Villages

The Montauk Library has released its operating budget proposal for 2014-15. At $774,198, the total is slightly higher than last year. If approved, taxpayers will pay $24.27 (up from $22.93) per $1,000 of assessed property value, roughly $121 for an average house.

The bulk of the library’s revenue comes from property taxes and such fees as fines, copy and computer charges, and grants, estimated at $19,603.

The Montauk Fire Department began its celebration of its 75th anniversary on Sunday with an ecumenical memorial service at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church honoring all those who have served the department who have since died. A roll call of the deceased firemen and ladies auxiliary members was read, with the church bell rung after each name.

Serve Sag Harbor, a new nonprofit organized to tackle problems in the village, has a plan to tame traffic by narrowing the roadways with the help of sidewalk landscaping and large planters.

Work briefly came to a halt at the East Deck motel in Ditch Plain, Montauk, last week after Tom Preiato, East Hampton Town’s chief building inspector, issued a verbal stop-work order after receiving a report that concrete drainage rings were being installed on the beach there.

The property’s new owner, a limited liability company headed by Scott Bradley, had received a go-ahead from the zoning board of appeals to add up to 6,000 cubic yards of sand to buttress the five-acre oceanfront property’s dune and bluff crest.

Until an attorney for the East Hampton School Board stepped in, it appeared on Friday that a decision was imminent on P.C. Schenck and Sons’ application to install AT&T antennas and ground-based equipment at its oil distribution facility on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service will close the beach above mean high tide at the Amagansett National Wildlife Refuge, which runs from Atlantic Avenue almost to Indian Wells Beach, and most of the Jessup’s Neck peninsula in the Elizabeth A. Morton National Wildlife Refuge in Sag Harbor on Tuesday to protect nesting shorebirds.

To the surprise of many in the audience, Tom Sperry, an employee of the Meeting House restaurant in Amagansett Square who had just delivered a vocal performance uncannily reminiscent of Frank Sinatra, was not crowned Mr. Amagansett at last Thursday’s fifth annual pageant.

Katy Stewart , Sag Harbor, Katy’s Courage Fund, Jim Stewart

It’s here, folks, the weekend some of us have been anticipating will pop the hard, cold bubble of winter. The Montauk Friends of Erin will be your hosts for the St. Patrick’s Day parade weekend, which starts tomorrow with a lunch to honor its grand marshal, Paul Monte of Gurney’s Inn.

Reservations for the lunch, which will take place at Gurney’s from noon to 3 p.m., have been requested and can be made by calling John Behan of the grand marshal committee. The cost is $50 per person, payable at the door.

The Maidstone Club’s application to expand and modernize its irrigation system, which has been the subject of multiple meetings of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, will require a final environmental impact statement before it can proceed.

An award-winning environmental documentary, “Bag It!” will be shown at LTV Studios in East Hampton on Friday, March 28, at 6 p.m. The film follows a character as he travels the world seeking to understand the use of plastic bags in our everyday lives. It addresses the effect of all plastics on the oceans, human health, and the environment.

Those who attend the screening, which is sponsored by the East Hampton Town litter committee, have been asked to donate a nonperishable food item at the door. The foodstuffs will be given to the East Hampton Food Pantry.         

Construction of a rock revetment in front of an oceanfront property at 11 West End Road in East Hampton Village resumed last Thursday after State Supreme Court Justice Andrew Tarantino lifted a temporary restraining order that had blocked the work since November.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation had initially given the property owner, Mollie Zweig, a tidal wetlands permit, and the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals had granted her variances to allow the revetment, or sea wall, as well as the removal of an existing rock groin.

A repaving project on the 8.2-mile stretch between Country Road 39 in Southampton and Stephen Hand's Path in East Hampton is slated to begin next Thursday.

After being stung by a venomous stonefish in Puerto Rico, Gina Bradley is working to get the word out to other travelers about what to do if they find themselves in her place.

In the beginning there were four men and it was on St. Patrick’s Day 1947 that they decided to march from one end of Montauk’s main drag to the other. They ended up at what is today the Shagwong Tavern, and an institution came to be.

       East Hampton Town officials have come up with proposed new legislation designed to tighten restrictions on taxis and prevent out-of-town companies from making a quick buck during the 8 to 12 weeks of summer. Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, the East Hampton Town board liaison to the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee, went over a draft of the legislation at a meeting of the committee on Monday. He warned, however, that it wasn’t simple to limit business in New York State. “We have very few tools to limit commerce,” he said.

