The owner of an approximately one-acre property at the northeastern corner where Ditch Plain Road hooks east and becomes Deforest Road continued to seek the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s approval on Nov. 28 to divide it into two lots, each about the same size. An existing house to the north of the property, which has a shared driveway with another lot to the east, would fall into the newly created eastern lot.

    While not questioning the owner’s right to divide the property into lots that are in keeping with neighboring Ditch parcels, board members expressed concern over traffic and the location of the new western lot’s driveway. In previous discussions about the proposal, the board encouraged the owner, identified only as Sullivan, to work with the town on a land-swap between a town right-of-way and a slice of the western property, with the goal of improving the sight lines for vehicles and pedestrians at that hairpin turn.

    Both Town Highway Superintendent Stephen Lynch, and Thomas Talmage, the town engineer, weighed in via memorandums, encouraging the board to approve the land-swap proposal, which involves about 1,100 square feet each way.

    The board did just that, voting 7-0 to approve the swap. When it came to placing the driveway, however, Nancy Keeshan, a board member who works in Montauk, spoke out.

    “People come to Montauk for that surf beach,” she said. “That corner is the gateway to the beach. I’d like to see it remain the same.” Stressing the difficulty of finding a safe location for a driveway on the western lot, Ms. Keeshan also asked the town board to acquire the property, a suggestion that other members embraced.

    “This corner is so busy. It’s one of the busiest corners in town,” Patrick Schutte, a board member, said.

    Reed Jones, the board chairman, proposed drafting a letter to the town board, requesting that the property be put on a list for potential purchase, and members voted 6-1 in favor. Diana Weir was the lone dissenter.

    “There are spots in Montauk that are magical,” Ms. Keeshan said yesterday. “That is one of them.”

East Hampton Town

Disciplinary Matters

    The East Hampton Town Board turned its attention this week to several disciplinary matters involving employees.

    Two employees of the East Hampton Town Human Services Department were suspended from their jobs for 30 days on Tuesday following disciplinary charges brought against them by Diane Patrizio, the human services director. 

    The town board voted unanimously to suspend Sheila Carter, a senior bus service supervisor, and Linda Norris, the adult day care supervisor, as of yesterday. An attorney, Eileen Powers, was appointed as a hearing officer should the employees seek a hearing on the charges, pursuant to state Civil Service law. Board members would not comment on what led to the suspensions.

    At a meeting last Thursday, the board also designated Ms. Powers as the hearing officer for an issue involving Joseph Reid, a Sanitation Department crew leader. Patrick Keller, the sanitation supervisor, brought disciplinary charges against Mr. Reid on Sept. 21, and he has requested a hearing.

    Another case involving disciplinary charges instituted by a supervisor against an employee has apparently been resolved. In another vote on Tuesday, the town board approved a stipulation of settlement between Patrick J. Gunn, an assistant town attorney and head of the Public Safety Division, and Fritz Riege, an ordinance inspector, along with his union-appointed lawyer. Mr. Riege had been written up in June by Betsy Bambrick, the director of code enforcement. Details about the settlement were not available by press time.

Taxi Licenses

    An overabundance of taxis this summer has led to a discussion of how to revise a recently enacted law requiring taxi companies to obtain East Hampton Town licenses.

    To cut down on the number of out-of-town operators, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley has suggested issuing operating licenses only to taxi companies with a home base in East Hampton. In addition, she has suggested that the board address how complaints against individual cab companies will be reviewed.

Hoop House Redux

    A law designed to ease the way for farmers seeking to extend the growing season by erecting hoop houses on their acreage is under discussion by the board again, after a public hearing on changes to the zoning code was held last year.

    Councilwoman Quigley has reintroduced the issue and suggested that a new hearing be held on a revised proposal that switches the responsibility for reviewing hoop house proposals from the architectural review board — a new element in the originally proposed revisions to the law — back to the town planning board.

