The long-awaited effort to alleviate traffic by adding Long Island Rail Road service between Speonk and Montauk in the morning and afternoon has taken a step closer to reality. 

On Tuesday, JoAnne Pahwul, East Hampton Town’s assistant planning director, told the town board that Feb. 25 is the target date for the inaugural runs of two additional eastbound trains that will arrive in East Hampton in the morning, and one additional westbound train leaving East Hampton around 5:15 p.m. 

A key component of the plan is the “last-mile shuttle,” through which commuters would get from train stations to their workplaces and back, and for which the Towns of East Hampton and Southampton will issue a joint request for proposals. 

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle helped to secure $500,000 to fund shuttle ser­vices. 

Southampton, Ms. Pahwul told the board, is prepared to move forward with a request for proposals. “We need to review it,” she said. The towns will issue the request jointly, but will enter contracts with winning bidders individually so that East Hampton “will have complete control over the service” it seeks. 

She asked the board to review and comment on the request for proposals in order to adopt a resolution at its meeting next Thursday to move forward with Southampton. By adhering to that schedule, the request can be advertised in media on Oct. 4, a bidders’ meeting can be scheduled for Oct. 15, and bids would be due on Oct. 30. “We are leaving enough time so we have an opportunity to rebid if necessary,” she said. 

Soliciting a service provider to shuttle people to and from train stations is “relatively new territory” that requires the town to determine how many passengers must be accommodated and what areas would be served by the shuttle service, Ms. Pahwul said. A 2007 survey conducted when the L.I.R.R. provided a similar service during construction on County Road 39 yielded considerable data, including that 77 percent of the 149 respondents took the train every day and that 23 percent, or 34 people, took the train to East Hampton. The town is conducting a new survey to determine how many of its employees live west of the Shinnecock Canal, she said. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said that the L.I.R.R. has asked the towns where additional stations might be sited. A station closer to the Town Hall campus, and to the nearby site where the Southampton Hospital Association plans to construct a freestanding emergency medical facility, makes sense, for example. 

“We don’t really know what ridership will be at a particular stop,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said, and adjustments will be likely as that becomes clear. “As the system becomes more in the public eye, more and more people are likely to take advantage.” 

Traffic to and from the South Fork, where the so-called trade parade clogs the primary route throughout the year, makes it difficult for employers, including the town, to find qualified employees, he said.

Days before today’s Democratic primary to determine the party’s candidate for a seat on the East Hampton Town Board, the East Hampton Reform Dem­ocrats and their town board candidate, David Gruber, accused David Lys, the East Hampton Democratic Committee’s nominee, of lying about his write-in vote for president in the 2016 election. Mr. Lys stood by his statement, and information from the Suffolk County Board of Elections backs him up. 

In an editor’s note on a letter in the Aug. 30 issue of The Star, Mr. Lys said he had cast a write-in vote for his father, Hakim Lys, in 2016, and had not voted for Donald Trump. An editorial in last week’s paper repeated that statement, calling Reform Democrats’ assertions to the contrary false. 

Reform Democrats cried foul, and on Monday morning sent out an email bearing the headline “David Lys Misleads East Hampton Star About His Presidential Vote in 2016.” It went on to state that “The official Suffolk County Board of Elections tally for the 2016 Presidential Election shows that NO ONE voted for Hakim Lys, David Lys’s father, in all Suffolk County.” The assertion was also disseminated on social media. 

A copy of the final results for the Nov. 8, 2016, general election was included. Below the Republican, Democratic, and third-party candidates’ names and the number of votes each received are the names and vote tallies for 12 write-in candidates. Hakim Lys is not among them.

According to the board of elections, however, the list presented by the Reform Democrats was not proof that no one wrote in Hakim Lys’s name. Rather, an official at the board of elections explained on Monday that those listed on the final-results document had probably notified the board of elections of their write-in candidacy. “If you notify us, you get your name printed,” said the official, who did not want to be named. As an example, she said that Mickey Mouse, a perennial write-in candidate, is not listed in the 2016 results. 

