The Montauk Chamber of Commerce will host its annual fall festival this weekend in the downtown area, with music, food, a 30-horse carousel, inflatable rides, crab races, pony rides, face painting, pumpkin decorating, raffles, and more, much more.

    Saturday will bring the ever popular chowder-tasting contest, with over 30 local restaurants donating huge vats of Manhattan and New England blends. The winners will be chosen by popular vote and by a panel of professional foodies. Servings begin at about 11:30 a.m. but the lines start forming much earlier. Two tastings and a souvenir mug will cost $10.

    Saturday evening will see a fireworks display by Grucci, set off from Umbrella Beach at 7 and visible from most of the downtown area and the beaches. 

           The fun continues Sunday with the Montauk Playhouse Community Center’s annual silent auction, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. under a tent on the green. A vast variety of prizes have been donated, including gift certificates from local restaurants, hair salons, motels, and gift shops, as well as electronics, jewelry, beach items and more. The winners’ names will be drawn out of jars and announced at the end of the event.

    Later Sunday, at about 4:30, chamber officials will draw the winners in its cash catch raffle. Tickets, $50 each, will be for sale right up to the moment of the drawing. Cash prizes will be based on the number of tickets purchased; only 1,000 will be sold. If they all go, then the prizes will be $20,000 for first place, $5,000 for second, $2,500 for third, and five more prizes of $500 each.

    With a bit of help from East End Getaway, the chamber will offer a shuttle bus through the hamlet all weekend, for rides from downtown to the Montauk Lighthouse, the harbor, the railroad station, and back downtown.

    Also, the Hampton Jitney will pick up passengers for free at its stops from Southampton to Montauk. Prior reservations are necessary and can be made by calling 283-4600.

    Updates and schedules are available on the chamber’s Facebook page and online at montaukchamber.com. The weather forecast is not promising; festival-goers might want to dress in warm clothes and bring rain gear.

    Representatives of a village civic group asked the Sag Harbor Village Board on Tuesday to create a citizens advisory committee that would be charged with studying and recommending traffic calming measures.

    “We are very much aware of the fact that this board doesn’t have the time to go off and do this work while they are busy running the village,” said John Shaka, who is on the board of directors of Save Sag Harbor as he broached the topic. He said the committee could have up to a dozen members and present the board with “actionable ideas,” not all of which would necessarily be adopted.

    He was joined by Susan Mead, a member of the group, who said that a new tax-exempt organization, Serve Sag Harbor, had been formed to be a conduit for private donations to help underwrite the cost of projects. To date, Ms. Mead said she had received pledges of $4,700.

    A resident of Main Street, Ms. Mead said in the middle of the night delivery trucks often raced down the street at speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour, rattling walls and making it “difficult to have a good quality of life.”

    She also said that when workers placed sensors in the dome of the John Jermain Library to make sure it was stable during construction, they were activated repeatedly by passing trucks.

    Jonas Hagen, an urban planner who led a workshop last winter on ways the village could make itself more pedestrian and bicyclist-friendly, also spoke. He offered a litany of suggestions, from narrowing intersections or creating traffic circles, to installing speed limit signs that use radar to post a motorist’s speed and speed bumps.

    When Ken O’Connell, a member of the board, asked if the village would be liable for damage to vehicles if it installed speed bumps, Mr. Hagen said the worst damage that typically occurs is that a car could lose its muffler. “It’s better to lose a few mufflers than a child, a senior, or anyone of us,” he said.

    Mr. Hagen and Mr. Shaka said the village would qualify for state transportation grants to help fund any traffic-calming measures it pursues.

    Although the board took no action on the request, Mayor Brian Gilbride said he would not object if such a committee was to meet in the Municipal Building.

    On Wednesday, Mr. Shaka said he hoped the board would move forward with the idea in the coming months. “It would simply be farming out some of the legwork and seeing that people who have an interest in it can take on the problem,” he said.

    The property southwest of the Jordan Haerter Memorial Bridge also came up for discussion on Tuesday. Bruce Tait, chairman of the Sag Harbor Village Harbor Committee, asked the board whether the sliver of public land there, behind the 7-Eleven convenience store, could be revitalized as an extension of the village’s waterfront park.

