In the nine months since Camp SoulGrow received nonprofit status, more than 230 kids have taken advantage of its 127 free and low-cost programs. Many of them were offered in collaboration with local businesses and community organizations and overseen by the camp’s tireless founder, London Rosiere, who gives herself the apt title of “head kid.”

“This last year, my challenge was building it,” Ms. Rosiere said on Monday while putting finishing touches on her end-of-year fund-raising letter at Starbucks in East Hampton. In the camp’s first full year she wanted to prove what it was all about and that she could deliver on the mission of “inspiring children’s growth from the inside out.”

She strives to offer workshops that get kids away from screens and electronics and put them in touch with “real people teaching real things”: chefs, business owners, sailors, artists, musicians, yogis, surfers, gardeners, even postal workers and baristas. She also pushes the importance of volunteering, leading teams of kids as they join beach cleanups or help other organizations do things like deliver turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Camp SoulGrow is about “giving the next generation the opportunities to find themselves . . . to be wonderful people.” Surrounded by so much wealth and so many people who have so much, “it’s very easy to see what you don’t have,” Ms. Rosiere said. “I want to show kids what they do have, and how to do things on their own, from sewing with a needle to learning table manners.”

The best testament to her success is the enthusiasm of her campers, age 7 and up, who swirl around her like a pint-size posse during workshops and lavish her with attention when she’s out and about around town.

While the first part of 2015 was about proving her organization’s worth and finding it a home — she rents space from Suffolk County in Third House at the Montauk County Park — this last part of the year is about making sure that the camp’s programs can be sustained through more significant donations, grants, and other support.

Local businesses and people in the community have been generous with their time and welcoming to the campers. Bridgehampton National Bank pledged support for her $2,500 purchase earlier this year of a surplus Suffolk County bus that seats 15. She is excited to be able to take kids outside of Montauk for some experiences, but until donations begin to flow in, she cannot yet afford the nearly $4,800 to insure the vehicle.

Until now, Ms. Rosiere has covered most of Camp SoulGrow’s expenses out of her own pocket using money left to her by her mother, who died in 2014. She has kept overhead low by doing much of the hands-on and behind-the-scenes work herself. Still, there is only so much one head kid can do.

“I would like to have three camps running at a time, but I can’t get there without funding,” she said.

To that end, she is collecting tax-deductible donations through her website, campsoulgrow.org, and by mail at Camp SoulGrow, P.O. Box 1016, Montauk 11954. Donations of art and sports tickets are also coming in for a Charity Buzz auction, with a link to auction items also found on the camp’s website.

She is planning her second annual Mardi Gras fund-raiser in February and is hoping to run a series of workshops over the Christmas break, but details had not been finalized as of yesterday.

Following a drone crash in Sag Harbor Village in October, officials are considering how to regulate the unmanned aircraft.

At its meeting on Tuesday, the village board will hold a public hearing on proposed legislation that would ban drones from flying over private or public property to take aerial photographs, video, or surveillance unless operators have permission from a property owner or the village.

Those who violate any of the regulations could be subject to a fine of as much as $1,000 or as many as 15 days in jail.

Drones may not be flown for commercial purposes without permission from the Federal Aviation Administration, which authorizes and regulates the use of unmanned aircraft.

A drone crashed into a Main Street building and burst into flames on the sidewalk on Oct. 6. No one was injured.

The hearing will be held at Village Hall at 6 p.m. T.K.V.

Having gained the approval of the Bridgehampton School administration to proceed with making a documentary about the school’s Killer Bees basketball team, Orson and Ben Cummings are in the midst of their first full week of filming.

On Monday, the two brothers from Bridgehampton, along with Lois Favre, the district’s superintendent, met with a group of parents to explain the project and the process and to collect waiver forms allowing children to be filmed. They stressed that the filming will not negatively impact the school.

“We want to be a light footprint — be present without being a bother,” Orson Cummings said.

“It’s my job to make sure the educational process is not disrupted,” Ms. Favre added. “So far, they have been great to work with.”

