Just about six years after East Hampton Town faced down a fiscal crisis caused by mismanagement that left the town with a $27 million deficit, Moody’s Investors Service has upgraded the town’s credit rating to the Aa1 level — a positive stamp of approval only one level below Moody’s top Aaa rating.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell at a board meeting on Tuesday. The fallout from financial mismanagement during the McGintee administration, which resulted in the need for the town to borrow more than $20 million to cover the deficit, has been largely resolved due to efforts over the ensuing two administrations, including his own, Mr. Cantwell said.

“The town has controlled expenses, increased nontax revenue, and built surpluses, all while investing in the capital improvements needed to maintain a municipality that functions efficiently and effectively,” the supervisor said in a press release. “In 2003, the town achieved the highest credit rating in its history and, today, based on the work of two administrations, we have restored that rating.”

Two constants over that time, he said, have been Len Bernard, the budget officer, and Charlene Kagel, the town’s chief auditor, who Mr. Cantwell credited for their work. “The financial guidance they’ve given the town had been largely responsible for the technical side of getting the town in shape,” he said — as have the efforts of town department heads and employees.

“Except for the deficit financing that’s still outstanding — half of which will be paid off next year, and the rest three or four years later — it’s pretty much a full recovery for the town, financially,” Mr. Cantwell said. A total of $10.3 million remains to be repaid, according to the Moody’s rating report.

Moody’s said that the upgraded rating, including a shift from a “stable” to a “positive outlook,” “reflects the town’s improving financial position as a result of deficit financing, ongoing conservative budgeting, and strengthened financial management practices.”

The report also cited town strengths that include “sound, conservative management with demonstrated ability to restore financial flexibility.”

“The positive outlook reflects our view that the town’s financial position will continue to improve. The town is expected to maintain a solid financial position due to its conservative budgeting and strong financial management practices with limited future borrowing planned,” the Moody’s report says.

The rating also reflects, said Moody’s, a “moderate debt burden and sizeable tax base characterized by very strong wealth and income levels” in the town.

The credit rating came in advance of the town’s annual debt sale this week, raising some $18 million in bonds and notes, and refinancing bonds that were issued in 2008. The credit rating upgrade was expected to result in better interest rates that would help the town to save approximately $300,000 in interest over the life of the bonds.

Town officials had invited Moody’s representatives to East Hampton last week to brief them on the financial progress East Hampton has made over the last six and a half years. They also gave a tour of sites and facilities operated and recently improved by the town.

“One step below Aaa — the ‘gold standard,’ if you will,” commented Mr. Cantwell on Tuesday. If not for the remaining debt from the previous deficit, he said, the town’s financial rating would likely be on the top rung.

About a dozen Montauk residents showed up for a hearing before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night when a proposed new house at 6 Prentice Place in the Ditch Plain neighborhood of the hamlet was on the agenda. Two residents spoke in opposition to the application.

The proposal is to tear down a modest house on the narrow 7,320-square-foot lot  and replace it with a 2,474-square-foot, two-story one. Variances from the town’s pyramid law, designed to prevent structures from looming over neighboring properties, would be required.

Earlier this year Rob Connolly,  an attorney with the Farrell Fritz firm, represented the owner of the property, Camellia Weinstein, before the board, presenting a larger house, at over 2,800 square feet. It would have required numerous variances, and it was clear Ms. Weinstein would have to scale back her plans to get an okay.

Eric Bregman, another attorney with Farrell Fritz, made the presentation Tuesday. “We listened to what you said,” he said. All the applications for variances, except the two regarding the pyramid law, were removed. Mr. Bregman also said the request for dormers on the house rather than its roofline triggered pyramid relief. He said the dormers were necessary to “make the house livable,” explaining that the second floor bathroom and closet would not be usable if the dormers did not push out beyond the roofline. He said a neighboring two-story house to the north would also require major pyramid variances if built today, as well as side-yard setback variances.

Maria Erwin, who said she was the neighbor to the south, handed the board a petition against the proposal. “Everybody in Ditch Plain is against this,” she said.

Gertrude Murphy, who lives near downtown Montauk, also spoke against the project, and complained about the general explosion of large houses in the hamlet. She said they were “seldom used, grandiose structures. Many of these megaliths are empty for most of the year.”

In that connection, the chairman, John Whelan, told the assembled to watch for a public hearing to be held by the East Hampton Town Board in coming weeks on the relationship of the size of houses to the lots they are on.

David Lys asked Tyler Borsack, of the Planning Department staff, if there were  examples of approved pyramid variances at Ditch. The answer was that there were a few. The board has 62 days to make a decision.

