Montaukers will proudly wave the American flag this weekend in honor of Memorial Day. The hamlet’s three-day event is in its third year. The services begin at 5 p.m. on Saturday at the Montauk Coast Guard Station, where a fish-and-chips dinner honoring veterans will be held on the grounds overlooking Lake Montauk. Veterans eat free. Guests will be asked for a $20 donation, $10 for children 10 and under.

    On Sunday, a parade of veterans and others who have served their country will start at noon at Kirk Park, wind its way east, and end on the downtown green at the memorial site. There will be a sing-along of favorite military songs with Johnny Hughes and the Local Players. Other entertainers will perform and local politicians will speak.

   On Monday at 8 a.m. the Coast Guard and the Boy Scouts will conduct a flag-raising ceremony and remembrance with guest speakers. At 8 p.m., the flag will be lowered and folded. Flags in need of retirement will then be officially burned under the watchful eye of the Montauk Fire Department.

    Good news was the order of the day at the 91st annual meeting of the East Hampton Historical Society, held recently at Clinton Academy.

     Arthur Graham, president of the board of trustees, reported that between fund-raising, memberships, and events such as house tours and parties, the society raised $560,000 in 2012 and now has net assets of $2.5 million. The money helps to fund its school programs, collections, exhibitions, and the upkeep of various buildings — in particular last year, the Mulford farmhouse and the Town Marine Museum in Amagansett.

    “We’re a very healthy organization,” said Mr. Graham, thanking the trustees — Chip Rae, John McGuirk, Maureen Bluedorn, Barbara Borsack, Mary Clarke, Frank Newbold, and Bill Fleming — for their commitment.

    Richard Barons, the society’s executive director, agreed. “It’s the best board I have ever worked with in my zillions of years in the nonprofit world,” he said.

    It was a banner year for collections, said Mr. Graham, including “an amazing amount of gifts from the community.” He singled out an early Rhode Island “banner-back” chair circa 1720, found in East Hampton about 40 years ago and still with its original red paint. It will be put on display at the Mulford farmhouse as of today.

    Among other gifts in 2012, reported Ms. Borsack, who heads the collections committee, were a pair of late 18th-century men’s brass and silver shoe buckles donated by the Corwith family, a 1912 South Fork telephone directory, and Maude Sherwood Jewett’s silk evening jacket, circa 1920, donated by Camilla Jewett of Main Street, who will be 102 in August.  

    The storage building used by lifeguards at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach, damaged by Hurricane Sandy last October, will soon be demolished and reconstructed.

    The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals voted to grant the village a coastal erosion permit and an area variance so that it can proceed. The new building will be on the site of the old one on the west side of the Main Beach pavilion. It will be larger, however, going from 396 to 603 square feet. Ed McDonald, the beach manager, had asked for the larger structure to house modern lifesaving equipment, the board noted.

    Measuring approximately 23 feet by 26.5 feet, the building will be constructed on pilings, in compliance with Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations, and will have a gable roof. The existing building is on a slab and has a flat roof.

    The board found that the new, larger building did not require further State Enviornmental Quality Review Act study, having no adverse effect on the character of the area or traffic. Nor will it have an impact on sewage treatment or removal because it will have no plumbing.

    Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, said a crew is likely to spend a few weeks completing construction next month. The elements of the building are expected to be prefabricated off site.

    “It’s isolated back there,” he said. “It won’t disturb the operations of the beach.” But, he added, “The idea is to try to get it rebuilt as quickly as possible.”

    New parking regulations in downtown Montauk are planned for this season in an effort to free up parking spaces near businesses close to the beaches, which are often tied up all day by beachgoers.

    The East Hampton Town Board will vote tonight to set a hearing for May 16 on a proposal developed by a parking committee of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce. It would limit parking to two hours in much of the area south of Main Street surrounding Edison Beach, including along South Etna Avenue and South Edison Street.

    Laraine Creegan, the executive director of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, told the town board at a work session on Tuesday that parking near downtown businesses is increasingly occupied by “all-day beachgoers that are creeping up from Edison Beach.”

    All-day parking will continue to be available at the Kirk Park lot, near the I.G.A. market, which is free to nonresidents and residents alike. That lot, Ms. Creegan said, has been underutilized, and a larger sign will be erected informing the public that the lot is open to all, without limited hours.

