Having consumed many pounds of mediocre food at exaggerated prices over the last couple of years, it is downright exhilarating to be able to report on a really enjoyable and inexpensive meal.

Stand up and take a bow, Chinda's!

Photo by Morgan McGivern

Some diners may have trouble finding it, located as it is in the dark hinterland of Noyac Road, but it's really worth getting out a compass and making the trek. (It's a little west of Cromer's Market, on the opposite side of Noyac Road.)

Enough For Two

The small dining room, adjoining a busy bar and takeout area, is brightly lit and no-nonsense while managing at the same time to be cozy and welcoming. This is partly because the Thai owner spreads an irresistible warmth and cheer that is guaranteed to put you in a good mood.

The prices are a little hard to state concretely since so many of the dishes are enough for two, but basically they run from $5.50 to $13.95. Only the whole fish, according to what is in season, may be more expensive.

The menu is divided into appetizers and soups and then into chicken, beef, pork, seafood, rice, and noodle dishes. (There are also hamburgers, chicken pot pie, steak, etc. for those few remaining stick-in-the-muds who won't try anything with a foreign name.)

Outstanding Appetizers

Let's start with the spring rolls. The spring roll does not translate well to the East End. Maybe it's the salt in the air, but as a rule of thumb they are sodden lumps of anonymous substances wrapped in deep-fried leather.

Chinda's spring rolls don't deserve to be mentioned on the same page - they're bright, crisp, fresh, and outstandingly good.

And the same could be said for the other appetizers we ordered. The kai satay, slivers of marinated chicken breast grilled and served on a skewer with peanut sauce, were tender and tasty. The tom yum koong soup was wonderful - a hot, spicy bowlful of shrimp, mushrooms, and broth flavored with lemon grass, lime, and peppers that was enough for four of us.

Another Rave

Last, and brought to us consecutively as were most of the dishes, was a platterful of featherlight fried pork-and-garlic wontons. Fattening, may be; delicious, undoubtedly.

The whole fish on Sunday evening was striped bass, which we chose to have steamed with fresh ginger, lemon grass, extra garlic, and a variety of vegetables. Here we go again - another rave.

Excellent also was Chinda's specialty, pad Thai, the national dish of rice noodles sauteed with shrimp, egg, bean curd, bean sprouts, and a lovely coating of ground peanuts, which was divinely comforting.

Heavenly

The stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts and green onion was a little less exciting, but mainly because everything else was so good.

And this time I'm not going to add that word "unfortunately" to the description of the dessert course, because the sticky rice with fresh mango, which was all we had room for, was heaven.

From the excellent martini at the beginning to the showers of jellybeans we were given at the end, Chinda's was a laid-back, entirely comfortable, delightful experience.

When Robert Fairbrother moved to the East End a year or so ago to become general manager of the Laundry, he was surprised to find there was no local chapter of the Sommelier Society of America.

He asked around and found that others were interested in the trade organization as well, and in November a Long Island chapter was formed, quietly perhaps, except to those in the restaurant and wine businesses.

The local chapter's first activity was to organize a 21-week course leading to a sommelier's certificate. It began last month at SagPond Vineyards in Sagaponack.

Big Turnout

Mr. Fairbrother expected perhaps a dozen students. In fact, 26 restaurant owners, wait staff, and winery personnel, all but one of them from East End businesses, have signed up.

The course covers such topics as viticulture and winemaking, the various growing regions of the world, different varietals and styles of wine, how to pair food and wine, other beverages, and the practical sides of purchasing and storage.

It is intended to give "a good strong foundation" to restaurant personnel and others involved with the world of wine, Mr. Fairbrother said.

"It really broadens their horizons and makes them a bit more educated about their products."

Sommelier's Credentials

The course is a prerequisite for certification as an advanced sommelier and, finally, a master sommelier. The instructors include local winemakers and members of the national organization.

Mr. Fairbrother taught the first session, on purchasing and storage, sales and service, and cigars. Roman Roth, the winemaker at SagPond Vineyards, helped give students an introduction to viniculture and viticulture, and will return as a teacher to discuss wines from Germany and the Southern Hemisphere and to give a vineyard and winery tour.

