The estranged husband of a Sagaponack woman who has been missing nearly a week, has been arrested twice this week in two police jurisdictions, accused of violating an order of protection in place for her.

One day before his 50th birthday, Carlos R. Aucapina was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court Friday on a misdemeanor charge of criminal contempt, related to an incident that took place right before she went missing on Oct. 10.

According to the complaint filed in court by East Hampton Town police, Mr. Aucapina confronted Lilia Aucapina, 40, and Angel Tejada in the parking lot of the Meeting House Lane Medical Practice on Montauk Highway in Wainscott Saturday morning. Mr. Tejada, whose call to the police ended the confrontation, according to his statement, had developed a close friendship with Ms. Aucapina over the past several months. Mr. Tejada accused Mr. Aucapina of being jealous, and said that he had been confronted by him previously.

The Aucapinas are in the process of divorce in the Suffolk County Family Courtroom of Justice Martha L. Luft. Justice Luft issued the order for Mr. Aucapina to stay away from his soon-to-be ex-wife just days earlier.

Mr. Tejada told police that Ms. Aucapina had parked her car at the medical center the evening before, spending the night with him. According to Mr. Tejada, the two were in the parking lot when the confrontation with Mr. Aucapina began.

However, police said “she had no involvement in the altercation.” Mr. Tejada told police that Mr. Aucapina made a phone call when he saw the two, with Ms. Aucapina’s brother soon showing up.

Her brother, Carlos Parra, “started saying bad stuff to Lilia, and he was trying to start a fight with me,” Mr. Tejada said. Mr. Parra was not charged with any crime. Mr. Tejada said he then called police, and Mr. Aucapina and Mr. Parra left.

Police had said Ms. Aucapina was last seen Saturday at the address of the medical center in Wainscott at around 9 a.m. Her children reported her missing to Southampton Town police at 9:20 p.m.

Anthony Rutkowski of Astarita & Associates, PC, Mr. Aucapina’s lawyer, challenged the case against his client during his arraignment in front of East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky, after being told that the district attorney’s office had asked bail to be set at $10,000. “That seems exorbitant,” he said. “Ms. Aucapina was not involved in the confrontation.”

Mr. Rutkowski said that the defendant had already posted $10,000 bail in Southampton Town Justice Court, which had been posted on his behalf. “He is alleged to have driven past his wife’s house, that he has to drive past,” Mr. Rutkowski said about an earlier alleged violation of the order of protection for Ms. Aucapina. She lives on Toppings Path in Sagaponack, which is in Southampton Town police’s jurisdiction.

Justice Tekulsky did not agree with Mr. Rutkowski’s assessment of the charges, setting bail at $10,000. Several friends and family members of Mr. Aucapina were in the courtroom, and posted the cash bail. Mr. Aucapina was released.

He is due to return to the East Hampton courthouse on Thursday.

Southampton Town police detectives have not said much since Ms. Aucapina's disappearance other than that it was unusual for her to go missing and that searches had taken place by foot with the help of K-9 units, on all-terrain vehicles, and by air. Detective Sgt. Lisa Costa did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.

WITH REPORTING BY TAYLOR K. VECSEY

Update, 11:20 p.m.:  Montauk Fire Chief Joseph Lenahan said his department made "a great stop" on a fire that broke out at Gosman's Dock Friday night. While an exterior wall near the entrance was badly damaged, it could have been much worse, he said. 

Though Chief Lenahan declined to comment on the cause, citing an investigation by the East Hampton Town fire marshal's office, he said the blaze started on the outside of an older part of the building, on the north side by the main entrance that faces the parking lot. Firefighters were able to keep the fire on the exterior of the restaurant, which closed for the season on Monday. There is smoke and water damage from the sprinkler system inside, but "the great news," Chief Lenahan said, "They'll definitely be open next spring." 

