Accusations and recriminations went flying from the moment Monday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Trustees began at Town Hall, with a half-dozen residents of Driftwood Shores, a development in Springs, accusing a couple who recently built a house on the last undeveloped lot there of prohibiting the use of the beach in front of it.

 The homeowners, Kenneth and Judith Reiss, insisted that they have no objection to anyone’s walking on the approximately 50 feet of beach in front of their house, but they said their deed extends to the mean high-water mark. Residents argued that access only to the beach below mean high water was unrealistic, at best, because of ongoing erosion. The Reisses told the trustees  they felt “under siege” and complained of nonstop hostility and harassment.

 The trustees, seemingly weary of multiple challenges to their jurisdiction over beaches on behalf of the public, and just a few hours after one of their number had testified at a trial about Truck Beach on Napeague, implored the neighbors to settle the matter amicably. Their attorney, Richard Whalen, however, said he would investigate the process — and the expense — of determining title to the disputed area.

Residents told the trustees that they, and in some cases multiple generations, had lived in the development for decades, using an access road to the beach and enjoying its unfettered use while other members of the public access it from the end of Springs-Fireplace Road. The Reisses “affirm the rest of us are only entitled to use the 20-foot-wide portion directly in front” of the access road rather than the beach in front of their house, which is wider due to the accretion of sand at a concrete groin, Peggy Backman of Driftwood Lane said.

Joseph Bradley said his family had owned property there since 1960 and had cared for and cleaned the beach throughout that span. The Reisses, he said, also object to property owners mooring their boats in the area of Gardiner’s Bay in front of their house. “If you buy land and build a house on waterfront property and you don’t want to see a boat,” Ed Cromer said, “I think you bought property in the wrong place.”

Ms. Reiss disagreed with her neighbors. “No one is being denied access to Gardiner’s Bay,” she said, and anyone can go to the beach. But “this entire community has made up their mind, they want to sit on our 50 feet.” She called four large chairs and kayaks that residents had put on the beach in front of their house a provocation, likening it to “sticking a flag in and saying ‘this is ours.’ ” When her husband said the residents do not congregate at any other portion of the beach, the response was “That’s not true!”

Ms. Reiss held a deed and property survey that she said proves they own the beach from the bulkhead at the upland to mean high water. Further, she said, her neighbors know this to be true, having previously appealed to the town attorney’s office. “It’s upsetting to know our neighbors knew this and totally ignored it. This is a private community: to come down Driftwood, you have to live there.”

“This is an old tale told again,” Mr. Whalen said. “Who owns the beach?” Most of the trustees’ original land grants date to the first half of the 18th century, he said, and extended to the bluff of the beach, “which I would interpret as not to the water, i.e., the trustees retained ownership of the beach.”

But matching those allotments to modern property ownership is not always easy. Sometimes, he said, it is discovered that a deed that extended to the bluff “suddenly ran to the water” when it was conveyed to a new owner. “In doing that, they’ve claimed ownership of beach where they didn’t have it,” in which case all subsequent claims would be invalid. “That is the issue as far as the trustees are concerned: We don’t know whether the beach is private because we don’t know whether the original land allotment went to mean high water.”

Referencing the Napeague beach litigation, Mr. Whalen suggested that if property owners in the development have had uninterrupted use of the beach for more than 10 years, they may have established prescriptive claim to it. But that “cannot be resolved in the absence of litigation.”

At the suggestion of Jim Grimes, one of the trustees, Mr. Whalen was asked to conduct a cursory investigation into ownership, as well as the trustees’ costs and potential liabilities.  But Mr. Grimes also instructed the neighbors to “try to settle it amicably. It may mean everybody gives a little bit.”

“For some reason, our dream has nothing to with their dream,” Mr. Bradley said of the Reisses. The adversarial relationship, he said, is “not what Springs is about, not what East Hampton is about. We all live in peace, have a good time, enjoy the beauty of our places.”

The case of a man accused by the Town of East Hampton of illegally converting a single-family house at 5 Hoover Court in Montauk into a multiple-dwelling residence is headed to a jury trial, following a contentious exchange on Monday between his attorney, the town’s, and East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana.

After inspecting the house last July, ordinance enforcement officers brought 21 charges against Eliot Ferguson, who purchased it with his wife, Jennifer Sample, for $1.15 million in 2012. According to documents on file at Justice Court, inspectors alleged that the couple had created bedrooms having no legal way out in case of fire, including a child’s room with bars on the windows, and had added an illegal second kitchen as well as an additional bathroom. A number of the charges are classified as misdemeanors under town code, including lacking building permits and certificates of occupancy; others are violations of state fire code laws regulating safety in residences.

The property, a little under a half-acre, fronts both Hoover Court and Tyler Road. From Tyler Road, a long driveway leads up a hill to the house, which has a two-car garage and a parking area that can hold several more cars. Just off the street on the Hoover Court side there is another parking area, which can accommodate another five or six vehicles.

