A pilot project aimed at reducing the flow of nitrogen into surface waters would see the installation of a permeable reactive barrier at the head of Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton. 

A committee of the Suffolk County Water Quality Protection Review Program has awarded the town $125,000 for the effort, called the Green Reach Infrastructure Demonstration Nitrogen and Stormwater Abatement Project. The town board voted last month to authorize an agreement with the county for its implementation. 

The award must still be approved by the full County Legislature. Kim Shaw, the town’s director of natural resources, said yesterday that she expects to present the proposal to it next month. 

Ms. Shaw also sought permission from the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage most town waterways and bottomlands on behalf of the public, to implement the project. The trustees endorsed the plan at their April 14 meeting. 

The barrier, comprising trench boxes filled with ground-up woodchips, would be installed behind an existing bulkhead to intercept groundwater as it seeps into Three Mile Harbor. Its installation would require “minimal excavation,” Ms. Shaw told the trustees, and it would have a lifespan of 20 years or more. Should the county provide funding, installation would happen in the fall, she said. “This is one step in the right direction to intercept some of that groundwater,” she told the trustees. 

“This is the first time it’s been tried on Long Island that I’m aware of,” said Christopher Smith, a senior educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, with which the town has partnered to conduct nitrogen-mitigation efforts. But the technique, he said, has proven effective on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. There, he said, officials of the United States Geological Survey created an environment in which anaerobic bacteria transforms the liquid nitrogen coming through it into atmospheric, or gaseous, nitrogen. “You have to get an organic material in an anaerobic environment for these bacteria to thrive, just like in septic systems,” Mr. Smith said. Woodchips were chosen due to their longevity, availability, and the bacteria’s effectiveness. Those bacteria, he said, “chew up nitrogen, so to speak.” 

At Three Mile Harbor, water would be sampled before it reaches the barrier and after exiting it, the goal being to remove 20 to 50 percent of the nitrogen. “We’ll be able to determine efficiency, which matters a lot,” Mr. Smith said. 

A similar project in Accabonac Harbor, for which the town received a $150,000 grant from the state’s Department of State, has been held up by a permit from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which is pending, Ms. Shaw said. 

Excessive nitrogen contributes to a drop in oxygen levels, which promotes the growth of harmful algal blooms including red tide. When filter-feeding bivalves such as clams, mussels, and oysters consume those algae, they can accumulate toxins and be unsafe for human consumption. Consequently, waterways are closed to shellfish harvesting. 

In recent years, the trustees, in conjunction with Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University, have been monitoring waterways including Three Mile Harbor. In a March 30 presentation summarizing his 2014 findings, Dr. Gobler said that oxygen levels in Three Mile Harbor fell below the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s standard in August and early September, and both red tide and rust tide, which are not harmful to humans but are potentially lethal to marine life, were measured. 

“We know from the work the trustees have done with Dr. Gobler that the head of the harbor is a chronic problem,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said. “To the extent we can remove nitrogen from migrating into the head of the harbor, that’s important work.”

The Breakers Motel on Old Montauk Highway in Montauk is going back to the future, according County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, who owns the motel with his sister, Helen Ficalora. 

Mr. Schneiderman, who has reached the term limit and cannot run for re-election, is planning to renovate the motel’s restaurant, which has not been open for some time. But, he said Monday, it will be quite a different restaurant than those in Montauk that have some residents on edge.

“This is not going to be another Surf Lodge,” he promised. “Closing time will be 9:30, maybe 10, on weekends,” he said. 

The Breakers, which has 25 motel units in 12 buildings and several cottages that were once part of the old fishing village, was opened by his parents, who bought and merged three motels.

Mr. Schneiderman said he had yearned for many years to reopen the restaurant, which was called the Burgundy House Buffet. “You could smell the blueberry muf­fins,” he said, recalling childhood mornings.

The restaurant will have a new name (the shingles were painted burgundy back then) and the menu will be different. “Very healthy,” he said, “a lot of vegetarian dishes and seafood.” 

  The plans call for moving the kitchen to a downstairs space, fully renovating the dining area, and creating an ocean view. Because restaurants are permitted in hotel zones, officials have had no issue with its having been abandoned, he said. 