    A majority of the board voted on Tuesday to proceed with another hearing, although Councilwoman Sylvia Overby raised some questions about other details. As proposed, she said, the new law would allow a hoop house to be constructed 20 feet away from a front-yard property line. Although farmers would likely prefer to put such buildings at the edges of fields, Ms. Overby said that preservation of scenic views across farmland is one of the goals of a farmland preservation program through which development rights are purchased with public funds. Perhaps, she suggested, setbacks should be increased on land for which the public has made such an investment.

Lighting Law Redo Lingers On

    East Hampton Town’s lighting law remains on the table, it appears, after members of a committee that has been reviewing potential changes to it requested more time.

    Committee members told the town board on Tuesday that a newly enacted state building code provision on lighting must be considered, as well as updated information on insurance requirements and energy-efficient lighting. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask, because it’s too important,” Tom Milne, a committee member said, asking the board to extend a grace period sunset on compliance with the existing law for three years.

    Public controversy had erupted over previously proposed revisions to the lighting law, with comments addressing the impact of the law on businesses as well as the degree to which it adhered to “smart lighting” and “dark sky” principles. The conversation led to formation of the citizens’ committee.

    The lighting committee members agreed to add two new participants who expressed concern about outdoor lighting and the proposed law’s provisions, Debra Foster, a former councilwoman, and Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk.

    In the meantime, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson announced that, after a meeting on a foggy night in downtown Montauk with East Hampton Town Police Chief Ed Ecker, town grounds maintenance staff, and John Keeshan, a Montauk resident, a decision had been made to replace the 75-watt bulbs in eight fixtures at four corners of the streets surrounding the Montauk green with 150-watt bulbs. The switch is needed for safety, to increase visibility of pedestrians in crosswalks, Mr. Wilkinson said, and “has nothing to do with brightening up Montauk.”

Brakes on Truck Ban

     More discussion is warranted before making a decision on a proposal to ban large trucks and through traffic on streets in the Miller Lane East and West area in East Hampton, the town board decided Tuesday.

    After hearing from residents of the area — some 80 or so who signed a petition asking the board to do something about drivers using the neighborhood as a cut-through and creating safety hazards — the board held a hearing last month on the restrictions. Councilwoman Overby suggested further discussion should include Chief Ecker, Highway Superintendent Steven Lynch, Tom Talmage, the town engineer, and town planners.

Preservation Decisions

    After hearings last Thursday on two properties targeted for preservation with the community preservation fund, the board voted to move forward on both.

    Members voted to buy a one-acre lot at 8 Deer Path in Springs for $385,000 from Barry McCallion and JoAnne Canary, and to add an almost five-acre property at 889 Fireplace Road in Springs, owned by Charles Miller, Valerie Meyer, Denis Gates, and Debra Gates, to the preservation fund list, a requisite step in the purchase process.    J.P.

Southampton Town

Herr Back at the Helm

    The Southampton Town Democratic Committee unanimously re-elected Gordon Herr as its chairman at a meeting on Oct. 2. Mr. Herr praised the committee for its organizational efforts, which have led to steady growth in the number of Democrats registered in the town.

    Also elected at the meeting were Mackie Finnerty as first vice chairwoman, Joy Flynn as second vice chairwoman, George Lynch as treasurer, and Hank Beck as secretary.

New York State

LaValle and Fleming Debates

    The first of two debates between State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, a 35-year incumbent, and his challenger, Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming, a Democrat and a former prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, will take place on Monday at 7 p.m. at the Hampton Bays Senior Center at 25 Ponquogue Avenue. Questions will be taken from the audience at the event, which has been organized by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons.

    The second debate will be in East Hampton on Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.

Military Flags Go Tax-Free

    Military service flags, prisoner of war flags, and blue star banners, which denote that a son or daughter is serving in the military, will be exempt from New York State sales tax under legislation sponsored by State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Oct. 3. Currently, the flags of the United States and the State of New York are exempt from sales tax. Mr. LaValle said the law would take effect on Dec. 1.