    Mr. Tait showed the board sketches prepared in 1996 by the landscape architect Ed Hollander. The plans showed installation of two docks that would provide space for up to 25 boats shorter than 28 feet, which Mr. Tait said matched a need among local residents.

    The park, which would be accessed by a foot path, would include “a jewel of a beach,” according to Mr. Tait. He said that members of his committee were willing to work on making the plan a reality.

    Mayor Gilbride said that the village had been trying to determine the ownership of the property and that, depending on the results, the board would most likely be willing to look into the project. “Let’s get some rough ideas about cost.”

    Mr. Tait told the board that because the village has adopted a Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, it might be possible to obtain state grants for the work, and it could even lobby for some private funding.

    Last month, the village planning board took is first look at a plan for a 21-unit residential development on property neighboring the proposed park. On Wednesday, Mr. Tait said the plan for the park was unrelated to that development and added that he was confident the village would not have difficulty proving ownership of the land.

    When the board took up the matter of paying for remediation work at Havens Beach, Trustee Ed Deyermond threw up his hands in frustration, saying he could not make heads nor tails out of the bills. He called for a county or state audit of the project.

    According to Mayor Gilbride, the work was originally supposed to cost $500,000, with the county picking up $147,500, the state shouldering just under $147,000, and the village to pay $205,000. A recent change order, submitted by the contractor doing the job, Keith Grimes Inc., would add $38,025 to the bill, the mayor said.

    Pierce Hance, a former mayor and trustee, said the village had erred by not holding a public hearing on the cost, which Mr. Gilbride said had been paid for out of the general fund, pending the completion of the work when the expense would be transferred to the repair fund and a hearing held.

    “You’ll have a hearing after all the money’s gone?”  Mr. Hance asked. The board tabled action on the matter, pending an explanation from the village treasurer, Eileen Tuohy.

    In other action, the board voted to adopt a 25-mile per hour speed limit in the Redwood neighborhood after holding a public hearing at which no one spoke. Neighborhood streets that are not otherwise marked have a 30-m.p.h. limit.

    The board also adopted a law that would require applicants whose development projects require the village to hire outside experts to reimburse the village for the expenses.

    The measure would not apply to standard applications, such as a single-family house, but to major projects such as the Bulova redevelopment, which could cost thousands of dollars in environmental review, said the village attorney, Fred W. Thiele Jr. It would “require money up front so basically you aren’t left holding the bag,” he said.

    September was “an ideal late-summer month,” Richard G. Hendrickson wrote in his monthly weather report from Bridgehampton.       

     Mr. Hendrickson, a United States Cooperative weather observer, recorded daytime highs in the 70s during the first half of the month and mainly in the 60s in the second half. Nights began mainly in the 60s, then dropped mostly into the 40s by month’s end.

    The hottest day last month was Sept. 11, when it was 85 degrees. The coldest temperature of the month was 38 degrees on the 18th.

    Mr. Hendrickson recorded measurable rain on four days, with the heaviest — 3.35 inches — falling on Sept. 3. The total for the month was 5.13 inches, quite a difference from September 2004, when he recorded a whopping 11.13 inches of rain. “Many people had a cellar full of water or overflowing,” he recalled.

    There were 10 clear days last month, 5 partly cloudy, and 14 cloudy.

    In a Sept. 21 wedding at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk, Meghan Anne Ryan and Nicolas Michael Finazzo were married. The Rev. Michael Rieder of St. Therese officiated.

    Mr. Finazzo is a son of Rori Butterfield of Montauk and Michael Finazzo of Boca Raton, Fla. He is a math teacher at the East Hampton Middle School. He received an undergraduate degree from St. Joseph’s College in 2009 and is in the master’s program in special and elementary education at Touro College on Long Island.

    Ms. Ryan Finazzo is the daughter of Mary Ryan of Nesconset and Michael Ryan of Commack. She is the lead physical therapist and manager of manual and sports therapy at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. She graduated from Smithtown High School in 2000, and in 2004 earned a science degree from the State University at Binghamton, where she was a chemistry major. She received a doctorate in physical therapy from Stony Brook University in 2007.

    From the time she was a child, Ms. Ryan Finazzo’s family had a summer house in Montauk. She and Mr. Finazzo met several years before they began dating.