Firefighters got to the West Lake Drive complex quickly with the chief arriving within three minutes, he said. The chief was at the firehouse, along with a bevy of other volunteers who had just finished fire school, when the department received the call at about 8:40 p.m. A passerby noticed a small fire and called 911, but it grew quickly. Dispatchers said one side of the building was "fully involved," the chief said.                                                                                                                                                T.E. McMorrow

Robert Gosman, an owner of Gosman's Dock and a former fire chief who had been home at the time, arrived just before Chief Lenahan, and also updated him on the situation, which was rapidly getting worse. The chief called for help from the Amagansett and East Hampton Fire Departments. 

The overhang on the building was ablaze. "It did extend into the building a bit, but we were able to contain it," Chief Lenahan said. The windows blew out from the heat, and the whole building filled with smoke, he said. An office above the old dining room was not damaged. Fortunately, winds were calm at the waterfront restaurant. 

The fire was extinguished within 40 minutes. 

Overall, 100 firefighters between the three departments responded.                                                                                                                                                 T.E. McMorrow

Update, 10:05 p.m.: After extinguishing a fire at Gosman's Dock in Montauk, firefighters have been sent home. It was unclear how bad the damage was at the restaurant, but firefighters were said to have knocked down the blaze in less than an hour. No injuries were reported. Check back for more information as it becomes available.

Originally, 9:25 p.m.: The Montauk Fire Department received a call of a fire at Gosman's Dock at 500 West Lake Drive at 8:40 p.m. on Friday.

The fire appeared to be in the main restaurant, which overlooks Montauk Harbor.

Heavy smoke filled a kitchen and main dining room. The fire appeared to be confined to the side of the restaurant nearest Montauk Inlet. Firefighters were opening the restaurant complex's windows to get the smoke out of the building. 

The restaurant, along with the others at Gosman's Dock, had closed for the season on Monday.

Montauk fire chiefs called for the rapid intervention team from the Amagansett Fire Department, in case firefighters had to be rescued from inside the building, and two engines from the East Hampton Fire Department. 

The East Hampton Town fire marshal's office sent an investigator to the scene. The fire department's ladies auxiliary was asked to bring refreshments to the firefighters. 

This is a developing story. Check back for more information as it becomes available.

WITH REPORTING BY CHRISTOPHER WALSH

A lawyer representing a group suing to block an effort to build an sandbag seawall along the downtown Montauk ocean beach said Friday that he anticipated a request for an injunction against the project would be denied.

Carl Irace, who has a legal practice in East Hampton, said that a court magistrate's report to the judge hearing the case was disappointing and that his clients were considering their options.

In her report, the magistrate, Judge Anne Y. Shields further recommended that the court reject the project's opponents' claims outright and dismiss the case.

Work on the roughly $9 million United States Army Corps of Engineers project was expected to begin this week. It had been delayed after erosion during September narrowed the ocean beach substantially.

Much of the report prepared by Judge Shields of the United States Eastern District Court centered on the question of whether the approximately 14,000 sandbags could be considered prohibited structures under town, state, and federal regulations, as Defend H2O and the other plaintiffs claimed.

While observing that both East Hampton Town and state policies favor so-called soft erosion control, Judge Shields said that an Army Corps determination had concluded that the project "does not run afoul of those restrictions because dune reinforcement" with "geotextile sand containers" was not considered a structural solution.

"It's a complete fallacy," Kevin McAllister of Defend H2O said. "These are hydraulically filled, these are packed hard."

"They are 1.7 tons each; 14,000 of these are a wall, these are a structure," Mr. McAllister said.

In the report, Judge Shields also repeated the Army Corps's assertion that the use of the large sandbags was "consistent with the 'nourishment of beaches and dunes with appropriate material' " and that the Army Corps had responded to local concerns by planning for the seawall to be covered by at least three feet of sand.

The report questioned the timing of the suit, as well, and several of its factual assertions. It made note of property and personal losses, particularly on Long Island during Hurricane Sandy, and said that a "clear public interest" would be hindered if Defend H2O and the other plaintiffs prevailed.

"It is clear that any order delaying the project, even for a short period of time, will put the shoreline in danger, and expose Montauk's population to unnecessary risk," Judge Shields wrote.

