At a Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee Monday night, the hamlet’s perennial need for seasonal employee housing was a focus of discussion.

Bill Akin, who is on the advisory committee’s housing subcommittee, said that several Montauk motels that had been used for seasonal housing have recently been sold, including the Neptune, which was bought by Marc Rowan, co-founder of a billion-dollar private equity fund. Mr. Rowan bought Duryea’s Lobster House two years ago and Ciao! On the Beach last fall.

Other places off the seasonal worker market are the Surf Lodge and Ruschmeyer’s, the motel rooms at Rick’s Crabby Cowboy, and the small cottages at Duffy’s Cottages on East Lake Drive. Some small houses that were rented by transient workers in summer are now being advertised on Airbnb. Altogether, the subcommittee estimated that up to 500 rooms or cottages have been taken off the seasonal housing market.

Members have reached out to Tom Ruhle, director of the town’s Housing Department, who gave them some ideas, Mr. Akin said. “Everybody knows there’s a problem, but nobody knows how big it is,” he said, adding that the  Montauk Chamber of Commerce is polling its members to get a sense of the housing crunch in peak season.

One possible housing site that has been mentioned several times before is on the Circle, the area that abuts the residences on the first block of Camp Hero. Before the 27 houses at Camp Hero, a former Air Force base, were sold to residents, it was used as a trailer park to house enlisted service members. A subcommittee has been researching sites to house the seasonal workers and has suggested the town might consider investing in trailers on the Circle.

In 1996, town officials chose a southwest corner of the Circle to build an adult day care center, which has since been moved to the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. A neighbor was assured there would be no further housing there. Once the day care center moved, the house was put up for sale through the town’s housing lottery and is now owned by a young family.

The site also has a children’s bus stop on it, and residents use it frequently as a playground, dog park, and walking track. Some store their boats there in winter. Camp Hero has always had water problems that continue to this day, so providing water could also prove troublesome.

Laura Michaels, an advisory committee member, wondered if the town could have made better use of a piece of land directly across the street from the Neptune Motel that was recently cleared to add 45 more parking spaces in the downtown area, by using it instead for seasonal housing.

The subcommittee is also looking at little pockets of space throughout the hamlet where other seasonal housing could be built. Some members suggested an area in the harbor for a dormitory-style building, and allowing apartments over businesses. Others, however, said that adding more summer housing would attract more people to the already bulging hamlet.

Ray Cortell, a committee member, asked why people who work in Montauk have to live there, too. “People go to work in Manhattan every day and don’t live there,” he said.

Committee members agreed that once the hamlet study meetings take place more solutions might be found.

Before the talk of housing began, East Hampton Town Police Chief Mike Sarlo and Joseph Kearney, the new Montauk precinct commander, went over some of the ways in which police will deal with this summer’s influx. The department maintains a strong presence on social media, they said, alerting people that the Town of East Hampton has zero tolerance for those who break the law.

Most businesses are cooperating with the law, Chief Sarlo said; even 7-Eleven has promised to lock up its beer coolers by 3 a.m. to avoid all-night partying. The Surf Lodge, he said, was very cooperative last summer and eliminated a lot of complaints. “It’s better, it’s improved, but we will keep working on it.”

Businesses have been warned that stiff fines will be imposed for breaking the law, and that the fines will increase with each violation, the chief said.

Peter Van Scoyoc, the committee’s town board liaison, said the town’s concern was not to hurt the businesses but to work with them. “I committed to you last year that we will continue to fight. A lot of things have already been turned around, and we plan to continue to do that,” he said.

Meanwhile, a traffic consultant’s proposal to make several downtown Montauk streets one way in order to create more parking and try to tame summertime traffic will not be pursued, East Hampton Town officials assured concerned residents on Tuesday.

Half a dozen Montaukers, some of whom had been at Monday’s meeting, attended a town board meeting in East Hampton the next morning to voice their concerns. Major changes will not be made until an upcoming hamlet study has been completed, Supervisor Larry Cantwell told them.

“It’s very late in the year” to implement changes before the summer, Mr. Cantwell said. And, he added, “there’s no strong consensus of opinion that that’s something we should do.”