Votes for such candidates “would be considered a scattering,” said another official, who also asked not to be named. That official agreed to speak to the commissioner and endeavor to provide the names of those grouped under the “scattering” umbrella.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, Mr. Gruber had asked the board of elections for a printout of all people who received write-in votes in the 2016 presidential election. On Monday, he said that an official there first read the names of write-in candidates receiving votes to him over the telephone. “I said, ‘Okay, thank you, that gives me the information I need,’ because I did not hear Hakim in the list. Then I said, ‘Please, I need you to send me a document that says this, because nobody is going to take my word for it.’ They did.” 

The board of elections’ final-results list, which the Reform Democrats offered as proof that Ms. Lys was lying, lists 4,087 scattering votes countywide.

In an email on Tuesday morning, Cate Rogers, chairwoman of the East Hampton Democratic Committee, wrote that she, too, had called the board of elections and was informed that “the only names that you see on that report as write-ins are official write-in candidates. Official means that the board of elections received a letter from the state stating that the candidate is a recognized candidate for write-in. All other names: Mickey Mouse, Barack Obama, David Lys’s dad, Hakim Lys, and any other random name are reported in the ‘Scatterings’ column. In Suffolk County there were thousands of ‘Scatterings’ as you can see,” she said. A 2016 election report for East Hampton Town lists 85 votes under the “Scattering” column.

“My write-in would be part of that scattering on there,” Mr. Lys said Tuesday. He called the Reform Democrats’ information a “half-truth” and said he is “disappointed by their actions.”

“They are trying to call me a liar. I am not,” Mr. Lys said.

“This attempt to say that David Lys is a liar is so blatant and egregious and if the truth still matters in our world then this should be exposed,” Ms. Rogers said.

  Also on the ballot in today’s Democratic primary election are candidates for the party’s committee in each of the 19 election districts. Registered Democrats will also choose a candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. 

Polls, which are the same as for the general election, will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. A list of polling places can be found in last week’s Star and online at easthamptonstar.com.

With the approaching one-year anniversary of the discovery of a southern pine beetle infestation in Northwest Woods in East Hampton, the town board is mulling its approach to managing the invasive species. 

The infestation resulted in the declaration of a state of emergency last October, which authorized the town’s Department of Land Acquisition and Management to cut down infested pine trees on both public and private property, the latter with landowners’ permission. Town staff was also authorized to enter private property to inspect trees and hire private contractors to augment town staff. Around 10,000 trees were felled to curb the infestation, Andy Drake, an environmental analyst, told the board on Tuesday.

This year, “We can be hopeful, or worry about what’s going to happen come October,” Mr. Drake said. He had been summoned to the meeting following last Thursday’s town board meeting, at which a resident of Swamp Road, near the epicenter of the outbreak, said that he had spent more than $24,000 in the felling or removal of pine trees on his 2.5-acre property and was now “way beyond my ability to pay” for the removal of still more infested trees. 

The town has adopted a “cut and leave” approach to suppressing southern pine beetle infestations, in which infested trees and a buffer are cut down and left on the ground. Beetles tunnel under the bark, blocking the flow of nutrients and killing the trees. To combat this, the bark is scored to expose the beetles to the elements. Private property owners are responsible for the cost of removing the trees, but the town accepts them at its recycling centers free of charge. 

Fortunately, Mr. Drake said, the situation is significantly different from last year. “We’ve made a really large effort in trying to minimize the spread since then,” he said. “This year, so far, we haven’t seen very much new emergence. . . . I think it shows that our efforts from last year have paid off.” 

The Land Acquisition and Management Department is “trying to stay on top of this and manage properties,” Mr. Drake said, pointing out that it offers inspections of private land. Since last September, around 480 properties were inspected, he said. Since June, eight private properties of 43 inspected have revealed southern pine beetle infestation. On town properties, 518 trees were felled since June. 

“Right now, we have 32 trees marked on town lands, which we intend to cut by the end of the week,” he said. “But so far, emergence has been relatively low.” Nonetheless, private property owners who are worried about the pines on their land have been advised to contact the town. 

The question for the town board, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said, is how to proceed. “Does it make sense to declare a state of emergency again to try to suppress the spread of the beetles, given we’ve made an investment and commitment to do that?” he asked. “I don’t know . . . if it makes sense to continue to try to suppress these little outbreaks. The resources that we might have to bring to bear might be much less and save us a lot of money, and residents a lot of money, over time, and prevent destruction of those large forest tracts.” 

