After approving a three-year capital spending plan last Thursday, which includes projects totaling $12.4 million, the East Hampton Town Board decided to issue $2.7 million in bonds to kick-start a number of projects.

    They include the purchase of computer servers, new trucks and a snowplow, mowers, new boilers, videocameras for police vehicles, a wood grinder for the Sanitation Department, and a vault and a generator for Town Hall. The money will also fund road and sidewalk reconstruction, improvements to the town-owned East Hampton RECenter building, the installation of waste treatment pumps at town docks, and an access ramp at the Montauk Playhouse.

    Six other projects, with a combined price tag of $2.2 million, are undergoing environmental review, and the board is expected to approve borrowing for them at an upcoming meeting.

    The bond issues approved did not include a proposed $300,000 bond to pay consultants to prepare a comprehensive town wastewater management plan. A three-member board majority — Councilmen Peter Van Scoyoc and Dominick Stanzione, with Councilwoman Sylvia Overby — recently approved a bid by a consulting firm, over the objections of Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, but four votes are needed before a bond can be issued.

    Ms. Quigley said she objected because the cost of the work was to be $200,000, not $300,000. But both she and Mr. Wilkinson also voted against a subsequent resolution offered by Ms. Overby to borrow $200,000 for the work.

    Ever since the other board members failed to approve a sale of the town’s wastewater treatment plant to a private operator last year, the supervisor and Ms. Quigley have declined to entertain other courses of action, and opposed the creation of a long-range comprehensive wastewater management plan.

    Ms. Overby said Tuesday that she would discuss the situation with Mr. Stanzione, with whom she had worked to craft an action plan for dealing with septic waste issues. Mr. Stanzione said this week that the money for the plan could be taken from a town operating fund surplus, and noted that only three votes are needed to modify the budget so as to place the sum in the proper line.

    Also last Thursday, the board passed a resolution expressing its “desires to entertain options for an engineered beach” in the Montauk downtown area, which suffered severe erosion after recent storms.

    The town is seeking to be included in beach reconstruction projects to be done by the Army Corps of Engineers and paid for with federal funds. During recent discussions about whether rocks or hard structures might be installed along the shore, the board could not reach consensus on Mr. Wilkinson’s request to issue a blanket approval of whatever the Army Corps might propose.

    Instead, Mr. Van Scoyoc offered to draft a resolution that could be supported unanimously, underscoring the town’s commitment to obtaining federal assistance. Some had suggested that lack of accord on beach rebuilding could hurt the town’s bid for federal dollars.

    After some disagreement on the wording of Mr. Van Scoyoc’s resolution, a slightly amended resolution was adopted unanimously. It reads, in part, that “the Town of East Hampton respectfully supports federal funding and attendant coastal engineering resources from the Army Corps of Engineers for an engineered beach.”

    Both Mr. Van Scoyoc and Ms. Overby would like to engage an independent coastal engineer to advise the town on what to do along the shore, as a consortium of environmentalists urged last week. Ms. Overby said Tuesday that “it is distressing to see that other board members think that they are the professionals to tell us what we should do, without professional help.” The supervisor and Ms. Quigley’s stance on both the wastewater plan and on coastal erosion issues show a “lack of leadership,” she said. “To have the town board impose its will without the professional advice to back it up, I think is a dangerous precedent,” said Ms. Overby.

    Also last Thursday, the board approved, for the second time, revised laws regulating taxicabs and their operators. A previous vote pushed through by Ms. Quigley at a work session, after revisions had been made to an earlier draft, had to be rescinded, as it is unlawful to adopt a law without first reviewing a written draft.

    After public hearings at which no one spoke, the board approved the purchase of several properties. Lots on Copeces Lane and Springs-Fireplace Road in Springs, owned by Kenneth Austin, will be purchased for $1.8 million from the community preservation fund, for open space.

    Approximately three acres on Old Stone Highway, also in Springs, will be purchased from Beverly Kassner for $450,000, also from the community preservation fund. It is adjacent to wetlands and almost eight acres of open space owned by the Nature Conservancy and the town.

   The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals ruled on two controversial matters on April 9 with a voting pattern unusual for this board.

