After some prompting from members of the Montauk Historical Society, the East Hampton Town Board has agreed to hire Robert Hefner, a historic consultant, and Drew Bennett, an engineer, to work with the society and define a restoration plan for the hamlet’s Second House Museum. East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell made the announcement on Monday.

The building, which is owned by the town and managed by the historical society, has been closed to the public for the last two years. Prior to that tours were available. The tours became especially popular after Victoria magazine used the site for a photo layout and redecorated it, using ivy-covered textiles and fresh coats of white paint. Although pretty, the decor was not historically accurate.

A renewed interest in preserving the building gained traction last winter when the Save Second House Committee was formed to help the town raise money for repair. The building sits at the entrance to Montauk, on the northwest corner of Second House Road.

In summer, roses of several varieties tumble over the wood shingles and an arbor. An heirloom garden is maintained in the backyard. Hydrangea bushes flower bountifully on the entire property. The site hosts many outdoor activities, including craft fairs, movie nights, and, in fall, an archaeology festival.

Greg Donohue of the Montauk Lighthouse Committee, another arm of the Montauk Historical Society, has been working with the Save Second House Committee and went before the town board in December to ask for a structural report on the building. He said prior work there had been shabbily done. Shingles are missing from the roof and some parts of the structure have been boarded up, he said.

Mr. Donohue said this week that not only did a raccoon gain entry to the museum last winter, it looked as if it had stayed there a while. He said the building and its grounds should be brought back to the level of years ago. “Bringing in Robert is the significant way to go,” he said.

At the back of the property another museum, which will honor the hamlet’s earliest Native American settlers, is close to ready. Lawrence Cook, a Montauk resident and collector of early American artifacts, has been working toward that goal.

According to Honora Herlihy of the Save Second House Committee, fund-raisers held last summer for that project were well received and will continue through this year. “We look forward in the near future of having two aesthetically and properly functioning museums on the same premises for a great tour,” she said in an email. “This community has waited long enough for its only historical district to function properly.”

A.I.A. Peconic, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, last month released the winners of its 2014 Daniel J. Rowen Design Awards. The top Honor Awards went to Maziar Behrooz, who has offices in East Hampton and Manhattan, and Roger Ferris, based in Bridgehampton, Manhattan, and Westport, Conn.

Mr. Behrooz won Merit Awards for two separate projects. Other Merit Awards went to Paul Masi of Bates Masi + Architects in Sag Harbor and Stelle, Lomont, and Rouhani of Bridgehampton, whose partners are Frederick Stelle, Michael Lomont, and Viola Rouhani.

A.I.A. Peconic’s 2014 Juror Awards were given to Mr. Masi, Erica Broberg Smith, who has an East Hampton office, and Siamak Samii, whose firm is in Southampton.

The Amagansett Chamber of Commerce has named Dell Cullum, a photographer and wildlife removal specialist, as its first Person of the Year. Mr. Cullum, who was given the award at the chamber’s holiday open house at the 434 on Main guest house last Thursday, was recognized for outstanding service to the community.

This year, Mr. Cullum organized several trash pickups in the hamlet, including those of the shoreline, the Napeague stretch, and the Long Island Rail Road station, as well as the Gansett Trash Bash, a weekly event through the month of August in which volunteers picked up litter from the streets. He also encouraged participation in the Town of East Hampton’s Adopt-a-Road project.

“Through his Hampton Wildlife Removal and Rescue, Dell has humanely rescued many of our four-legged friends,” said Joi Jackson Perle, the chamber’s executive director. “And finally, through his camera and website, Imagination Nature, Dell has captured the natural beauty of our town, our beaches, and all points in between. He has become the recorder of both everyday life and important milestones in the lives of those that make up the fabric of Amagansett and the surrounding towns, quietly photographing ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

At a celebration of the Gansett Trash Bash volunteers’ accomplishment held on the grounds of the Amagansett Historical Association in September, David Trotta, a musician and the general manager of Jack’s Stir-Brew, gave the gift of a free concert to Mr. Cullum. Mr. Cullum opted to incorporate the gift into a larger event. At the East Hampton Methodist Church on Friday, Mr. Trotta and Mr. Cullum prepared and served a holiday dinner to over 35 guests from Maureen’s Haven, which provides shelter and services to the homeless on eastern Long Island. Mr. Trotta then sat at the piano and delivered a solo performance of Christmas favorites.