     East Hampton Town Justice Lisa Rana dismissed four charges against Thomas Ferreira, a Montauk mechanic, on Sept. 24 on the advice of John Jilincki, the town attorney, and Robert Connelly, an attorney in Mr. Jilincki’s department. In doing so, she cited their brief of July 30, which cited a “legal impediment to the conviction of the defendant for the offenses charged.”

    Three of the four were for alleged violations of state fire and property maintenance codes dealing with the storage of unregistered vehicles and maintenance of a wooden carport. The fourth was an alleged violation of a town code requiring a building permit for a radio antenna.

    The town attorneys’ advice came after Lawrence Kelly, a former federal prosecutor, and Thomas Horn, an East Hampton attorney, filed a $55 million civil rights action against the town on Mr. Ferreira’s behalf, which is pending. It also followed revision of numerous town ordinances, whose details and terminology were questioned by the lawyers.

    Mr. Connelly advised Justice Rana: “It appears from researching the East Hampton Town Code that the town did not affirmatively adopt, by resolution, the New York State Fire Prevention and Building Code, commonly referred to as the Uniform Code, until June 3, 2011, sometime after the defendant was served with charges for same.” Mr. Connelly said that while the town was permitted to administer the code at the time, it did not have the authority to enforce it.

    With regard to the antenna, Mr. Connelly referred to a ruling from the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in the People v. Rian White case. The ruling stated that the town code did not prohibit a property owner from maintaining or keeping a structure on his property without a building permit, but only its erection, construction, enlargement, removal, improvement, transportation, or demolition.

    The federal action against the town stems from alleged wrongdoing by the town when it hired contractors to remove vehicles and equipment from Mr. Ferreira’s property on Fort Pond Bay.

    “The whole thrust in civil rights litigation is to hold government accountable for its actions. People were able to use government for their personal reasons in Tom’s case,” Mr. Kelly said.

    He said the charges dismissed on Sept. 24 were only a part of the federal lawsuit. “We look at all the things that went into it, the lack of free information flow to the town board, the suppression of findings that his property was free of public safety threats. Mr. Horn and I look at everything the town has done, we find they were not wrong out of chance, but by incompetence, laziness, or malice.”

    The legal impediments Mr. Connelly referred to in his brief to Justice Rana were corrected two weeks ago by the town board, but they had existed from 2005 until then. Mr. Kelly said that, just as fire marshals were technically not permitted to issue state code violations during that time, code enforcement officials, who had been given the title of inspector without the proper investigative experience or training during the administration of former Supervisor William McGintee, “were not authorized to write town code violations.”

    “They issued thousands of summonses without authority, including in Tom Ferreira’s case,” Mr. Kelly said.

    In an effort to address concerns about density, lot coverage, and “excessive use of land,” the Sagaponack Village Board is considering a number of changes to its village code to deal with maximum building coverage, seasonal rentals, and coverage as it relates to accessory structures like swimming pools, playing courts, fences, walls, decks, and patios. A hearing on the changes will be held on Monday at 4 p.m. at Village Hall.

    Among other things, the changes on the table would define “building coverage” as the percentage of a lot covered by the ground floor area of all buildings, as measured from their exterior walls. “Lot coverage” would be defined as the portion of the property covered by buildings as well as parking areas, driveways, and other impermeable surfaces. The flagpole portion of a flag lot would not be included in lot coverage.

    Maximum building coverage and maximum lot coverage are both pinned to lot size.

    The changes also define a playing court as the court area as well as all “associated netting, fencing, backstops, decks, slabs, patios, pavilions, pergolas, open-walled roofed structures, and other improvements.” Included in the definition are tennis, handball, racquetball, and volleyball courts, as well as ice rinks and similar “facilities.” Bocce courts would not be included.

    If the proposed changes are passed, village code would allow seasonal rentals of less than 30 days only two times per year, requiring that those short-term rentals be for no less than two weeks.

    A full copy of the proposed legislation can be found on the village’s Web site at sagaponackvillage.org.

