What they lacked in numbers, they made up for in volume. A dozen activists rallied in support of marriage equality outside Incarnation Lutheran Church in Water Mill on Tuesday afternoon, the day the Supreme Court began hearing arguments as it prepares to rule on gay marriage.

“We may finally be equal,” said the Rev. Dr. Katrina Foster, the pastor at Incarnation Lutheran Church and St. Michael’s in Amagansett. “We may finally have the same joys and responsibilities as our heterosexual counterparts.”

As passing drivers honked their horns, Ms. Foster stood with signs alongside her wife, Pamela, their 12-year-old daughter, Zoia, several friends and acquaintances, and a few complete strangers, who arrived from the upstate town of Brewster to attend the rally.

“We’re sitting on the edge of our seats,” said one of them, Scott Barber Weiser. He said he and his husband of 10 years, David Weiser, are “trying to stay positive at this point. We think it’s going to happen.”

Leo Revi, an artist from East Hampton who attended the rally, also said he thinks “it” – meaning a ruling that strikes down some states’ bans on gay marriage as unconstitutional – is going to happen.

“My gut feeling says yes. I think the scale has tipped,” Mr. Revi said. “I’ll give you a Biblical quote. ‘God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. That means we’re all the same in God’s eyes.”

According to The New York Times, a Supreme Court ruling on the issue is expected in approximately two months.

Jason Lee, the former Goldman Sachs banker accused of raping an Irish woman at an East Hampton summer house in 2013, was found not guilty Wednesday afternoon after a non-jury trial that spanned three weeks.

State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Kahn, in handing down her verdict, said that the absence in court of the accuser's brother, who refused to return from Ireland to testify, had deprived her of a key prosecution witness. Saying further that the burden of proof is always on the prosecution, she said it was a burden that had not been met.

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said "every effort possible" had been made to convince the brother to come, but that "he gave excuses . . . with respect to his education."

Mr. Lee had entered the courthouse with his wife, Alicia Lee, holding hands, as they had each day of the trial. She left the courthouse Tuesday by herself, however. He left 20 minutes later.

His mother, who had been seated in the courtroom, broke down in tears when the verdict was announced.

Andrew M. Lankler, Mr. Lee's lead attorney, had summarized his case on Tuesday, listing several inconsistencies between the accuser's April 14 testimony and statements she gave to police and a grand jury little more than 24 hours after the 2013 incident. He told Justice Barbara R. Kahn that each inconsistency in and of itself was enough to cast a reasonable doubt as to his client's guilt. "When you add them all up together," he said, she had to conclude that Mr. Lee was not guilty.

The courtroom in Riverside was filled to capacity the day before the verdict was handed down. Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota sat in the front row.

Mr. Lankler's summary lasted about 75 minutes, with Kerriann Kelly's, for the prosecution, running about as long.

The timeline presented by Ms. Kelly began with the Irish accuser identified as D.D., then 20, changing in a bathroom back into the dress she had taken off earlier, before plunging into a backyard pool at the house Mr. Lee was renting in East Hampton. It was around 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 20, 2013.

As Ms. Kelly told it, Mr. Lee, naked, tried to enter the bathroom. D.D. at first thought it was a joke, then began pushing back against the door, leaving a handprint on it. She was knocked backward, Ms. Kelly said, and one of her earrings popped off, ending up on the floor by the sink. Mr. Lee then forced himself on her, placing the back of his hand over her mouth.

She fought back, kneeing him in the groin. He fell off her, Ms. Kelly said, and left the bathroom. D.D. then removed her underwear and dress and changed into some gym clothes Mr. Lee had given her earlier. She testified earlier in the trial that the dress "was disgusting."

Mr. Lankler's timeline also began in the bathroom. There were towels on the floor, and D.D. was performing oral sex on Mr. Lee, he told the court. Mr. Lankler pointed to multiple saliva stains found on the khaki shorts Mr. Lee was wearing that morning as proof, though the prosecution contended that the saliva had come from his own hand, when he clapped it over D.D.'s mouth.

