Nearly a month after an explosive public hearing on the creation of a new East Hampton Village Department of Emergency Medical Services to take control of the ambulance association, the corps is experiencing a shortage of volunteers to cover overnight shifts and its chief is asking the village to hire a paid emergency medical technician to fill the gaps.

A groundbreaking ceremony for a long-awaited aquatic center at the Montauk Playhouse is planned for July, Sarah Iudicone, the president of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation’s board, told a delighted East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

The Suffolk County Legislature voted 14-to-3 last week to raise its hotel/motel tax from its current 3-percent rate to 5 1/2 percent. The increase starts on June 1, just in time for the season. Legislator Bridget Fleming was one of the three who voted against the hike, along with Al Krupski of Cutchogue and Anthony Piccirillo of Holtsville.

The East Hampton Town Board last Thursday voted to promote Eric Schantz, the assistant planning director, to director of housing and community development, making him the fifth new town department head appointed since late December, following the retirement of several longtime key officials.

Opponents of a new spring turkey hunting season pleaded with the East Hampton Town Board to opt out of the program until the last minute, but on Tuesday the board, as it had previously indicated it would, voted only to prohibit hunting during a five-day span around Memorial Day weekend.

The Springs School District’s over-the-tax-cap budget proposal for the 2023-24 school year continues to take shape as Tuesday’s state-imposed deadline looms. Schools must finalize their budgets by then.

A famous surf break in Montauk known as the Ranch may soon have to be called the Ranches if an applicant gets approval for a 3,591-square-foot residence overlooking it. The break is at the base of a cliff in the heart of the moorlands, a dwarf forest habitat that doesn’t exist anywhere else in New York State.

The Long Island Community Foundation has awarded a $25,000 grant to Concerned Citizens of Montauk to install floating wetlands again in Fort Pond, an effort through which the group has been able to mitigate the harmful blue-green algal blooms that have beset the pond in recent years.

The coming week brings movie madness for kids and teens, from classic films to newer box office hits, along with plenty of other activities to learn and play.

A new principal and a new honor for the Bridgehampton School.

Whose trees are these? A village employee called in the law on Saturday afternoon when he suspected a Lockwood Lane homeowner was illegally pruning trees on village property. The pruning is paused for now, while a code enforcement officer investigates.

East Hampton Town police recently levied drunken-driving charges against two men who had been convicted of D.W.I. within the last 10 years.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to extend the time that developers of the South Fork Wind farm have to complete the restoration of Beach Lane in Wainscott, from April 30 to May 22.

Else Anna Grimm, a year-round resident of Montauk since 1991, died on March 29 at home after a two-month illness. She was 92.

Beverley Mountain Galban, an amateur artist who was inspired by the beauty of the East End, died on April 9 at home in Summit, N.J., after a long illness. A resident of Sagaponack for several months each year, she was 85.

Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, sent this 1948 letter to Abe Katz, an East Hampton dairy farmer, on the subject of an animal research laboratory planned for Montauk.

Ann Burack-Weiss of Montauk and New York City, an author and gerontologist, died of complications of metastatic breast cancer at home in Manhattan on April 3. She was 86. 

Vito Brullo of East Hampton died on Monday at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead. He was 78. Visiting hours will be Monday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton.

To mark Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jewish Center of the Hamptons will have Deborah Dwork, director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the City University of New York Graduate Center, speaking after the 11 a.m. service on Sunday.

The weather was, for the first time in a while, pleasant on Monday, as was East Hampton High’s 7-1 baseball win here over the Westhampton Beach Hurricanes that day.