An interfaith forum on morality will proceed as planned Monday night, but one of its invited guests, Representative Lee Zeldin, will not be there. 

The forum, at 7 p.m. in Fellowship Hall at the Hamptons Methodist Church in Southampton, was to feature Mr. Zeldin and Perry Gershon, his opponent in the Nov. 6 election to represent New York’s First Congressional District. Participating clergy, all representing houses of worship on the South Fork, extended invitations to the congressman and his challenger last month. 

The forum, according to the July 19 invitation from Rabbi Jan Urbach of the Conservative Synagogue of the Hamptons in Bridgehampton, who initiated the event, is “to enable you to share with voters your views on significant moral issues of the day and the moral dimensions of government policy.” Five dates in August were offered. 

“Recognizing the incivility that characterizes much public discourse today — of concern to all of us as clergy and we trust to you as well — we will use our authority as clergy to ensure respectful and open discourse, and an opportunity for each of you to be heard,” the invitation said. 

Five days later, another email was sent to Mr. Zeldin, whose campaign had not responded. “Our congregants and parishioners have expressed great enthusiasm at the opportunity to hear from both you and Mr. Gershon about your values and moral convictions, as well as the way each of you approaches the moral/ethical dimensions of the policies you support and oppose,” it read. “They are anxious for genuine conversation, hungry to hear elected officials and candidates focus on morality, and looking to us as religious leaders to assist in elevating public discourse. We know that you have often lamented the lack of civility at in-person forums, so we trust that you will welcome this opportunity to participate in a high-level discussion moderated by a diverse group of interfaith clergy, representing a wide variety of faith traditions.” 

On July 25, Chris Boyle, of Mr. Zeldin’s campaign, responded, saying that he was working to coordinate debates and forums. He asked that Rabbi Urbach fill out a request form, for which a link was provided, “and we will get back to you as soon as we can.” 

Five days later, Rabbi Urbach sent another email to Mr. Boyle stating that she had still not received a reply. “We have done everything possible to take Mr. Zeldin’s schedule into account, but if we don’t get proposed dates from you, we will need to schedule it regardless,” she wrote. Finally, the clergy set a date for the forum. 

Mr. Gershon had responded immediately and offered several possible dates, according to a release issued by the clergy. Mr. Zeldin, the release said, “passed up the opportunity to suggest dates and once a date was set indicated he would not attend.” The sponsoring clergy expressed disappointment at the congressman’s unwillingness to engage, and continued to welcome and hope that he would reconsider.

Katie Vincentz, Mr. Zeldin’s communications director, contacted Rabbi Urbach. “The congressman looks forward to impartial fact-based debates prior to the election,” she wrote. “Due to your frequent political attacks against the congressman, via public statements, on social media, at protests, in front of his office, in meetings directly with the congressman, and elsewhere, it is extremely unlikely that you would be impartial.”

Rabbi Urbach has been critical of Mr. Zeldin. In a social media post from July 2017, for example, she wrote, in part, that the congressman appeared at the South Fork Natural History Museum’s annual gala in Bridgehampton “to glad-hand. But he hasn’t shown up to oppose climate change deniers, protect the [Environmental Protection Agency], and actually preserve our environment.” 

The forum, Rabbi Urbach said in an email on Tuesday, “is sponsored by a large and diverse coalition of mainstream congregations, with questions formulated and posed by their clergy; it’s not about the personal views of any one person. The format is specifically designed to provide a balanced, nonpartisan opportunity for the candidates to share their moral commitments with voters. Our goal is to bring issues of morality, character, and ethics into the public conversation, and everyone involved genuinely wants to hear both candidates’ approaches.” 

To enable the candidates to offer their most thoughtful responses, and in the hope that Mr. Zeldin would be reassured and change his mind, the candidates will be given the questions in advance, the rabbi said.

Correction: The forum will take place on Monday, Aug. 27, not Friday, Aug. 24, as originally reported. 

East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys, who was appointed to the town board in January and must stand for election in November, submitted petitions to the Suffolk County Board of Elections on Monday offering himself as the candidate of a newly created independent political party, the East Hampton Unity Party. 

Mr. Lys, who changed his party registration from Republican to Democratic last year, faces a Democratic Party primary challenge from David Gruber, who recently formed his own party called the East Hampton Reform Democrats. Appearing on the newly formed Unity Party line, Mr. Lys said, is a means to “give myself ballot access in November” should he lose in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary. Though he said he is “fully committed and determined to win” that contest, he is also “ fully committed to maintaining my town council seat by all means possible.”