However, a few temporary changes aimed at increasing pedestrian and vehicular safety are under consideration for a trial run this summer. They include blocking off an access road on the north side of the Plaza for designated taxi parking, and adding 10 more lights that meet dark-sky standards to existing poles on the south side of Main Street.

Anything done on a trial basis can be reversed or modified, Mr. Cantwell stressed. The proposed changes are expected to be discussed at a board work session at the Montauk Firehouse on Tuesday at 10 a.m., and interested parties have been invited to be there. Specifics on the plans are on the town’s website.

“I feel like you’re fixing a problem that doesn’t need to be fixed,” Bonnie Brady told the board, questioning several of the details. Rather than relying on recommendations from an out-of-town consultant, she said, decision-makers should look to the people of Montauk for input.

“I think this is great for a start,” said Laraine Creegan, head of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce. “Some of them are good,” she said of the ideas. “Some of them are perhaps doable.”

“But,” she added, “everyone should know about it so that they can weigh in.”

Traffic consultants had visited the hamlet last Labor Day weekend to observe the peak traffic flow, and made recommendations designed to improve the extreme conditions.

“I think preparing a traffic study based on peak use disenfranchises the local people for 9 or 10 months of the year,” said Thomas Muse. Changes that might be useful or necessary to deal with the summertime influx, “for the sake of our guests for a couple of months,” such as creating one-way streets, might not be warranted or desired during the rest of the year, he said. “We want to make it safe, but we don’t want to bend over backwards and really redo our lives for the sake of those two months.”

“We’re looking at trying a couple of things temporarily that could be changed very easily,” Mr. Cantwell replied.

“If we’re going to make these modifications it should be because there’s real data,” Mr. Muse insisted. He said the board should look at statistics regarding accident spots and the like, rather than relying on assumptions or theoretical recommendations.

“I’m glad that the board is taking a crawl-before-you-jump-off-the-cliff approach, taking some temporary measures,” he said. But he cautioned against moving too far ahead before completion of the hamlet study process, which will include gathering opinions and information from residents to map out future plans for Montauk as well as East Hampton’s other hamlets.

East Hampton Town

Planning a Paumanok Campsite

A rough campsite for hikers along the Paumanok Path could be created near a section of the trail in Montauk close to the Navy Road park property, allowing hikers traversing the path, which runs 125 miles from Rocky Point to Montauk Point, to do an extended portion without leaving the woods. 

A small area would be cleared just off the trail, should East Hampton Town officials sign off on the idea, brought to them recently by Andrew Drake of the town’s office of land acquisition and management. The Paumanok Path is a “designated long-distance scenic path,” Mr. Drake said. The East Hampton Trails Preservation Society and other hiking groups are seeking a national designation of the trail’s importance, he said. 

The land department staff, which already maintains other trails in Montauk, would mow a 100-foot spur to the camping spot off the main trail and issue the permits that would be required to stay there overnight. Campers — up to six people using no more than two tents — would be limited to a one-night stay.

Although town board members expressed concern about the potential for abuse of the site, “I’m willing to try this,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at a recent meeting. “If it gets out of hand we can shut it down.”

Classes for Contractors

Continuing education classes that will help those with East Hampton Town contractor’s licenses meet licensing requirements will be offered by the town in conjunction with the East End Council of the Long Island Business Institute beginning on Wednesday with a session on the 2016 state energy conservation construction code, which goes into effect at the end of September. Sessions will continue on May 25, with “Best Practices to Meet and Exceed the New York State Energy Construction Code,” followed by “Marketing for Contractors” on June 15, and a session on “next generation” flooring on June 29. The classes will be held at 3 p.m. at Town Hall.

The cost for each session is $25 for Long Island Business Institute members and $40 for nonmembers. Those interested can register by calling the institute; limited registration at the door may be possible, depending on space. 

Eyeing One-Ways for Montauk 

A number of streets in downtown Montauk could be designated one-way thoroughfares, should the East Hampton Town Board act on recommendations recently presented by a traffic engineer hired to come up with ways to ease traffic and parking issues in the hamlet.

Ray DiBiase of McLean Associates gave an overview of his ideas at an April 12 board meeting. They include limiting Elwood Avenue, just south of Montauk Highway in downtown Montauk, to one way, headed east, and limiting all of Emerson Avenue, between Eton Street on the west to Edison Street on the east, to westbound-only traffic. The plan would also eliminate right turns from the highway onto Eton and Eagle Streets at the hamlet’s western edge.