Larry Perrine, the winemaker at the new Channing's Daughters Winery in Bridgehampton, has taught a session on the wines of Burgundy and will also explore those of Loire, Alsace, and other regions including the American Northeast.

International Master

Last March at Pellegrini Vineyards in Cutchogue, master sommelier members of the society competed to represent this country in an international wine-tasting event. The winner, Andrea Immer, at the time one of only three women in America to hold the title of master sommelier, is also volunteering her time for the East End class.

She is teaching the wines of Bordeaux, Spain, Portugal, and emerging regions. Roger Dagorn, a master sommelier who is chairman of the national society, will teach champagne and sparkling wine and port, sherry, and Madeira.

Students in the East End course will receive their sommelier certificates on June 29.

Crammed with furniture, heated by a woodstove, edged with orderly ranks of tools, polishes, and shellacs, Edoardo Romani's hugger-mugger of a workshop in Noyac feels as if it's in an 18th-century time warp. Computer-driven America is a million miles away.

In the only clear spot in the room, Mr. Romani, a filmmaker turned furniture restorer, is rejuvenating a 19th-century writing desk. The sad frame stands on a table. Braces secure its rickety legs, clamps retain strips of peeling veneer, the damaged inlay is gray and lusterless with neglect.

Photo by Morgan McGivern

Frankly, it doesn't look worth the effort.

Resurrection

But then he removes a cloth from the desk's top, which he has finished. The oiled and polished surface glows like a conker fresh from its shell, a delicate spiral star of pale golden inlay at its center.

It is a shock that such a dry, dusty corpse could be resurrected to such sensual beauty.

While nothing about Mr. Romani's life has been dry and dusty, in recent years it has undergone almost as radical a transformation as the desk.

Italian Cinema

He was born in Venice, and retains the easy warmth of a city where everyone knows everyone else's business and "if two people are arguing in the street, anyone who comes along feels they can join right in."

When he left Venice's Academy of Arts in 1967, the Italian cinema was at an artistic peak. Mr. Romani, determined to join it, secured a job as assistant cameraman on a Franco Rossi film.

Like others before him, he at first spent more time making cappuccino than celluloid, but before long he was working for Vittorio de Sica on "The Long Voyage" and then, in Rome, for John Huston on "The Kremlin Letter," starring Pat O'Brien and Orson Welles.

Working For Huston

"I was in love with John Huston," said Mr. Romani, who speaks French and Italian but whose English is a little idiosyncratic. "For the first time, I was jumping from the Italian attitude to the American. It was very exciting, very new. He was a fabulous director."

Parts of the movie had been shot in Russia, and when it was over the producer, Dino de Laurentis, mentioned that there was a chance to go back there to work on Sergei Bondarchiuk's "Waterloo."

Mr. Romani, who was still only 19, jumped at the chance. Armed with 50 kilos of pasta and not a word of Russian, he spent three months in Moscow behind the camera.

Dubbed From Mongolian

By then he knew that what appealed most to him about film-making was editing. Back in Rome, he worked for the next 12 years with Franco Arcalli, Bernardo Bertolucci's editor and scriptwriter, who became his mentor.

The movie that cemented his relationship with Mr. Arcalli was Akira Kurosawa's "Dersu Uzala." The film had to be dubbed in Italian from Mongolian and Russian, a task further complicated by the difficulty of communicating with the enigmatic Kurosawa, who spoke no Italian.

Mr. Romani bribed the night porter at the studio to let him into the editing room in the middle of the night so that he could study the rushes until he was completely familiar with them, enabling him to anticipate Mr. Arcalli's every request.

Cut To Measure

When his mentor died, Mr. Romani moved to Italian television and became a documentary editor.

"People think that editing is just joining action and sound without a concept," he said. "But a film editor must be a tailor, a chef, who sees all the defects of a film and cuts and fits to measure. When you have synchronicity and rhythm, the film becomes elastic, fits."

His TV documentaries - on the Pope, the neorealist painter Renato Guttosi, crime in the Bronx, Irish terrorism, Tibet, David Bowie, life in the Camargue, a seven-hour series called "Magic Africa" - had him crisscrossing the globe in the 1970s and '80s.

British Reserve

His exuberant warmth helped him out in unfamiliar situations.