    East Hampton Town Police Capt. Michael Sarlo, who worked with Ms. Creegan and others on the committee, along with Councilman Dominick Stanzione, said that “from a public safety standpoint, the recommendations make clear sense” and would help to “clean up a lot of the shoulders of the roadways,” where haphazard parking caused potential dangers to pedestrians and bike riders. “It just created a little bit of a chaotic scene,” Captain Sarlo said. Spaces, both parallel and head-in, will be marked, he said.

    In addition to the street-parking limits, parking in the lot behind Plaza Sports will be limited to two hours or designated only for those with resident parking permits.

    “As we look through the weather records from April 1 to April 30, we go through the temperature range of sometimes the 20s to the 60s by the month’s end,” Richard G. Hendrickson wrote in his April weather report from Bridgehampton. “This great variation is due in part to our location — 100 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, yet but a few miles from the mainland on the north.”

    “Southwesterly winds give our area warmer spring temperatures,” the United States Cooperative weather observer reported. Wind last month was from the southwest on 13 days, the prevailing summer direction. “When cooler easterly winds bring the cooler temperatures with showers, we are often in a two to three-day wet period.”

    Mr. Hendrickson, a retired farmer, said that one to three inches of rain can delay potato planting by three days. That wasn’t a problem last month. Rain fell on only two days in April — .15 of an inch on the 5th and 1.12 inches on the 12th. The long-term average for the month is 3 to 4 inches.

    “Few of us realize how beneficial the early spring rains are here to the many glacial-made freshwater ponds,” Mr. Hendrickson wrote. “They all have now perch, bass, sunfish, pickerel, and carp.” But he reminded readers: “You must have a New York State license to fish in these ponds.”

    He recorded 10 clear, 8 partly cloudy, and 12 cloudy days last month. In April, he said, “there is sometimes a freezing night, and often a fair snowfall!” The highest temperature last month came on the 9th, when it was 78 degrees, but that was the only day of the month with a temperature in the 70s. It was 60 or higher on seven other days and dropped down to 25 on April 2 and to the 20s on two nights.

    “Spring is on the way,” Mr. Hendrickson wrote, “but eastern Long Island is out in the Atlantic Ocean and that is the largest factor that governs our weather, as it always has.”

    After winning election to the Montauk Library’s board on April 27, Perry Haberman learned that he was ineligible for the position. The board took action at a meeting on Monday to declare the election null and void, leaving Mr. Haberman, who was elected with 62 votes, off the board.

    Mr. Haberman had switched his voter registration to reflect a New York City residence in order to vote in the presidential election, which meant he was no longer considered a Suffolk County resident for a full year prior to the library election, as mandated under New York State election law.

    In an e-mail message he said he had switched his registration because he knew he could not make it out to his Montauk home for the presidential election in November.

    “We were all shocked; it took us by surprise,” Joan Lycke, the board president, said. “Perry has been a dedicated library trustee. It’s an embarrassment and we feel bad about it.”

    Residency is determined solely by voter registration. An owner of a house in Montauk and the Montauk Book Shop, Mr. Haberman was still registered in New York City, where he also resides. “As a taxpayer and property owner in Montauk since 1994, as well as having a business in the hamlet, it never occurred to me that voter registration would be an issue,” he said.

    Mr. Haberman said he reviewed the 62 votes he had received for another five-year term and discovered that his name had been removed from the voter registration rolls. The library got in touch with its attorney, Bill Cullen, who is also the attorney for the Montauk School District, and he determined that Mr. Haberman was ineligible to accept re-election or continue his current term, which ends on June 30.

    Library officials have reviewed the minutes of all the meetings during Mr. Haberman’s term and have determined that all actions and votes taken during that time remain valid. The budget that was approved with 82 votes on April 27 is not affected.

    Mr. Haberman, who has been a board member for 10 years, five as president, said that before the election it was not his intention to run again, but other board members coaxed him into it, saying that they could use his assistance.

    “As you can see, the irony here was my willingness to help out my friends and colleagues on the board and then have this happen,” he said. “Neither I nor anyone else knew this would be an issue. Being required to submit my resignation in this manner after so many years of dedication is very frustrating, and to say that I am upset is an understatement.”

    In a release, board members said they regretfully accepted his resignation from the position. As a result, there is now a vacant seat on the board. A write-in candidate who received one vote was asked to step in, but declined. The vacancy can be filled by appointment until next year’s election. Anyone interested can reach the board through the library.

