Villages

    With the Montauk Chamber of Commerce’s annual Fall Festival this weekend, the end of summer is now official. And this chamber knows how to send out a season. There will be fireworks by Grucci, a clam chowder contest with over 30 restaurants vying for the title, live music, beer and wine tastings, clams and oysters, German-style food, a farmers market, games, inflatable jumps, face-painting, pumpkin-decorating, crab races, a 30-horse carousel, and more — lots more.

    A fall 2013 wedding is planned for Meghan Ryan and Nick Finazzo, Montauk residents who had been introduced by friends and became engaged on Aug. 19.

    Ms. Ryan is the lead therapist and manager of Manual and Sports Physical Therapy in Montauk. She graduated from Smithtown High School in 2000 and went on to earn an undergraduate degree in chemistry in 2004 from the State University at Binghamton and a doctorate of physical therapy from the State University at Stony Brook in 2007. She is the daughter of Michael Ryan of Smithtown and Mary Ryan of Hauppauge.

    By a vote of 195 to 36, taxpayers overwhelmingly approved an almost $2 million 2013 budget for the East Hampton Library on Saturday. The increase from this year’s budget was just over $120,000.

    Dennis Fabiszak, library director, said the library board and staff were thankful for the support, noting that the budget was approved by 84 percent of those who voted.

    Myron Levine of Sag Harbor had a vision to increase cash flow to charities here, and minutes before the announcement of the launching of All for the East End, the organization through which he aims to achieve it, he said he was “encouraged by the excitement already.”

    At a meeting on Friday, for the second time, the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals granted Howard Schultz, the president of Starbucks, and his wife, Sheri Kersch Schultz, an interior designer, a coastal erosion hazard permit and a variance to allow the construction of a deck and a 2,521-square-foot addition at the first floor and basement levels of their waterfront house on Gracie Lane. The property is just over four acres.

    Eighty percent of the night life in the entire town of East Hampton is now in Montauk, East Hampton Town Police Lt. Chris Hatch, who is also the Montauk precinct commander, told the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee Monday night.

    The nightclubs located in the other hamlets are really seeing a drop in business, a member commented.

    Rocio Fidalgo, a native of Chile, and Julio C. Vasquez were married on Sept. 9 in Manhattan at the St. Columba Catholic Church in Chelsea. The Rev. Keith Fennessy officiated. A shipboard reception took place aboard the Bateaux New York dining cruise, which departed from Chelsea Piers.

    The couple met four years ago in Chile, where Mr. Vasquez had gone to study Spanish.

     It’s likely that the standing room only crowd of over 100 people learned something new about disease-bearing ticks at the Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s annual meeting, which included a forum on Lyme disease, on Saturday at the Montauk Firehouse.

     The discussion was led by Dr. Joseph Burrascano Jr., an expert in the field of tick disease, who upon retiring from a private practice in East Hampton began further research on Lyme and related illnesses, and Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of C.C.O.M.

    Taylor Kari Vecsey and Nicholas Bryan Hemby of Water Mill have announced their engagement.

    Ms. Vecsey, a former senior writer for The Star, is a local editor for East Hampton Patch, a news media Web site owned by AOL. She is the daughter of Joan and Peter F. Vecsey of Shelter Island and Manhattan and is a graduate of the College of Charleston and the Ross School.

    Voters in the East Hampton Library District, which includes the East Hampton, Springs, and Wainscott School Districts, will vote on Saturday on a nearly $2 million budget for 2013, an increase of just over $120,000 over this year’s budget.

    According to the proposed budget summary, personnel expenses comprise the largest increase in spending, $105,000 more than this year for a total of almost $1.4 million.

ride’s cousins Maisie Rude and Robert Rude of Atlanta served as flower girl and ring bearer. Other attendants included John Foley and Gerard Miller, who are friends of the groom from New Hampshire.

    The Thomas Moran Trust is fine-tuning a site plan for the restoration of the artist’s house and studio on Main Street in East Hampton, a National Historic Landmark.

    The trust began the public phase of its $4.5 million fund-raising campaign this year. It has raised approximately the same amount since its inception in 2007, according to its first newsletter, The Studio, published on Sept. 18. Most recently, the trust received a $500,000 gift from the Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation.

   East Hampton Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc has gotten the ball rolling again, so to speak, on the renovation of the Montauk Skate Park on Essex Street.

    The East Hampton Town Board liaison to the Town Parks and Recreation Department, Mr. Van Scoyoc met on Sept. 19 with employees of the department to identify issues still needed to be addressed at the town-owned park.

    Bailey Marie Thompson and Jeremy Ryan Somero of Beach Plum Road in Montauk were married on Sept. 14 at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in that hamlet. The Rev. Mike Rieder officiated. A reception catered by the Harvest restaurant followed at Montauk County Park.

    The bride, who will keep her name, is a daughter of Deborah Thompson of Montauk and the late Larry Thompson. A massage therapist at the Deborah Thompson Day Spa, she graduated from Colby Sawyer College in 2003 and from the Finger Lakes School of Massage in 2007.

    Despite an outburst earlier this month that the East Hampton Village mayor called “totally inappropriate and not in keeping with the high standard of professionalism” the village expects, Andrew Goldstein will continue to serve as chairman of the village zoning board of appeals, according to a statement issued on Monday by Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr.