President Obama recently announced the United States would relax restrictions on travel and commerce with Cuba, look to open an embassy there, and explore the possibility of removing Cuba from the list of states that sponsor terrorism. Though it will take an act of Congress to lift the full trade embargo, it is only a matter of time, a short time, before we do.

Those who oppose this policy argue that this action ignores the gross human rights violations perpetrated by the Cuban government. They further assert this will prop up a totalitarian regime on the verge of economic collapse and that there is no correlation between economic freedom and personal liberty. They are wrong. Freedom is coming to Cuba.

I have traveled to Cuba 30 times between 1998 and 2006 on a variety of cultural exchanges and humanitarian exchanges. The only reason I stopped going is I was warned I might be arrested and used as a hostage to obtain the release of Cuban spies held in the United States (like Alan Gross, the American just released). I believe Cuba is poised for real political freedom.

The first crack in the wall Castro built around Cuba came in the late 1990s when the Clinton administration eased travel restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba. Once it became clear Americans were not going to be prosecuted or fined for visiting there was a flood of American tourists. The Cuban government didn’t welcome that. Though it loved the tourist dollars, it viewed the influx of Americans as a threat. Instead of taking tourists on their orchestrated pro-Communist tours where visitors were meticulously insulated from the misery of the Cuban people and the repressive nature of the regime, Americans were mingling with Cubans, hiring locals as tour guides, eating and sleeping in their homes, and letting Cubans know America was not the bogeyman Fidel and Raul and their corrupt cronies told them we were.

The Cuban government even allowed some Cubans to rent rooms in their homes or serve food to foreigners, while taking the lion’s share of the profits. But soon it feared it had gone too far. It had lost too much control of the interaction between tourists, especially Americans, and its people. Cubans were obtaining cellphones and learning about the Internet.

The threat of the embargo was called Track One. The threat from American tourists was called Track Two, and the Cuban government used the U.S. invasion of Iraq to counter it. The limited freedoms it had allowed some Cubans to exercise were sharply curtailed. Cubans were arrested for talking to Americans in tourist hotels. In 2004 the government changed the currency from our dollar to its peso, but kept 20 percent of one’s money in the exchange, thereby making more money but limiting the desirability of a tourist coming. Odd that those claiming that more tourism will not result in undermining the regime do not recognize this historical fact.

There was another reason the government could afford the crackdown. Hugo Chavez became its ally and propped up its economy by shipping 100,000 barrels of subsidized oil to Cuba every day.

But the failed Cuban system still failed. The second crack came a few years after Fidel gave power to Raul. They eased the restrictions on the average Cuban having a business. Currently there are over 300,000 private enterprises operating in Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans now work in the private sector. When I first went to Cuba in 1998 I did not know anyone who worked legally in the private sector.

The frauds who used a failed utopian ideology to stay in power finally owned up that they had failed. As Fidel famously told The Atlantic in 2010, “the Cuban Model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

Raul publicly encouraged Cubans to criticize the government. Wow, the dictators in fatigues admitted they were the emperors with no clothes. How many millions had to suffer before those criminals understood this?

Political repression and the harassment of dissidents continues. However, as The New York Times editorial page pointed out last week, there are independent bloggers and journalists operating in Cuba, and the government recently pledged to open up Internet access. This was unthinkable 10 years ago. For several years the government has improved relations with both Catholic and Protestant churches, which in turn have achieved greater and greater influence with the people. Ask the 53 dissidents whom Cuba will release as part of this opening if they are freer now than they were in jail.

When I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s dictatorships ruled in almost every country in Latin America, as well as in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain, and Portugal. Yet today, these countries and most of those regions have vibrant democracies. Economic freedom empowered their people to attain political freedom. When people open their own businesses and make money, they empower themselves. When people in Cuba obtain access to technology, their government loses control of the storyline. When the embargo is lifted, they can no longer blame us. The more the Cuban people know, the more they will want to know.

