“Everything is on track to go from public to private use,” Bill O’Connor told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

When the fire alarm went off at Southampton High School at 9:24 on Monday morning, it was not a drill. Everyone was evacuated safely in three minutes and 34 seconds as firefighters rushed to the school: A burning smell had been reported in the building, a fire department official said afterward, attributing it to a burned-out motor in a heating and ventilation unit. That incident was hardly major, but it underscored the importance of safety codes and procedures in schools.

Irwin Levy led a successful hike through the studios of the late Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park connecting nature and art, and then thought, why not nature and history?

On social media, Mark Smith has shared only a few of the pictures he’s taken of these ordinary moments at a refugee center in southeast Poland, just a couple of miles from the Ukraine border, yet there is something about them that serves to make the everyday consequences of the war in Ukraine very palpable for people an ocean away who can easily push it out of their thoughts.

Eleven days ago, on April 3, the northern gannets invaded Sag Harbor. A friend sent a video of several hundred crowding the waters surrounding Long Wharf. Above them, the sky teemed with more. In 20 years of birding around Sag Harbor, I had never seen more than a handful from the wharf.

An engineering project to alleviate chronic flooding on Stephen Hand’s Path near its intersection with Route 114 in East Hampton is projected to begin this fall and be completed in the spring of 2023.

Covid-19 pandemic-era exceptions to New York State’s Open Meetings Law, which allowed meetings to be held, and the public to participate, via video conference, can be made permanent, thanks to changes adopted with the state’s 2022-2023 budget.

The findings were mixed at the East Hampton Town Trustees meeting on Monday, when Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences delivered an annual report that emphasized how human activity on land influences the health of the waters around it.

The existing fields will be displaced by Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s freestanding emergency department and imaging and diagnostic center, for which the town board previously approved a lease with the Southampton Hospital Association.

Proposed changes to the East Hampton Town code would expand the definition of litter to include “gravel, loam, dirt, and other debris,” as well as prohibit “drag-out” of such materials onto public roadways and require that the contents of any vehicle containing yard waste be covered and secured. The motivation for the proposed changes includes complaints about drag-out of debris from commercial industrial sites such as sand and gravel mines.

After months of tinkering with a very challenging project, the Sag Harbor Village Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to set a public hearing on proposed changes to the village code that will allow for affordable housing development in the village.

Eleven months after a public groundbreaking ceremony and eight months after the actual breaking of ground, substantial progress has been made on “Forever Home,” a significant re-envisioning and renovation of the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons campus in Wainscott.

The Sag Harbor School Board on Monday adopted a $45.99-million spending plan that will be put up for a community vote on May 17. The proposal is unchanged from the last time it was discussed, on March 21, with one notable exception: New York State’s governor and Legislature have reached an agreement on their own budget, which will lead to more state money for Sag Harbor.

Near sunset on Friday, an erratic driver was reported near a Laura’s Lane house in Springs. Police found a blue and white Mustang near the pavilion at Maidstone Park and let the driver know he’d been seen driving well over the speed limit. The man said he’d observe the limit going forward and was waved on.

Looking out his side-view mirror, a driver of a cement truck watched in horror as the cement drum broke off the bed of the vehicle, which then overturned.

A loud crash shortly after midnight on Sunday alerted a Sag Harbor Village police officer on routine traffic patrol at Hampton Street that something was awry.

Here’s the buzz out of Bridgehampton High School this week: Ayanna El has been named its 2022 valedictorian and Grace Turza its salutatorian.

The Sag Harbor School District introduced a full-day prekindergarten program for the first time this year, receiving a glowing report card this week from school board members, educators, administrators, and parents.

Shortly before the school board voted to hire Kathy Masterson as its new athletic director, Joe Vas, East Hampton’s current athletic director, handed her a maroon-and-gray Bonac baseball cap — a symbolic passing of the torch.

Shortly before the school board voted to hire Kathy Masterson as its new athletic director, Joe Vas, East Hampton’s current athletic director, handed her a maroon-and-gray Bonac baseball cap — a symbolic passing of the torch.