    Members voted 4-1 to grant several variances and a natural resources special permit to Morgan Neff, which will allow him to keep, unchanged, two of his seven cottages, known as Millionaires Row, on Fort Pond in Montauk.

    The board’s concern in granting the requested variances, in particular for one small cottage that is close to the water and straddles two different flood zones, was that it might be jeopardizing East Hampton Town residents’ ability to get flood insurance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    JoAnne Pahwul, assistant director of the Planning Department, had cautioned the board in a February memo that FEMA flood insurance is a cooperative program between the agency and local communities, predicated on the idea that the communities themselves will discourage building in areas considered high risk for flooding. Should FEMA find that a town had failed to comply it could take harsh steps against the town, and the residents, up to and including pulling out of its part of the bargain.

    Richard Whalen, arguing on behalf of Mr. Neff, told the board at the February hearing that approving the requested variances and permit would not jeopardize the town’s standing with FEMA. “It’s a tiny variance on a tiny property,” he said, and after a debate on April 9 the board concurred.

    Bryan Gosman, a member, said this was the only time the issue had been raised, and that granting the requests would not set a pattern.

    David Lys, the board’s newest member, noted that Mr. Neff had had a building permit for work done on the small cottage, though the permit was later rescinded. “He built what was approved,” said Mr. Lys. “This is the first time for this. I don’t think it sets a pattern.”

    Alex Walter, the chairman, agreed, but wondered whether the applicant had demonstrated that denying the requests would create undue hardship. “It has to be exceptional hardship,” he said. In concluding that it was not, Mr. Walter was the lone dissenter; Mr. Gosman and Mr. Lys were joined by Don Cirillo and Lee White in approving the application.

    Since Mr. Cirillo became the board’s vice chairman and Mr. Walter its chairman 16 months ago, the Z.B.A. has split 4-1 on several occasions, but Mr. Cirillo, an ardent advocate for landowners’ rights, is usually the odd man out.       Such was not the case with the Neff application, nor was it in a second application, this one involving fenceposts.

    Susan Kwit of 285 Kings Point Road in Springs discovered last year that neighbors were cutting through her property in order to get to the beach. Her solution was to build a 70-foot-long, six-foot high stockade fence, which runs the length of her property, right to the dune. But for the fence to be legal, the homeowner needed a natural resources special permit.

    The fence did not trouble Mr. Lys, who spoke first during deliberations, but the way it got there did. “I don’t care for the reverse order,” he said — meaning building before obtaining approval.  He said that the last fencepost, which was driven into the crest of the bluff, should be removed. Removing it would shorten the fence by about seven feet.

    Mr. Walter, too, was unhappy that Ms. Kwit hadn’t come before the Z.B.A. before erecting the fence, and Mr. Cirillo agreed with the chairman, to a point. At the time of the public hearing on the application he had wondered why Ms. Kwit never sought other remedies, or called the police, before putting up the fence. “This seems to be the last resort being used first,” he said.

    In the end, though, he agreed with Mr. Lys that the fence could stay, provided the last post was taken down. Mr. White also agreed, leaving Mr. Walter as the final speaker.

    “This is a direct violation,” he said. “This is my night to be contrary, if that is the reason they put the fence up. If everyone did that, we wouldn’t have a zoning code.”

    When Mr. Walter finished speaking Mr. White seemed to waver, but in the end he sided with the other three board members against the chairman’s lone dissent.

    “It is just my opinion,” Mr. Walter said. “That is why we have five members.”

East Hampton Town

Barn at Duck Creek Farm

    The condition of the barn at the East Hampton Town-owned historic Duck Creek Farm, which is the former studio of the painter John Little, will be evaluated to see if it can be used for a temporary art installation proposed by the Parrish Art Museum for the month of August.

    Soft sculpture works by Sydney Albertini, a Springs artist, would be displayed, Loring Bolger, the chair of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee, said at a town board meeting on Tuesday. The committee has endorsed the idea. A number of people are interested in the use of a viable structure for exhibits, she said, suggesting that the town could perhaps seek donations for needed repair work. Several groups have inquired about using the Duck Creek site, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said.