   Words of wisdom from Margaret Mead warned to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

    Save Sag Harbor, founded in 2007, has taken those words to heart, making it its mission “to safeguard the scale and fabric of a historic village,” effecting positive change while preventing what it sees as negative, and backing the village’s commercial code, which the group helped push for.

    At the moment, the all-volunteer not-for-profit has its sights set on the Harbor Heights Service Station on Route 114, whose redevelopment is before the Sag Harbor Village Zoning Board of Appeals.

    “We want it to stay a gas station, to be modernized, upgraded, and safe,” said John Shaka, one of the group’s directors, and others in the group at a meeting on Monday afternoon. But the group also wants to rein in what happens at the site, owned by John Leonard’s Petroleum Ventures.

    The application before the zoning board calls for multiple variances, including one for a 102-foot long canopy over the gas pumps, which does not meet village code. The revamped station, which is in a residential and historic district, would have more pumps and a convenience store, as well as new underground storage tanks, an upgraded septic system, and new stormwater drainage and retention systems. 

    As Mr. Shaka sees it, the application is the first full-scale challenge to the commercial code. “Sometimes you have to play defense,” said Mr. Shaka.

    And so Save Sag Harbor has, by hiring Jeffrey Bragman, an East Hampton attorney, to oppose the application as originally proposed.

    A victory of sorts came at an April 16 zoning board meeting, when Dennis Downes, the applicant’s attorney, said he would amend the application, spell out what variances will still be needed, and present a new plan at the board’s May 21 meeting.

    Mia Grosjean, Save Sag Harbor’s president, said she looks forward to seeing the new design. “We’re optimistic,” she said, “confident that they can create something that is in compliance with regulations, that is all we wanted.”

    At an earlier zoning board meeting, Mr. Bragman presented detailed diagrams showing how the service station and a 600-square-foot convenience store could conform to code and still accomplish the owner’s objectives. An exception, he said, are those that would entail a change of use, such as additional gas pumps.    Although the code does not allow gas stations in residential districts, the business currently operates in one because it was there before the zoning code prohibited it.

    But the multiple variances it needs are substantial, Mr. Bragman argued at an April 16 zoning board meeting. “You are supposed to grant the minimum variance necessary, not 62 percent,” he said, telling the board, “He has not shown unnecessary hardship. . . . He has to prove for each and every use that he can’t get a reasonable return on his property, with competent financial evidence. . . . It is an inefficient argument: added profitability for larger size.”

    “Dennis does not believe it is an expansion, which is why he hasn’t applied for one,” Mr. Bragman said on April 16.

    Mr. Downes argued that the pumps need to be moved to make the filling area safer, something Save Sag Harbor is not opposed to.

    On April 16, Mr. Bragman also seemed to convince the zoning board that the canopy proposed above the pumps should be a considered a building under the code — a new 2,600-square-foot, roofed structure where one did not formerly exist.

    While the group is making headway thanks to its legal representative, legal advice does not come for free. “We’ve got a couple of bills to pay,” Ms. Grosjean said Monday. It will raise money to continue its mission at Meet Your Neighbors gathering on May 4 at St. David’s A.M.E. Zion Church, next door to Harbor Heights.

    At the event, the group will share some historical facts about the neighborhood, believed to have been part of an Underground Railroad network. It includes a burial ground that has just been awarded a site preservation grant by the Archeological Institute of America. Examples of the Harbor Heights plans will be offered, too, to show how “out of scale and jarring” the proposed remodel would look, said Ms. Grosjean.

    Proceeds will be split between a fund for legal fees and the restoration of the church’s bell tower by Dana Harvey, an Eagle Scout. Guests will be asked for a free-will donation.

    Long Wharf could be next on the agenda, after a traffic-calming workshop hosted by the group demonstrated the community’s interest in having a say about its use now that it is owned by the village.

    The group’s members don’t agree on every issue. When last summer’s passenger ferry service was first proposed from Long Wharf to Greenport, some were opposed, some were not. Save Sag Harbor put together a survey to get the community’s input, encouraging the mayor and the village’s harbor committee to create their own, as well.

    The group tries to support small businesses, too, encouraging the community to shop locally. And its members attend village meetings to just listen or write up reports for those unable to attend. “More people should attend these meetings . . . standing up for what you believe in, having a voice,” said Ms. Grosjean. She and Mr. Shaka both said they plan to run someday for a seat on the village board.

