After a positive public hearing last Thursday before the East Hampton Town Board, it appears another major community preservation fund purchase is close. The deal is a complex arrangement between the town, East Hampton Village, and the Peconic Land Trust, with the majority of the $55 million purchase price — $35 million — coming from the land trust.

Simmering discontent with the effort by East Hampton Village officials to publicize code amendments passed over the winter that require service workers to register with the village and curtail noise by tightening the hours during which such work can be done came to a boil at the village board’s July 2 meeting, with an attorney and the director of a Latino advocacy organization forcefully criticizing what they deemed insufficient outreach.

Dubbed the “Save Montauk’s Waters” campaign, the plans to help the beleaguered water body were equal parts education and action. “The ultimate goal of this study is solid, evidence-backed recommendations for remediation of toxic blue-green algae and pathogenic bacteria in the pond, that will be cost effective and long lasting,” said Rebecca Holloway, Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s manager of environmental advocacy.

The “apparent decline in our civil liberties and the unusual and extraordinary accretion of executive power that we’ve seen since Donald Trump was inaugurated” were considered with a mixture of gloom and optimism alongside denunciations of the conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court and a spirited call for citizen action to defend democracy at “Guardrails on Democracy,” the first Hamptons Institute discussion of the 2025 season.