 Mr. Schneiderman said the Suffolk County Health Services Department had approved seating in the restaurant for 60 people after looking at photographs and postcards to determine what was in the old restaurant. There will be tables for 32 in the dining room, a new bar will seat 8, and the outside deck, already in place, will seat another 20 patrons. The septic system has been replaced with a modern one that can handle the additional flow.

According to a memo to the East Hampton Town Planning Board from Marguerite Wolffsohn, head of the Planning Department, the interior alterations can proceed without site plan approval. 

Mr. Schneiderman called the clientele at the Breakers eclectic, with a mix of Europeans, artists and writers, and families, many of whom return year after year.   

With fingers crossed, he is hoping for a July Fourth opening, although, given what he acknowledged was the difficulty of finding contractors at this time of year, he concedes that August might be more realistic.

There will be lunch and dinner served during the season and a continental breakfast. And, Mr. Schneiderman hopes, fresh blueberry muffins.

An April 22 meeting for parents of Latino students about New York State math tests has aroused controversy, with some saying they were misled by the East Hampton School District administration--and the East Hampton Teachers Association calling the meeting “racial profiling.” The district denies allegations that it called Latino parents to the meeting to persuade them to have their children “opt back in” to the test.

East Hampton’s test refusal rate was among the lowest on Long Island, with 90 percent of students participating in the English language arts exam and 85 percent in the math exam.

“It seems to me that the intent of this meeting is being clouded as getting kids to opt back in,” Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said. “The intent of the meeting was to clarify why a test is given. It wasn’t there to persuade students to opt in. . . . That’s a complete mischaracterization of the meeting.”

Mr. Burns said he had quite a few private conversations with parents of many backgrounds to talk about the importance of the testing.

Bob Tymann, the assistant superintendent, who attended the meeting, said it was not “unique to the testing.” District officials “felt that some clear information was necessary for our Spanish-speaking community, to explain what the tests are for. That’s what it was about. . . . We do the same thing when it comes to problems, for instance, with scheduling.”

Mr. Tymann said the meeting was called after the district noticed a spike in the number of test refusals coming in for the math test and saw that many were from the families of Latino students.

Nevertheless, at least two parents have questioned why only Latino families were invited, while a third said her son was called “lazy” for not taking the test.

Amid continued back and forth among parents and school personnel about the meeting, yesterday, the East Hampton Teachers Association released a statement that if the meeting was indeed as parents had described, “it shows a remarkable lack of judgment and sensitivity on the part of district officials to the needs of the school community.”

 It went on to read: “In every sense of the phrase, this was ‘racial profiling.’ Given the composition of the meeting that took place and the pressure applied solely to members of the Latino community, it is hard to conclude otherwise.”

One parent who attended the meeting said she had expected it would be simply a general meeting about the testing and was “really surprised that it was just Hispanic parents, and no Americans were there.” Speaking through a translator, Martha Euri, who has a daughter in eighth grade, said she received a phone call and a text message on April 22 informing her of the meeting. A refusal letter had already been submitted for her daughter.

During the meeting, which was conducted in Spanish, Ms. Euri said she was told that the tests were important for the children because “it would help them for college.” She said the confusion over the test caused a fight with her daugher, whom Ms. Euri then thought was lying when she said many other children weren’t taking the tests. According to parent accounts, some of their children were called to the office the next day to discuss taking the tests. Others were reported to have gone to the office to ask why it seemed that only Latino students were being talked to.

Another parent, Jesus Ibarra, also said he had been told the tests were important because they were related to college admissions. But Mr. Tymann said any discussion related to college was framed in the context that the tests measure preparedness for higher education.

“What they were told was that there are tests like the SAT that are going to be very important for college, and the question was would they opt out of that? It’s a question I ask all parents that I would have the discussion about test refusal,” Mr. Tymann said. “The Common Core and the new SATs that are evolving at this point will be very similar. . . . There should be some logic based on educational research of what it means to really be prepared for college.”

Mr. Ibarra also said he was actually told that students could not opt out of the tests. “It doesn’t count for anything for the kids,” he said. “They are losing time that they can do something else.”

“The American people did not have that meeting,” Mr. Ibarra said.

