Ambiguous language in the East Hampton Village code and the potential for thousands more square feet of habitable space in residences were described by Ken Collum, the village building inspector, at a village board work session last Thursday, prompting the board to consider changes to the law governing accessory buildings. The board also heard a heartfelt plea from Leonard Ackerman, an East Hampton resident and attorney, that health-care personnel or family members be allowed to live in accessory buildings. 

“We’re looking for some direction, because we have seen several detached accessory structures, quite large, with full basements underneath them,” Mr. Collum said, and the result is that “we’re loading properties up with large bedroom counts.”

 Mr. Collum explained that property owners are building garages and other detached structures with full basements that contain the mechanical equipment necessary for heating and plumbing in their houses. Basements in accessory structures are not counted in floor-area calculations, so allowing such equipment to be in them frees the basements of houses for habitable space, adding to the number of bedrooms and attendant density. To correct this, Mr. Collum suggested a prohibition on basements or crawl spaces under accessory buildings. 

Pool houses are among the accessory structures Mr. Collum is concerned about. Pointing out that a garage can have a sink on its ground floor, and a pool house can have a sink and a toilet, he said, “Over the years it has been a problem for the zoning board of appeals and for the Building Department to police” them. “But other accessory structures, there’s no prohibition on plumbing. We’re looking to see if the board is fine with that, or they want to look to regulate that.” He also suggested an amendment requiring pool houses to be freestanding rather than attached to an existing or new structure.

Abuses of the code will mount as the village grows and more affluent people build here, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. predicted, and he asked Linda Riley, the village attorney, to draft code amendments.

Mr. Ackerman addressed the board with regard to a proposal he had submitted in July. Under the proposal, an accessory structure of no more than 500 square feet and without a kitchen would be allowed for nursing personnel or family members. The impetus was his late wife’s illness, he told the board. 

“During the course of her illness, I became concerned for the community, and for people aging, as I am and my family is. . . . I did not want my wife to go to a nursing home, and I wanted to have full-time staff. I make it personal because it was personal to me. . . . I think there is a need for this, and I ask respectfully for you to consider it.”

Applicable property would have to be a minimum of four acres and the property’s main house would have to be pre-existing and conforming. “Because we’re so concerned today with dealing with affordable housing, and housing for young people who want to stay in our community, it provides a place for families to keep intact and provide housing,” he said. 

Mr. Ackerman had been disappointed and offended by the board’s initial tepid response to what was for him a very personal matter, he said, but “I’m very encouraged by this board, that you’re open to discussing these things.”

In fact, Barbara Borsack, a village trustee, told him that she and Arthur Graham, another board member, are on a committee discussing affordable housing, “and your proposal is part of the discussion.” 

Open that discussion to the community, Mr. Ackerman urged. The committee will deliberate, the mayor answered, “and then they will bring that back to the board of trustees. Assuming at some point in time there’s enough of a consensus, we will codify language through counsel to have a public hearing.”

Mr. Ackerman pressed his case. “You have the ability to make some significant changes . . . with respect to aiding the aged, the autistic, the disabled,” he said. “I think you should move in that direction.”

In other topics at the work session, a previous discussion about restrictions on gasoline-powered leaf blowers continued when Scott Fithian, the superinpublic works, displayed and demonstrated battery-powered models. 

Residents frequently have complained about the noise and pollution produced by gas-powered landscaping equipment. Mr. Graham, whom the mayor had asked to research the matter, said new electric models were “perfectly adequate for the light cleanup that we usually find landscapers doing in the summertime.” 

A Memorial-Day-to-Labor-Day ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, or all gas-powered landscaping equipment, is one course the board could pursue, he said. “Obviously, for the fall cleanups, you need the gas-powered equipment for the power. But I think that largely we’ll find that the electrically-powered equipment is adequate for most of the uses.”

To soften the financial impact to landscapers, Mr. Graham suggested that mandating the use of electric-powered equipment could be phased in. Residents would have to understand, he said, that landscapers would be likely to pass some of the cost of new equipment on to their customers. Landscapers are “an integral part of community,” he said, and “one reason why our village is so beautiful. We don’t want to hurt them. We really want to find a way to work with all of the stakeholders to come up with what we feel is the smartest solution.”