Last year, two separate emergency declarations were made, spanning a total of 60 days. Mr. Drake suggested that, should the board again declare an emergency, “we should declare later on in the season so it can encapsulate the whole migration time period and reproduction time period.” The beetles go dormant once the temperature falls below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, he said. “Last year, there were still trees being infested after the period we were allowed to do cutting. We were making recommendations, but private property owners were stuck with a lot of their own management.” 

The invasive species is now well established, Mr. Drake said. “This is a problem that has been a management effort and should continue to be a management effort. But I don’t know if it has quite that emergency feel anymore, because it is so heavily established at this point.”

The town has $47,000 remaining from a State Department of Environmental Conservation grant to manage the invasive species, he said, and a standing relationship with the tree company that felled trees last year. “There’s a really high potential to reach outbreak status again,” he said, but “so far, based on our inspections, we’ve seen really low numbers.” 

The infestation, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, “was a predicted result from a warming climate. This creature did not live in this area, in this climate. Due to warming temperatures over all, it’s expanded its range. They’re probably going to have to rename it the Mid-Atlantic pine beetle.”

Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company seeking to construct the 15-turbine South Fork Wind Farm in an area leased from the federal government about 30 miles offshore from Montauk, plans to submit an application for the wind farm’s transmission cable to the New York State Public Service Commission in the next week. The company submitted a construction and operations plan for the installation to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in June, and an application to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is to be submitted in the coming weeks.

Clint Plummer, Deepwater Wind’s vice president of development, said last Thursday that the application to the P.S.C. will include Beach Lane in Wainscott as the transmission cable’s preferred route, where it is to make landing from the wind farm. It would then be buried along a route to a Long Island Power Authority substation near Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton. 

The P.S.C. oversees components of the project that lie within state waters, including portions of the transmission cable, and those buried under state roads or rights of way, as well as the interconnection facilities to be built at the LIPA substation. The agency will determine whether to issue a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need, as required under the review process known as Article VII, which covers applications to construct and operate a major electric transmission facility. 

Deepwater’s move follows the East Hampton Town Board’s 3-to-2 vote in July to support the granting of an access and utility easement allowing the company to land the cable at the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane, and the town trustees’ Aug. 27 vote to retain Daniel Spitzer, an attorney who is to guide the trustees in negotiating a land-use agreement and through the Article VII process. 

In its July vote, the town board also voted to hire an attorney, John Wagner, to serve as outside counsel to the town attorney’s office for issues relating to the wind farm, including proceedings pursuant to Article VII and before the federal agency and other regulatory bodies.

“Because we have the votes that show an indication of interest by the town and trustees, we’re moving forward in good faith,” Mr. Plummer said. “But since we don’t have agreements finalized, we are including a viable alternative,” referring to a landing site on state-owned land at Hither Hills. “If we don’t get an agreement, we will land at Hither Hills and connect at the [East Hampton] substation,” bypassing land that may be under trustee jurisdiction.

The Beach Lane landing has drawn criticism, particularly from Wainscott residents who are concerned about the environmental impact on the beach. Deepwater Wind plans to drill horizontally, beginning several hundred yards offshore and continuing under the beach, to create a tunnel into which a conduit will be laid, the high-voltage transmission cable contained within it. 

A petition opposing the Wainscott landing began circulating late last month and is to be delivered to the town board. 

More broadly, many residents are opposed to the wind farm entirely. Commercial fishermen and their advocates say that the electromagnetic field emanating from the transmission cable might alter fish migration patterns, possibly repelling some species while attracting others. 

Deepwater Wind has offered an $8.45 million community-benefits package to the town, which would fund sustainability programs and infrastructure improvements, in exchange for the easement. Should the town and trustees deny Deepwater Wind an easement to land its cable, the offer will be withdrawn, the company’s officials say. 

Adjacent property owners along both routes will be notified on or about the day the application is submitted to the P.S.C., Mr. Plummer said, with instructions on how to access additional information. The commission is to review it for completeness. It will be posted to the P.S.C.’s website and at southforkwindfarm.com, and print copies will be available at locations in East Hampton Town and Village, including the Montauk Library. 