With his name on a Unity Party line, he would still face Mr. Gruber, along with Manny Vilar, the Republican Party’s nominee for the seat, in the event he loses in the primary election — provided the Suffolk County Board of Elections validates his petitions, that is.  

Nick LaLota, commissioner of the Board of Elections, said yesterday that Mr. Lys had filed about 420 signatures, 100 more than required to put himself and the Unity Party on the ballot. 

Amos Goodman, chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, which has mounted a court challenge to the Independence Party’s petitions for Mr. Gruber, said yesterday that he has not challenged Mr. Lys’s petitions but “it is something I am looking at. If I get a copy of it, which I think is going to be today, there has to be 350 green signatures,” meaning signatories cannot have signed any other nominating petition. Given how many petitions have already been circulated for the various political parties, “I personally think it will be tough.” 

“From my perspective, I think a potential three-way race means Gruber wins, because I think Lys and Manny in that instance would split the moderate vote to David [Gruber]’s benefit,” Mr. Goodman said. “That’s why we’re fighting so hard to challenge Gruber’s Independence Party petitions. We don’t want a three-way race. We’re not looking to suppress votes or cause problems. I don’t want to be the ‘petition hall monitor.’ We just want to take a look. We’ve had, in past years, our own petitions scrutinized. It’s appropriate, in the proper way, not in the court of public opinion, or in trying to smear. I’ve never done that.”

The move also allows Mr. Lys, who cannot vote for himself in November because of his recent change in party affiliation, “to interact with a large voter bloc. They’re all extremely excited by what I was doing” on the town board. “I was very, very bolstered by the support I received from hundreds of people.”

“The way I looked at it,” Mr. Lys said, I wanted to make sure that I have done everything possible” to prevail in the Nov. 6 election.

Over the objections of East Hampton Town’s disabilities advisory board, a site plan for a new commercial building in Montauk that designates a separate, back-door entrance for disabled people was endorsed by the town planning board in a straw poll earlier this month. The approval came despite a statement from the chairman of the disabilities board, Glenn Hall, that the proposed back-door ramp would violate the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. 

The issue was back on the planning board’s agenda at its meeting last night. According to Job Potter, the board’s chairman, the straw poll vote was likely to be revisited due to a finding by David Browne, the town’s chief fire marshal, that the ramp would not comply with New York State’s building code.  

Whether or not the site plan goes forward, Mr. Hall said that his board, which has been scheduling meetings with town board members and other officials, will begin taking steps to “fix the system,” so that the concerns of handicapped people are given more consideration in the government’s decision-making processes.

An early site plan for the two-story building at 87 South Euclid Avenue included a handicapped-accessible switch-back ramp leading from the parking area, which is at the front of the building, to the main door. That plan was approved by the planning board on Jan. 25, 2017. 

Upon excavation of the property, Kathleen Semergieff, one of the building’s owners, said it had become apparent that that placement of the ramp was not feasible due to the incline of the parking area. “The lot was way, way, way, too steep,” she told the planning board on July 25, explaining that a change was necessary because if the plan were left as initially approved “no one in a wheelchair would be able to get out without rolling backward into the street.” 

Having the ramp lead to the back of the building, Ms. Semergieff said, would make the incline less precipitous. 

Before granting the modification, the planning board asked the disabilities advisory board for its opinion. Mr. Hall wrote back on Aug. 6 that making disabled people enter the business through the rear door would amount to “back of the bus” and “separate but equal” treatment, which, he said, was clearly in violation of the law. Nevertheless, in a 5- to-2 voice vote, the board approved the modification.

Mr. Hall was so outraged by the results of the July 25 straw poll that he began an effort to stop construction from moving forward. 

“This is a civil rights issue,” he said. A back-door ramp, he said, violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, which states that a handicapped-accessible route coincide with or be located in the same area as the “general circulation path.” Furthermore, pointing out that the proposed building has three doors, he said the back-door ramp would be breaching a provision that 60 percent of a facility’s public entrances be handicapped-accessible.

Mr. Hall said he had hastily organized a meeting of the disabilities advisory board on Friday to discuss the matter. In attendance were several town officials, including Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, a board member and the group’s liaison; Tom Ruhle, the disabilities coordinator, Tom Talmage, an engineer, Marguerite Wolffsohn, planning director, and Michael Sendlenski, the town attorney. Mr. Hall said that Mr. Sendlenski had agreed at the meeting that the ramp in question would be illegal.

