There is a hearing at East Hampton Town Hall this evening  on an update to the overarching policy document that guides land buys using money from the community preservation fund. The draft that will be brought to the town board for consideration does not contain major departures from a program that many residents value highly and that has been an unmitigated success. The 251-page document lists every property suitable for some form of protection, whether by outright purchase, through easements, or via public-private partnerships. It also provides guidelines for officials as they mull potential deals.

    Approved by voters for the first time in 1998 and several times since, the preservation fund in East Hampton has helped save hundreds of acres of land, protect drinking water sources, and assure the survival of rare plants and animals.

    By reducing the number of residences that will ever be built here, the preservation fund has helped keep taxes relatively low by limiting the need for new public services and infrastructure. And it has set aside accessible acreage for pursuits such as hiking, birding, and outdoor education. Another goal of the program is to maintain East Hampton’s connection to the past, something the fund can be used for under certain circumstances.

    Tonight’s hearing, though routine, is an opportunity to be reminded of the community preservation fund’s importance in the constant fight to keep East Hampton attractive and viable as a vacation and second-home economy — a place its residents are proud to call their home.

    With the not-unexpected departure of the superintendent from the East Hampton School District at the end of the month, school board members have found themselves with a difficult job. Ray Gualtieri had a stormy tenure, mostly of his own creation, but finding a replacement will not be easy, despite the position’s hefty salary.

    During his eight-year tenure, Mr. Gualtieri reigned as the district’s top policy-maker rather than the elected board of education. This must change. His resignation gives the board an opportunity to restore public confidence by insisting that the district’s leaders restore a habit of openness. Far too many decisions were made behind closed doors without the opportunity for board members, much less taxpayers, to become involved.

    One of Mr. Gualtieri’s low points was the still-unexplained decision to hire a white-shoe Park Avenue law firm to handle a contract dispute, leading to legal fees in excess of $2 million. A request from this newspaper to examine detailed billing records from Mr. Gualtieri’s chosen firm was denied, even though the New York Committee on Open Government has repeatedly issued advisory opinions that such documents must be available for public inspection. But this was the way the superintendent ran things — his way, welcoming very little outside scrutiny or advice.

    Problematic, too, was the formula chosen to arrive at tuition rates for students from other school districts, which led to usurious rates. While this might have been good for the taxpayers in the East Hampton district, it created rancor within what had long been a united community. A recent deal to pay back some of the money has helped heal the wounds, but there is more to do.

    In considering new candidates for the post, ideally, the board should look among the district’s existing administrators. Though this is not essential, it might help avoid some of the conflicts that plagued Mr. Gualtieri. Foremost among the qualities the board should look for in the candidates is a talent for diplomacy to help forge stronger ties among the sending districts and East Hampton. Consolidation of the districts, or the creation of a separate high school district, are ideas whose time may have come. A more cooperative approach among the districts would benefit taxpayers and students at all levels.

    For the East Hampton board and its new superintendent, the biggest issue, however, may turn out to be a property-tax cap that may well be handed down from Albany later this year. The proposal, backed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, would hold increases to 2 percent annually, with exceptions for the cost of pensions and other contract obligations. This is far less than the historic rate of inflation, and it could prove crushing for the state’s schools.

    East Hampton’s next school superintendent will have a very full to-do list. For the board of education, finding the right person for the job has never been more important.

    New York State Senators were expected this week to approve a bill that would legalize same-sex marriages. If a similar bill is approved in the Assembly, and signed by the governor as expected, the law would make the Empire State the largest in the country to allow couples to marry regardless of their gender. If this happens, it would be a landmark moment not just in the gay rights movement but for human rights in the United States as a whole.

    It has become increasingly difficult for elected officials in even the most conservative New York districts to rationally defend their preference for supposedly separate-but-equal civil unions. This half-step does not, nor would it ever, guarantee same-sex couples all the legal rights and privileges that heterosexual couples enjoy. Access to estate planning, tax parity, and the ability to make health care decisions for a dying spouse, for example, have never been fully allowed by civil unions.

    No understanding of the fundamental principles of the United States can support the idea that government has a place in saying who can marry. Many engaged in this path toward equality share the hope that a positive vote in New York will be followed in other states, even in Congress, which produced the shameful Defense of Marriage Act that allows the federal government to intrude in the most personal of decisions.

    Let our state help lead the nation in saying to its people, whether gay or straight, that they are free to marry whom they want. Let New York show the world once again how big its heart is.

    Last weekend, we cleaned the barn. Nearly 200 years old, it is a ramshackle, dusty old edifice that is literally packed to the rafters with junk (ancient matresses, broken appliances) and treasures (ancient farm implements, office chairs from the 1920s that only lack a bit of love). Many small creatures, some more adorable than others, call it home.

