Villages

    Registered East Hampton, Springs, and Wainscott School District voters approved the East Hampton Library’s 2014 budget on Saturday. The vote was 162 to 43 in favor of a $2.1 million budget, representing an increase of $141,000 over this year. Next year’s budget will result in an average tax increase of $7.76 for homeowners.

    The Hampton Library in Bridgehampton will hold its annual budget vote and trustee election on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

    Residents of the Bridgehampton and Sagaponack School Districts will weigh in on a $1.55 million spending plan for 2014, which includes a debt service of $560,000. Total spending is up $29,100 over this year’s budget, and taxpayers will be asked to contribute an additional $30,100 next year. The library expects to raise $10,500 through fines and fees and $13,600 in investment income.

    A new police officer was introduced at a brief meeting of the East Hampton Village board on Friday, and the Long Island Power Authority’s application for an excavation permit to upgrade its transmission grid was discussed.

    “We are going to welcome into the ranks of the East Hampton Village Police Department our newest member,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., standing at the lectern with Richard Lawler, a trustee, told the assembled.

    The Montauk Seafood Festival is set to happen on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. under a tent in the parking lot of the Montauk Marine Basin, near Lynn’s Hula Hut.

    There will be nonstop music by the 3Bs, Timmy Fee, and Remember September. Fish races, a snapper derby, fish-print demonstrations, T-shirt airbrushing, and coloring contests will keep the kids busy.

    Seaside sights, sounds, and tastes will bring the masses to the 24th annual Greenport Maritime Festival this weekend to benefit the East End Seaport and Marine Foundation and to celebrate the village’s 175th year. Over 40,000 people have attended the event in the past, whether for a glimpse of visiting tall ships, maritime demonstrations, or offerings from local artisans.

    The John Jermain Memorial Library’s budget vote and trustee election will be held on Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and is open to all registered voters in the Sag Harbor School District.

    The proposed 2014 budget is just under $2.29 million, an increase of $71,633 over this year’s approved budget, with $60,450 of that increase to be covered by taxpayers. That represents a difference of about $5 per year for the average homeowner, according to the library.

    On Saturday, registered voters in the East Hampton, Springs, and Wainscott school districts can vote on the East Hampton Library’s proposed 2014 budget. Those eligible can vote between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the library.

    Estimated expenses total $2.1 million, up $141,000 over this year. Staff salaries and benefits, and facilities expenses, including custodial supplies and services, building repair, furnishings, computer software and hardware, and landscape maintenance, at $106,000 and $20,500 respectively, account for most of the increase.

    The Sag Harbor American Music Festival is finalizing the schedule for its annual village-wide music celebration Friday, Sept. 27, and Sept. 28. The festival will include indoor and outdoor music at galleries, restaurants, and retail shops.

    Genres will be as diverse as venues. BeauSoleil Avec Michael Doucet, the Grammy Award-winning Cajun and folk band, is set to headline the kickoff fund-raising concert on Friday, Sept. 27, at 8 p.m. Tickets to the opening show at the Old Whalers Church start at $25 and are available on the festival’s Web site, sagharbormusic.org.

    Virginia and Tom Hessler of McGuirk Street in East Hampton were alarmed when they saw a Long Island Power Authority stake on their front lawn. Rumor had it, so said their neighbors, that a pole was to be installed there.

    Several residents of Second House Road in Montauk are calling for East Hampton Town to lower the speed limit on the two-lane artery and consider making it a no-through zone.

    For more than a year now, since Ruschmeyer’s and Solé East have become popular nightspots for a younger crowd, residents have been complaining about speeding cars and commercial work trucks in the residential area, which also includes a school zone.

   The East Hampton High School class of 1973 will hold its 40th reunion on Oct. 12 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Fairway Restaurant at the Poxabogue Golf Center in Sagaponack.

   A light buffet and open bar will be provided for $35 per person. Class members wishing to attend have been asked to e-mail Wendy Leese Mott at lazys@ opton­line.net or Kim Friedah Brown at kimfbrown@gmail. com.

    Drs. Robert J. Marshall and Simone Verniere Marshall of East Hampton and New York City celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary and her 89th birthday at a lunch on Saturday at the Amagansett house of their daughter and son-in-law Annette and Jacques Franey. Their other daughter and son-in-law, Drs. Gabrielle Salomon and Amir Salomon of Summit, N.J., co-hosted the celebration.

   A motorcycle ride to benefit the Donald T. Sharkey Memorial Community Fund, in conjunction with the Red Knights, will take place on Sunday. Registration begins at 9 a.m. at the Bridgehampton Fire Department, and the ride, heading east to Montauk Point, starts at 11.

   At the conclusion, there will be a stop for food, beverages, and a 50-50 raffle at Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague. Registration is $30 per rider.

    During a weekend that was full of celebration for the couple and their families and friends, Haley Cunningham Grant and Eric James Weaver were married on Aug. 25 on the beach at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk.

    Labor Day may have passed, but big plans are still in store for Shelter Island, and for good cause. The Rock’s annual fund-raising Beach Blast is set for Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning, it’s the charitable bicycle Spur Ride.

    The blast and barbecue is all-important this year to the Island Gift of Life, with last year’s event called off due to strong winds and a storm threat.