Also speaking through a translator, Monica Alexandra, a parent who did not attend the meeting, said she thought her son, a sixth grader, was a victim of “bullying” by the administration. She said he was called “lazy” for “not wanting to take the test,” although she did not identify who had said it.

Asked to comment on this, Mr. Burns said he did not think any administrator would speak to a student that way. “I’m not aware of a student called ‘lazy’. . . . I don’t even know what to say to that one. I would have a hard time thinking that would have been said.”

 Ms. Alexandra said her son “feels really sad because he is very smart and he is a good student. For them to call him lazy like that really hurt, because that’s not who he is.”

“We have to work together and move forward,” Ms. Alexandra said. “The racism has to stop. It feels like it was racist against the Hispanics, what happened here. It can’t go on. It has to change.”

A hearing will be held next Thursday at United States District Court in Central Islip on a bid by helicopter and aviation companies and a group called Friends of the East Hampton Airport to block the East Hampton Town Board from implementing an overnight curfew and restrictions on helicopters and other noisy aircraft.

The parties are plaintiffs in a suit challenging the legality of the new restrictions, which the board had hoped to have in place before the summer season. Aircraft that fall into a “noisy” category would be held to one takeoff and one landing per week from May through September, and the airport would be shut down from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., with extended curfew hours of 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. for the noisy planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which itself was sued in January by the same group of plaintiffs in an action related to the town’s new laws, is expected to support the plaintiffs in their demand for a temporary restraining order. If it is granted, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs, the new restrictions cannot be implemented, at least until theoutcome of the lawsuits is determined.

The National Business Aviation Association recently joined the action against the town. According to its website, the group is also “considering additional measures to ensure . . . reasonable and reliable access” to East Hampton Airport for its members and other aviators.

Those who are suing the town contend that East Hampton is bound by agreements with the F.A.A. to operate within certain parameters of federal aviation law and policy, and that the airport use restrictions fall outside of those bounds and of Constitutional precepts.

The January suit against the F.A.A. challenged that agency’s stance regarding the town’s obligations. According to the settlement of an earlier lawsuit against the F.A.A. by a local group called the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, the federal agency agreed to release the town from four contractual agreements, or “grant assurances,” after 2014. That, the F.A.A. said in a 2012 letter to former Congressman Tim Bishop, freed the town from complying with certain F.A.A. procedures in developing its own airport use restrictions to reduce aircraft noise.

In a letter to Judge Sandra J. Feuerstein, Lisa Zornberg of Lankler Siffert & Wohl in Manhattan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said an F.A.A. attorney had indicated that the agency “intends to support plaintiffs’ application” for the temporary restraining order. She asked that the lawsuits against the F.A.A. and the town be consolidated, as they address common legal issues, and said the F.A.A. had indicated it would not object. The town, she said, did not consent.

In a statement released this week, Kathleen Cunningham of the Quiet Skies Coalition called the F.A.A.’s decision to support a restraining order “unexpected and alarming.”

It suggests, she said, that the agency is unwilling to defend its settlement agreement with the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion, which underpins the town’s recent efforts to adopt airport access limits. The settlement, Ms. Cunningham said, “legally restored the town’s proprietary rights . . . and therefore is fundamental to the town’s plans to mitigate disturbing aircraft noise impacts for East End residents this season.”

“The East Hampton Town Board has adopted policy to protect the health, welfare and safety of the residents of the Town of East Hampton, as well as residents all over the East End of Long Island, as is its right and responsibility,” according to the Quiet Skies press release. “The board worked in a transparent and comprehensive way, which led to the adoption of policy to protect the public from the adverse health, environmental and economic impacts of aircraft noise, while supporting a safely maintained, recreational airport.  To go back to try to undo the foundation of these policies is the worst sort of big government interference. And, for whom?  Some out of state helicopter companies that are unhappy that they cannot have 24/7/365 access to our community.”

“The Friends [of the East Hampton Airport] are trying to compel the F.A.A. to go back and negate the settlement now that the town is rightfully and lawfully acting as airport proprietor because they don’t want any limits on their ability to make planeloads of money at our expense,” said former Town Councilman Pat Trunzo III, a Quiet Skies member, in the release.