The magistrate's report will be added to the material being considered by United States District Court Judge Arthur D. Spatt, who is expected to issue a ruling within days that will allow the project to move ahead.

Mr. Irace said that the next legal move for opponents would be to file objections to the report, something that he said was under consideration.

"It's a continued opportunity to educate the public," he said.

Update, 3:30 p.m.: The inside of a house in Northwest Woods was damaged by fire on Monday afternoon, though firefighters quickly stopped it from spreading. 

A passerby who saw flames coming from inside 795 Hands Creek Road called the East Hampton Fire Department at about 12:30 p.m. When Gerry Turza, the first assistant chief, arrived there was "heavy fire" showing from the street. Bushes and a deck were ablaze, as well. It was unclear whether the fire began inside or outside, and Chief Turza declined to comment due to an investigation underway by the East Hampton Town fire marshal's office. 

Firefighters "made a very efficient, very aggressive attack," first from the outside, and then from the interior, to extinguish the fire. The two-story, wood-frame house was not occupied at the time, the chief said. Flames had just reached under the eaves of the roof, and firefighters stopped it just before it reached the top. 

About a quarter of the residence was heavily damaged by fire, Chief Turza said. The outside deck partially collapsed. The rest of the house has extensive smoke damage. 

Due to a shortage of public water in the area, the chief quickly called for tanker trucks from other departments from Montauk to Southampton. The nearest hydrant was 1,600 feet away from the house, he said. However, the fire was extinguished so quickly that the tankers weren't used. Also, he said, new water mains have just been installed on Hands Creek Road in the Clamshell area. 

Original, 1 p.m.: A fire broke out in a house in Northwest Woods in East Hampton on Monday afternoon, calling out several fire departments on the South Fork. 

The East Hampton Fire Department received a call about the house fire at 795 Hands Creek Road at about 12:30 p.m. A caller told dispatchers there were flames and it was blowing windows out. A column of smoke could be seen from Lazy Point in Amagansett. It was not clear whether the house was occupied. 

Gerry Turza, the second assistant fire chief, immediately called for neighboring departments, including Sag Harbor Fire Department's rapid intervention team, to stand by in case firefighters needed to be rescued, and for tankers from at least three other departments, as there were no nearby hydrants. 

The Bridgehampton Fire District will be able to buy a new combination pumper and ladder truck following a successful bond referendum vote on Tuesday.

By a vote of 78 to 33, voters supported the bond, which amounts to $850,000, payable for up to 10 years. Two more votes were cast, but are being reviewed because the residents who cast them were not registered to vote in the district.

The truck is valued at $1 million, but the cost will be offset by $150,000 because the board of fire commissioners decided to put some reserve funds toward the purchase. Bruce Dombkowski, the fire commissioner who announced the results Tuesday night, said the new truck will be "the best thing that ever happened to this district."

"We were 15 years behind" without that truck, Mr. Dombkowski said. "The houses are getting bigger and now we have a 77-footer that is going to reach, no problem."

The district will not have the truck for about one year. It's expected to take 270 days to build, Mr. Dombkowski said.

"We thank the community for coming down and voting this truck in," he said.

Southampton Town officials have temporarily closed the Poxabogue Golf Center in Sagaponack following the arrest of the manager on a charge involving a minor.

Steven Lee, 46, of Ronkonkoma, allegedly photographed a minor female's genital area through a one-way window. Police did not indicate when the incident occurred or how old the girl involved was. He was arrested and charged with a felony, unlawful surveillance, as well as a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a minor on Wednesday. He allegedly showed the photographs to employees, several of whom contacted Southampton Town police. 

The Town of Southampton, which contracts the management of the nine-hole golf course and driving range to Steven Lee Golf, Inc., closed the facility on Wednesday. "We expect that normal operations will resume as soon as possible," the town said in a statement. 

The restaurant is under separate contract and has remained open to the public.