Peconic Bay Preservation Fund

    First-quarter revenue for the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund, at $20.2 million, was more than 92 percent higher than in the first quarter of 2012, according to a release from State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. Total revenue for March in the five towns that participate in the program — a 2 percent real estate transfer tax that raises money for land preservation — was $4.1 million, compared to $3.7 million in the same month last year.

    Real estate transactions in 2013’s first quarter totaled 2,164, compared with 1,459 last year. In East Hampton, $5.7 million flowed into the preservation fund, a 106-percent increase over 2012.

    Landing fees at East Hampton Airport could rise this year by more than 100 percent for some types of helicopters, according to a proposal discussed Tuesday by the East Hampton Town Board.

    The fees, said Jim Brundige, the airport manager, have not been increased since 2008, but the airport has had “a clearly steady increase” in expenses.

    Mr. Brundige told the board he structured the fees so that, with the traffic expected based on last year’s, they would rise enough to cover operating expenses this year.

    Though the airport had been accumulating surplus revenue since 2006, reaching $200,000 to $300,000, he said that last year operating expenses exceeded income, and some of the surplus funds were used to cover the shortfall. That, he said, was a result of a spike in fees related to the installation of the control tower, and to legal fees stemming from an Article 78 lawsuit against the airport.

    In addition to landing fees, the airport fund gets money from leases on hangars, which are generally long-term and subject to contracts, and from advertising at the terminal, as well as from a town fee on fuel sold at the airport. At 15 cents a gallon, Mr. Brundige said, those fees are already three times the industry standard. They have brought in about $700,000 a year.

    Hangar leases brought in over $411,000 last year. Income to the town from advertisers, who are secured by Luxury Media Partners, which under its contract gets half the advertising dollars, totaled $47,500 last year and $43,000 in 2011, Mr. Brundige said.

    Some revenue from landing fees has been forfeited in the past, he said, “mainly because it was difficult to track down the owners of the aircraft. “ Seventy-five to 80 percent of the planes were identified. 

    With the airport unstaffed at some times of day, aircraft could conceivably land or take off, bypassing landing fees. “I mean, you have to be a detective,” Mr. Brundige said.

    However, he said, that situation has improved since the town hired Vector Airport Solutions, which provides land fee billing and collection services.

    “Is the budgetary goal to break even?” asked Councilman Peter  Van Scoyoc. Covering annual operating expenses does not include raising money for capital expenses, such as runway repair — items for which the town has, in past years, accepted Federal Aviation Administration grants.

    “That’s what the [federal] airport improvement fund is for,” Mr. Brundige said.

    Whether to continue to accept those grants, which come with conditions that limit the town’s authority to restrict access to the airport — the only way, some say, to effectively reduce airport-related noise — has been a matter of some debate, as has whether the airport could be fully self-sustaining or if, without federal money, town taxpayers would have to shoulder the airport’s capital expenses, which could reach into the millions.

    “I don’t see a problem with exceeding our budgetary requirements,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

    “We were maintaining a fiscally sustainable budget until last year,” Mr. Brundige said. In fact, said Councilman Dominick Stanzione, Mr. Brundige has managed the airport budget well during his tenure, resulting in the accumulated surpluses.

    F.A.A. guidelines, Mr. Brundige said, say that landing or other airport fees cannot be “discriminatory,” ensuring that general aviation airports are available to flyers, but that airport operators are allowed to set fees so as to “maintain airport revenue in a way as to be self-sustaining.”

     “East Hampton Airport is the most expensive airport on the East Coast, including J.F.K.,” Mr. Brundige said, “so we really have got to be careful, because you’re treading on potential lawsuits.”

    The Downtown Manhattan Heliport, Mr. Brundige said, charges $255 for a particular type of helicopter to land, versus the $215 he has suggested as a new landing fee here, up from $100.

    Since the heliport is where many copters begin a flight to East Hampton, Mr. Van Scoyoc suggested that the town’s fee match the New York City facility’s. Councilwoman Sylvia Overby suggested a seasonal fee scale, with higher fees in the summertime, when the airport has a greater impact on residents.