Congressman Lee Zeldin, who replaced Tim Bishop and is the newly appointed vice chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation, wrote recently to the F.A.A., calling for the agency to stand by its previous assurances regarding the town’s rights to regulate the airport, provided no new federal airport grants were accepted.

“East Hampton is setting the stage for years of costly litigation by attempting to implement severe operating restrictions at HTO,” Steve Brown, the National Business Aviation Association’s chief operating officer, said in an article on the group’s website.

“East Hampton is part of a national system of airports, and operational restrictions like those under consideration present a threat to the nation’s air transport system that transcends local communities,” Mr. Brown and others had written in a letter to the town. “This is a critical element in the survival of our nation’s system of airports and one the town can expect will be vigorously defended.”

Affordable housing, particularly its scarcity, is among the most pressing issues facing the South Fork’s year-round residents. While revenues from the Peconic Bay Region Community Pre­servation Fund’s 2-percent transfer tax — $22.6 million in the first quarter and over $1 billion since its inception in 1999 — demonstrate a thriving real estate market, the shortage of housing available to low and moderate-income residents has broad implications.

In the five East End towns, where 60 percent of all housing units are seasonal, many young adults cannot afford to live in their hometown. The pool of potential recruits for emergency services is shallow, and employers have difficulty finding and retaining staff. Many houses are crowded with multiple families and residents, and labor coming from less expensive areas contributes to traffic and congestion.

Relief, however, may be on the way. Last week, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. introduced legislation that would authorize the five East End towns to create a work-force housing fund to help residents achieve homeownership. Residents at or under 120 percent of Suffolk County’s median family income would be eligible for the program. At present, according to a release issued by Mr. Thiele’s office, that figure is $130,800.

The fund would provide no-interest loans of up to $250,000 toward the purchase of a home, restrictions allocating existing housing stock for work-force housing, and housing counseling for residents.

A $10-per-square-foot fee on residential construction in excess of 3,000 square feet would finance the fund, the creation of which would be subject to a mandatory referendum. That surcharge — $40,000 for a 7,000-square-foot house, for example — would be included in a building permit fee.

Loans for affordable housing would be repaid to the fund upon the resale of a house and in an amount equal to the proportion of the loan to the original purchase price. As an example, if the fund provided a $200,000 loan toward the purchase of a $600,000 house, and the house was subsequently resold for $900,000, one-third of the resale price, or $300,000, would be paid back to the town and returned to the fund.

“I’m trying to move this in the Assembly between now and June,” Mr. Thiele said on Tuesday. “I think there’s a lot of community support.”

A similar effort several years ago, he said, was derailed by the financial crisis that began in 2008. “This is a bill I had worked on for several years,” he said. “We had had some hearings in the district, generated a report, and did a lot of research.” Today, he said, “Judging by the local real estate market, the recession is behind us. We’re seeing extremely high and escalating real estate prices. I’ve revived this and am trying to move it forward.”

The proposed legislation, said Tom Ruhle, East Hampton Town’s director of housing, “would dovetail nicely” with the town’s Community Housing Opportunity Fund, the December 2014 implementation plan for which recommends creation of a “substantial down payment assistance program” to assist first-time homebuyers in purchasing open-market properties. “Affordable housing is a huge problem out here, which I think everybody knows,” Mr. Ruhle said. “People can’t afford to rent and they can’t afford to buy. It’s a crisis.”

Adding a work-force housing fund, he said, would help to alleviate that crisis. Speaking for himself and not on behalf of the town government, he also said, “I would personally love to see the expansion of the 2-percent land transfer tax to include provisions for affordable housing.”

Mr. Ruhle was not alone. Though none of four real estate professionals on the South Fork responded to a request for comment, Mitchell Pally, the chief executive officer of the Long Island Builders Institute, offered the same suggestion. While the association is formulating a response to Mr. Thiele’s proposed legislation, its East End committee has already voted to oppose it.

“The concept of a work-force housing fund is essential and strongly supported,” Mr. Pally said on Tuesday. “However, we don’t believe the way the funds are being raised is the right way to do so. We believe this is an issue that permeates throughout the entire community, and therefore everybody in the community should be part of the solution, if funds have to be raised.” Affordable housing, he said, “is a societal problem, not just caused by people who are building larger homes.”