The board also has 62 days to rule on an application for a wetlands permit at 56 Hedges Bank Drive. A house there burned down last year and has since been rebuilt.  The fire drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation because Merle Hoffman, the property owner, is a women’s rights activist and writer who founded one of the nation’s first abortion clinics.

At issue for the Z.B.A. were steps down to the beach and a small deck, which apparently had been built without permits.

Laurie Wiltshire of Land Planning Services told the board Ms. Hoffman was amenable to reconfiguring the steps in a straight line as opposed to a zigzag, as recommended by the Planning Department, and the board asked that she remove the deck.

With Roy Dalene needing the night off, the board was down to three members because the town board has yet to replace Lee White, who retired several weeks ago.

They will be raising the rafters for a barn on Long Lane soon, if the East Hampton Town Planning Board gives its stamp of approval for a site plan regarding the former Damiecki farm at the corner of Stephen Hand’s Path. The plan has been in the works since early this year, after being offered by the new owners of the property, Alex Balsam and Ian Calder-Piedmonte, partners in Balsam Farms.

Mr. Calder-Piedmonte, a member of the planning board, has recused himself from the site plan process and would not comment this week on it.

The duo bought the nearly 29-acre property early this year for $1.7 million. The town had previously purchased all development rights on the land, to preserve it for agricultural use only. The plan calls for an 11,520-square-foot barn, two 3,000-square-foot hoop houses, which can double as greenhouses and for storage, and two 400-square-foot cold storage walk-in boxes.

The owners obtained approval from the town’s architectural review board last September for a nine-foot-tall deer fence to line the perimeter of the property. The new structures will be erected on the southeastern corner of the property, about 250 feet away from Long Lane, from which tractors and trucks will be able to access them. This was increased from the original proposed distance of 120 feet, with the Planning Department saying it would allow for more farmable land between the barn and the street, increasing screening. The Planning Department also vetted the proposed walk-in boxes, contacting the manufacturer to determine the amount of noise they would generate. The conclusion the department reached was that the noise of the compressors would not have an adverse impact on the surrounding agriculturally reserved land or on Long Lane, JoAnne Pahwul, the assistant planning director, told the board earlier this year.

No one spoke in opposition when a public hearing was held on the proposal on July 13. The board is likely to vote to discuss the plan on Wednesday.

Another matter that will likely be on the planning board’s agenda Wednesday is that of Damark’s Deli on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton. The plan is to add to the popular but cramped market. There will be at least four stoves with six burners each, two woks, a smoker oven, a pizza oven, a noodle range, an espresso island, and a six-foot long grab-and-go island.

In the basement there will be separate walk-in refrigerators for produce and meats, along with two walk-in freezers. All these details and more are revealed in the latest survey on file with the Planning Department.

Parking will be moved to the back of the building, accessed from Soak Hides Road, which will be changed to a two-way street up to the entrance to the parking lot. There also will be an exit onto Three Mile Harbor Road. The overall proposal for the building’s expansion has already been approved, in a site plan that the board voted on in early 2012.

The question now before the board is whether a major change in concept can be done via an administrative action or whether a full site plan review is required. The plan approved in 2012 included a 1,700-square-foot second-story apartment. Now, that apartment has been removed from the proposal, with the ground floor and basement expanded. The ground floor in the 2012 proposal was to be expanded from the 1,996 square feet in the existing structure to about 4,400 square feet. In the new proposal, the ground floor has grown again, now to 5,400 square feet, with a larger basement planned as well.

Big game hunters who live in East Hampton and have town and state hunting licenses will now be able to get a guest license for a nonresident hunter, following a vote of the town board last Thursday. The nonresident will have to have required state licenses, however.

Before voting on the new rule, which mirrors one that applies to bow hunting, board members heard comments from a hunter and from several advocates for wildlife, said Town Councilman Fred Overton, who sponsored the law.

Bill Crain of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife said that allowing more people to hunt here will increase the amount of gunfire in the woods, creating greater risks to hikers, and will result in more suffering for the deer that are being hunted. Nonresident hunters will be less accountable to town residents and neighbors of hunting lands, he said.

Mr. Crain said that the town board had, in recent months, added acreage to the lands where hunting is allowed, had extended the January hunting seasons for hunting with both guns and bows and arrows, and had authorized hunting closer to residential areas.

Instead, he suggested, the board should consider establishing wildlife sanctuaries free of hunting.

