as a contractor. He was married to Linda Christiansen-Wheeler and had three children and two stepchildren.

    Mr. Cunha, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, was a carpenter and had grown up in Sag Harbor, attending Pierson High School. A son, Christopher G. Cunha, lives in Queens.

     Cheryl Kraft, Southampton Town's chief fire marshal, said her office had not been called to the scene to determine the cause of the fire, adding that "if it's clear-cut, they don't always call us."

     According to the State Department of Motor Vehicles, 1,148 people died in 1,060 car accidents in New York in 2009.

     A service has been planned for Mr. Cunha on Wednesday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in Sag Harbor. His funeral is scheduled for Thursday at 11 a.m., with burial to follow at St. Andrew's Cemetery in Sag Harbor.

     Visiting hours for Mr. Wheeler will be Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at Yardley and Pino in Sag Harbor.

    A permit for a three-day music festival in Amagansett in August, issued last month by the East Hampton Town Board, remains in place despite calls for the board to rescind it.

    In the face of a rising chorus of opposition from Amagansett community groups and individuals who fear a Woodstock-style bacchanal, or at the very least, traffic tie-ups from the up to 9,500 people who may attend, town board members declined to reconsider their decision at a town board meeting on Tuesday.

    The permit would allow the concert with 18 bands, as well as booths for restaurants, nonprofit fund-raising, and “pop-up” stores, to take place on the Principi farmland on Montauk Highway from Aug. 12 to 14.

    “I don’t see any need to rescind what we did,” said Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson on Tuesday, responding to a letter from Rona Klopman, the chairwoman of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, asking for the permit to be pulled. Councilwomen Julia Prince and Theresa Quigley, who approved the permit last month along with Mr. Wilkinson, agreed.

    “I’m not asking you to,” said Councilman Dominick Stanzione about rescinding permission for the event. Mr. Stanzione had, however, abstained from the vote approving the permit, saying that the board should first solicit more input from the community. He maintained that stance this week.

    Councilman Pete Hammerle, who voted against issuing the permit, was not at Tuesday’s meeting.

    “This town is in financial stress,” Mr. Wilkinson had said earlier at Tuesday’s meeting. “We have a commitment to try to help, from a social point of view, our charities. This was a wonderful opportunity for a private-public partnership.”

    He said that he had weighed the proposal and its impacts and come out in support of the show. “The residents — who basically don’t go out on weekends — would basically sacrifice for two days . . . and that begot $100,000 for our charities.”

    Councilwoman Julia Prince said that the promoters would be asked to issue a bond to insure that the donation occurs.

    The town board will discuss potential beneficiaries. “It’s our responsibility to determine where the money goes,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

    Town Councilwoman Theresa Quig­ley suggested that the board develop a list of eligible nonprofits. “I would like to come up with a list of social commitments for our community, and then see which charities fit those commitments,” she said.

    At a meeting last Thursday night, board members got an earful from numerous people who questioned how they could have approved such a large event during the busy summer season.

    “I’m saddened and disheartened,” Joan Tulp said. “I can’t believe you let Amagansett down so badly by allowing a three-day rock concert in Amagansett. The promoters or the town board never bothered to check with the people who live and work here year round.”

    The event is being organized by Bill Collage and Chris Jones, both of Sag Harbor, a screenwriter and resort owner who plan to use the festival as a springboard for a music TV show and an event-planning business that they say will provide job opportunities here. Mr. Jones and Mr. Collage both attended a meeting on Friday to answer questions from concerned community members.

    “You, the board, are jeopardizing our property values and our quality of life,” Helen Kuzmier said last Thursday. Summer visitors who come here “are getting away from places that attract rock concerts,” she said.

    “This reeks of a Woodstock acid flashback,” said Arlene Reckson, who said she attended that concert. Like Woodstock, she said, “I think that this is going to grow out of control.”

    “Are you going to set up a booth in Manorville to make sure these kids have tickets?” she asked. “I thought maybe I was turning into an alta kaka,” she said, using a Yiddish phrase for an old person, adding “I was 22 at Woodstock.”