That assessment was contrary to the advice provided to planning board members by their own lawyer, John Jilnicki, who indicated that the issue fell into what Mr. Potter described as a “gray area” of legality. 

Explaining his reasoning, Mr. Jilnicki said this week that he viewed the back-entrance access for people with disabilities as comparable to the front entrance because both would open up into the same large commercial space, albeit at opposite ends. Convenience-wise, he added, a straight ramp to the back entrance would ultimately allow for a shorter traveling distance than a switch-back ramp to the front.

The fire marshal’s office regularly provides guidance on planning board matters, and Mr. Browne, who had earlier alerted the board to accessibility issues with the site plan, informed the members that the ramp to the back door would likewise violate a mandate of the state’s building code that “at least 60 percent” of all public entrances be accessible. 

At Mr. Hall’s urging, Richard Whalen, an attorney for the East End Disabilities Group, an advocacy organization, had also pointed to the state code’s 60 percent rule in an Aug. 16 letter to the board.

“We have to change the way the planning board gets their instructions,” said Mr. Hall, who believes that if the members had been better versed in the A.D.A.’s requirements, the site plan modification would have never been approved. 

“The good news is, this is raising people’s consciousness,” he said. To make town officials even more aware, he said, he will recommend to the town board that planning board members be required to attend classes on the A.D.A.

With the Nov. 6 election for a seat on the East Hampton Town Board barely 10 weeks away, party officials are lobbing charges and countercharges of fraudulent nominating petitions. Meanwhile, David Lys, the councilman defending his seat, is moving to form an independent party to ensure his appearance on the ballot in the event he loses a primary election next month. And, in yet another wrinkle, the attorney leading a legal challenge to one party’s petitions was indicted on Tuesday on an unrelated matter. 

Elaine Jones, chairwoman of the East Hampton Independence Party, said on Monday that she had visited multiple people listed on the Republican Party’s nominating petitions for Manny Vilar, its candidate for councilman, and that “the first 20 people said that they did not sign his petition.” She listed a dozen names and corresponding addresses, each of whom, she said, denied that the signature appearing on the petition was his or her own. Further, she said that one signatory on the Republicans’ petition is deceased, a charge the Republicans have leveled at the Independence Party’s nominating petitions for David Gruber, who heads the East Hampton Reform Democrats and is challenging Mr. Lys in the Sept. 13 Democratic Party primary.  

Ms. Jones’s move followed a Republican Party challenge, filed with the Suffolk County Board of Elections, to the Independence Party’s nominating petitions for Mr. Gruber. That challenge came in the wake of Republicans’ effort to force a primary challenge by Mr. Vilar for the Independence Party’s nomination. 

Should the Republicans prevail in a suit filed on July 25 seeking to invalidate the petitions and thus the Independence Party’s nomination of Mr. Gruber, the Independence Party line on the Nov. 6 ballot will be blank. 

At a hearing last Thursday at Suffolk County Supreme Court in Central Islip, “several witnesses testified that they did not in fact sign” Independence Party petitions, Amos Goodman, chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, said yesterday. The proceeding is to resume tomorrow. 

Ms. Jones, however, is pressing the Republicans with her claim that it is in fact their petitions that are fraudulent, although the deadline to challenge petitions was July 16, according to an official with the Board of Elections. “He is a notary,” she said of Mr. Goodman. “He is supposed to ask for identification. . . . This is as bad as it gets.” 

Mr. Goodman pushed back in an email on Monday and again by telephone yesterday. Ms. Jones’s move, he said in the email, is “her latest attempt to muddy the water by asserting that there was something bogus with my petitions.” Mr. Gruber, he said, “tried to do that in the run-up to the hearing, and his lawyer tried at the hearing, but it didn’t stick because it’s very flimsy. And irrelevant. And false.” The claim that the Republicans’ petition includes a deceased person “is just pure projection, and I’ve seen this ‘evidence’ and the name is not legible. It’s just a blatant attempt at whataboutism, and a sort of sly shift from ‘we did nothing wrong’ to ‘everyone does it.’ It’s laughable.” 