The case was adjourned several times, during which time a warrant was issued for Mr. Ferguson’s arrest for failure to appear in court; it was voided when he showed up the next time. After that, Thomas Horn, who was then the couple’s lawyer, negotiated a conditional discharge with the town. The couple would pay a fine and the matter would be closed, as long as there were no other violations. However, as a condition for the settlement, the town demanded a new inspection take place.

Weeks, then months, went by, without the inspection happening. When it finally did, in late March, the owners were not present. Mr. Horn, however, was.

According to the town, the new inspection showed that almost nothing had changed. Almost all the original charges were filed again, plus a few new ones. Mr. Ferguson now faces a total of 44 charges.

Mr. Horn’s presence at the house during that inspection, Justice Rana told him last month, made him a potential witness in the case. Lawrence Kelly, who has worked with Mr. Horn on other cases here, replaced him.

On Monday, after entering a not-guilty plea on behalf of Mr. Ferguson, who was not in the courtroom, Mr. Kelly referred to the second inspection as “court-ordered.”

“Excuse me, I beg to differ,” Justice Rana interrupted. “If the people are requiring [an inspection] as part of a disposition, that is the people’s requirement.”

“The reason for the re-inspection is that the defendant’s previous attorney, Mr. Horn, said the defendant was now compliant,” said the lawyer for the town, NancyLynn Thiele. “The inspection was at the request of Mr. Horn in order to resolve his client’s case. It was not that the court ordered it, or the people demanded it, but that it was at the request of Mr. Horn, who actually scheduled the inspection.”

Justice Rana was not finished with Mr. Kelly. “For you to come in here and state that it is the court that requires it, with all due respect, is 100 percent incorrect. I’m not going to allow that to stand.”

Mr. Kelly then requested that an independent prosecutor to be appointed to replace Ms. Thiele, saying the town attorney’s office had a conflict of interest.

“That is a fact or issue of law which you can make a motion for,” Justice Rana responded. “As of right now, I don’t believe there are any motions in this case. At least make a motion that you believe that there is something remiss. In the meantime, I will set this down for a jury trial.”

Also arraigned during Monday’s zoning court session was Leslie M. Cooper, the owner of a house at 105 Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton, along with eight co-defendants, all living in the house when it was raided in March after the town obtained a search warrant.

Hope De Lauter, an attorney for the town, told the court that Ms. Cooper had agreed to plead guilty to 10 of the 17 fire code and town ordinance violations with which she was charged, in return for a conditional discharge and a fine of $10,000. The exact terms will be negotiated before her next court appearance, on July 11.

The others arraigned were Carmen Rocio Yamba Tenezaca, 30, Jaimo Uzcha Namina, 31, Wilson Guillca-Satian, 30, Melida Yamba Tenezaca, 33, Jose Donaie, 40, Angel Uzcha, 32, Angel Maza-Namina, 32, and Rafael Felix Llauri, 23. Mancayo Arnulfo Rivera, 27, who was also charged, was not listed on Monday’s calendar.

Most of the tenants have since moved, several of them to Flanders. Ms. Cooper, who lives in Amityville, said after court let out that she had rented the house to a couple with a young child and had no idea they were bringing in additional tenants.

Long gone are the days of school computer labs featuring boxy machines with monochrome green type and simplistic dot-matrix printers.

Recently, at the Springs School, a group of eighth-grade students raced plastic cars they built using parts they designed on computers and then brought to life using a 3-D printer.

At the Wainscott School, some of the South Fork’s littlest fingers assemble Lego pieces that are not your standard plastic bricks: The handles, wheels, gears, and other parts form tiny robots that serve to solve a problem or demonstrate a concept.

And in East Hampton, where a top administrator successfully lobbied the state for a new category of teaching certification, its first dedicated computer science teacher has been hired to teach a full slate of courses next year.

While each looks different, most public schools from Bridgehampton to Montauk have set up technology programs aimed at preparing kids for what experts say will be the careers of the future. The term used most often is “STEM,” which stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The National Science Foundation reports that the median salary for STEM jobs was $78,270 in 2012, compared to $34,750 that year for non-STEM jobs. It also reports that jobs in STEM fields are more recession-proof. U.S. News and World Report has said that many tech jobs go unfilled in the United States because workers don’t have proper training.

“We see that we’re no longer competing school district to school district. We have to get our students ready to compete on a global level,” said Katy Graves, the Sag Harbor superintendent. “They have to have exposure starting at a very young age to things like computer systems, coding, and robotics to see if they like it.”

Sag Harbor Elementary’s programs include a robotics and engineering club and one called STEM Challenge, in which students use technology to find answers or invent solutions to everyday problems. The school incorporates electrical engineering and computer science into its curriculum using Little Bits, which are electronic building blocks that snap together with magnets, and Tyn­ker, which allows kids to build games and apps, control robots, and even customize the popular video game Mine­craft. Pierson Middle and High School has a competitive robotics club and CyberPatriots teams that compete to protect networks from theoretical hacking attacks. Its International Baccalaureate program includes a rigorous computer science class.