The construction and operations plan, which a developer is required to submit within five years of receiving an offshore renewable-energy lease from the federal government, will also be made public once the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management deems it complete. That is expected in mid-October, according to Deepwater Wind. Public hearings, including one in East Hampton, will follow.

Mr. Spitzer attended the trustees’ meeting on Monday, and was to have met with them and with stakeholders, including representatives of the commercial fishing industry, on Tuesday. 

Julia Prince, Deepwater Wind’s Montauk manager and fisheries liaison, “has been on the docks and has been letting folks know we are submitting the application,” Mr. Plummer said.

Amos Goodman, chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, has challenged petitions David Lys submitted to the Suffolk County Board of Elections last month to create the East Hampton Unity Party.

Mr. Lys, a town councilman appointed to his post in January, offered himself as a candidate for the new independent political party in an effort to ensure he remains on the Nov. 6 ballot even if he loses today’s Democratic primary.

Mr. Lys had changed his party registration from Republican to Democratic last year before being appointed to his post. He faces David Gruber, who formed a splinter group called the East Hampton Reform Democrats, in today’s primary. 

Mr. Goodman, who successfully challenged the East Hampton Independence Party’s petitions for Mr. Gruber to appear on its line on the November ballot, said on Tuesday that his challenge would not be settled before today’s primary election, but “by my count they’re short of what’s the statutory requirement.” The petition requires 320 valid signatures; Mr. Goodman charged that only about 260 of approximately 383 submitted are valid. 

Unlike his challenge to the Independence Party’s nominating petitions, in which he accused that party’s officials of fraud, Mr. Goodman said he is simply trying to ascertain the validity of the signatures. He described the move as “strictly a technical challenge,” referring to requirements including that signatories be residents of the town and that they have not signed another nominating petition.

The New York State Department of Transportation is planning to reduce the speed limit on Montauk Highway between Flying Point Road and Head of Pond Road in Water Mill, according to Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. The speed limit will go from 45 miles per hour to 40 m.p.h. heading toward the hamlet’s downtown from the west. 

The D.O.T. has installed “reduced speed limit ahead” signs on the eastbound and westbound sides of the road to alert drivers to slow down to 30 m.p.h. as they enter downtown. The department has also installed larger speed limit signs to enhance visibility and new “pedestrian ahead” warning signs near the two crosswalks between Halsey Lane and Proprietors Road.

East Hampton Town

Car-Free Day

Long Island’s sixth annual Car-­­Free Day is set for Friday, Sept. 21, and the Town of East Hampton’s energy sustainability advisory committee has asked for residents’ participation. 

Linda James, chairwoman of the committee, and Lauren Steinberg, an environmental analyst in the Natural Resources Department, asked the town board for its support of the initiative on Tuesday. Car-free day, Ms. Steinberg told the board, is part of an international movement observed every September that encourages people to shun use of cars, particularly single-occupancy vehicles, in favor of public transportation, cycling, walking, and carpooling. Some 2,500 cities participate, she said. 

The board’s endorsement, Ms. James said, would support its broader initiative to achieve 100 percent of its energy needs through renewable sources. 

Information about Car Free Day is available at carfreedayli.com. Those interested can pledge to participate at carfreedayli.com/pledge. 

Car Free Day is part of Long Island Mobility Week, a series of activities and events by municipalities and organizations to encourage sustainable transportation. It will be launched on Sunday with an electric vehicle show at the Tanger outlet center in Riverhead. C.W.

Sculpture Celebration

The Town of East Hampton and the East Hampton Arts Council will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate “Nureyev and Fontaine,” a sculpture by the late artist Bill King, on Monday at 2 p.m. on the Town Hall grounds. The public has been invited to attend. 

Mr. King lived in East Hampton for more than 40 years and was deeply involved in the community. His work is among collections held by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was the recipient of four honorary doctorates and numerous fellowships as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the International Sculpture Center and Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts.

Laura Cutler, who donated the sculpture to the town last year, will attend the ceremony along with the art dealer Fred Dorfman, who helped spearhead the donation, Scott Chaskey, who also helped, and the artist Connie Fox, Mr. King’s longtime partner.

Days before Thursday's Democratic primary to determine the party's candidate for a seat on the East Hampton Town Board, the East Hampton Reform Democrats and their town board candidate, David Gruber, have falsely accused David Lys, the East Hampton Democratic Committee's nominee, of lying about his write-in vote for president in the 2016 election. Mr. Lys stands by his statement, and information from the Suffolk County Board of Elections backs him up.

