Sharing stories of challenges faced communicating with school staff, Spanish-speaking parents have asked the Sag Harbor School Board to add more bilingual staff.

A public hearing on an East Hampton Town proposal to alter the calculation that governs the maximum size of a house — going from a gross floor area of 10 percent of a lot size plus 1,600 square feet down to 7 percent of the lot size plus 1,500 square feet — was replete with buzzwords: community, resources, traffic, McMansion, greed, and sliding scales. Building professionals and concerned citizens stuffed Town Hall past capacity to offer mostly educated comments. 

The surprising news in an update on wildfire readiness in East Hampton Town at Tuesday’s town board meeting was that trees felled by the southern pine beetle are not top of mind for fire experts who are assessing the town’s fire risk. 

They didn’t need to speak the same language to build a school, play soccer, or partake in the most popular local pastime, Senegalese wrestling. For the 22 students on the buildOn service trip, it was a life-changing experience.