Both sides agreed that D.D.'s brother and her friend Fiona were also at Mr. Lee's rented house. They had met him and a friend of his, Rene Duncan, the night before at Georgica, a popular nearby restaurant and nightspot, and were invited back to the house to continue partying at closing time. Mr. Lee's wife was in the city that evening.

According to the prosecution, Fiona, who testified the same day as D.D., and the brother went looking for D.D., not knowing where she was, and found her exiting the bathroom. Ms. Kelly reminded the court of Fiona's description of that moment: "She looked shaken. She looked scared. There were tears in her eyes."

Mr. Lankler, in his summary, questioned how an attack of that nature could have gone undetected by Fiona and the brother, who did not testify. The two were either in the living room or the kitchen, he said, just a few feet away from the bathroom. Mr. Lankler also emphasized differences between the two women's testimony.

Defense and prosecution agreed that all five people -- D.D., Fiona, her brother, Mr. Lee, and Mr. Duncan -- were outside on the street in front of the house when police arrived. Mr. Lee had made repeated phone calls in an attempt to get a taxi or car service to take his guests back to Montauk, where the brother was staying. To Ms. Kelly, this was the beginning of a long chain of actions which, taken together, were those of a guilty man. In the view of Mr. Lankler, however, Mr. Lee was simply trying his best to get rid of three now unwelcome visitors.

Mr. Lee finally told the three that he would drive them back to Montauk, himself. He told them to get into his Range Rover, which was parked in the driveway, not knowing that around that same time, Mr. Duncan had called East Hampton Town police to report his own car missing, apparently stolen. He had loaned it to a friend of D.D.'s brother earlier that morning.

Officer Sarah Mortensen arrived at 6:34 a.m. Evan as Mr. Duncan demanded that his car be found, Mr. Lee told her the police were not needed. In Mr. Lankler's narrative, this was natural: Mr. Duncan and the brother had been having a loud argument on a quiet East Hampton street and Mr. Lee wanted to calm things down.

Officer Mortensen also saw D.D., her brother, and her friend. They approached her vehicle and the brother leaned over to tell her something had happened to his sister. Mr. Duncan and Mr. Lee were arguing in the street at this point, away from the squad car.

Officer Mortensen asked D.D. to get into the car with her, and when she looked up, Mr. Duncan was in the street alone. Mr. Lee was found two and a half hours later, curled up in the back seat of the Range Rover.

Ms. Kelly said he had seen D.D. get into the police car and panicked. He jumped into the car, and made numerous phone calls while there, exchanging a series of text messages with both friends and attorneys.

Mr. Lankler saw it differently. Mr. Duncan was shouting about his missing car, he said. The scene was chaotic. "So Mr. Lee removes himself from the dispute . . . the reality is, he removes himself from the situation, but he takes a vantage point where he can see," in the back of the Range Rover.

D.D., along with her brother and her friend, were taken to police headquarters. Mr. Lankler did not explain why Mr. Lee stayed in the car, and Mr. Lee did not take the stand in his own defense.

He remained in the car, phoning and texting, while police were searching the house and grounds. He was not thinking about covering up a crime, said Mr. Lankler; rather, he was concerned about the car. The attorney made a point of saying that one of the first lawyers Mr. Lee called was the same one who represented Lizzie Grubman in 2001 after she backed her car into a crowd outside a Southampton nightclub. (Though he did not mention his name, that attorney was his co-counsel, Edward Burke Jr.)

Ms. Kelly objected, and the comment was stricken from the record.

Mr. Lankler and Ms. Kelly also interpreted testimony by Tara Accavallo, a nurse trained to treat victims of sexual assault, differently. She spent four hours examining D.D., and testified that the woman was alternately shaking and crying throughout, up to 11 hours after the incident.

Ms. Kelly reminded Justice Kahn of Ms. Accavallo's statement that a vaginal bruise was consistent with rape, while Mr. Lankler stressed the nurse's admission that the bruise could have occurred during consensual sex.

Finally, there was the question of the peach-colored dress D.D. was wearing that night. Police did not find it at the house during their investigation; it turned up eight months later, in a box delivered by someone employed by the defense.

Mr. Lankler did not explain this. Instead, he criticized the police investigation.