In 1984, for example, he was sent to London to edit newscasts for Italian television. Every morning he commuted from the suburb of Brixton to the center of the city. After a while, he realized that he was travelling with the same people, in the same carriage, at the same time every morning - and no one ever spoke a word to anyone else.

After two months Mr. Romani, on a one-man mission to melt the iceberg of British reserve, got into the train and said, "Good morning, everyone." The passengers hurriedly raised their newspapers and ignored him.

The next morning, he tried again.

"Good morning, everyone. This is the second day of the second month we are all here together. How are you all?"

This time, one or two people sheepishly acknowledged him. After that, it wasn't long before everyone was greeting each other, swapping stories, and even, he said, getting together for drinks after work.

At about this time, Mr. Romani decided to make his own film. The inspiration for the movie was a major milestone in his life - his girlfriend was going to have a baby.

"I was interested how a pregnant woman softens, becomes gentle, and makes gentle the people around her."

Tragedy

Having traveled around the English canal system on a barge doing research - as a Venetian, he had been entranced to discover England's canal system - his script and story boards were ready.

In this unrealized film, a young pregnant woman takes refuge in the barge of a dour old sailor, having decided that she will have her baby there and together they will sail the secret waterways of England, isolated from the world beyond.

But the film was never made. While still in infancy, Mr. Romani's son died.

Starting Over

He found some consolation in Buddhism, but the relationship broke up. Doubly traumatized, the filmmaker decided to abandon his turbulent life in Europe and start again in America.

On and off during his peripatetic life Mr. Romani, who believes that all artists love furniture and people, had studied gilding and refinishing. It proved a good investment when the moment came for introspection, and he turned to the tranquil existence of a restorer.

His first job, the restoration of a six-paneled mother-of-pearl and ivory screen for the Smithsonian Institution, led to a long project in Chicago restoring 36 pieces of Bugatti furniture that came from a collection belonging to Elton John.

Sound Of Silence

Since then, specializing in Gio' Ponti, Bugatti, Biedermeier, and Le Lain Julen furniture but taking on practically any project, he has worked for Sotheby's and Christie's, the estates of Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos, and a number of foundations.

Three years ago, after falling ill with Meuniere's disease, Mr. Romani moved to Sag Harbor.

"The silence here is so exaggerated that it almost has a sound," he said. "It talks to you."

Natural Materials

He works only with natural materials, he said, and as a demonstration coated a small area of sanded wood with shellac, which, unlike varnish or polyurethane, allows wood to breathe rather than sealing it completely.

Some of the furniture crammed into Mr. Romani's low-ceilinged workshop is waiting to be restored for clients, other pieces he has found himself at sales or accumulated during the five years he lived in SoHo before moving east.

When these have been lovingly resuscitated, he will hold a sale and then start all over again.

Behind The Door

And then there are the pieces he has made himself from scratch - a folding bookstand, a tilting mirror, a gilded frame.

The peace has obviously been therapeutic for the restorer, as has the quiet, contemplative work.

"I opened my jungle door," Mr. Romani said, gently sanding away ugly varnish on a strip of wood to reveal the clear grain beneath. "It's so beautiful, so mysterious."

When it comes to Lyme disease, as it unfortunately does every season, the accepted wisdom always has been to treat early, the earlier the better.

The sooner antibiotics are administered following the appearance of the characteristic "bull's-eye" rash surrounding a tick bite, or other significant symptoms, runs the theory, the greater the patient's chance of escaping serious aftereffects, up to and including, in rare instances, death.

Stories have long circulated of visitors to the East End, or Nantucket or the Connecticut shore, who were bitten by a deer tick and went home to unwitting doctors in the Midwest or California complaining of chills, fever, pain in the joints, or exhaustion; being diagnosed with the flu, and later experiencing cardiac arrhythmia or arthritis.

In recent years, however, awareness of how to recognize Lyme disease and how to treat it has soared, both among the general public and in the medical profession.

That, according to a report released this week by the Yale University Lyme Disease Clinic, is both good and bad. It seems that many patients who undergo treatment for Lyme are so afraid of the illness that they press their physicians for a course of treatment they may not really need.

Of 209 persons in the Yale study, 125 turned out not to have Lyme disease at all, although they visited their doctors an average of seven times and took antibiotics for an average of 42 days. Fifty-two of the 125 suffered from apprehension, so certain were they that they had the disease. More than half reported adverse side effects from the antibiotics.