    Actually, it was more sorting and sifting than washing or scrubbing, and there were two men with strong backs, while I stood around suggesting where to stow things and agreeing about what to throw out. Nevertheless, I had fun and came away with a feeling of accomplishment for having delved into a job that had seemed too daunting.

    Although none of us is the worse for it, as far as we know, on reflection I think that we may have taken a foolish risk. Does anyone remember hantavirus?

    Hantavirus is a disease transmitted by deer mice that can be fatal in humans.  A serious hue and cry went up on eastern Long Island in 1994, after a 22-year-old student whose family had a second home on Shelter Island died of the disease. Where he contracted it wasn’t known, but Shelter Island, like the rest of the East End, was then, and is now, full of deer and deer mice. (He also had worked in a factory in Queens before becoming ill.)

    For years, aware of the deer mice and rats who frequent our barn, my daughter used to theatrically shout  “Hantavirus! Hantavirus!”  whenever tasked with retrieving something from its depths. (And, yes, for those of you who don’t know: Much of East Hampton Village has for a very long time been home to rats, too; I prefer to think of them as shipwreck rats, and consider them a mark of distinction.)

    How soon we forget. In the ’90s, everyone on Long Island was made aware that dusty, cobwebbed corners could hide mouse droppings that could make us seriously ill. Caution should have reminded me and my crew last weekend to buy and wear face masks.

    Certainly, I do think we often, these days, take health precautions too far.  At what point, for example, do parents, aware that ticks may be lurking, decide not to let their children play on the grass? (I’m not sure if it’s rational, but I am probably a bit more scared of those little yellow signs that get stuck in the ground when lawns around town have been sprayed with pesticides than I am of lolling on the grass.) Similarly, are those anti-bacterial potions people carry in their purse really more helpful than harmful?

    It isn’t in my nature to be overcautious. Some years ago, I even tried to convince my husband that we should name our boat Caution. At the time, I thought Caution would be a great name because, yes, I liked the idea of throwing caution to the winds.

    Still, having reminded myself about hantavirus, I may feel a bit foolish but I will put on a mask this weekend when we attack another part of the barn.

    Celebrities have never been the stock in trade of The East Hampton Star, so it was not all that surprising that we first learned Liza Minelli had sold a truckload of stuff at a yard sale here last weekend from an item on Page Six. Among the items were a set of epaulets given to her by Michael Jackson.

    The New York Post runs Hamptons gossip fairly dependably a couple of times a week, Memorial Day to Labor Day. The editors and writers there have a pretty good ear for such things, as evidenced by the various and sundry blogs and other media outlets that picked up on the Liza story.

    Late Tuesday, our front office took a call from a television news producer asking about yard sales of the rich and famous, and, as I was passing by at the time, the phone was handed to me.

    It was obvious where the guy was going on this. He assumed that the rich and famous were unloading unwanted items every weekend, and that we could steer him and a TV crew to the next big thing.

    “Martha goes to yard sales out there, right?” he asked.

    Well, maybe she does, I thought, but most of the time I see people like a certain East Hampton lawyer, who, like me, has somewhat of a problem resisting great deals on fishing tackle. Or there’s the photographer who combs the sales aggressively looking for collectibles to resell. And don’t get in the way of that antiques dealer from Sag Harbor who rolls in before everyone else with a couple of burly helpers to scoop up the good stuff. There are stories aplenty, but not usually of the sort that makes for network TV.

    I gave the producer my cellphone number anyway and a tip about one sale this weekend that was likely to draw a crowd. I also let on that it was difficult to tell from the address alone how good a sale was going to be. Sometimes the best locations, I said, have the poorest offerings. The real scores come mostly from those out-of-the-way places on the side streets, not Lily Pond Lane.

    Then, too, the little secret is that a lot of people go out on the yard sale circuit of a Saturday to snoop. It’s like one great big house tour without the admission fee or cheeky decorators leaving their business cards where they can’t be missed. I am not sure I’ll tell the television guy this if and when he calls back.

    “Joe Pilates would be proud of you,” my instructor said following yet another midweek class at the Y in which, were I to be frank — which I can’t because I’m Jack — I flailed about trying to work in sync with a group of women whose cores are iron and who bend like reeds in the wind at Carolyn Giacalone’s cues as I strain in the general direction of my toes wherever they may be.

    They’ve come a long way, baby. And, in part because they have, I have too.

    I wasn’t always so humble: When Zach Grossman, our champion young golfer, said before the high school’s athletic awards ceremony that he had earlier that day lost a tennis match to a female classmate, I told him that “eons ago,” when it became apparent I was about to lose to Joan Foedisch at the Edgeworth Club in Sewickley, Pa., I had walked off the court rather than be beaten by a girl. But that was then. Nowadays, when any of our club’s hotshot women — and they are legion — deign to have me as a doubles partner I hum this ditty (substituting myself for the old maid who sings it):

    “Come a landsman, a kinsman, a soldier, or a sailor / doctor, a lawyer, a tinker, or a tailor / a rich man, a poor man, a fool, or a witty / Don’t let me die an old fud, but take me out of pity. . . .”