Ms. Kelly, on the other hand, contended that Mr. Lee had withheld vital evidence, suggesting that he had kept the dress as a "trophy" -- yet more proof, she concluded, of a "consciousness of guilt."

"I can't account for the judge's thinking," the district attorney, Mr. Spota, said after the verdict was announced. "We disagree. That's all I can say."

 

A controversial proposal for Duryea’s Dock in Montauk — to remove all the structures on the site and replace them with a restaurant and an open deck with a total capacity of 353 patrons — was tabled on April 22 before the East Hampton Town Planning Board could consider it.

The applicants, a limited liability corporation based in Delaware, bought the two properties involved, on either side of the private Tuthill Road, about a year ago for about $6.4 million.

There are a number of problems with the proposal, according to JoAnne Pahwuhl, the town’s assistant planning director. For one, one of the properties lies in a residential zone. The new owners propose to demolish that structure and use the space for the parking and septic system the restaurant would require.

Ms. Pahwuhl warned that before that can happen, a determination must be made as to whether land zoned residential can be used for commercial purposes.

Also, the zoning board of appeals ruled in 1997 that the existing operation was not a restaurant but a take-out business for prepared food. A restaurant would therefore constitute a new business, Ms. Pahwuhl wrote in a memo to the planning board, and the town would have to determine the total sewage flow and parking needed before it could issue it a permit.

Sewage flow is a major concern for another reason. The flow proposed is double the shy-three-acre lot’s maximum capacity. Unlike the current business, which will reportedly operate through the coming season, the new restaurant would fall under Suffolk County Department of Health Services control.

The site is ecologically sensitive, Ms. Pahwuhl said, sitting as it does between Fort Pond Bay and Tuthill Pond. “The project appears very aggressive, given the sensitive nature of the site,” she concluded.

The owners will apparently do more homework before bringing the proposal back to the planning board, Reed Jones, its chairman, indicated on Friday.

The race for one seat on the Montauk School Board will see a longtime school board member face a newcomer who already holds a different elected role in Montauk.

Diane Hausman, the president of the school board, has held her seat for nearly 20 years. She has a background in business management as one of the co-owners of the Sands Motel. She was a member of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce for 15 years, including 11 years as an executive board member. Ms. Hausman, 60, has been a full-time resident of the hamlet since 1980. Her son attended the Montauk School, and she has a niece and a nephew attending the school now.

Her challenger, Carmine Marino Jr., is in his seventh year as a fire commissioner in the Montauk Fire District. As such, he said he has helped manage budgets and municipal systems. Mr. Marino, 59, is a 17-year resident of Montauk whose three children attended school locally. He is a retired civil engineer, having worked for more than 31 years with Suffolk County.

Ms. Hausman said she is running to retain her seat to continue helping the community. “My motivation is our students. I just love being involved with the school board,” she said. “I really believe in being part of the solution.”

Mr. Marino said he is running to increase transparency in school operations, to offer residents a choice in school board leadership, to make sure children have up-to-date technology, and to ensure the school facilities are in good condition. “I want to make sure the children’s needs are being met,” he said. “If you don’t have a good environment, you’re not going to learn.”

Ms. Hausman pointed to prekindergarten, character education, and English as a second language programs as points of pride that were developed over the past 20 years. She was also a board member during the school’s expansion in 2000.

Mr. Marino said he hopes to bring fresh ideas to the board. “I really want to be a school board member that is accessible to everybody and will be equally fair to everyone — the students, the staff, and the taxpayers,” he said.

In the Springs School District, Barbara Dayton is the sole candidate running for one seat on the school board. Ms. Dayton said she is running because she cares about the school and also about “the good will between the school and the community.” She is a 16-year resident of Springs, with a son at East Hampton High School and a daughter in seventh grade at the Springs School.

“I want to be there to serve my community. I’m happy to step up to do it,” Ms. Dayton said. “I’m open-minded and fair, and I just want to bring that to the table.”

In Sagaponack and Wainscott, incumbent school board candidates are not facing any challengers.