Some districts, like Springs and East Hampton, have equipped students in certain entire grades with their own Chromebook laptops, which they can take home and treat as their own, but return to the school at the end of the year. They are relatively cheap, at $150 or $175 per device when bought in bulk.

The impact is being felt so deeply that even as the state’s tax-levy cap requires budget cuts almost across the board, administrators are finding ways to add or preserve technology.

“When a program makes sense, you don’t want to attack it at all,” said Stuart Rachlin, the Wainscott superintendent. “We just had to make sure we could find other areas to pare back and not put a successful program in jeopardy.”

Wainscott’s program goes beyond just Lego robotics. The school hired a technology specialist, Jeanette Gautier-Downes, to show children how coding works. Using a particular program — for the younger children it might look like colorful boxes with arrows showing directions like up, down, left, and right, but for high school students coding might include arranging tags in computer languages like HTML, Python, and Javascript — students are able to achieve an objective such as making a cartoon character move a certain way or building a game or program.

Ms. Gautier-Downes said STEM education encourages problem solving, self-correction, review and revision, perseverance, visualization, and, most importantly, fun and play — “so many of the skills you’re going to use for a lifetime,” she said. “I think it’s especially important for our younger kids.”

According to Eleanor Tritt, the Amagansett School superintendent, the school is adding a “maker space” in its library, which will provide space and tools for robotics and engineering, and potentially a 3-D printer. In its curriculum this year, the school introduced keyboarding for all grades, mouse-handling skills for kindergarteners and first graders, and lessons on internet safety and digital citizenship. Students designed their own websites using Weebly, a free online website building tool.

Springs received a grant from the Greater East Hampton Education Foundation to add coding and Lego robotics to its science program. “We talked about how robots are now being used in deep underwater searches, inside volcanoes, and the rovers on Mars,” said Sean Knight, a science teacher.

In Montauk, seventh and eighth graders do lot of hands-on building: model airplanes, bridges, rockets. “Every project we do has students thinking about the math and science behind it and allows them to build test models in order to see if their math and scientific calculations are accurate,” said Paul Salzman, an art teacher who helps with the science and technology program. Montauk will also expand its curriculum by hiring its first-ever dedicated elementary science teacher next year.

Robert Tymann, East Hampton’s assistant superintendent, was the administrator who successfully lobbied the state for a new teaching certification in coding. Eighty-two high school students have signed up for various computer science courses next year, including Advanced Placement computer science. Before the district found its new teacher, though, it had several science teachers working outside of their subject areas to teach coding from the high school all the way down to the elementary school. The program will be expanded to include building and repairing computers and website design.

“The big crescendo is to have senior- year internships that will give a viable path for some of our students to go directly into careers in computer coding,” Dr. Tymann said. “I think we’re doing a better job connecting what a student is learning in school to what their needs are going to be once they leave school.”

Across the districts that send children to East Hampton, there is an effort to make sure children are exposed to these concepts by the time they arrive at the high school.

The Bridgehampton School’s robotics program has been successful in its two years of existence, with its rookie team reaching the finals of an international competition last year. Traditional wood and metal shop programs have been transformed with the addition of robotics and electronics. Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz, the school’s resident jack-of-all-trades, will take a grant-funded course this summer to help her build a computer science program at the school. The school uses Code.org, which offers lessons and other resources to teachers and students for free, and makes use of an electronic ball called Sphero, which can be programmed with mathematical concepts and then rolls around to illustrate how the concepts work.

“It happens right in front of you,” said Jeff Neubauer, a Bridgehampton teacher. “The real concept is teaching something abstract, applying it to technology, and seeing it in a real-world situation, producing a real-world experience.”

When the audiences stood for ovations at band and choir concerts over the last two weeks at East Hampton High School, it was clearly the music directors who were being lauded. That’s because the concerts were the last to be conducted by Marilyn Van Scoyoc, the band director, and David Douglas, the choir director, who are retiring.

When Mr. Douglas began teaching here 20 years ago, Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said at a concert on June 1, “the choral program was barely limping along. I can remember a few conversations we had. How can we attract more students into the choral program?” Gesturing to a choir of about 120, Mr. Burns told Mr. Douglas, “Your musical genius inspired our students to do their very best. You tapped into their passions and helped them to develop a lifelong love of music.”

Mr. Douglas began his career playing classical guitar. “I have a very distinct memory of my freshman year in college, lying in my dormitory bed on a Friday or Saturday night, miserable. I was seeing a lot of people walk into the music building. . . . It was a performance of a Bach concerto. I’d heard instrumental music before, but I thought to myself, ‘Where have I been?’ ” He began studying classical guitar after hearing it played on the college radio station. His first teaching job was at a private school in Connecticut, and he later spent six years at a public school, where he was a finalist for a state teacher-of-the-year award. An injury to one of his hands caused him to branch into a different realm of music: choral conducting.