    The East Hampton Town Board will ask the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with its “enhanced navigation” plan for the dredging and maintenance of the Montauk Harbor inlet. The plan will increase the depth of the inlet to 17 feet and will dig a “deposition basin,” essentially a trench, on the channel’s east side to collect sand that would otherwise allow dangerous shoaling to form. The $26 million fix will cost the town $801,000.

    The board chose the plan over a controversial and more expensive alternative that would have stabilized the Soundview community’s chronically eroding beaches just west of the inlet’s stone jetties, using a series of short groins. That plan would have combined the enhanced navigation scenario with the beach stabilization work.

    The alternative would seem to have had the added advantage of making Soundview beach an “engineered beach,” in Army Corps parlance, meaning it would be eligible for federal funding should it be damaged by storms. The work would have cost a total of $41 million, the town responsible for $1.5 million, the state, $3.6 million.

    The board decided against the more expensive plan in large part because it would require public access to the engineered beach, a requirement Soundview residents have vehemently opposed. As owner of the harbor jetties, the town is already facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Soundview residents who claim the jetties are the cause of the chronic erosion.

    Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has suggested modifying the recommended plan to include a project the town would carry out, in which sand from the eastern, Gin Beach side of the inlet would be added to material dredged from the inlet in order to provide more sand to rebuild Soundview’s eroded beach. 

    Councilman Dominick Stanzione has cautioned that by not choosing the plan to stabilize the beach in front of the Soundview community and the homeowners on Captain Kidd’s Path farther west, “we lose our insurance.” Mr. Stanzione said that without the promise of federal funds to rebuild eroded beaches, “we’re back to square one.” 

    In that regard, Brian Frank of the Town Planning Department said he would ask the Army Corps to determine if Soundview beach, as the recipient of sand dredged from the inlet, could be considered an “engineered beach,” and thus eligible for federal emergency funding in the event of serious storm damage.

    After a presentation by Dominick Ninivaggi, superintendent of the county’s Division of Vector Control, members of the East Hampton Town Board decided not to act on calls by several residents to ask the county to stop using the chemical methoprene to spray for mosquitoes in salt marshes here.

    Mr. Ninivaggi said there was “a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding of what the scientific data show.”

    The county vector control program was adopted in 2007 after an extensive review of its details, including an environmental review of the chemicals to be used, he said. “Methoprene was looked at very thoroughly,” and a secondary review was performed by outside agencies such as the State University at Stony Brook and the United States Geological Survey. Sampling of salt marshes that have been sprayed, Mr. Ninivaggi said, showed that the amount of the chemical remaining in the marsh is “extremely minute, and disappears very quickly.”

    “This is by no means any kind of deadly poison or environmental concern.” And, he said, “the amount of material that we use is far below the amount of material that would be deleterious. The margins of safety are several hundredfold.”

    There are no known effects to shellfish, he said, or to humans.

    Methoprene has been used since 1995, Mr. Ninivaggi said, along with a biological larvicide, Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bti, which some have suggested could be used exclusively as a safer substitute for methoprene.

    “Bti alone does not do the whole job,” Mr. Ninivaggi said. Alternating the agents of attack prevents mosquitoes from becoming resistant to one of the substances, he added.

    Besides the West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, of particular concern, he told the board, is a virulent strain of equine encephalitis called Triple-E, which has a 50 to 75-percent mortality rate in humans and often leaves survivors with neurological damage. “It’s important to remember that there is more than one mosquito-borne disease,” he said.

    Mosquitoes that carry both diseases live in local salt marshes, and the most effective strategy is to kill larvae in the marsh, he said. Once adult mosquitoes reach residential neighborhoods, an “adulticide” — a broad-spectrum pesticide — must be used to kill them, he said. Because that chemical is “toxic to a lot of different species of insects,” and the spraying exposes residents, county vector control tries to avoid the need to treat adult mosquitoes. “We do very little of that.”

    West Nile was found this year in mosquitoes from the Three Mile Harbor and Beach Hampton areas of East Hampton Town, he said. Salt marshes around Napeague and Accabonac Harbors, as well as in Beach Hampton, are the areas of the town routinely treated by the county, he said.