Joe Louchheim is running for a third term on the Sagaponack School Board. Mr. Louchheim, 50, is the publisher and owner of the Press Newspaper Group. He said he wants to ensure a smooth transition as the school moves from education in grades one through four to kindergarten through third grade. “My kids went there; I went there,” he said, “so I feel a real connection to the place.”

Kelly Anderson, who has worked as a special education teacher in Southampton for the past 20 years, is running for a second term on the Wainscott School Board. Ms. Anderson, 46, is a mother of two who previously attended the Wainscott School. She said she is excited that Wainscott is investing more in technology and personalized learning, but said she is concerned about the proposed affordable housing projects that may be built within the district’s borders. “I definitely have a vested interest in seeing the school continue to operate in the same way it has for generations,” she said.

In Bridgehampton, three incumbent candidates are also running unopposed to retain their seats. Ronald White, the current school board president, Lillian Tyree-Johnson, the current vice president, and Doug DeGroot, another board member, are up for re-election.

Mrs. Tyree-Johnson, 50, is finishing up her second term on the Bridgehampton School Board. She has her own bookkeeping company, is the president of Bridgehampton Community House, and is also active in the Bridgehampton Village Improvement Society. “We have really great things going on,” she said. “I’d like to see us continue, and keep the group together that’s making it stronger.”

Mr. White agreed, saying, “The engine is going very well-oiled right now. I’d like to continue to be a part of that.” Mr. White, 33, is the father of two children, one of whom attends the school. He works in the real estate industry. He is seeking a third term on the school board.

Mr. DeGroot, 57, is also running for a third term on the school board. The president of Hamptons Tennis Company, Mr. DeGroot has two children at the Bridgehampton School. He said he would like to remain involved both as a parent and as a taxpayer of Bridgehampton. “I feel like we have done a lot of good things, including really scouring the budget for savings for the benefit of our taxpayers,” he said.

The school board elections and budget votes will be held on May 19. A story on the candidates for the East Hampton, Amagansett, and Sag Harbor School Boards will appear next week.

A Springs man was arraigned Tuesday in Suffolk County Court in Riverside on nine felony charges, including burglary, grand larceny-auto theft, illegal weapons possession, and a grand larceny charge involving stolen credit cards.

According to East Hampton Town Police Capt. Chris Anderson, the arrest of Nicholas C. Gray, 27, ended a one-man crime wave that began on March 25 with the theft of a Jeep parked behind T & B Auto repair in Amagansett, and finished on April 6 with a burglary of a house on Marine Boulevard in Amagansett. Mr. Gray was arrested the next day by Suffolk County police, who took him into custody at the Lindenhurst Motel in Babylon, where East Hampton detectives learned Mr. Gray was staying.

In addition to allegedly stealing the Jeep, in which the keys had been left overnight, Mr. Gray was said to have stolen a 1997 Hyundai Elantra from the Amagansett train station, in which the keys were also left. That vehicle was later recovered in the parking lot at East Hampton Point on Three Mile Harbor Road. The Jeep was found parked at the Patchogue train station.

Marine Boulevard was a particular focus for Mr. Gray, the captain said, with two burglaries being reported on April 6, as well as a March 30 incident in which several credit cards were stolen from a work van parked on the boulevard by the ocean. Those credit cards were then used to make purchases, the captain said.

“He was developed as a suspect using outside information we received in addition to evidence left inside one of the stolen vehicles,” Detective Sgt. Greg Schaefer said Thursday. He said that when police went to 175 Marine Boulevard after receiving a complaint about a burglary on April 6, they discovered while canvassing the area that a second burglary had occurred at 189 Marine Boulevard. In one of those burglaries, the detective said, two collectible guns were stolen.

Detective Schaefer said the arrest of Mr. Gray occurred “without incident.” Mr. Gray was in possession of the two guns, one of which was functional and loaded.

Mr. Gray was initially arraigned in Central Islip on April 8 on weapons possession charges, and was then indicted by a grand jury on the nine felony counts on April 15.

Mr. Gray was re-arraigned following the indictment in the courtroom of New York State Supreme Court Justice Richard Ambro in Riverside on Tuesday, where he pleaded not guilty.

Bail was set by Justice Ambro at $40,000, which was not posted. Mr. Gray is being held in county jail in Yaphank.

