Time limits on parking in and around the municipal parking lot in Amagansett should be reduced as a short-term measure to alleviate the parking deficit in the hamlet, the new rules should be enforced aggressively, and, in the long term, the town should acquire more land for parking.  So said Tina Piette at an Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee meeting on Monday.

Ms. Piette, who is on the subcommittee charged with making recommendations to the town board, said it had met with Supervisor Larry Cantwell and other town officials, including Alex Walter, Mr. Cantwell’s executive assistant, and Lt. John Claflin of the Police Department, and had decided that the hamlet would always face a parking deficit unless the town acquired more land.

In the absence of an acquisition, however, the parking shortage, which is particularly acute in summer, can be eased by reducing from one hour to 30 minutes the time limit on three or four spaces in front of the Amagansett Library, Mary’s Marvelous, and Amagansett Wine and Spirits, all on Main Street. Those spaces are adjacent to the municipal lot’s entrance and surrounded by handicapped spaces, which would be unaffected.

The lot accommodates approximately 155 vehicles, with a 24-hour limit on the three northernmost rows. The subcommittee recommended reducing the number of 24-hour spaces from 79 to approximately 53. The two-hour limit for the remainder of the lot would remain in place.

Given what Ms. Piette said was scant enforcement, the northernmost rows now effectively offer unlimited parking. “If the 24-hour rule was just enforced there would be a lot more turnover in the summer,” she said. Because an estimated 110 people work in the commercial district, however, “there might be a bit of a backlash.”

Ms. Piette suggested that parking be regulated from May 15 to Oct. 1 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., but suggested that regulations could also be enforced year round. She said that better signs describing the regulations are necessary in the municipal lot. 

Parking at the town-owned spaces at the Long Island Rail Road station should be limited to 24 hours, she said. The subcommittee also suggested that spaces owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — the row closest to the tracks — be designated for drop off and pickup only.

 The committee voted in favor of asking the town board to enact the subcommittee’s recommendations, combined with aggressive enforcement. “Those were the suggestions to get going on next summer to improve flow,” Ms. Piette said. “And of course, buying more property for parking should be on the town’s agenda.”

Members of East Hampton Town’s energy sustainability advisory committee presented a draft climate action plan to the town board on Tuesday, urging its swift adoption and implementation to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.

John Botos, an environmental technician with the town’s Natural Resources Department, and Gordian Raacke, executive director of the advocacy group Renewable Energy Long Island, recommended actions including retrofits of facilities, replacement or conversion of vehicles, energy-efficiency upgrades and stormwater management on residential properties, and long-range planning for coastal resiliency.

The climate action plan, Mr. Botos said, results from the town board’s 2009 and 2010 resolutions to join the state’s Climate Smart Communities program and builds on the town’s comprehensive management plan, local waterfront revitalization plan, clean energy action plan, and comprehensive energy vision.

It dovetails, Mr. Raacke said, with New York State’s “ambitious goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the gases that cause climate change,” 80 percent below current levels by midcentury.

The plan, he said, uses as a benchmark the New York Institute of Technology’s local greenhouse gas emission inventory for East Hampton — in 2010, an annual rate of 350,000 metric tons. “The good news is, by knowing where we’re starting we can measure our progress, and we will be,” Mr. Raacke said. The plan also gives the town, for the first time, greenhouse gas inventories of its facilities and fleet, which will also aid in assessing progress toward goals and emissions and cost savings.

Potential initiatives to reduce municipal facilities’ carbon footprint, Mr. Botos said, should include retrofits adding solar installations and wind turbines, as well as improved lighting, insulation, and window replacements. The plan also calls on the town government to explore partnerships with the state’s Boards of Cooperative Educational Services to encourage energy efficiency in school districts, and to implement a web-based interface of automation systems to monitor and control town-owned buildings. These actions would reduce emissions while saving money, he said. “It does pay to go green.”

Mr. Botos referred to the Town of Southold’s Human Services Department, which he said has saved $100,000 in fuel costs by changing the vehicles used for its home-delivered meals program for senior citizens. While East Hampton Town has already installed an electric vehicle charging station at Town Hall, the plan also calls for the town’s fleet to be replaced or converted with a focus on electric and hybrid vehicles, while locations for additional charging stations should be identified. Vehicle sharing between departments and among school districts would further reduce emissions.

