Most of the worst cuts that Representative Tim Bishop had feared from a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through September did not come to pass in a deal struck late Friday night by C.ongressional leaders, the congressman told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.

    “This 11th-hour deal cuts $38.5 billion from fiscal year 2010 levels. We’re still sorting our way through the details, but the pieces of the proposal embodied in HR-1 [the original Republican budget proposal] have all appeared to be addressed in a way that satisfies a great many concerns I’ve had. I’m not yet ready to declare victory, but it appears the essential work that goes on at Brookhaven Lab will be preserved,” Mr. Bishop said, referring to the 20-percent cuts originally planned to the Office of Science, a key funding source for Brookhaven National Laboratory. The congressman also expressed appreciation for restorations to Pell grants, the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, and Head Start.

    “This was a fight about Long Island’s future and that future is brighter because we have preserved 1,000 local jobs and cutting-edge research,” Mr. Bishop said in a statement later on Tuesday, announcing he would vote in support of the continuing resolution. “I agree with the need to cut spending and save taxpayer dollars, but we must also balance our priorities like the important research at B.N.L.”

    One concern Mr. Bishop expressed  was that cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers would prevent short-term dredging work in Lake Montauk. This remains a possibility, and Mr. Bishop said the problem warrants additional attention before the next scheduled maintenance dredge in 2013.

    Before the budget deal was announced late Friday, Mr. Bishop stated in a press release his intention to donate his pay for each day the government was shut down to charities that would help make up for the “draconian cuts” that had seemed likely. “I am frustrated that we find ourselves on the brink of a government shutdown which I believe is entirely avoidable. While I pledge to work seven days a week to serve Suffolk County residents as I was elected to do, I do not feel it is right for me to accept a paycheck when 800,000 federal employees — including 8,500 in my district — will not have that opportunity and when federal contractors are facing canceled contracts and layoffs,” Mr. Bishop said in the statement.

    With a government shutdown now averted, Mr. Bishop turned his attention to the budget proposals for 2012 and the future put forth by Republican Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee and the G.O.P.’s chief policy wonk on the issue, and proceeded to attack them as unfair to the poor and rife with tax giveaways for the rich. He was specifically indignant at the suggestion by many that this is a bold policy document because it tackles entitlement spending.

    “This is not courageous. I have great regard for Paul Ryan as an individual. I believe he is a serious individual. But it’s not courageous to beat up on poor people,” Mr. Bishop said, in addition to stating his belief that there is “not a shred of shared sacrifice in this proposal.”

    The Republican budget document, among other things, proposes cutting spending by between $5 and $6 trillion over the next decade compared to the current baseline of federal law, repealing the Affordable Care Act (health care reform), and eventually shifting Medicare to a voucher-based system as opposed to the single-payer one now in effect. Mr. Bishop called the Medicare change a “massive departure” from the present and said that for those currently 54 or younger, “there would not be a Medicare program for them as we now know it.”

    Mr. Bishop also expressed disappointment that the Ryan budget lacked “a job creation focus. There is not an ounce of job development or job creation in any of the proposals we’ve seen thus far.”

    Mr. Bishop, now in his fifth term, formally kicked off his 2012 re-election bid on Sunday with a fund-raiser in Southampton.

    Chris Jones, one of two principals organizing the MTK: Music to Know festival, got the attention of everyone at an East Hampton Town Board meeting on Tuesday when, kidding, he dropped the name Stevie Wonder when referring to the fact that headline performers on both nights of the August 12 and 13 festival are expected to draw the biggest crowds.

    Just a joke, Mr. Jones stressed. Twenty bands are to be booked and their names have yet to be announced.

    But a bid to win approval to hold the event on an unused runway at the East Hampton Airport is steaming ahead, with the concert team (Mr. Jones, his partner, Bill Collage, several local employees, and a contingent of consultants) appearing at the Tuesday meeting to provide more information to the board.

    A permit issued by the board to MTK to hold the festival in Amagansett is being challenged in court by a group of residents who immediately rose in opposition upon learning of the summertime event.

    Mr. Jones and Mr. Collage responded to community concern by seeking the permit to hold the concert at the airport. There are fewer houses and businesses near the airport runway that could be disturbed by traffic or noise.

