Eighteen years ago, a few months after my grandmother on my father’s side celebrated a milestone birthday, she and my stepgrandfather, Milt, took the entire family on a weekend getaway to the Catskills.

    There were 16 of us then and our destination was the Concord, the largest resort in the Borscht Belt, and at the time one of the last of its kind. According to Wikipedia, it had some 1,500 rooms and a dining room that seated 3,000. The food was kosher, to cater to what had historically been a Jewish clientele.

    The weekend we were there, Howie Mandel was the Saturday evening entertainment, offering a stand-up routine rife with four-letter expletives. (The children were supposed to be in bed.) Though I was already 22 and in college, my grandmother — a modern woman and not overly proper — told me recently that she had been surprised by his language and embarrassed that I was exposed to it.

    Before that trip, everything I knew about the Catskills I had learned watching “Dirty Dancing.” But despite the instructive value of the movie, I knew nothing of the area’s history or its popularity as a Jewish summer vacation spot. My father and his two sisters had gone to summer camp in the Catskills and had memories of family vacations not far from the Concord.

    Most of the other big Borscht Belt resorts were already closed by the time of our visit. Five years later, the Concord would follow suit, sitting empty and abandoned, with only its golf course operational, for a decade until demolition finally began a few years ago.

    To me, the Concord was like a landlocked cruise ship, a mammoth place where activities were scheduled throughout the day and you dressed up for dinner. It was fun, in an unexpected way.

    Two weeks ago, as a belated celebration of Nana and Milt’s 25th anniversary and an especially big birthday for Milt, my grandparents again gathered the family for a weekend in the Catskills. This time we were 21 and our destination was the Villa Roma Resort and Conference Center in Callicoon. Not quite as vast as the Concord, it still offered an array of on-site activities including indoor and outdoor pools and boccie courts, tennis, golf, shuffleboard, a bowling alley, a nightclub, bumper boats, and, my favorite, a go-kart race track, a k a the Monaco Speedway. Had it rained, we could easily have entertained ourselves without ever leaving the expansive building.

    The family portraits looked very different this time than they had 18 years ago.

    Age aside, there had been two divorces, an uncle lost to cancer, and the addition of two fiancées, a grandchild, a grandson-in-law (my husband), and two great-grandchildren (my kids). Cousins who were toddlers or not yet born in 1993 were old enough, or almost, to share a beer with this time around. After rendezvousing with the rest of the arriving family members at our hospitality suite on Friday afternoon, my daughter declared it “a party” and determined to sleep as little as possible for the entire weekend.

    She didn’t want to miss a moment, and I don’t blame her.

    At dinner on Friday and Saturday nights, with all but the youngest of us clustered around a big table with a view of the pretty hills beyond, my grandmother gushed about how lucky she was to have all of us there together. I couldn’t agree more.

    The older I get the more I appreciate time with family. And with relatives who are emotionally connected but geographically scattered, that time doesn’t come often enough. Who else will volunteer to hang out with your 3-year-old or vie for a chance to chase after your fiercely independent 1-year-old walker? For other people, even the closest of friends, it gets old. For family . . . well, they’re family.

    Having experienced the fun of her aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents at dinner and then breakfast on Saturday, Jade had no interest in spending time away from them in the kiddie pool — “too splashy” — or even going to the playground. She just wanted to “go to the party.”

    There were three outdoor pools, but securing a lounge chair near them was harder than getting a parking spot at Indian Wells in August. The pool gates opened at 9 a.m.; however, if you were not up and waiting on line by 7, you were out of luck for the day. Being a beach girl, the idea of sitting in such close quarters with so many other people by the side of an overly warm and overcrowded pool did not appeal to me. Maybe that’s because I did not get on line at 7 and therefore did not have a lounge chair.

    I wondered, as I stepped between the tanning-oil-slathered bodies, where did these people come from? What was Villa Roma’s primary demographic? I’m a reporter, an amateur anthropologist. I can’t help it. I always want to figure a place out. Did they come from a nearby city? From suburban New York or New Jersey, and if so, why wouldn’t they go to the beach? Were they upstate vacationers? People without pools or beaches at home?

    An answer of sorts came later that evening during the resort’s Saturday comedy show. A comedian whose name I did not catch with a routine aimed at Italian-Americans from Jersey, like him. Who knows? We may not have been the typical Villa Roma guests, but it didn’t matter. It was fun to be somewhere different, to be away from one resort area in the height of the season and enjoying another.

