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.

Monday night’s meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee was short, just 45 minutes, and reasonably sweet. Members received in resigned silence the news that the public bathrooms the hamlet has awaited for the last 20 years or so will almost certainly not be built in time to accommodate this summer’s importunate visitors, thanks to the Suffolk Health Department’s continuing refusal to grant the required permits.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee, called the situation a “quagmire.” The bathrooms are slated to be built in the town parking lot behind Main Street, but adjacent property owners have yet to file the necessary easements with the county, which will not grant a construction permit until they do. Worse yet, work on the parking lot — restriping, repaving, trenching for electrical lines — cannot begin until the facility is place. Even when it is, the county will not allow it to be used until one neighboring house is connected to public water. Asked when the bathrooms might ever be ready, Mr. Cantwell silently shook his head.

Work on another Amagansett headache, the unsightly PSEG Long Island electrical substation on Old Stone Highway near the train station, was to have been completed months ago, but the “nuclear power plant” is still under construction, the supervisor said, and will be until sometime in June. “This is what happens when we have no local control,” he said.

The town had issued a stop-work order soon after construction began, arguing that PSEG had not submitted a site plan or other filings in compliance with town code, but a State Supreme Court justice disagreed, ruling that as a public utility it was exempt from local zoning. PSEG has promised that “the overhead stuff will come down and the lighting will be night-sky compatible,” Mr. Cantwell told the group. Meanwhile, he said resignedly, “It is what it is.”

The ugliness will be relieved to some extent when PSEG, which is working with the Planning Department, begins landscaping the site, hiding its chain-link fence (“a fence only Putin could love,” someone has said) with 8 to 10-foot trees and other shrubbery. Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board’s liaison to the planners, said on Tuesday that the utility had submitted a preliminary drawing with “everything you wouldn’t want,” mostly pointy arborvitae, but after some gentle prodding has now proposed a new plan with more indigenous plantings. The tall trees include American holly, Japanese cedar, keteleeri juniper, white pine, cypress, and more. “Stepping down” from the trees — “like in the woods,” Ms. Overby explained, “not lined up like little soldiers” — will be shadbush, inkberry, winterberry, bayberry, and arrowwood (viburnum) bushes, some 173 plants in all.

PSEG has made a verbal agreement to pay for the landscaping and for irrigation, the councilwoman said. It has also promised to cut back the protruding point of the fence between Old Stone Highway and the railroad tracks by 10 feet, and cant it to make it less prominent.

  Back at the advisory committee meeting, Mr. Cantwell gave an update on East Hampton’s new rental registry law, saying that 1,200 applications have been processed to date, with “40 to 50 a day being received, and there will be many more.” He called it “a good beginning” for the law, which is to take effect on May 1.

 The rest of the brief meeting was devoted to a discussion of speed limits in the hamlet, with several people wondering why speeds could not be lowered from 30 miles an hour to 25, at least on the lanes and in Beach Hampton. Mr. Cantwell explained that the legal minimum in New York State is 30 m.p.h., to which someone asked why, then, East Hampton Village has a number of 25 m.p.h. streets. “The village has more authority under state law than the town, believe it or not,” said the supervisor, who was the village administrator at the time the 25 m.p.h. signs went up. “[Assemblyman] Fred Thiele tried it [for the town] last year and was turned down.”

“I do think we’re looking at a four-way stop sign at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Bluff Road,” he said. That intersection has been a trouble spot, particularly in the summer when north-south cars hurry to and from the Atlantic Avenue beach and east-west drivers use Bluff Road to bypass the Main Street crowds.

What about speed bumps, someone suggested. No, Mr. Cantwell said, “the town has a longstanding policy of not putting speed bumps on public roads.” Suffolk County “was talking about speed cameras in front of schools,” he added, but it came to nothing.