The Killer Bees documentary will tell the story of the Bridgehampton School, the community at large, and a number of related social and economic issues through the lens of the basketball team as it attempts to defend the Class D state championship it won in March. The Cummings brothers will have interns from the school working with them, and they will get in touch with alumni for interviews and input. The school administration will also have an opportunity to provide suggestions along the way.

A handful of parents at Monday’s meeting appeared to be cautiously optimistic about the film even as they said their children are downright thrilled to be part of it. Bastienne Schmidt, whose son, Max Cheng, is a junior who plays on the basketball team, said her son is excited, while she is curious. She said she hopes the documentary captures the history of the school.

“There is definitely a wonderful team spirit that is unique because it is a small school,” Ms. Schmidt said.

Leanne Hostetter, whose son, Matthew Hostetter, is a senior on the team, said the idea of the documentary made her emotional. She herself is a Bridgehampton School alumna. Ms. Hostetter suggested that “there’s going to be a lot of pressure, but they seem to handle it when they need to.”

“For a small school, it’s a big thing to get some recognition,” she said.

The Cummings brothers pitched their idea to the Bridgehampton School Board in early October. They are the writers and producers of the feature film “If I Didn’t Care,” which was given the new title “Blue Blood” upon its international release. They have also completed a psychological thriller, “Pacific Standard Time,” and are working on a political drama based on a book by their father, the late Richard Cummings.

One of the challenges is that “it takes a little time for everyone to be comfortable” with the filming, Orson Cummings said. But, he said, “with some time and some trust, they’ll do their thing, and we’ll see the authentic version of what it’s like to go to school here and live here.”

An East Hampton couple, both 21 years old, are facing felony charges after being arrested in separate incidents occurring within two days of each other. Both spent the holiday weekend in the county jail.

Justin R. Cruz and Kori R. Fleisch­man­ had been living in a rented room at 61 Whooping Hollow Road, Det. Sgt. Greg Schaeffer said Tuesday. On the night of Nov. 22, he said, East Hampton Town police were called to the house to quell a fight. Mr. Cruz had attacked another resident, Alexis Rivera-Narvaez, punching him “in the face several times.” The victim suffered a “fractured left cheek bone and a concussion involving swelling on the brain, vomiting, and dizziness,” according to the report.

The fight began when Mr. Cruz accused his housemate of stealing from him, according to the police. After it ended, they said, Mr. Cruz went to the garage and vandalized a Ford belonging to another resident, Jacqueline Gutierez-Chaves, puncturing its grill and destroying the radiator. “Jacqueline was already outside, fighting with Justin and his girlfriend, Kori Fleischman, about her damaged car,” Mr. Rivera-Narvaez told police. “After they stopped fighting, I went to call the police, and that is when they got in their Nissan and sped off.”

“I punched the kid in his face, but I didn’t do anything to her car,” Mr. Cruz told police when they confronted him the next day after picking him up at a nearby residence. Two days before Thanksgiving, in a nearly empty courtroom presided over by East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana, he was arraigned on a felony charge of criminal mischief, as well as a misdemeanor charge of assault. Seated in the courtroom was Ms. Fleischman.

Mr. Cruz has three cases open on Justice Rana’s calendar, including another criminal mischief charge and a violation of probation. She set bail at $5,250. Ms. Fleischman spoke with him in a hallway as he was being led away.

A couple of hours later, on Oakview Highway near Middle Highway in East Hampton, an officer, aware that Ms. Fleischman’s license had been suspended in August after she pleaded guilty to driving with ability impaired by alcohol, spotted her at the wheel of a 2002 Nissan and pulled her over. The car, which had blankets and belongings in it, was searched.

“A clear plastic bag containing a white powdery substance and a digital scale were located within her vehicle,” police reported. Asked if it was cocaine, she reportedly responded, “It is. It’s coke. That’s the only thing I have knowledge of being in there.”

However, police said, they also found “five glassine envelopes containing a brown powder,” said to be heroin.

The cocaine weighed over a half-ounce, leading to a felony possession charge, as well as a charge of possession with intent to sell, also a felony. She was additionally charged with heroin possession at the misdemeanor level.