An application to alter an accessory building on a historically significant property gave the East Hampton Village Board plenty to consider when it met on Friday. 

John and Evelyn McNiff own property at 71 Apaquogue Road, which was once owned by the artist Hamilton King and his wife. In 1921, the Kings hired the architect Lewis Colt Albro to design a house incorporating the two fishermen’s cottages that stood on the property, according to “East Hampton’s Heritage: An Illustrated Architectural Record.” The architect joined the cottages with a long living room, covering the exterior surfaces with gray stucco. 

The building is now accessory to a main house and has pre-existing nonconforming status for residential use, with a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette. The applicants want to add a 620.5-square-foot second story including an additional bedroom and bathroom and rearrange the first story layout. Trevor Darrell, an attorney, represented them before the Z.B.A.

Any expansion of a pre-existing nonconforming use requires a variance. The addition, and a terrace, would fall within the required 150-foot wetlands setback, creating a need for a variance, as would the addition’s being within the rear-yard setback and, at 24.5 feet high, above the height maximum. The couple also seeks variances to install a new septic system within the wetlands setback, although in a more conforming location than the existing system, and to construct a swimming pool within the side-yard setback. 

With clear concern about setting a precedent, Frank Newbold, the board’s chairman, focused on the degree of the accessory building’s proposed alteration. “The plans look pretty much like the entire building is being rebuilt,” he told Mr. Darrell. “The fireplace is being relocated, the roof height is going up, the whole fenestration is changing. Why isn’t this basically rebuilding a pre-existing nonconforming?” 

The foundation and first floor will not change, Mr. Darrell replied. “The construction is going to be a remodel, not a teardown and rebuild,” he said. The kitchenette, however, would be removed as unnecessary because one family occupies the property. The accessory building includes “sleeping quarters, yes, but not living quarters, if that makes sense. It’s going to be used for the family, amongst themselves,” Mr. Darrell said.

The zoning code dictates that pre-existing nonconforming uses cannot be expanded absent a compelling reason, Mr. Newbold said. “You can imagine our concern is the precedent, that everybody that has a pre-existing cottage would say, ‘I would love to add a bedroom there. I would love to raise the roof height a few feet to make it more comfortable.’ ”

Even with the addition, however, the floor area would be approximately 3,000 square feet under the maximum allowed in the code, Mr. Darrell said. The applicants seek only an additional bedroom, he said, and want to accomplish that by using structures that already exist on the property, rather than “demolish all of them and build one giant house at 9,000-something square feet in the major, wide-open space,” as he suggested many others would do. 

Any changes to a pre-existing nonconforming building should be as minimal as possible, Mr. Newbold said. He and other board members asked if the building’s proposed height could be reduced. The pre-existing cottage is now more than 19 feet high, and would rise to around 24 with a second-story addition, but the code limits the height of accessory buildings to 14 feet.

Kim Hovey, who owns neighboring property, addressed the board. “I just have a concern about the volume increase” and about privacy. “Up on the second floor I have a balcony off the master,” she said, adding that another concern is a row of arborvitae planted one year ago close to the proposed septic system. She asked that the applicants agree to replace any trees that die as a consequence of the construction or placement of a new system. 

Ms. Hovey also echoed Mr. Newbold’s concern about altering a pre-existing nonconforming structure. “I would like the applicant to prove why they need that,” she said of the proposed addition, “because it is making it more nonconforming.”

“We need to be convinced,” Mr. Newbold said to Mr. Darrell, “that there’s no alternative location, that this is the minimum that can be done to the structure to achieve what you want, that the neighbor’s concerns as to visibility . . . all that has been addressed.” The hearing was left open and is to be on the agenda at its next meeting, on Dec. 8. 