    I told Zach that the equanimity of his generation — his equanimity at least, for he has already learned to treat victory and defeat as the imposters they are — when contrasted with the chauvinism of mine “must mean there is such a thing as evolution.”

    It is a happy thought then, that at three score and 10 I can participate in a coed effort at self-improvement, rid to some extent of the self-consciousness that might keep a man from trying something new. (Lest I get too big a head, I suppose, a woman in my class told me I wasn’t the only one, that she knew of a number of other men who were doing Pilates elsewhere.)    Of course, if I were really free I wouldn’t be writing this column about how acutely aware I am of women’s superiority. Though fairly flexible for a man, I’ll never bend like them, elbows on the floor, heads on their knees, nor do I yet have — maybe never will have — the stomach for what they do.

    It is pleasing, though, to sense that I’m participating in the dance of life, however ungainfully. That’s my core value, I would say.

    Before throat cancer took his voice and eventually his life, Damon Runyon, most famous for the stories immortalized in “Guys and Dolls,” was asked what kind of a remembrance he wanted. “You can keep your things of bronze and stone,” he said, “and give me one man to remember me just once a year.”

    My dad, like Runyon, died before his time at 65. He had beaten the big “C” before, but in early 2001, he got sucker-punched.

    A lot of people are described as larger than life. Dad was larger than life, and he lived that life large. He only ate the freshest produce and the juiciest meats. He wore the softest shirts. He smoked only the finest cigars, rolled upon the tanned and nubile thighs of laughing Dominican virgins, or so he said.

    When I was a small, shy child in grade school on the Upper East Side, occasionally the door to my classroom would open and a half-dozen tuxedoed waiters would burst forth, carrying silver-covered platters of hot dogs and hamburgers still hot from the ovens at Maxwell’s Plum for me and my astonished classmates.

    His avoirdupois only solidified his standing as the largest person in the room. When he appeared at some highbrow event in a gold lamé suit, he was described in a Manhattan gossip column as a “shiny butterball.”

    Dad lived up to his Hollywood glam roots. The son of Mervyn LeRoy, who produced “The Wizard of Oz,” and the grandson of Harry Warner, the mogul who started Warner Brothers, he was pretty much doomed to be over the top from the very beginning.

    He was born to astound.

    But what I miss most is when the gilded paint would chip a little, and the real Dad would shine through.

    “We’re nothing but ants on this planet,” he would tell me. “You just have to be the best ant you can.” Or, “Have a dream. Make it come true. Then move on to the next dream.” Those are the jewels I remember best. Those, and the feel of his shirt on my cheek.

    I was in Hawaii when I had my last conversation with Dad. He was in the hospital, heavily medicated, and somewhat manic.

    “How are you, Dad?” I asked.

    “Busy,” he replied, sounding distracted. “Busy, busy, busy.”

    “Doing what?”

    “Oh, you know . . . hospital shit,” he answered, annoyed, making it sound as if he had taken over the entire oncology department and had dozens of patients to see before the end of the day.

    “What’s going on?”

    “Oh, I’m having a big party in my room tonight. Big,” he emphasized. “You should come. Bacce is coming, and Rita is coming, Buddy and Greer, Judy Garland . . .” He continued to rattle off the names of people who had been dead for years. His stepfather, Charles Vidor, the director, he called Bacce. Rita was Rita Hayworth.

    “It’s going to be fabulous. Fabulous!” he said. “I’ve just ordered 12 chickens from Eli’s, and a bunch of other stuff. I found the reddest peonies in New York City. No kidding. The reddest! You really should be here.”

    “I’m in Hawaii,” I said lamely.

    “Oh,” he said. “Well, a big kiss for you and for Eric and for Georgia and for Joelie and for Bing and a big kiss for you!”

    “You already gave me one at the beginning,” I told him.

    “Well, you get two ’cause I love you so much,” he said with a laugh, and then said the words I had heard thousands of times. “I’m really busy, Bridgie. I gotta get going. I love you.”

    “Okay, Dad. I love you too. Have fun tonight.”

    Three days later he was dead.

    I’m so glad he went out with a big party, lots of friends, and lots of food.

    Since I’ve moved back to the East End, at least once a week someone asks, “Are you related to Warner LeRoy?”

    “Yeah,” I say, never knowing what to expect. “He was my dad.”

    Then they smile to themselves and all say the same thing: “There will never be another Warner.”

    Tom Twomey, the attorney, grabbed my hand at a library meeting last week and looked into my eyes.

    “Your dad was one of my heroes,” he said with all sincerity, and I know he meant it.