Pressured by fearful patients, concluded the study, some doctors are prescribing too quickly, without consideration of the possible ramifications.

There will be those who say it is better to take unnecessary antibiotics and contend with their side effects than to wind up with an irregular heartbeat or painful arthritis, and maybe they're right. On the other hand, if ever there was a shining example of an instance in which an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure, this must be it.

Spring is coming. Wear long pants and stay away from the tall grass.

A lot of politicians in Suffolk County, especially Republican ones, are hoping that if the old movement to create Peconic County won't die it will just fade away.

Not so one of the East End's favorite Republicans, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. Assemblyman Thiele has worked with a half dozen other attorneys, most of whom are Democrats, to prepare litigation against the state that, if successful, would require the State Legislature to provide a procedure for the creation of new counties. Mr. Thiele has been visiting the East End's town and village boards in an effort to have them sign on as plaintiffs.

So far, every village has done so, as have East Hampton and Shelter Island Towns. The Town of Riverhead, which had under former Republican leadership been the most skeptical about Peconic County, saw a change in its Town Board majority in November when a Democratic and Riverhead Party took over. It is expected to agree to join in the suit before long.

That leaves Southold Town, which voted unanimously last month against taking part in the lawsuit, and Southampton, which has yet to vote on whether to do so. Both towns have Town Boards with Republican majorities.

Something is at work here that should not be. In November of 1996, 71 percent of East End voters favored a ballot proposition calling for a binding referendum to be held on the creation of a new county from the five East End towns. Such a referendum requires an act of the State Legislature, but the Speaker of the State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat concerned about whether Peconic County would set a precedent for Staten Island, has kept the issue from reaching the Assembly floor.

East End voters deserve more respect. However, since the Legislature doesn't seem about to respond to their wishes, it is appropriate for the organization pushing for Peconic County and the municipalities to take legal action.

Southampton and Riverhead should get on board as soon as possible and Southold should reconsider its negative vote. Although there have been several contradictory reports on the economic feasibility of the proposed new county, the time has come to put them all on the table and to let the voters decide.

It's not every day that we come upon a person willing to venture forth, to stand up and be counted. To be courageous.

Steve Miller, an East Hampton native son, is such a man.

As reported in these pages last month, Mr. Miller, who has AIDS, has made his life an open book, but not for commercial reasons or for fame. He puts his story "out there" for his community's kids - to help them think about the causes of dangerous behavior, to face its effects, and, in his own words, "to give something back."

For a week in February at East Hampton High School, and for another full day this week at the middle school, Mr. Miller addressed students' curiosity and fear and answered probing questions. The administrators of the district's schools have done something right in letting this happen.

When Mr. Miller is in front of a class, nothing is taboo. Because he is candid, the students respond in kind, suspending embarrassment. Because he is genuine, they believe him , obvious by the looks on their faces and their attention to what he says.

Because he is willing to talk about young love and attraction, condoms and sexually transmitted infection, and heterosexuality and homosexuality, he may well be saving lives.

Nothing could be more important.

Randy Brecker, a jazz trumpeter and part-time resident of Northwest Woods in East Hampton, was on stage in a London jazz club when he discovered that he had won a Grammy Award.

Because he wasn't in the United States, Mr. Brecker had lost track of when the Grammys were to be awarded, thinking, even as he was winning one, that they were to be dished out the following evening.

The good news arrived in a whisper between songs at the famous Ronnie Scott's in London, his publicist said, where Mr. Brecker was in the midst of a week-long gig. The club is the oldest and most famous jazz club in England.

Solo Effort

The Grammy was for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance on "Into the Sun," an album with a strong Brazilian influence seasoned with jazz, funk, and rock. David Sanborn, Gil Goldstein, Cafe, and Bob Mintzer are among the U.S. and Brazilian guest musicians it features.

Mr. Brecker was a member of Blood, Sweat and Tears in the band's heyday, and also has played trumpet with Frank Zappa, Larry Coryell's Eleventh House, Jaco Pastorious's Words of Mouth, and the band Dreams in concerts and on recordings.