    Criticized for issuing the original event permit without first conducting a full review, the town board is now following procedures outlined in the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) to determine if the concert could have negative environmental impacts.

    The organizers hired the consulting firm Freudenthal and Elkowitz to produce a report that details answers to environmental assesment questions. Copies were delivered to the board in a large cardboard box on Tuesday morning.

    Terry Elkowitz, a partner in the firm, told the board that while they would provide as much detailed analysis of the concert as desired, “technically, this may be an action that is not subject to SEQRA at all.”

    According to Ms. Elkowitz, state law, SEQRA guidelines, and case law all indicated that “temporary use of land not having a permanent impact” and a “public gathering on state land” are among the types of things that do not require full environmental review under the state statute.

    The concert’s only lasting effect on the natural environment, Ms. Elkowitz said, would be the construction of a fire lane, which the town fire marshal has requested to ensure easy access in case of emergency. Vegetation would be removed, she said, but the area would be replanted after the event.

    Larry Penny, the town’s director of natural resources, has issued a memo to the town board advising that there would be no lasting harm to the environment, Ms. Elkowitz added.

    According to the consultants, an analysis using standard formulas indicates that, with 9,500 tickets to the two-day event to be sold, between 2,600 and 2,650 vehicles are expected.

    Planned parking areas at the airport, now under review by the Federal Aviation Administration, would provide about half the needed spaces. Agreements with off-site property owners, such as the East Hampton Indoor Tennis Club and the Sag Harbor School District, would yield enough spaces to park up to, potentially, 4,000 cars, representatives from Freud­enthal and Elkowitz said.

    Shuttle buses would be used to transport festivalgoers from remote parking areas to the airport. “It’s beneficial to everybody to have less cars going to the event,” Mr. Jones said. “We’re trying to actively discourage people from bringing cars to the event.” There will be a parking fee, he said, and some parking areas will be reserved only for high-occupancy vehicles carrying four or more.

    Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Mr. Jones announced that through a partnership with a major sponsor MTK will offer a downloadable application through which local businesses may offer information about their services and special deals.

    Customers and concertgoers who opt into the service will receive notifications by e-mail throughout the year when businesses post new deals, such as hotel packages or restaurant prix fixes. “That’s something we’re going to invest in, and it will be free to every business,” Mr. Jones said.

    A $100,000 donation from MTK, earmarked for local charities to be designated by the town board, will be made well before the August festival, Mr. Jones said. “They don’t take the field without it,” said Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, noting that the original support for the concert by a board majority was based on the ability to raise those funds for charitable organizations through a public-private partnership.

    According to some neighbors of a popular East Hampton restaurant, the East Hampton Town Planning Board has more work to do before it approves a new roof for the business.

    Paul Fiondella, who lives on Maple Lane near Bostwick’s Chowder House said at the board’s meeting on April 6 that a “threshold legal issue” has to be dealt with before the restaurant owners obtain approval. If it is not, he promised further litigation, calling the plan an outrage.

    He alleges that the owners may have voluntarily “abandoned” a pre-existing, non-conforming fast food restaurant and replaced it with a restaurant. Mr. Fiondella said that night that a restaurant use like the one operating from the building now is not permitted in the limited business overlay district it is in.

    The Bostwick’s property, once home to A & B Snowflake, has been the subject of litigation for several years, with the court dismissing on a technicality Mr. Fiondella’s claim  that a building permit and a certificate of occupancy had been issued erroneously due to abandonment of the pre-existing fast food use.

    According to court records, Justice Jeffrey Arlen Spinner at the State Supreme Court in Riverhead said that Mr. Fiondella failed to name the property owners in the suit and named only the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, whose earlier ruling he was asking the court to overturn.

    Jon Tarbet, who represents Christopher Eggers and Kevin Boles, the owners of the restaurant, called Mr. Fiondella’s presentation to the board “an attempt to sandbag us tonight.”

    Mr. Eggers and Mr. Boles are seeking planning board approval for a new, permanent roof to replace an awning that Mr. Tarbet said makes the business hot and uncomfortable in the summer. He denied that the roof will allow for an expansion of business.

    Reading from the town code, Mr. Fiondella said a fast food use consists of ordering prepared food over a counter. Food is not brought to your table at a fast food establishment, he said. A restaurant, he said, allows for table service and the accessory sale of alcohol, which he said describes Bostwick’s more appropriately.