In an editor's note on a letter in the Aug. 30 issue of The Star, Mr. Lys said he had cast a write-in vote for his father, Hakim Lys, in 2016, and had not voted for Donald Trump. An editorial in last week's paper repeated that statement, calling Reform Democrats' assertions to the contrary false.

As evidence of their claim, the Reform Democrats have disseminated a vote tally from the Suffolk County Board of Elections in emails and on social media. Below the Republican, Democratic, and third-party candidates' names and the number of votes each received are 12 write-in candidates and their vote tallies. Hakim Lys is not among them.

An email sent by the Reform Democrats on Monday morning bore the headline "David Lys Misleads East Hampton Star About His Presidential Vote in 2016," and went on to state that "The official Suffolk County Board of Elections tally for the 2016 Presidential Election shows that NO ONE voted for Hakim Lys, David Lys's father, in all Suffolk County." A copy of the final results for the Nov. 8, 2016 general election is included. 

However, the evidence they offer is a "half-truth," Mr. Lys said on Tuesday. Mr. Lys stands by his statement and is "disappointed by their actions," he said. 

In two separate calls to the board of elections on Monday, officials explained that the list presented by the Reform Democrats was not proof that no one wrote in Hakim Lys's name. Those listed on the final-results document had probably notified the board of elections of their candidacy, one said. "If you notify us, you get your name printed," said the official, who did not want to be named. As an example, she said that Mickey Mouse, a perennial write-in candidate, is not listed in the 2016 results.  

Votes for such candidates "would be considered a scattering," said another official, who also asked not to be named. That official agreed to speak to the commissioner and endeavor to provide the names of those grouped under the "scattering" umbrella.

Mr. Gruber said on Monday that an official at the board of elections first read the names of write-in candidates receiving votes to him over the telephone. "I said, 'Okay, thank you, that gives me the information I need,' because I did not hear Hakim in the list. Then I said, 'Please, I need you to send me a document that says this, because nobody is going to take my word for it.' They did."

The board of elections' final-results list, which the Reform Democrats offered as proof that Ms. Lys was lying, lists 4,087 scattering votes countywide.

In an email on Tuesday morning, Cate Rogers, chairwoman of the East Hampton Democratic Committee, wrote that she, too, had called the board of elections and was informed that "the only names that you see on that report as write-ins are official write-in candidates. Official means that the board of elections received a letter from the state stating that the candidate is a recognized candidate for write-in. All other names: Mickey Mouse, Barack Obama, David Lys' dad, Hakim Lys, and any other random name are reported in the 'Scatterings' column. In Suffolk County there were thousands of 'Scatterings' as you can see," she said. A 2016 election report for East Hampton Town lists 85 votes under the "Scattering" column. 

"This attempt to say that David Lys is a liar is so blatant and egregious and if the truth still matters in our world then this should be exposed," Ms. Rogers said.

Mr. Lys also referred to the 85 scatterings in East Hampton on Tuesday. "My write-in would be part of that scattering on there," he said.

The Reform Democrats, he said, are offering as evidence "a form that shows individuals who wanted to put their write-in names on the ballot. I did not do that for my father. It was a decision I did at the ballot booth. I would be classified in there as a scattering. That was not shown" on the Reform Democrats' messaging, he said. "They are trying to call me a liar. I am not."

The Democratic Party primary election next Thursday will determine not only the party’s nominee for the fifth seat on the East Hampton Town Board, but also the membership of the town’s Democratic Committee, which, atypically, is hotly contested this year. In every one of the town’s election districts, each of which has two seats on the committee, there are primary challenges.

A fight to determine the successor to Jeanne Frankl, the committee’s chairwoman until her retirement earlier this year, opened a chasm between establishment party officials and a group that has come together under the name “East Hampton Reform Democrats,” the latter group charging that Ms. Frankl had underhandedly maneuvered to ensure the outcome of her successor’s selection. That, the group charges, is emblematic of a broader culture of “bossism and cronyism.” 

David Gruber, who sought but did not win the Democratic Committee’s endorsement as its candidate for the town board, is the Reform Democrats’ candidate. He will face Councilman David Lys, who was appointed to the board in January, in the primary election. 