Three determinations were announced at the meeting. Lee Fixel, a partner at the New York investment company Tiger Global Management, was granted a variance allowing the reconstruction of a tennis court within the required side-yard setback at 226 Further Lane. The board also reversed previous denials of building permits for a proposed garage and a pool house. Over the course of the hearing on the application, Mr. Fixel, who purchased the property for $57.3 million last year, had amended it to eliminate variance requests related to the principal dwelling.  

Richard and Kim Slater of 142 Cove Hollow Road were granted a variance to construct a 576-square-foot detached garage in the front yard, where the zoning code prohibits one closer to the front lot line than the principal building. The variance was granted on the conditions that the garage’s second-level storage space be accessible only by a pull-down stairway and that the garage include no plumbing. 

The board also granted Elizabeth Ellers variances to construct a generator within the front-yard setback at 19 Pudding Hill Lane. 

“Medicines in the home are a leading cause of accidental poisoning,” the East Hampton Town Police Department cautions in a flier promoting a drug take-back day on Saturday at Town Hall. Add to that the facts that “many teens abusing prescription medicines get them from the home medicine cabinet” and that old medicines tossed in the trash or flushed down the toilet can contaminate aquifers, bays, and ponds, and you have three good reasons to find a place to safely dispose of old medications.

A number of pharmacies now have locked boxes where customers can get rid of old prescription and over-the-counter drugs used for people or pets, and there are similar boxes at the East Hampton Town police headquarters in Wainscott and the Sag Harbor Village police headquarters on Division Street.

On Saturday, one of those red metal boxes will be at Town Hall from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., offering people a chance to purge the medicine cabinet of everything from that Tylenol with the 2003 expiration date to expired antibiotics and unused pain medications.

In other matters, East Hampton Town police are also promoting a new phone number at which they will take anonymous tips of suspected narcotic activity, under-age drinking, bias-related incidents, or other illegal activities.

Private messages can be left in English or Spanish at 631-537-7226. They will be screened and forwarded to the appropriate department members.

In looking for new ways to raise money for hurricane relief efforts in Texas and the Caribbean, Jolie Parcher, the owner of the Mandala Yoga and Healing Arts Center in Amagansett, wanted to do something fun.

“Melissa Berman of East End Cares asked if I would hold a special yoga class, and the proceeds would go towards Hurricane Harvey victims,” she said. “I just thought that wasn’t enough. When I think of a tragedy, I think of an entire community coming together to help.”

A heel-kicking, foot-stomping hoedown was the answer, said Ms. Parcher. “My husband and I went to one at the Water Mill center, and it was so much fun!” What is especially good, she said, is that everyone can participate — beginners and families, the young and the old. “It’s playful and a real celebration of the community.”

And a hoedown there will be tomorrow at Scoville Hall in Amagansett, featuring Chart Guthrie as the caller and music by the band Dance All Night. Attendees have been invited to put on their cowboy gear and join in the fun. A $20 per adult and $5 per child donation has been suggested but is not mandatory. Chili and cornbread will be served.

All proceeds, Ms. Parcher said, will be split between Team Rubicon, which has joined with East End Cares to provide relief in Texas, and Give More Hugs, another nonprofit, which is dedicated to helping underprivileged students. It has a large presence on the island of Dominica, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Maria. 

Assisting Ms. Parcher with the event is Charity Robinson, a yoga teacher who lived on Dominica, a tiny Caribbean island just a few miles from Martinique to the south and Guadeloupe to the north. Ms. Robinson taught dance in schools there and worked as an adventure and excursion tour guide. Many of the close friendships she had formed during her time on the island and subsequent visits back were shattered in September when Hurricane Maria hit.

“Friends who were my go-to people on the island lost everything — their house, their belongings. One family even lost their two little girls. The hurricane hit so close to my heart.”

Ms. Robinson teamed up with Give More Hugs and started a drive for much-needed donations of clothes, food, feminine hygiene products, solar flashlights, and solar chargers. Last week, she loaded Ms. Parcher’s truck, usually packed with surfboards, and the two drove to Queens. From there the supplies made their way to Dominica.

At the end of the month, Ms. Robinson will head back to the island for a trip she had initially intended as a yoga retreat, but now, she said, it will be one of relief work.