    The Building Department, Mr. Tarbet said, has had “ample opportunity” to review the Bostwick’s permit history and has found nothing of question. As for Mr. Fiondella’s claim that Bostwick’s is a restaurant with table service, Mr. Tarbet said, “we would like to be a restaurant, but it’s not allowed.” He said there is no table service on the premises.

    Charla Bikman, Mr. Fiondella’s wife, said otherwise. “I have frequently observed waitress service,” she said, adding that she believed the owners advertise the place as a restaurant. “But the board can conduct its own investigation,” she concluded.

    Another neighbor, Eugene Waldstein, described his own experience eating at Bostwick’s: A customer is asked to write down an order and pass it over the counter, then find a seat and wait for a server to deliver the food. Adding that he understands the owners’ desire to operate a successful business, Mr. Waldstein said he is more concerned about parking on Maple Lane.

    When the Bostwick’s parking lot is filled to capacity “it’s absolutely scary,” he told the board.

    Phyllis Madan, who also lives on Maple Lane, said an ongoing problem with parking could impede an emergency vehicle trying to make its way down her street. Mr. Fiondella said Bostwick’s does not have enough of its own parking to accommodate its customers.

    Despite the neighbors’ many complaints, Mr. Tarbet pointed out that none of them complained about the application for the new roof itself.

    “Let’s be consistent, otherwise we don’t have a planning code worth a dime,” Mr. Fiondella begged the board.

    A member of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee asked that the record be left open and after two votes, the planning board decided to keep the record open for two weeks for written comments.

   According to the New York State Unified Court System, Carl Irace, East Hampton Town’s deputy town attorney, is late in renewing his registration with the state as a practicing attorney, resulting in his status being designated as “delinquent.”

    Attorneys are required to renew their registration with the court every two years, providing proof of good standing and completion of required continuing legal education courses, and paying a $375 fee. Failure to do so can result in disciplinary action or, in extreme cases, suspension from the New York bar.

    A late renewal does not in itself affect a lawyer’s ability to practice. According to online court records, thousands of attorneys in New York State are late in reregistering.

    Mr. Irace’s previous registration expired in May 2010. “I’m in the process of rectifying it,” the attorney said yesterday. He said he is in good standing with the court and had in fact been recently admitted to the federal bar, and that he was well over the requirement in continuing education credits.

    Renewal forms are mailed to attorneys the month before their birthdays, an individual’s biennial renewal date.

    Because of the two-year interim between registrations, and because he had moved several times since his last renewal, Mr. Irace said that the renewal date was overlooked and that a reminder from the court had likely not reached him by mail.

    After being hired by East Hampton Town in January 2010, Mr. Irace, who formerly practiced in the Bronx County District Attorney’s office, gave up a New York City apartment and moved to East Quogue. He subsequently moved to East Hampton. “I know it got messed up when I moved,” he said.

    Recently, though, with an upcoming birthday, he began expecting to receive a notice from the court. After being contacted about the matter yesterday, Mr. Irace tried to renew his license online, but found that was not possible. He said that he had called the court system and made sure a renewal form would be sent to the correct address.

    Lawyers clashed at an April 6 meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board over where Ronald Lauder, a billionaire heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, should put a driveway to the house he is building on 38 acres in Wainscott.

    The differing interests of two sets of neighbors were represented by attorneys who found themselves on opposite sides of the fence: David E. Eagan, for the McCaffreys and Babinskis, prominent families in the hamlet, and Christopher Kelley, for a group of residents who own property near Mr. Lauder’s along Town Line Road.

    Although neither lawyer opposed Mr. Lauder’s plan to build a new house on the land his family has owned for more than 50 years, they disagreed on just which access to it was best.

    Mr. Lauder and his own attorney, William Fleming, had presented two options to the planning board. One of these was a driveway that would wander down the side of Wainscott Pond and onto Mr. Lauder’s property; that alternative was referred to as the “eastern access” at the hearing. The other option was a driveway that would run along the west side of the property, parallel to Town Line Road, and then cut east in the middle of the lot; that was called the “western access.”

    Although Mr. Fleming has offered two options, he told the board last week that the Lauder family prefers the eastern access.