“Any time you talk about a fee . . . perhaps in the real estate and building industries, there may be some resistance,” Mr. Thiele conceded. “But it’s necessary to create the balance in the community as far as housing opportunity.”

While a committee tasked with updating the Community Housing Opportunity Fund’s implementation plan recommended an option to fund affordable housing through the C.P.F., the town board asked that that option be removed from the plan, said Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, liaison to the C.P.F. advisory board.

“In a real estate market where the median home price is nearly $1 ­million, extraordinary efforts must be made to provide the diverse housing options that mean schoolteachers, firefighters, plumbers, and more can live in the community where they work,” Ms. Overby said. “We are a richer community if we are a diverse community. However, C.P.F. was voted on by the public several times for preservation of open space, preservation of historic properties, purchase of recreational opportunities, and preservation of farmlands and farming. A change in C.P.F. would need to be voted on by the public that ushered in the original legislation, in my opinion.”

The danger of allowing C.P.F. money “to be ‘subdivided’ is that other truly meaningful projects might have their hands out as well,” Ms. Overby said, “and where does one stop when all might be worthy?” The C.P.F., she said, “should be true to its origins, and options such as the one proposed by Assemblymen Thiele should be considered.”

Sag Harbor’s school board race has five candidates vying for three seats. Two incumbents, Chris Tice and Tommy John Schiavoni, are being challenged by James Ding, James Sanford, and Stephanie Bitis.

Ms. Bitis, 52, recently began working in real estate sales after a career with CBS managing its flagship radio station. She has two children attending Pierson Middle School, who, she said, have had “a childhood in a school environment that was perfect.” She said the most pressing issue facing the school board is the potential budget strain resulting from the wave of students who have refused to take the state exams in math and English.

“I want to give back,” Ms. Bitis said. “I want to see our district grow and continue to provide the education, environment, and foundation for our young people to go out in the world and make a difference. Our main issue will always be how to improve, add, and further their education with limited resources in an ever-changing and demanding world.”

Mr. Ding, 64, is a 15-year resident of Sag Harbor who works as a consultant after spending 20 years running a small business in Southampton. He has also taught industrial arts in public schools. He said he would like to see more focus on education in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, as well as better collaboration between the students and the adult community. 

He also said he believes that tax increases in recent years are unsustainable. “Unfortunately, what’s going to happen is, those who were fortunate enough to find hidden gems are going to be forced to move . . . you just can’t afford to live here anymore.”

Mr. Sanford, 46, is the owner of Sag Harbor Advisors, a company he founded after a 20-year career on Wall Street. He has been a Sag Harbor homeowner since 2005 and a full-time resident since 2010. Mr. Sanford, who has a son attending school in Sag Harbor, cited a positive correlation between parent involvement and student achievement as one reason he is running for the school board. He also supports keeping class sizes small and believes it’s time to find creative solutions in the budget process.

“We need to focus on the parts of the budget that are growing at multiples of inflation,” Mr. Sanford said. “We can’t be in a situation where line items that don’t affect a student’s education are allowed to grow like that.”

Ms. Tice is the Sag Harbor School Board’s vice president. She is in her fifth year on the board; two of her three children attend Sag Harbor schools. A real estate sales professional, Ms. Tice, 54, also has experience as an executive at Sony Online Entertainment and American Express. She became a part-time resident of Sag Harbor in 1965 and has lived there year-round since 2004. She said she was proud of what the district has accomplished in recent years, including expansion of STEM education and the addition of the International Baccalaureate program, and called herself an advocate for transparency.

“I am seeking re-election because I’m passionate about public education,” Ms. Tice said, “and with my experience and commitment I’m confident that I will continue to serve the students, families, and taxpayers of this district well.”

Mr. Schiavoni, 51, is running to retain his seat on the board after being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2014. He was born and raised in Sag Harbor, and said he wanted to continue “to give back to a community which has given me so much.” He works as a social studies teacher in the Center Moriches School District, and serves as the school board’s legislative liaison and liaison to the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. He supports expanding the I.B. program and the potential purchase of the Stella Maris Regional School building.

“I am running for school board in order to maintain or improve upon the academic programs in the Sag Harbor School District in a financially sustainable way,” Mr. Schiavoni said in an email.

Volunteers from five fire departments fought a barn fire north of Water Mill on Sunday morning.

