On election eve an unusually small group of 18 members attended the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee’s monthly meeting. They learned from East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the committee’s town board liaison, that a taxi task force has been formed to come up with ideas for limiting the number of out-of-town cabs that infiltrate the hamlet each summer to cash in on the influx of seasonal visitors.

       Mr. Stanzione told those gathered that the task force has five members but would like more people to join. “If anyone else feels they can be potentially productive, I’d welcome their help in shaping enforcement so we can be more effective,” he said.

       The town’s nature preserve committee is seeking new members, too, specifically from Montauk. The hamlet is as yet unrepresented on the committee, which helps protect preserves and other land, decipher state laws, and manage wildlife, hunting, and invasive species.

       Members on Tuesday also discussed obtaining money for the protection of Ditch Plain Beach. John Chimples, a committee member, said that he walked the beach recently with two coastal engineers who told him that the beach there is the obvious place to replenish sand because it would feed the rest of the area.

       Mr. Stanzione said that the town would be looking to add $500,000 to next year’s budget proposal exclusively for sand at Ditch Plain. “Once that happens we set a precedent,” he said.

       One member, Paul Monte of Gurney’s Inn, said that recent media reports claim there is surplus money for Hurricane Sandy projects and wondered if any of it could be used for Ditch. Mr. Stanzione said the town is exploring all financial options.

       Regarding the recent notion of using the community preservation fund for beach replenishment, one member of the audience reported that Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. had said it was highly unlikely that the C.P.F. could be used for anything other than land preservation.

       Use of the fund is being investigated, Mr. Stanzione said. “If we could use the fund to improve the beach, that would be beneficial. But the capital budget fund will probably be our financial tool,” he said.

       Cynthia Wilder and Giovanni de Moura of Springs and New York City were married on Sept. 3 at the Bronx Courthouse, with his brother, Lou de Moura, and their friend Marirene Heisler as witnesses.

       They will celebrate their nuptials on Saturday at the Abigail Adams Smith House in New York with friends and family, including each of their five children, who are coming from as far away as Australia. This is the second marriage for both of them.

       Ms. Wilder de Moura, who is known as C.Y., worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 17 years in ancient Near East art, leaving that post in 2003. She spends a great deal of time in New Guinea, Indonesia, and Siberia studying indigenous people and cultures.

       Mr. de Moura is a fine-art painter and contractor. The two met 13 years ago, while he was renovating an apartment she had just moved into.

       Nicole Marie Nessel and Gregory Austin Martin were married on Sept. 21 at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk. The Rev. Michael Rieder officiated, and a reception followed at East by Northeast restaurant.

       The bride is the daughter of Janice and Richard Nessel of Montauk. Mr. Martin’s parents are Diane and Thomas Martin of East Hampton.

       She is an accounting service representative at Cook Maran and Associates. He is an East Hampton Town police officer.

       The bride wore an ivory satin Casablanca gown with a Swarovski crystal belt and carried a bouquet of white roses and fuchsia lilies. She was attended by Allison Sheades and Brianna Field of East Hampton, Stephanie Kempel of Atlantic Beach, Fla., and her cousin Dara Pellinger of Andover, N.J. They wore navy dresses and carried white hydrangeas, fuchsia lilies, and roses.

       Phil Cangiolosi of East Hampton served as best man. The groomsmen were the bride’s brother, Jacob Nessel of Arlington, Va., and Robert Stone, Eben Ball, John Anderson, and Craig Theriault, all of East Hampton.

       The couple took a wedding trip to Cabo San Lucas and are now back at home in East Hampton.

“October was so beautiful in many respects it is hard to realize just how fortunate we have been,” Richard G. Hendrickson wrote in his monthly weather report from Bridgehampton. “First, there were no heavy rains, therefore no flooded cellars, no washouts, or deep gullies in our large potato fields, no gullies that eroded severely for public transportation. Our roads, walkways, and cellars were all spared a flood, yet during our next month it could happen.”

Mr. Hendrickson, a United States Cooperative weather observer, recorded a scant .15 inch of rain in October. Compare that to 1.35 inches in October of last year.

The highest temperature last month was 79 degrees on the 4th. The lowest Mr. Hendrickson recorded was 25 degrees on the night of Oct. 26.

“November should give us cooler weather, heavier rainfall, cloudier days, and stronger winds,” the veteran weather observer predicted.