Layout plans depicting the proposed changes, which include adding parking spaces and a taxi stand and moving the crosswalk across Main Street from the west side of the Plaza to its eastern side, are posted on the town’s website.

Reconsidering Beach Generators

Areas along the Montauk ocean beach adjacent to the sites where the town leases spots for food trucks to sell their wares could be quieter, and with cleaner air, this summer, if an agreement is inked between the town and a company that would provide electricity to the sites, eliminating the need for the trucks to use noisy generators that emit exhaust for power.

Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc announced recently that the company was interested in installing pedestal kiosks providing electrical service, for which the concessionaires would pay. The town would receive 20 percent of the charges as revenue, he said. The pilot program could eliminate noise and fumes from the lots at Kirk Park and at Ditch Plain, both in the main lot and at the dirt lot near the former East Deck motel. 

A Lazy Point C.P.F. Purchase

The town board approved the purchase of .22 of an acre at 60 and 66 Shore Drive East at Lazy Point, now owned by Paul Capocciamo, Colette Gambino, Lorraine Ericson, and Mary Capocciamo, for $915,000 following a public hearing last Thursday. A small house on the property will be removed at the seller’s expense before the purchase. The money will come from the community preservation fund. The property, in a low-lying shorefront area, will be returned to its natural state but could be used in the future to provide public parking for water access, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said. 

Booking App Owes Airport $35K

Blade, a service through which flights between Manhattan and East Hampton Airport can be booked using an app, or charter flights organized through a crowdsourcing system, owes East Hampton Town $35,000 for activities at the airport last summer, and is seeking a three-year seasonal license to continue doing business there.

Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the board’s airport liaison, said at a meeting last week that Blade, which was doing business at the airport last summer, was told it must pay rent to the town to continue to operate from the airport terminal. Upon approval of a license agreement, the company will pay what is owed, followed by a $37,500 fee for the next May 1 to Sept. 30 season, and $40,000 for the third year. The town will reserve the right to cancel the license agreement at any time. J.P.

Federal Vote to Prevent Plum Island Sale

Representative Lee Zeldin on Sunday announced that a bill that would prevent the sale of Plum Island is scheduled to be voted on today in the House Homeland Security Committee, paving the way for a full House vote later this year. The bill would require the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Homeland Security, which owns the island, to develop a plan for other uses for it. It is home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. 

According to a release, Mr. Zeldin’s bill outlines a future for Plum Island that could include a transfer to another federal agency, New York State, or a nonprofit organization. An educational or conservation opportunity is another possibility. Under current law, the disease center is to be decommissioned and the island is to be cleaned up and sold to the highest bidder, a plan that is opposed by many local and state officials and civic leaders.

East Hampton Town, which took a pledge in 2009 to become a state-designated “climate smart community” and has been taking various actions in relation to climate change and sea level rise, has been certified under the state program, the first of more than 170 participating communities to achieve that designation.

Under the New York State Climate Smart program, communities are encouraged to take actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, prepare for the impact of climate change, and save taxpayer money. 

Working with the town’s energy and sustainability committee, John Sousa-Botos, the town’s climate-smart coordinator, and other members of the Natural Resources Department have instituted “a number of projects to enhance the town’s sustainability and resiliency efforts,” according to Kim Shaw, the department’s director. 

“The town is experiencing a changing coastline and scientists are improving their modeling to demonstrate that we need to prepare to mitigate and adapt to climate change,” Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said in a press release this week. 

The “certified community” designation, he said, will make the town eligible for funding for more projects and new technologies. 

“East Hampton’s leadership in acting on climate change is exemplary,” Basil Seggos, the acting commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, said in the release. “Achieving status as a certified Climate Smart Community means the town has implemented a wide range of actions that both reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and help protect the town from extreme weather. I applaud East Hampton’s commitment to preserving natural resources and utilizing renewable energy, and I encourage more communities across New York State [to] follow its example.”