    And did I mention there were go-karts?

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    Carissa Katz is an associate editor at The Star.

    In the early 1980s, the East Hampton Town Board disbanded the Planning Department. While that does not seem to be the goal of today’s Town Hall leaders, a continued push to change the way the department operates should have those who favor environmental protection and solid land-use management concerned.

    The latest salvo came in a memorandum from a recently appointed member of the town zoning board of appeals to Marguerite Wolffsohn, who heads the Planning Department. In the memo, Don Cirillo expressed displeasure with the planners’ environmental review of building applications. Among other things, he described the planning staff as arbitrary and engaged in blackmailing applicants to do its bidding in order to secure permits. Ms. Wolffsohn fired back in her own memo, calling Mr. Cirillo’s allegations unfounded and defending her department’s professionalism.

     Much of Mr. Cirillo’s language echoed complaints heard over the years from lawyers involved in land-use projects for themselves or clients, as well as from people in related fields, so this is not new. What is unusual, however, is for a blunt, one-sided critique to come from an appointed official. It is unlikely that Mr. Cirillo was alone in his criticism, but he didn’t indicate whether he was speaking on behalf of others, even other members of the Z.B.A. Because the memo was so harsh and because Mr. Cirillo is in a position of influence as vice chairman of the Z.B.A., it is important that he disclose who his confidants are. We have asked him to do so and will report if and when he responds.

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, the deputy supervisor, have spoken out about what they see as failings in the town planning-review process and expressed their shared desire to see it streamlined. They have not commented publicly about Mr. Cirillo’s critique, but they have made no secret of their hostility for the Planning Department.

    That Mr. Cirillo is a former treasurer of the town Republican Committee and his wife is a current committee member is relevant here because Mr. Wilkinson, a Republican, is seeking re-election this fall. The memo may turn out to be a political liability, especially if it is consistent with the supervisor’s personal views.

    Among the several points Mr. Cirillo makes, his general assertion that the process is overly cumbersome in all matters is wrong. Most permits that require Planning Department review are processed in an effective and efficient manner; what does take longer — sometimes far longer — are requests for complicated projects, those for which environmental regulations come into play and those for the expansion of businesses in residential zones, among others.

    Yes, tricky applications are going to take a long time to review and the outcomes are not guaranteed. All of the town’s permit procedures, including the Planning Department’s, undoubtedly can be improved. But the memo’s declaration of war on sound environmental review and the professionalism of the town planners is dangerous, poorly thought through, and should be repudiated by those in Mr. Cirillo’s party if they are to have any credibility on these issues among the public. Voters like their East Hampton a certain way, and look dimly at those who favor the bulldozer’s blade over heritage and preservation. It is a message that all sides cannot lose sight of.

    The Napeague homeowners who sued the East Hampton Town Trustees and Town Board, claiming they own the beach in front of their houses from the high tide line down to the surf, and that they can, therefore, deny its use by the public, have incited an opinion hurricane, as might have been expected. They also seem to have raised more legal questions than they might have anticipated.

    The litigants trace their ownership of the beach to a trustees’ deed selling a swath of Napeague to Arthur Benson, the man who also bought Montauk in 1879. But a lot of sand has washed over (or off, as the case may be) the beach since that time, allowing legal ins and outs to arise. 

    How about adverse possession? It is a principle of real estate law that allows title to vest in those making use of someone else’s property when they meet specific criteria. The law differs from state to state, but the standards involve the length of time the property was used by someone who didn’t own it and whether the use was consistent, among many others. Is it therefore possible that a group acting on behalf of the public (the people who populate truck beach) can claim adverse possession and overrule private title?

    Then there seems to be a tricky matter about an easement; according to a knowledgeable source, the trustees obtained an assurance preserving public access to the beach in the Napeague Lane area at the time the upland was subdivided — a reservation, if you will. In addition, there are questions about whether the surveys showed ownership to mean high water, the common practice at the time. Then again, even if the homeowners’ deeds do show title below the high tide line, there’s the matter of whether they acted as owners of private property over which the public made use by blocking it at certain times, and whether they paid taxes on it.

    Although we have encouraged the town to find other places where East Hampton residents who do not live on the water can get on the beach, and although we cannot predict who will prevail, the lawsuit may force the trustees to enact further restrictions on driving on the beaches.

