Myriad rising costs are impacting the bottom line in the East Hampton School District, where, for the first time in a decade, and only the second time in the history of New York State’s cap on tax-levy increases, the district is seeking voter approval for an over-the-tax-cap budget plan.

While not all the spaces in Jay Eastman’s newly renovated Park Place building have been leased, two anchors are in place: Amber Waves will move across the brick alleyway known as Eastman Way to occupy 64 Park Place, and a new burger and shake restaurant, Smokey Buns, will be next door at 68 Park Place.

The dawn chorus of birdsong is different depending on your habitat, your location, and the time of year. Songbird migration will peak by mid-May. As songbirds migrate overhead during the night, they blanket the sleeping country with sound, calling to each other to keep their flocks together and tight. When they land, they sing us awake.

The Sag Harbor Planning Board agreed that Adam Potter’s plans for a 61,292-square-foot downtown building including 44 apartments and nearly 8,000 square feet of commercial space would require a lengthy environmental review. The developer said he is “happy to go through the process. . . . We’d love to be able to answer any questions that people have.”

Adriano Rangel, a junior who was East Hampton’s delegate to the Angelo Del Toro Puerto Rican/Hispanic Youth Leadership Institute in Albany, is also one of just seven delegates chosen to attend a similar program, the Somos Conference in Puerto Rico, in November.

Taking risks can be scary and overwhelming, but Emily O’Reilly, the eighth-grade English teacher at Springs School, showed students that taking risks can be worth it. Recently, she “walked the walk,” so to speak, when she entered a poetry contest she saw posted in a local newspaper.

“I’ve definitely had to answer questions” about the 2024-25 school budget proposal, Joshua Odom, Montauk’s superintendent, said in explaining the strange situation the district came up against this year — the discovery, by a school board member, that taxpayers were accidentally overcharged last year by approximately $56 per thousand dollars of assessed value. The solution? A tax credit for Montauk homeowners.

Public hearings have been scheduled in each school district ahead of the May 21 budget vote. See when your district's hearing is.

The Montauk Library will cut the ribbon Saturday on its new tween room, a space devoted to the needs of students in fifth through eighth grades. Plus: coding for kids, community service events, book clubs, crafts, movies, and more for kids and teens.

This photo, taken in 1999 during a tour of the 1804 Gardiner Mill off James Lane, shows the smock-style windmill’s inner gears.

Durell Godfrey, a photographer whose images have been a visual chronicle of life in East Hampton since her work was first published in The East Hampton Star more than 20 years ago, won third place in the Photographer of the Year category in the New York Press Association’s 2023 Better Newspaper Contest.

A 17-year-old girl fell victim to an online scam when she attempted to sell a prom dress on the website Poshmark on April 14. She ultimately sent more than $1,000 in Apple gift cards, thinking there was an error with her account after receiving an email from the company that turned out to be fake. An investigation is still ongoing.

Readers debate the changing nature of East Hampton, from roosters to exclusive clubs.

Way back in 1899, The Star had the good sense to call out the folly of changing old Long Island place names, singling out the late, lamented Good Ground, now pedestrian Hampton Bays.

How do you get from Covid to the tax cap? Consider what will be lost if sharp cuts have to be made to the school budgets in East Hampton.

Interested in seeing the 10,000-foot view of how far inland the eroding shoreline has reached? Take a look in Google Maps at the end of Bay View Avenue near Lazy Point, Amagansett.

What the community gets for the money it spends on libraries is impressive indeed.

I am happily a morning person, but birds tend to get annoying as the day goes on.

If I were a car, what kind of car would I be?

The latest South Fork real estate rundown.