According to Marasca family lore, the barber shop pictured here was a direct result of the actor John Drew encouraging his barber, Paul Marasca, to leave New York City for East Hampton.

If the numbers shake out the way they were presented during Monday’s meeting of the Sag Harbor School Board, the district could see its 2024-25 budget top $50 million for the first time — but still stay under the state-mandated cap on tax-levy increases.

“A vibrant display of student artwork from regional schools and our community” will be on view at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill through April 7. Plus: puzzles, grilled cheese sandwiches, St. Patrick's Day fun, youth soccer, a grandparents' play date, and more in store for kids and teens this week.

The Level Playing Field Foundation, which first began granting scholarships to East Hampton High School students two years ago to defray the costs of college counseling, college visits, and test-prep tutoring, awarded another round of scholarships on Saturday, valued at roughly $3,800 per student.

East Hampton Town’s junior lifeguard training, evaluation, and testing in advance of the summer junior lifeguard program for kids 9 to 15 is underway at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Sundays. All new and returning participants are required to attend.

On Jan. 25, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released his list of schools that are under fiscal stress in the state. There was disturbingly high fiscal stress in Amityville and the New Suffolk Common School District, and Springs School was on the list for being susceptible to fiscal stress. 

On Feb. 26, a few minutes before midnight, an officer patrolling Sag Harbor's Long Wharf discovered that a car had smashed into a wooden guardrail. Surveillance camera footage revealed that the damage was caused by a driver who, the very next day but in an unrelated incident, was charged with driving while intoxicated.

A 28-year-old Amagansett woman was arrested Friday afternoon on felony charges of larceny, stemming from a Feb. 15 incident at the M&T Bank branch on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village.

Martha Mary Whelan Robinson, who grew up in East Hampton, “dedicated her life to finding housing for the homeless and the developmentally challenged” and later worked to expand literacy education. She died of A.L.S. on Feb. 7 at the age of 65.

Joan Dickson of Amagansett, a social worker, birdwatcher, and later in life an accomplished painter and printmaker, died on Oct. 30. She was 92.

Hal Buckner, who for more than 20 years focused on the female figure as the central imagery in his artwork, died at home in Water Mill on Jan. 26. He was 85.

Ann Williams Chapman, a board member of the East Hampton Library for 40 years who was actively involved in its expansion and fund-raising activities, died on Jan. 22. She was 96.

Emily Morgan Cobb, a Broadway stage actress and early supporter of the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, died at home in Springs on Feb. 26 at the age of 102.

Jennifer Mulligan of East Hampton died at East End Hospice’s Kansas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue on Saturday. She was 76 and had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Faith Hermany of Montauk died in her sleep at home on Saturday. She was 97.

The New York State Assembly is considering the Deadly Driving Bill, which would change the definition of “drug” in state law to include “any substance or combination of substances that impair, to any extent, physical or mental abilities,” making it easier to prosecute drug-related driving violations. Right now, if police cannot ascertain just what substance is involved, they may not be able to make an arrest in the first place.

“We’re looking at Ditch as potentially a two-phase project with the dune restoration to happen as quickly as possible, and we’ll reassess before Memorial Day to see if we need to have more sand brought in,” said East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez. The immediate goal is to protect the neighborhood from flooding following a series of winter storms that took the beach down to the hardpan.

East Hampton Town will seek New York State Pro-Housing Community designation as part of a program established last year by executive order of Gov. Kathy Hochul to reward local governments that are working to address the state’s housing crisis. Municipalities with Pro-Housing Community status that apply for grant funding are given priority by certain state agencies.

A nine-foot wall of geocubes at the end of Bay View Avenue on Napeague has prevented access to the beach from neighboring houses since it was installed in 2018, but without the geocubes, the owner of the property said, his house would be inundated during storms and made unlivable. He wants to replace them with a 108-foot-long, 10-foot-high rock revetment.

Kayla Kearney, a 20-year-old college student from Springs, is making “baby steps” toward recovery every day at Weill-Cornell Hospital in Manhattan after undergoing several complicated medical procedures for treatment of a rare type of brain tumor.