    The numbers of those with four-wheeler permits have grown to the point where they outweigh tradition and what the colonial-era town fathers had in mind when they set down the community’s rules and regulations. Conflicts are inevitable now, though court should be the last place to try to solve them. Even so, the trustees may have a few aces up their sleeves. Whether a legal victory will solve the long-term issue of overuse and abate the frustration of oceanfront property owners is an open question.

    East Hampton Town Planning Board members could make no mistake about where Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, the deputy supervisor, stood when they walked into the meeting room on July 13 and sat down in the audience next to the applicant in a matter before the board. In past practice, there has been a studious separation between the appointed boards and the elected officials who appoint them; this should be maintained.    

    The matter before the board was complicated, but the details are less relevant than the appearance of meddling. For the record, the board had to decide whether to change the terms by which a commercial subdivision had been approved in 2005. Planning board members were told by the board chairman, Reed Jones, that a legal error had been discovered in the original approval, and he asked them to vote then and there. For some reason, the proposed modification had come from the town attorney’s office, whose lawyers are hired and fired by the town board, rather than directly from the applicant. The standard procedure, in which a property owner seeks changes and a hearing is scheduled, was not followed; the reason why was not explained.    

    This is not the only recent example of intrusion by members of the town board into the workings of an appointed board. Councilman Dominick Stanzione is reported to have coached the chairman of the architectural review board on what to say during a hearing on a matter the councilman is advocating.    

    After some heated discussion, the planning board made the change, with the members appointed by the current town board majority voting the way Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley wanted and those appointed by a prior administration voting the other way. The terms of planning board members are seven years, long enough, the idea is, to allow them to be less beholden to changing politics. The supervisor and deputy supervisor’s involvement suggests a willingness to undermine that wall. It would be far better for East Hampton Town if the process operated without interference.

    No one would have designed it this way — 100 trucks lined up on the beach at Napeague. But they are there now, and figuring out what to do about it is the difficult question.    

    The “truck beach” phenomena and the lawsuit it spawned is a colossal headache for the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage the beach in question, as well as for the members of the town board who also have been cited. While four-wheel-drive permits may have historical roots in the traditional practices of whaling, commercial fishing, and seaweed or salt hay gathering, using Napeague as a recreational paradise evolved only in the last 10 years or so.   

    If those residents who drove onto the sand at the end of Marine Boulevard for a day of sun and relaxation were doing it decades ago, they were keeping it under the radar. Now, like most anything good, the secret is out, and dozens upon dozens of vehicles turn that section of ocean shore into one long party on hot summer weekends. Like many enjoyable pursuits, once enough people discover it, there are bound to be conflicts. In some ways, East Hampton Town has not managed its growth very well. What would the trustees’ reaction have been if they were asked to open up a half-mile or more of beach to trucks, creating a de facto bathing beach minus the lifeguards and the facilities. Make no mistake, it wouldn’t have happened, at least not the way that beach is now.    

    Eliminating truck beach would be politically risky, to put it mildly. Many of its biggest fans can be counted on to vote in the November town elections, and nothing motivates turnout like taking something cherished away from voters. This must have been the calculation of the property owners who sued, asserting ownership of the extensive portion of the beach above the high tide line. They must have guessed that elected officials would not have the courage to take on the issue.   

    Walking along this stretch of beach several times on weekends this summer, it was easy to see both its attraction for those who park there and the annoyance of those whose houses overlook the scene (some of whom, incidentally, are year-round residents, too, just like many of the truck beachers). These homeowners should not have to endure living adjacent to what appears to be a parking lot. Conversely, although 100 trucks is just too many, those who would like to join friends in a great big tailgate party on the beach should have a place to do so.   

    Regardless of the merits of the case now before the Suffolk Supreme Court, town officials and the trustees should seek a solution that both sides could endorse. Satisfying everyone may not be possible, but coming up with a reasonable alternative or two to the parts of truck beach that are directly in front of houses just might be.

    Composting household kitchen waste is among the easiest of the so-called green measures that ordinary citizens can undertake, and it requires the least investment of time and cash. For East Hampton residents, there is an added incentive — helping the town save money. Gardeners have long known the advantages of compost as a soil conditioner and source of nutrients for vegetables and flowers, but there is a compelling dollars-and-cents reason why more of us should compost.