While many people who work in the schools were enjoying their final days of summer vacation, Daniel Hartnett, a bilingual social worker at the East Hampton Middle School, spent the first days of September helping immigrant women and children detained at the United States-Mexico border. 

Volunteering with the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project, Mr. Hartnett conducted 13 social emotional evaluations of long-term detainees at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Tex., during the week he was there. “I wrote reports for attorneys to either use immediately or put in a file to use down the line,” Mr. Hartnett said. He had hoped to return, but received notice yesterday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had revoked his visiting privileges.

The center, run for I.C.E. by a private prison contractor, was opened in December in response to a massive increase last year of illegal crossings at the southern border, particularly women with children.

The Dilley facility is the largest family detention center in the country. Part of President Obama’s package of 2014 executive actions on immigration, it now houses about 2,000 detainees, some who have been there almost since its opening and some who are processed and released or deported in a matter of weeks. It was designed to send the message to other families considering the difficult journey from Central America that illegal entry into the United States did not guarantee freedom — those detained are first in line for “expedited removal.”

The CARA project was set up by four nonprofits — the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association. CARA works to ensure that the detainees at Dilley receive competent legal representation and also pushes to end family detentions “by leading aggressive advocacy and litigation efforts to challenge unlawful asylum, detention, and deportation policies,” according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association website.

The nonprofits fund three full-time staff members in Dilley. One of them is Isabel Saavedra, an East Hampton High School graduate and lawyer who was admitted to the New York bar in August. Mr. Hartnett has known her since she was a new immigrant herself as a child in East Hampton.

Her own experiences inspired her to become an immigration lawyer. “I entered as an unaccompanied minor,” she said. Her parents came here first, then sent for Ms. Saavedra and her younger sister when they had saved enough money. The children came on visitors’ visas, but overstayed. “I was undocumented from March of 1999 until November of 2008, when I finally got my green card,” Ms. Saavedra said.

Mr. Hartnett said she and her sister were standouts in school. “Isabel was a superlative.” Her parents did not speak English, and when it came time to apply for college, he helped her with her applications. She went to the State University at Old Westbury and graduated from law school at the University of Massachusetts. She arrived in Dilley three months ago, right after passing the bar.

“Being down here in Texas is like being in the emergency room for doctors,” she said. Volunteering attorneys, social workers, psychiatrists, and the like from around the country are trained on Sundays, then work Monday through Friday “dealing with the most pertinent cases on the docket,” Mr. Hartnett said. The information they collect goes into a database for the next crop of pro bono attorneys to use.

Ms. Saavedra works 15-hour days, six days a week, managing the pro bono attorneys. “This is the best experience I’ve ever had in my life.”

During his time in Texas, Mr. Hartnett met women and children fleeing gang violence, domestic abuse, and economic hardship, most from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, where gang activity is epidemic. Despite the center’s proximity to Mexico, “I didn’t meet a Mexican while I was there,” he said. The majority of those detained are Central Americans who crossed Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S.

Many of the children he met were anxious and depressed and preoccupied. They and their mothers had been separated from husbands, fathers, and older sons or brothers with whom they had traveled. “There were high levels of trauma, and signs of post-traumatic stress.”

One woman he interviewed had been threatened by her boyfriend, a gang member, before deciding to flee to the U.S. Another had failed her first “credible fear” interview. The interview, a chance to make her case for being a legitimate asylum-seeker with a real fear of returning to her home country, could have secured her conditional release on a bond or with an ankle monitor. “She kept saying ‘May 30, May 30,’ ” Mr. Hartnett said, but she was otherwise difficult to understand, even for someone like himself who is fluent in Spanish.

He came to realize that May 30 was the date that gang members — who had previously killed her brother for refusing to sell drugs for them — had broken into her house, told her she had to take her brother’s place, and taken her picture. “She had a speech and language disability,” said Mr. Hartnett, a clinical social worker, and had failed her first interview because of it. His conclusion after evaluating her: “She was significantly impeded in her ability to expressively utilize language in an interview.” After his evaluation, and perhaps because of it, she and her child were released to a family member.