In the residential sector, “one thing we really need to do is make sure every new home to be built here is top-notch energy efficient,” Mr. Raacke said. “If we don’t, we’re building a home that has a huge hole in the wall,” needlessly wasting homeowners’ money “and emitting much more greenhouse gases than we have to.” He suggested a new building code that would require new and reconstructed houses to be subject to a home energy rating system as administered by the Residential Energy Services Network, a nonprofit that produces energy efficiency standards. Houses meeting this standard, he said, would be 40 to 50-percent more energy efficient than a conventional house. Another recommendation was to require new residential construction to incorporate stormwater management features.

Planning for the effects of climate change, including sea level rise, should be integrated into other town initiatives, according to the plan. The town has already applied for and received a $250,000 grant to compile a coastal assessment resiliency plan, which would guide development of a long-range strategy for addressing coastal concerns such as erosion, sea level rise, and flooding.

The draft climate action plan is “a mechanism for starting a discussion,” Mr. Botos said. “This will start the process of engaging the community.” All boards and departments, he said, should collaborate and educate one another to identify strengths and vulnerabilities.

“We’re not alone,” Mr. Raacke told the board, referring to 167 other municipal participants in the Climate Smart Communities program. “There is other intelligent life out there.” The Towns of Southampton and Huntington, he said, are in the process of drafting climate action plans.

The plan, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said, presented “a lot for us to digest,” but “we’re anxious to move forward” to meet the town’s energy-efficiency goals. Implementing a final plan, he said, “is going to require day-to-day work and some training and communication of staff and employees about how they can help us get there.” The board, he said, will rely on the energy sustainability committee to assist in the plan’s implementation.

The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation’s Shellfisheries Section has downgraded approximately 20 acres of bottomland in Accabonac Harbor in Springs from seasonally uncertified to uncertified year round, meaning that the harvesting of shellfish is prohibited. The areas were previously uncertified from May 1 through Nov. 30. The reclassification took effect on Tuesday.

The affected bottomlands include the area of East Harbor, located in the southernmost portion of Accabonac Harbor, south of a line extending northwesterly from the southernmost bulkhead at 73 Louse Point Road to an orange marker on the opposite western shoreline. Also affected is the area of Accabonac Harbor, Pussy’s Pond, and an unnamed cove, including tributaries, lying west of a line heading north from an orange marker on the southern shore to an orange marker on the opposite northern shoreline. The cove is south of the Merrill Lake Sanctuary and north of Harbor and Shipyard Lanes.

The D.E.C. did not provide further information or respond to a request for details.

In a letter in this week’s issue of The Star, Bill Taylor, a town trustee who is seeking re-election, advocated an aggressive campaign to address water quality. Mr. Taylor, a Democrat, asked voters to support Democratic and Independent candidates, writing that trustees will work to dredge Georgica Pond in East Hampton and “interact with all other levels of government, as an equal stakeholder, to clean up our environment.”

“I think the water quality problems we have in the Town of East Hampton are not localized problems,” Mr. Taylor said on Tuesday. “They are manifestations of something nationwide. The way to solve these things is by working together with other agencies.”

East Hampton Republicans argued on Sunday during a forum in Montauk that the current Democrat-dominated town board had been run with insufficient openness.

In an event hosted by Concerned Citizens of Montauk at the hamlet's firehouse, Tom Knobel, the Republican Committee chairman and its candidate for supervisor, said several times that the town board had worked too often on new laws behind closed doors and held too many executive sessions. He also faulted the town board for taking too long to complete work in several areas.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, who is seeking re-election, said the board had been responsive to public concerns and that many of the challenges facing the town were complex and would take time to solve. He said that community preservation fund land purchases and matters involving the town's workforce of about 300 often made closed-door sessions necessary.

The afternoon's sharpest exchange concerned the East Hampton Town Airport. "Airport noise is affecting many people. We have made a concerted effort to rein that in," Mr. Cantwell said. "Helicopter companies are contributing 75 percent of the funds to our Republican opponents, who want to challenge what we are doing," he said.

Mr. Knobel said the helicopter operators believe the town has been operating in bad faith. He said that while the town's legal expenses in defending a lawsuit brought by a coalition of commercial users and aviation industry groups were paid for from airport revenue, using that money for litigation was diverting it from necessary maintenance.