“Hollywood lights at the Main Street crosswalks, like in East Hampton?” was another suggestion. “Every crosswalk on Montauk Highway should have lights,” Mr. Cantwell agreed. “They’re really effective at night. But, it’s a state road.” In the case of the village, he explained, “the state said, if we paid for the cost of designing it, they’d put it in. And that took five years.”

A draft three-year capital plan under review by the East Hampton Town Board includes $18.2 million for a range of efforts from construction projects to repairs and equipment purchases and would require $10.7 million in new borrowing, according to a presentation by Len Bernard, the town budget officer, on Tuesday.

The plan calls for spending up to $5.5 million to rebuild the old town hall and for construction of a new senior citizen center, at just over $3 million, to replace an aging building on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton.

The cost of the two buildings would be offset by the sale of 11 office condominiums at Pantigo Place in East Hampton that currently house town offices that would be moved to the renovated old town hall, as well as the sale of the defunct scavenger waste treatment plant site.

The former town hall has been empty for several years, since historic buildings donated to the town were fashioned into a new town hall on the same Pantigo Road campus, but plans are under way to once again put the space to use in order to consolidate town departments onto the campus.

At its meeting tonight, the town board is expected to approve a $258,400 bid from Keith Grimes of Montauk to have the scavenger waste plant site cleared and the buildings demolished to ready the commercially zoned property for sale.

Despite the new borrowing under the proposed capital budget, the town’s overall indebtedness would continue to decrease as a strategy of retiring more debt than is added each year continues.

A total of $104 million owed at the beginning of this year is expected to decrease to $96 million by the end of 2016.

Should the capital plan be adopted as drafted, with new bonds issued for the projects listed, the town’s indebtedness would nonetheless fall to a projected $79 million at the end of 2018, according to the budget officer’s calculations. 

With lower debt, Mr. Bernard said, “long term, the town is going to be in a better financial position and able to adjust its spending priorities.”

The 2016 plan includes 66 new items and carries over an additional 18 items from the 2015 plan. The list maps out a timeline for projects to be completed, but decisions are made throughout each year on their priority and the town board must vote to issue bonds to fund each individual item.

Among the undertakings on the list are the installation of a new bulkhead at the head of Three Mile Harbor beginning next year, with an estimated $750,000 price tag; the purchase of new police vehicles, for a total of $600,000 over the coming three years; a $2.5 million mandated upgrade to the police communications system in 2018, and $450,000 in spending on Highway Department truck refurbishments over the three years.

Changes to town properties to make them handicapped-accessible would continue this year and next, with $125,000 budgeted for 2016 and $100,000 for 2017. An additional $100,000 could be added to the projected spending for 2018, Mr. Bernard suggested at a town board meeting on Tuesday, “to show commitment” to meeting the needs of disabled residents and complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

“These are things that have come from the various departments as needs going forward,” said Mr. Bernard at a town board meeting on Tuesday. Additions to the capital plan suggested by board members included refurbishment of the former mess hall at the Boys Harbor camp, now owned by the town, including the addition of public bathrooms, for an estimated $208,000, and replacing drafty and rotting windows at Town Hall.

The inlet between Hog Creek and Gardiner’s Bay in East Hampton was dredged on March 30 and last Thursday, after the Army Corps of Engineers modified a permit to allow the work.

The Clearwater Beach Property Owners Association, representing more than 800 homeowners, performs the annual dredging. Late-winter storms that caused shoaling, however, made navigation difficult and impeded tidal exchange between the creek and bay, necessitating dredging outside the Sept. 30 to Jan. 15 timeframe that is in place to protect the spawning of winter flounder.

Jim Walker of Inter-Science Research Associates helped the property owners association to coordinate and explain the need for dredging to the Army Corps, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the East Hampton Town Trustees, who own and manage the waterway and bottomland on behalf of the public. Mr. Walker told the trustees at their March 14 meeting that the association was “caught between the federal dredging window” and that “the best time to do it is before boating season.” Federal, state, and town agencies approved the project.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said in a statement that the shoaling would have threatened Hog Creek’s water quality and boat access to the body’s two marinas. In the same statement, Gerry Giliberti, president of the property owners association, thanked Representative Lee Zeldin, Mr. Cantwell, and Mr. Walker, whom he said had been integral in securing the permit modification.