A federal judge in California ruled in July that the Obama administration’s detention of women and children in secure facilities violated a 1997 settlement on the treatment of immigrant children caught crossing the borders illegally. Hearings for detainees are being ramped up in response, with an effort to process them within 20 days, but there are still more than 2,000 at the Dilley center. “There are 1,800 women with children detained — nursing mothers, children as young as 18 months,” Ms. Saavedra said.

“The reality is that people are being incarcerated,” Mr. Hartnett said. “This is a prison for young mothers and little children. There are guards; their movements are monitored. It’s pretty extraordinary. This is how we are responding to this refugee crisis at our border.” Mr. Hartnett is not the first mental health professional to have his visiting privileges revoked, and he believes such actions are violating the detainees’ rights to adequate representation.

The CARA project has lodged a series of complaints about the “inhumane conditions” at the Dilley center, including inadequate medical care. 

“Everybody I met had at least one child 12 or under,” he said, and every child he met was sick, mostly with coughs. While the center has playgrounds, schools, and a medical clinic, mothers told him they would wait five hours at the clinic without being seen, or, when they were seen, would be told to “just drink water.”

While the people detained at the southern border are not fleeing outright war, there are “geopolitical forces at play that have created an economic, social, and political situation that is forcing people to flee,” Mr. Hartnett said, pointing to gangs, corrupt governments, rampant violence, and social upheaval.

“If they claim they have a fear of returning, they’re asylum-seekers and refugees,” Ms. Saavedra said. But the U.S. government, she said, “refuses to refer to them as refugees.” Instead, “we’re treating them like criminals.”

 

When you go into the woods with Marguerite Wolffsohn, your vision starts to change. At first look, the view through tall pines and oaks and spindly sassafras trees into bright spaces where the sun reaches open ground, covered with grass, is a pleasing sight.

But then Ms. Wolffsohn describes her more knowledgeable view: The small plants under the trees are primarily huckleberry or ferns, plants that deer don’t much like. Look for the sapling trees and variety of young shrubs that should fill the mid-layer under the trees, and there is nothing much to see.  There is leafy vegetation above a certain height and wide open space where a dense understory should be.

It is not that Ms. Wolffsohn, East Hampton Town’s planning director and a longtime nature observer here, wants to diminish anyone’s enjoyment of a forest stroll. Just the opposite. She cares passionately about the forest ecosystem, all of it, and wants to insure the health of all of the elements that keep it in balance, from the soil where seedlings take root, to the understory of native shrubs and small trees, to the established pines whose lower limbs are being stripped of leaves by munching deer.

All of it — the soil microbes and insects, the berries and nuts and seeds and leaves — supports the birds, reptiles, and mammals that together need, and feed, a healthy, balanced ecosystem.

The deer are herbivores that eat just about anything in the woods. A full-grown deer of 100 pounds, Ms. Wolffsohn said, eats five to nine pounds of vegetation a day. “That’s a lot of leaves, because they don’t weigh a lot,” said Andy Gaites of the town’s land management department, another guide on a recent afternoon forest tour.

Ms. Wolffsohn points to the difference, at deer-mouth height, between the abundance of plants at various levels of the woods. The damage is already obvious and widespread, she says. Ms. Wolffsohn, along with Mr. Gaites, supports what they see as the only viable option to reverse the damage: increased hunting.

A town deer management plan calls for that, among other things, and steps have already been taken to facilitate it, such as opening up more land to hunters.

Mr. Gaites walks down a trail to an area pinpointed on a global  positioning system and marked by a wooden stake in the ground. A patch of woods there is one of eight study areas from Wainscott to Montauk that are being monitored to gauge the health of the forest. “We’re trying to show some of the damage in a scientific way,” he said. This is the second season the areas are being tracked, and comparisons will be made.

“You’re watching specific spots of seedlings to see if they can grow,” says Ms. Wolffsohn. “But aside from that, just take a look at the woods — a browse line is an indication that there’s just too many deer.”