    Sag Harbor has been missing a village trustee since the August resignation of Timothy Culver, and Mayor Brian Gilbride does not plan to appoint someone to fill his seat, preferring that the public choose someone at the next election.

    At the board’s last meeting there were only three members present. Dr. Robby Stein was absent, having been injured in a bicycle accident on Suffolk Street.

    The Sag Harbor Village Planning Board may hand down a decision involving Harbor Heights, the Hampton road service station that wants to add a convenience store, on Tuesday at its 5:30 meeting, after evaluating the project through State Environmental Quality Review Act guidelines. The board may be ready to declare a negative SEQRA evaluation, having in hand a new traffic study and modified lighting and landscaping plans.

    Sister Ann Marino, the director of Cormaria, a retreat house in Sag Harbor, knows that people passing by often wonder about the mansion with a wraparound waterfront porch and extensive gardens barely visible from Bay Street. In celebration of her 30 years as director, Sister Ann will welcome the public to explore the compound on Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m.

    Not only was August free of coastal storms, it had no heavy 4-to-6-inch rainfall like has been seen in Augusts of past years, according to Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton.

    Rain fell on four days last month, with the heaviest — .66 inch — coming on Aug. 19. The total for the month was 1.48 inches, well off the long-term average of 3.4 inches. In August 1952, the wettest August ever recorded in Bridgehampton, rainfall was a whopping 13.19 inches.

    A dozen or more people who left town when the season started and haven’t been seen at an Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee meeting in months showed up on Monday night for a well-attended meeting, much of it devoted to talk about rapacious taxicabs.

    Taxis have, to his knowledge, been charging as much as $75 or $80 for a ride from Montauk to Amagansett, said Michael Cinque. Was there any way to regulate them?

    Saturday morning is when most of the action will begin on Long Wharf for Sag Harbor’s annual HarborFest weekend, and a lot of it will involve food.

    The Sag Harbor Farmers Market will relocate there at 9 a.m., joined by local artisans and craft vendors, and food vendors, including local restaurants and wineries, will offer their treats on Saturday and Sunday. Main Street shops will get in on the action with sidewalk sales throughout the weekend.

        Cynthia Young, the director of the Amagansett Library, talked to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee before the start of its Monday night meeting about a Suffolk County program called JEEP, for Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan, aimed at people in wheelchairs or the homebound who cannot leave their houses in an emergency situation without help.

    The panther-like creature spotted eating composted scraps at the Spring Close Farm in East Hampton on Sunday was probably a dog or fox, according to the State Department of Environmental Conservation, whose officers examined paw prints attributed to the animal.

    The economic meltdown may be behind us, but schools, states, and local governments are still paying for it. In an Aug. 31 announcement, Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York State Comptroller, said retirement contribution rates for state and local civil service employees, as well as police and firefighters, will rise in the 2014-15 fiscal year.

    At the end of a Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee meeting on Monday, at which the proliferation of taxi cabs, litter, noise, and parking woes were discussed, members learned that a tattoo parlor is to come to the hamlet. Lola Snow Esperian is wading through the permit process required by the Suffolk County Department of Health and plans to open the parlor in one of the small stores behind the Washout restaurant near the train station. It will be called Lola’s Hot and Flying Tattoos.

    “We arrived in the dead of night,” said Yuri Ando, pastor of the East Hampton Methodist Church, speaking of an Aug. 25 church mission to the Catskill Mountain town of Prattsville. “The motel owner gave us a special rate after I told him why we were there, which made it $10 a night for each of us.”

    Ms. Ando was accompanied by three church members, Kiana Magat, Beaubelle Bugante, and Patricia Bugante, their trip made possible by church collections and donations. They left after the Aug. 25 services in East Hampton.

    The Amagansett Historical Association will host a “mini barn-raising” on Saturday at 2 p.m. on its property at 129 Main Street, at the corner of Windmill Lane. Volunteers have been invited to help raise the beams and hammer in the trunnels (oak pegs), using simple hand tools, the way they used to.

    The event is intended to demonstrate, albeit on a small scale, how post-and-beam structures are assembled, said Peter Garnham, the association’s director.

    Trucks will be at the Montauk docks from 7 a.m. tomorrow and again on Sept. 20 to haul away unwanted and out-of-use commercial fishing gear free of charge. A red-painted container has also been placed at the Montauk waste transfer station for the fleet’s castoff nets, gear, traps, and line. Commercial fishermen who take gear to the transfer station will not be charged for entrance or a “tipping fee,” East Hampton Town Clerk Fred Overton said.

    The lifeguard stand was carted from Georgica Beach on Tuesday, nearly three weeks earlier than had been planned. “It was between the beaches at Two Mile Hollow, Main Beach, and Georgica . . . we had to close one,” said Ed McDonald, who manages the ocean beaches for East Hampton Village. “We are running into the same problem as restaurants and storeowners — our employees are going back to school.”

    For those out there sulking at the recent lack of fireworks, a silver lining is in sight. At 8:30 p.m. on Saturday the East Hampton Fire Department will send summer out with a bang.

    The department’s annual fireworks display at Main Beach will begin at dusk. Picnickers will have a good portion of the beach to themselves as vehicles will be prohibited from Egypt Beach to Georgica Beach. Those with town beach driving permits will be allowed to drive on at Two Mile Hollow and Wiborg’s Beach.