The Democratic Committee as currently constituted has seized on an Aug. 24 State Supreme Court ruling that nominating petitions for Mr. Gruber’s appearance on the Independence Party ballot were invalid due to fraudulent signatures, including that of a deceased person, to discredit his candidacy. 

“This level of deceit is astounding and unprecedented in our town and David Gruber has to take responsibility for it,” Cate Rogers, who was elected to succeed Ms. Frankl, said in a statement issued last weekend. “His campaign’s use of the ‘moral compass’ symbolism for his hostile takeover attempt of the East Hampton Democratic Party is clearly a farce.” 

In their own messaging on social media and in mailings, the Reform Demo­crats hit back, telling voters that they “are committed to breaking the monopoly of a small group of Democratic Party insiders on party nominations” with open screening of prospective candidates and party conventions. “That way, elected officials will no longer be beholden to party insiders who now exercise unhealthy influence over appointments and decisions by boards, such as planning and zoning, that are supposed to be fair and independent, serving the public.

The East Hampton Town Board will continue hearing a proposal tonight to abandon the ownership of an unopened road between Cranberry Hole Road and Abram’s Landing Road in Amagansett while accepting a permanent scenic, conservation, and trail easement over the road, which is part of the Paumanok Path, a hiking trail that runs from Rocky Point to Montauk Point State Park. The board will meet at 6:30 at Town Hall. 

When the board first heard the plan, on Aug. 2, David Buda, a resident of Springs, voiced strong objection to it. The board, he charged, was “actually considering giving away a valuable asset,” for no compensation, to “a very well-heeled landowner” of an adjacent parcel. 

That owner is apparently the billionaire investor Michael Novogratz, a former hedge fund manager and partner at Goldman Sachs, who purchased, through a limited liability corporation, the five-acre parcel for $3 million earlier this year. His motivation, Mr. Buda asserted, is to maximize lot area, thereby altering required building setbacks and lot coverage allowance in his favor. “To do so at no cost,” Mr. Buda told the town board, “is incredible.” 

In an Aug. 3 email to the board, he wrote that the property, at 58 Cross Highway East, was purchased with the intent to relocate the residence of the late architect Francis Fleetwood from 85 Oceanview Lane, also in Amagansett. “That property was purchased in July 2016 from the Estate of Mr. Fleetwood by another entity under common control: Novofam, L.L.C.,” he wrote

Should the board approve a resolution to exchange ownership for the easement, it would “severely limit the public’s right to use this public highway,” Mr. Buda said, with restrictions on vehicles that could traverse the road and the hours in which the public could access it. 

It wasn’t ironclad proof, he agreed, but Mr. Buda said that a 1914 “Town Highway Book” indicated that the road was opened that year. He cited testimony from Rick Whalen to the planning board in May. In his Aug. 3 email, he said that Mr. Whalen, vice president for trail planning of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society and a former assistant town attorney, “unequivocally stated” that the section of Cross Highway in question “is a town highway,” further citing both the road’s physical characteristics and photographic evidence. “There is no good reason to consider abandoning a town highway that’s been in existence since 1914,” Mr. Buda said, “even if only used now primarily for trail walkers.”

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc disagreed, stating that the 1914 document “hardly demonstrates” its present status. Councilwoman Sylvia Overby referred to certification from a title company, provided by the property owner, confirming ownership of the land underlying the road. That is not title certification, Mr. Buda countered. “What it says is, he couldn’t find any record of there being a town highway. . . . There was no deed because in 1914 there was no requirement that there be a deed of dedication to the town. . . . I’ve looked at the deed to the owner. The deed does not in any way include or guarantee ownership of the road.” In fact, the deed description excludes the road, he said. 

Steve Latham, an attorney representing the property owner, said that the road had never been opened, that there was no evidence of ownership conveyance to the town, and that the trails preservation society was happy with the proposal. “I think that we’ve submitted more than ample proof that the procedures we’re using are proper,” he told the board at the Aug. 2 meeting. 

But Councilman Jeff Bragman was adamant that the hearing be kept open. “I’d just like to understand the facts before I make a decision on this,” he said. “Call me curious, I just want to know what this is.”