If new trees, shrubs, and other plants are stripped of leaves or eaten entirely by deer as soon as they sprout, then the ongoing cycle of forest regeneration will halt, and areas like those observed on a recent forest tour will revert to open, meadow-type swaths.

“The acorns that drop from that tree,” Ms. Wolffsohn says, pointing at an oak, “there should be some of that.” But no oak saplings are growing below the tree. Mr. Gaites says there “should be at least 10 seedlings” coming up in the area around a healthy sassafras tree. “We had a hard time finding any.”

“When you see the grass in the woods returning, it’s not a healthy thing,” Ms. Wolffsohn says. “It’s not a meadow.”

Natural tangles of cat briar are important, as they provide nesting areas and food for forest songbirds. “Reduce the number and variety of sizes of plants like that, you’re going to reduce the number of species — birds, especially. It’s just wrong. It’s simplifying the habitat.”

If the impact of deer were reduced, the makeup of plants in the study plots would begin to change, and diversity return, Mr. Gaites believes. The deer have begun to browse on what he calls “stuffing food,” plants that are not preferred, but that are nonetheless beginning to show signs of being eaten: pines, beeches, red cedar. Those huckleberries — the only thing in lots of areas providing a green cover on the forest floor — could well be next.

Driving along Old Stone Highway in Springs, Ms. Wolffsohn turns her trained gaze out the window. “The leaves should be down to the ground,” she says, eyeing a stretch of woods. “The red maple, the tupelo, the sweet pepperbush should be thick under there.”

Deep into the Grace Estate, a 500-acre preserve in Northwest, there is a place Mr. Gaites and Ms. Wolffsohn have been watching, where a tall deer fence erected by residents adjacent to a preserve creates a stark line between one type of woods and another. Look through the fence onto the private land, and the lower levels of the forest are crowded, chock full of green. Goldenrod, low-bush blueberry, sumac, bittersweet, summer grape, and Virginia creeper are growing. Turn to the left, and the unprotected public land looks sparse by comparison.  “It looks like somebody just cleared it yesterday,” Ms. Wolffsohn says.

In a 2014 report that is posted on the town website, Thomas J. Rawinski of the United States Forest Service, who took a similar tour of East Hampton’s woods, writes of observing “jaw-dropping deer impacts.” He called the sight “shocking, even to me.”

“We were witnessing deer-induced forest disintegration,” he said of the Grace Estate. “Unless the deer population can be brought into balance, the forest will continue to disintegrate.”

A number of other studies from forest ecologists across the country document the same issues. “It’s not just here, it’s the entire Northeast that has this problem, because we don’t have the predators” for deer, Ms. Wolffsohn says. “Like everything in ecology, it’s complicated.”

But, she says,  “We’re hoping that the more people understand how bad the problem is, the more they’ll be willing to help with the solution.”

Not all are convinced. Bill Crain, the founder and head of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, which is strictly opposed to an increase in hunting and advocates nonlethal deer management strategies instead, said this week that town officials should objectively evaluate what is occurring in the woods before setting deer policies.

At a forum sponsored by his group in June, he said, the town’s former natural resources director, Larry Penny, contended that deer have not significantly harmed the understory. There are other factors, Mr. Penny said, such as trees that inhibit growth beneath them.

An East Hampton Town rental registry law has been honed and is being readied for a hearing, probably next month. The hearing will provide an opportunity for members of the public to give their opinions on the draft legislation to the town board.

East Hampton Town Board members got an earful at two previous hearings on an earlier draft law — almost exclusively against a requirement that property owners who want to rent their houses would have to register with the town.

Officials are moving forward nonetheless to answer a call for better enforcement of housing statutes as residents continue to complain about short-term rentals, share houses, and overcrowded housing in their neighborhoods.

A new draft rental registry law was developed in response to previous public comments, Michael Sendlenski, a town attorney, and Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said last week.

The information kept on file in the registry about rental properties in the town would include the number of legal bedrooms and the number of legal occupants in a house based on bedroom square footage, according to state law.