    The wedding party included Rosemarie Cicalese as the maid of honor. Ms. Ryan Finazzo’s bridesmaids were her friends Erin Cicalese, Jennifer Mason, Amy Linda, and Aubrey Farnham.

    The bridegroom’s brothers, Max and Steve Finazzo, shared best man duties. Ms. Ryan Finazzo’s brother, Daniel Ryan, was a groomsman, as were Mr. Finazzo’s friends Ryan Borowsky and Jon Newman.

    Their reception began with cocktails on the pier at Edward V. Ecker Sr. Park in Montauk and then moved to dinner under a tent with a view of Fort Pond.

    They live in Montauk.

    It was tuxedos and Croc sandals for David A. Steckowski and Adisorn Chaikhram, who were married in an evening ceremony on the bay beach in Amagansett on Sept. 19.

    The couple gathered before a group of family and friends, with their dogs, at the Cross Highway house of Mr. Steckowski’s grandmother Charlotte Hallock as the sun set and the moon came up over distant Napeague.

    Mr. Chaikhram, whose nickname is Ong, wore a white tux with black Crocs and held Minne, their Chihuahua, and Mr. Steckowski, in a black tux with white Crocs, held the Pekinese, Romeo.

    The Rev. Steven E. Howarth of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church officiated and blessed the couple’s earlier civil union and rings. A reception followed on the lawn.

    Mr. Chaikhram is the son of Samruay and Thaveesak Chaikhram of Bangkok, Thailand. Mr. Steckowski is a son of Linda and Dennis Steckowski of Amagansett.

    Mr. Steckowski met Mr. Chaikhram while vacationing in Thailand. He made many return trips to see Mr. Chaikhram, who in 2009 decided to come to the United States.

    The couple live on Cedar Street in East Hampton.

    The top brass of the East Hampton Town Police Department visited a meeting of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday to address speeding and other concerns on Second House Road in the hamlet.

    Chief Edward V. Ecker Jr., Capt. Mike Sarlo, who will take over as chief in late December, and Lt. Chris Hatch, the Montauk precinct commander, told the group that enforcement of existing speed limits would be the key to solving the problems that residents are having.

    Enforcement, including overtime officers, was increased on the road at the end of the summer, the officers said, and soon the department will post a piece of equipment similar to the trailers that display speed limits. It will be able to collect data — speed limits, times, and other information — from the vehicles that drive on the narrow two-lane artery, some of which has a 30-mile-per-hour speed limit and includes a 20-mile-per-hour, two-block school zone.

    The extra enforcement has lowered speeds, Chief Ecker said. “We can’t be there 24 hours a day, but I really think it has already helped.”

    Residents of the road, which connects with Industrial Road and has a 40-mile-per-hour limit in some places, said that traffic has increased immensely since establishments such as Ruschmeyer’s and Solé East opened and brought with them speeding trucks, loud, intrusive taxis, and other vehicles that are making it dangerous to walk on the road. It has only intermittent sidewalks.

    “For that road, 40 miles per hour is too fast,” Kim Esperian told those gathered. “I can no longer walk there. I’ve put my house up for sale because I can no longer live there.” She said there are now hundreds of taxis routinely traveling the road, and most of them are speeding.

    Ms. Esperian’s mother, Lola Snow, said she is outside almost all day gardening and watches the traffic. “I see it as an accident waiting to happen. And it will happen, and when it does, we’ll all remember these meetings.”

    Another resident, Joan Palumbo, called the speeding cars death traps because of the number of deer on the road, which borders Fort Pond and several wooded areas.

    Captain Sarlo told residents that the traffic problems are not unique to Montauk. “Townwide, all of the ancillary roads have become worse as the town has grown. It’s not as safe as it used to be, and we have to take that into consideration.”

    Lieutenant Hatch said that since January 2010 there have been six accidents on Second House Road — three due to snow, one because of a deer, one caused by speeding, and another a result of a driver’s failing to stop at a stop sign. Since then, 168 summonses have been issued there.

    Steve Lynch, the town’s highway superintendent, said that lowering the speed limit to 20 there is not possible because of state laws. When it was suggested that the allowable weight limit be decreased, he said that was something that could be looked into.

    Residents suggested that the town explore extending the sidewalk on the southern portion of the road. All seemed in favor.