    A majority of the neighbors prefer the eastern access, as well, according to Mr. Kelley, who rattled off a list of names.

    Larry Penny, the director of East Hampton Town’s Natural Resources Department, has called the environmental soundness of the eastern access into question in the past, but Mr. Kelley argued that the driveway would be placed far enough away from the pond to protect the wetlands and wildlife there.

    In a letter to the planning board several months ago, Mr. Penny said he had reservations about the driveway’s proximity to the pond. It is 10,000 years old, he said, with fertile soils on both east and west sides, and should be shielded from traffic. He said the driveway would affect animals living there.

    Mr. Kelley said that of greater concern to many neighbors was the farmland on the west of the pond that would be bisected by a road running through it, should the board choose the western access.

    However, Mr. Eagan, speaking for the McCaffrey and Babinski families, countered that contiguous farmland would be bisected with the eastern option, too.

    “Planning is never limited to the four corners of the lot,” said Mr. Eagan, pointing to farmland to the east of Wainscott Pond on an aerial photograph. “You cannot ignore this lot.”

    Mr. Eagan called the Lauder property, which includes protected agricultural land that is actively farmed, the “last chapter of the town’s farmland preservation program.”

    The western option, he argued, would allow currently farmed land to be kept available for future farming. In addition, he said, the western access would provide for better views for the public across the farmland, and not just for the neighbors along Town Line Road who abut the Lauder property.

    Andy Babinski, who lives on Beach Lane near his own farm, said that it is the board’s “responsibility to consider the entire viewshed of Wainscott Pond,” which he contended includes the eastern lot.

    Saying he believed the eastern access was more appropriate, Yves Istel, who lives on Town Line Road, said he could not imagine how the views would be better with the western access. Mr. Kelley assured the board that his clients would not support Mr. Lauder’s application if the western access is used.

    The planning board will hold a meeting in the upcoming weeks to discuss the points raised at the public hearing.

    The Montauk School Board approved a proposed 2011-12 district budget of $18.1 million on Tuesday, a 1.9-percent increase over this year’s spending. The budget, if passed by voters on May 17, will bring a tax-rate increase of 2.55 percent.

    The amount was $161,800 higher than the number discussed at a workshop last week, due in part to the need for the district to budget for three students who require special services. One, who attends the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, has just moved into the district. “We are now responsible for that child,” Jack Perna, the school’s superintendent, explained. The board and administration discussed trying to help the child make the transition into the Montauk School and offering on-site educational services in an effort to reduce costs while also providing the services the child requires.

    The other two children attend the Cleary School for the Deaf in Nesconset. A recent state mandate requires the district to budget $75,000 each for students attending the Cleary School. Although the district will be reimbursed, “in order to spend it we have to budget for it,” Mr. Perna said.

    Cuts in other areas, helped to offset the increases.

    In other school news, Jaime Balsam, the school’s social worker, was granted tenure. “She is one of the best employees we have. She is good with the kids and good with the families. It was a good move when we hired her,” Mr. Perna said.

    Patti Leber, a board member, raised the subject of incorporating fun activities into the daily curriculum, saying that she has been concerned about too much testing and has found that kids don’t seem to have an interest in learning. She would like to start a program that would introduce the students to other activities with members of the community. “The idea is to get them excited about things. The teachers could maybe share their hobbies. I see it as a form of enrichment,” she said.

    Mr. Perna said that a barely used nature trail is just feet from the school’s playground area and suggested that students could be split into sections and each given a part of the trail to study and learn about. It was also mentioned that a vegetable garden and on-site nature trail are in the works and could be used

    There was an audible sigh of relief in the Springs School gym Monday night when the school board unanimously adopted its proposed $24.8 million district budget for the 2011-12 school year.

    The budget hearing will be held at 7 p.m. on May 9 and the budget will go to a public vote on May 17.

    The proposed budget will carry a tax-rate increase of 5.8 percent, or about $289 in additional taxes for a homeowner with a house assessed at $6,000.

    During a budget work session earlier that night, Ken Hamilton, the district’s treasurer, had shown last year’s tax card and explained that in 2010-11, the bud­get had gone on the books as about $22.5 million, when in fact, by the time the school year started, the budget had increased by $862,000 to almost $23.36 million, due to more high school students than anticipated and an extra kindergarten class.