"Into the Sun" is Mr. Brecker's first solo effort in six years. He and his brother Michael had a jazz band, The Brecker Brothers, in the mid '70s, but eventually went separate ways. Reuniting in the early '90s, they put out a pair of albums, one of which, "Out of the Loop," won a pair of Grammys in 1994.

One was for Best Instrumental Composition - Michael Brecker's doing. The other - for which Randy Brecker could take credit - was for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance - the same award he picked up last week.

High Quality

Michael Bloom of San Franciso, Mr. Brecker's publicist, said he and Mr. Brecker were aware that he was a strong contender for a Grammy.

"I actually picked him to win for that category," Mr. Bloom said. "Now everybody wants me to pick horses."

"It's very good" Mr. Bloom said of the album. "He has some very good people guesting," and "it's accessible to people who may not be real jazz heads, but also harmonically sophisticated enough" for those who do know their stuff.

"It's a very high quality project," he said.

Concord Vista

"Into the Sun," recorded on the Concord Vista label, a new jazz-oriented subsidiary of Concord Records, was the subsidiary's first Grammy nominee, and winner.

Although he has not performed on the East End, he spends a lot of time in Northwest Woods, and was interviewed on WPBX, the Long Island University public radio station, a couple of months ago.

He could not be reached in England, where he was still performing, this week.

A funny thing happened on the way to CTC Theater Live's planned spring productions of "The Murder Room" and "Crazy for You." Perhaps already in volved in local shows such as the Southampton Players' "Damn Yankees," few suitable male actors answered the casting calls.

Photo by Gary Mamay

To top things off, the company's dream lead for both productions, the darkly compelling Thomas Rosamillia, who played Public Enemy Number One in last spring's wonderful "Anything Goes," lingered unavailably in Florida.

Did CTC's board of directors freak out? Au contraire, they converted potential disasters into golden opportunities, rescheduling "Belles," which opened last Friday at the John Drew with an all-female cast, and "Wonderful Town," a low-male musical with two female leads, instead.

Forty-Five Phone Calls

"Belles" is a funny, quirky, even kinky little "play in two acts and 45 phone calls," as the program puts it, by Mark Dunn.

An award-winning Southern writer who is now playwright-in-residence at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre in Manhattan, Mr. Dunn has imagined a Southern family of six girls who strive to transcend the childhood horrors of a drunken father and a mother so phobic she fears electrocution if a raindrop falls during a phone call.

Five of the sisters, ranging in age from 22 to 40, have flown their dysfunctional coop to make new lives in places as far from home as they can get.

Bedridden Materfamilias

The play unfolds on John Mercurio's witty, multilevel set as they phone one another for advice and companionship, waiting, if only subconsciously, for the heart-easing call from Mom that clearly will never come.

As the play opens, all six phones begin to ring on the empty stage while a spotlight tours their various locations. Then the stage goes dark.

The lights go up again on the long-suffering, recently widowed Peggy (Irene Stefanik) in the Memphis sitting room where the sisters grew up and where she now tends their bedridden, senile materfamilias, who, mercifully, remains off-stage.

Disasters

A tireless do-gooder, Peggy functions as a communications center for her scattered siblings, faithfully guilt-tripping them with bad-news bulletins about their declining Mom.

She first calls single-career-wom an-with-a-drinking-problem Aneece (Marion Stark) in Philadelphia, getting her out of the shower to report some fresh disaster and prompting her to phone Roseanne (Louise Shaw), an Atlanta housewife whose minister husband has just walked out on her and their two daughters.

Roseanne calls Audrey (Susann L. Ashraf) in Mississippi. Tricked out in a black lace mantilla and red feather boa, she's an exotic bar-room chanteuse who performs with a marionette she believes is her 4-year-old son, Huckle. In Ms. Ashraf's far-out yet stunningly dignified performance, she is riveting.

Telephone Tag

Audrey phones their hippie sister Sherry (Marie Dahl) in her "living space" in Elk Run, Wash. Something of a nymphomaniac, Sherry has assumed the low-self-esteem name Dust, and is deeply into the paranormal.

Finally there's Paige (Melissa W. Ralph) in Texas, who acquires and dumps boyfriends at a dizzying rate. What with her beeping answering machine, Roseanne's cries to a suicide hotline, Audrey's frantic phoning when Huckle disappears, and Peggy's dreaded bulletins, the sisters run up the huge long-distance bills of a family trying to find its center.