    Although in 2007 the East Hampton Town Board adopted a resolution asking the county to discontinue the use of methoprene here, Mr. Ninivaggi explained to the board that local municipalities are “specifically pre-empted” by state law from enacting their own laws regarding pesticide use.

    “There’s always more to be learned. There’s always a possibility of some very subtle or sub-lethal effects that nobody’s seen,” the county official said of methoprene. But, he said, “we are 30 years in” to its use, “and you have to consider the alternatives.”

    Board members said after Mr. Ninivaggi’s presentation that, given the information he had provided, they felt comfortable with the county’s spraying program.

    The Peconic Baykeeper organization has asked the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to reduce nitrogenous water pollution through more stringent septic discharge standards and has threatened a federal lawsuit if it does not respond.

    The request, made on Sept. 17, seeks modifications to state pollutant discharge elimination systems, known as SPEDES, permits for sewage treatment and septic systems. The permits, said Kevin McAllister, the director of the Peconic Baykeeper, fall under the federal Clean Water Act, which was passed in 1972.

    “We’ve found an atrocious record of violations relative to levels of nitrogen that are coming out of these systems. They’re excessively high in most cases,” Mr. McAllister said, citing Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton and Lake Montauk, and Fort Pond in Montauk, among the impaired water bodies.

    The request was also addressed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator, Judith A. Enck, and the commissioner of the Suffolk Department of Health Services.

    “We’ve got to start regulating for ecological standards, Mr. McCallister said. “The noncompliance is egregious. There are wholesale violations that are going unchecked. Where is the enforcement? It falls on the D.E.C. or the county, and they’re both failing us miserably.”

    The state Department of Environmental Conservation is legally obligated to respond to the Baykeeper request, Mr. McAllister said. “It they don’t, they are in violation as assigned to them by the federal government and Suffolk County. They better respond to this petition in a meaningful way. If they don’t our next step is a lawsuit.”

    The petition will undergo a thorough review, said Lori Severino, the D.E.C.’s press officer. She would not comment on specific elements. “D.E.C. does not have detailed empirical data indicating what impacts either the subsurface discharge systems, or the additional regulatory requirements sought by Baykeeper, would have on nitrogen levels in the many estuarine water bodies surrounding Long Island,” Ms. Severino wrote in an e-mail.

    The county’s director of planning, Sarah Landsdale, agreed that the county’s water systems are under pressure. In an e-mail, Ms. Landsdale wrote, “We are reviewing the data that came out of last year’s Groundwater Management Plan and along with several sewage treatment studies currently being conducted are moving toward implementation of both stronger policies and infrastructure improvements.”

    Bob DeLuca, president of Group for the East End, applauded Mr. McAllister’s efforts. “Kevin is connecting the dots,” said Mr. DeLuca. “It’s a good move to put the state on notice that at some point the bill comes due. There are a lot of implications for that, economic and environmental.”

    Mr. DeLuca said he thought that a statewide legislative approach is necessary for action on water quality, and that time is of the essence. “There’s going to have be an imperative for New York State to deal with nitrogen levels. The standards we have for drinking water may be okay, but they’re not for surface waters. The amount of degradation you have to clean continues to go up.”

    “If we start tomorrow, it’s going to take a while. We don’t need any more algal blooms or fish kills. As soon as we can stop that, there’s an economic and environmental benefit,” Mr. DeLuca said.

    Mr. McAllister warned that the situation is urgent and procrastination on the state and county levels may be ruinous to the environment and local economy alike.

    “Enough kicking the can down the road,” he said. “Look at East Hampton’s economy: it’s based on beaches and water. For those that say the costs are prohibitive, when pollution reaches a level where it threatens people — a red tide, where you cannot eat the shellfish, or bacterial levels shutting down beaches — the cost factor goes out the window. We’re going to enforce this. If we have to get into a courtroom to make everyone understand this, we will do so.”

