The East Hampton Town Board took a step closer to adopting a more stringent building code at its work session on Tuesday. Among other things, the new law would require new construction and major renovations to achieve maximum efficiency through technology and design, in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

CSEA members ratified the agreement in an April 7 vote, with 74 percent in favor. The ratification, announced in a statement issued from Town Hall on Tuesday, comes more than two years after the previous contract expired. Negotiations commenced in 2018, prior to its expiration, but a mediator was called in when the parties reached an impasse.

For the 10th year in a row, the Sag Harbor School District is proposing a spending plan that stays under the state-mandated cap on tax levy increases while maintaining all programs, services, and extracurricular activities and sports.

 Springs School officials released updated 2021-22 budget projections during Monday's school board work session. Among the highlights was the news that this year's projected tax levy increase has been trimmed from 3.91 percent down to 2.61 percent — still within state limits on tax-levy increases — although that number is not yet set in stone.

Shay Siegel and Mai Ismail have something in common: writing poetry. Ms. Siegel is a young-adult author and Mai is a high school student who hopes someday to publish her work, but they both use poetry as an outlet for expressing emotions that can often be difficult.

Here's what's happening locally for kids and teens this week.

Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough brought a lot of heat to New York Fashion Week with a video of their collection for Proenza Schouler filmed at the Parrish Art Museum on the coldest weekend of the year.

It was perhaps inevitable that New York’s First Congressional District’s seditious representative, Lee Zeldin, would try a run for governor. But it is truly an ironic spectacle for him to rage against Andrew Cuomo’s treatment of women after he spent the last five years brushing off that of the former occupant of the White House.

On Long Island, Covid-19 numbers have fallen since their peak, but they remain surprisingly and stubbornly high. Deaths from the virus have also declined, but even so lives are lost that should not have been. The 3,300th person in Suffolk County died from the disease between Monday and Tuesday this week.

Not a lot seems to be scheduled here for Earth Day, which comes next Thursday and marks the 51st anniversary of the first Earth Day. It is the pandemic no doubt that has prevented organized activities, but that does not mean that individuals cannot step outside to pick up litter, support an environmental group, or cut back on fossil-fuel use and nonrecyclables.

At the risk of offending my friends from Sag Harbor, what is up with those people? Most of the time that I run into someone I know in that village, the first thing they say is, “What are you doing over here?” with the emphasis on “you.”

“I wanted to go to Persan’s for a clam knife,” I protest. They tilt their head ever so slightly, suspicious

My rubber-band ball, made entirely from rubber bands, grew bigger every day. It was bigger than a softball, bigger than a  grapefruit. It was heavy and perfectly round. I liked to bounce it, like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape,” off the wall of my first office at Vogue magazine, when I got my start in 1998.

Some thoughts on the coming gentrification of Sag Harbor’s mini strip mall, the Water Street Shops.

Recently, I was asked to retrieve from The Star’s attic contacts and negatives of Troy Bowe, the former Killer Bees’ point guard, in action. The request set my head to spinning like a leptoquark, for, as I told Carl Johnson, who had made the request, “It’s a black hole up there, a bottomless pit from which it has been said nothing escapes.”

AMAGANSETT

Mary Karoussos to Stonyhill L.L.C., 120 Stony Hill Road, Dec. 11, $1,927,476.

Glenn Behr to Handy Lane 6 L.L.C., 35 Handy Lane, Dec. 22, $1,675,000.

Outerbridge Associates Inc. to Handy Lane 7 L.L.C., 45 Handy Lane (vacant), Dec. 22, $1,675,000.

Glenn Behr to Handy Lane 2 L.L.C., 30 Handy Lane (vacant), Dec. 22, $1,570,000.

Lessons from a tumble down a flight of stairs, a hospital stay during the height of Covid, and 90 isolating days in a less-than-desirable care center.

Give Thanks
Springs
April 5, 2021

To the Editor:

“Ode to Spring,” Horace, “Odes,” Book 4, Number 7:

Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis

arboribus comae;

mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas

flumina praetereunt. . . .

A translation for spring 2021:

Summer water temperatures are rising in East Hampton, stressing organisms including bivalves and seagrasses. Meanwhile, the water quality in Wainscott Pond is rapidly worsening, with 2020 measurements of a toxin "unlike anything we'd ever seen," the town trustees were told on Monday.

With warmer weather on the way and the increasing availability of vaccines, more vehicles are out on the roads, and with them come a small but increasing number of alcohol-related arrests.

The East Hampton High School field hockey team qualified for the county playoffs by virtue of a hard-fought 2-1 win here over Pierson Tuesday, and the boys cross-country team qualified for the county Class B championship meet at Sunken Meadow next week, after a third-place finish at the division meet there Tuesday.