     “I asked my 24-year-old daughter, and she said, ‘Are you kidding? What are we, the Jersey shore?’ That’s what you’re turning us into,” Ms. Reckson said.

    Other speakers questioned whether the board had adequately addressed the considerations spelled out in the town code for issuing mass-gathering permits, such as how an event will affect neighbors, and whether other large events are taking place at the same time.

    Some raised the specter of young people sleeping on the beaches during the concert weekend and “rampaging” through the town.

    With performers still to be announced, Mr. Wilkinson said it remained to be seen whom the show will attract. “But,” he said, “I don’t think that anybody between the ages of 20 and 39 is unpleasant. I think we have a lot of troops serving overseas in that age group that could come here to a concert.”   

Two 47-foot patrol boats ferried representatives of the Coast Guard, State Legislature, Army Corps of Engineers, and East Hampton Town into the Montauk Harbor Inlet on Friday to show them what they couldn’t see, and, they hoped, couldn’t feel — a sand shoal that has made it dangerous for Montauk’s fishing fleet and the Coast Guard’s search and rescue boats to get in and out of the harbor.

The tour was not long, but it seemed to elicit a new commitment from officials to come up with a fix. “I’m confident we can get it done,” Representative Tim Bishop said during a post-tour conference at the Montauk Coast Guard Station.

This winter’s storms have accelerated the flow of sand from the east side of the harbor’s jetties into the inlet, increasing the shoal. The storms, and down-drift scouring from the jetties, also are blamed for worsening the already serious erosion of beach and dune to the west. The erosion has spawned a multi-million-dollar lawsuit by residents of Montauk’s Soundview community.

Among those on Friday’s tour in addition to Mr. Bishop were Rear Admiral Daniel A. Neptun, commander of the Coast Guard’s first district, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, Councilwoman Julia Prince, Joseph Olha and Stephen Couch of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Senior Chief Jason Walters, commanding officer of the Montauk Coast Guard Station. Capt. Bill Grimm and Capt. Richie Jones, commercial fishermen representing the Inlet Seafood group, also attended, pointing out the danger they, and other mariners, face.

The inlet was last dredged in 2009 and was not scheduled to be worked on again until 2013. “It’s obvious the timetable will not suffice. The survey indicates that shoaling has accelerated. It’s our challenge to work with the Army Corps to identify funds so dredging can take place in 2011,” Mr. Bishop said.

Mr. Bishop said the corps had “responded immediately” once it learned of the danger and the impact on the fishing fleet. However, he cautioned: “This is not a lay-up. It will mean a reallocation of Army Corps funds to deal with this emergency.” He said the cost of the emergency dredging would be “north of seven figures.”

“It’s imperative it gets done in 2011,” Assemblyman Thiele said. He added that he had introduced a bill to spark a state response, which included matching funds to increase the depth of the channel. Mr. Thiele said it was important to have the corps dredge the inlet at least two or three feet deeper than previously to account for the “dynamics of storms,” and to add the extra sand to the eroded beaches to the west.

“If we can make the connection between a government expenditure and saving jobs, it will help. The landings of fish between Shinnecock and Montauk are greater than in Boston,” Mr. Thiele pointed out.

“It’s important to know we can lean on the federal and state. They have been here and are responsive to the erosion and safety problems,” Supervisor Wilkinson said. “If our fishing boats don’t get into port and go to Rhode Island to [pack out] we lose on the economic level.”

Mr. Olha showed the group a bathymetric survey of the inlet, completed last week. It confirms that the shoal stretches from the east jetty near the harbor mouth to the south and west into the center of the channel, where the depth has decreased from 12 feet, as shown on charts, to just 7 feet in places. And it shows that the shoaling has created an extremely narrow navigable channel.