    Monday’s monthly meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee saw an unusually small turnout, only nine people including the chairman, Kieran Brew; the vice chairwoman, Sheila Okin, and the committee’s liaison from the East Hampton Town Board, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who began the brief session with an upbeat report on Eli Zabar’s Farmers Market.

    ACAC members had complained for much of the summer about deteriorating conditions there: a broken fence and trellis, dilapidated furniture, weeds, and more. Ms. Overby said she had talked with Pam Greene, vice president of stewardship for the Peconic Land Trust, which manages the property, and been told that the trust was working with Mr. Zabar to polish up its appearance. The broken fence has been repaired and the front gardens will be replanted, among other improvements.

    “They’ve already pulled the weeds,” said Joan Tulp. “It looks much better.”

    “And more will be done,” Ms. Overby promised.

    Mr. Brew had a question for the councilwoman about the community preservation fund. “How, as ACAC, can we advise the town board on issues of community preservation?” he wanted to know.

    Start with the C.P.F. committee, Ms. Overby advised. “Anyone can bring a suggestion to the committee — a real estate agent, a homeowner, the Suffolk County Water Authority might be divesting. . . .” The committee, she explained, looks at the suggestions and “grades” (ranks) them in order of desirability.

    Members seemed surprised to hear that such a committee existed. “At one time, each [advisory committee] was given a list of all the properties,” said Ms. Okin.

    “We didn’t have a C.P.F. committee at that time,” Ms. Overby said.

    Ms. Tulp wanted to know how the committee members were appointed. “Is there anyone from Amagansett?” she asked.

    Ms. Overby said there was no one from Wainscott — she wasn’t sure about Amagansett — and no women on the committee, whose chairman is Tim Brenneman. “They’d like a woman,” she said, going to on explain that not all the properties that are ranked wind up on the official C.P.F. list. Those that do must first have a public hearing before the town board.

    As an example, she mentioned two parcels at Promised Land near the fish factory. In early August, the board approved the $1.1 million purchase of a parcel of land at 427 Cranberry Hole Road, on the bay side of the road, for a public access to the beach along Gardiner’s Bay. However, at another public hearing a week later, Ms. Overby said, “We lost the one that was cater-corner across the street from the one on the water.” The second parcel had been envisioned as an unpaved parking lot, and neighbors objected.

    Rona Klopman said she’d happened to catch two sessions of the East Hampton Architectural Review Board on LTV, “and it seemed to be dysfunctional.” Ms. Overby answered that there were three new people on that board, and “it’s a learning process.”

    “They’ve done some very good things,” the councilwoman continued, citing the St. Michael’s Lutheran Church project, now in its final stages. “A.R.B. made sure the buildings were shingled. The community center is adorable.”

    Mention of the St. Michael’s complex, which will provide 40 affordable housing units for senior citizens whose incomes are below 50 percent of the region’s median, led to a brief back-and-forth about the traffic pattern there. The complex is directly across Montauk Highway from the Amagansett Post Office and the I.G.A.

    “How are these seniors going to get across the highway?” someone wanted to know. “How are they going to survive?

    “Some will, some won’t,” Bill Jackson remarked dryly.

    A median strip and crosswalk have been built between the complex and the supermarket there, and “the highway narrows there, which is called traffic-calming,” said Ms. Overby. “We can do some things at the crosswalk, such as push a button to cross.”

    Mr. Jackson was skeptical. “I predict a traffic light,” he said.

    As the clock neared 8 p.m., Ms. Klopman announced that she’d attended a town board meeting in Montauk last week, hoping to hear the board discuss reports from Ms. Overby and other advisory committee liaisons. “But there were no liaison reports,” she said. “They said the agenda was too long.”

    “It’s happened several times,” said the councilwoman. “Tomorrow we have another very long meeting.” She read out Tuesday’s town board agenda, which included discussions of deer management, the north-south approach airport controversy, the town budget, and other big issues (covered separately in this issue). There were 10 items in all. Liaison reports were last on the list.