Police are still investigating possible connections between Mr. Gray and other reported crimes. They believe that as summer residents return to East Hampton, more incidents may be uncovered. They ask that anyone with knowledge of related crimes call the detective division at 537-7575.

 

The future of East Hampton Airport, as may have been expected, remained up in the air this week. While the East Hampton Town Board voted unanimously last Thursday to adopt an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew and to extend that curfew from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. for planes in a “noisy aircraft” category, a coalition of aviation businesses filed suit on Tuesday, asking the court for an injunction against the laws’ enactment and demanding a jury trial. The suit alleges that the town’s rules are pre-empted by federal airport law and policy and violate the Constitution’s commerce clause.

In addition to the curfews, a limit of one takeoff and landing per week for noisy aircraft during the busy summer season, from May 1 through September, was adopted. The latter restriction was approved by a 4-to-1 vote, with Councilman Fred Overton, the sole Republican on the board, dissenting. Mr. Overton said he was not as convinced as other board members that the weekly limit would “bring as many benefits” as surmised. Instead, he said, it would “seriously inconvenience many airport users.”

  A full ban on helicopters at the airport from Thursdays through Mondays during the season had originally been proposed, but it was dropped when concerns were raised about its impact on neighboring communities.

The question of how much authority the town, as owner of the airport, has over operation of the facility has been central to discussions of the aircraft noise problem for years. Since last summer, the town board has, with an aviation attorney and several consultants, been engaged in data collection and analysis to develop legal footing for use restrictions. As part of the national air transportation system and a past recipient of federal airport grants, however, the town airport also falls under Federal Aviation Administration jurisdiction.

In a statement issued Tuesday, East Hampton Town officials said the lawsuit, which was anticipated, “is entirely predictable and contains no surprises.”

“We have, with surgical precision, defined precise restrictions that limit only the most disturbing operations at East Hampton Airport,” the statement said. The plaintiffs, it went on, “don’t admit that the restrictions are narrowly targeted to address the operations of most concern that generate the most disturbance — and that the restrictions will not affect almost 80 percent of the operations at the airport.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in federal court, include Friends of the East Hampton Airport; the Analar Corporation, a New Jersey helicopter charter company; Associated Aircraft Group, a Connecticut corporation, and Heliflite Shares, a Newark-based company, both of which offer helicopter charters along with fractional ownership shares; Liberty Helicopters of New Jersey, a charter service; Eleventh Street Aviation, a Delaware-based limited-liability corporation that owns a helicopter and a jet that is based at East Hampton Airport; Helicopter Association International, a trade group, and Sound Aircraft Services, an East Hampton business that provides fuel and other services at the airport.

The town acted after the suspension of several contractual agreements with the F.A.A. regarding airport operation, called grant assurances, as of the beginning of this year, and after receiving a letter from the F.A.A. stating that the town is also not subject to the federal Airport Noise and Capacity Act, which restricts the ability of airport owners to regulate certain aircraft.

The lawsuit takes the opposite stance, asserting that “in adopting the restrictions, the town has knowingly and purposefully transgressed the bounds of its extremely limited authority.” 

While citing federal law and the Constitution, town officials said, the complaint “conveniently forgets . . . the years of studies, analyses, public meetings, consultations with airport users, and deliberative process and town board deliberations that led to the three restrictions,” and the “the many, many steps that led to the town board decision that these restrictions are necessary — steps that included federally mandated flight paths for helicopters, voluntary flight paths for all aircraft, voluntary curfews, voluntary altitude requirements, and other measures.”

“All of these efforts proved ineffective,” town officials wrote in their statement. It goes on to say the town “has patiently waited” for the several grant assurance obligations to expire before acting. More than 300 people from across the East End attended a forum last summer held by the board to gather information about the impact of aircraft noise, and a large majority supported action by the town to address it.

“The town is fully prepared for this litigation and will vigorously defend its legal and constitutional right to impose reasonable, nonarbitrary, and carefully balanced restrictions. Plaintiffs raise issues that we are fully prepared to defend. The issues that plaintiffs raise have been litigated over and over again in lawsuits throughout the nation and airport proprietors have consistently won. While we anticipated this lawsuit, it is sad that these airport users are now going to force the town to spend scarce airport funds to defend these restrictions rather than working to make this airport the best it can be,” the statement said.