He said it was estimated that dredging the shoal to 12 feet would remove between 12,000 and 16,000 cubic yards of sand. An additional 3,500 cubic yards could be removed if a deeper channel were authorized. Mr. Olha said the State Department of Environmental Conservation would have to approve an increase beyond the 1,000 foot length of the beach to the west of the inlet, the current limit of approved beach restoration.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, asked if the Army Corps could also look into “leaks” in the inlet’s eastern jetty, which, she said, seems to accelerate shoaling.

    A colony of feral cats at the Montauk Downs State Park is being disbanded by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. The cats, some of which have been there for up to eight years, are being taken to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons for evaluation. Some are being placed elsewhere, and others might have to be euthanized, depending on their health.

    Cared for by Elizabeth Willoughby since 2002, the cat colony has thrived on the site for more than 15 years, and all of them have been spayed or neutered. Ms. Willoughby said that in the time she has been caring for the cats, no kittens have been born and the colony has been reduced from 37 to about 20. Since state park officials began trapping the cats, Ms. Willoughby has been able to place 9 of them with new owners.

    The others still consider the space behind the park’s Dumpster their home, however. When a visitor arrives, felines will coyly start rubbing up against their hay-lined shelters and congregating around the food dish. They are black, gray, orange, and calico. They look to be healthy, with good coats and seemingly hearty appetites. A chorus of purring begins when Ms. Willoughby sits among them.

    Ron Foley, the Long Island regional director of the State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, said the state is removing the cats because of neighbors’ complaints. “They’re saying, ‘Your cats are fouling our yards,’ ” he said. Neighbors have also complained that the cats are killing songbirds.

    Mr. Foley said the state’s policy on feral cats is to reduce the population to none. “Through no fault of anyone, that’s not happened in Montauk.” He said a former park employee who took some of the cats to his house became ill, and the cats were returned to the park by a neighbor.

    A letter sent out from Mr. Foley’s office to cat rescuers in Montauk called abandoned cats on state parkland a continuing problem. “If these cats have not been relocated in 60 days from the date of this letter, they will either be brought to a humane shelter or humanely euthanized,” the letter said.

    Mike Caggiano of Nuisance Wildlife Control in Ridge said he has so far trapped 16 cats at the park. He baits traps in the late afternoon and then waits, he said. He often has to remove a raccoon from a trap before he catches a cat, which is then taken to ARF in Wainscott.

    There they are medically evaluated, Sara Davison, the group’s executive director, said. So far, two have had to be put down because of their age. “It was an opportunity to give them a humane send-off,” she said. The others are feral and will live only outside. “We’re looking for someone with a barn or a backyard, or someone who already feeds feral cats, to take them,” she said.

    Ms. Willoughby is also trying to place the cats. She said they are good mousers and ratters. Operation Cat at ARF will supply some food to those who adopt. Anyone interested can e-mail her at [email protected].

    “Feral cats are a community concern, they are not a problem,” Ms. Willoughby said. “The problem is with the people who dump cats when they don’t want them anymore.”

Though recent daily news reports about economic indicators — the stock market is up, but unemployment is, too; long-term unemployment trends down, while the next day the market takes a dive — could send people reeling from an optimistic outlook to a fatalistic funk, one local indicator is ending the year way up: the community preservation fund.

The money that flows in to the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund comes from a 2-percent transfer tax on most real estate sales and provides money for the five East End towns to purchase and preserve land.

When the real estate market tanked, so did the balance in the fund. But this year, according to a press release from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., in the first nine months of 2010, $48.31 million was raised for the fund — a 61-percent increase over the total during the same period last year, when just over $30 million was collected from January through September.

Based on recent activity, preservation fund revenues for 2010 are projected to be in the $55 million to $60 million range, according to Assemblyman Thiele. Revenues for 2009 totaled $40.3 million.

Money from real estate sales in the individual municipalities goes into separate funds for each township.

The news is particularly good in East Hampton, where the transfer taxes collected on 8,778 sales through October yielded slightly more than $15 million for the preservation fund this year, an 89-percent increase from the 2009 revenues during the same time, which were $7.9 million.

