New initiatives and an increased focus at Town Hall on ordinance enforcement and reducing the quality-of-life problems that result from chronic violation of East Hampton’s zoning, safety, and other codes appear to have had an impact in 2014, according to a recent annual report on the work of the  town’s Ordinance Enforcement Department.

The number of investigative cases opened last year was 1,590 — almost 30 percent more than in 2014, Betsy Bambrick, the director of code enforcement, said at a Jan. 20 town board meeting. There was an effort, she said, to have ordinance officers “go out in the field and be more proactive,” which resulted in 22 percent more cases opened last year pursuant to a patrol, versus cases driven by a citizen’s complaint.

Officers’ use of laptops in the field, affording them access to property records and the like, and a “real-time” online complaint-logging system launched in May helped create a “marked increase” in cases dealing with housing, parking, contractor licensing, and permits, Ms. Bambrick said.

And, she said, there was a huge increase in the number of cases regarding illegal signs — from two cases opened in 2013 to 137 last year.

The number of cases involving alleged violations of the town’s housing code jumped by 57 percent, from 121 in 2013 to 190 last year.

While housing code violations occur year round, due to the proliferation of online sites such as Airbnb advertising short-term vacation rentals, alleged violations of the town’s laws against “excessive turnover” at rental houses became a big issue for the ordinance department. “Housing is always a priority for the department,” Ms. Bambrick said. 

Also on the increase was enforcement of alleged noise violations, after ordinance enforcement officers were issued and trained to use noise meters, which were previously operated primarily by the police. In 2013, there were three noise complaints investigated stemming from commercial establishments and six at residences. Last year, the department investigated 17 complaints of excessive noise at commercial sites, and 21 complaints of noise at residences.

In April of last year, Ms. Bambrick said, the department pursued an “unlicensed contractor initiative,” checkingo see if contractors required to have town home improvement contractor licenses had obtained them. Six unlicensed contractors were ticketed, she said, and 21 notices of violation were issued for various infractions at job sites, such as for zoning violations or a lack of safety fencing or required permits.

There was total compliance, Ms. Bambrick said, with all of the offenders notified of violations correcting the issues without tickets having to be issued, part of the reason the department issues notices before writing citations.

Overall in 2014, offenders in 595 ordinance enforcement cases rectified situations voluntarily, without being formally charged.

Of town or zoning code violation cases that went before the justice court last year, Ms. Bambrick said, 388 resulted in charges, a 45-percent increase over 2013.

The Ordinance Enforcement Department is now cataloging its efforts and issuing public reports weekly. Year-to-date, as of Jan. 15, 53 cases have been opened, and 20 notices of violation issued.

“I think we’re making some progress here,” Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at the Jan. 20 meeting. But, he said, “we’re always striving for better.” With increases in staffing and training for Ordinance Department personnel, he said that he expects similar strides this year, and Ms. Bambrick agreed.

East Hampton Town is moving to acquire, through eminent domain, disputed beachfront on Napeague. Ownership of the beach is at issue in a lawsuit against the town and the East Hampton Town Trustees by a number of individuals and private property owners who object to driving and parking on the beach in front of their houses and neighborhoods. The lawsuit challenges  public ownership of the beach as well as the right of the public to access it. 

The town will seek to condemn the beach portion of all the properties in question, according to Michael Rikon of the Manhattan law firm Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon & Houghton, who was hired to lead the effort in a Dec. 18 vote of the town board.

According to New York State law, municipalities may pursue ownership of private land, with just compensation, for a “public purpose.”

“Here there’s a very clear public purpose,” Mr. Rikon, who specializes in eminent domain law, said recently, “allowing the public to use the beach for a public purpose.” He added that there was “no question in my mind.”

 In its resolution to hire Mr. Rikon, the town board stated that “the issue of title and the public’s continued access to town’s beaches is of paramount importance to the town and the trustees. . . .”

The property owners’ lawsuit claims that the town trustees ceded approximately 4,000 feet of the Atlantic Ocean beach between Napeague Lane and Napeague State Park to the east in an 1882 deed to Arthur W. Benson, who had bought much of Montauk. That deed contained language reserving a right for townspeople to use the beach to fish. The lawsuit challenges the continued existence of that agreement and also claims that the vehicular use of the beach for recreation exceeds that exemption.

A ruling in the lawsuit in September by Suffolk Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo dismissed the ownership claims to the beach by some of the plaintiffs. He refused to summarily dismiss other owners’ claims, however, pursuant to deeds that describe their property boundaries as extending to the ocean’s mean high water mark, as well as to deeds with property bounds that are in question.

Mr. Rikon said the town would pursue condemnation of the beachfront portions of all of the properties without regard for the outcome of the lawsuit, which is ongoing.

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said recently that pursuing eminent domain provided a “window of opportunity” to cement public access to the beach. Before the town can move forward with condemnation, however, state law requires a public hearing to be held.