Under Serena Seacat's imaginative direction, "Belles" is an eccentric, funny evening with a lot of heart but occasional unevenness, at least on opening night, when some of the comic timing was thrown off by the Southern drawls.

Among its many joys is meeting three talented young actresses new to the John Drew stage: Ms. Dahl, Ms. Ralph, and Ms. Ashraf, whose future appearances we look forward to.

We also have the pleasure of seeing Ms. Shaw and Ms. Stefanik again. Ms. Shaw played Clarice in CTC's production of "You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running" a few years ago, when she was known as Louise Sweeney.

Ms. Stefanik's many fine CTC performances include Agnes in "Dancing at Lughnasa" and her priceless Mom in last year's "True West."

Dramatic Role

And we find Ms. Stark, the singing star of CTC's "Guys and Dolls," "Kiss Me Kate," "South Pacific," "Bells Are Ringing," and "Annie Get Your Gun," in her first non-musical role.

Her speech as the embittered Aneece with her bottle of Stoli reveals an impressive hidden talent.

"Belles" can be seen tomorrow and Saturday nights at 8 p.m., and Sunday afternoon at 2:30. It's new, different, and very beguiling.

AMAGANSETT

National City Bank of Kentucky to Gregory Odland and Tracy Schaffzin, Mako Lane, $400,000.

Willett to Arnold and Ann Gatof, Wyandanch Lane, $289,000.

Oliver to Doris Guidi, Whalers Lane, $421,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Vanderveer 3d to Michael and Ivy Chazen, Daylily Lane, $619,500.

Bridge Bldg. Co. to Richard Gasalberti, Tansey Lane, $355,000.

Rojas to Kellis Pond Assoc. L.L.C., Montauk Highway, $1,025,000.

Florin to Andrew Kregar and Oili Tikkanen, Casey Lane, $287,500.

Marek to Jaime Elkoury and Marie Montesinos, Jack and Jill Drive, $750,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Ayer Jr. to Virginia Coleman, Mill Hill Lane, $425,000.

Homes by Arbia to Barbara Lichtenberg, Close Court, $375,000.

Maidstone Estates Ltd. to Starbright L.L.C., Pine Close, $245,000.

Kluger to Timothy Mygind, Route 114, $550,000.

Shanholt to Alice Geller, Georgica Road, $1,850,000.

Lester estate to Taylor Smith and Bernard Krupinski, Pleasant Lane, $240,000.

MONTAUK

Rizzo to James Mattatut, Fort Pond Road, $162,000. NORTH HAVEN

DC Partners to Lisa Perry, Bay View Court, $725,000.

DC Partners to Loren Plotkin (trustee), Bay View Court, $192,000.

Gramlich to Loren Plotkin (trustee), Bay View Court, $775,000.

DC Partners to Loren Plotkin (trustee), Bay View Court, $192,000.

NORTHWEST

National Brand Licensing to Joyce Miner (trustee), Bull Run, $230,000.

Dainow to Gus Yerolemou, Tillinghast Place, $182,000.

Kaplan to Linda Stein, Scallop Avenue, $216,500.

SAG HARBOR

Mayhew to John Louise, Madison Street, $430,000.

Ocean View Farms to Daniel and Katherine Hartnett, Cliff Drive, $220,000.

Santos to Gina Clemente, Wildwood Road, $290,000.

SAGAPONACK

Ocker to Robert Nagle and Jane Chung, Farmview Drive, $750,000.

SPRINGS

Siegel to Jo Ann Virga, Sycamore Drive, $235,000.

Schmalz to Judith McMurdo, Waterhole Road, $165,000.

Smith to Anne and John Mullen 3d, Louse Point Road, $750,000.

WATER MILL

Maran to Mark Epstein, Halsey Lane, $330,000.

Southampton Design Assoc. to Joseph Kundrat, Uncle Leo's Lane, $475,000.

The East Hampton Village Board is expected to adopt its first ever open space planning and management program when it meets next Thursday.

The plan's recommendations, village officials say, point the way to more environmentally sensitive redevelopment here, more aggressive protection of the village's wetlands, dunelands, and public corridors, and preservation of its remaining undeveloped areas - about 10 percent of the residential lands within its 4.8 square miles.