    Board members and Mr. Brundige agreed to discuss the landing fees further. Meanwhile, the board will proceed with changing the town code, which now includes a schedule of specific landing fees, to allow the board to set fees and amend them from time to time with a simple resolution. A hearing will be scheduled on that change to the code.

    East Hampton’s representatives in the State and County Legislatures came out this week in support of creating a town comprehensive wastewater management strategy and plan, an initiative that has drawn strong opposition from East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley.

    Over their objections, the majority of the board voted last month to hire a consortium of professional engineers, scientists, and consultants to undertake a study of the issues and draft a plan. Lombardo Associates of Massachusetts, the FPM Group of Ronkonkoma, the Woods Hole Group, and Christopher Gobler, a Stony Brook Southampton professor, will work together to develop a plan for dealing with wastewater that addresses both environmental protection and regulatory mandates. They will try to answer the question of what to do about the town’s aging scavenger waste treatment plant, which is currently nonfunctional and operating only as a waste transfer station, and craft a ground and surface water monitoring program.

    However, the three-member board majority was unable to secure the majority-plus-one votes needed to include the project in the town’s capital budget or to issue a bond to raise the money for it. Ms. Quigley and Mr. Wilkinson have called hiring the professionals a waste of money and have instead advocated handing the scavenger waste plant over to a private operator. Ms. Quigley has said that she fears that a proposed aspect of the plan — to assess the functioning of individual septic systems throughout the town by distributing a questionnaire, and developing an incentive or other program that would lead to private septic upgrades — would result in visits to residents by the “septic police.”

    In a letter sent Monday to the East Hampton Town Board, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, and County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, a former town supervisor, offered their “strong support” for the “environmentally significant study,” which they said could “prove to be cost-effective for the town.”

    With a need for “clean, productive groundwater and surface waters” in East Hampton and on the entire East End, the legislators wrote, “identifying, monitoring, and remediating sources of water pollution should be of utmost importance to the town.”

    “Developing a comprehensive wastewater management strategy and plan will put East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village on the right track to assess the purpose and ownership of an aging scavenger waste facility, better understand the impact of septic systems on the town’s vulnerable and sensitive water resources, as well as establish scientific systems for monitoring the quality of these invaluable assets,” the letter states.

    “These are clearly significant advances in environmental management,” the three added. The letter ends by urging the town board to “advance this study by providing the funding it deserves.”

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, a supporter of the long-range planning strategy, along with Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Dominick Stanzione, read the letter aloud at a board work session on Tuesday. Neither Mr. Wilkinson nor Ms. Quigley was in attendance.

    Ms. Quigley voted on April 4 against accepting the consultants’ proposal, but the resolution passed, with three assenting votes; Mr. Wilkinson was absent from that vote. However, on April 18, both voted against issuing a bond to pay for the work, which is expected to cost $197,989. A supermajority of the board (or four members) must approve bond issues, so that measure failed.

    The question of how the work will be funded has not been resolved. However, the April 4 resolution notes that the consultants would be paid “from the appropriate operating, surplus, or reserve accounts should funding not be approved as a capital item in the 2013 capital budget.”

    In an e-mail on Tuesday, Councilman Stanzione wrote that “this powerful endorsement of my proposal for a comprehensive wastewater study comes from our most esteemed elected environmental leaders, Senator LaValle, Assemblyman Thiele, and Legislator Schneiderman — stalwarts of progressive environmental leadership. Wow! I’m humbled and grateful because their strong support comes at a pivotal moment. It puts a very bright exclamation point on the public conversation about the merits of the proposal. It’s time to fund the study.”

    Three members of the East Hampton Town Board agreed at a work session on Tuesday to move forward on “parallel tracks” to implement both long-term and short-term recommendations made by a town committee on coastal erosion. Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilmen Dominick Stanzione and Peter Van Scoyoc outlined the steps to be taken in the absence of Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who did not attend.

    Town staff, including the attorneys and Planning Department, will be directed to prepare the materials necessary to obtain permits for immediate solutions, such as adding sand to the Montauk beach and beach “scraping,” or relocating and stockpiling sand that accrues on the beach during the summer months, as well as to enable the board to begin drafting revisions to the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, which restricts erosion-control efforts on the ocean beaches to the addition of sand.