Ms. Fleischman, a senior at Rutgers University, had had no trouble with the law until June, when she was charged with drunken driving after crashing a 2004 Volvo, registered in her name to a Scotch Plains, N.J., address. She was scheduled to spend the current semester studying in Valencia, Spain, and her lawyer, Robert J. Coyle of Sag Harbor, managed to obtain for her a reduced charge, something rarely granted by the district attorney’s office in a D.W.I. case that involves a crash. She pleaded guilty to that charge on Aug. 19, and flew to Valencia. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook five days later, sitting in front of a fountain in the Spanish city, smiling.

But a few weeks later she abandoned her studies, returning to East Hampton and Mr. Cruz, who has a history of arrests on minor charges including possession of stolen property.

Mr. Fleischman was arraigned on the cocaine possession charges the day before Thanksgiving. Expressionless, she stood before Justice Rana, who asked for her phone number. When she gave it, Justice Rana asked, “Isn’t that the number Justin gave me yesterday?” It was.

“All of those people who are supposedly your friends, they are not here now. Those people are not your friends,” Justice Rana said. She told Ms. Fleischman to turn around and look at the courtroom. The young woman, in handcuffs, appeared in shock as she turned. “I don’t see any of them here. They are users,” said Justice Rana.

She set bail at $21,000. “The Justin Cruzes of the world are not your friends,” she told the defendant. “You will have a little time in jail to think about it . . . A woman with the world in front of her is going to jail tonight.”

On Monday, no grand jury indictment having been obtained, Ms. Fleischman was brought back to the courthouse. This time, her parents were present, and she looked back over her shoulder at them. Her mother cried.

It was Justice Steven Tekulsky’s turn on the bench. “You’re fortunate that this case has not been presented to a grand jury,” he said. Ms. Fleischman was released later that afternoon, and will enter a drug rehabilitation program, according to her lawyer. Mr. Cruz was still in jail as of yesterday.

As the old neon sign for Johnny’s Bait and Tackle was lowered down by crane for the last time, an era came to an end on Montauk’s Main Street. “I’ll be 66 next month,” Johnny Kronuch said on Sunday. The store, with its sign that looks like it could have been put up by Carl Fisher himself, has been in Mr. Kronuch’s family since his father opened the shop about 70 years ago. Now, Mr. Kronuch is retiring and closing shop for good.

The sign, however, is staying in the family. “It’s going to my brother,” Emily Kronuch, Johnny Kronuch’s daughter, said, as she watched it being placed on the bed of the truck from North Shore Neon Sign Company.

It is not the first time that North Shore has taken the neon down. “We just repaired the sign,” Tom Brown, an executive of the company said.

Neon repair companies have become a rarity on Long Island, as companies switch to modern technology. Old family-owned businesses on Montauk’s Main Street are becoming rare, as well. “It’s depressing,” Ms. Kronuch said.

Mr. Kronuch declined to comment about his future plans.

The former district clerk of the Springs School District is planning to sue the district, asserting that she had been wrongfully terminated and suffered “extreme emotional and psychological stress” resulting from a “hostile work environment.”

According to a copy of an Oct. 27 notice of claim obtained by The Star, Fran Silipo, who served from 2002 to 2015 as the Springs district clerk, is seeking $1 million in damages. The Springs Board of Education is named in the notice, as is the school superintendent, John J. Finello.

The notice states that “this hostile work environment came to a head when a FOIL request came to Ms. Silipo’s desk regarding invoices paid to an architecture firm.” Ms. Silipo states that she was “repeatedly told by Superintendent Finello to find documentation related to this request that Superintendent Finello knew did not exist.”

In an interview at her house yesterday, Ms. Silipo said the request involved a resolution authorizing the district to pay an architect who had been hired to study the school’s space needs and design plans for a possible expansion. She said she was told “to do whatever she could do” to find the resolution.

The school board president, Liz Mendelman, has since acknowledged the board did not pass such a resolution, and has called it an “oversight.”

They “were very upset about the FOIL request and being accused of not following the proper protocol,” Ms. Silipo said. “I was completely freaked out, because I knew [the resolution] didn’t exist.” She told Mr. Finello there was no such resolution, she said, but “they were insisting that I find it, and when I did not produce the document . . . it was two weeks later that they decided that I should not be the district clerk.”