The town is taking an “incremental approach,” the statement noted, that will be re-evaluated and revised as necessary after the coming season, to make sure limits on use of the airport are “only as restrictive as necessary.”

Before casting his vote against the once-weekly round-trip limit, Mr. Overton said that restriction was perhaps going too far too soon, and that, though the town board has vowed to track the impacts of the new regulations and adjust them as needed, he was concerned that, politically, it would be impossible to repeal a restriction once it was put in place.

He acknowledged the work of the board and its advisory committees and consultants who compiled data on the airport and its noise issues, primarily from helicopters, as well as the effort to strike a balance between various interests such as residents seeking relief from noise and airport interests and users.

Mr. Overton also said he was concerned about the impact on nearby airports of diverting aircraft traffic from East Hampton and about lawsuits challenging the laws. While litigation over the adopted airport regulations may be a given, he said, omitting the one trip a week maximum could “reduce our litigation exposure.”

Members of the audience in favor of the new rules applauded after each vote last Thursday night and stood for a sustained ovation once the board had adopted all three.

The defense in the rape trial of Jason Lee rested its case Wednesday afternoon after calling only three witnesses. Closing arguments are scheduled for Tuesday morning at 10:30.

Mr. Lee’s attorney Andrew M. Lankler, who has expressed confidence throughout the trial that the prosecution would be unable to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, called Dr. Lone Thanning, a former Rockland County medical examiner; Frank Senerchia, a private investigator, and Jacques F. Guillois, the retired detective who led the investigation into the charges for the East Hampton Town Police. Mr. Lee did not testify.

Mr. Guillois was subpoenaed to appear for the defense on Wednesday.

Mr. Lankler had Mr. Guillois read from his notes from Aug. 20, 2013, on the telephone records of the alleged victim's friend, Fiona, who testified last week. According to Mr. Guillois's notes, Fiona had made a series of phone calls between 6:12 and 6:24 a.m. on Aug. 20, mostly to Moko Taxi in Montauk, and had also called the company at 4:21 that morning.

After the defense rested, a hearing was held over what Mr. Lankler claimed was a “missing witness,” the brother of the alleged victim. Mr. Lankler maintained that the brother should be produced, or that the lack of testimony from him should be held against the prosecutor. He said that the defense was willing to wait as long as needed for the witness to be produced. Prosecutors had said last week that the brother could not fly from Ireland to testify because he was taking finals in school and had signed a contract to go work for a firm in London.

Mr. Lankler challenged that explanation Wednesday and offered to show Justice Kahn the brother’s Facebook page, which he said shows him partaking in a marijuana celebratory event this week. “It is hot off the presses,” Mr. Lankler said. Justice Kahn declined Mr. Lankler’s offer.

Kerriann Kelly, one of the prosecutors on the case, told Justice Kahn that the district attorney’s office had done everything that it could to get the brother to come and testify. “He said he absolutely can not do it,” she said.

In any event, Ms. Kelly said, because the brother is a foreign national, she had no legal recourse.

“The people cannot compel his appearance,” Justice Kahn said. “Therefore I have no choice but to reject the motion.”

The two sides agreed to allow the brother’s statement to the police, as well as his grand jury testimony, into the record. 

This is how scarce elementary school teaching jobs are on Long Island: The Wainscott School District, which plans to hire one teacher, has received more than 1,200 résumés from candidates near and far.

Stuart Rachlin, the district superintendent, published the job opening on the Internet on March 22 and in local newspapers during the second and third weeks of April. Since then, more than 1,100 hopefuls have responded online and about 100 sent in applications by mail. The opening originates with the coming retirement of one of Wainscott’s two full-time teachers.

The influx has prompted Mr. Rachlin to form a hiring committee to help sort through the résumés and develop criteria by which the candidates can be screened and ranked. “Otherwise, it’s just an untenable situation,” Mr. Rachlin said during a meeting of the school board last week.