    The Rev. Mark Phillips, pastor of the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, the church’s historical committee, and members of the church’s Session have announced that the historic trompe l’oeil mural in the building’s sanctuary will be restored. The public has been invited to a talk about the project on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the church.

    The mural, part of the architect Minard Lafever’s original design of the church, which was completed in 1844, creates the illusion of a curved apse with classical columns framed in an Egyptian-style border.

    One of the architect’s stylebooks shows the interior of his ideal church, which resembles Old Whalers but includes an actual apse. One theory is that a large cost overrun forced the replacement of the apse with the painted illusion of one. The pulpit area has been modified over the years, and the mural repainted several times — painted out and replaced with a different wall decoration in 1902, then restored in 1909.

    The restoration will be carried out by International Fine Arts Conservation Studios of Atlanta. The first phase will involve a detailed inspection of the mural and the structural condition of the wall, as well as an analysis of samples taken from drilling. A congregation member has underwritten the $4,500 cost of this phase.

    The second phase will be the actual restoration of the mural. The conservation group will be guided by historical photographs and the results of research. This phase is expected to begin in April of next year and be completed in May 2015, in time for the building’s 170th anniversary celebration. The cost of the restoration is $45,000, of which $40,000 has been donated by four of the church’s members.

    The restoration of the mural is the last structural project in a series of efforts to preserve the historic sanctuary of the church. Other projects have included restoration of the coffered ceiling, replacement of the windows, plastering and painting the other sanctuary walls and those in the narthex, and restoration of the narthex and sanctuary floors. The Old Whalers Church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994

    A cocktail party for the Darlene Lycke scholarship fund will be held at Sammy’s restaurant on West Lake Drive in Montauk on Friday, Nov. 8, from 6 to 8 p.m.

    The party is a new fund-raiser that replaces Joan Lycke’s yard sale, which was held on her lawn annually for many years to benefit the fund, established in her late daughter’s name. The scholarship goes to Montauk students who graduate from East Hampton High School.

    The yard sales were started in 1987. Money raised has been awarded to 32 students to help with the cost of attending the college of their choice. Ms. Lycke hopes that some of the previous recipients will attend the party. Tickets cost $50 and are available at Sammy’s or at the Montauk Laundromat, which Ms. Lycke owns.

    “The fund-raiser is essential to keep the scholarship award stable,” said Ms. Lycke, who was forced to give up the yard sale when most her helpers moved from the hamlet or left to attend college. The annual sales were popular because many Montauk residents contributed items and you never knew what you might find.

    “People are still calling us to pick up items for the yard sales,” Karen Damm, Ms. Lycke’s daughter, said this week.

    The highlight of the party at Sammy’s will be a drawing for four tickets to see the New York Giants play the Green Bay Packers on Nov. 17 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. A free parking pass is included. Raffle tickets cost $100 apiece and are available at the Montauk Laundromat. Only 100 tickets will be sold.

    Helene Tallo of Montauk knits about 120 baby blankets a year, at least 12 per month. They are given to every newborn infant patient at her son’s pediatric medical practice at the Children’s Health Center in Fort Wayne, Ind. Most of the tiny patients leave their first visit already swaddled in the blue, mint green, purple, or pink coverings.

    Her quest started in 2003, two years after she made a blanket and sent it to her son, Chris Tallo, M.D., who had just opened his own practice and asked her to make some for his patients. He must have known that she had baby blankets of all colors stockpiled in her knitting room, which is chock-full of knitting books and patterns, colorful spools of thread and yarn, and a large variety of intricate tools that she uses to manipulate the computerized Brother knitting machines that are now considered vintage and no longer made.

    A former manicurist and hair salon owner in the Bronx and Larchmont, N.Y., with her husband, Jerry Tallo, a hairstylist, Ms. Tallo fell into the hobby in 1992, when she learned a customer was selling a Brother machine. “I had always been a sewer, so I thought I’d try this,” she said, sitting at one, counting stitches.

    Mr. Tallo poked his head in and said she is in there every day. “It keeps her out of trouble,” he said with a laugh.

    The couple kept a boat in Montauk at the Snug Harbor Marina through the 1970s and moved full time to the hamlet in 1983. They rented a house that they eventually bought on West Lake Drive. Luckily, it came with a den that was turned into Ms. Tallo’s “hobby room.”