Among the highlights of his East Hampton career, he said, were a classroom visit by Billy Joel in 1997 and a trip with the Camerata, a group of auditioned singers, to Italy in 2014, which included a performance at a Mass in the Vatican City. He has also led two other auditioned groups, the Belle Voci, a girls ensemble, and the Manly Men boys choir. Mr. Douglas will be succeeded by Dylan Greene, a graduate of the State University at Fredonia who is one of his former students.

Olivia Salsedo, a senior who has been among Mr. Douglas’s singers for four years and who will study music in college, said, “We really connected. That was really important to me. He really set in stone what I wanted to do with my career. . . . He will be missed dearly.” Gage Reinboth-Lynch, a senior who has studied with both Mr. Douglas and Dr. Van Scoyoc, also said the teachers had affected his life. “Mr. Douglas has changed me not only musically but also as a person. He taught me to notice little things and how to find joy in music.” Referring to Dr.Van Scoyoc, he said, “Doc changed me as a musician. She taught me how to perform.”

Before Dr. Van Scoyoc took the stage on May 24 for her final appearance with the 85-student concert band, Mr. Burns recalled how, in 1990, the administration drove her and Mr. Douglas around town, showing them all the hot spots and courting them. “Common wisdom says that everyone is replaceable. I’d like to break with that tradition. Marilyn, what you did for countless students, parents, families, and the East Hampton community is forever irreplaceable and will never be forgotten. You are one of a kind. A gem,” he said.

Dr. Van Scoyoc, who plays trumpet, clarinet, tenor and alto sax, baritone horn, flute, and trombone, said in an interview that she had loved music since her days in the junior high band in the Three Village School District. Her career, which included teaching at that district’s Ward Melville High School and Walt Whitman High School, among others, has spanned 34 years. She said retiring now makes sense. She has conducted not just the concert band but also the jazz band and marching band, which took her to 26 consecutive Memorial Day parades and all but two football games during her years at East Hampton. She has also taught advanced placement music theory and conducted the fourth-grade band at John M. Marshall Elementary School. She advised the Interact Club, which is a community service group, and conducted the high school musical production for many years. And she has seen quite a few students go on to professional music careers.

“I feel like I’ve been able to enrich the lives of the students, but I’m not trying to make musicians out of everyone,” she said. “I’m teaching how to have a love of music and appreciate the beautiful things in life. I’m teaching commitment, hard work, teamwork, service, and self-expression. Those are all really worthy goals.”

As students had said of Mr. Douglas, so did others say Dr. Van Scoyoc went beyond routine teaching. Eitan Albukrek, a senior, said, “More than the music itself, Doc is like an aunt to me. I don’t mean that in a corny way. She had a very good influence on all of us. I think the freshmen were always intimidated by her, but by the end she’s your best friend.” Joseph Bordino, another senior, said she helped him grow attached to music. “She’s always happy, full of energy, and cracks good jokes,” he said.

Dr. Van Scoyoc will be succeeded by Christopher Mandato, who was the band director for several years at the Montauk School. “It’s so easy to pass the baton to such a talented young man. I’m sure he will have a long and wonderful tenure here at East Hampton,” she said.

She and Mr. Douglas both said they were grateful to East Hampton for giving them the chance to teach here. “The district, the administration, and the parents have been very supportive, and I’ve always had great students,” Dr. Van Scoyoc said. “It’s a really nice community that supports the arts and music.”

Ronald A. King Jr., 39, accused by East Hampton Town police of taking a single mother’s car on Memorial Day weekend and destroying it in a drunken crash, was indicted by a grand jury in Riverside Friday on multiple felony charges. The indictment was obtained with unusual speed by the county district attorney’s office, because under state law, he would have been released if not indicted by then. He remains in county jail and will be arraigned tomorrow in front of Justice Stephen L. Braslow in the Cromarty Court Complex in Riverside. Justice Breslow had sentenced Mr. King on at least three previous occasions, stemming from guilty pleas on felony charges of driving while high on drugs.

As reported last week, Carmen Moreno of Sag Harbor, the owner of the car, a 2005 Jeep Cherokee, had dropped off the vehicle in front of a mechanic’s house on Three Mile Harbor Road on the night of May 28. Mr. King, an acquaintance of the mechanic, is alleged to have taken the car without permission and driven it down Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road as far as Manor Lane. There, police said, the Jeep ran over a street sign, knocked down a utility pole, and hit a tree. The vehicle was left a twisted wreck, out of which, witnesses said, he climbed, bloody and dazed, trying to flee on foot before being arrested. “It’s my friend’s car,” he allegedly said. “He probably doesn’t know I took it. I had a bit to drink.”

Without transportation, Ms. Moreno, the mother of a 2-month-old, missed more than a week of work at Staples in Bridgehampton. On Tuesday, however, her fiancé helped her obtain a 1999 Mercedes. They became engaged after the incident.

The indictment includes a D felony charge of drunken driving, unauthorized use of a car, a misdemeanor, and leaving the scene of an accident. Also included are two felony charges of unlicensed driving stemming from arrests in East Hampton in 2013.