Responding to a question from the audience about more helicopter flights going to Montauk as a result of the town's noise-control measures, Mr. Cantwell said that the town would commission an analysis. Mr. Knobel said that it was "very important" that East Hampton talk to the helicopter interests to seek voluntary measures to reduce the impact of flights on residents below.

"For the most part, you are dealing with commercial companies. It's not like they didn't see this coming," Mr. Cantwell said. "We did not force this fight; they chose not to make this better."

Mr. Knobel criticized the board for what he saw as delays on "signature issues" -- beach erosion, rental registration, and work-truck parking in residential areas. "We have to perform faster and better," he said. "It amounts to a lack of transparency to keep hearings hanging," he said.

"To the contrary, I think the town has been very efficient and very effective," Mr. Cantwell said. "You want the public's input. The rental registry is a whole new system that affects the entire Town of East Hampton; to move slowly, to accommodate public comment, I think that is a good thing," he said.

"When I took office in 2014, we were replacing a town board that had become dysfunctional with political bickering and fighting. The public was being treated with disrespect. We changed that, for the positive," Mr. Cantwell countered. "If we don't work together as a town board, as a community, we won't be able to take the tough issues on," he said.

Following the general exchange, there were questions from the audience. Martin Drew, a Springs resident who has launched a write-in campaign for supervisor, asked Mr. Knobel about the town's discontinued leaf-pickup program. "I don't support it. It's a public benefit for private parties," Mr. Knobel said. 

In response to another audience question, Mr. Knobel offered qualified support for a recommendation from a town consultant for a downtown Montauk sewage treatment project. Mr. Cantwell said that a proposed sewage district would require a great deal of public support and that it would be very expensive for those taking part. "I would not support it if it were seen as a tool to increase development," he said.

Following the supervisors' exchange, the forum was turned over to four candidates for town board: Sylvia Overby, Margaret Turner, Lisa Mulhern-Larsen, and Peter Van Scoyoc. Ms. Overby, who is completing her first four-year term as a town councilwoman, cited her "proven record of accomplishments."

Ms. Turner described a "crushing need for affordable housing, but the board has badly neglected this responsibility."

"There are a lot of issues. In the last two years we have made a great deal of headway to dealing with them," Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

Ms. Mulhern-Larsen said she was concerned about summertime chaos in Montauk, and that she worries about her college-age children. "I felt it was an unsafe environment," she said. "The problems are not fixed. Taxis rules are not being enforced; are there convicted felons driving taxis? Convicted sex offenders? You don't know."

Taking an audience question, Ms. Turner said the town's affordable housing program needed to be changed. "We need to sit down with applicants, learn what worked and what didn't work," she said. She criticized an overlay zoning change that she said removed the possibility of additional housing at a specific site in East Hampton.

A short time later when she returned to the microphone, Ms. Overby said the story about additional housing was not quite how her opponents described it and criticized the East Hampton Business Alliance, from which Ms. Turner stepped down to run for town board, for not helping promote second-floor apartments over commercial spaces, for example. Regarding the overlay zoning issue, Ms. Overby responded, "The Republicans didn't say boo when that was taken off." 

Returning toward the end of the forum to issues surrounding the East Hampton Airport, Mr. Knobel said he would seek a dialogue: "Airport interests are not monolithic. They say that they have been rebuffed. There is enormous distrust between both parties; I have an open mind."

Taking a last shot, Mr. Cantwell said, "Tom has an open mind about the airport, with $115,000 of campaign donations."

Margaret Turner bundled up in a warm coat on Monday afternoon, ready to spend a few hours walking door-to-door in East Hampton as part of her campaign for a seat on the town board. She forgot to bring a pair of gloves, though, and by the time she finished a walk down Conklin Terrace, a dead-end street with perhaps 20 houses, the chill of the 40-degree afternoon had gotten to her.

But soon enough, as she turned from Newtown Lane onto Cooper Lane, she ran into a friend who happily lent her a pair of sassy-looking red gloves. Ms. Turner pledged to return them soon. That’s a campaign promise that should be easy enough to keep, but she knows the other statements she has been making along the way will require more effort.

Ms. Turner, a Republican, said her top issues are water quality protection, “full transparency and public involvement in all of our decision making,” and better planning for the town’s future.