    “Me too,” I answered, choking up a little, amazed that I still do.

    If Runyon’s quote means anything, Warner will be around as long as there’s someone out there who will remember him, with fondness, just once a year.

    Which just goes to show Dad’s even larger than “larger than life.”

    He’s larger than death.

    Happy Father’s Day to all.

—

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter at The Star.

  It seems to be a reasonable solution to the Springs School’s useable-space crunch that the district would borrow an East Hampton Town-owned building on school property to use for classrooms. However, a deal should not be struck without keeping in mind the needs of the larger Springs community.

    The Springs Youth Association has been holding programs in the small, shingled structure off Ed Hults Lane, and a town homework club has been run from there. The school’s problems have been well documented, and there is a sense that property owners there are nearing the end of their willingness or ability to pay for any more tax increases that might fund an expansion.

    With the hamlet showing tremendous population growth during the last decade, the school has struggled to accommodate all of its students. The youth association building would help relieve some of the pressure, but assurances must be made that it be accessible to the non-school public for meetings and events unrelated to the school.

    With the closing of Fort Pond House in Montauk by the town board and the town’s planned handoff of the Duck Creek Farm alongside Three Mile Harbor to an artists’ group, there are fewer publicly owned buildings available to one and all than there once were. Ashawagh Hall, also in Springs, is privately owned and generally booked, and it and the Presbyterian Church nearby should not be the only venues for gatherings in the hamlet.

    As the town board and Springs district continue to discuss the youth association’s building, its value as a potential meeting place for Springs residents remains a key point of negotiation.

    Banning plastic shopping bags of the sort you get at the food store will solve one problem; specifically, what to do with them when you get them home and unpack the groceries. Southampton Village recently outlawed the bags and now East Hampton Village officials are considering doing the same. From its beginnings in San Francisco and Ireland, a national and international movement to curtail the use of the bags has been spreading.

    Advocates of bans say that the one-time-use petroleum-based bags are a wasteful use of nonrenewable resources and unnecessarily fill up landfills. They can end up in surface waters with harmful effects on marine life. In the environment nonbiodegradable bags and other plastic objects slowly degrade into small particles that can attract toxic chemicals and be consumed by wildlife. Fish in particular that are contaminated in this way can be a pathway by which toxins can enter the food chain, in some cases ending up in humans. Nationwide, only about 5 or 6 percent of them are recycled, according to federal estimates. Paper bags can be made from recycled materials.

    Plastic bag manufacturers have counterattacked, saying that reusable bags can be a source of harmful microbes. Some libertarian-minded people have said that government should not infringe on the rights of the people to bear plastic. Others have questioned whether a patchwork of localities banning the bags would withstand a Constitutional challenge.

    Surprisingly, perhaps, opposition from retailers has been limited, from what we have seen. This may be in part due to many of them seeing an opportunity to cut costs by not buying thousands upon thousands of bags. At the same time, some may see opportunities at the checkout counter to sell reusable bags, particularly those that carry the company’s logo.

    East Hampton Village’s continuing efforts to go “green” should be commended.

    That State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, who represents the very gay-friendly South Fork, as well as the rest of eastern Long Island, has refused to vote yes on a same-sex marriage bill so far this week has, unfortunately, not been a surprise, even if it is deeply disappointing. With the Senate locked in a 31-to-31 stalemate over the issue, Mr. LaValle could have played the hero with a reversal to vote in favor of the measure. That, however, did not appear to be likely as the battle raged on in Albany.

    Mr. LaValle is in his fourth decade as a state senator and has rarely faced any real competition. He has not suffered any apparent political harm from the right for his position in favor of civil unions, kind of a marriage half-step that does not guarantee equal protections under the law.

    Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a Sag Harbor resident with an office in Bridgehampton, has been a consistent supporter of same-sex marriage bills and has not had much criticism over his position and is about as popular as ever. Mr. Thiele voted again last week in favor of a measure that is a companion to the one in the State Senate, and angry constituents did not flood his office with complaints.

    Mr. LaValle’s opposition to gay marriage comes from his own apparent principle. But his express support of civil unions for gay couples could be interpreted as a contradiction, or perhaps a glimmer of hope, for same-sex marriage advocates. He is usually a compassionate legislator, with particular interest in matters of importance to disabled people and the First District’s older residents. The limits of his empathy are apparent in this matter.

    We would have hoped Mr. LaValle would have followed the lead of another Republican state senator, James Alesi, who changed his stance earlier this year, saying, “I believe that if you live in America and you expect equality and freedom for yourself, you should extend it to other people.”

    Whether based on his personal belief or not, Mr. LaValle is on the wrong side of this historic debate. We would have hoped that he would reflect the moderate and tolerant views of the majority of people in his district rather than hew to the regrettable line of an era that is rapidly ending.