The last few years have presented challenges the Springs Food Pantry’s founders could not have anticipated when it was first established. More than 600 families are now registered to receive the assistance it provides, and an average of 355 families are served each week.

While conditions had improved by Monday, last weekend, the Surfrider Foundation’s Eastern Long Island chapter, which partners with Concerned Citizens of Montauk and the Peconic Baykeeper in sampling and analyzing local waters, canceled an International Surfing Day meetup that was to happen that day at Ditch Plain Beach, citing alarmingly high levels of Enterococcus bacteria in the water.

The East Hampton Village Board was criticized at its meeting last week for not doing enough to communicate two new laws that have been ensnaring landscapers and contractors since the middle of May. One requires service workers to register annually with the village at a cost of $250. The other, a noise ordinance, shortens hours for certain landscaping and construction activities between May 15 and Sept. 15.

A new gymnasium and a marine biology wet lab may be in the cards for the Sag Harbor School District. According to Jeff Nichols, the district superintendent, the plans are still in their early days, but he hopes to put a bond referendum for the project to a public vote by the fall.

One of the essential roles of religion, Rabbi Jan Uhrbach of the Bridge Shul in Bridgehampton said this week, is to “help us hold onto our humanity, and remind us of the higher values that go beyond money and power and position and all of those things, in a time when the values that I hold dear are not only being violated, they’re being rejected as values.”

East Hampton Town’s Democratic Party candidates launched their 2025 campaign on Monday with a gathering marked by gloomy assessments of Democrats’ status at the national level mixed with encouraging signs of resistance. At home, they enjoy a supermajority on the town board and among the town trustees, with some incumbents running unopposed for re-election.

The East Hampton Town Trustees will write a letter to the town board supporting the purchase of two parcels fronting Georgica Cove by the Peconic Land Trust, which is at present in contract, and the simultaneous sale of an easement to the town and to East Hampton Village to ensure their preservation in perpetuity.

It might be surprising to learn that the Coast Guard, which has a station in Montauk, owns 17 houses in Springs. Perhaps even more surprising was the news last week that it would like to upgrade the septic systems at all 17 properties, and will seek grants from the town to do so.

The Children’s Museum of the East End celebrated the grand opening of a brand-new playground — a goal the museum’s co-presidents, Liz Bard and Lara Sweeney, have been working toward for four years.

The 2025 valedictorians and salutatorians at East Hampton and Pierson High Schools already have résumés that put most of us to shame, and they’re just getting started. Along with their academic successes, they are standout musicians, athletes, and volunteers.

High school graduation ceremonies take place Friday in East Hampton and Saturday at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor. In East Hampton, 241 students will graduate under a tent on the school grounds at 6 p.m. Pierson’s ceremony takes place at 5 p.m. Saturday on Pierson Hill.

The East Hampton Village Board voted to approve a $30.7 million budget for the next fiscal year that includes a tax increase of 1.28 percent for village residents.

The East Hampton Village Board has posted new dates for public hearings on a plan to trim term limits for the zoning board of appeals and the planning board from five years to three. Those hearings will now be held on July 2.

Hemerocallis may be an unfamiliar term, but the garden adjacent to Clinton Academy once bore the name. This photo shows the gate to the garden some two decades after its establishment in 1941.

He was “just out for a walk” on the night of June 18, a Wooded Oak Lane man told officers responding to reports of a suspicious person in the area, before admitting that he’d been going through his neighbors’ mailboxes.

Two S.U.V.s, one a Hyundai and the other a Mercedes, were badly damaged in a collision at the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path and Potters Lane, off Huckleberry Lane in East Hampton, on the morning of June 20.

The attorney for the driver in a fatal Springs accident on June 15 confirmed on June 19 that the Suffolk County district attorney’s office had notified her that it would be convening a grand jury on upgraded charges the following day.

A woman who was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital after a May 2 car accident here had the misdemeanor drunken-driving charges against her dismissed on June 12 after a toxicology report from the hospital showed that she had no alcohol or drugs in her system.

Harris Yulin, who appeared in over 100 film and television roles, as well as countless theater performances dating back to 1963, died in New York City on June 10. A part-time Bridgehampton resident, he was 87.

Robert Emmett Gosman, who with his family built Gosman’s Dock from a modest chowder house on Montauk Harbor to an expansive complex of restaurants, shops, and a wholesale and retail seafood business, died last Thursday. He was 89.