Hugh Miles, a hunter, endorsed the guest hunting proposal. “We have traditionally extended the courtesy of guests to bow hunters,” Mr. Overton said. Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said that a lot of East Hampton families have members who have moved away who would like to come back and hunt.

“I’m going to vote for it, but I understand how you feel, that there’s going to be suffering,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby told Mr. Crain. “There could be worse suffering.”

“Hunting is a tradition out here,” she said. “What would really be inhumane would be sterilization of animals,” she said, referring to a recent program in East Hampton Village. “And a cull is brutal.”

Mr. Crain, speaking lightly, had a final word. “Patriarchy and slavery are traditional,” he said. “Not every tradition is worth saving.”

The board, he said, has “added so much hunting,” in piecemeal decisions, that the effect is equivalent to approving a deer cull.

Southampton Town officials are looking to hire an outside engineer to start developing a plan for improving pedestrian safety and traffic problems in the area around downtown Bridgehampton.

Tom Neeley, the town’s transportation and traffic safety director, said he has been considering various pedestrian traffic safety measures and looking at traffic and accident data but has not put an overall recommendation together just yet.

Pamela Harwood, the chairwoman of the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee, said she felt there was a lack of communication about what preparations were being done to spend the $700,000 state officials had secured for Bridgehampton.

“I thought that’s why I was here tonight,” Mr. Neely said.

There seemed to be general frustration that things were not moving fast enough. Kathy Conway of the C.A.C. said the group had discussed many of the same concerns about crosswalks, lighting, traffic flow, and lack of police presence — which members spent an hour and a half talking about Monday night — at a meeting last month. “Nothing has gone on in four weeks. I’m so frustrated I don’t know if I’m going to come back next month,” she said.

Two subcommittees have been formed to look at how the money could be best used for lighting and crosswalks. Nancy Walter-Yvertes reported that three changes have been recommended for the portion of Montauk Highway that is Bridgehampton’s Main Street. The first was for adding illumination to the crosswalk at the post office, as was done for the one near the Hampton Library. The post office crosswalk was where Anna Pump, the cookbook author and owner of the Loaves and Fishes shop, was killed in October.

The second recommendation was for a traffic light at the Candy Kitchen that would turn red only when a pedestrian wanted to cross. The third called for a lighted crosswalk across Ocean Road from the Nathaniel Rogers House to Almond restaurant on the south side of the highway.

If money allows, the committee would also like to see an illuminated crosswalk stretching across Main Street from the Golden Pear to the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church.

Any of these changes, Mr. Neely said, would require the support of an engineering recommendation or state study, since Montauk Highway is a state road. A Department of Transportation study of the area has not been completed.

“To hear that the study is not completed for one little stretch of road with about five, six crosswalks is really disturbing, and what can we do about that?” Ms. Harwood asked.

“That doesn’t surprise me the way that it surprises you,” Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said. “There’s a study called FIMP that’s been going on for my lifetime,” he said, referring to the Fire Island to Montauk Point coastal study.

The supervisor said the town needs to know what the community wants, and he said he felt it would be best to have a traffic engineer start developing a plan. “We have to define it very clearly,” he said, adding that traffic congestion is probably something everyone will have to live with.

“There’s no question that traffic is the number-one problem Bridgehampton faces, and it’s the most amorphous to deal with,” Peter Wilson, a C.A.C. member, said. “If there’s any way we can get some help with this — something — I think enforcement is probably a key pressure point.”

Mr. Schneiderman said he would ensure that either the police chief or captain would attend the next meeting, on Aug. 22, to hear firsthand the committee’s ongoing concerns over the lack of police presence. Due to a prior commitment, Mr. Schneiderman will not be there, but he hoped that Councilwoman Christine Scalera, who is the committee’s liaison to the town board, would attend.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday renewed its mandate that helicopters flying between points west and the East End, many of which use East Hampton Airport, follow a route along the North Shore until turning south toward their destinations. The rule, which was to have expired on Aug. 6, has been extended through August 2020.

New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand first asked the F.A.A. to enact the North Shore mandate four years ago, in response to complaints across Long Island about helicopter noise. The route keeps the choppers about a mile off the coast to minimize their time over land. However, because so many of them are heading for East Hampton and other South Shore points, North Fork communities have experienced little relief from the disruption, and the most recent extension has angered residents and officials there.

When first enacted, the North Shore-mandated route was set to expire in two years if it were determined that there was “no meaningful improvement in the effects of helicopter noise on quality of life or that the rule was otherwise justified,” according to the Federal Register. Or, the F.A.A. said at the time, should there be an improvement, the agency could make it permanent or modify it.