It seems likely that East Hampton Town will encourage AT&T, which is seeking permission to construct a pole for its cellular equipment on town land at the recycling center on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton, to build a taller tower there than planned, one that could accommodate antennas and equipment for several other carriers as well, according to a discussion at a town board meeting Tuesday morning.

Both AT&T and Verizon are being evicted from a Cablevision tower close to the recycling center, on which they have been leasing space. Two other companies, Sprint and T-Mobile, have their equipment on a 150-foot pole already on recycling center land.

Under Federal Communications Commission rules, municipalities cannot obstruct communication companies’ erection of needed equipment, but they may, through their zoning codes, set standards and preferences for the locations of poles and equipment. The town’s wireless communications plan pinpoints the recycling center as one of a number of “opportunity sites” where wireless poles are considered acceptable.

With a site-plan application by AT&T for a “temporary” new pole at the recycling center under review by the town planning board, Eric Schantz, a town planner, presented an option to the town board on Tuesday: lease recycling center land to AT&T provided that it build a pole that can accommodate all four carriers, so that their equipment can be consolidated and the existing pole eliminated.

A so-called stealth monopole, which incorporates all of the cellular antennas inside it, rather than on arms protruding from the pole, should be recommended, Mr. Schantz told the board. And, he said, it should be tall enough so that all the companies can mount their equipment at the heights needed to boost cellular service.

The planner recommended approval of a 175-foot pole, though an attorney for AT&T said a minimum height of 199 feet would be needed.

Mr. Schantz said the pole would not be visible from any nearby historic area or state-designated Scenic Area of Statewide Significance. At 175 feet, the stealth pole, he said, would be barely discernable from spots up to a mile away on Town Lane, Three Mile Harbor Road, and surrounding areas.

The recommended plan, he said, would not only eliminate the existing pole — which is more intrusive, visibly, with protruding arms — but would provide for all the carriers on a pole paid for by AT&T. The town would receive rent for use of the recycling center land. The new pole would increase cell coverage for each company’s customers, Mr. Schantz said. 

Sprint and T-Mobile still have several years left on their existing lease, and would have to be convinced to move their equipment over to the new pole, the planner said. Having their antennas mounted higher than they are now would be an incentive.

The town board would have to approve a lease to AT&T so that the company could revise its plan and site-plan application.

“I think we’re interested in trying to solve the problem,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell said. “Our preference is the height be as low as it can be to accomplish the objective.”

“If you can’t do it here,” he said of the dump site, “I don’t think you could locate a tower anywhere.”

“You should propose your permanent plan to the planning board,” Mr. Cantwell told the AT&T lawyer. He offered to have preliminary discussions with the company about lease terms.

East Hampton Town

Time to Buy Recycling Permits

New East Hampton Town recycling permits for 2016 have been needed since April 1, for dropping off garbage and recyclables at the town’s two centers in Montauk and East Hampton.

The annual permits, which cost $115, or $55 for senior citizens aged 65 and up, are available at the town clerk’s office at Town Hall and at the Sanitation Department office at the East Hampton recycling center, which has reopened after being closed since Valentine’s Day, when its sprinkler system froze and there was a water leak.

A secondary recycling permit, for a second car in one household, costs $40.

Accabonac Condominiums

A town affordable housing project, 30 condominium units to be built on Accabonac Road in East Hampton, is moving forward, though Suffolk Health Department approvals are still pending, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby reported this week.

The Health Department has required additional information on the project before issuing the needed approvals, Ms. Overby said. Meanwhile, a request for proposals from builders who could construct the manor house-style development is being prepared, so that it may be issued as soon as the county approval comes in.