    According to state law, the town must consult with an engineer on any project costing more than $5,000. 

    The three board members discussed seeking those services in two phases — right away, for sand replenishment, and in a second phase, for expert advice on developing new coastal legislation.    Efforts to chart a course on ameliorating the severe erosion along the Montauk oceanfront, which is threatening beachfront businesses following Superstorm Sandy, had bogged down during several recent board discussions, with Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley saying the town should accept a hoped-for offer by the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild the beach even if it included using rocks or other hard structures and the others wanting to wait and see what might be proposed.

    Allocating the money for a one-time piling of sand, to protect the shore from further damage until longer-term solutions are achieved, could also pose a problem for the board, as a super-majority, or four members, must approve any borrowing for the project.

    “I could certainly draft it,” John Jilnicki, the town attorney, said at the meeting of a potential revision to the L.W.R.P., “but I don’t know what the content would be. We need the planning and engineering expertise,” he said.

    While the erosion committee recommended establishing a new coastal zone for the Montauk downtown beach, where anti-erosion measures other than sand could be allowed, the town board would have to determine the parameters of that zone and its regulations.

    “We need to have expertise,” Ms. Overby said. “It’s a time-consuming effort, and I think that, while we need to start that, there are other things we can immediately do,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. As far as changes to the L.W.R.P., he said, “I think you’ll find that relief will be many months away. Whereas depositions of large quantities of sand is something we can do immediately.”

    Mr. Van Scoyoc noted that any revisions to the L.W.R.P. would have to be sent to the State Department of State for approval — a process that took over a year for the original L.W.R.P.

    Meanwhile, he said, “people will be in a vulnerable position” when fall and winter storms come. “The calendar is not our friend,” Mr. Stanzione commented.

    Also on Tuesday, board members moved toward adoption of a townwide deer management plan. A hearing on the draft plan had been held in December.

    Results of an aerial deer population survey conducted using infrared technology will be available any day, Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town planning director, told the board. It will be analyzed and discussed with state and federal fish and wildlife experts, so that choices can be made about specifics.

    Certain future actions that could be contemplated, such as a targeted kill, or culling, program would be subject to public hearing and separate environmental review. However, the board agreed that the overall draft plan would not require an environmental impact statement.

    Instead of having a consultant create a comprehensive wastewater management plan for East Hampton Town — a plan that is to include recommendations on environmental protection, ongoing surface and groundwater quality monitoring, meeting regulatory mandates, and what to do about the town’s currently inoperable scavenger waste treatment plant — Councilwoman Theresa Quigley suggested on Tuesday budgeting perhaps as much as $10 million to subsidize upgrades of private septic systems in ecologically sensitive areas of town.

    Both Ms. Quigley and Supervisor Bill Wilkinson have opposed the plan put forward by the other three board members to hire a consultant, likely at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars, to collect data and draft an overarching plan before final decisions are made regarding the waste treatment plant, for instance. At the start of last year, the two were ready to sell the plant to the sole private company that had submitted a bid but were stymied when Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who had supported seeking bidders, agreed with the two new board members, Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, that the bid was unacceptable.

    A committee that evaluated submissions by consultants interested in creating the town’s wastewater plan recommended that the board accept a proposal by a coalition comprising Lombardo Associates, a Massachusetts company, the FPM Group of Ronkonkoma, and the Woods Hole Group, along with Christopher Gobler, a Stony Brook Southampton professor. Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley criticized that recommendation Tuesday, but Mr. Stanzione said he would offer a resolution at tonight’s meeting to hire the group.

    Lombardo Associates has developed a wastewater treatment system that can be used on a small scale. Ms. Quigley charged that, if the town hires Pio Lombardo as a consultant “he is going to be suggesting that we put his product in, his own product.”

    “I’m suggesting that this man who’s selling the product is not going to find that there is nothing wrong,” she said. “There’s a foregone conclusion to this study, and that foregone conclusion is to shut down the plant and put Mr. Lombardo’s system all over town.”

    The board voted unanimously on Jan. 8 to seek proposals for the comprehensive wastewater plan from four pre-qualified firms that had previously submitted outlines and any others. The proposals were vetted by a committee of town staffers that included the heads of the Planning and Natural Resources Departments.