Yesterday, he repeated the assertion that Ms. Jones is attempting to create a false equivalency. “I’ve never done anything wrong, my petitions aren’t on trial,” he said, although he allowed that “it’s possible we were sloppy,” and may have filled in addresses next to the wrong signatures on nominating petitions. Any discrepancies, he insisted, “were certainly not willful. . . . There’s only one set of petitions on trial. I categorically deny anything untoward in this regard. I think it’s unfortunate that this is what they want to do, and it’s also fundamentally irrelevant. There was a time to raise objections, and nobody raised them. As far as the law,” he said of his party’s nominating petitions, “they’re all valid.” 

On July 31, Mr. Gruber said that he was grateful for the Independence Party’s endorsement but, as he is not a member, he had no control over the process. “I discovered, to my chagrin, that legally and formally, I am the respondent in the petition filed to invalidate those petitions,” he said that day. 

In an effort to ensure that he appears on the Nov. 6 ballot, should he lose the Democratic primary election, Mr. Lys submitted petitions to the Board of Elections on Monday offering himself as the candidate of a newly created East Hampton Unity Party. 

In yet other news related to the tussle for Mr. Lys’s seat on the town board, The New York Law Journal reported yesterday that Guy Parisi, the attorney representing the Republicans in their legal challenge to the Independence Party’s petitions, was indicted on Tuesday for allegedly trying to embezzle from a decedent’s estate, of which he was the court-appointed administrator. 

“I’m sure folks will use this unrelated thing to muddy the water,” Mr. Goodman said yesterday. With the expectation that the challenge to the Independence Party petitions will conclude tomorrow, “and we’re already lashed to him, and he’s innocent until proven guilty, it’s too disruptive to switch horses.”

Code violations issued in the Town of East Hampton fell by roughly 100 in the first six months of 2018 over last year, the town’s public safety director told the town board on Tuesday, and a crackdown on out-of-town taxi companies is largely responsible, he said. 

In a year-to-date report to the board, David Betts said that 1,279 violations were recorded from January through June, versus 1,372 in the same period last year. “If you look at taxi validation, that’s about the difference,” he said. 

Taxi companies are required to register with the town using a local business address, and all taxis must have a town permit sticker. Taxi validations are down from 241 to 80, Mr. Betts said, because “if a company doesn’t come out here to have an office, we don’t do the inspection of the cab.” That, he said, translates to “161 taxicabs that are not operating in the Town of East Hampton at this point.” 

But violations related to contractor licenses, which are also required, as well as parking, have increased, Mr. Betts said. Enforcement efforts for the former, he said, “have gone up dramatically, almost 25 percent.” In the first six months of 2018, 123 violations were issued, versus 96 in the same period last year. “Parking tickets are dramatically increased as well,” he said. Last year, 88 violations were issued through June; 126 were issued in the first six months of 2018. 

Violations issued for artists’ studios fell from 124 to 98, Mr. Betts said. Such structures, which sometimes morph into habitable space, are inspected annually. “Some of them have stopped claiming use as an artist studio,” he said. 

Violations of determinations by the architectural review board, zoning board of appeals, and planning board stood at eight through June, versus 27 in the same period last year. Separately, violations of the zoning code, such as noncompliance with required setbacks, or pertaining to structures like fences or decks, are down from 243 to 208. 

Twelve violations were issued for peddling without a license through June, versus just one in the same period last year. Violators were often peddling wares from vehicles parked on commercial and public property, Mr. Betts said. 

Environmental infractions, such as illegal clearing of vegetation or improper drainage of a swimming pool, were down by just one, from 164 to 163.

Safety violations, such as open foundations or swimming pools that are not properly fenced, rose from 98 to 109, Mr. Betts said. 

Housing violations have fallen from 92 to 54. Rental registry violations fell to 28 from 31. Lighting violations were up slightly, from 8 to 12, but residential noise infractions fell from 36 to 20. 

Eight citations related to peace and good order — public consumption of alcoholic beverages and public urination are the common infractions — were issued between January and June, versus three in the first six months of 2017. Signage violations fell in the first six months of 2018 over 2017, 31 to 26. 

Violations of state code, which Mr. Betts said are mostly to do with property maintenance, were nearly static: 41 in the first six months of 2018, one more than the same period last year. 

“Keeping compliance throughout the town is not just about enforcing rules,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said. “It’s really about public safety as well.” He referred to the town’s execution of a warrant last week that resulted in the discovery that 32 unrelated people were residing in a four-bedroom house, 18 of them apparently sleeping in the basement, where a gasoline generator and storage tank were situated. 

“It’s comforting to know not only that the quality of life issues are being addressed through code enforcement, but it’s also public safety,” he said.

