Villages

    “This is only the second meeting in what I anticipate will be a somewhat lengthy process,” Andrew Goldstein, chairman of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, said when Friday’s meeting turned to a new irrigation system planned for the Maidstone Club’s 27-hole golf course.

     Some Montauk residents say the dim lighting in the hamlet’s business district is unsafe, and they want the town to turn up the lights downtown.

    The East Hampton Village Board voted at its April meeting to pierce the 2-percent tax cap if necessary, but it needn’t have bothered. At last week’s work session the board unveiled the 2012-13 budget, which came in a hair’s breadth under the allowable amount.

    The new budget of just over $19 million is an increase of $626,574, or 3.4 percent, over this year’s spending, and reflects a rate increase of 2.9 percent, $15,176 less than the tax cap’s ceiling.

    The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs will share in nearly $3.66 million raised from the Stars of Stony Brook Gala held on April 25 at Chelsea Piers in New York City. The money the benefit raised includes funds for student scholarships at the State University at Stony Brook.

    The center on Springs-Fireplace Road, which was the house and studio of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, is in the process of a capital campaign to build an endowment, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Pollock’s birth.

    The Montauk Playhouse Community Center is kicking off the fund-raising season with a new slate of officers on its board of directors — Lisa DeVeglio as president, Carol Nye as vice president, Rori Finazzo Butterfield as secretary, and Kathy Beckmann as treasurer.

    Last Thursday, the State Department of Environmental Conservation closed approximately 490 acres of bottomland in Southampton Town to shellfishing due to detection of a marine biotoxin associated with paralytic shellfish poisoning.

    Spring on eastern Long Island “has been changing slowly during the last 75 years,” Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton, wrote in his monthly report for April.

    In the springs of his youth, when his family had milk cows and chickens, hatching 1,500 baby chicks a week, he recalls once having to shovel the door free of snow so he could tend to the coal stove keeping 350 baby chicks warm and toasty.

    “We had to keep more than an eye on the weather every day and night,” he wrote.

    A Two Mile Hollow rebuild on a beachfront property was on the docket again, with revised plans, at Friday’s East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting.

    Beautiful Joy L.L.C., which owns the property next to, and a little behind, the asphalt-covered village beach parking lot, had revised previous requests and moved the project back from the contour line of the dune ecosystem.

    A sigh of relief was almost audible in Sag Harbor this week, following an announcement that the Bay Street Theatre had signed a 10-year lease for the building on Long Wharf it has leased for two decades. It had been reported last fall that the 2012 season would be the theater’s last in that location.

    Voting on the budget and trustees for the Montauk Library will be on Saturday, from 2 to 8 p.m. at the library. The budget, totalling $700,768, is less than $500 higher than last year’s, and the candidates for trustee are running unopposed. The bulk of the library’s income will come from property taxes in the amount of $684,640. The average homeowner can expect to pay about $109.25 for the year in taxes.

    Two illuminated crosswalks to assist nighttime pedestrians and drivers will be installed on Main Street in East Hampton Village over the next few weeks. The installation, approved by the East Hampton Village Board in February, began on Monday, six months after a pedestrian was hit and injured in a village crosswalk at dusk.

    “I’m lucky to be alive,” said Larry Zarsky, an East Hampton resident who sustained a fractured pelvis and shattered knee on Oct. 23, when crossing the street following a party at Babette’s restaurant on Newtown Lane.

    On Saturday evening a large and lively crowd came to the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor to see “Patriocracy,” a documentary about the political polarization of the country and how it has brought the functions of governing to a standstill.

    The film was a special presentation by the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, which takes place in the fall. The festival brought both the filmmaker, Brian Malone, and Ken Rudin, an NPR political commentator, to lead a discussion after the screening.

    On Sunday Montauk will rock Earth Day with a full schedule of activities for all ages. The hamlet will get a spring cleaning sponsored by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk. Participants can pick up bags in front of the Montauk Movie Theater from 9 a.m. to noon. Mickey’s Carting has donated a huge Dumpster that will be stationed there until 2 p.m. Residents can choose to spiff up any area they wish.

    A group of loyal Java Nation customers carried the coffee roaster out the doors of the Sag Harbor shop early Sunday evening like pallbearers grieving over the end of an era.

    Having lost its lease in the Shopping Cove off Main Street, the coffee shop, owned by Cheryl and Andres Bedini, was moving after 17 years.

    With the posting of new signs at the 7-Eleven in Montauk notifying drivers that they must enter one way on the east and exit one way on the west along Montauk Highway, the final stage of a traffic improvement project at the entrances to the convenience store and the I.G.A. across the street has been completed.

    When Lona Rubenstein, an East Hampton woman who used to excel at table tennis, checked into the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut on March 23 to play in the Foxwoods World Poker Classic, part of the World Poker Tour championship tournament, she started out hot.

    That night, she played in a no-limit hold ’em tournament, placing 15th, earning $550, “which covered my entry fees to play the rest of that weekend,” she said this week. “I only play in tournaments; I don’t play in cash games.”