For over 50 years this embargo has done nothing to enhance political freedom in Cuba. It has succeeded in hurting the average Cuban and provided a propaganda tool for the Castro dictatorship. It is in the playbook of every thug in power to justify the deprivations they inflict on their subjects, to have their scapegoats. Hitler had the Jews and Communists; Milosovic, the Croats and Bosnians; Hugo Chavez, the U.S.A.; ISIS, anyone who isn’t ISIS. We gave the Castros us, gift-wrapped. They made us the bogeyman responsible for Cuba’s travails.

Every year the embargo is denounced by every country in the world except Israel and the United States. It is a major issue, opposed by everyone, especially in Latin America. Even the majority, albeit a narrow one, of Cubans in our country oppose it. And every year that majority grows as members of the aged Cuban exile community in Miami die. For over 50 years they had the Cuban government collaborating in maintaining our estrangement, each side parroting the dead slogans of their youth. But the Cuban government just opted out.

The Cuban government knows it is risking a loss of power now. It will play this as a public relations coup to its people and hope it can figure out how to keep the lid on, because it knows this can lift the lid off. It will try to become like China, opening the economy but retaining sole political power (though China is less repressive now than 25 years ago — see the reaction to the Hong Kong demonstrators versus Tiananmen Square). By the way, please note we trade with China, a country still displaying photos of Mao, the biggest murderer in history.

The government is least popular in Havana. That’s because there the people can interact with tourists. In Havana, the underground market in satellite TVs, cellphones, and Internet access is far more prolific than in other parts of the country. Those who say more contact will not effect a change in Cuba are oblivious to the fact that when Cubans talk to Americans it advances the cause of freedom. That is the fact, no less than it was in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s when Ronald Reagan let American students study in the Soviet Union.

I cannot quantify how much greater freedom this will instantaneously translate into for Cubans, but 50-odd years ago we blundered into a policy that hurt the Cuban people, helped the Cuban power elite subjugate people, failed to dislodge a government that simply suffocated its people to survive, and left us ridiculed by the world. Does any intelligent person really believe less contact will help the Cuban people better their lives or achieve more freedom? More contact will enhance, not retard, our influence.

This is the third crack in the wall, accelerated by the collapse of oil prices, which has reduced Venezuela’s economic support. A few years ago, in an article I wrote for The Star, I said, “Years ago, I visited the sleepy town of Bayamo, renowned for the fact its 19th-century residents had burned it to the ground rather than let it be captured by their Spanish colonial masters. There is (or was) an enormous digital clock that overlooks the town square. It flashes the same time, though most of the bulbs don’t work so it is hard to know what time it was when it broke. My guide told me it was a gift from the Soviets in the 1960s. ‘How long has it been broken?’ I asked. ‘I never remember when it worked,’ he responded. My guide was in his 30s. The long-discredited Revolution still holds sway over this island frozen in time. All of Cuba anxiously waits for President Obama to start the clock.”

Mr. Obama has done just that.

A few years ago, my friend Amado was able to get out of Cuba. He had spent six weeks in a tiny jail cell for having my cellphone. His father got 18 months in jail for having $2 in U.S. currency. His grandfather got seven years for possession of two joints of marijuana. When a cop at J.F.K. Airport told him he could now say whatever he wanted, he shouted, “I hate Fidel Castro.”

Like most Cubans, he loved America. He died last May, but somewhere out there he is smiling.

The Village of East Hampton is in sound fiscal order, the village board was told on Friday.

In delivering an annual summary to the board at its meeting on Friday, Michael Tomicich of the accounting firm Satty, Levine, and Ciacco gave an upbeat report on both the village’s budget and compliance with reporting standards.

The auditor was able to deliver an unqualified, or clean, opinion, Mr. ?Tom?icich told the board, meaning that the village’s fiscal statements give a true and fair view in accordance with the reporting framework used in the preparation and presentation of statements. “The results of our tests disclosed no instances of noncompliance or other matters that are required to be reported under government auditing standards,” he said. “So the village is in very good shape financially. The books and records, the internal controls — everything is fine.”

In the fiscal year that ended on July 31, revenues were higher than expenditures by $790,000, Mr. Tomicich said, mostly due to license and permit fees, as well as state and federal aid received during the year. Expenditures, he said, were lower than anticipated on various line items, as were employee benefits. Consequently, he said, the village was able to appropriate more money to its capital projects fund to cover current and future expenditures.