After a consultant conducting hamlet studies for East Hampton Town delivered an update to the town board on Tuesday, the board decided that each hamlet should have its own public hearing, the first of which may be held as soon as next month. 

The studies began in 2015, with public input beginning the following year. The consultants, Peter Flinker of Dodson and Flinker, a Massachusetts consulting firm, and Lisa Liquori of Fine Arts and Sciences, a former town planning director, have presented updates since then based on public comment from individuals, the hamlets’ citizens advisory committees, chambers of commerce, and East Hampton Village. The goal is to adopt recommendations for each hamlet to be incorporated into the town’s comprehensive plan. 

On Tuesday, Ms. Liquori asked if the board felt the studies were ready for public hearings now or if they should be further modified. After some debate, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said the board would schedule the hearings and review any comments before determining any environmental impacts under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. The studies would then be forwarded to the Suffolk County Planning Commission, which would have 30 days to respond. 

A vote to adopt the recommendations would follow. But adoption, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, was “a broader stroke” than other regulatory legislation necessary to put recommendations into effect. The next step, he said, would be to “look at creating zoning laws or other means of regulation” to legalize the recommendations.

Councilman David Lys, the board’s liaison to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, said that he and the committee both felt that further development, or redevelopment within the present allowable density, of that hamlet’s eastern portion, near the I.G.A. supermarket and post office, was ill advised. Nonetheless, the board’s consensus was to leave the Amagansett study as is for a public hearing. 

In East Hampton, the raising of the railroad trestles over North Main Street and Accabonac Road is expected to allow greater truck traffic on both. The board indicated that a wait-and-see approach to how traffic patterns will change, and how traffic lights might be reprogrammed to better coordinate altered patterns, made sense. That hamlet study was accepted in its present form. 

Montauk’s hamlet study focused on its downtown, harbor, and train station areas. While the addition of roundabouts near Second House and at the confluence of the firehouse, Playhouse, and Long Island Rail Road station on Flamingo Avenue was generally opposed, Mr. Van Scoyoc recommended keeping them in the study’s recommendations for the public hearing. 

In Wainscott, where the board voted in June to extend a moratorium on development of properties zoned for central business or commercial-industrial uses for six months to allow the hamlet study’s completion, “a more walkable hamlet” and “get rid of the strip-mall feel” are oft-heard goals, Mr. Van Scoyoc said. 

A more unified architectural aesthetic, relocation of the post office, and the burial of overhead electricity transmission lines are other goals put forth by Wainscott’s citizens advisory committee, Councilman Jeff Bragman, its liaison, said. “My feeling at this point is, it’s shaped up enough to put in a public hearing,” he said. 

The Springs hamlet study is also ready to move to public hearing, said Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the board’s liaison to its citizens advisory committee. 

Public hearings could be scheduled “just after Labor Day,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

Health Care Workers for Gershon

In New York’s First Congressional District, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East has announced its endorsement of Perry Gershon.

“Our union is dedicated to the ideals that make it possible for every working person to create the life they envision for themselves and their family,” Gabby Seay, 1199SEIU’s political director, said in a statement issued last week. “We believe Perry will fight to protect family-sustaining jobs, expand access to quality health care, and serve as a true advocate for working people.”

“We must reaffirm the importance of unions to our communities by taking action on behalf of workers,” Mr. Gershon said in the same statement. “Income inequality, the lack of well-paying jobs, the lack of affordable health care, are all symptoms of a much greater problem in our country: People have forgotten that the fundamental right to assembly is the source of greatness in our country. When the American people unite, organize, and act as one collective, there is nothing that can hold us back from continuing to be the greatest nation in the world.”

—

C.S.E.A. Backs Thiele

The Civil Service Employees Association has endorsed State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. in his 2018 re-election bid. Mr. Thiele is a member of the Independence Party. 

Mr. Thiele expressed appreciation for the endorsement in a statement last Thursday and praised unions as “the backbone of this country. They established a foundation for job security and economic stability for all working people. I support, and will continue to fight for, the right of every person to have access to good jobs, good benefits, and fair wages, as they are fundamental to achieving a sustainable standard of living.”

Mr. Thiele will not face a primary challenger. Election Day is Nov. 6.

Mr. Thiele also picked up an endorsement from the New York State United Teachers, a federation of more than 1,200 local unions representing people who work in, or are retired from, New York’s schools, colleges, and health care facilities. It is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, as well as the AFL-CIO and Education International, with more than 20 million members worldwide.