    With a deadline nearing in two weeks, the East Hampton Town Board must make a final decision about what it wants the Army Corps of Engineers to do about the Montauk Harbor inlet.

    The corps is set to dredge the inlet to provide safer navigation, but there are several options as to how to proceed. Federal funds would fully cover the least ambitious plan — to maintain the status quo by dredging to a 12-foot depth and 150-foot width in the channel, with a 50-foot wide “deposition basin” at the east side, to collect sand that would otherwise cause shoaling.

    Sag Harbor’s HarborFest, which began 50 years ago as the Old Whalers Festival, will celebrate its golden anniversary this year with a three-day glorification of all things nautical, as well as tastes of Sag Harbor food, music, and history.

    Competitive whaleboat races, the festival’s claim to fame, will go on all weekend, launched from Windmill Beach, with the winner crowned there on Sunday afternoon.

    Margaret M. Ciechanowski, M.D., of Glen Ridge, N.J., and George J. Ciechanowski, M.D., of Lake Hopatcong, N.J., have announced the engagement of their daughter Tesia Eva Ciechanowski to Timothy Joseph Henn, a son of Marie T. Gallagher and Joseph G. Henn of Darien, Conn., and East Hampton.

    While temperatures topped 90 degrees on four days in July, August was “considerably on the cool side,” Richard G. Hendrickson reported from Bridgehampton. “In all my years of keeping weather records, this has been one of the coolest Augusts. There was only one day, on the 2nd, when it reached 91 degrees, the highest for the month. In fact, it was only 80 or higher on 14 days. A cool, cool August.”

    Mr. Hendrickson, who turned 101 on Monday, has been a United States Cooperative weather observer since he was a teenager.

    The Montauk Seafood Festival will have its inaugural launch on the weekend of Sept. 21 at the Montauk Marine Basin on West Lake Drive from noon to 5 p.m.

    The two-day event will be held under a tent near the Hula Hut and have nonstop music by three bands, food from at least 12 local restaurants, a snapper derby, goldfish races, and fish printing and airbrush painting on T-shirts and hats. In addition to seafood there will be burgers and hot dogs for the landlubbers.

    Bivalves got a brief respite this week after the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation early yesterday ordered East End bays and harbors closed to all shellfish harvesting following heavy downpours in Tuesday’s thunderstorms.

    The order covered enclosed water bodies from Moriches Bay in the Town of Brookhaven east to Lake Montauk and will remain in place until the D.E.C. announces that unsafe conditions have dissipated.

    While public libraries everywhere are adapting more or less effectively to the many challenges posed by the technological revolution, the East Hampton Library — known not so very long ago for its dusty stacks, once-a-year book sales, and “Shhh, quiet, please” admonitions — is fast becoming a pacesetter among its peers. Not only is it keeping up with digital change, it is running a step or two ahead.

   Four days of performances, exhibitions, demonstrations, and food will kick off at 3 p.m. tomorrow at the 67th annual Shinnecock Reservation powwow, one of the largest in the country. Over 100 tribes and 100 vendors will be on hand.

    Activities include native drumming and dance performances, an art display, crafts, food, raffles, and fire lighting at sunset. Contests will be held with $50,000 in prize money.

    Page at 63 Main, a restaurant in Sag Harbor, took a giant leap Tuesday toward the establishment of a backyard seating garden there. A permit approval of the newest site plan is expected at the village planning board’s next meeting, on Sept. 24.

    Previously, Neil Slevin, the chairman of the planning board, had serious concerns about the plan by Gerard Wawryk, the restaurant’s owner, to eliminate a driveway off Division Street, at the rear of the Main Street eatery, to make room for a courtyard where customers could take food and drinks purchased inside.

    The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals heard emotional appeals from two residents who spoke on separate applications before it on Friday.

    Don Horowitz, a co-owner of Wittendale’s Florist and Greenhouses on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, took more than a wealth of knowledge home from the Cornell Floriculture Field Day, held Aug. 13 at the Bluegrass Lane Horticultural Research Facility in Ithaca, N.Y. He also brought back a medal, awarded for his winning entry in the Kathy Pufahl Container Design Competition.

    In its first meeting of the new fiscal year, the East Hampton Village Board considered and quickly adopted three laws aimed at tightening existing regulations and reducing vehicular traffic on Huntting Lane, and fielded a request for new signage regarding pets in cars.

    The Springs Fisherman’s Fair is taking place Saturday on the grounds of Ashawagh Hall and the nearby library and Parson’s Blacksmith Shop.

The longstanding annual event will offer food booths, with homemade jams and jellies, a bake sale, hot dogs and corn on the cob, and seafood delicacies including mussels and clam pies, as well an opportunity to buy produce and other items from Springs Farmers Market vendors.

    The Long Island Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Network will open its first East End center  at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor on Saturday.

    The G.L.B.T. center will offer year-round programs for students, adults, and families, and it has been predicted that over 1,000 East End residents will participate within the next year.

    The Montauk Village Association, which is responsible for the flowering plants sprinkled about the hamlet, including those in the trees, is getting ready for its annual Greenery Scenery party. It will be held at the Montauk Lake Club on Aug. 16 from 6 to 9 p.m. Mickey Valcich Vanessa Trouble and the Red Hot Swing will provide the music, and the event will include a live auction and dinner. Tickets are on sale at $125 per person. Mickey Valcich is this year’s honoree.