    Jeanne Carrozza, the town purchasing agent, told the board on March 19 that each was scored on 40 different criteria, with two proposals earning more than the 70 points needed for further review of their specifics and price. The firm selected for recommendation to the board “fully satisfies the requirements” outlined by the town board, she said, which included professional qualifications, financial responsibility, and the use of innovative technology.

    Ms. Quigley took issue with the vetting process at the March 19 meeting, comparing it to a similar group evaluation applied several years ago to bids by vendors on town beach locations. “We tried this and it blew up in our faces,” she said.

    In that process, a huge public outcry ensued when it was announced that a longtime Ditch Plain vendor had not made the grade and would lose its spot, and all vendors’ bids were thrown out by the board when it was discovered that not all had received the same information, invalidating the bids.

    “If we are so concerned about our groundwater,” Ms. Quigley said Tuesday, the town would do better to give money directly to residents for septic system upgrades, “instead of having Mr. Lombardo and police coming to our septic tanks. Trust me, it is the next step,” she said.

    Mr. Wilkinson pointed a finger at Mr. Stanzione. “This is a charade,” he said heatedly. “Dominick, you’re putting the public through a charade.”

    Turning to Len Bernard, the town budget officer, Mr. Wilkinson ascertained that four votes — a supermajority of the board — would be needed to issue a bond to raise the money for the consultants’ fees. The money could come from bonds, Mr. Bernard said, or could be taken out of a surplus from the town operating budget.

    “We’ll get it either way,” Mr. Stanzione told Mr. Wilkinson.

    “Really, you know that?” the supervisor replied.

    Mr. Bernard reported that borrowing $10 million for septic upgrades would add $700,000 a year to the town budget for 20 years, and would put an annual increase to the town budget, which must include unavoidable increases in costs for employee benefits and other items, over the state-imposed 2-percent tax increase cap.

    However, any sum the town commits to underwriting septic upgrades would be unlikely to be expended in one year, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby pointed out.

    “It’s a great idea to start thinking about septic upgrades,” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc told Ms. Quigley. But, he added, “I don’t think it supplants the need to have the study.” One thing the wastewater management plan would do, he said, would be to identify, “scientifically,” the areas of the town where septic upgrades are most needed.

    Should the town move forward with an upgrade program, he said, it would not necessarily mean issuing bonds to raise the money — other options, such as establishing a septic upgrade tax district could be explored, he said.

     After establishing a Water Quality Protection Fund six months ago, Southampton Town officials recently began discussing an incentive program to help residents replace, repair, or upgrade aging or failing septic systems dating from 1981 or earlier. The proposal calls for providing up to $5,000 or 60 percent of the cost to homeowners who install systems verified by the County Health Department to reduce nitrates going into groundwater. Money from the water protection fund and rebates will be drawn from a Southampton Town budget surplus from 2012.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees’ plan to condense the 90 moorings set aside for large boats within a broad area in the center of Three Mile Harbor came under fire during the trustees’ monthly meeting Tuesday night.

    Sean McCaffery and Stephanie Forsberg, trustees, and the panel’s clerk, Diane McNally, explained to the dozen or so boaters in attendance that the board was trying to correct a disorderly pattern which boaters had come to accept as normal.

    Trustees said the loose mooring pattern took space away from kayakers, stand-up paddle boarders, and waterskiers, among others, and threatened to bring the State Department of Environmental Conservation down on the harbor’s shellfish beds. “It’s why you are given supplemental forms asking if you plan to stay on your boat overnight,” Ms. McNally told the boaters. She said the board’s plan followed the example of other East End towns and villages, Sag Harbor among them.

    Ms. McNally said the D.E.C. looks upon moored and anchored boats as they do marinas: as potential sources of coliform pollution from marine toilets. The bigger the area in which boats are moored, the bigger the potential for shellfish closures, is the trustees’ reasoning. “You might say, ‘But Three Mile Harbor is a no-discharge zone,’ but the D.E.C. will not take that into account,” she said. “They close areas because they don’t have enough people to test the water.”