Southampton Town

Highway Department Worker Suspended

Roosevelt Sykes, a heavy equipment operator with the Southampton Town Highway Department, who was arrested on March 10 for allegedly using a payloader at the Bridgehampton yard to load material into his personal truck, has been suspended without pay. Deputy Highway Superintendent Robert Welch suspended Mr. Sykes effective April 11 for a period not to exceed 30 days, and the town board upheld the suspension the following day.

Brian J. Lester, an East Hampton attorney, was appointed the hearing officer in the disciplinary proceeding, and will make recommendations to the highway superintendent. He will be paid $950 per day.

Marathon Day Traffic

With the Bridgehampton Half Marathon fast approaching on May 7, starting and finishing at the Beebe Windmill on Ocean Road, the Southampton Town Board approved some parking restrictions for the day. Ocean Road, from Montauk Highway to the intersection of Sagaponack Road, will be closed to vehicular traffic between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m., and there will be no parking allowed on either side of the road, to accommodate shuttle buses dropping off participants and spectators.

New Laws for Uber

The Southampton Town Board has approved changes to its taxi law that will require ride-share drivers to obtain the same licenses required of traditional taxi companies and drivers. At its April 12 meeting, the board unanimously approved the amendments.

The new law, introduced by Councilman Stan Glinka, mandates the annual registration of cab companies, cab drivers, and cabs. Given Uber’s business model, in which cars are owned and operated by independent drivers affiliated with but not employed by the company, each individual driver would pay $1,000 for all three of the permitting fees to operate legally in the town.

Mr. Glinka said he had already met with police and code enforcement to discuss enforcement. Next, he will reach out to the various villages within the town to see if they will adopt the same legislation, to promote consistency.

Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said he would like the board to re-examine the fees.

C.P.F. for Farm Fields

The Southampton Town Board has agreed to purchase more enhanced development rights on farm fields, namely 5.85 acres on Sagg Main Street in the Village of Sagaponack from James Pike, at a cost of $860,000 from the community preservation fund. The move guarantees that the property continues to be used for food farming, preserves prime agricultural soils, and keeps it affordable to future farms.

Under the current agricultural easement applied to the property in the 1980s when a subdivision was created, any agricultural use can take place there. The easement even allows for landscaped wooded areas, according to Lisa Kombrink, an attorney representing the Pikes.

Southampton was the first town in the state to purchase enhanced restrictions on farmland with the 2014 acquisition of the former Danilevsky farm in Water Mill for over $11 million. In January, the town also bought enhanced restrictions on a 25-acre property in Bridgehampton, known as Hayground Farms, for $2.46 million.

Despite its many nature trails through preserved tracts of woods, East Hampton Town lacks even one for people who need a smooth, flat surface — the wheelchair-bound, the elderly, those who are injured or less agile — can enjoy the outdoors, Mario Bladuell, an East Hampton resident, told the town board this week.

Mr. Bladuell has been working on a plan for a paved loop of trails through the woods, and after presenting it to the town nature preserve committee, made his case to the board members on Tuesday.

“Sidewalks are not always adequate or available,” he said. A paved woods trail would provide a safer place to walk, jog, or bicycle away from traffic and noise, while providing a getaway into nature, he said. 

The town’s miles of trails are good for fit walkers, joggers, and mountain bikers, he said, but are “not adequate or even possible” for people with mobility issues. A level, eight-foot-wide paved surface would allow them to stroll two abreast, without the care or attention required when walking on uneven terrain.  It would also limit exposure to ticks, he said.

Mr. Bladuell proposed using a section of the 300-acre Buckskill Preserve, part of which is owned by the town and part by the county, to install five miles of paved walkway. The area lies north of the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path and Route 114 in East Hampton, with the Ross School property on its northern edge. The land there, he said, is flat, which is essential for wheelchair use; other protected tracts are too hilly, he said.

Two concentric ovals with four connecting sections would provide numerous choices for routes of varied lengths, Mr. Bladuell said. Existing unpaved nature trails throughout the preserve would be untouched.

“This would be a facility unlike any other on the East End,” he told the board, noting that in winter the path could be used for cross-country skiing. It would provide “all year, all-weather use, at no cost to users.”

Mr. Bladuell said he would raise money for construction of the path, which he estimated “in the high six figures,” by soliciting private donations. “I am not going to rely on a crowd-funding effort to do the heavy lifting,” he told the board, but would mount that type of campaign to garner public support and raise enough money to maintain the paths.