Ms. Silipo said in the notice of claim that her remaining work responsibilities and records access as Mr. Finello’s secretary were later taken away from her, calling it “retaliatory conduct.”

“I was so humiliated and so degraded . . . I wasn’t a part of anything,” she said yesterday. “I questioned [Mr. Finello] in writing many times about my job description. I literally could have given myself a pedicure at my desk. It was a total waste of district money. I was given nothing to do. When I asked for work it was ignored, or I was told someone else was doing it now.”

Both Mr. Finello and Ms. Mendelman said yesterday that they could not comment on the litigation and referred questions to their attorney, Adam Kleinberg, a partner with the Carle Place firm Sokoloff Stern.

“This is a frivolous claim, and I look forward to proving that,” Mr. Kleinberg said.

The role of district clerk is a one-year appointment that is made by school boards at their annual reorganizational meetings. While the Springs School Board was within its rights to appoint someone other than Ms. Silipo to the job, she said she had never been given a negative performance review, had no reason to believe she would not be reappointed, especially since her name had appeared on the meeting agenda as the anticipated appointee, and said she has never been given a formal reason why the school board made the change.

Ms. Silipo, who is being represented by Steven A. Morelli of Garden City, has taken two leaves of absence from the district since losing her district clerk post. She took a one-week paid leave in July after the school board appointed a different district clerk, and is currently on a second leave of absence, this time unpaid, after suffering a stroke on Oct. 29 that affected the right side of her body.

Ms. Silipo said her doctors told her that the stroke was caused by work-related stress. Through physical and occupational therapy, she has regained the ability to walk, but remains unable to drive.

The holiday season also brings with it fire district elections, held annually on the second Tuesday of December, when voters choose a commissioner for a five-year term on boards that oversee the funding for fire and emergency medical services. In districts that serve the residents of the Town of East Hampton, there are no contests, with incumbents looking to keep their seats.

In Springs, Patrick Glennon, the chairman of the board of fire commissioners, is seeking a third term on the board.

“I have to see certain things through,” Mr. Glennon said of his decision to seek reelection. Among other ongoing matters, the board’s decision to erect a communications tower behind the Fort Pond Boulevard firehouse has started a legal battle with the Town of East Hampton (covered separately in today’s Star).

“It wouldn’t be a fair thing to leave them out there, to let somebody come in brand new,” Mr. Glennon said. After Kenneth Brabant Sr., who has been on the board for more than 20 years, Mr. Glennon has the most experience, having served for 10 years. The three others have less than five years, he said.

The board has also included funding in its 2016 budget for a paid emergency medical service program, though the details are still being worked out.

An advanced emergency medical technician, Mr. Glennon is a longtime volunteer with the Springs ambulance squad. He runs Handy Hands, a construction company, and has been in the business for 30 years. He is also a chef who owns Harbor Bistro and Harbor Grill with his family.

Mr. Glennon continues to be concerned about rising taxes in Springs, and is searching for creative ways to keep the district’s budget around $1 million. “I want to try and keep the taxes down, again, and still achieve safety for the community. It’s a hard challenge. We’ve got to make that attempt.”

Residents of the Springs Fire District can cast a vote on Tuesday at the firehouse between 6 and 9 p.m.

In the Bridgehampton Fire District, whose department covers an area that spans Wainscott to Water Mill, Fred Wilford is planning to return to the board. Mr. Wilford, a Sagaponack resident, first was elected to the Bridgehampton Board of Fire Commissioners in 1990. He is a past chief and a 50-year member of the fire department.

“I enjoy the fire department. I enjoy serving the community,” he said, adding that the board had made “some big accomplishments” recently including hiring paid first responders, 24-7, this past year. The board also replaced, with a community vote, a 46-year-old pumper truck and a 39-year-old tanker.

The board has implemented an equipment-replacement program. “We’re going to start replacing equipment timely instead of waiting so long,” he said.