The hoedown for hurricane relief will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

An attorney representing Mariska Hargitay and Peter Hermann, actors who met on the television series “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” returned to the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday, nine months after the board denied the couple’s request to legalize a tree house that is within required setbacks at 31 Cottage Avenue. The board also had turned down requests to legalize a swing set and playing court within the setbacks and to permit 63 square feet more floor area in an accessory building than the maximum allowed, although it did okay a slate walkway within a setback. 

This time, said Andy Hammer, an attorney, the couple wants to relocate and legalize the tree house, which was constructed without a building permit. They would like a variance to allow the 63 square feet of excess floor area, and another for the tree house to remain 18 feet high, four feet above the maximum for an accessory building.

When the board rejected most of the application in January, it told the couple to remove the playing court and relocate the tree house and swing set. “That hasn’t happened yet,” Frank Newbold, the board’s chairman, said on Friday. 

“We did submit a building permit to do it, thinking we could do it as of right,” Mr. Hammer said. “However, we couldn’t” because the Building Department said relocating the tree house would require a variance. 

“The turn-down letter from the Building Department wasn’t dated till June 9,” Mr. Newbold noted. “The applicant had another summer to use these improvements.” Moreover, he said that calling the structure a tree house was “a little misleading. . . . This is an 18-foot-high structure, it has a staircase that leads up to it, it has walls, it has a roof. . . . It’s basically being bolted to a tree, it’s not really a tree house. It’s a free structure, it’s a playhouse.” 

Board members appeared divided, but a majority seemed inclined to once again reject the application. The property has many outbuildings already, Mr. Newbold said, including a pre-existing, legal guest house, a pool house, and a pre-existing, nonconforming shed. “It has already been the beneficiary of a lot of variances. The question is, is not having a play structure that requires two variances . . . a hardship?” 

The other structures conform to code, Mr. Hammer said. “I think what Frank was trying to say is that it’s one acre,” Lys Marigold, vice chairwoman of the board, said, “and it’s already loaded with so many accessory structures.” 

The property complies with the coverage limit, Mr. Hammer said, calling the tree house “not adaptable to any other use . . . that’s why it’s located where it’s located, because it’s underneath the tree canopy and it’s a place for the children to play.” He called the variances sought minimal. “Technically, the reason you would deny it is adverse impact to somebody. . . . I can’t put my finger on who would be affected.” 

“It’s the precedent of the height,” Craig Humphrey, a board member, said, “not the structure itself.” 

If the tree house could be redesigned to meet the height limit, Mr. Newbold said, “then we would be able to cut the number of variances requested in half.” Mr. Hammer said the structure’s peaked roof could be eliminated, or the entire structure, which he said is about 11 feet tall, could be lowered and the staircase shortened, though that would leave it just two or three feet off the ground. 

The hearing was left open so that Mr. Hammer could consult with his clients. It is to come up again at the board’s next meeting, on Friday, Oct. 27. 

One determination was announced at the meeting. The board granted Richard Brockman’s request for variances to allow the construction of an addition to the grand Tudor building at 64 Huntting Lane, which will fall within the required rear-yard setback. A request to legalize a patio within the front-yard setback also was granted. 

Known as the Woodhouse Playhouse, the 1917 building was converted to residential use in 1948. The property is in the Huntting Lane historic district, and the proposed addition also requires approval by the design review board.

October is domestic violence awareness month, which is fitting for a new lecture and workshop series about healthy relationships and self-esteem building that will be held at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton. 

Beginning today and running on Thursdays until Nov. 2 from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Stacey Naschke, a psychologist, will lead programs focusing on changing negative thought patterns through positive psychology, awareness, boundary building, positive self-talk, and self-esteem building skills. 

“We’re trying to get it out there to the community so people can have full awareness of healthy relationships,” Ms. Naschke said. “You also don’t have to be a victim of domestic abuse to get this information — it’s for everyone.” 

Not only does Ms. Naschke have firsthand experience working for seven years with victims of domestic abuse at the Retreat, an East Hampton organization that provides services for victims of domestic violence (and which is also sponsoring the workshops), her dissertation research developed cognitive behavioral conditioning for victims of domestic abuse. 