“The idea of having an area in town where young children could learn to ride their bikes, where people with strollers could walk, that would be [Americans With Disabilities Act] accessible, for people that are rehabilitating injuries — those are all attributes we need,” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc told Mr. Bladuell. But he said he had “deep concern” about clearing acreage in the Buckskill area, which is a large woodland block in a water-recharge area.

Mr. Bladuell said the town planning director, Marguerite Wolffsohn, had expressed concerns as well. Because of its size, the Buckskill Preserve provides habitat for species of birds and other wildlife that prefer forest interiors.

“I like the idea of the proposal, but I’m having a hard time seeing how this fits on this property,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “I think there are other areas in town that could accommodate it.”

Councilwoman Sylvia Overby questioned the necessity for the eight-foot width of the paths. It was proposed, Mr. Bladuell said, to provide enough room for a wheelchair and walkers to pass without going off the path into the brush, which would “defeat the purpose,” he said, of helping people avoid ticks.

“I’m not sure where this is going at the moment,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell told him. “Give us a chance to digest it.”

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals seemed to be navigating through a foggy sea regarding businesses in residential districts Tuesday night, after a public hearing on an unusual Wainscott proposal. Hovering over the hearing was the question of whether a model house is an office.

Michael Davis, a builder of high-end houses, had overcome opposition from several neighbors when he was allowed to build a small house on the one-acre residential lot his office is on, at the southeast corner of Sayre’s Path and Montauk Highway.

 Mr. Davis now has his eyes on two buildings to the east, at 405 and 407 Montauk Highway, which are also on one-acre residential lots but contain offices, which are permitted because that use predates zoning.  

Mr. Davis wants to merge the properties, tear down the structures, and build a new one of the same square footage. He first brought this idea to the planning board in September of last year. Even if combined, the properties would not meet the one-acre requirement.

At the time, JoAnne Pahwul, the town’s assistant planning director, questioned whether combining “the square footage of the two nonconforming uses into a single new structure for an office use is permitted.” She directed the board to seek guidance from Ann Glennon, the town’s head building inspector.

The question was complicated by the nonconforming uses of the structures. Anthony Pasca of Esseks, Hefter, Angel, DiTella & Pasca, Mr. Davis’s attorney, told the board that both buildings were built in the 1950s or ’60s as model houses. One, he said, was a “bargain residential home that you could buy for $4,500, or have installed for $5,500.”

And, he said, a model house is exactly what Mr. Davis wants to construct.

 Mr. Pasca said that Mr. Davis’s clients would be able to walk through the new building to see various architectural styles designed by his architect, Roger Ferris. He also pointed out that allowing the property to be used for a single model house would decrease density and lead to one modern septic system.

 Ms. Glennon had been asked by the planning board to determine whether replacing the structures currently on the two properties with a model house on a newly merged property was permitted. Not finding the term “model house” in the  code and noting that the certificate of occupancy for the building at 405 had long been cited as in residential use, she ruled that the proposal was contrary to the code.

Mr. Pasca, acknowledging that the town would like to see nonconforming structures made more conforming, argued that the courts had found they were allowed to be modernized.

Cate Rogers expressed concern that the board would be setting a precedent if it overturned the building inspector’s finding. “This is the type of precedent you want to set,” Mr. Pasca answered.

Two others at the hearing raised other questions. Bob Schaeffer, who retired from the planning board at the end of last year, supported Mr. Davis’s proposal. This raised a red flag for John Whelan, the board’s chairman.

Mr. Schaeffer’s assigned district as a planning board member had been his home hamlet of Wainscott. In that capacity, he had shepherded Mr. Davis’s previous project through the site plan process. Ms. Rogers asked Elizabeth Baldwin, attorney for the board, if a letter to the town ethics board was in order. “You can do that,” was the answer.

At that point, Roy Dalene told his fellow members of the board that he needed to recuse himself. Unbeknownst to him until that moment, his brother, Frank Dalene, a neighbor of Mr. Davis and a member of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee, was about to speak about the application. He expressed opposition to the proposal, telling the board he was speaking as a private citizen. He asked the board to delay a decision until the planned hamlet study for Wainscott could be completed. Another neighbor, Jose Arandia, also spoke in opposition. However, yet another neighbor, Scott Bartlett, spoke in support of the project, saying that the new structure would, at least in appearance, reflect “the real nature of the neighborhood.”