    What to do about the town’s aging scavenger waste treatment plant, the question of whether residents would be willing to pay taxes to hire additional code enforcement officers, and issues of budget strategy — specifically, what to do with some $4.2 million that was borrowed to help address a budget deficit, but was not needed — took center stage during a discussion of East Hampton Town’s 2013 budget on Tuesday.

    Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby asked about the disposition of the $4.2 million, which was part of a total of $26.7 million borrowed under special New York State authority to get the town back in the black after deficits accumulated under a prior administration.

    After 2011, when budget cutbacks and careful spending left the town coffers “better than expected,” Len Bernard, the town budget officer, said, there was a $4.6 million surplus.

    The town had first borrowed $15 million for the deficit financing. For a second round of borrowing, “the original plan was to borrow $14.8 million,” Mr. Bernard said, to cover the full amount of the deficit “and an additional amount, in order to create some kind of cushion in the A and B funds,” the town’s two main operating funds, which were affected by the deficit.

    However, he said, “we didn’t want to over-borrow” but “to borrow a reasonable amount.” The plan, he said, was sanctioned by the state comptroller and the town’s financial advisers.

    The $4.6 million has not, so far, been allocated, Mr. Bernard said, although several reserve funds, permissible under state finance law, were created, including funds to accrue money for state retirement system costs for employees, to cover accrued benefits payouts to employees, and for capital projects.

    Once earmarked for one of the funds, money may not be spent on anything other than its stated purpose.

    Ms. Overby said that the town is paying interest on the borrowed money, and that she would feel more comfortable if there was a “game plan,” or set of rules regarding how it could be used.

    State finance law governs use of the dedicated funds, Mr. Bernard said, and allows a town board to use the entire amount in a reserve fund in a single year to pay the costs for which it is earmarked.

    “That’s a problem,” Ms. Overby said. “Because if you do that in one year, it creates a hole in the budget for next year,” which would need to be filled by a rise in taxes.

    The tentative budget prepared by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson proposes the use next year of $1.2 million from the retirement cost reserve fund. As retirement funding is an ongoing expense, should that fund be depleted in 2014, that money would have to be raised through taxes. The draft budget also relies on the use of over $900,000 from two reserve funds for debt service.

    Also on Tuesday, Ms. Overby relayed an interest on the part of members of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee in the addition of seasonal code enforcement officers to address violations regarding “noise, litter, and quality of life” during the summer. She asked the board to consider adding money to the budget for those positions.

    “What I’m hearing,” said Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, “is that people would be willing to bear the additional cost to protect their quality of life . . . given [that] the negative aspects far outweigh the financial impact.”

    “I would not support that,” said Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, citing her recent time spent in New York City, where she is living most of the week in order to be near a daughter who is recovering from an injury. People feel more free there, she said. “I don’t believe that we need to turn our town into any more of a town that has people ready to ticket us,” she said.

    “I would prefer that we took the approach of educating people. I’m not suggesting there isn’t a problem. I’m suggesting there’s a more positive way to address the problem,” Ms. Quigley said.

    Though not disagreeing with the idea of education, “I’m not sure that alleviates the problem,” Ms. Overby said. Councilman Dominick Stanzione suggested that Mr. Wilkinson might be able to get more code enforcement coverage by shifting personnel.

    A discussion of the future of the town waste treatment plant — now being operated as solely a transfer station and the topic of perennial disagreement among board members — resulted in no change to the tentative budget, which contains funding to keep the transfer station open for the first three months of the year.

    Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc had inquired about including enough money to keep it open for a longer period, as the process of crafting a comprehensive wastewater management plan that will, among other issues, address the future of the plant, has just begun. Mr. Stanzione suggested shutting it altogether.

    However, after Mr. Bernard informed the board that state finance law and the state comptroller, who is overseeing East Hampton’s budgeting, would allow money to be advanced to the transfer station, if necessary, from other parts of the sanitation budget, board members did not press for revisions to the draft budget.