    When the police officials left, talk turned to erosion in downtown Montauk, which has been a hot topic ever since Hurricane Sandy blew through a year ago, but even more so in the last few weeks, since the Army Corps of Engineers informed the town that it would do a beach reconstruction project in Montauk using federal money.

    After a lengthy discussion, in which Steve Kalimnios, the owner of the severely affected Royal Atlantic motel, said he was thankful that everyone was finally on the same page about sand replenishment, the committee approved two resolutions asking the town to broaden the range of study from downtown to include the beaches east up to the Ditch Plain area and to hire an outside coastal engineer to study the recommendations submitted by the Army Corps.

    It was also announced at the meeting that the Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s meet-the-candidates forum would be held on Oct. 20 at 1 p.m. at the Montauk Firehouse.

    An archaeology festival sponsored by the Montauk Historical Society will be held on the grounds of the Second House Museum on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

    The festival, now in its second year, is held to raise awareness of a proposed Montauk Indian Museum to be established in a cottage owned by the Town of East Hampton on the north side of the Second House property. A future addition to the building is planned.

    The daylong event will feature interactive exhibits that will make up the core of the museum if at least $500,000 can be raised to complete it. Demonstrations include friction fire, flintknapping, bow and arrow making, and early cooking techniques using local produce and shellfish. Talks by archaeologists and historians will round out the day.

    Auntie Dorine’s Clam Bar, a food vending truck, will be on hand selling all types of modern-day goodies.

    The festival is being funded with a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities. “What a day it will be when the museum is a reality. This is just a great project, long overdue,” Dick Cavett, a museum supporter, said.

    Maria-Louise Sideroff, an archaeological consultant for the museum, stressed how important it is for schoolchildren to learn about the days of yore, and has visited local students in their classrooms for that purpose.

    The festival will allow experts in the field to demonstrate the skills of prehistoric life that enabled early cultures to survive, she said. “Every schoolchild knows that native people were hunter-gatherers, but as our technology world has advanced it becomes more and more difficult for people to imagine what life was like in a pre-tech world.”

    At the festival, which drew more than 700 visitors last year, experts and aficionados will bring items from their own collections, some of which will then be prizes in a raffle. More information is on Montauk Indian Museum’s Facebook page.

    A new police officer was introduced at a brief meeting of the East Hampton Village board on Friday, and the Long Island Power Authority’s application for an excavation permit to upgrade its transmission grid was discussed.

    “We are going to welcome into the ranks of the East Hampton Village Police Department our newest member,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., standing at the lectern with Richard Lawler, a trustee, told the assembled.

    Mr. Lawler then spoke: “It’s my pleasure today to be able to able to present Jennifer Dunn with her police shield.” Ms. Dunn, who Mr. Lawler said was a relative, graduated from the police academy. “I can tell, from personal experience, that that’s very rigorous and demanding training, and she should be very proud of her accomplishments,” he said.

    Mr. Lawler invited Ms. Dunn and Chief Gerard Larsen to the lectern, where the chief lauded the new officer for her outstanding performance as a dispatcher over the last eight years for the village’s emergency communications department. “She’s one of the best dispatchers that we have,” he said. “We’re looking forward and are excited about her joining this department.”

    “On behalf of the mayor and entire village board, I want to present you with your East Hampton Village Shield number 75,” Mr. Lawler said. “Congratulations!”

    Among the items on the board’s agenda, all of which were approved without debate, were Ms. Dunn’s employment, effective next Tuesday at a starting salary of $66,790, and that of Richard C. Sperber as a part-time police officer, at $22 per hour. The board also approved paving projects on North Main Street, Hook Mill Road, Methodist Lane, and Accabonac Road, totaling $101,026, and a milling project on North Main Street for which $23,100 is allocated. “Ladies and gentlemen, that is a budgeted item, so it is in the operating budget,” the mayor said.

    The board also voted unanimously to approve LIPA’s application for an excavation permit. As reported in these pages last week, the authority plans to expand and upgrade its power distribution system in response to increased demand.

    The project includes the installation of 68 utility poles, 51 of which will replace existing poles, along a 6.2-mile span between LIPA’s East Hampton substation, on Cove Hollow Road, and its Amagansett substation on Old Stone Highway. The new poles, most of which will be installed in the village, are needed to accommodate new transmission lines that will increase reliability to meet increasing loads. They are built to withstand winds up to 130 miles per hour.