    She now owns three of the Brother machines. They fill most of the room. She uses floppy disks and can tweak designs on a monitor as she sees fit. Once it’s ready, she slips the disk into the knitting machine and then follows it from there. In addition to the blankets, she makes sweaters and scarves and does embroidery.

    Since the machines are no longer made, it’s becoming hard for her to find the yarn that they use. She has found a place in England that still sells it, but the shipping costs are too high, she said. Online, she visits a site called Knitting Paradise, where she has found a network of people willing to chat and share tips, patterns, templates, tutorials, and other product information.

    “Meeting people in the knitting world is wonderful. They treat you like family,” Ms. Tallo said.

    Knitters for some reason stop after they have been doing it for about 10 years, she said, so yarns, hooks, and various pieces of equipment often can be found on eBay. “Machine knitting is at a low right now, but it’ll come back.”

    She spends about a day and half making each blanket, but they don’t all go to the babies. If you’re lucky enough to be a friend of Ms. Tallo’s, she will pull out a stack of her completed projects and tell you to choose one.

    In the last 10 years she has made more than 1,200 blankets — all for little ones she has never met. But she does have a few photographs that parents have sent to her showing newborns wrapped tight in their new knitted blankets made by the lady in Montauk.

   The board of trustees of the Amagansett Library will conduct a study to determine how the library can continue to meet the community’s needs, and has asked the public to attend focus groups, held by an outside facilitator, on Saturday and Wednesday.

    The board seeks input as to whether it is providing the community with good value, adequate staffing, resources, services, and space, and if it is meeting expectations, among other questions.

    Focus groups will be held on Saturday from noon to 1:15 p.m., and on Wednesday from 3 to 4:15 p.m., 6 to 7:15 p.m., and 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. Participants must register in advance by calling Danielle Lambert, the project coordinator, at 589-4000, ext. 126, or by filling out a form online at syntaxcom.wufoo.com/forms/msaxuy50e9rihy.

    The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals had a lengthy back-and-forth with the former chairman of the board about the definition of garages in the village code and how they can be used.

    Mark Smith and Betty Petroski of Conklin Terrace, where zoning calls for acre lots, have applied for variances to allow more coverage of their 9,982-square-foot parcel than the code allows as well as a generator and the continued maintenance of an air-conditioning condenser and a tankless water heater. At issue, however, was whether what the applicants call a garage could hold a car.

    Andrew Goldstein, an attorney with Phillips Nizer, who was not reappointed as the board’s chairman when his term ended in June, represented the applicants. The condenser, generator, and water heater, he said, are small and quiet, and will neither affect the character of the neighborhood nor be injurious to neighbors, who had submitted letters supporting the application.

    The existing physical structures on the property were in place at the time of the applicants’ purchase, in 2009. “This property received a C.O. [certificate of occupancy] for virtually all the coverage that’s in place at the time,” he said. “There is no detriment to any neighbor from this. None of the appliances, nor this coverage, are visible to anybody.”

    The certificate of occupancy lists a two-car garage, Lysbeth Marigold, a board member, said, but an earlier survey “mentioned it was a cottage, and now it’s back to being a garage when it’s clearly not a garage.”

    “It is a garage,” Mr. Goldstein answered. “A garage is a garage.”

    When they sought a building permit, Mr. Smith explained, the updated 2009 survey listed the 400-square-foot structure as a shed, a distinction he thought was immaterial. This triggered a violation from the building inspector, as the village code limits accessory buildings, with the exception of garages, to 250 square feet. The violation was later removed.

    “The building inspector came and looked at it and said it was a garage,” Mr. Goldstein said. “A garage can be used for any accessory use legal in the district.” But Ms. Marigold said there was no way a car could get in it. “You can sit in a garage, you can play Ping-Pong in a garage, you can watch TV in a garage,” Mr. Goldstein answered.

    The board was only seeking clarification, said Frank Newbold, Mr. Goldstein’s successor as chairman of the zoning board. “It does indeed say ‘garage,’ but in your application it says ‘contains no habitable space.’ By ‘habitable’ do you mean contains no sleeping space?” He noted that the structure has a heated floor, air-conditioning, wall sconces, and a ceiling fan. Mr. Goldstein responded, saying, there is no plumbing, no kitchen, and it is not a bedroom.

    “It has new French doors that open to the garden — very nicely done,” Mr. Newbold said. “It seems as if the applicant does indeed sit there. . . . It just seems ‘garage’ is a little misleading.”