If elected, she said, she intends to work closely with the town’s Planning Department to support the needs of people in multiple demographics, such as an aging population and young families who may not be able to afford to stay here much longer. She said she would like to see more public-private partnerships, expanded health care options, and even an assisted living facility.

“I think we have to work harder to plan for our residents’ needs,” she said during Monday afternoon’s walk. “I do not believe this town has done a good job of planning. . . . I’m very focused. This is important.”

Her bid for a town board seat is her first run for a public office, but Ms. Turner, a full-time resident of the town for close to 20 years, is no stranger to Town Hall. She served for 10 years as the executive director of the East Hampton Business Alliance, stepping down in July, and said she has been to every town board meeting during that time, more “than any of the sitting town board members.”

Since 2009 she has served on several town committees, appointed by three different supervisors to help deal with affordable housing, energy sustainability, wastewater management, and more.

She is involved with Maureen’s Haven, a shelter for the homeless, volunteers for the monthly wintertime soup kitchens at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church and for Elsa’s Ark, and is active at Most Holy Trinity, where she has been the treasurer of the Silver Tea fund-raiser for the last eight years.

Her career background is in management and product development, and she also runs Loving Hands Pet Care, taking care of pets when their owners are out of town.

In the span of an hour, Ms. Turner stopped to pet a tiny black poodle, introduced herself to a young girl on a bicycle, and saw two more people she knew. She said she is more of a runner than a walker, and so the houses went by rather quickly. At most she left a piece of campaign literature personalized with a message: “Sorry I missed you.” At others, she found a friendly audience willing to give her a few moments for an introduction. One man she encountered said he identified as a Republican but tended to vote Democrat in local elections. He called town politics “tribal,” and Ms. Turner replied by sharing her vision for a bipartisan effort to get things done.

“I’m in this because there are issues we should all be concerned about,” she said. “I feel our issues cross all party lines. We should be working jointly to solve them.”

Moments later, after wrapping up the conversation with the resident, Ms. Turner said, “This is the part that I enjoy. . . . It’s important to get your message out and answer questions.”

A housing complex planned for a five-acre property on Montauk Highway in Amagansett is expected to provide affordable living space for community members of mixed income — an alternative for “hardworking people who just can’t quite get comfortable in the open market,” according to Katherine Casey, the executive director of the East Hampton Housing Authority, which will buy the land and build the development.

The project is still being designed, said Ms. Casey, but it will serve low to moderate-income residents of all ages. The number of units is yet to be determined, but they will be of various sizes, with separate access to individual residences. Each will include an outdoor patio or other private space. The majority of the units will be handicapped-accessible, she said.

The property is owned by Putnam Bridge, the Connecticut company that had sought to build a large luxury senior citizens housing development on adjacent acreage. There was an outcry from the community, and in the end, East Hampton Town used its community preservation fund to buy the bulk of the farmland property.

The five acres in question, which are zoned for affordable housing, were excluded from the purchase, with an eye toward their eventual use as a housing site. They lie between the eastern edge of the I.G.A. shopping center and V&V Auto.

The buildings will be designed to meet “passive house” energy-efficiency standards by Anthony J. Musso, a Cold Spring Harbor architect who specializes in green building, to “take little energy to heat or cool,” Ms. Casey said.  A three-year design and construction period is expected, she said. Grants will be sought from various agencies, including the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

Monthly rents will be set at “fair-market rates,” according to Ms. Casey, pegged to a federal Office of Housing and Urban Development schedule, so that the project can be self-sustaining, though tenants may qualify for individual rent subsidy programs, and no tenant will pay more than approximately 30 percent of their income in rent. The project is aimed at people with incomes ranging from 30 to 90 percent of the median income in the area, as set by H.U.D. Those figures vary, but this year range from $26,200 for a two-person household, at the low end, to a $63,750 annual income for two at the top of the scale.

While tenants will pay their own electric bills, Ms. Casey said the plans call for a photovoltaic system to generate solar power, which will bring those costs “as low as possible.”

Applications from potential tenants will be taken about a year before the anticipated completion date, she said. There is no waiting list as yet.

The housing authority will issue a $4 million bond to buy the land and for initial costs. Last Thursday, the town board voted unanimously to guarantee the note.