 Mr. Rachlin, who already has reviewed some 500 applications, said that so far the candidate pool “has not been with the same kind of rigor or experience” he has seen in the past. “A lot of candidates have a year of being a teaching assistant, but any experienced teacher is holding on to his or her job,” he said.

According to Julie Lutz, the chief operating officer of the Eastern Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services, “for elementary openings, I would say that the market is pretty flooded.” She noted that in the past four years more than 4,000 school positions had been eliminated in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, resulting in 2,180 layoffs.

As of Tuesday, the Online Application System for Educators, a statewide BOCES-run job database, listed just 292 openings in Long Island schools, with 57 elementary openings. “It’s a climate where you can really pick and choose the best of the best,” Ms. Lutz said.

Last year, the neighboring Sagaponack School District, which employs one part-time and two full-time teachers, needed a head teacher. Alan Van Cott, Saga­ponack’s superintendent, said the district received more than 600 résumés.

The person Wainscott eventually hires will teach a combined second and third-grade class. The job posting states that the district is seeking someone “with experience in small-group instruction or a multi-grade classroom.” The district also hopes to find a candidate who speaks Spanish.

Another hiring challenge, Mr. Rachlin said, is a state requirement that new teachers work with one who is more senior on such tasks as lesson plans. Since the Wainscott School has only two full-time teachers, such mentoring could require occasionally hiring a substitute, he said.

David Eagan, president of the Wainscott School Board, said last week he is optimistic about the search for a new teacher.“This is a sought-after job, and I think we’re going to end up with a fabulous candidate,” he said.

In the Springs School District, a plan to build a new parking lot, widen Ed Hults Lane, redo the drop-off and pick-up area, and more would not come cheap, but it boils down to one key word — safety.

On Monday, the Springs School Board voted to add a proposition to the May 19 ballot that will ask residents to approve the use of $2 million from a reserve fund for the project. It would not require additional taxes to be collected.

According to a presentation made Tuesday by the school’s architect, Roger Smith, the physical improvements to the campus would make it safer for families to drop off and pick up their kids, while also reducing congestion on the streets surrounding the school, such as School Street and Old Stone Highway. The $2 million would break down into $915,000 for the parking lot, about $256,000 for the drop-off and pickup loop, $480,500 for improvements to Ed Hults Lane, and about $349,000 to redo other athletic fields and play areas that would be affected by the changes.

The proposed 150-space parking lot and drop-off and pickup loop would accommodate more cars on school grounds, reducing the spillover to surrounding streets in the mornings and afternoons. It would replace a baseball field, but a new one could eventually be built elsewhere on the property, Mr. Smith said, noting that voters in 2006 had approved the sale of bonds up to $225,000 for such a purpose. That project never materialized because it was deemed too expensive at the time, he said.

Liz Mendelman, president of the school board, said she has seen “so many unsafe practices” on and around school grounds. “We owe it to the kids and the community to make it safer,” she said. “We impact our residents on School Street, we impact our residents on Old Stone Highway. The town has said you need to add more parking on the property. . . . At some point you have to step up to the plate and solve the problem.”

In a statement posted Tuesday to the school’s website, East Hampton Town’s police chief, Michael Sarlo, a Springs resident, expressed support for the project.

“The growth of the student population and the current safety and logistical challenges of the site are obvious and should be addressed in a meaningful way,” Chief Sarlo said. “The plan that has been created meets that goal and should be given careful consideration by the community.”

But the proposal has not won unanimous approval. Chris Tucci was among residents who opposed it on Tuesday night. Mr. Tucci told school officials that the district ought first to address space concerns in the school building itself. Two million dollars was a lot of money, he said, and it could be better spent on easing crowded classrooms.

“It is possible to start the expansion of the building and come back and do this basically at any time?” he asked. “The issue of space is imminent and critical.”

There is no formal plan to expand the school, though creating one has been discussed, and a facilities committee has been put together to explore the options with Mr. Smith, the architect.

Yesterday, some parents who had just dropped off their children said the traffic congestion depended on a number of factors, such as the time they arrived, the day of the week, and the weather.

“If you get here closer to when school starts, you wait a little longer,” said Sigrid Benedetti.