East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo explained last week that Mr. King had been charged with unauthorized use of the Jeep, a misdemeanor, rather than grand theft auto, a felony, because he did not take the car with the intent of depriving Ms. Moreno of her property. According to Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the district attorney, the destruction of the Jeep would qualify for a felony charge of criminal mischief only if Mr. King had intended to destroy it.

Mr. King had first been sentenced by Justice Braslow in 2013 to a three-year conditional discharge. After being charged that year with another felony, he was sentenced to several years on probation. However, in 2015, Justice Braslow issued a warrant for his arrest alleging he had violated the terms of probation. This time he was sentenced to six months in jail.

The importance of an obscure event in the history of World War II has been brought home, literally, in recent years with the annual re-enactment of Nazi saboteurs’ landing on the ocean beach near Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett.

At 7 p.m. on Monday, 74 years to the day after four would-be saboteurs landed on the beach armed with a plot to destroy New York City’s transportation infrastructure and terrorize Americans at home as the war raged overseas, the event will be commemorated in a new way. Instead of the live re-enactment staged in years past, Hugh King, East Hampton’s town crier and director of the Home, Sweet Home Museum here, will present a double feature on the silver screen. This will include a re-enactment filmed last year by LTV and newsreel reports of the landing from 1942. The action will take place at the Amagansett Life Saving and Coast Guard Station, which is nearing the completion of an extensive restoration. The rain date is Tuesday.

Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1942, the trained German saboteurs landed in the fog on the beach near the Coast Guard station. Their U-boat stuck on a sandbar, they had rowed ashore in a collapsible rubber boat filled with explosives, clothing, several thousand dollars in cash, and a two-year plan to blow up aluminum and magnesium plants, canals and other waterways, bridges, and locks, according to the Eastern Sea Frontier War Diary, a document held at the National Archives and Records Administration.

A 21-year-old coast guardsman, John Cullen, was patrolling from the Atlantic Avenue station when he encountered the men on the beach to the east of the station. The saboteurs offered him $400 to keep quiet. Mr. Cullen took the money, ran back to the station, and reported the incident to Carl Jennett, boatswain’s mate. The saboteurs made their way to the Amagansett railroad station and, from there, to New York City, where they were captured after being betrayed by one of their compatriots.

Subsequent information led to the arrest of four more saboteurs who had landed at Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville, Fla., on June 17. On June 27, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced the arrest of all eight saboteurs, and events that would surely have terrorized the population and impeded the war effort were averted.

“The man in charge of the Coast Guard station that night was Warren Barnes,” Mr. King told the East Hampton Village Board last Thursday. Recently, he said, Mr. Barnes’s family donated artifacts from the landing, including the coast guardsmen’s handwritten statements. Mr. King will read Mr. Barnes’s account on Monday. He will also introduce family members of Mr. Barnes, Mr. Cullen, and Mr. Jennett.

Rumor Has It, a singing group, will entertain in the guise of Patty Page and the Andrews Sisters, and Mr. King will introduce the actors who appear in the LTV video. Monday’s event will also have an update on the Coast Guard station’s restoration, including future events and fund-raising efforts.

Those interested in attending the commemoration of this historic event have been advised to bring a chair and a flashlight.

The Seven Sisters, the landmark houses on the Montauk moorlands east of Ditch Plain, designed by the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White in the 1880s, are about to meet their mother.

So said Sean MacPherson, who owns the property where the Montauk Association’s clubhouse once stood, in a phone call on Tuesday.

His plan to reconstruct the clubhouse, which burned down in 1933, as a private residence was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals that night. The first structure to be built when Arthur Benson developed the Montauk Association for a group of wealthy friends, the clubhouse was once the gathering place for the owners of the seven nearby houses.

Mr. MacPherson plans to rebuild the 11,827-square-foot structure to the exact exterior specifications of its predecessor, and has been helped in the process by Robert Hefner, a historic preservation consultant who oversaw an archeological dig beginning in the fall of 2014 to uncover the long-buried clubhouse foundation.

Mr. Hefner and Britton Bistrian of Land Use Solutions represented Mr. MacPherson before the zoning board on Tuesday. Mr. Hefner described for the board the effort to recreate the historic clubhouse without the benefit of architectural plans. When the original foundation was excavated, he said, three cellars were revealed: the first from 1881, a second from an extension in 1883, and a third added in 1885.

The dig produced treasure for the team’s efforts, including original bricks and shingles, invaluable to calculating exact dimensions of the original structure. Mr. Hefner relied on old photographs, carefully counting each brick and shingle. Knowing the size of the original items, he was able to calculate exact dimensions, although he conceded Tuesday that he might have missed a brick or two behind the point where the lawn met the building in the photographs.

At times, Tuesday’s session seemed to be more of a seminar than a hearing. Toward the end, John Whelan, the board’s chairman, asked Mr. Hefner what type of wood the original shingles were made of. “White or red cedar” was the answer, and they were all stained.