“The town has been very supportive,” said Ms. Casey. She has been working with the Planning Department, and when the proposed design and construction details are ready and the Housing Authority submits an application for site plan approval, the proposal will be submitted to the town planning board.

 Beyond the initial $4 million bond, the Housing Authority will seek federal, state, and county funding, including tax credits, to cover the remaining construction costs, for which an estimate has not been provided. 

Ms. Casey, who has been head of the Housing Authority for several years and has been working on the Amagansett project for much of that time, said Monday that she is “very excited” to see it moving ahead. An analysis by consultants last year, which reviewed factors such as existing housing, housing needs, community services, demographics, and the potential impact of new housing on the Amagansett School District, including its capacity to absorb new students, supported the development, she said.

The housing project will be “very forward-thinking, very sustainable,” she said. “A livable, walkable community, transit-oriented.”  Apartments will be of a design appropriate for older adults as well as for families with children, allowing a “transgenerational” community that gives older residents the opportunity to “age in place.” There will be a central green, a play area, and a community room with a public display monitoring the green buildings’ infrastructure systems, providing an opportunity for education in sustainable building design and operation. “Rain gardens” will collect rainwater and manage runoff.

Ms. Casey hopes the development will serve as a beacon for future housing projects. “I’m very much looking forward,” she said, “in the hopes that, aesthetically and in terms of green technology and community character, and serving the community at large — that it will make it hard for anybody to oppose anything like this in the future. They’ll say, ‘They did that right.’ ”

The campaign for East Hampton Town Board and supervisor intensified this week with Democratic Party officials suggesting that the Republican candidates have coordinated with a new political action committee with ties to an out-of-state helicopter charter service. Republicans deny any coordination.

Door tags supporting the election of Tom Knobel, the Republicans’ candidate for supervisor, and Lisa Mulhern-Larsen and Margaret Turner, the party’s candidates for town board, were placed at residences. On their reverses, the tags’ content is critical of incumbent Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, all Democrats. The advertisement was paid for by a group called the East Hampton Leadership Council, and states that it “was not expressly authorized or requested by any candidate or candidate’s political committees or any of its agents.”

The Democrats, however, pointed out that the pictures of the Republican candidates are identical to those used on the party’s own website and in its advertising, and suggested Republican collusion with the group.

The New York State Board of Elections lists a Manhattan residential address for the East Hampton Leadership Council, which records indicate is the residence of Lance G. Harris, a New York attorney. At a meeting in July 2014, Mr. Harris was identified to Mr. Cantwell and Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez as a member of the board of directors of HeliFlite, a New Jersey helicopter service that is among the plaintiffs in lawsuits challenging flight restrictions at East Hampton Airport that were enacted by the town board this year, according to Ms. Burke-Gonzalez. That meeting included representatives of aviation interests who “wanted to work constructively with the town,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said. HeliFlite Shares LLC gave $5,000 to the East Hampton Town Republican Committee in July, according to the board of elections.

The plaintiffs are seeking to overturn the new restrictions, implemented in response to complaints about noise from an increasing number of flights into and out of the airport. The restrictions include curfews on aircraft deemed noisy, a category that includes most helicopters.

The East Hampton Republican Committee issued a statement on Monday denying involvement with the ad campaign. Photos of the candidates, according to the statement, “are not from our print ads but appear to have been taken off the Internet.”

“The group that put out the door hangers,” the statement said, “obviously has an interest in a proactive East Hampton Town Board that doesn’t skirt the issues and its responsibilities to the people.” A statement attributed to Mr. Knobel said that “Residents deserve a town board that will listen and work with the citizens to find solutions, to represent and serve all residents, avoid litigation, and move East Hampton forward to be the best town it can be.”

Calls to Mr. Harris and to Kurt Carlson, HeliFlite’s chief executive, were not returned. Jonathan Weinstein, a vice president in the New York office of Mercury LLC, a lobbying group based in Washington, D.C., said that he is the East Hampton Leadership Council’s spokesman. The council, he said in an email, “is a group of concerned citizens who are unhappy with the lack of leadership from Town Hall. We are advocating for the real leaders who will solve the problems in East Hampton, not continuing the destructive policies of the incumbents, which are resulting in lost jobs, lost business, and higher taxes.”

Mr. Weinstein did not respond to a request for the East Hampton Leadership Council’s membership roll.