       With hearings on new restrictions on parking in East Hampton Village municipal lots and on the commercial use of landscaping equipment scheduled for the village board’s meeting on Friday, March 21, the board considered both topics at its work session last Thursday.

       The hearings will be held at 11 a.m. at the Emergency Services Building.

       The fifth annual Mr. Amagansett pageant, a fund-raiser for the Donald T. Sharkey Memorial Community Fund, happens tonight at 7 at the Stephen Talkhouse.

       The venue will open at 6:30. Admission to the lighthearted pageant is $20. To compete, contestants pay a $150 entry fee.

       Harry Blumenfeld and Martin Falzack, East Hampton residents for over 50 years, were married at City Hall in Manhattan on March 4.

       Mr. Blumenfeld, 86, and Mr. Falzack, 80, were introduced at a dinner party in New York about 60 years ago, when Mr. Blumenfeld had just graduated from Brooklyn College and Mr. Falzack was still a student. They dated briefly, remained friends, and rekindled a relationship nearly 20 years later. After eight months they moved into an apartment on 10th Street and University Place and have been partners ever since.

       Organizers of the sixth annual Am O’Gansett Parade, happening on Saturday at 12:02 p.m., may have outdone themselves in the selection of this year’s grand marshal.

       The grand marshal of what organizers claim to be the world’s shortest parade, a sort of alternate-universe St. Patrick’s Day march, cannot be of Irish heritage. In a way, officials of the Amagansett Chamber of Commerce, who oversee the parade’s planning, have satisfied that requirement: Last week, they named the Amagansett School this year’s grand marshal.

       “The weather for our past month of February has given this weather observer and recorder a very uneasy time,” Richard G. Hendrickson, a United States Cooperative weather observer, wrote from Bridgehampton.

Organizers of the annual March 15 Am O'Gansett Parade, a sort of alternate-universe St. Patrick's Day march, have named the Amagansett School as this year's grand marshal.

       The East Hampton Library’s expansion and renovation is “coming down the final lap,” according to its chairman, with an additional 6,800 square feet set to open to the public in late spring or early summer.

       More than $6 million has been raised to finance the expansion, Tom Twomey, the library’s chairman, said last month, with an additional $250,000 needed. In November, the actor Alec Baldwin donated $1 million to the project.

       An application to install AT&T antennas and ancillary equipment on the ground and an oil tank at P.C. Schenck and Sons continues to draw skepticism from the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals.

       “You’re saying there are so many things going on here, plus you have an oil tank very near the village, which doesn’t make people very happy, and now you want to put something more,” Larry Hillel, a zoning member, said at a board meeting on Friday. “Maybe there’s too much. . . . It raises the question, is this the straw that breaks the camel’s back?”

       As Kathy Nielsen Havlik tells the story, she and Andy Hanson met in 1966 when they were both living in Montauk and they became high school sweethearts. They fell out of touch after Mr. Hanson graduated from East Hampton High School in 1968 and left for the Navy.

       About five years ago, Ms. Havlik said, she asked Richie Nessel, a Montauk resident who had been the best man at Mr. Hanson’s earlier marriage, if he had ever heard from him. Mr. Nessel replied, “I’m pretty sure I heard he died.”

A consent order signed earlier this month has closed a case brought by the state Department of Environmental Conservation against Montauk Shores Condominium and Keith Grimes Inc., which reconstructed a rock revetment on the oceanfront there last year

       After three years reviewing an application to expand the Harbor Heights gas station on Route 114, the Sag Harbor Village Zoning Board of Appeals last week denied the majority of the variances that John Leonard had asked for to expand the gas station and establish a convenience store.

       The figures are both impressive and disheartening. Twenty-and-one-half miles of shoreline and 84 volunteers in the former category. In the latter, 3,510 pounds of mixed debris collected and removed.

       After harsh weather conditions twice postponed Shoreline Sweep 2014, volunteers took advantage of Saturday’s bright sunshine and mild temperatures to clean the ocean coastline between Georgica Beach in East Hampton and Montauk Point.

      Although plans for a deer cull in East Hampton Town and Village were effectively abandoned at the end of last month, it was not until Friday that the village board formally rescinded the resolution it had adopted in December authorizing participation in the program.

While Robbie Badkin recovers from a severe blood infection, his friends and family are planning a renovation project at his house the week of March 10, but they need helping hands.