Landlords would have to provide information about their tenants — the number, not their names — as well as about rental periods.

Should it appear that properties are being used outside of the town code bounds, this would provide a “more expedient manner of getting compliance,” Mr. Sendlenski said earlier this week, making it easier for enforcement agents to prove overoccupancy or other infractions, such as repeated short-term rentals.

The draft law includes a list of “presumptive evidence” that could be presented to the court — the number of mattresses observed in a bedroom to prove overoccupancy, for example.

To obtain a registry number, property owners would have to verify that their properties meet certain standards.

The new draft law eliminates the potential for a property inspection by town officials before a registry number is issued. Instead, property owners will be given a checklist of New York State property maintenance code requirements and will be asked to certify, with a notarized signature, that the various safety items are in place.

Included among the 22 items are smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, proper pool fencing, and stairway handrails.

The rental registry would be administered by the Building Department, which would provide data on individual properties to the Ordinance Enforcement Department, as needed.

Property owners would be required to include registry numbers in rental ads, with a fine of up to $1,500 for not doing so.

Other violations of the rental registry law could incur a minimum fine of $3,000 and a maximum of $15,000, with the fine reaching as high as $30,000 for a second violation within 18 months. Tenants of unregistered premises would also be subject to fines.

Under the proposal, new registration numbers would be required every two years and would cost $250. Property owners would have to file updates, at $25 each, whenever a new rental period begins or tenancy changes.

The board discussion drew residents both for and against the rental registry to the work session last week.

After further town board review, a hearing is expected to be scheduled for a date next month.

Parents of second-grade Springs School students asked the district to hire teaching assistants for their children’s classrooms at a school board meeting on Oct. 5. The request is the result of the fact that there are three second-grade classrooms this year while there were four sections of first grade last year.

The move has resulted in larger class sizes, with each section at 24 or 25 students instead of around 20. At the same time, while each first-grade classroom had a teacher and a teacher assistant, the second-grade classrooms do not have that second teacher.

“This is a really crucial year, and we’re asking you to put assistants in all three sections. We really need help,” Laura Petscheitis, a parent of a second grader and a fifth grader, told the school board.

Eric Casale, the school principal, said earlier in the meeting that he was working on a plan to schedule an existing staff member for a few extra periods per week in each of the second-grade classes. But, reached by phone after the meeting, Ms. Petscheitis said she didn’t think that would be enough “to cover the job that needs to be done.”

“These are kids who just learned to read and just learned to write,” she said. “They’re trying to do small group reading. If you’ve got one group with four or five students, the teacher also has to manage the rest of the classroom.”

Tony Long, another parent, also told the school board more support was necessary for second- grade classrooms. “It’s tough, it always comes down to money,” he said. “Please do what you can.”

Ilaine Bickley, a second-grade teacher, also asked the school board for more support. “This is my 18th year teaching here. One thing that hasn’t changed in 18 years is studies that show if there’s a gap after second grade it doesn’t go away,” she said, referring to students who fall behind in reading or math. The bottom line, she said, “is we need full-time assistants in the second-grade classrooms.” .

After the meeting, another parent, Stacey Pitts, whose oldest son is in Mrs. Bickley’s class, said she believes “there are just too many in one classroom” for one teacher. “My son tells me it’s busy. It’s a little hectic. Not in the sense that Mrs. Bickley isn’t doing her job . . . she’s just wonderful, but she’s just one person.”

 Mr. Casale pointed out last week that the second-grade classes are within the range the school board has identified as the target size during the most recent budget process — 25 students, even though class sizes were around 20 students in the past. He also said there was no room in the building, he said, to split the second-grade classes into four sections.

He added that he believes a floating teacher between the three classes will help. “If that doesn’t work then I will go back to the board, and the board will either stay with the course of action we have or they’ll look to make a change,” Mr. Casale said.

“It’s their budget. I can only make a recommendation. In an ideal world, I’d like to keep the student-teacher ratio as small as possible, but that’s not my call at this point.”