The district just completed a $1 million renovation on the firehouse, and is now looking to another property it owns, the former Pulver Gas building on Main Street. It bought the building for $3.9 million in 2011. Mr. Wilford said it is not worth taxpayers’ money to repair the building. The district hopes to demolish it in the coming months, and has put the project out to bid.

Mr. Wilford is no stranger to longevity on a board. He sat on the Sagaponack School Board for 36 years until July of 2014. He is semiretired, having worked for the Long Island Lighting Company for over 30 years. He works as an estate manager.

Voting will take place at the firehouse on School Street in Bridgehampton between 6 and 9 p.m.

Carl Hamilton, who is seeking his sixth term in office in the Amagansett Fire District, also pointed to the paid paramedic program the board established last year as a move he was proud to be part of. The program, which is also around the clock, is running smoothly, he said. The board has credited it with saving lives.

Mr. Hamilton, who has been in his post for 25 years, said the board is committed to making the district more energy efficient. He pointed to the decision to move from oil to gas heat at the firehouse, and the addition of solar panels and a wind turbine. “We’re making strides toward making it a greener building.”

While he faces no opposition, there is a question on the ballot for voters. The district wants to establish an equipment repair reserve fund to pay for the costs of acquiring, maintaining, and repairing equipment, other than trucks and ambulances. He believes it is a good move so the district has money set aside to make major repairs, when necessary.

A lifelong resident of Amagansett, Mr. Hamilton is a 40-year member of the Fire Department and held every position there from secretary-treasurer to chief. He works in maintenance at the East Hampton Tennis Club.

The vote will be held at the Amagansett Firehouse on Main Street between 7 and 9 p.m.

In Montauk, there are no propositions on the ballot and Michael Mirras is running unopposed for a five-year term. In 2013, he was appointed by the board to finish the fourth year of Vinnie Carillo’s five-year term when Mr. Carillo moved from the hamlet. In 2014, he was elected to fill the fifth and final year of that term. He is now running for a full five-year term.

A volunteer with the Montauk Fire Department for 32 years, he was an advanced emergency medical technician and an emergency medical technician of the ambulance squad, captain and lieutenant of the fire company, and has held the positions of first and second assistant chief before he became chief of the department from 2002 to 2004.

The vote will be held at the Montauk Firehouse on Flamingo Road between 2 and 9 p.m.

A federal judge has denied a court request that would have temporarily halted the Army Corps of Engineers’ downtown Montauk project, notably citing what he said was the corps's conclusion that it would "not have a significant impact on the environment." However, a lawsuit by a group of environmental activists will be allowed to move ahead.

In his decisions issued on Monday, Judge Arthur D. Spatt of the United States District Court in Islip rejected a request from Defend H2O and nine individual plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction.

Judge Spatt's ruling was in line with an earlier legal review by a magistrate judge that made Monday's decision expected. It followed an Oct. 1 rejection of a request for a temporary restraining order against the Army Corps work in Montauk.

Judge Spatt wrote that he has received "a number of calls and letters from purported residents of Montauk expressing their opposition to the project" but that he was bound to decide on the injunction according to the evidence presented in court.

Among the points Judge Spatt listed in his discussion of the case was evidence that the project did not conflict with East Hampton policies nor those of New York State or the federal government. He also faulted the group suing the Army Corps for waiting until Oct. 1, the day the project was set to begin, to seek an injunction and for not presenting its objections to the corps while it was preparing its environmental assessment in 2014.

"Based on this undisputed evidence, the court finds that construction on the project has gone far enough that for economic reasons, it would be impractical and wasteful to delay it any further," Judge Spatt wrote.

He agreed with the magistrate judge's review, which said that Defend H2O and the others suing the corps had not demonstrated that the work would harm the Montauk beach. He sided with the corps in its assertion that downtown Montauk was in immediate need of "flood control" measures.

The 14,500 plastic sandbags to be used in the project were "nonstructural," he wrote, and therefore legal.

Carl Irace, an East Hampton attorney who is representing Defend H2O and the other plaintiffs, said in an email on Tuesday, "The bad news is that the judge denied the injunction, but the good news is that the case is still open."