    The group’s goal, Mr. Shaka said, is not “let’s stop something.” It has also raised money for the restoration of the windmill on Long Wharf and for free WiFi in the village, for example.

    “You can see how you make a difference, said Hilary Loomis, secretary of the group.

    Sag Harbor Village’s police chief, Tom Fabiano, pleaded yet again with Mayor Brian Gilbride on Tuesday evening to reconsider eliminating one officer from the force. The proposed village budget does away with the job. Should that in fact happen, said the chief, it would affect not only his department but “people that live, visit, go to school here, boat or drive here, have an event here, have a medical issue, fire, or criminal matter.”

    The budget was not on the village board’s agenda that night, and at press time a budget hearing had yet to be scheduled. The deadline for acceptance of the budget is May 1; the next village board meeting is not until May 14.

    “If it was truly about economic issues and the budget,” the chief said with some bewilderment, “there surely would be many more questions.”

    “Nobody has asked me how losing an officer adversely affects the department and the safety of the people in our village,” he told the board. “I wonder, how can you make an informed decision without this input.”    

    Citing a March 28 story in this newspaper, Chief Fabiano asked why Edward Gregory, a board member, had asked at a budget hearing a week earlier how it would affect the budget if the officer’s job was kept. “Why doesn’t he know that answer?” the chief asked, wondering if the board had had any discussion on the topic at all.

    “I am surprised that nobody is concerned about it, or doesn’t care about it,” said the chief. “It’s not like 100 guys. We have 11.”

    “The problem we have,” Mayor Gilbride responded, “is that there is a continuing escalating cost in both medical insurance and retirement. It’s nobody’s fault. . . . We have a 2-percent cap.”

    “We don’t have to adhere to that, replied Chief Fabiano. “The board can vote to go over that if need be.”

    Having already lost Officer Michael Gigante halfway through the last budget year after the mayor threatened to disband the entire force, Chief Fabiano said he wondered how the village, with only 10 officers, could stay safe. What with vacations, illnesses, personal time, disability, and event coverage, he said, it would be impossible to have two officers working per shift. And considering widespread predictions that this summer will be the busiest yet, he said, “This is no time to reduce the Police Department.”

    Mayor Gilbride suggested at a budget hearing on April 3 that two or three part-time officers be hired to fill the vacant positions. But part-time police officers are meant to supplement the force, Chief Fabiano told the board Tuesday, not to replace two full-time officers.

    “I’ve never heard what the magic number was that we need — what is it?” the chief asked. “I have [reviewed] my current budget, I told the mayor I am willing to make stops on anything I can possibly do to keep this position alive . . . I don’t know what I have to do, where to go, what to say, who to see. I ask you, what is the number?”

    Mayor Gilbride said police retirement expenses are increasing this year by a significant amount. “Medical has increased 10 or 12 percent for the last two years,” he said. “With no raises, there has still been a 21-percent increase. ”

    “I am not going to argue the numbers,” said the chief. “I’m here to save someone’s job.” Chief Fabiano said he had already found $90,000 he could cut if it would save the job of one of his officers. “With taking another guy out . . . I am going to need more overtime,” he said. “We will have to structure something like that,” said the mayor.

    Patrick Milazzo, the Police Benevolent Association’s representative, gave The Star an example in an e-mail yesterday of how a village resident would be affected should the 11th officer be retained. For a house assessed at $795,000, he  wrote, the tax cost of one officer “would be $51.52 per year, $4.28 per month, or 14 cents per day. Noteworthy I think, given the current discussion.”

    “This is nothing personal,” Mayor Gilbride told Chief Fabiano during Tuesday’s meeting. The chief disagreed. “You’ve made comments,” he said. “Let’s not go there.”

    At the tense April 3 budget hearing, Mayor Gilbride accused the chief of  “posturing.” “I’ll take it up with you tomorrow,” he said. The two met privately the next day, apparently to no avail.

    Montauk will celebrate Earth Day on Saturday with a cleanup from 10 a.m. to noon starting at the Montauk Movie, where bags and gloves will be dispensed. Hosted by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk and the Group for the East End, the festivities will continue at 11:30 a.m. through 1:30 p.m. at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center with a program on everything you ever wanted to know about birds. There will be crafts for kids and materials for making bling-laden birdie gift bags.