"We are proud to put this in place," Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said yesterday, anticipating that his board would pass the plan without a hitch.

Way Is Cleared

Larry Cantwell, the Village Administrator, called the plan's adoption "a very important first step." It will become, he said, the village's "road map for preservation."

The plan details 13 remaining undeveloped village parcels larger than four acres, totaling 160 acres - the only land remaining with subdivision potential. Some smaller parcels also remain undeveloped, according to the plan, but all told only about 100 new village lots can still be created.

First unveiled in draft form last May, the plan was the subject of an informational meeting last spring and a public hearing this month. The board, finding that its implementation would not have a "significant impact on the environment," adopted a negative declaration Friday, in accordance with the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the Village Code. That vote clears the way for the plan's adoption.

Parking Demands

Some objections, however, were raised by the Village Preservation Society and the Circle Association, two residents' groups, about recommendations that the village acquire land near its beaches to expand parking, if needed, in the future. The plan specifically suggests that the village acquire two properties along the Double Dunes next to the parking field at Two Mile Hollow Beach.

Gene E. Cross, the village's planning consultant, responded that demands could increase significantly at village beaches 20 years hence, resulting in "spill-over onto adjoining residential streets." If the village owns the property, he said, parking could go "where the demands are generated."

Mr. Cantwell said the village still has "growth potential" near the beach even without the purchase.

Preservation Monies

The residents' groups also questioned the plan's recommendation to beef up one of the "special permit" sections in the Village Code. The plan suggests "reworking" the special permit procedure to compensate for changes in the State Environmental Quality Review Act the state adopted two years ago that exclude minor projects from its review.

The Village Board has said it will spend up to $1.5 million to acquire land for conservation and has also retained the services of the Peconic Land Trust, a conservation organization, to help identify property owners willing to grant easements.

The village hopes to tap state monies for preservation, too, if the State Legislature again passes, and the Governor signs, a land bank bill, slated for reintroduction next month.

Suggestions Followed

The legislation would put in place a 12-year $35 million program that State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. estimated could bring East Hampton Town as much as $2.5 million a year though transfer taxes on sales of property. Village properties would be "eligible" for preservation under the bill, Mr. Thiele said yesterday, with the Village and Town Boards negotiating the allocation of the funds, he said.

To qualify for the state funds, the village must have adopted an open space plan.

The Governor vetoed a similar bill last year, but Mr. Thiele said it had been redrafted to cover all five East End towns and an exemption for agricultural lands, provisions the Governor suggested. Mr. Thiele said he was "optimistic" that the bill would pass both the Senate and Assembly, and see the Governor's signature by late spring.

Seeking Easements

The village's plan encourages landowners "to dedicate easements similar to those of their neighbors," where that possiblity exists, and tax reductions are recommended "beyond" what is established by the Village Code.

"The assessors will have to be brought into the loop to see what kind of deals can be cut," said John Halsey, the Land Trust's executive director. Easements, he said, "have to be appealing enough," adding that the plan will help create awareness of "the public costs of despoiling a pond," for example.

When a property owner agrees to move a pre-existing septic system back from a wetland, Mr. Halsey explained, it is "good for the community as a whole."

New District

Mr. Halsey added that each situation is different, and part of his job is to "tailor individually" charitable gifts made by property owners to the Land Trust, or easements to the municipality.

The village would dedicate a new zoning district for all public lands to be called "Greens and Parks," the plan suggests, and enhance enforcement provisions governing it.

The final version of the open space plan has few changes from the original draft, though its language has been tightened, and a few corrections made.

One of its more ambitious recommendations remains - for the village to acquire the former Mark R. Buick dealership on Accabonac Highway and Pantigo Road.

To Vote Thursday

"The recommended course of action is acquisition and demolition," the plan says, as it is located "between two village greens and would provide an important link between them."

The property, however, owned by Generosa Ammon of East Hampton and Manhattan, is said to carry a price tag of more than $2 million.

Ms. Ammon has proposed renovating the building to a single-use retail/office building, and is expected to appear before the Village Design Review Board with her plan Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Village Hall.

The Village Board, meanwhile, will take its vote on the proposed open space plan at a special meeting at 11 a.m. next Thursday, before its work session, at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.