The workshops, which will involve various activities, and lectures will each be comprehensive but differ slightly throughout the four-week series for those who want to attend all of the programs. 

“They will concentrate heavily on healthy relationships, how to deal with specific things, and making better choices,” Ms. Naschke said. “Some sessions will be devoted to personal things, boundaries, and self-esteem. Some will deal with you in the world, and some with you and yourself.” 

The programs are an hour and a half, and child care will be provided. They are open to the public, but space is limited. Reservations can be made by calling 631-329-4398.

Ed McDonald, East Hampton Village’s ocean beach manager, delivered an upbeat report on the summer season to the village board at its work session last Thursday.

“The summer started as very cold and cloudy,” he said, with ocean temperatures remaining in the 50s well into June. “Suddenly, in early July, the sun came out, it got beautiful, and we had some pretty good crowds.” The crowd at Main Beach on Aug. 9 was the largest he had ever seen, the 32-year veteran of the beach said, likening the scene to Coney Island. 

Proceeds for daily parking permits were higher than those of the previous year, he said, rising from $141,475 to $154,855. A $5 increase in the cost of daily tickets was at least partly responsible, he said. 

Security cameras installed on the Main Beach pavilion this year revealed “a lot of nocturnal activities on the beach,” including “beer parties” and youth climbing on the structure. “But we also caught someone dumping hot coals in one of our garbage cans right up against the building,” he said. “That could have been tragic.” 

The cameras also recorded a theft. “A guy was missing his cellphone,” Mr. McDonald said, “and on one of our cameras we saw a woman look at it, look at it again, look at it again, and stick it in her bathing suit. Because of the watchful eyes of one of our kids, we found her.” 

He praised his “very, very good” staff, including the beach attendants — “the kids that clean the beaches, clean the bathrooms, do all the dirty work on the pavilion” — and the lifeguards. 

Of particular note this year, he said, was the amount of marine life observed. “I’ve been on that beach such a long time,” he said, “and I’ve never seen a year like this. . . . We had whales, for a period of time in August, every day,” including large humpback whales. “We’ve had more dolphins than I’ve ever seen,” along with “other unidentifiable splashes and swirls.”

Large schools of menhaden, he said, attracted other marine life, including sharks. “Everything was feeding on them,” he said. “Ospreys were also out in the ocean feeding on them.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has asked the United States secretary of commerce to take strong action to alter quotas on fluke that he said are hurting New York’s commercial fishing industry. 

In a letter on Tuesday, the governor told Wilbur Ross that the state would take legal action to protect New York’s commercial fishermen if fluke is not more equitably allocated among states. 

The commercial allocations “are based upon incomplete data from 1980-1989,” the governor wrote. “As a result, New York is only allocated 7.6 percent of the coastwide limit, while the neighboring states of Rhode Island and New Jersey received allocations more than twice the size. Other states have access to as much as three times New York’s quota, causing an inequitable distribution that injures the state’s economy and prevents fishermen from feeding their own families. These outdated allocations have devastated fishermen, and will continue to impact the subsequent generations of New York’s commercial fishers.”

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission are scheduled to hold meetings in December. Governor Cuomo urged Secretary Ross to take action on the quota in advance of those meetings. “I cannot allow self-interest to grind this process to a halt, while an entire industry suffers as a result,” he wrote. “Regulators cannot continue to manage this fishery in a manner devoid of equity and flexibility. Accordingly, if the December meetings do not result in a process for a dramatic increase to the commercial fluke allocation for New York, I will commence litigation and secure from the courts the rights of New York’s fishermen as a matter of law.”

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. seconded the governor’s letter yesterday, noting in a statement that the Magnuson-Stevens Act of 1976 established a state-by-state quota allocation system for commercial fishermen. The quotas, he said, are “based upon faulty and incomplete collection data, which discriminate against commercial fishermen in the State of New York.

