A development on Handy Lane that has riled neighbors is a familiar story in East Hampton Town and across the South Fork: along with teardowns and rebuilds, spec houses that, with seemingly few exceptions, take allowable lot coverage and floor area to their absolute limit.

Working toward the goals of cleaner waters and stable shorelines, the South Fork Sea Farmers engaged students from the Springs School and East Hampton High School to help construct a new oyster reef in Accabonac Harbor this week.

After last week’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, a public hearing on a proposal to raise a 185-foot cellphone tower at the 172-acre Camp Blue Bay in Springs seemed likely by October. Other than lingering questions about a diesel-fueled generator, the board appeared satisfied that the application was ready to hear the public’s comments, for better or worse.

The East Hampton Village Board has created a new aesthetics committee made up of designers, architects, and “tastemakers,” who will advise it on projects and initiatives. On Friday, it got its first task: deciding whether the village could accept an offer from a homeowner whose house overlooks a preserved property adjacent to a Main Beach parking lot.

Ketamine, an illegal hallucinogenic party drug, also known as Special K, might hold the key to treating 10-year-old Rowland Egerton-Warburton of Water Mill, who was diagnosed in 2016 with ADNP syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder.

Citing the time and expertise required to process applications, the East Hampton Town Planning Department has proposed updated application and permit fees. Some application processes “are quite involved,” the planning director said, requiring, for example, attention of the attorney’s office, the town board, the planning board, the Building Department, and the fire marshal. If applicants aren’t asked to “shoulder the majority of the burden for the service that they are asking us to perform,” the town’s other taxpayers “are picking up that tab.”

“My focus has been on really addressing wages within the town to invest in our human resources, our staff, to bring them up to a more competitive level," East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said of the 2023 budget, which the town board will focus on during work sessions on Oct. 4 and 11. The town, he said, “has fallen a bit behind other municipalities” in employee salaries.

The East Hampton Town Water Quality Technical Advisory Committee made grant recommendations for high-impact improvement projects in Sag Harbor and Amagansett to the town board. By far the larger of the committee’s recommendations, and the largest to date in the committee’s request-for-applications program, is a grant of just over $1 million to Sag Harbor Village for an expansion of its existing sewage treatment plant.

Jamal Johns of Newark is the latest defendant to accept a plea deal for his part in a March robbery at the East Hampton Balenciaga, when five people made off with $94,000 worth of handbags from the luxe Newtown Lane retail shop.

An early morning car crash on Woods Lane in East Hampton Village on Monday ground traffic to a halt for four hours and sent Delvair Dias, 73, to Stony Brook Hospital. East Hampton Fire Department personnel utilizing the jaws of life extricated Mr. Dias from his severely damaged vehicle.

In response to a rash of car thefts and break-ins, the East Hampton Town Police Department issued a statement Wednesday imploring people to remove their key fobs and other valuable items from their cars and lock them overnight.

Local police made two drunken-driving arrests in the town last week and one in the village.

Thieves hit a pop-up jewelry shop at Gurney’s Resort and Spa on Labor Day weekend. A woman grabbed a hat from a display, the shopowner told police, and tossed it to a friend seated on a couch nearby; the two then left the premises, hat in hand. The owner, Hayley Denman, said it was a cheap hat, but that not long after, one of the women had returned and dropped a $5,400 diamond butterfly necklace into her purse before fleeing. The women, who will be charged with grand larceny if found, were last seen getting into an Uber.

Want to improve communications at the Springs School, or weigh in on topics like health and safety, school policy, or technology? The school is seeking parents and community members to volunteer for topic-based committees.

Big Truck Day returns Saturday to the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton. Plus, pajama story time, leaf printing, and puppets at the Sag Harbor American Music Festival.

Born in the 2018-19 school year out of the desire for a more rigorous curriculum that also lined up with New York State’s changing academic requirements, Pierson Middle and High School’s PLANT program — Preparing Learners for a New Tomorrow — is finally blooming.

A large group of tree swallows is called a gulp, which proves ornithologists are not without humor. Before the leaves change, gulps of swallows crowd our beaches. At Mecox Inlet, Sagaponack Pond, and the dunes that circle Napeague Harbor, hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of tree swallows collect.

“Pleasure is our birthright. And it’s great to experience who you are as a person and as a sexual being without being shamed,” said Dr. Lee Phillips, a psychotherapist, sex therapist, and substance abuse counselor with practices in New York City and Virginia, and now Water Mill.

In an attempt to secure the health of its waterways for future generations, Sag Harbor Village has hired an engineering firm to develop a master sewer plan that will connect more parcels to its wastewater treatment plant. The project’s estimated price tag? A whopping $78 million.

Under a hot mid-September sun, the Burying Ground Preservation Group, a nonprofit organization formed in 2018, was at work last Thursday at the Hog Creek Cemetery, a small parcel on Hog Creek Road in Springs where members of the Parsons family are buried.