The clubhouse property, which Mr. MacPherson and his wife, Rachelle Hruska MacPherson, purchased in 2014, is part of the Montauk Association Historic District, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Not only were the association houses designed by the lauded McKim, Meade, and White, but they were sited by Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect who created Central Park and Prospect Park. The clubhouse was roughly at their center, with footpaths connecting it to all the houses.

Although the MacPherson property now contains a modest ranch-style house, there are strict guidelines about how it can be redeveloped. The option they chose was to rebuild in place in kind. It is a sort of partnership with Stanford White, said Mr. MacPherson, who is fan of the architect’s work. “I had to pinch myself.”

Ms. Bistrian told the zoning board Tuesday that she too had always admired the work of Stanford White, going back to her days as an architecture student at Connecticut College. To be involved in this project, she said, was a dream come true.

The project complies with the historic district guidelines, but still needs variances from the town’s zoning code to move forward. It would be 39 feet tall, when only 32 feet are allowed, and would have a third floor, as the original did, despite the fact that third floors are normally prohibited in town. Additional permits are needed because the four-and-a-half-acre property contains freshwater wetlands.

Lisa D’Andrea, a planner for the town, expressed support of the project on behalf of the town’s Planning Department. In addition to replacing the house, the plan calls for a swimming pool, which is allowed under the guidelines for the Montauk Association Historic District, Ms. D’Andrea told the board, and a pool house, which is also allowed.

The plans for the interior are still up in the air, though Ms. Bistrian pointed out that, because of the faithfulness of the exterior, windows would dictate, in part, the setup of rooms. Also, the original houses in the association did not have bathrooms off of bedrooms; that is likely to change. Right now, in the plans on file, the master bedroom is the largest room in the house, looking out over the ocean.

Mr. MacPherson, who was not at the hearing on Tuesday, said that he had rented the house there at one point. “I always loved the property,” he said.

He owns several other properties in Montauk, including the Crow’s Nest, Pharaoh’s Cottages, a series of cottages off Ditch Plain Road, and a modest house of his own on Miller Avenue.

A 2-year-old nearly drowned on June 1 when he fell into the water at a Montauk marina and couldn’t be found for several minutes.

The boy was revived after his hand was spotted sticking up from under a sailboat at the Montauk Lake Club. East Hampton Town Police Capt. Chris Anderson said that there was limited information about what happened, but that the boy, Nathan Sarmiento of East Hampton, had fallen off the Saoirse. Police received a frantic 911 call at 11:13 a.m. after a bystander had pulled the unconscious boy out of the water.

He vomited a large amount of water and began breathing on his own before police arrived, Captain Anderson said. He regained consciousness and was crying before being airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital. Though hospital officials did not release information on his condition because he was a minor, several people involved said the boy was released from the hospital and is back home.

“To me, it was a miracle,” said John DeLuca, 79, who plucked the boy’s limp body from the water.

Mr. DeLuca, a grandfather known as Johnny Marlin to many in Montauk for the restaurant he ran for 22 years, had been on his boat for about 10 minutes when he heard a scream break the silence at the quiet marina, which was mostly empty that Wednesday morning. At first he ignored it, thinking there was an argument, but then a second scream made it clear something was desperately wrong. He jumped off the boat and ran about 100 yards to the end of the dock, where it meets another floating dock.

A woman was thrashing about. “I kept saying to her, ‘What’s the problem?’ ” he said. “She was so hysterical that she was out of it completely.” She also spoke only Spanish, which Mr. DeLuca doesn’t speak. Still, he understood that someone or something was in the water — he thought it might have been a dog. The water was dark and the visibility poor in the line of boats at the full dock. He thought about jumping in, but he wasn’t sure where to start a search, he said, so he stayed on the dock.

After what Mr. DeLuca estimated was 7 to 10 minutes after he had first heard a scream, suddenly the mother saw the little boy’s hand pop up near the transom. He kneeled down on the dock, reached into the cold water, and lifted the boy up by his arm.

“He was a rag doll. That’s the only way I can explain it,” he said, holding back tears.

The 2-year-old wasn’t breathing. Mr. DeLuca turned the boy face down and “pumped his stomach,” he said, in an effort to get the water out of his lungs. He tried to recall the cardiopulmonary resuscitation he learned many years ago when he worked as a lifeguard at Long Beach. Water flowed from the boy’s mouth, and there was foam around his lips. He kept pumping.

“I kept talking to him all the time. ‘Come on, pal. Come on, pal.’ ” Then he heard a noise. “Two minutes later, the kid opened his eyes,” Mr. DeLuca said.

“It wasn’t me. God brought him back,” he said. “I just can’t believe that a kid that would be underwater for all that time could come back. He’s a miracle kid.”

Each year, more than 500,000 people  worldwide die by drowning. According to the American Heart Association, brain damage is possible after four to six minutes without oxygen. After more than 10 minutes without oxygen, brain death is likely. While survival is not common in victims who have been underwater for a prolonged period, people have made a full neurological recovery when submerged in icy water, and in some cases warm water.