A vote by the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday to ban parking on a grassy area off Edgemere Road bordering a dirt road that ends at the Montauk Firehouse was a great relief for residents of the two houses across from the area, which has been used by patrons of the nearby Surf Lodge.

“It’s the first time, after 30 years, I’ve actually considered selling my house,” MaryAnn Peluso said. 

“People are so drunk they come up to my house and try to get in. They’re so drunk they don’t know where they are.” She said she doesn’t feel safe at home alone anymore, and had to install a gate and new windows and doors. 

Cars in the area narrow the access to her house and the second one, adjacent, raising concerns about the ability of emergency vehicles to reach them, she said. 

John Quinn, Ms. Peluso’s neighbor, said that there is “public urination, lewdness, drug use. . . . The quality of life is a problem for us.” He predicted that if the situation were allowed to continue, “someone will get hurt.”

It’s not just the emergency access or what takes place on the grassy area that is of concern, the residents said. Parking at its edge and on the roadside nearby creates a danger as drivers pulling out cannot see oncoming cars. 

“Montauk residents are really concerned about what’s been allowed to happen here,” said Ms. Peluso. “There should not be special treatment for a particular business.”

Businesses are required under the town code to provide adequate parking for their customers. Parking by Surf Lodge customers along the nearby roads has been just one of the problems for the town posed by the popular summertime spot. As no-parking zones were added along the roads, people apparently turned to the grassy area to park. 

That led to someone having boulders placed along its edge without seeking anyone’s permission. Those, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said after the board voted to ban parking on the site, “will have to go.”

An ongoing discussion about a possible deletion in the Sag Harbor Village code having to do with the posting of notices for every application made to the board of historical preservation and architectural review continued during the village board meeting on Tuesday. A final decision has yet to be made. 

Initially, during the September board meeting, the proposal elicited significant public concern, and a number of residents spoke out, adamantly opposed to the elimination of physical postings outside properties.

A compromise could not be found, and the revision was tabled so that residents could submit suggestions for changing its language. Meanwhile, at a work session on Friday, village board members met to discuss their own suggestions. 

Although Mayor Sandra Schroeder was the only board member at last month’s meeting to cast a dissenting vote for the tabling because she was ready to approve the changes, on Friday she suggested posting applications received by the Building Department online rather than physically.

“The list could be applications received by the Building Department,” Ms. Schroeder said. “Because if you found out the house on the corner was going to be modified, you could then ask to see the plans.” Residents “are obligated to find out when it is going to the board.” 

The board members seemed to like the online idea, and when one of them, Aidan Corish, subsequently proposed it during Tuesday’s village board meeting, he said an updated online list would be helpful: “A lot of people who are second-home owners would be able to see it from anywhere, and if they’re not in the neighborhood they aren’t going to see a posting,” he said. “I would like to see that list before we vote, but other than that I have no problem with this, I think it’s a good law that will make our Building Department more efficient and also communicate more effectively to residents and second-home owners.” 

Despite nods from other board members, some residents were reluctant. Jeffrey Bragman, whose law office represents the Save Sag Harbor group, called online-only postings “a step backwards and the wrong move for a local government to make. The problem I have with the computerized notice is that a public notice on a street, it notifies not only the immediate neighbors but anybody waking around the village who has an interest in it. Secondly, it is simple and easy to administer.”

Mr. Bragman, who noted his time as an attorney for the architectural review board in East Hampton, did not agree that posting notices of neighborhood construction is burdensome, referring to a comment by Anthony Brandt, the chairman of Sag Harbor’s A.R.B., from the September meeting. 

“It’s an absolute necessity that local government is completely transparent,” Mr. Bragman said. “And if you want to supplement it, then run the list online, but that should not be the only way. People should not have to click on a computer to see what is going on in their own village. They should be able to walk down a street and see a sign that says, ‘I want to replace that fence.’ ” 

Renee Simons, a resident who had voiced concern at the previous meeting, suggested on Tuesday that the village board consider a list of minor projects that would not require physical postings. 

While there was no decision, per Ms. Schroeder’s request the board agreed to draft a list, and the revision was left open for next month’s meeting.