    Estimates are that American households throw away about 470 pounds of food waste each year, whether scraps after meals, wilted produce, or outdated pantry items.  Unfortunately, every single bit of East Hampton’s trash is trucked off Long Island at considerable cost, which makes any excess expensive. Through the first half of 2011, the town spent just under $450,000 to haul away what is termed mixed solid waste. A considerable portion of it could have been composted.

    The town had tried municipal composting. Residents and commercial carting companies were supposed to separate their garbage, but the experiment was a failure. Since then, some households have picked up the slack, but more should be doing so. The town pays about $83 a ton to send waste to distant landfills. Even acting alone, a single household that takes up composting would help cut the expense. If everyone did it, the savings would be significant.    

    Figures vary, but by conservative estimates, 40 percent of the garbage in the United States could be reclaimed by composting. That means East Hampton’s roughly 5,300 tons of outgoing trash through the first half of the year could have been cut to about 3,200 tons — with savings to taxpayers of more than $175,000.

    Not enough attention has been paid in recent years to groundwater supplies and how we use them on the South Fork. There was a time when land development’s impact on what potentially comes out of the tap was at the top of the agenda locally, but nowadays, perhaps with the spread of so-called public water, interest has faded. Helping put the subject back into public discussion (we hope) was a recent story in The Southampton Press listing the top residential water-consumers in East Hampton and Southampton Towns.

    According to documents obtained from the Suffolk Water Authority, the top South Fork water user was the Ocean Road, Bridgehampton, vacation house owned by Millard Drexler, the head of J. Crew, where 18.4 million gallons went through the pipes last year.

    According to figures cited by the newspaper and provided by the water authority, the average household here uses 160,000 gallons annually. The late Bruce Wasserstein’s Further Lane, East Hampton, spread was the third-thirstiest property, going through 13 million gallons in 2010. The list goes on, citing properties elsewhere on the South Fork, including a surprising number of big water-hogs in Montauk.

    A water authority spokesman said the peak water users were those with geothermal heating and cooling systems in massive houses. Other explanations for the high numbers included landscape irrigation and swimming pools. All of the properties whose apparent excesses were noted in the story get their water from the authority’s street-side mains. These, in turn, are almost entirely supplied by wells sunk into underground accumulations.

    One of the problems with the use of water for landscaping is what happens when it leaves the property. Some is absorbed into the ground — and joins a shallow, subsurface aquifer — and some drains into surface waters, such as streams, ponds, wetlands, and bays. If irrigation runoff is carrying herbicides and pesticides, those, too, are taken along for the ride. Eventually, these contaminants can reach private wells not tied to the water authority, or enter the marine ecosystems.

    According to the last major study of Long Island groundwater, by the Department of the Interior in 1982, every drop of fresh water here comes from precipitation, some recent, some perhaps from thousands of years ago. The levels of consumption released in the water authority documents suggest that some property owners may be taking more than their fair share of a vast — but finite — resource.

    Perhaps some restraint is in order. It may be time for public officials and the various environmental organizations here to take a more active position on water use with an eye toward assuring residents of a long-term, high-quality supply.

    East Hampton Town officials appear to be passing the buck when it comes to control of the burgeoning nightlife scene in Montauk. The easternmost hamlet in town has had a half-score years of favorable publicity from movies and fawning magazine stories, and, as a result, has gotten what seems to be a little too popular for some longtime residents’ tastes. Town Hall is at best disconnected, allowing apparently unchecked expansion of some businesses and now appearing to be surprised at the chaos of a busy Saturday night.     

    At a town board meeting on Tuesday, an irritated resident complained about noise and garbage at Solé East, a restaurant and gathering spot on Second House Road. Patrons’ vehicles were parked on her property, Kimberly Esperian said. The subject of crazy parking and traffic on Navy Road was discussed as well, as was the well-documented mayhem at the Surf Lodge over on Edgemere Street.    

    Now, some Montaukers are looking at the renovated Ruschmeyer’s Inn, at the other end of Second House Road in a residential zone, and wondering if it may have been overexpanded. Downtown Montauk is not spared the action, what with the Sloppy Tuna drawing crowds and popular ladies’ nights at the Memory Motel and the Point Bar and Grill across Montauk Highway, which are setting off all sorts of late-night cavorting and petty crime. Some people say that the crowds are good for Montauk’s economy, but it’s obvious that much of the money the party crowd brings in goes out of the hamlet just as quickly.    