    John Courtney, the trustees’ attorney, reminded the disgruntled boaters that the original arrangement for the large-boat mooring area was a tight pattern, in large part because of the shellfish closure issue.

    John Chadnick complained that the town code permits boaters to anchor within the mooring grid. Trustees admitted this should be changed, although a separate, formal anchoring area might draw unwanted attention in regard to shellfishing areas.

    John Sabastoanski, who has kept a boat in Three Mile Harbor for the past 15 years, said his “main concern is the boats are too close together,” an opinion shared by Glenn Bennett, a contractor who installs moorings.

    “On a strong southwest wind, sometimes it takes three passes to get to your mooring,” said Mr. Bennett. “Sag Harbor has accidents. At night, none of the boats are lit if nobody’s on them. People swim off their boats.”

    Most of the boaters who spoke said they found the tight quarters objectionable from a safety as well as a privacy standpoint. 

       Craig Humphrey said the condensed pattern would actually put his boat out of reach: “I row to my boat. I had a check ready for you and I paid for a dinghy slip on a sand spit on the north end of the harbor. It’s two-tenths of a nautical mile. I wouldn’t mind rowing a little farther, but not a mile.”

     Dustin Goodwin said the condensed pattern ruined the “poetry” of Three Mile Harbor. “The harbor is my summer home. I want my ashes spread there. Why do you think boaters come from Connecticut and Rhode Island? Three Mile Harbor is not a parking lot. The grid is too dense. You will lose the poetry.”

    As to the trustees’ contention that the tighter pattern would allow for more boaters in the future, Mark Mendelman, a contractor who sets moorings and who gathered the naysayers for Tuesday’s meeting, suggested that spreading the boats out within the grid also allowed for future growth. “You could fill in rather than expand out.”

    “It’s a bitter pill. Rules and regulations are hard,” Ms. McNally said. “I was at the high school when the trustees first said there should be a mooring field. The people said, ‘Mooring field? It’s our right to put them where we want.’ ” But ever-increasing use of the harbor made the regulations necessary, she said, adding that the trustees are willing to hear from boaters independently to see if their mooring location could be better fitted to their needs.

    All moorings, set on the bottom by independent contractors, must be approved by the trustees, who raised the cost of a resident’s permit this season from $7.50 to $10 per boat-length foot. Nonresidents now pay $20 per boat-length-foot. There is also a $50 inspection fee.

    Ms. Forsberg told the boaters the increased mooring fees were helping the board pay for a $25,000 program to test for coliform bacteria as well as algae blooms in the harbor.

    “It’s important for the town to take action with deliberate speed. The Montauk commercial district is threatened,” Drew Bennett, who chaired the town’s erosion control committee, told East Hampton Town Board members at a work session on Tuesday.

    Mr. Bennett’s caution was echoed by Montauk residents and business owners also at the meeting.

    After the board’s contentious discussion on April 2 about 11 recommendations issued by his committee, Mr. Bennett said he was on hand to “reiterate the recommendations,” while other speakers urged the board to find unanimity on at least some of the issues and move forward. At the April 2 meeting, the conversation derailed when Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, pressing members to say whether they would accept a possible proposal from the Army Corps of Engineers to “drop rock” on Montauk’s shore, found no immediate accord.

    “The board has two matters,” Mr. Bennett said. “We would encourage you to endorse the engineered beach and we would encourage you to endorse some interim action. And we urge you to act on both.”

    The town has asked for federal funding, to the tune of $20 million, for beach repairs following the damage from Hurricane Sandy and other storms.

    But East Hampton’s chance to receive a piece of the pie could be threatened by a fractious town board, suggested Paul Monte, a Montauk business owner and member of the erosion committee. A lack of direction on erosion control efforts is surely being noticed by Representative Tim Bishop, the town’s point person on obtaining the federal funds, and other officials, he said.

    “If we can’t get our act together to give them a comfort level . . . after they jump through hoops and call in political favors . . . then the money will go elsewhere,” Mr. Monte said.

    “If the feds say, here’s money, and recommend hard structures, why wouldn’t you take the recommendations?” he said. “It’s ludicrous.”