Training and proper equipment saved three lives Saturday evening and prevented 150 gallons of fuel from spilling into the Atlantic, according to the Coast Guard and Roy Fridenberger, the captain of a family-owned commercial fishing boat that was beached after it began to sink Saturday evening.

The captain, along with two brothers, Bret and Troy Fridenberger Jr., were making the last voyage of the season before dry-docking the boat at Inlet Seafood in Montauk for the winter. They left Montauk Harbor late Saturday afternoon, headed for Freeport on a three-day trip.

It had been a busy season, including a few days work on the set of Showtime’s “The Affair,” playing, naturally, fishermen.

At 5:21 Saturday evening, according to the East Hampton Town police event log, a report of a disabled vessel in the Atlantic was received. The 40-foot Margaret Mary, built in 1963, powered by two Cummins M11 diesel engines and in the Fridenberger family for over 30 years, was almost two miles out when an alarm sounded.

“Had we not had a proper high-water alarm, it might have been too late,” the captain said by phone Monday. The ship’s hold was taking on water faster than the two pumps onboard could get it out.

There was no panic onboard, the captain said, thanks to the many hours of training by the Coast Guard in preparation for just such a disaster. The captain made contact with the Coast Guard. “The first thing we did was change course,” he said. “The Coast Guard told us to put the boat on the beach.” The section of beach they were nearest, at Napeague State Park, is wide and sandy. There are no rocks visible to the naked eye.

On top of the threat of the boat’s sinking before they could reach the beach was the knowledge that 150 gallons of fuel they had just put into their tank could spill out into the ocean.

The men quickly donned their emergency suits over their lifejackets.

They were just able to make shore, Captain Fridenberger said, braving the six-foot waves and southeast wind. Now beached, the crew was instructed to abandon the craft. They were met on the beach by the town police, along with the New York State Park police. Marine Patrol officers brought the men to the Coast Guard station on Star Island.

Captain Fridenberger gives all the credit for their ability to beach the Margaret Mary to the Coast Guard, the police, and the training he and his brother had received.

Executive Petty Officer Dennis Heard of the Coast Guard, stationed on Star Island, said that the training system in place is voluntary. The force will send an inspector to a vessel and will instruct the crew and captain about “safety procedures if things start to go south in an emergency.”

The next day, the entire Fridenberger family was on the beach. The Margaret Mary was partially buried in sand as the ocean lapped over its deck.

According to the Coast Guard, it is the responsibility of a craft’s owners to get a boat off the beach. Captain Fridenberger began that task Sunday morning, along with his seven brothers and five sisters, most of whom live in the Mastic Beach-Shirley area.

The first thing they did was pump out the fuel tank. Then they looked to see what could be salvaged. The radar system is new. They may or may not be able to save the engines, depending on how much damage was done. They expected the boat to be taken off the beach by Wednesday.

Insurance will not cover much of the loss.

The family currently has a second boat, as yet unnamed, which they plan to outfit and put in the water sometime next year.

For Captain Fridenberger, whether or not the engines can be saved paled in comparison to two things more important: “There was no loss of life, and no spillage,” he said.

They have traveled all walks of life, but between Monday and Friday they arrive at the same destination: the senior citizens centers in East Hampton and Southampton Towns, where they take advantage of free hot lunches, take-home meals, and social activities.

Their individual situations may differ greatly, but the majority of those who show up are living on fixed incomes and collecting Social Security or disability benefits.

The federal government will not be increasing those benefits in 2016, which will be only the third year since 1975, when Congress adopted annual Social Security increases, that there will be no such adjustment. The other years were 2010 and 2011.

“They always hit the small people,” said Edward King, 73, a retired school custodian, at the East Hampton center on Springs-Fireplace Road, one of two the town provides. “The government doesn’t know how it is to live like we live. . . . There are people in this country who are starving or can’t buy their pills because they don’t have enough money.”

Although he doesn’t fall into that category, Mr. King, a lifelong East Hampton resident and cancer survivor, said he would no longer be able to afford a mortgage payment if he had to and that he and his wife are weighing whether to sell one of their two cars. “I could go on forever,” Mr. King said.