The village’s balance sheet shows a total fund balance of $4.2 million, which represents an increase of $901,000 over last year. In addition, he said, “The village has very strong cash of over $4.8 million.” Within that figure, he said, is $100,000 in reserve for capital projects and $93,000 for insurance. Capital assets put in service for infrastructure, vehicles, and other equipment totaled $331,000.

A lower interest rate on new bonds issued led to a reduction in debt service payments of $280,000 over the next nine years, Mr. Tomicich said. “Principal payments on the existing serial bonds in the current year were about $823,000, which reduced your current debt,” he told the board.

Health insurance payments to retired employees totaled $528,000 last year, with the village’s total liability for post-employment benefits totaling $2.9 million at the fiscal year’s end. 

Sag Harbor Village has much to offer, but one area it has been lacking in is the medical one, according to Dr. Ilona Polak, who will open a walk-in practice there sometime next month.

Sag Harbor Medical Walk-In will be at 34 Bay Street, in the building housing GeekHampton and the Sag Harbor Cycle Company.

“I love the village,” said Dr. Polak, who is leaving Wainscott Walk-In Medical Care to venture out on her own. “I do have a lot of people who come and see me from Sag Harbor in Wainscott, and they really don’t have a doctor, or a walk-in, in the village.”

Dr. Polak, who is board certified in family medicine, has been in practice for more than 10 years and spent the past five in Wainscott after having left the Port Jefferson area. A native of Poland, she began medical school in Europe and then moved to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and later Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She finished her residency at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J.

“You have to grow, so to speak, and develop,” she said of her decision to go into a private practice. She said she is thankful for her time at Wainscott Walk-In. “I really enjoyed working with Dr. [Blake] Kerr, and I will miss very much my supportive staff. They were always there to help me.”

Dr. Polak hopes to move in to her new space by the end of January, but doing so depends on the progress of the renovation now under way. She is excited to open her doors.

“Thank you to everyone — first of all to the Sag Harbor community for a very warm welcome; it means a lot,” she said.

Maria Suzanne Dayton and Nicholas Richard Nemecek of Washington, D.C., were married on Sept. 21 at East Hampton Point. Barbara Hansen officiated the ceremony, and a reception followed at the restaurant.

The bride, whose parents are Jonathan and Suzanne Dayton of East Hampton, is a marketing coordinator and in international sales at EDVOTEK. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Mary Washington College, where she graduated in 2004, and earned a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. She graduated from East Hampton High School in 2000.

The groom is a senior management consultant at Mercuri Urval Global Client Services. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Miami University in 2002, and earned an M.B.A. from Ohio State University in 2009. His parents are Richard and Pauline Nemecek of Worthington, Ohio.

The bride wore an ivory strapless Modern Trousseau A-line gown with a topaz necklace and earrings. She carried blue hydrangeas, white roses, and Dusty Miller. Mary Aufrecht of Greenwich, Conn., a friend of Ms. Dayton’s since high school, was her maid of honor. Sara Miller Archie of Brooklyn and Steph?anie Talmage Forsberg of East Hampton, both friends from high school, Lauren Hren of Denver, her cousin, and Monica Tyler of Dublin, Ohio, the sister of the groom, were attendants. They wore shadow gray Jenny Yoo dresses.

Ross Paolino of Washington, D.C., was the best man. The groomsmen were Dave Lamp of Columbus, Ohio, and Steve O’Neill of Chicago, both friends from high school, his brother-in-law Patrick Tyler of Dublin, Ohio, and William Dayton of East Hampton, the bride’s brother.

Hadley Tyler and Graham Tyler of Dublin, Ohio, the niece and nephew of the groom, were the flower girl and ringbearer.

The couple, who met in Washington, D.C., in 2009, took a wedding trip for three weeks to Borneo, Bali, and Lombok. They live in Washington, D.C., with their greyhound, Toastie.

An environmental engineering firm tasked with developing a water-quality management plan for the Hook Pond watershed area should be selected by next month. 

Becky Molinaro, the East Hampton Village administrator, delivered an update on the Hook Pond Water Quality Improvement Project to the village board at a brief work session last Thursday. The initiative is a collaboration with the town, the East Hampton Town Trustees, and community organizations.