In the midst of Mr. DeLuca’s attempts to revive the boy, another man appeared on the dock and asked if anyone had called 911. No one had. Mr. DeLuca threw his cellphone on the dock, and the other man made the call.

Montauk Fire Chief Joe Lenahan was around the corner working when his department was dispatched to the Lake Club about a child who had fallen into the water. He said he got to the marina within 45 seconds of the call. He ran to the pool, found no one, then ran out back to the lawn overlooking the water and saw no one there either.

“I stopped and listened, and I heard a scream in the distance,” he said. He ran down the dock and found the rescue effort under way.

The boy was lying on his back at that point but was still blue, and his breathing was labored, the chief said. He took the child in his arms, turned him onto his stomach, and ran as fast as he could down the dock to meet the police and ambulance crew as they arrived. The boy threw up more water as he was carried.

Once he had reached a town police officer, Chief Lenahan took the child’s soaked clothes off — a brown shirt with a teddy bear on it and blue pants — and then the emergency medical technicians took over.

Chief Lenahan said he wasn’t able to gather from the boy’s mother, Irma Suarez, what exactly had happened.

Mr. DeLuca said he has since learned that Ms. Suarez was hired to clean the boat. It still isn’t clear to him whether the boy fell off the boat or the dock.

Either way, Mr. DeLuca said, he has spoken to the owner of the Lake Club about posting signs encouraging parents to put life preservers on children who are on the dock. State regulations only require that children under 12 wear life jackets aboard boats. Mr. DeLuca said the club has agreed to post signs and is also putting out rescue devices on the docks.

Mr. DeLuca said he hoped the story would help prevent a tragedy during the boating season this summer. He is struggling to rid his mind of what happened and trying to focus on the fact that the boy is home and riding his bike, based on a photo he received through the owners of the boat. He hopes to meet the boy and give him a hug.

Mr. DeLuca’s boat was put in the water only that very day, and he said he almost didn’t stop by when he did. “God works in mysterious ways,” he said. “A miracle in Montauk — that’s what it was.”

Some Montauk residents are feeling the sting of swarms of taxis buzzing about the hamlet’s trendy night spots, where, they say, the cabs are creating unpleasant conditions.

The Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday heard numerous gripes from its members, who reported seeing taxis speeding, parking illegally, dropping people off in roadways without pulling over to the curb, and, as one person put it, “trying to grab people” as they came out of places like the Surf Lodge.

It’s a complaint that East Hampton Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, the committee’s town board liaison, said the town is taking seriously. However, he said, creating the kind of taxi commission that some residents think would solve the problem — like the one New York City has, but on a much smaller scale — is too expensive, at a cost of around $1 million.

The East Hampton Town Code requires all cab companies to register with the town using a local business address within East Hampton, and all taxis must have a town permit sticker. Drivers must be fingerprinted by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. According to Carole Brennan, the East Hampton Town clerk, there are 33 cab companies registered in the town that collectively operate 281 vehicles.

“There’s no question that taxis continue to be one of the biggest complaints in Montauk, and really the biggest complaint about Memorial Day weekend if there was any complaint,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said Monday. “I don’t know if a number of those are unlicensed taxi owners who are coming here trying to make a quick buck.”

The actual number of licensed taxicabs in East Hampton “may be down a little” over the last few years, according to Ms. Brennan. In the past, she said, taxi licenses were for two years, local business addresses were not required, and Uber had not become a major issue yet, so as many as 800 cabs had operated in the town at one time.

Some at Monday’s Montauk C.A.C. meeting suggested potential fixes.

“I’m wondering about the responsibility of the businesses who are lucky enough to generate enough business to fill the Nassau Coliseum,” Joan Palumbo said. “They should get themselves a couple of Jitneys and bring their people places.”

Raymond Cortell suggested the town require the cab companies to set up a unified dispatch system in which they would use the Kirk Park parking lot, which empties at night, as a place to line up and wait their turn to be sent out to pick up fares.

“We stop the cruising. We keep it under control,” he said. “We can’t keep talking about this every single year.”

Mr. Van Scoyoc replied, however, that Mr. Cortell’s idea “would have to be a voluntary system among those businesses.

It was also suggested the shuttle-bus Hampton Hopper be tapped for services in Montauk, and that the town be asked to provide funding for it.

But the cab problem is a symptom of what the Montauk C.A.C. says is a larger issue it is trying to address: A lack of comprehensive public transportation options, seven days per week, that the hamlet so desperately needs.

“Taxis did not come from nowhere,” said Arden Gardell, a committee member who manages 668 the Gig Shack. “They were a solution. They are the reality of a town that had issues with drinking and driving . . . but still retained the need for people to get around. It has morphed into a new problem.”

The town and the Police Department are considering setting up two taxi stands, one near the Sloppy Tuna and another at the north end of Carl Fisher Plaza, with the goal of creating safer places to catch a cab. East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo said in an email that “the town as a whole feels a difficulty in striking a balance in the need for transportation, with a huge increase in traffic volume at night on the weekends.”