More Comfort at Ditch Plain

Renovations to the comfort station at Ditch Plain Beach in Montauk are under way, Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc reported on Tuesday. The work will double the number of bathroom stalls in both the men’s and women’s restrooms.

Debris Found on Montauk Beach

Debris found along the downtown beach in Montauk, which appears to be torn pieces of the geotextile bags used for the Army Corps of Engineers buried sandbag wall, will be collected and the source investigated, Mr. Van Scoyoc said Tuesday. The wall is virtually complete.

The debris was discussed at a meeting of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday night, after a cleanup effort by residents.

FEMA Grant for Gerard Drive

The two causeways along Gerard Drive in Springs, which are often overwashed during storms by waters from Gardiner’s Bay, cutting off access along the narrow finger of land between the bay and Accabonac Harbor, will be rebuilt and elevated, using money from a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant obtained by the town.

The FEMA grant will pay for 90 percent of the $826,750 project, which will include rebuilding portions of a revetment along the road. The work will ensure better access for homeowners and emergency responders, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said in a press release.

The grant was secured by members of the town’s finance department, including Charlene Kagel-Betts, the town’s chief auditor, and Nicole Ficeto, the grants coordinator, along with Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch, according to the release. Mr. Lynch will oversee the construction, which is expected to begin, and be completed, in the fall.

Southampton Town

Traffic Tests on County Road 39

In anticipation of the blinking light test program on County Road 39 at Tuckahoe Road during the week of April 18, county engineers will be on the road next week to collect baseline data. Crews will set up strips and run test vehicles through traffic, and this could add to the commuting logjam. Traffic may already be worse as drivers steer clear of a paving project on Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s recent remarks about establishing a statewide licensing system for taxi and livery businesses, including services like Uber and Lyft that are summoned by an app, have prompted East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell to send a letter to Albany, weighing in.

East Hampton has adopted its own licensing regulations to control the numerous taxis and other cars-for-hire that come here in the summer. The law was revised last year making licensing contingent on having an office in the town, which effectively took Uber drivers, who are independent contractors, out of the mix, over the company’s strong objections.

After describing how the vehicle-for-hire industry, including Uber, “profoundly . . . impact[s] our community,” Mt. Cantwell suggested that any statewide legislation should “augment local communities’ abilities to deal with the transportation-for-hire industry.”

Before East Hampton Town adopted its taxi laws, he wrote, the “questionable tactics and actions” of 89 taxi and livery companies, operating close to 1,100 licensed vehicles, were overwhelming the town’s public safety resources. He cited roadway congestion, use of limited parking, and “literally fighting over fares.” Among other common complaints, the supervisor told the governor, were “fare-gouging, passenger-stranding, and driver assaults (of one another and passengers alike). . . .” 

Requiring vehicle-for-hire companies to maintain an office within the town would not only give riders a location to complain to and an accessible lost and found, but would also prevent drivers and companies from using “inappropriate properties, such as single-family residences and public spaces, as depots and offices,” Mr. Cantwell wrote.

The law also requires that cars for hire  be registered to their associated businesses, “to prevent fraud and abuse,” he noted, adding that the new regulations “have been very successful,” and were welcomed by the local business community and the vast majority of those affected. “The fever pitch of public complaints has subsided,” he wrote.

The state legislation being discussed would apparently exempt certain classes of vehicles for hire, such as livery service cars. Mr. Cantwell took exception to this. A “patchwork approach of state regulations,” he wrote, would “confuse consumers and push the town’s hamlet centers and transportation hubs toward the type of chaos that my administration has spent two years cleaning up.”

Should the legislation move forward, the supervisor asked that the state allow local municipalities to prohibit or limit vehicles for hire from parking on certain public streets, set maximum rates, and prohibit drivers from sleeping in their vehicles.

In addition, he wrote, East Hampton would like to be able to regulate all vehicle-for-hire trips that begin in the town, regardless of the final destination. Currently, the town can only regulate trips that start and end within town limits.