    “However,” Mr. Hamilton said, “the tax card you receive will compare this year’s budget to the first [adopted] budget, not the one that passed. So what in reality is a budget-to-budget increase of 6.39 percent will look like it’s 10.47 percent. It isn’t,” he said.

    If the budget passes as is, then the Springs School will not have to cut any of its programs or staff, and in fact will be able to afford a new gym roof at $150,000 to replace the one that’s leaking, and a new school bus at $103,000.

    However, if the budget is voted down and the school is forced to turn to a contingency budget, there would be a tax increase of 4.3 percent, or about $215 for a house assessed at $6,000. The district would be forced to cut $827,655 out of the budget as it stands now.

    “First thing to go would be the capital improvements and equipment,” said Mr. Hamilton, but it was clear that even with those removed from the budget, there would still need to be almost half a million dollars in additional cuts to achieve the lower figure.

    “Back to the worst-case scenario,” said Thomas Talmage, a school board member. Earlier in the budget process, before the district reached a high school tuition agreement with the East Hampton Hampton School District that brought significant savings as well as reimbursements for past overpayments to Springs and other sending districts, Springs had been considering cutting staff, increasing kindergarten class sizes, and reconfiguring the seventh and eighth-grade day. The tuition agreement allowed the district to avoid those cuts while still putting forward a single-digit tax increase.

    If the budget is voted down and cuts need to be examined again, public input would be sought, the board told the audience on Monday.

    “The difference between the proposed 5.8-percent tax increase and a 4.3-percent contingency budget tax increase is about $74 a year, or $1.42 a week. That’s the price of a cup of coffee a week,” said Mr. Hamilton.

    While parents may be relieved at the budget the board is proposing, some in the district are already organizing in opposition to it. A group called the Springs Homeowners Alliance has mounted an Internet campaign urging people to vote down the 2011-12 budget. “We are questioning why $4 million in potential reductions to the budget were dropped from consideration,” the group wrote on its Web site, springshomeownersalliance.com.

    In other news from Monday’s meeting, the board president, Christopher Kelley, announced that he will leave the board when his term ends on June 30. “It’s time. I’ve served 12 of the last 13 years. I urge any of you who feel an urge to go for it and share your talents with us.” Mr. Kelley received a standing ovation from the crowd, as did Ken Hamilton, who is retiring after serving the district as treasurer for the past 16 years.

    Monday is the last day for possible school board candidates to get their nominating petitions to the district clerk’s office. The deadline is 5 p.m.

    School board elections are the same day as the budget vote. Springs residents who are not yet registered to vote have until May 12 to do so. To be eligible, the Springs district must have been their primary residence for 30 days prior to the election and they may not be registered to vote in any other voting district. Registration may be done in person at at the district clerk’s office on any business day.

Jeremy Samuelson, an environmental advocate from the Group for the East End, visited the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee meeting on Monday to discuss the health of Lake Montauk, but the conversation swiftly turned to this week’s hot topic: Peter Kalikow’s application to extend a dock — that some believe is already illegal — an additional 15 feet into the lake. 

Mr. Kalikow, the former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is seeking a natural resources permit and a variance to extend the dock and legalize an existing boatlift.

The committee agreed by resolution to write to the East Hampton Town Board and the zoning board urging them to not just deny the application for the dock extension but recommending that Mr. Kalikow be made to remove it altogether. They also agreed to ask that the boards deny Mr. Kalikow’s request that the boatlift (which he had installed without a permit for his motorboat, a speedboat of the so-called cigarette type) be made legal.

Jay Fruin, a committee member who lives on East Lake Drive and who has been appointed to the Lake Montauk Watershed Committee, told the citizens group that the engines in Mr. Kalikow’s boat are enormous. “When he fires them up you can hear it. That alone is probably killing all of the eelgrass seedlings,” he said. “There is no way extending that dock makes any sense to anyone in this room except to him.”

The dock, which has caused controversy since it was built in 1990, was approved by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals in 1988 after the Concerned Citizens of Montauk and others strongly opposed it. One argument used against it was that if one resident were allowed to build a dock, others around the lake would want them, too, potentially jamming up the waterway and leaving little room for other uses. 