Ms. Pahwul reiterated the point that 405 had a residential history and reminded the board of the code’s directive to bring structures into conformity. She said a larger building was less likely to ever become conforming.

Ms. Glennon also spoke about 405 Montauk Highway at the hearing. “They have always maintained that it was a house,” she said about the town’s Building Department. She pointed out that she had been asked for a determination about office use, not that of a model house.

 David Lys,  a board member, questioned the 16 parking spaces proposed, and Mr. Pasca assured him the number could be lowered. In a comment that could cut both ways, Mr. Lys said, “We also know certificates of occupancy can be issued improperly.”

Mr. Dalene’s recusal means it will take at least a 3-to-1 vote to overturn Ms. Glennon’s determination. A split decision would leave the determination standing.

Plans are moving forward to replace East Hampton Town’s senior citizen center on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton with a new, larger building on the same site.

The center, where the town’s Human Services Department offers nutrition, adult day care, recreation, health, and social programs, is inadequate for current needs, Eric Schantz, a town planner, told the town board on Tuesday. And, he said, with the number of older adults in town consistently rising over the last 50 years — a third of the population is now over 55 — the need for senior services will also increase.

The existing facility, in a building a century old, was once a watering hole called the Cottage Inn, Supervisor Larry Cantwell and Councilman Fred Overton, who grew up here, recalled. It is “very actively used,” Mr. Schantz said, and is showing its age. It has served as the town’s senior center for 30 years.

“There are probably not too many senior centers on Long Island where the building is older than the people that are there,” Mr. Schantz said.

After a senior-services committee called for replacing the senior center “with one that can serve the entire community,” in 2014, Mr. Schantz worked with other planners, human services staff, and Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez to analyze demographic data and future needs and to review senior center designs in order to develop the proposal presented this week. While other sites were considered, he said, the group found the current location — two centrally located acres within walking distance of several affordable housing complexes, including the Windmill I and II centers for senior citizens — to be the best option and able to accommodate a larger center and more parking.

A draft plan calls for a two-story building with basement, 50 percent larger than the existing center. It would accommodate a larger kitchen and dining room as well as activity rooms, including a computer and media room, a wellness room for yoga, tai chi, and meditation, and a game, cards, and book club room. It would include automatic doors and hallways wide enough to accommodate walkers, wheelchairs, and scooters, a private restroom and walk-in shower for adult day care patrons, and a covered entrance for pickups and dropoffs. An outdoor area would be maintained for walking, picnicking, and relaxing.

The rough plan developed by the committee would be vetted and possibly revised by an architect. According to a preliminary timetable, an architect could be selected by June and construction begun by May 2017.

No cost estimates have yet been developed, but a draft capital budget for 2016 through 2018 calls for borrowing just over $3 million for the senior center project, some of which would be offset by the proposed sale of several town properties.

After lengthy negotiations and a failed attempt to come to terms, East Hampton Town and its union employees have agreed on a new four-year, retroactive contract spanning from 2015 through 2018.

Under the agreement ratified by both sides last week, wages will increase annually, but new and recently hired workers will begin to pay 20 percent of their health insurance costs.

The Civil Service Employees Association ratified the contract on April 5 in a close 74-to-64 vote; the town board voted unanimously to approve it last Thursday night. According to Miles Maier, the C.S.E.A. unit president, workers had been hoping for a higher wage increase than the agreed-upon 2-percent hike across the board.

In November, the union rejected a contract that would have eliminated so-called “step” raises, a system of guaranteed annual wage increases for workers in the first seven years of their employ in a particular civil service position. The new contract will maintain that system, giving its employees a 2-percent annual raise plus an additional 1-percent step wage increase each year in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Employees not in the step system will get a 2-percent raise for each of the four years covered by the contract.

While the hoped-for wage increase is “still not really there,” Mr. Maier said, the contract gives workers more opportunities for compensatory time and overtime, and provides for a 10-percent wage increase upon promotion, up from 5 percent.