The Town of Southampton is working to come up with $5.1 million to elevate Dune Road from Hampton Bays to Quogue. Parts of the road can be impassable during high tides.

The town has been planning for the better part of six years to raise a 5.1-mile stretch, from the Shinnecock Inlet in Hampton Bays to the Village of Quogue, by two feet. Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said the county has offered a $3 million grant, but the deal is far from done, as the town has to come up with the rest before the county will commit the money. Quogue Village is undertaking the elevation of its portion of Dune Road, another 1.2 miles, at a cost of $1 million.

The previous town administration had already budgeted $1 million for the project, and with property owners along a stretch willing to kick in some money, there remains a gap of about $500,000. Mr. Schneiderman has proposed going out to bond for the shortfall, and the rest of the town board is mulling it over.

“We know this has to be done,” he said at a recent work session. “The big challenge to elevating Dune Road has long been how do we pay for it?”

County Executive Steve Bellone’s office told the supervisor that $3 million from a Community Development Block Grant that had been specified for disaster recovery had been freed up. One of the grant’s criteria is that the money be used in an area that the census tract identifies being more than 50 percent low to moderate income.

Lower income is not exactly what comes to mind when thinking about Dune Road, with its water views and proximity to the ocean, and Alex Gregor, the town highway superintendent, objected on that basis at a work session with the town board last Thursday. “I look at Dune Road, I see the average house is $5 million. It doesn’t make me feel that comfortable putting a grant that’s supposed to be for poor and impoverished people on a millionaire’s road.”

He said he had found $2.7 million in roadwork that is needed in lower-income neighborhoods of Flanders, Riverside, and Northampton.

Frank Zappone, the deputy supervisor, who sat in on the work session, told Mr. Gregor that the road is part of a community, defined by the census bureau, in which 58 percent of its residents fall into the lower to moderate income bracket. Also, Mr. Zappone said the road not only serves those who have a house along it, but the entire community.

Mr. Schneiderman said he was surprised by Mr. Gregor’s stance, and added that income threshold was only one of the criteria that have to be met. He said he was not sure if the areas Mr. Gregor mentioned that were in need of $2.7 million in roadwork would even be eligible for the grant money. He also said residents of the erosion control district may be contributing as much as 10 percent for the project.

“You’re using the mainland people to give credibility to get this grant,” Mr. Gregor said.

“I’ve been under the assumption that this was a priority project for you,” Mr. Schneiderman said. Mr. Gregor responded that he was trying to balance “the needs of the many against the few.” With 450 miles of centerline road throughout the town and only $2.1 million to spend annually, he said it is difficult to consider spending so much on only five miles of road. 

Mr. Gregor also questioned whether the town even owns the road, pulling out copies of a 1964 deed that he said transferred ownership to the county. Mr. Schneiderman asked James Burke, the town attorney, to research the matter.

While the rest of the town board mulls over the funding possibilities, Mr. Schneiderman said he felt the time was right to pull the trigger. “Do we wait for the next major hurricane, which may or may not come? We know we’re going to have flooding chronically,” he said.

With permits from the Department of Environmental Conservation already in place, work could begin as early as this fall if the board decides to move forward with the project.

Michael Walrath, an Internet entrepreneur, seems to have a Midas touch. He sold his start-up digital advertising company, Right Media, to Yahoo for $850 million in 2007. In 2011, he invested in a rundown bar on Fort Pond in Montauk, which became the popular Surf Lodge. Whether that golden touch can give him a third floor on his Montauk house will be determined over the next few weeks by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals.

 The Z.B.A. held a public hearing on March 22 on a request from Mr. Walrath and his wife, Michelle Walrath, to legalize the third floor of the house, which is at 188 West Lake Drive. They bought the property shortly after completing the sale to Yahoo in 2007.