Erik Davidowicz, who lives close to the school, said there were indeed concerns about parking, but that people were generally “pretty good” about not parking where it’s prohibited. “If you’re here early, you usually have to park pretty far away,” he said. “If it rains, it’s usually worse.”

On Monday, the school board also adopted a proposed 2015-16 budget of $27.4 million, which will be presented to voters as Proposition 1 on May 19.

“This budget allows for the continuation of an educational program of excellence for our students while staying within the limits of the tax levy cap,” said John J. Finello, the Springs School superintendent, in a statement issued Tuesday. “We think we’re in pretty good shape, but it is a tight budget.”

Meetings of the East Hampton Town Trustees, the town’s original governing body created in 1686 by King James II through the Dongan Patent, are not broadcast on LTV, in contrast to those of the town board, many of the town’s other governing bodies, and the East Hampton Village board and zoning board of appeals.

The trustees’ meeting place, a small room at the Donald Lamb Building in Amagansett, is not conducive to video production: The nine trustees, their attorney, and their secretary are joined by those with business before the board, be they shorefront property owners, contractors, or, as has recently been the case, tenants of trustee-owned land at Lazy Point in Amagansett. These groups, which can number 30 or more, often overflow into the hallway.

The secretary makes an audio recording of the meetings, which is transcribed for the minutes that become the trustees’ official record. Soon, however, that may not be the only document. At the governing body’s April 14 meeting, Chini Alarco was among several Lazy Point residents who asked if they were allowed to record the meeting with their smartphones.

At the time, only four trustees were in the room, and Diane McNally, the group’s clerk, said she would discuss it with her colleagues when a majority was present. The minutes, she said, are available to the public. If the trustees met at the Town Hall complex, a prospect raised in recent months, video recording would be more realistic, but, she said, “with the amount of money available and the resources we have here, it would look very much like a home movie.”

Regardless of whether the trustees’ meetings are recorded by LTV personnel, “any meeting of a public body that is open to the public shall be open to being photographed, broadcast, webcast, or otherwise recorded and/or transmitted by audio or video means,” according to New York State’s Open Meetings Law.

“It’s very important that what our public officials do is transparent,” Ms. Alarco said Tuesday, “and that people know how they decide things.” While the trustees’ meetings are open to the public, “I have a feeling that there is not that commitment to be open,” she said.

If a member of the public wants to record the meetings, “as long as it’s not disruptive to the open meeting,” Ms. McNally said this week, “we’ll recognize that.” The clerk noted that government meetings tend to begin with an instruction to turn off cellphones and other electronic devices so as not to disrupt the proceedings. “We’ve turned a corner on that idea,” she said.

A public body, such as the trustees, can adopt rules as to the placement of equipment and audio or video technicians in order to maintain an orderly meeting, according to the law, but those in attendance are within their rights to record the proceedings.

“There’s no reason not to be filmed,” Ms. McNally said, “except it’s an inconvenience now. I’m either going to have nine trustees that get incredibly quiet — camera-shy — or you’re going to get people that want to come and grandstand. We’re all human, we make mistakes. We might say things we might not mean, or be taken out of context. But for the most part, there’s no reason not to be filmed.”

Accommodating audiovisual equipment for recording and broadcast by LTV, said East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, “is an issue for the trustees to decide. They’re an independently elected body. As the trustees would tell you, they prefer the town board not interfere with their work.” Nonetheless, Mr. Cantwell said, “If the trustees would agree, we’d be happy to work with LTV for a camera setup in their current meeting room, and if they wanted to move to another venue we’d certainly help them find that venue where they could be recorded, including Town Hall.”

The town board will do whatever is reasonable to accommodate the recording of trustee meetings, he said. “LTV’s coverage and therefore the public’s ability to watch public meetings . . . represent an opportunity for the public to participate, in their home, in local government. The trustees should be included in that.”

“I think it would be better for them to televise, I just think they don’t realize it,” Elaine Jones, an Amagansett resident who attends many of the trustees’ meetings, said. “It would be more open.”

While she agrees in principle, Ms. McNally advised that “the best thing is to make the effort to show up at the public meeting.”