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, who negotiated on behalf of the town, pressed for and succeeded in including a new merit-based wage increase system. “I’m glad we were able to resolve it,” he said this week. “Overall, it’s a good agreement. You never come away from a negotiation with everything you want.”

Recommendations for the new merit-based salary increases will be made annually to the board by department heads, Mr. Cantwell said, after employee evaluations. A review committee of union members and town officials will review the recommendations, with final decisions made by majority vote.

The supervisor said the “plan to provide an incentive to employees who have provided extraordinary performance to the town . . . will be used sparingly” and will be a consideration in annual budgeting.

Also at its meeting last Thursday, the town board voted to prohibit parking along a dirt road leading from Edgemere Street in Montauk near the Surf Lodge to the Montauk Firehouse parking lot. No-parking zones had previously been established along nearby stretches of Edgemere in response to crowded and hazardous conditions often caused by patrons heading to the Surf Lodge, a popular club with little on-site parking.

Parking along the dirt adjunct to Edgemere Street has “restricted or even blocked travel lanes,” according to the board resolution, causing a public safety threat, as the lane is used by emergency responders heading to the firehouse.

Another parking ban approved by the board, affecting a number of streets between Montauk Highway and the Old Montauk Highway in Montauk, drew objections from David Buda, a Springs resident, who raised questions about its impact on residents seeking access to the nearby ocean beach.

The parking regulation was requested, board members said, by residents of the area, which has been used by Gurney’s Resort staff and valet service to park cars that don’t fit in the hotel’s lot. 

Also at last Thursday’s meeting, following a hearing, the board approved the purchase of a shy acre at 11 South Federal Street in Montauk, from Boris Munt, for $375,000 from the community preservation fund. The parcel contains freshwater wetlands that are part of a system feeding into Lake Montauk, according to the resolution, and construction on the land, including installation of a septic system, could adversely affect both the wetlands and the lake.

Also approved were two purchases from Suffolk County — 1.8 acres of underwater land in Lake Montauk for $3,520, and a small lot on Fireplace Road in Springs for $698.15.

The need for affordable housing raised a problem for the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday when it considered an application that would require a variance to allow a homeowner to create an accessory apartment. The night also heard the board announce decisions on several controversial applications.

Represented by Zach Cohen, a two-time unsuccessful Democratic candidate for town supervisor, Anita Baskind sought permission to convert a 372-square-foot room in her house at 81 Hog Creek Road in Springs into an accessory apartment. The problem is that the property, which measures only 9,375 square feet, is well under the 15,000-square-foot minimum required to create such an apartment.

Mr. Cohen told the board that under the town code, his client, a retired teacher, could rent the room without invoking the town’s new rental registration law because she lives in the house full time. He said an affordable apartment would be far more desirable.

Tyler Borsack, a town planner, noting that this was the first application for an area variance to allow an accessory apartment, cautioned that “it may set a precedent.” He asked the board how it would be “possible to single out individual applications from one another, even though they are very rare.” However, each school district is allowed to have up to 20 accessory apartments, while Springs now has only seven.

The precedent setting nature of the request clearly concerned board members. Cate Rogers warned that, once granted for Ms. Baskind, the variance allowing the apartment would remain with the property in perpetuity.

Ms. Baskind spoke on her own behalf, saying young people born here are being driven from East Hampton by the high cost of housing. “Living in daddy’s basement is not always something they want to do,” she said.  Allowing an affordable apartment would also make it possible for elderly East Hampton residents to “die in their own homes,” she said.

A graduate of East Hampton High School, Juan Gouache, also spoke. “I live with my parents, because I cannot afford to live here,” he said. Mr. Cohen explained that Mr. Gouache has a degree in architecture, but as an apprentice, does not make enough money to afford East Hampton rentals.

“This might provide an option for me as well,” said Diana Walker. “I would like to die in my house, too. I would be thrilled to have Juan in my affordable accessory apartment.”

Chuck Hitchcock, a former East Hampton Democratic Committee chairman, also spoke in support of the application, as did Mr. Cohen’s wife, Pamela Becket, an architect.

“This will set the bar for possible future applications,” Mr. Borsack said.

The board has 62 days to make a decision.