    “I don’t know if the village wants to get in the business of micromanaging what people do in their houses,” Mr. Goldstein said. “If it does, I think that’s really problematic. It’s a garage. It’s not a cottage. . . . You could put a Smart car in there if you wanted to; you can’t put a Rolls-Royce in there. But if you say it’s not a garage, he’s got to get a variance for the size of that structure. I don’t think it’s required.”

    Reading from the village code, Linda Riley, the board’s attorney, said a garage is defined as an “accessory building or structure used for the storage of motor vehicles.” Mr. Goldstein interjected that the code  “goes on to say, ‘A garage may be used for any accessory use legal to the lot.’ ”

    Ms. Riley disputed that claim. “It says, ‘A garage may be used only for a purpose accessory to the permitted use of the lot.’ ” The code had been amended, she said, to prevent people from renting residential garages on a commercial basis.

    “He’s not only able to use a garage to store a car,” Mr. Goldstein said, proceeding to ask Ms. Riley if “all the people who are only using their garage for Ping-Pong or the storage of other things are doing an illegal thing?” 

    “. . . This is clearly not for storing motor vehicles, and it’s been turned over into a very nice space for I don’t know what — parties, or television, whatever. It is not primarily a garage anymore,” Ms. Riley said.

    “If he uses that garage for an illegal use in the district, that is an issue for enforcement,” Mr. Goldstein said. “You’re engaging in a lot of speculation in terms of how he’s going to be using the garage. . . . I’m not sure to what end this discussion is going.”

    Mr. Smith then addressed the board. “When I bought this house . . . everything was there,” he said, adding that the garage was heated. “All I did was change from electric heat to radiant heat.” He continued, “I put my bikes in there. I put garden stuff in there. I didn’t increase anything or intend to use it other than it was.” Defining the structure as a garage, a shed, or a cottage, he said, “appeared to me a semantics thing.”

    “There is no plumbing. Is it not habitable in terms of sleeping or bathing accommodations?” Mr. Newbold said. “If there is not, when is a garage not a garage?”

    The applicants, Ms. Riley said, have not asked for a variance to allow an accessory building larger than 250 square feet. They have a certificate of occupancy for a garage, “and he’s asking to maintain it as a garage. He’s going to have to live with what the restrictions are, whatever they are,” she said.

    But it appeared that the board was not going to ask the applicant to seek a variance for the size of the structure. Mr. Newbold said, “So I think we’re okay.” The determination is expected at the board’s next meeting, on Nov. 8.

    In other news at the meeting, the board granted Katherine Rayner coastal erosion hazard and dune setback variances that will allow construction of a 525-square-foot basement under a portion of her house at 85 West End Road. The board had heard explanations of the work to be done from multiple sources. Given the adjacent dunes and the history of erosion, excavation and construction will be done by hand and 21 temporary 16-square-foot pits will be dug around the perimeter of the new basement.

    With Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and members of the East Hampton Village Board wearing pink in recognition of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Friday’s meeting was brief. Two public hearings on proposed amendments to the village code were held, and they were quickly adopted unanimously after no one commented.

     One of the amendments will reduce the speed limit on Middle Lane, Hither Lane, and Amy’s Lane from 30 to 25 miles per hour. At its Sept. 5 work session, the mayor had informed the board that Andrew Right, who was in the process of moving from Further Lane to Hither Lane, had brought to his attention that roadways surrounding Middle Lane have a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit, and that there had been complaints.

    The other amendment supplements zoning code provisions enacted in January that were designed to encourage the preservation of 25 timber-frame houses built between 1700 and 1850, which the village had designated historic landmarks. Detached accessory buildings are allowed on those properties, but the law adopted in January had not included height regulations for them. Detached accessory dwellings will now have the same height limits as apply to principal residences.

    Also on the agenda was a notice for a public hearing, to be held on Nov. 15 at 11 a.m. at the Emergency Services Building, at which the addition of a new chapter to the village code will be proposed. At its Oct. 3 work session, Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, had informed the board that the state had created something called the Information Security Breach and Notification Act, which all counties, cities, and villages are required to adopt.

    The law requires the village to notify individuals when there is believed to have been a compromise of private information. It also requires the village to notify the state attorney general’s office, the state’s Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination, and the state’s Consumer Protection Board of any such breach. As of Oct. 3, there had been no security breach, Ms. Molinaro said.