Mr. Kalikow has a vacation house on Star Island and recently battled with neighbors when he fenced off a portion of beach that had been used by the public for many years.

Mr. Samuelson said the dock, at an estimated 1,600 square feet, is already about four times the size allowed by law. “That’s a huge red flag for me.” He said that when biologists studied the area before the dock was built they had been concerned about the impact of a structure that size on the eelgrass bed, upon which many species (including flounder) rely.

“It’s not enough that they’ve already killed an acre of eelgrass, but now we’re going to expand it? I didn’t believe it 10 years ago, and I don’t believe it now. There is no benefit to the eelgrass. There is no benefit to shellfish. There is no benefit to the neighbors, and there is no benefit to the community,” he said.

Richard Kahn, a retired attorney and a member of both the lake advisory committee and the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, said that giving Mr. Kalikow a variance to expand the dock and legalize the boatlift would set a bad precedent. “How can the Z.B.A. possibly say no to the other 157 residents?” he asked rhetorically, referring to the number of houses around the lake. “It’s a very serious risk. The permit said you should not build the dock. He gave them the finger and expanded the dock.”

Mr. Kalikow’s lawyer, Eric Bregman, a former East Hampton Town attorney, has said that the longer dock is needed because the boat sits in shallow water and its propeller scrapes the bottom at low tide, disturbing native plant life. He contends that extending the dock would relieve that.

In a follow-up phone call, Mr. Samuelson pointed out that on March 15, the East Hampton Town Board revitalized the Lake Montauk Watershed Committee and appointed 15 members to study the lake’s current state.

In addition to Mr. Fruin, those committee members include experts in the fields of ecology and natural resources; town officials, including East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Town Trustee Joe Bloecker; and several other Montauk residents, including Rav Freidel, Keith Grimes, James Hewitt, Julia Evans Brunn, Perry B. Duryea III, Bill Grimm, and Henry Uihlein.

“The lake is dying,” Mr. Samuelson said. “It’s really crying out for a study to move forward and reach a scientifically valid conclusion. We have to quantify and understand the negative impacts so we can sit down to the serious work of saving Lake Montauk.” 

The destruction to the lake is being caused, he said, by pathogens and nitrogen loading, sediment, road and storm-water runoff, habitat loss, leakage from septic systems, and a lack of adequate tidal flushing. “If people think that dredging the channel and inlet will solve the problem, I caution them that that is not all that needs to be done,” he said.

Lawyers representing a group of landowners on Napeague who are seeking to assert control of a stretch of sand in front of their properties and the East Hampton Town Trustees, who claim ownership of the stretch, will have to wait two more weeks for a judge to intervene in their argument. In the meantime, some residents have mobilized in an effort to keep the beach open to the public, taking to cyberspace to decry the privatization effort.

According to Stephen Angel, who represents the White Sands Motel, and in a separate suit Seaview at Amagansett, State Supreme Court Melvyn Tanenbaum granted an adjournment during an injunction proceeding in Riverhead on Friday. The ruling gives both Mr. Angel and Anthony Tohill, who is representing the trustees, until Friday, April 15, to streamline their arguments for and against the so-called privatization. 

April 15 is opening day of the eight-month striped bass season.

Mr. Angel asked for Friday’s court intervention in order to impose a restraining order to keep the public from “trespassing” on the land in question.

Pushing back, some residents formed the Citizens for Access Rights group last summer, which has been meeting at Ashawagh Hall. Over 150 people have been following the group on Facebook, with some on the site calling for a boycott of the True Value Hardware Store in East Hampton Village, which is owned by Bernard Kiembock, who also owns the White Sands Motel.

The trustees also sprang into further action this week, calling a special meeting on Tuesday night to discuss elements of the lawsuit in an executive session. Before the meeting, John Courtney, the trustee’s regular lawyer, deferred comment to Mr. Tohill. Mr. Tohill declined to comment yesterday morning.

In a release issued yesterday, the trustees assured the public that they would “not compromise on public access to the beaches” and that they will continue the legal battle over the 4,000 feet of beach. The release asked residents to forward comments about the ongoing case to the East Hampton Town Board.

In an article published last week, Mr. Angel alleged that the trustees sold their rights to the beach in 1882 to Arthur Benson, who also bought the peninsula of Montauk. Those who own deeded land abutting the beach, he said, retain those ownership rights.