In a release issued by the Democrats, Mr. Cantwell said that “as long as I am supervisor, we are going to maintain local control of our own airport for the benefit of the entire community. Our town will not be run so that outsiders can make money at our expense.”

The height of the water table, adjacent wetlands, and allowing a house to be demolished without appropriate approval had all sides in a controversial application before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals seeing red on Sept. 29. The immediate question was whether a property owner could take advantage of variances and permits that had been granted before the structure was demolished.

The 1.7-acre property, at 96 Northwest Landing Road, was purchased by Peter Emerson in 2013 for $2.2 million, under an L.L.C. called ESLanding. The previous owner had been before the Z.B.A. in 2009, and again in 2010, obtaining approvals to expand the residence and add a swimming pool and decking. He never followed through.

In March, Dan Casey, a former town building inspector, issued the new owner a permit to demolish the house even though demolition had not come up before the Z.B.A. “It was not until after the demolition had taken place that the Zoning Board of Appeals received a memo asking if the property was ready for the issuance of a building permit and the error was discovered,” Tyler Borsack, a planner for the town, wrote in a memo to the board.

There are extensive wetlands to the north and southwest of the property, requiring a permit to build near the wetlands, and major setback variances from the wetlands would be needed for the proposed pool.

The old house on the property had been built before town zoning was adopted, and it was built with less than the currently required two-foot separation between the structure and the water table. The new proposal adds a basement, exacerbating the problem.That means sump pumps would have to be used, particularly during rainfall, Mr. Borsack wrote in his memo.

Robert M. Connelly, an attorney with Farrel Fritz, spoke on behalf of the applicant. “This is not a self-created hardship,” he said. He called the demolition permit a mistake, saying his client should not have to pay for an error by the town. “They relied on the building inspector,” he said.

Pat Trunzo, who would be the builder, told the board the structure would be completely waterproofed, using a new method of pouring concrete, which has no seams for water to flow through. Mr. Trunzo said pilings would have to be driven beneath the foundation, because the ground itself is extremely porous.

Neighbors, however, objected to the project, expressing particularly strong opposition to the pool. “As we all know, building a pool in a Harbor Overlay District is virtually prohibited because of the obvious threat to the wetlands,” T. James Matthews, head of the Northwest Alliance, wrote in a letter to the board. “There are no pools at any homes on Northwest Landing Road.”

“Caveat emptor. The owner should have known,” Donald Lehman, another neighbor, told the board. David Demarest, yet another neighbor, said the applicant should consider eliminating the pool. “This is a luxury,” he said.

At the close of the hearing, the record was kept open for one week to allow Mr. Connelly to submit the Suffolk County Board of Health Service’s approval for the proposed sanitary system.

As Election Day approaches, the East Hampton Environmental Coalition is working toward two goals: Making sure candidates in local races do not forget about environmental causes, and making sure the general public knows which way they stand.

The environmental coalition, made up of, at last count, 17 organizations that come together every other year around this time, announced a three-pronged plan of action on Friday. It will distribute its “East Hampton Green Guide,” summarizing its members’ concerns and detailing their policy goals, to the candidates, and will publish in full their unedited responses to a questionnaire on environmental issues. On Saturday, it will sponsor a question-and-answer forum with the candidates at the Amagansett Library from 2 to 4 p.m. Candidates running on the Democratic slate will make their case in the first hour; the second hour will be for the Republicans.

The coalition’s member groups include the Quiet Skies Coalition, which campaigns against aircraft noise; the Dark Sky Society, which addresses light pollution; Defend H20, which wants to improve water quality; the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, Long Island Businesses for Responsible Energy, and more. Jim Matthews, the head of the Northwest Alliance and co-chair of the environmental coalition with Jeremy Samuelson, estimates that it has 6,000 members in all.

“What they share in common is a tremendous commitment to the East End environment,” Mr. Matthews said. “As we all commonly know and believe and cherish, the East End is certainly one of the most preserved and marvelous environments that we could possibly hope to live in. It has become the obligation of those who live here to do everything we can to protect it.”

He praised “the sensitive leadership” of East Hampton town and village, saying that, over the years, wisdom has largely prevailed here when it has come to environmental issues.

“Of that we are very proud; on the other hand we are also very defensive,” Mr. Matthews said. “Each year that there is an election, we gather to do what we can to be sure that everyone remembers that the environment is what makes this place great. We want to keep the candidates and the electorate, in particular, very much aware of the issues that concern all of these groups.”