The alarm was reported just before 5 a.m. at a property on Little Noyac Path. The Bridgehampton Fire Department, whose district includes Water Mill, called for additional equipment and personnel from the East Hampton, Southampton, Sag Harbor, and North Sea fire districts.

As of 6:30 a.m., firefighters and other emergency service providers remained at the scene. There were no reported injuries. The barn was unoccupied, with no animals inside.

The Village of Sag Harbor is in the midst of a building boom. Houses in its historic district are being knocked down or added on to, their character altered. Residents have taken notice and are asking for changes in the village code.

“The momentum of objection to it has been building, and I think I happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on Main Street,” said Frank Greenwald, an architect and investor in a project at the center of the battle between old and new. “It seems, I’ve been told, I am the poster child for expansion problems in the Sag Harbor Village . . . in terms of community opposition.”

Mr. Greenwald’s limited liability corporation, 19 Indian Hill, bought a two-story, 1,658-square-foot house on a narrow 9,909-square-foot lot at 295 Main Street, which is south of the business district and across the street from Canio’s Books, about two years ago.

The house was for the most part torn down after permits were issued in September for the renovation of what was left standing, as well as for a two-story, 2,720-square-foot addition, a 240-square-foot pool house, and a swimming pool.

At issue are property setbacks and the village’s “sky plane,” or pyramid, regulations, which limit height.

Because part of the house was built 100 years ago, its setbacks and its peak were considered legal even though they do not conform to current zoning. Construction got under way.

Although permits were in place, on Dec. 31, after Tom Preiato, a former East Hampton Town building inspector, took over that post in the village, he issued a stop work order on the premise that the house had been demolished and that the scope of the project was reconstruction rather than renovation. A subsequent hearing was held in March by the Sag Harbor Zoning Board of Appeals, however, which decided that Mr. Preiato had been incorrect.

“The setbacks, whether legal under current zoning regulations or pre-existing and nonconforming, will remain the same as will the pre-existing and non-conforming pyramid violation,” the zoning board wrote in its decision, going on to point out that “demolition and reconstruction are, unfortunately, not defined terms in our village code so we base this conclusion on the ordinary definitions of these terms and our common sense review of relevant facts.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Preiato said he didn’t have “a full grasp” of the code at the time of the stop-work order. “The zoning board did what they had to,” he said, adding that there is a “weakness in the code because it does not have a definition of a demolition.”

Such weaknesses in code are at the center of a petition from Save Sag Harbor signed by 961 residents and neighbors. The petition calls for the village to take action “to ensure that the distinctive and historical character of the historic district of the village shall not be injuriously affected.”

Those who signed the petition asked the village to “put an end to the unprecedented and damaging flood of approvals, variances for development, and code violations that are threatening to destroy the historic fabric, scale, and character of our village!”

By chance, the petition was presented to the village board on April 14, the same night neighbors of 295 Main Street pleaded with officials for help.

“This is not a renovation. This is a joke. The peak is the only thing left of the renovation,” said Carol Olejink, who lives in a family house at 291 Main Street, which has deeds going back to 1856. “Excuse me, common sense says this is a new home.”

The houses in the area have always been close together. In fact, she allowed workers onto her property at the start of the project so that work could be done on 295’s foundation, which, in places, is between 9 inches and 3 feet from her property line. It’s a decision she regrets because part of her yard caved in during the work.

Known as the Tomato Lady, Ms. Olejink enjoys her garden and said the new house looms over it, ruining her comfort zone. “Once you knock it down you should have to go for setbacks,” she said.

While construction continued after the Z.B.A.’s decision, work has again stopped after questions were raised about the height of the house’s peak. “To me, it appears to be high. I’m not going to say how high,” Mr. Preiato said. On Friday, he reached an agreement with Mr. Greenwald for work to cease until a new survey is produced.

Mr. Greenwald maintains he has done nothing wrong. “It’s obviously in violation of the pyramid law but the existing house was. There’s no increase in the level of nonconformity,” he said.

Mayor Brian Gilbride, who had expressed displeasure that the original application had gone through without thorough scrutiny, said he understood the Z.B.A.’s decision. “If this is a flawed part of the code, we need to look at it,” he said.