Candidates who earned NYSUT’s endorsement “showed through their advocacy, their accessibility, and their strong pro-education, pro-labor voting records that they are true friends of public education, organized labor, and working people,” Andy Pallota, NYSUT’s president, said in a statement. “They have demonstrated a willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with educators to fight for better public schools, colleges and hospitals. We are proud to support them.”

The East Hampton Town Board announced yesterday that the town has maintained its top-tier AAA credit rating, as affirmed by Moody’s Investors Service. 

In preparation for yesterday’s sale of $16.5 million in general obligation bonds for the town, Moody’s affirmed that the town’s financial status continues to warrant the AAA rating it was awarded last year. 

The rating reflects confidence not only in the town’s present financial condition but also in its practices, according to a statement issued by the town. Moody’s cited East Hampton’s “conservative budgeting and proactive financial management practices” as well as its “modest debt burden” and “sizable tax base” as factors in the triple-A rating and positive outlook. The town has built reserves while lowering overall indebtedness, according to Moody’s. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in yesterday’s statement that “it is very satisfying to have Moody’s acknowledge through our AAA rating the town’s strong financial position as well as the work we have been doing to maintain that strength. Our substantial financial reserves and surplus were particularly noted by Moody’s as factors that have allowed us to maintain the highest rating possible.” The town will strive to maintain those reserves at levels expected for a triple-A credit, he said. 

The bonds being sold are to finance projects including a townwide upgrade to its emergency communications system, a new records management system, a new fuel facility at East Hampton Airport, and structural improvements to the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter.

Responding to concerns from parents of children who swim at a small beach inside the mouth of Three Mile Harbor at Maidstone Park in Springs, the East Hampton Town Trustees erected sections of split-rail fencing last month to discourage trucks from backing down to the water’s edge. 

“Several moms were concerned about all the trucks backing up on the south side of ‘Baby Beach’ where the little ones wade in the shallow water,” said Brian Byrnes, a trustee. “Since we’ve done that, people are really pleased.” 

Mr. Byrnes acknowledged some opposition to the move from those considering it an encroachment on the public’s right to drive on the beach. “We were more concerned about the moms,” he said. 

Sections of fence are spaced apart, so vehicle access to the water’s edge remains. “It’s a small thing,” Mr. Byrnes said, “but it gets a little crazy there on nice weekends.”

The East Hampton Town Board collectively denounced the increase in takeoffs and landings at East Hampton Airport in a press release issued last Thursday, calling a 29-percent increase in helicopter flights between 2016 and last year a direct consequence of a federal Court of Appeals’ November 2016 ruling that the town could not independently enact the curfews and limits it had set the previous year. 

A mandatory curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and one from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. directed at aircraft, including helicopters, deemed noisy, were in effect from July 2015 until the court’s ruling. Complaints by East Hampton and Southampton Town residents living under flight paths to and from the airport have soared since then. 

According to statistics in an Aug. 8 report on last year’s airport operations by Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Jeff Bragman, the board’s co-liaisons to the airport, the volume of takeoffs and landings was relatively stable from 2014 through 2016. But 2017 saw a 7-percent increase in operations over the previous year, or 27,546 operations versus 25,836. Operations are calculated by doubling the number of reported landings. 

In enacting its curfews, according to last Thursday’s release, the board had relied on written statements from the Federal Aviation Administration to then-Representative Tim Bishop stating that once federal grant assurances expired in 2014 the town, as the airport’s proprietor, was authorized to adopt noise restrictions. But due to the appeals court’s decision, East Hampton Town  must complete an analysis known as a Part 161 study in order to propose and enact noise or operational restrictions on aircraft. That process is ongoing. 

The board’s statement followed a communication from the Eastern Region Helicopter Council to its members stating that the southern route to the

airport was unavailable due to overcrowding of different aircraft types. That statement, which was inaccurate, nonetheless upset what had been a balance between southern and northern flight paths. But those paths are voluntary, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said last week, because the town has no authority to mandate them. 

At the board’s meeting at the Montauk Firehouse on Tuesday, Ms. Overby told her colleagues that “We’re looking for noise abatement maps to continue to be used so our constituents here, and those on the North Fork, get some relief during summer,” when airport operations are at a peak. 

Mr. Bragman suggested that the board summon Jeff Smith, chairman of the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, to speak to residents at a meeting of the board so that they are informed as to the council’s directives to its members with respect to the airport.