In decisions announced that night, the board rejected variances requested by Andrew Tatiana of Springs and by a trust that owns a Bull Path, East Hampton, house. Mr. Tatiana wanted to retain an illegal 10-foot-tall gate and fence in front of his property on Parsons Close. The town limit is six feet. “It changes the character of the neighborhood,” Ms. Rogers said, as they voted the application down.

The 40 Bull Path request, from the Abraham Feldman Trust, was to retain an artist’s studio over a garage. The garage itself is perfectly legal, at 600 square feet, the maximum allowed for an accessory structure under the code. However, the 360-square-foot second floor studio was an issue. It would have to go, the board decided, either by decreasing the height of the ceiling so that the space can only be used for storage or eliminating the space entirely.

The board split on an application from Barbara Hair of 265 Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Highway, voting 3-2 to allow her to demolish the house there and replace it with a 3,015-square-foot house farther away from Three Mile Harbor.

David Lys saw the proposal as a tradeoff, one that benefits the town. “This property is going to be environmentally better than what it is now,” he said. Mr. Dalene agreed, calling what is on the site now, including an aging cesspool and an asphalt driveway that drains toward the harbor, “the worst possible scenario.”

John Whelan, the board’s chairman, also agreed and called for requiring mitigation to prevent leakage from a planned swimming pool into the harbor. Ms. Rogers and Lee White disagreed.

The East Hampton Town Trustees were briefed Monday evening on the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s plans to revegetate local waterways with native beach and marsh grass species, as well as clams, bay scallops, and oysters.

Eelgrass die-offs in the 1930s, resulting in a nearly 90 percent loss of the species in coastal North America, have been attributed to wasting disease, though the cause is uncertain. Brown tide blooms in the 1980s and ’90s contributed to additional losses, and more recently, climate change and declining water quality are believed to be further stresses. Eelgrass, which provides important habitat to finfish and shellfish, is slow to recover naturally, making human intervention critical in the re-establishment of eelgrass meadows to a self-sustaining level.

The cooperative extension’s marine program has helped to bring back eelgrass meadows in waterways here. At Monday’s trustee meeting, Kimberly Barbour, the program’s outreach manager, followed up her October 2015 visit with results of seed collection of another species, spartina alterniflora, an intertidal marsh grass, and detailed a proposal for new stewardship sites that the program hopes to establish this year.

“Last year, we started to expand the marine meadows program to include coastal species as well, trying to build native stocks of beach grass species,” she told the trustees. Approximately 159,000 seeds were collected from Sammy’s Beach and another 70,000 from Northwest Creek in East Hampton last fall, with viability measuring 49 and 37 percent respectively, Ms. Barbour said.

“We’re using all local stock,” she said. “We harvest from healthy meadows, but we take, very carefully by hand, the shoots we need to then transplant.” Efforts to propagate seeds in the marine program’s greenhouse, she said, have been less successful.

The seeds collected from trustee waterways germinated over the winter, Ms. Barbour said. “The next step in this, which is why I wanted to have an opportunity to ‘plant the seed,’ is to have you start thinking about locations within the town that may be in need of some revegetation, and to try to get the community involved in the growing of the seeds as well.” Through the marine program’s Back to the Bays initiative, “We are going to be propagating some of the seeds from the East Hampton stock we collected,” she said.

With money raised from events including the Race for the Bays on May 7 in Sag Harbor and the Back to the Bays 5k race the following week in Southold, marine program officials will develop the new stewardship sites. Potential sites include areas near Havens Beach in Sag Harbor and Ward’s Point on Shelter Island, and between Sag Harbor Bay and Northwest Harbor. The hope is to expand to sites in trustee waters, Ms. Barbour said, and to engage community businesses and individuals through financial support or hands-on assistance. She asked the trustees for guidance in those efforts. “We want to get information to local school districts” too, she said.

Cornell Cooperative Extension is also partnering with the Art Barge on Napeague to present several programs, starting on June 29 with an exploration of the nearby salt marsh and a discussion of salt marshes’ importance to an ecosystem’s health. Other programs will focus on pressing flora and algae “to create one-of-a-kind pieces of artwork”; light in the water column, the importance of shellfish to waterways’ health and in maritime history, and marine debris.