In June 2014, the F.A.A. extended it for two years. In renewing the route on Friday, the agency said that it was engaged in a number of research efforts regarding helicopter use, with a focus on modeling helicopter performance and noise, noise-abatement procedures, and community response to helicopter noise. The information, the agency said, will better inform decisions regarding how to abate helicopter noise impacts on communities.

According to the Federal Register, where information on the renewed rule has been published, “the F.A.A. finds it necessary to extend the rule for an additional four years to preserve the current operating environment while the F.A.A. conducts ongoing helicopter research that will be considered to determine appropriate future actions.”

In a press release this week, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said that in extending the mandate, the F.A.A. had failed East End residents. Along with other elected officials, he has argued for a second east-west route, along the South Shore, to “keep helicopters over water as long as possible.”

“The current route is beset with loopholes that permit transits over land and populated areas many miles from the East Hampton Airport at low altitudes,” said the assemblyman in a statement. “The current route has resulted in detrimental impacts to the quality of life across eastern Long Island.”

The F.A.A., he said, has “again . . . turned their backs on the very public they are supposed to protect. Congress must intervene to save the people of eastern Long Island from four more years of assaults on their health and quality of life.”

Representative Lee Zeldin, a member of the House transportation and infrastructure committee and the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on aviation, was apparently unaware of the F.A.A. decision when he spoke Saturday morning at a meeting in Southold in favor of adding a South Shore route and eliminating use of the North Shore route altogether. He later called for the F.A.A. to reconsider its decision, and for Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to oppose it as well.

East Hampton Town

Lighted Crosswalks Coming

To improve pedestrian safety, East Hampton Town will install lighted crosswalks at four locations along Montauk Highway. They are yet to be finally determined, but East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said last week that there will be two in Amagansett — one at the hamlet’s eastern edge near the I.G.A. store and the St. Michael’s senior citizen housing complex, and the other likely at Hedges Lane. The other two will be in Montauk, with one likely to be located near the 7-Eleven store and that hamlet’s I.G.A. and the other near the circle at the center of town. With a vote last Thursday, the town board hired L.K. McLean Associates to design and oversee the installation of the crosswalks, for a $42,000 fee, and authorized a $375,000 bond to pay for the project.

New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, who helped secure state grant money for the project, will join town officials on Monday at 11 a.m. at the Main Street and Hedges Lane intersection in Amagansett for a formal joint announcement of the pedestrian safety effort.

Open Space Purchases

The town board approved a number of land purchases to be made with the community preservation fund after hearings on the proposed buys at Town Hall last Thursday. Kelly Reardon and Sundaram Tagore will sell 3.7 acres at 68 Hog Creek Road in Springs to the town for $625,000. A shy half-acre at 28 South Faber Street in Montauk, owned by Matthew Jewett, will be purchased for $295,000, and a .2-acre lot at 81 Gerard Drive in Springs will be acquired from UYM Charities for $35,000. William Flynn will sell .92 acres of land at 28 Folkstone Road in Springs to the town for $875,000.

The $550,000 purchase of a scenic and conservation easement over a .6-acre lot at 29 Isle of Wight Road, also in Springs and owned by Robert Kold and Catherine Bopp, was approved, but not unanimously. The easement protects the parcel from development, but leaves the land in private hands. Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said that she felt the price was too much to pay for a site that the public will have no right to access, and Councilman Fred Overton said that he sees no public benefit to the deal. But Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc likened the arrangement to the purchase of development rights on agricultural land, a common occurrence that also leaves land privately owned, but protects it using public funds. Protecting the Springs site, he said, will reduce density in the neighborhood and protect Hog Creek by eliminating the possibility of another septic system in the area, as well as maintain a wildlife habitat. The easement purchase price is about half the price of buying the land outright, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said.

An East Hampton Town-appointed committee on airport planning and its noise subcommittee have reconvened as an independent advisory group that hopes to engage the public in debate about the airport. To the end it will hold two meetings at the LTV Studios in Wainscott, the first on Monday from 9:30 to 11 a.m. and another on Aug. 13.

According to a press release sent out by David Gruber, a member of the group who had chaired the noise subcommittee, the group thinks “the issue is too important to be left to town government alone.”

Mr. Gruber also serves as counsel to the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, an airport watchdog group.

“This is part of a long tradition in East Hampton of citizens groups forming to address issues of urgent public concern,” Pat Trunzo III, a former town councilman and member of the group said in the press release. 