    Affected streets in the village include Buell Lane Extension, East Hampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, Toilsome Lane, Gingerbread Lane, King Street, McGuirk Street, and Cooper Lane. Outside of the village, poles will be replaced along Cedar Street, Collins Avenue, Accabonac Road, Town Lane, and Old Stone Highway.

    The new utility poles will range in height from 40 to 70 feet, though most will be 50 or 55 feet tall; the existing poles are 35 and 40 feet tall. The new poles will be 16 inches wider, at ground level, than the existing ones.

    An active approach to health for older residents will be the subject of a morning forum Saturday, sponsored by the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation. Rethinking Aging will be held at the Emergency Services Building at 1 Cedar Street from 9 a.m. to noon. Free coffee and a light breakfast will be served at 8:30.

    Dr. Eileen H. Callahan of the department of geriatrics and adult development at Mount Sinai School of Medicine is the featured speaker. Also on the panel will be Dr. Charles Guida, who is a gerontologist; Dr. Elaine Karis, a rheumatologist; Dr. Louis D. Pizzarello, an ophthalmologist, and Dr. Gerard M. Turino, a pulmonologist and the president of the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation.

    Patia Cunningham of the Body Shop in East Hampton will talk about yoga’s benefits for older practitioners. Ann M. Silver, an East Hampton nutritionist, will address healthy eating. Erik Peterson of Peterson Physical Therapy in East Hampton will discuss healing for older patients. Finally, Howard John Lebwith, who is a retired dentist and active in many community organizations here, will talk about the life well lived.

    Admission is free, though the Healthcare Foundation has said it would appreciate advance registration by phone or e-mail to [email protected].

    Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s 11th-hour veto of a bill that would have smoothed the Montaukett Indian Nation’s path toward state recognition will not be the last word on the tribe’s effort to reclaim its identity, according to State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Chief Robert Pharaoh.

    In his veto message, the governor said the bill would require New York State to adopt the lengthy and thorough federal process for recognizing Indian tribes. Mr. Cuomo said that would be too costly for the state.

    Mr. Thiele co-sponsored the bill with State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle. It easily passed both houses of the state legislature in June.

    The deadline for the governor to veto the bill was midnight Friday. Mr. Thiele said the first he heard that there might be a problem with it was when the governor’s office called at about 8 that night, “when it was too late to do anything about it.”

    “I think they misinterpreted the legislation,” said Mr. Thiele. “We put in the bill that it would use the same standards as they use for federal recognition, but we did not authorize the federal process. The bill was deliberately written not to do that.”

    Instead, he said the bill would have allowed the Montauketts to directly petition the state Department of State for recognition, with the burden of proof placed on the tribe, not the state. The secretary of state would then weigh in on the merits of the petition before issuing a recommendation to the legislature, which would vote on that recommendation.

    The state would have been able to charge the tribe a fee for processing its petition, insuring that it would not cost taxpayers “a dime” to weigh in on the tribe’s application, Mr. Thiele said.

    Despite vetoing the legislation, the governor has directed the secretary of state to study the merits of Montaukett recognition, which leaves a door open, according to Mr. Thiele.

    “A couple of things are going to happen,” he said. There will either be “a fair and balanced report from the secretary of state, or we could always go back and reintroduce the legislation and address the concerns of the governor’s veto,” early next year.

    Mr. Pharaoh said he was disappointed by the veto but looked forward to working with the secretary of state.

    A statement on the tribal website, montaukettnation.org.,  describes the veto as a possible “blessing in disguise” because the governor has directed the secretary of state “to determine the merits of Montaukett recognition.” Now, the tribe will not be held to the more difficult federal standard.

    “Ironically, this was our ultimate goal in the first place,” the statement continues.

    The state recognized the Montauketts as a tribe until 1910, when a still-controversial court decision resolving a land dispute between the Indians and the Montauk developer Arthur Benson declared the tribe to be extinct.

    “My legislation was designed to give the Montaukett Indians an opportunity to reverse this century-old injustice,” Mr. Thiele said in a release. “Unfortunately, the veto will only serve to perpetuate this questionable court decision.”