The year’s total for East Hampton’s preservation fund in 2009 reached only $10.1 million — compared to a high of just over $30 million that was collected in 2007.

Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and preservation, said yesterday that this year’s income so far is “beyond expectations.” The town had projected a 30-percent increase over last year, he said. “I’m actually quite surprised that the revenues are as strong as they are,” he said.

Income to East Hampton’s fund spiked in August to $1.9 million before dropping to $676,288 in September. Last month’s total again topped $1 million dollars, at $1.1 million.

Property sales were apparently slow in all five towns during September, as the cumulative preservation fund revenue was $2.8 million.

However, in October, the transfer tax produced $4.6 million for the five towns’ preservation funds, compared with $4.2 million last year.

In his press release, Mr. Thiele said that “no conclusions can be drawn from a single month’s revenues. However, it appears that the one-month decline in September may be an aberration due to a very late Labor Day holiday weekend and the threat of a hurricane that may have temporarily depressed real estate activity in the short term.”

“In addition, anecdotally, it appears that real estate activity in recent weeks has been healthy,” he said in the release. “Nonetheless, the Peconic Bay towns need to closely follow revenues over the next few months to determine if there are any changing trends in the real estate market. I continue to believe that the current climate presents preservation opportunities for local government.”

Preservation fund revenues for Shelter Island Town were up to $1.1 million through October this year, a 68-percent increase over last year. In Southampton Town, preservation fund revenues jumped by 52 percent over the same period last year, to $27.2 million. In Riverhead, they jumped by 49 percent, to $1.9 million, and in Southold by 33 percent, to $2.9 million.

Mr. Wilson of East Hampton said that, after money owed that town’s preservation fund from other areas of the town budget is repaid, there will be about $30 million in the coffer, with approximately $10 million earmarked for debt repayment and purchases already in contract.

With an effort under way to address budget deficits and general financial disarray, East Hampton’s community preservation fund land acquisitions essentially came to a halt from the latter part of 2009 until August.

Since then, Mr. Wilson said, appraisals have been ordered on a number of properties and several purchases have been completed or are in progress. A hearing will be held tonight on one, the purchase of development rights on acreage at the Iacono farm.

Since its inception in 1999, the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund has generated $653.14 million. The program, which was reapproved by voters after its initial period, expires in 2030.

Raymond Gualtieri, the superintendent of the East Hampton Union Free School District, will be heading to Pennsylvania at the end of July.

Dr. Gualtieri was appointed Thursday evening to be the new superintendent of the North Allegheny school system, north of Pittsburgh, Pa., according to a release from that district.

Dr. Gualtieri has been the superintendent of the East Hampton School District since 2003. His contract was to end in the summer of 2012, but he had made it clear last year that he was seeking another job before the current deal was over.

The North Allegheny district chose Dr. Gualtieri to replace Patricia Green, who is moving to Ann Arbor, Mich. Dr. Gaultieri was voted in unanimously by the school board in North Allegheny, with a five-year contract and a starting annual salary of $190,000.

Under the terms of his current contract, he and his spouse can receive lifetime medical benefits from the East Hampton district.

Dr. Gualiteri could not be reached for comment.

     One might expect that Len Bernard, East Hampton Town’s budget officer, is taking a deep breath this week, now that bonds have been issued and the money is in hand to straighten out the town’s finances.

    Things have finally been pinned down and repayments between funds outlined or even accomplished following an extensive forensic accounting effort to sort out financial transactions between town funds during the last administration, when money was improperly allocated and records were found to be lacking or inadequate. The state comptroller has certified the town’s deficit, which accumulated through 2009 under the previous administration, at $27.2 million.

    A final draft of a 2010 independent audit is due within weeks and is expected to verify that reduced spending last year resulted in approximately $9.7 million left over from the $71.7 million budget for 2010, though final calculations may change the surplus amount.