So, too, could Michael R. Geller, 72, an Air Force veteran who said he started collecting Social Security at the age of 62 after falling on hard times. His monthly check barely covers his rent, his car, and food for himself and his dog, he said. He called the lack of an increase in the year ahead “a horrible cop-out.” During lunch at the East Hampton center, Mr. Geller said, “If I didn’t have food stamps and this place here, I wouldn’t have food.”

Ronald Fick, 69, a retired East Hampton Town worker and Navy veteran, said the challenges on the East End were particularly harsh given the high cost of living here. “I think the government forgot that Social Security is all the people’s money,” Mr. Fick said.

Andrew Malone, 89, a retired auto repair shop owner, said he recently received a persuasive letter from the Senior Citizens League, a group that is pressing for an “emergency cost-of-living adjustment” and, at the same time, is demanding that Social Security benefits be denied “illegal aliens.” The group’s efforts are controversial, however, with The Huffington Post dubbing one of its mailings, in 2011, “the holy grail of elderly scare tactics.”

Mr. Malone collects about $800 a month from Social Security. Because he also qualifies for subsidized housing, his rent is $209 a month. “If I didn’t have that, I would be on the street,” he said. A Navy veteran who was once active in Democratic politics, Mr. Malone added, “Definitely, a raise would help me.”

Social Security cost-of-living increases, also known as the consumer price index, or C.P.I., are tied to inflation, which has been mostly flat in the last few years. When told inflation had been level, however, Mr. Fick said, “But not as far as I can see. You’re just trying to survive around here. If it weren’t for the food pantry, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to do it. But you don’t have enough money to move away, either.”

Theoretically, Congress could still enact a cost-of-living increase for 2016.  Representative Lee Zeldin said by phone on Monday, “I don’t think that at any point we should give up that fight among those members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. I don’t think there really is ever a time where it should ever be considered too late.”

Mr. Zeldin, who represents the East End, said he was in the process of reviewing a proposal by Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon that calls for a consumer price index modified for the elderly population. It would take into account the idea that, according to The Washington Post, “people who are working have different spending patterns than retirees.” Mr. Zeldin said he also supports the idea that Social Security benefits should take regional costs of living into account.

“Money just doesn’t go as far on Long Island as it does elsewhere,” Mr. Zeldin said. “Some seniors choose between oil in their tank and prescription medication. I’m somebody who believes that the money should be paid out factoring the cost of living in very unique regions all across America. . . . It’s needed in order to survive here.”

In 2010, according to the census, East Hampton was home to about 3,780 people 65 and older. They accounted for 17.6 percent of the population, which was 21,457 as tallied by the census that year. The Washington Post reported in October that nationwide 65 million people and disabled workers collect Social Security, or about one in four households, and another 15 million are disabled veterans, federal retirees, or the poor who also qualify for Supplemental Security Income.

_____________________________________

Social Security cost-of-living increases are

 tied to inflation, which has been mostly flat

 in the last few years.

_____________________________________

Aware that the average age in East Hampton is rising, the members of the town board established a senior services committee in 2014 to consider the needs of seniors and make recommendations. According to the committee, the over-65 population will be twice the size of the school-age population here within the next 15 years.

“There are a lot of supports in place for people who might feel the crunch” of rising costs without an increase in Social Security, Diane Patrizio, East Hampton Town’s director of human services, said in a recent interview.

Asked about the local impacts of no Social Security increase, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, an East Hampton Town councilwoman who was the liaison to the  senior services committee, said “an uptick in the town-provided services” was expected.

Ms. Patrizio and Ms. Burke-Gonzalez agreed that the town has the capacity to handle more clients. In  addition to the nutrition programs at the East Hampton senior center and at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center, services include transportation to doctor’s appointments and grocery stores and assistance in applying for benefits like federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance or Medicare. There is also a town residential repair program, which helps eligible seniors obtain repairs for their houses, and a Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps with the expense of heating their houses. More information on these programs can be found on the town’s website at ehamptonny.gov or by calling the Department of Human Services at 329-6939.

“What I want people to be aware of is that there are programs that can help them financially deal with these issues,” Ms. Patrizio said.

Correction: A previous version of this story said Michael Geller was 67 years old and a veteran of the Army.