The lakefront property, which is almost five acres, once housed the Anchorage, a bar and motel with 10 units. It was converted to a private residence in 1999, according to Lisa D’Andrea, a planner for the town who prepared a memo for the board. It contains either two or three lots, which also became an issue.

According to documents on file with the Building Department, the Walraths’ dream house began to take shape in late 2008 and early 2009, when they were granted permits to build a pool, decking, a cabana, and put in an array of solar panels. In 2011, the architectural review board gave them permission to raise the height of the roof. Then, in 2012, a building permit was issued for interior demolition and reconstruction.

Mr. Walrath, who spoke by phone on Tuesday, said once the sheetrock came off, major structural problems became apparent. “When we started to demolish the archway, the house began, essentially, to fall in on itself.” The decision was made to build a new house “in kind and in place” in July of that year, Mr. Walrath said. He added that the contractor, John Scollan, had received a verbal okay from the building inspector at the time to proceed with demolition.

Nevertheless, the Building Department — which had not issued a a permit for the structure’s demolition — issued a stop-work order when consruction commenced. Mr. Scollan met with a building inspector, Mr. Walrath said, who eventually signed off on demolition and a survey that included a third floor. “Everything was being done by the book, by the right protocol,” he said. He added that the house always had a third level. But, when the Walraths tried to get a certificate of occupancy in 2014, the Building Department found the third floor illegal. Mr. Walrath then agreed to remove the stairs accessing the top floor, and, in 2015, a certificate of occupancy was issued for a two-story structure.

Joel Halsey of Lighthouse Land Planning, Mr. Walrath’s representative during the public hearing, said several times that errors had been made in the process. His comments did not sit well with Roy Dalene, a board member who is the founder of Telemark, a construction company.

“The construction of this third floor is so blatant. I don’t understand. Did he think that he could do this?” Mr. Dalene asked, referring to Mr. Scollan.

“It is my understanding that the contractor is under the assumption that he could do this,” Mr. Halsey said. Mr. Dalene jumped in. “Is this contractor still operating? He has no idea of the code. This is blatant,” he repeated.

“Things happened in this town before the new building inspector took over,” David Lys, a zoning board member, said.

On the phone, Mr. Walrath said rapid turnover in building inspectors had been a major hindrance. “There has been no consistency or continuity,” he said. “I have had five different inspectors come to the house over the past four years.” Each new inspector would have to learn the project’s history. “It’s like trying to play a basketball game where they change the rules every five minutes.”

Mr. Lys asked about something else — a bluestone driveway that had been removed, then rebuilt. “Once that had been removed, it should have been quartz,” he said. Eventually, the bluestone was taken up and replaced with the required quartz. “It is still not naiveté,” Mr. Dalene said.

When it came time to put in a new septic system, almost all of the huge concrete rings were placed underground on the middle lot, away from the house, and, Mr. Walrath said, away from Lake Montauk. “My kids swim in that lake,” he said. “I swim in that lake.” The health of Lake Montauk is of paramount importance, Mr. Walrath said. “There are no chemicals used on the property. No nitrogen.”

If the middle lot is actually a separate lot, using it for an accessory structure is legal under the town’s so-called Jerry Seinfeld law, enacted in 2005, according to Elizabeth Baldwin, the attorney who advises the Z.B.A. Mr. Seinfeld had created a baseball field on a lot adjacent to his Further Lane, Amagansett, house. Before the law was changed, no accessory structure could be built without a dwelling on a property. The town changed the law, with officials saying it was counter to the goal of decreasing housing density.

As to whether the land referred to as the middle lot actually was a separate entity, Mr. Halsey said Mr. Walrath could, if he so desired, split it away from the lakefront lot and develop it, potentially with a house up to 10,000 square feet. Instead, Mr. Halsey offered to consider the lot attached to the lakefront lot, or “sterilized,” as he put it. The land would never be developed and a scenic easement placed on it.