The village, which appropriated $35,000 in its 2014-15 budget for the project, issued a request for qualifications in October. Ms. Molinaro told the board five replies were received. A selection committee including trustees, pond-front homeowners, representatives of the Nature Conservancy and the Group for the East End, and officials from the town’s natural resources department chose two of them as finalists. They are Nelson, Pope, and Voorhis, LLC, based in Melville, and Lombardo Associates of Newton, Mass. The latter firm recently drafted a comprehensive wastewater management plan for the town.

A third firm may also be named a finalist, Diane McNally, clerk of the trustees, said Tuesday.

Interviews with officials of those firms will be scheduled “within a week or two, hopefully,” Ms. Molinaro said, so that the committee can discuss and make a recommendation. “Hopefully, the village will decide by January,” she said.

Tests performed since 1981 have detected a range of conditions in the watershed area, which includes the central commercial district, the North Main Street commercial area, residential areas, and the Maidstone Club. In general, the village’s request for qualifications stated, nitrogen concentrations in Hook Pond exceed the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s eco-regional criteria, meaning that the pond contains an excessive richness of nutrients. Animals, primarily waterfowl, are cited as a significant source of nitrogen in the pond, though septic systems are also blamed for water-quality degradation. Excessive nitrogen depletes oxygen in the water, which can kill marine life.

The chosen engineering firm’s tasks will include the compilation and analysis of existing water quality and flow data to diagnose and identify data gaps; identification and analysis of the sources of problems; development, implementation, and analysis of a water-quality sampling plan, and a final report including an updated diagnosis of problems and recommendations for actions to protect and improve the pond’s water quality. Future funding mechanisms must also be identified, and the firm will have to conduct two community outreach meetings after the plan is developed to obtain feedback and refine its recommendations.

At its Nov. 21 meeting, the board approved a proposal from the FPM Group, an engineering and environmental science firm, to sample groundwater at the Emergency Services Building. That testing was performed on Dec. 3, a result of the discovery of pentachlorophenol, a wood preservative, in water from a basement sump in the building. Results of the testing are expected in a few weeks.

The utility poles that PSEG Long Island erected this year as part of an upgrade to its transmission infrastructure are treated with the preservative, commonly known as penta, which is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the E.P.A. The Emergency Services Building, on Cedar Street, is along the transmission route.

Emily Christine Ward, the daughter of Christine and Mark Ward of East Hampton, and Michael Albert Bunce, a son of Joanne Bunce of Water Mill and Michael Bunce Sr. of Lady Lake, Fla., were married on Oct. 25 under a beautiful blue sky at Giorgio’s in Baiting Hollow.

The maid of honor was Kalie Peters of East Hampton. The bride’s cousins Lyndsay Ostrower of Melville and Amelia Ward of Bay Shore were bridesmaids, and the groom’s cousin, Georgia Bunce of East Hampton, was a junior bridesmaid. The bride wore an ivory gown of taffeta and lace; her attendants were in navy blue gowns.

Mr. Bunce’s best man was his brother, Christopher Bunce of Water Mill. His groomsmen were Kurt Rist and Ryan Wilson, both of Southampton.

The bride is an audiologist at ENT and Allergy Associates in Southampton. She earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at the State University at Geneseo and a doctorate in audiology from the State University at Buffalo. Her husband is a personal and group trainer and the director of CrossFit 11968 in Southampton. He is completing a degree at Adelphi University in Garden City.

The couple live in Water Mill and are planning a wedding trip to Hawaii in January.

Yaniris F. Vargas and Isaac A. Lopez were married on Saturday at 4 p.m. on Oakview Highway in East Hampton. East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky officiated.

Mr. Lopez, an East Hampton firefighter, is the son of the late Genara and Alcides Lopez. He has two children, Charlene Lopez of Puerto Rico and Isaac S. Lopez of Seattle, both of whom were at the ceremony Saturday. He studied custom engineering and works in maintenance at the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center.

Ms. Vargas is the daughter of Oneida and Victor Vargas of the Dominican Republic, and has a son, Kelvin Vargas, who also took part in the ceremony. A graduate of a two-year university in the Dominican Republic, she is a custodian at East Hampton High School. She was attended on Saturday by Vivian Polanco of New Jersey and the groom’s aunt Sandra Fernandez. Altagracia Valiente of New York City, another of the groom’s aunts, was his attendant.

The couple will honeymoon in Santo Domingo in the Domican Republic.