    The Coast Guard has credited the  response of the Shamrock’s crew for saving the fishing vessel on Saturday morning. The boat’s design also helped keep her afloat. According to published reports, the wooden boat, based in New Bedford, Mass., had sprung a plank in 10 to 12-foot seas 70 miles south of Montauk.

    On Friday, the high school French Club held its second annual fashion show to support the Retreat. Students’ families, teachers, and friends were invited to the school cafeteria, where a runway was set up, to watch students strut their stuff. Local stores such as LF, Lilly Pulitzer, Kai Lani, the Retreat Boutique, and others provided clothing for the models to wear.

    Lisa Grenci, the chairwoman of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committe for the last 15 years, dropped a bombshell at its meeting on Monday when she announced she was stepping down.

“I’m tired; I’m done,” she said to groans from members, who have re-elected her year after year, almost unanimously. Linda Barns, the committee’s secretary, added another unsettling note, saying she too would no longer run.

    In the final days before the world premiere of his new documentary, “They Come to America,” at Guild Hall on Saturday, Dennis Michael Lynch was “bombarded with requests for tickets,” he said.

    In the film, Mr. Lynch offers both a local perspective on the illegal immigration debate, and a view of conditions along the United States-Mexico border.

    There will be no morning Mass today, Holy Thursday, at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church.

    Tomorrow, Good Friday, a Stations of the Cross service will be at noon. A celebration of the Lord’s passion will begin at 3 p.m. and at 6 p.m. in Spanish.

    A two-hour Easter vigil will be held on Holy Saturday at 7:30 p.m. It will be a bilingual celebration.

    On Easter Sunday there will be an ecumenical sunrise service at 6 at the concession stand near the Montauk Lighthouse. Back at the church, Masses will be said at 8:30 and 10:30 a.m.

Amagansett

Isabel Carmichael

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    The Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee will meet on Monday at 7 p.m. in the community room at the Amagansett Library.

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    Egg hunters unite. And repair to the East Hampton Youth Park on Saturday at noon for an Easter egg hunt. The park is on Abraham’s Path. All wishing to participate have been asked to drop off a dozen plastic eggs and a bag of individually wrapped non-peanut candy at the youth park before Saturday if possible.

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    After 30 years as a fixture in Sag Harbor, first on Main Street and then on the corner of Bay and Division Streets, Provisions Market is planning to expand a little bit farther down Bay Street into the neighboring space most recently occupied by the Style Bar.

    The renovations to the natural foods market and cafe are expected to begin shortly, with the lease on the space scheduled to start May 1.

    A glimpse into the diverse kitchens of the Sag Harbor community is now available within a new cookbook, the result of a school festival. The “Multicultural Cookbook” celebrates the varied cultures that have co-existed since whaling days, when many dialects and traditions converged in the village.

    “We have passed through the entire month of March without seeing a single flake of snow,” Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton, wrote in his monthly report for March.

    It’s not the first time, but it is uncommon. According to Mr. Hendrickson, there was no snow in the month of March in 2008 and 1983, and only a trace of it in the Marches of 1946, ’54, ’66, ’71, ’72, ’79, ’86, ’95, and 2002.

    “Such is the variation in weather during the month of March on eastern Long Island,” Mr. Hendrickson wrote.

Bridgehampton

Those who wish to document their lives, for themselves or their loved ones, will have a chance to learn how at the Hampton Library, beginning Tuesday, from 5 to 7 p.m., and continuing weekly through May 8. The workshop involves reading, group discussion, research techniques, writing exercises, and marketing information. People of all ages and all levels of writing ability have been invited. The fee for six sessions is $70.

Egg Hunt

Planting Day

    The Child Development Center of the Hamptons is about to embark on the first growing season of the new C.D.C.H. Edible School Garden, with an inaugural planting day scheduled for Wednesday.

    The students and staff of C.D.C.H. will rotate out into the garden throughout the day sowing seeds, planting berry bushes, painting signs, and installing a rain catchall system and composting area. 

     The East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery will hold a series of shellfish culture workshops beginning on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at the hatchery, which is on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk. The subject that day will be an introduction to shellfish biology, broodstock conditioning, and algae culture.

On May 12 from 10 a.m. to noon, spawning and hatchery culture will be the subject at the hatchery, and then on June 23 during those same hours at the commercial dock at Gann Road on Three Mile Harbor, nursery culture will be addressed.

    The Peconic Land Trust, which has helped protect more than 10,000 acres of land on Long Island, much of which is used for working farms, has announced an opportunity for farmers to get their hands on farmland, equipment, education, and support. Its Farm Incubator Program is geared toward food production farming, due to the issues of affordability and sustainability that threaten the agricultural industry and security of the food supply, according to the trust.

    A roomful of people, including East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Theresa Quigley, a town board member, listened on Friday as the East Hampton Village Board voted to reduce the allowable size of real estate and contractor signs from 7 square feet to 18 by 18 inches.

    Local brokers and builders have until at least June 1 to roll out the smaller size, and also to post them parallel to properties, instead of perpendicular.