“Can I just tell you the picture I have in my mind of what happened here?” Mr. Dalene asked. “The picture I am getting is that this was the plan from the get-go. Now you are coming to us and offering up merging lot two but it seems there have been many violations.”

Cate Rogers, a member of the board, said that despite the fact that the land is in a harbor protection district, it had been almost totally cleared. But Mr. Halsey argued that the two lots closest to West Lake Drive were a meadow.

“There is nothing to say that will stay a meadow,” another member, Lee White, said.

At the end of the hearing, the board agreed to keep the record open. John Whelan, chairman, said he wanted the entire Building Department history of the property, including documents stored in the basement, researched. “We’ll get to the bottom of this when we get to the archives.”­

East Hampton Town

Sanitation Department Flooded

Those looking to renew a dump permit have been advised to visit Town Hall rather than the town’s Sanitation Department. Pipes burst in the Sanitation Department’s office on Valentine’s Day, according to Patricia Sanfilippo. She and the other clerk are working in trailers behind the Highway Department while the office is being outfitted with new floors, walls, and furniture. It was particularly bad timing for the Sanitation Department, which this month processes new dump permit applications, Ms. Sanfilippo said. The department hopes to be back in its office in a couple of weeks.

Southampton Town

Blinking Light Test a Go

Next month, a three-day traffic experiment will be conducted on Country Road 39 in Southampton. The traffic light at the intersection of County Road 39 and Tuckahoe Road will be converted into a blinking yellow light from April 19 through 21 during the morning commutes from 6 to 9. The test will allow the county’s traffic engineers to study if a blinking light would ease a bottleneck that forms at the light near the Stony Brook Southampton campus.

Following a public hearing on Tuesday night, in which no one spoke for or against, the Southampton Town Board agreed to temporary restrictions on vehicular traffic, allowing for the use of a blinking light. During the test period, left-hand turns onto County Road 39 from Tuckahoe Road, which runs north and south, intersecting the highway, as well as left turns by westbound traffic from 39 onto Tuckahoe Road, will be prohibited. Drivers also won’t be able to drive straight across County Road 39 to continue on Tuckahoe.

New Date for Gateway

While the hearing on the change of zoning for a mixed-use planned development district known as the Bridgehampton Gateway project had been held over until April 26, the Southampton Town Board voted Tuesday night to postpone it another week. Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said the previous date fell in the middle of public schools’ spring break, and he had a family obligation. Councilwoman Julie Lofstad would also be out of town, he said.

The board decided in February to keep the hearing on whether to consider a zoning change open as the proposal — presented with 90,000 square feet of commercial and retail space, plus affordable housing and market-rate condominiums — had failed to win community approval. The developer, Carol Konner, is working on making some changes.

Bridgehampton Street Renamed

A portion of Hildreth Avenue in Bridgehampton will now be called Audubon Road following a request by the street’s residents. Hildreth Avenue is an oddly shaped street that starts at Ocean Road and then turns at a 90-degree angle toward Sagaponack Road. The latter portion was renamed Audubon Road by town board resolution on Tuesday night after a quiet public hearing. The numbering on the street has posed problems, and residents often have trouble receiving deliveries, according to Carl Benincasa, an assistant town attorney.

Push for Accessory Apartments

Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said last week that he is working on a plan for accessory affordable apartments that would help address the town’s housing crisis in which “the town is generating a huge labor demand that can’t live here.” He is working with Michael DeSario, the president of St. Michael’s Windmill Housing Associates in Amagansett, in the hopes of coming up with a proposal for a program that would match those working in Southampton Town with homeowners in need of extra income. The program would help pay for converting space in “underutilized houses” into accessory apartments, Mr. Schneiderman said.

Even though the proposal is in its infancy, the supervisor said his goal is to register 25 units by the end of the year. “I think the community wouldn’t even know that they’re there,” he said. “I feel like we have an obligation as a town board to try to find a better way to house a larger percentage of our work force.”