“Of course taxis help keep drunk drivers off the roads and serve a very valuable service to the community,” Chief Sarlo said. “However, given the extremely large number of people out and about in Montauk in the summer, all looking to go from one bar or restaurant to the next, the volume of taxis jockeying for fares, trying to pick up and drop off as quickly as possible — quite often in the lane of travel or at an intersection, blocking a crosswalk, or making U-turns across traffic in congested areas — has led to some hazardous conditions. We need to continue to address violators with enforcement and improve the behavior of the drivers as much as possible.”

Also on Monday, Laraine Creegan, the executive director of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, announced that the chamber would be releasing a survey to business owners about their need for housing for seasonal workers. The eight-question survey was distributed yesterday via email and is aimed at helping the town board, citizens committee, and consultants working on a townwide hamlet study “accurately understand the magnitude of this issue.”

More information can be obtained by contacting the Montauk Chamber at [email protected] or 631-668-2428.

For months now, a persistent rumor has been circulating that giant cruise ships will start docking in Montauk’s Fort Pond Bay, with thousands of disembarking passengers flooding an already-crowded summertime hot spot.

Such talk gained momentum after Marc Rowan, the billionaire co-founder of Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm, bought Duryea’s Lobster Deck in 2014 and opened a restaurant called Arbor in the hamlet this spring. He paid $6.3 million for Duryea’s, which overlooks Fort Pond Bay at 65 and 66 Tuthill Road.

Steven Jauffrineau, who works as the managing director of food and beverage for Montauk Asset Holdings, which runs Duryea’s, returned a phone call for Mr. Rowan. “It’s 100 percent false,” Mr. Jauffrineau said, of the possibility that cruise ships would soon come into view. “I don’t even know that Fort Pond is big enough.” Mr. Rowan is on several corporate boards and previously served on the board of Norwegian Cruise Lines.

Formed in November of 2015, Montauk Asset Holdings is a corporation registered in Delaware. According to East Hampton Town deeds, Duryea’s and several neighboring Fort Pond properties have all been purchased by Delaware-registered limited liability corporations. Their owners are all but impossible to trace. These include Sunrise Tuthill I and II, which owns the Duryea’s lots and almost five acres of associated underwater land.

Other Delaware corporate entities that have bought property in the nearby area are 75 Fleming L.L.C., 75 Firestone L.L.C., 80 Firestone L.L.C. Fleming Court L.L.C., and 240 Fort Pond L.L.C., now Arbor restaurant. All of the L.L.C.s use the same Albany process server, according to state records.

Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town planning director, said there had been an application submitted to redo Duryea’s as “a big fancy restaurant that’s still hanging out there.” Under Mr. Rowan’s ownership, lobster rolls and crudité platters now cost $28, with $18 French fries and $95 champagne on the menu.

“There’s a dock there, so boats can dock there, but cruise ships aren’t your ordinary boat,” Ms. Wolffsohn said, noting that cruise ships occupy a legal gray area when it comes to the town code, since they’re neither ferries nor excursion boats. “We would have to figure this out and look at the town code to see where such a boat would fit in and whether it’s allowed or not,” Ms. Wolffsohn said. “Nobody has ever asked that question.”

Michael Sendlenski, who heads the town attorney’s office, refused to comment, saying that the legality of cruise ships docking in Fort Pond Bay was “not a simple answer.”

Jeremy Samuelson, president of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, an environmental group, said talk of cruise ships coming to Montauk was but one of “thousands of rumors.” Still, he said it underscored the need for the town’s site-plan review process, “so that reviewing agencies can get a comprehensive look at what a vision for a property is and make decisions about what scale is acceptable.” For Mr. Samuelson, the issue comes down to process, and advocating for a comprehensive appraisal long before proposals are approved.

 “The law is very clear,” Mr. Samuelson said. “If someone comes in and proposes changes or upgrades, we have a well-worn path for how we identify proposals and mitigating factors that need to be taken into consideration.”

The notion of cruise ships coming to Montauk long predates Mr. Rowan’s purchase of Duryea’s, going all the way back to the 19th century, when Austin Corbin, a railroad executive who was president of the Long Island Rail Road, first dreamed of making Montauk a transatlantic “Port of Entry.”

According to Jeannette Rattray’s “Montauk: Three Centuries of Romance, Sport, and Adventure,” among Mr. Corbin’s more ambitious plans was a 20-mile railroad extension, which connected Bridgehampton to Montauk, where he envisioned a deep-water, international steamship port at Fort Pond Bay. The idea was that travelers could avoid New York Harbor altogether, resulting in a shorter trip, with passengers traveling by high-speed train from New York City to Montauk and back.

With a combined railroad and international port, Mr. Corbin hoped to develop Montauk into a more easily accessible vacation destination. But following an untimely carriage accident in 1896, his dreams died with him — though it remains to be seen whether a deep-pocketed entrepreneur, more than 100 years later, will give it new life.