“In the ’70s, the Group for the South Fork was created to remedy weaknesses in the town’s planning and environmental management. In the last decade, the Group for Good Government was created to plug holes in the town’s financial management. We intend to do the same for the airport. Otherwise, the current unacceptable  situation threatens to drag on indefinitely.”

The airport noise subcommittee had made a number of recommendations to the town board, several of which were reflected in the access restrictions the board adopted last year. One, a once-a-week limit on takeoffs and landings by noisy planes, was blocked by a judge after aviation interests filed suit and is the subject of ongoing litigation. 

Kathleen Cunningham, a former subcommittee member and chairwoman of the Quiet Skies Coalition, said the board’s “cherry-picking” rather than adopting all of the group’s “mutually reinforcing” proposals weakened “the entire proposed structure of noise control.” The subcommittee was subsequently disbanded.

Mr. Trunzo has suggested that those who wish further information call him at 516-523-6013.  

East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky imposed maximum fines on two corporations Monday, one in connection with the controversial Napeague bar and restaurant called Cyril’s Fish House, and the other in a default judgment against the Hampton Land Corp., which owns the Inn at East Hampton on Montauk Highway.

The owners of the property where Cyril’s operated, Michael Dioguardi and family, settled myriad outstanding charges out of court, agreeing to pay $60,000 and to subject future use of the property to site plan approval. 

But Cyril Fitzsimons’s corporation, Clan-Fitz Inc., facing 47 charges, took his chances at a jury trial, and lost. Clan-Fitz was found guilty of 45 of the charges, all misdemeanors.

Mr. Fitzsimons had not attended the trial nor was he there on Monday. His attorney, John T. Powers Jr., argued for less than the maximum penalty, which is $1,000 for each misdemeanor. 

“The trial has created a significant hardship,” Mr. Powers said. “The business is no longer in existence. They have been shut down. The prosecutor has never put forth anything on the record to show any damages, significant or otherwise.” 

The town was represented by Joseph Prokop, an outside counsel, who reminded the court that the violations Clan-Fitz had been convicted of were longstanding. He asked for the maximum fine. 

Mr. Powers countered, saying, “The people of this town have lost a restaurant. And, importantly for the town, a source of employment for a number of people. There are people disappointed in the fact that they have no place to go to work . . . people who enjoyed going there for some years.”

“The number of charges and the nature of the charges suggests a persistent pattern of violating the standards set by this town,” Justice Tekulsky said. He read each charge, and set the fine at $1,000 each.

Mr. Powers said afterward that Clan-Fitz planned to appeal the guilty verdict handed down by a six-person jury in May, which would delay any requirement to pay the fine.

The default judgment against Hampton Land Corp., the owners of a 20-unit motel called the Inn at East Hampton, occurred after no one appeared to face the charges. Fire marshals had inspected the motel after receiving complaints about overcrowding. While overcrowding was not an issue, they allegedly found 60 violations of the state’s health and safety laws. These included lack of working smoke detectors and combustible debris on the premises.  Justice Tekulsky gave the owners, or an attorney who might represent them, over an hour after the court had completed its other business to arrive, but no one did. Justice Tekulsky took the bench at 1:50 p.m., and said there was proof that the corporation had been subpoenaed. He then issued a default judgment, with $1,000 on each of the counts, for a total of $60,000.

The East Hampton Town Planning Board looked askance at a site plan application for a 50-foot tall tower at St. Peter’s Episcopal Chapel on Old Stone Highway in Springs at its meeting Tuesday night. The tower, to be constructed by AT&T, would be built next to the chapel and would hold cellphone antennas and accompanying equipment. 

“There were comments that it looked like a rocket ship,” John Huber, the phone giant’s representative, acknowledged at the meeting. Peter Gumpel, an artist who lives in Springs, presented the board with watercolors he had done depicting the proposed structure. Mr. Huber said the images resembled the Piaza di San Marco in Venice. Mr. Gumpel is vice chairman of the town’s architectural review board, but was acting on his own.

Job Potter was the first member of the board to speak, calling the tower “not suitable.” He understood the need for cell towers, he said, but noted that the chapel is really small. “You mentioned Venice but it looks to me like Southern California. This tower would really be out of keeping.” 

Diana Weir called it “massive” and another member of the panel, Nancy Keeshan, said, “This is smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood.” 

Although other members voiced support, the votes were not there to support it. Mr. Huber said the proposal would be redrawn.

Another site plan application taken up that night also appears to be in troubled waters. It involves a Stephen Hand’s Path property that belongs to Personalized Pools. It will be covered next week.