The East Hampton Town Trustees said that they are the owners of the land on behalf of the residents of the town and have been since the 17th century when they were given their charter known as the Dongan Patent.

Should a judge decide that a chain of title that Mr. Angel said points to private ownership is valid, the beach could become privatized, and access to the beach as well as beach driving could be eliminated there. That portion of the ocean beach is a popular weekend spot for beachgoers and their vehicles.

—

An earlier version of this story in one place mis-stated the total length of the area involved in the law suit.

   Neighbors of a proposed three-lot development in Springs continued to rail against improvement of the properties at an East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on March 22, even though the board had already approved a house on each lot three years ago. 

The owner of the three lots, Joslin Lions Head, which received variances for each of the three houses in 2008, had to return to the zoning board with reworked applications after the Suffolk County Department of Health denied variance requests for septic systems on the properties. 

In the revised applications to the zoning board, the houses, which would be between 1,911 square feet and 3,149 square feet, no longer require variances, according to Kelly Risotto, who represented the landowner. However, some of the septic systems require greater variances than those originally needed and are closer to the the wetlands surrounding a small pond known as Lion Head Pond East — 148 feet, 125 feet, and 115 feet from the wetlands where 150 feet is required. And, despite the zoning board having denied variance requests for pools and decks on the properties in 2008, the owner is again asking for pools on each lot. 

This time, the pools are proposed more than 100 feet from wetlands, and while natural resources permits are still required for their construction, variances are not.

Most neighbors who appeared at the meeting to speak against the application asked that the three parcels be acquired with money from the town’s community preservation fund. The 2005 Comprehensive Plan recommended that the lots be purchased, characterizing them as land with “Hog Creek frontage, and wetlands.” Brian Frank, the town’s chief environmental analyst, said that the ponds in the area may have at some point in time been connected to Hog Creek, but they are not now. A swath of land northwest of the pond is preserved open space. 

But, as Mr. Frank pointed out, purchase through the community preservation fund requires a willing seller and the property owner has yet to indicate such willingness.

Henry Schwatzman, who lives next door to two of the lots on Pond Lane, took neighbors’ requests to the town board on March 24, asking it to consider public purchase of the properties. 

Mr. Schwatzman, who hired his own engineer to review the application, said on March 22 that in addition to attending the zoning board meeting, he and William Graner, his engineer, also attended the County Health Department’s Board of Review meeting to oppose variances for the septic systems. Still, the county approved the systems 75 feet from his well. (Final county approval is subject to the town zoning board’s approval.)

Mr. Graner pointed out what he perceived to be a number of inaccuracies in the plans Ms. Risotto presented to the board, saying they were “a little deceptive in what they’re showing.” 

Philip Gamble, the zoning board’s chairman, seemed surprised that the county did not take Mr. Schwatzman’s protests into account. Ms. Risotto told him that engineers from the county found that the natural grade slopes toward the pond and away from Mr. Schwatzman’s well.

Mr. Schwatzman said Theresa Joslin, a principal of the what he called the Joslin Lions Head “development corporation,” is “trying to force through variances” to increase the value of the properties. “They want to get the maximum dollar bang out of the property they have,” he said.

“The impact is going to be tremendous,” said Howard Persky, who has lived at his Isle of Wight house for 30 years. He called the neighborhood a “small, sensitive area.” Lion Head Pond East is the “only pond that’s healthy in that community,” said his wife, Willa Persky, echoing his comments.

Mr. Schwatzman told the board that Ms. Risotto offered some neighbors of the project a connection to public water in order to mitigate the fact that their drinking water wells are within 150 feet of the proposed septic systems. Mr. Schwatzman, along with another neighbor, Dorothy Rossi, have not accepted the offer. 

“I have a right to maintain my well,” said Mr. Schwatzman. Ms. Rossi pointed out that she would have to pay the Suffolk County Water Authority to have water extended to her house from the public main. Ms. Risotto said the developers would reimburse her for those costs.

The board continued to listen to neighbor’s concerns long into the night and chose to leave the record open until April 19 to give the East Hampton Town Trustees time to weigh in on the proposal. The trustees own the bottomland of Lion Head Pond East and were not properly notified of the zoning board hearing.­