    There are limits, of course, to what local officials can do about noisy and often noisome nightspots. But an obvious place to start is to limit the crowds that spill onto the streets around the popular haunts. The town code counts those who are actually inside an establishment or on a deck or porch toward its legal capacity for patrons. There has been talk among town board members that they might look into setting a maximum spillover capacity for an establishment’s grounds as well. At the very least, existing regulations on the expansion of these kinds of businesses in residential districts must be dusted off and enforced — as in several cases these operations are the ones that cause the greatest annoyance and inconvenience to those who live nearby.    

    The East Hampton Town Board, and especially Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, who is running for re-election this year, cannot blithely dismiss mounting frustration, telling complainers, in effect, to pipe down because the nightspots are good for the economy. Maybe. But maybe those who call Montauk home are entitled to some peace and quiet at what is supposed to be the sweetest time of the year.

Perhaps it was the high-pressure zone this week or, more likely, that my husband was about to head back to work five days a week in the city after months of recuperation from surgery here, but the sort-it-out, throw-it-away, reorganize-it bug hit me bad this week.

    While others who find themselves with a little time to spare on glorious summer days might head for the beach or hop on the bike, I take pleasure in straightening my nest.

    It’s also true that I have been getting up earlier than usual, ever since my recent trip to Ethiopia, which is seven hours ahead of us. That’s a plus when you’re on a neatness binge. 

    Over all, this sort of clearing of the decks is fun — but I was dismayed to discover exactly how many papers, pamphlets, photographs, folders, magazine clippings, and  other ephemera I had allowed myself to accumulate willy-nilly. All of a sudden, it became obvious that it would have been easy to put them in proper places to begin with.

    I had been piling family photographs in a stack by my desk, without much thought, and forgotten they were there. It felt good, then, to put them into labeled envelopes. (How organized am I?) Just this week I ordered 31 new prints of David Teodros Rattray, the newest member of the family (who has joined us from Ethiopia), and I’m glad they won’t just disappear into an office oblivion.

    During sorting, I took time to frame some photos of my husband’s grandchildren, who had noticed some time ago that they weren’t represented on my desk at The Star. I also found the original photograph of Jeremiah Huntting, my late mother-in-law’s grandfather, standing in front of his Main Street house. That one really deserves a good frame.

    But the real reward is how it feels to have done away with a lot of clutter . . .  at least in one room. A low-pressure zone may well to arrive ter . . .  at least in one room. A low-pressure zone may well arrive some day soon, and it is apt to defeat my intention to move on to other parts of the house.

—

    For readers who may recall a column I wrote here not long ago about having cleaned up the family barn, the recent death attributed to hantavirus of a young man who had a chiropractic practice in East Hampton and Montauk puts into serious perspective the promise I made in that column to make sure that we all wear masks during future barn forays.

    My condolences go to the family of David Hartstein, who died on June 17 at the age of 35.   

Right now, the much-ballyhooed New York property tax cap appears to be much ado about very little. Under the terms of a bill passed last week, which the governor is expected to sign shortly, tax increases would be held to 2 percent annually or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. But the cap has a significant hole in it, particularly where local government is concerned.

    In order to go past the 2-percent limit, three-fifths of the deciding body for a particular budget would have to agree to break the cap. For school districts, this means getting 60 percent of voters to approve it in a referendum. So far, so good. However, for other forms of government, approval for higher tax levies would come from its elected representatives alone.

    Eastern Long Island’s towns and villages, like most of the smaller municipalities across New York, are governed by five-member boards. This means that it would take only a three-person majority to reach 60 percent and exceed the limit. As such, the bill is patently unfair, placing greater restraints on schools while essentially allowing cities (although not New York), counties, towns, villages, and special taxing districts to continue business as usual.

    If Albany really intended to pass a meaningful bill with adequate restraint on the growth of government, this is an embarrassing loophole. For towns and villages from Niagara to East Hampton, the number of yes votes required to approve an annual spending plan is the same as would be necessary to bust the cap.

    It is, frankly, stunning that lawmakers, many of whom came to their current posts with small-town government experience, could have missed this important detail — unless they didn’t miss it and the escape valve was intentional. Requiring a four-member supermajority for municipalities to exceed the tax cap might have been an option.

    If Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is serious about protecting taxpayers from runaway local government and school spending, he should not have signed this bill.