    The town has no outstanding short-term notes, meaning that all of its debt has been converted to long-term bonds or paid off.

    This year, Mr. Bernard said, “I would hope to have an in-year surplus, but it’s not going to be like last year.”    

    The 2011 budget is the result of “zero-based budgeting,” he said, and contains little, if any, more than will be needed.

    The 2011 budget relied on an expected $2.7 million in mortgage tax revenues this year. The town has received $735,000 for the first quarter of the year, Mr. Bernard said. If that trend continues, the annual revenue would equal $2.9 million.

    Along with money raised through issuing deficit financing bonds, a $5.9 million portion of the 2010 “within-year” surplus has been allocated to help cover the town’s overall deficit.

    The remainder will be used to establish two reserve funds, one to cover “accrued liabilities” — payouts to retiring employees for unused sick days, for example — and another that could be used to pay for minor capital projects, allowing the town to avoid borrowing to pay for them.

    An “undedicated surplus” of up to 5 percent of the total of each of the town’s two general operating funds will also be set aside.

    Under the terms of the town’s deficit financing plan, any surplus in those funds of more than 5 percent must be used to pay down the debt on the deficit financing bonds.

    The surplus last year was the result of a number of factors, Mr. Bernard said Tuesday, not least of them the decision not to hire new employees for 18 vacant positions whose salaries were already in the budget. A decision by 33 employees to retire in October under a state incentive plan resulted in further savings on salaries.

    Belts were also tightened. There was little spent on conferences or new equipment, and spending was carefully tracked. At the end of the year, Mr. Bernard said, “every [budget] line, all of those little lines, were in the black.”

    The 2010 bottom line also benefited from two unforeseen occurrences. With contract negations with the police union under way, the previous board had included enough for a 6-percent increase in police salaries in the 2010 budget. Under Mr. Wilkinson, officials were able to negotiate an increase of only 3 percent.

    In addition, a change in the way that the county makes mortgage tax payments to the town added an additional three months’ worth of that revenue, amounting to $575,000 to the town’s coffers in 2010, Mr. Bernard said.

    Mortgage tax, which is collected by the county for allocation to individual towns, is now distributed quarterly, rather than twice a year.

    A $1.5 million allocation in the 2010 budget, included by the previous board as part of its plan to address the deficit, was left untouched and added to the in-year surplus.

    “It was three plastic bags in tree branches in the water that put me over the edge,” East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said at a village board meeting last Thursday, while discussing a possible prohibition on plastic bags in the village.

    “I don’t think there’s a downside to this.”

    Southampton Village passed a law banning non-biodegradable bags as of April 28 of this year, allowing merchants in its bailiwick a six-month period to come into compliance.

    Alternatives suggested in the Southampton Village law were reusable cloth bags and recyclable bags that contain “no old growth fiber.”

    “How do you figure out if it’s old growth fiber?” asked Barbara Borsack, an East Hampton board member, who also expressed concern about bags in which some newspapers are delivered.

    Some stores, like Hampton Marketplace on Race Lane, use biodegradable plastic bags, which could also be an option. The board will continue to discuss the matter at a future meeting.

    The board also discussed replacing the heating at the Emergency Services Building, which is “antiquated and inefficient,” according to Larry Cantwell, the village administrator. His suggestion? Getting an evaluation from a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning expert. He also suggested taking advantage of an offer from the New York Power Authority, which is offering low-interest-rate financing for new energy systems in larger buildings.

    The power authority would take a look at the building, and “estimate the gas consumption for an in-kind conversion of the oil-fired system,” according to a letter to the village. It would evaluate the costs and savings for installing natural gas heating at the Emergency Services Building as well as other potential energy-saving measures. If the village moves ahead with the conversion, it will pay nothing for the evaluation. If it does not, it will be billed $3,500.

    The mayor asked if there was a track record with other municipalities which may have worked with N.Y.P.A., and Mr. Cantwell said he would look into it.

    Also last Thursday, the village board passed the $18.4 million budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year.