    For adults, a free program on how to prevent deer from wreaking havoc on your garden will be held from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Fort Pond Native Plants in Montauk, where Matt Stedman will lecture and provide a survival guide.

    Two hikes will take place, weather permitting, led by student interns who have been trained in Concerned Citizens of Montauk programs. The first will meet at the trailhead at Big Reed Pond at noon on Saturday. If you have the stamina, the second will start at the trailhead of the Walking Dunes on Napeague at 2 p.m. Directions and other information can be found at CCOM-Montauk.org/events.

    Also in Montauk, the East End chapter of the Surfrider Foundation will have a cleanup at Ditch Plain Beach on Saturday starting at 9 a.m. Participants will meet in the parking lot near the East Deck Motel.

    “We need lots of help to pick up trash, debris, and other stuff that is littering our beaches,” a release said, going on to point out that doing so offers a fine opportunity to spend time with friends and family. “At the end of an hour or two, you will feel good about cleaning a special part of our coastline.”

    As part of its Earth Day celebration, the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton is seeking volunteers to help clear beach debris that may be dangerous to birds and marine life on Saturday morning from 8:30 to 9:30 on Long Beach in Noyac.

    Southampton Town will hold its annual Great East End Cleanup on Saturday and Sunday, with residents asked to select a property such as a public park, beach, roadside, or trail to help clean up.

    In Sagaponack, bags will be available at Sagg Main Beach at 9 a.m. Saturday, or volunteers can bring their own. A pointed stick would be a good idea, too, according to Sagaponack Mayor Donald Louchheim, who will participate with other village board members.

    Mary Lou Kaler, an East Hampton horsewoman who 21 years ago adopted a young horse named Bubba — a Clydesdale that grew familiar to town residents, clomping peacefully in numerous parades and offering cart rides around town — reported his death on March 30, six weeks after a Star turn in a photo on the front page of this newspaper.

    Ms. Kaler said that she and a partner, Glenn Heigl, got the yearling horse in 1992 from a breeder in Jamesport. He was already named Bubba. “With a good Bonac name like that, he was destined to live in East Hampton,” she said.    

    Early on, Ms. Kaler and Bubba took on ceremonial duties, marching in the annual Santa Parade, as well as in the parade marking East Hampton Town’s tricentquinquagenary (350th) anniversary celebration, with the late Carleton Kelsey, a town historian from Amagansett, riding in a Bubba-drawn carriage.

    From 1995 through 2001, Bubba and Ms. Kaler also paraded the carriage around East Hampton Village for wedding celebrations or at Christmas, offering rides, with eggnog, from the Maidstone Arms. In 2006, Bubba was at the head of Montauk’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, squiring Suzanne Gosman, the grand marshal, in her Irish “tub-cart.” 

    “He was East Hampton’s Clydesdale,” Ms. Kaler said last week, “the people’s horse. Bubba was a great horse — a horse in service to community.”

    Bubba was indeed a horse-about-town. He was kept at first at a farm leased from the Tillinghast family in East Hampton, and pastured in an adjacent field, where he became a familiar sight to many passing by the Cove Hollow area. He was housed for a time in Montauk and also in Springs, then again in East Hampton Village.

    Without a farm or land of her own, Ms. Kaler has had to depend on others to house her horses — Peanut and Tucker remain — in existing barns. She occasionally rides on horseback through the streets, and stops so that children, and others who love horses, can say hello.

    “The kids loved it,” she said. “I feel strongly about showing up for the ­parades,­ for the children, for everybody . . . to stay connected to our rural heritage.”

     “I shared him in every way,” she said. Bubba appeared at fund-raisers and other parties, took people on  trail rides, did therapy work, and once posed with Justin Timberlake for a GQ magazine photo spread.

    “I feel that people benefit from contact with horses,” Ms. Kaler said in an e-mail. “Having worked professionally with horses for 30 years, it saddens me to witness the gap between horses and their riders growing ever larger. People arrive at a barn, have a groomed, saddled horse handed to them, have someone tell them what to do inside a fenced-in area, and a half-hour or an hour later, hand the horse off again.”

    Ms. Kaler said that a cash gift recently made it possible for her to move all of her horses to a “beautiful pasture” close to her house, where she was with Bubba around the clock as he neared the end. “We shared a campfire under Springs’s . . . full moon,” she said, before the horse died at 2 a.m. on the penultimate day of March.  The two had been “inseparable,” she said, for 21 years.