    One change to the budget the board agreed on was the addition of a $10,000 budget line, suggested by Mr. Van Scoyoc, to begin work to identify and address town properties where handicapped access does not comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Mr. Van Scoyoc has been working with town staff to fix the problems, and suggested a minimum allocation of $15,000 for the project next year.

    Mr. Wilkinson asked what year the act went into effect and was told it was in the 1970s. “Where have these inventories been?” he asked. “It’s never come up until now.”

    “I’m proud of the fact, then, that I’m the one bringing it up,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

    A hotly contested appeal by East Hampton’s senior building inspector seeking to overturn a certificate of occupancy issued by his predecessor was coolly disposed with by the town’s zoning board of appeals on Oct. 9.

    Tom Preiato, the building inspector, was trying to reverse a 2008 C. of O. for two stone pillars with attached gates at the entry to 17 Beverly Road in Springs that he believed was issued by the late Don Sharkey based on “erroneous and misleading information.”

    After months of discussion, the board  dismissed the appeal without debate, acting on the advice of its attorney, Robert Connelly.

    The certificate had been issued by Mr. Preiato’s predecessor, the late Don Sharkey.

    The owner of the property, Lee David Auerbach, had obtained approval for the pillars and fixed front gate following a hearing before the town’s architectural review board.

    In 2011, Mr. Preiato made a formal appeal to the zoning board to reverse the certificate of occupancy issued by Mr. Sharkey.

    Alex Walter, the chairman of the zoning board, addressed the issue at length on Oct. 9, after noting that Mr. Connelly had done extensive research on the process used by Mr. Preiato to launch the current appeal.

    “Normally, the building inspector issues a revocation, then brings it to us for confirmation or denial. That wasn’t done here,” Mr. Walter said. “He wanted us to tell him to revoke it, and that isn’t our job. I don’t think this board has the [standing] to act on this. If Mr. Preiato wants to revoke it, he has to issue the revocation and have us verify that he did it correctly, not the other way around.”

    The board voted 5-0 to dismiss the appeal.

    Also on Oct. 9, the board was split on a request for a prefabricated pool house at 38 Jacqueline Drive in Amagansett.

    The applicant, Boris Nepomnyoschy, offered the board two locations for the pool house, which would not have a foundation. His small yard is surrounded by freshwater wetlands. The first would have had the pool house 23 feet from the restricted wetlands when 100 feet are normally required. Don Cirillo, a board member, pointed out that this proposal would save the homeowner money. “The purpose of the variance is to try to help the homeowner,” he said.

    However, though absent, Lee White, another board member, voiced his position in writing.

    “There is a more conforming location almost three times as far from wetlands,” he said, supporting the second choice offered by the owner.

    “I agree with Lee. The owner gave us the option,” Sharon McCobb said.

    Mr. Walter agreed with her. “We’re not depriving him of what he wants to do, but we’re also doing what is in the best interest of the town. That’s the reason we have a town code and that’s the reason people come to us.”

    The board voted 3-2 against the first proposal, before unanimously approving the second.

    What it lacked in controversy, another before the board made up for in star, or perhaps better put, sun power.

    Jerry Seinfeld is looking for permission to install two 65-by-10-foot solar panels at the edge of his property on Further Lane in Amagansett, between a swimming pool, which is at the dune side of the oceanfront property, and a Nature Conservancy preserve. The panels, made by a firm called SunPower, will be flush to the ground and therefore invisible to Mr. Seinfeld’s neighbor, who supports the project, despite the fact that they would be only a few feet from the neighboring property, when a 30-foot distance is normally required.

    Ms. McCobb noted the neighbor’s support for the proposal.

    “Anything good for the environment is a positive,” said Bryan Gosman, a board member, before the board voted 5-0 to approve the variance.

    On  Oct. 2, Laurie Wiltshire of Land Planning Services said that her clients Christine Lemiuex and Joshua Young, who own property on Mulford Lane at Lazy Point, have made major modifications to their plan to build a 147-foot stone armor revetment on Napeague Bay, where such structures are prohibited. Their request for a similar structure was denied earlier this year.