The mayor and building inspector’s stance that the code needs another look is one Mr. Greenwald agrees with. “I do think the Village of Sag Harbor code needs to address renovation and restoration and reconstruction of all the houses in the village,” he said. But in the meantime, he wants to get back to work. “It’s a great old house. It will be a beautiful addition to the village if we could ever get to redo it properly.”

With the annual influx of summer renters about to begin, East Hampton Town’s Ordinance Enforcement Division is cracking down on homeowners who would disregard the zoning-based laws that prohibit shared houses.

The town put the kibosh on several potential group rentals recently after a two-month investigation. A search of websites, newspaper ads, and other outlets has resulted to date in a total of 85 charges of zoning code violations at four properties. Eight individuals or corporations were cited.

Under the town code, operating a share house is defined as “the selling of shares or establishment of tenancy in which individuals obtain rights of occupancy in individual bedrooms, or rights to occupy all or part of the residence on particular days of the week, specified weekends or other similar terms.” According to a release from the town, it “severely impacts neighbors and leads to complaints of environmental impact from litter, debris, and septic overload, as well as issues relative to excessive noise and vehicle parking.” 

Aaron Monet and John Shub each face 10 charges of selling shares for a house at 25 Old Montauk Highway in Amagansett, where a two-car garage, according to Betsy Bambrick, East Hampton’s director of ordinance enforcement, “had been converted to a fully functional cottage for two people without the benefit of a building permit, subsequent inspections, or certificate of occupancy.” The garage conversion produced five separate zoning-related charges.

Allen Salkin and Nicholas Contos received 10 counts each for offering shares at 55 Hand Lane in Amagansett, and Bernice Papia was charged with 10 counts for a prohibited use in a single-family residence: selling shares, excessive turnover, and partial occupancy of 32 Atlantic Street in East Hampton. A limited-liability corporation, 23 Atlantic, was similarly charged as owner of the property. 

Sophie Wilhelm and 145 Neck Path L.L.C., the corporate owner of a house at that address, also face 10 counts apiece for share house violations. All the defendants are scheduled for arraignment on May 18.

“It is our intention to closely monitor these and other locations over the summer and take appropriate action should there be further violations of the Town Code,” Ms. Bambrick stated in the release. 

“Tackling illegal occupancy and excessive turnover in summer rentals remains a high priority for the Town of East Hampton,” added Supervisor Larry Cantwell. “I hope this latest action by our Code Enforcement Department will send a strong message to others who may feel tempted to violate our town code.”

When Catherine Mottola-King erected a Little Free Library on her front lawn — described on the website of the organization promoting them as a “ ‘take a book, return a book’ neighborhood gathering place” — she didn’t expect the overwhelming response she got after announcing it on Facebook.

People from all over East Hampton left comments lauding the idea and expressing hopes that it would grow.

“I had seen them around and I thought it was fun,” said Ms. Mottola-King, a school librarian in Wantagh who lives in the Clearwater section of Springs. She is home on maternity leave, and decided that, with some time on her hands, now was the time to set up the book-borrowing station.

With the help of her husband and a friend, who built the little schoolhouse-style box on a post, she installed it on her front lawn at 17 Rutland Road and stocked it with extras from her own collection of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books.

On Tuesday morning, looking out the window while having breakfast, she had her first “customer,” she said — a jogger who stopped to make a selection, then sprinted away, book in hand.

The Little Free Library movement began in Wisconsin in 2009 when a son built a schoolhouse model in tribute to his mother, a former schoolteacher, and set it up with a sign saying “Free Books.” The concept grew, with a goal of promoting literacy and a love of reading by erecting 2,510 tiny libraries, one more than the number of free public libraries supported by Andrew Carnegie at the turn of the century. A nonprofit organization was established, and by January of this year, it was estimated that there were at least 25,000 Little Free Libraries all around the world. 

After she registers with the group, Ms. Mottola-King’s library will add to the number, and be adorned by a plaque. A map of all the Little Free Libraries, and tips for establishing one, can be found at littlefreelibrary.org.

Ms. Mottola-King’s 3-year-old son, Nathaniel, “couldn’t be more excited about it,” she said, helping his mom with “our own little library” and feeling like “we’re real librarians now.”