    Board members appear to agree that an “engineered” beach — one reconstructed to specifications designed to withstand storms over a period of time — is called for in Montauk, in the area from Ditch Plain to downtown. Adding sand from offshore would widen the beach both above sea level and below the water line.

    If East Hampton is awarded funding, the beach would be created at no local cost by the Army Corps of Engineers, under plans developed in its Fire Island to Montauk Point reformulation study, and future repairs would also be eligible for federal funding.

    The plan could include a “reinforced dune core,” as Mr. Bennett described it, with rock or other structures placed beneath the sand dunes on the shoreward side of the beach.

    “You guys have fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of East Hampton,” Mr. Monte told the board, and should take “this once in a lifetime opportunity to have the government say, take this money and build a beach.”

    The funding status is still uncertain, Mr. Bishop’s spokesman, Oliver Longwell, said Tuesday. But, should the town be included in a federal erosion-control project, “the form the project will take — that’s going to be the result of a process the Army Corps goes through.” With the participation of Mr. Bishop’s office, he said, “the priorities of the local community” would be included. “There’s always collaboration,” he said.

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby have resisted giving a thumbs-up to any plan the Army Corps might come up with, before seeing the details. But Mr. Van Scoyoc offered to draft a resolution that the board could approve, perhaps unanimously, next week, that indicates its support of an engineered beach.

    “And at the same time we will work toward amending the emergency provision,” Mr. Wilkinson said, outlining a way to allow property owners to take temporary measures in the interim.

    An oceanfront house on Marine Boulevard in Amagansett was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on April 2 for variances that would allow what might be called a creative expansion.

    “I’m a composer,” Carter Burwell, the applicant, told the board. Mr. Burwell is, in fact, the composer for the Coen brothers, the Academy Award-winning film-making duo, having written the scores for all but one of their films.

    He was accompanied at the hearing by his wife, Christine Sciulli, a video installation artist, and their two sons. “Working at home, and our growing family, are our reasons for the expansion,” Mr. Burwell said.

    The property, at 39 Marine Boulevard, is about 27,663 square feet with a three-story, 3,149-square-foot house on it and a 1,430-square-foot deck. Mr. Burwell bought the property in 2010; it was previously owned by the fashion designer Elie Tahari.

    As designed by Katherine Chia of Desai/Chia Architecture, who was at the hearing and spoke at length, the plans call for a two-story addition to the living area and an increase in the size of Mr. Burwell’s recording studio.

    The expansion would total 1,191 square feet and be on the street side of the house, with a small, 218-square-foot deck. Several variances from the town code would be required, some of which are minor, such as a 5.4-foot variance from the required 100 feet from the dune crest. Two of the requested variances are somewhat rare: a 14-foot, 8-inch height variance from the pyramid law, which is intended to prevent buildings from looming over neighboring properties, and a total square footage variance of 353 feet.

    Calling the existing house “a little convoluted,” Ms. Chia said it was more or less a split-level. Laying out floor plans and a scale model of the house, she pointed out that the proposed extension would be at the top right, facing Marine Boulevard.

    Ms. Chia used a tool, apparently of her own design, to illustrate the impact of the pyramid variance being requested. Using a piece of Plexiglas cut to fit over the model, she dropped it in place, illustrating clearly what the height would look like from the street.

     “You should patent that for all our pyramid applications,” Alex Walter, the board’s chairman, said, only half in jest.

Mr. Walter asked what property would be most affected if the 14-foot variance from the pyramid law were granted. A beach access to the east was the response.

    Referring to the overall project, Ms. Chia said, “We’re trying to scale it down in proportion to the street.” She noted that the coverage variance requested was due to the requirements of the studio.

    Lisa D’Andrea of the Planning Department told the board that the only vegetation being taken out was manicured lawn, and she complimented the applicants on their presentation. She also noted that the extension was strictly landward. Mr. Burwell added that any natural vegetation removed during construction would be replaced.

    “I understand the rules of the code and take them seriously,” Mr. Burwell concluded.

    The board agreed to keep the hearing open for two weeks to allow the East Hampton Town Trustees, who own the beach in front of the property, to weigh in. It will then have 62 days to make a determination.