Affordable housing advocates who have been working on the creation of a 48-unit apartment complex for low-income residents that they had hoped could be built on town land in Wainscott have so far not seen support from the East Hampton Town Board, which has been asked to provide land for the project, as has been done for other affordable housing efforts.

Representatives of the Windmill Village Housing Development Fund Corporation had hoped to be included on the town board’s Tuesday work session agenda, but were not on the list as of yesterday, according to Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell. The housing group was involved in the creation of three affordable housing complexes for senior citizens, Windmill Village I and II in East Hampton and the St. Michael’s apartments in Amagansett.

At a recent candidates’ debate and again yesterday morning, Mr. Cantwell expressed concerns about the potential impact of the project on the Wainscott School District, which has 22 students at present in its two-room schoolhouse.

“There has to be a consideration as to overwhelming any particular school district . . . so that’s a concern,” said Mr. Cantwell yesterday.

The Wainscott School Board itself weighed in early on about the housing project, expressing opposition and urging the town board not to act until the potential impact could be further examined. The project would have a “profound impact” on the school, David Eagan, the school board president, told the town board.

But estimates of the number of additional students the project might add to the district in analyses prepared by the district and by the town Planning Department vary widely.

The Planning Department found that the apartment housing could add six to nine new students to the kindergarten through third-grade classes housed at the Wainscott School, and a total of 28 new students to the district, including the youngest children. The district sends its older students to the East Hampton School District.

Over the next 10 years, a total of 38 additional students could be expected in the Wainscott district if the apartments are built, according to the Planning Deparment analysis.

The Wainscott School District had predicted between 43 and 55 new students over the next 10 years if the affordable housing were built.

In response to the school district’s concerns, the Windmill organization revised its proposal, reducing the number of apartments sizable enough for families in the mix of one, two, and three-bedroom units.

David Weinstein, a member of the Windmill housing organization’s board of directors, said last week that he feels the new affordable housing proposal has “a lot of support in the community.”

In a presentation to the town board some time ago, Michael DeSario, who was also a member of the board and now serves the group as a consultant, said that federal, state, and county grants and tax credits could cover the entirety of the estimated $15 million construction costs.

“Our studies have shown that the residents of the housing would be 90 to 100-percent from the East Hampton community. The children are going to school here anyway,” said Mr. Weinstein last week.

And, he added, should the location of affordable housing in Wainscott result in a hike in school taxes for the education of more students, the district taxpayers could well shoulder it.

“Our thinking is, if you look at the taxes, the current tax in the Wainscott School District is approximately 20 percent or less than the taxes in the Springs School District.” The Wainscott taxes, he said, would “still be nowhere comparable” to those in surrounding areas. “It would still be the lowest school taxes by far among the five school districts.”

“At the end of the day it’s a question of fairness,” he said. “I have an ethos that we all have an obligation to educate our young.”

“Where is the burden to be taken on?” he asked. “The community at large,” he said, should be “fairly sharing the burden,” he said, “and they have the ability.”

Mr. Cantwell said yesterday that there are various ways to address the range of housing needs in East Hampton. “We have multiple housing needs throughout the town,” he said, “and if in a particular school district a 40-unit proposal requires either a major expansion of the school or [of] their students attending the school, there are options. There are ways to resolve these issues.”

The East Hampton School District has also recently expressed its concerns about the addition of new students from new affordable housing within its boundaries, and the cost of educating them, in light of an East Hampton Town plan to build 12 townhouse units on Accabonac Road.

In a letter and appearance before the town board last moth, Rich Burns, the East Hampton schools superintendent, said that while the East Hampton School Board “supports affordable housing” the board “does not believe that this fiscal responsibility should fall entirely to E.H.U.F.S.D. taxpayers — as is currently the case.”

Property taxes or payments in lieu of taxes provided for affordable housing complexes do not cover the per-pupil education costs, the letter said.

“There must be a more equitable geographic distribution of affordable family housing among the hamlets,” the school board wrote. “There must also be a concerted effort to develop a formula for equally distributing the educational costs associated with such housing among all of the taxpayers of East Hampton Town. The responsibility for affordable family housing — which benefits our entire town and our entire community — is one we must all share equally. That is not the case today.”