The snowstorm that crippled the South Fork this week has left damage in its wake, including the collapse of the roof on the former East Hampton Bowl building in East Hampton Village. 

Part of the vacant building's barrel vaulted roof caved in Wednesday night, and it will likely be condemned, according to Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., who had spoken with Ken Collum, the village code enforcement officer. Mr. Collum made sure that all the power to the building is off so that it is not a further hazard. A fence already surrounded the property to keep people away from it. 

"It's an old roof, and I think the latest storm just took its toll," Mayor Rickenbach said. "The weight was so much that the structure couldn't handle it."

No one was inside at the time. 

The building has been empty since East Hampton Bowl closed its doors after 54 years in June 2013. It was likely to be torn down anyway. A sign out front said the property was for lease and that a new building could be built to suit. Mayor Rickenbach said the new owner has been working with the village on plans for a new retail space. 

Much of the Nathaniel Baker House on Town Lane in Amagansett, which is owned by the actor Alec Baldwin, has been torn down as part of a substantial renovation.

The house, at Stony Hill Farm, dates to the early-18th century. It originally stood on the north side of Main Street, just east of what is now Gansett Green Manor, according to Robert Hefner, a historic preservation consultant and neighbor. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller spent a summer in an accessory structure on the property.

Originally a saltbox design, the house was made into a full two-story house in the 1790s by Samuel Schellinger, a carpenter and millwright who built its Federal period stairway, Mr. Hefner said in an email.

Harry and Mary Hamlin purchased the house in 1913 and moved it to Town Lane. Joseph Greenleaf Thorp, the architect who designed the Grey Gardens estate in East Hampton that was later made famous by Jacqueline Kennedy's cousins, Edith Bouvier Beale and Edith Bouvier Beale, known as Big and Little Edie, remodeled the structure into a country house that was the centerpiece of the Hamlins' farm.

Mrs. Hamlin was a collector of early East Hampton houses, Mr. Hefner said. She moved Rowdy Hall and Gansett House to the green on Egypt Lane, and owned and operated the Hedges Inn. She was also an important figure in the preservation of Mulford Farm and Home, Sweet Home. She sold Stony Hill Farm to Jeffrey Potter in 1949.

Mr. Baldwin and his then-wife, the actress Kim Basinger, bought and enlarged the Nathaniel Baker House in 1996. The late Mr. Potter's son, Job Potter, whose family owns a parcel adjacent to Mr. Baldwin's, would not comment on the present state of the Nathaniel Baker House.

According to some reports, Mr. Baldwin put the property up for sale last year and purchased a house in East Hampton. That was not the case, according to an Amagansett real estate broker who is familiar with the properties in question, but asked not to be named. In fact, he said, Mr. Baldwin had bought a house on Fresh Pond Road in Amagansett, but soon put it on the market again.

"He loves that house too much" to sell it," the broker said of Mr. Baldwin and the Nathaniel Baker House. "I know that for a fact. The fact that he has been doing renovations, which he'd been planning for quite some time, is indicative of that. He is improving it to continue to enjoy it."

Update, 11:30 a.m.:  A driver for the East Hampton Town Highway Department was plowing and sanding Old Montauk Highway Monday morning around 6 when he saw flames shooting out from the truck. A few minutes later it was engulfed.

The Montauk Fire Department was dispatched to a truck fire near Washington Drive, and did not discover it was a town vehicle until the first firefighters arrived, according to Vinnie Franzone, the first assistant fire chief, who was the first chief on the scene. Jim Nigro, the driver, was already out of the truck, unscathed. 

Stephen Lynch, the town highway superintendent, said he's not sure what caused the six-wheel truck with a sander-spreader on the back to catch fire. Mr. Nigro "heard a pop" and then saw flames, before he jumped out and used his fire extinguisher. "It didn't do anything," Mr. Lynch said.

The truck, one of the newer ones in the fleet, had only been in use about an hour Monday morning when the fire broke out, Mr. Lynch said. It was destroyed. "Nobody got hurt that's what's important. A truck can be replaced," he said.

Once the engine arrived, the fire was not difficult to get under control, Chief Franzone said. "Because it was a sander, the only thing that could burn on it was the cab," he said, adding there was no threat of explosion because it took diesel fuel. 

Mr. Nigro was among the many highway employees who had reported to work at about 3:30 a.m. to plow and sand as another winter storm dropped 2 to 4 inches on the area. The Highway Department brought a payloader to remove snow from a parking lot on Washington Drive, and then placed the charred truck in the lot.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nigro was quickly given another truck so he could continue sanding Montauk streets before students headed to schools, which were on a two-hour delay, Mr. Lynch said. 

Original, 6:37 a.m.: An East Hampton Town Highway plow truck reportedly was destroyed when it erupted in flames while it was being used in Montauk on Monday morning. 

The Montauk Fire Department was called to Old Montauk Highway and Washington Drive just after 6 a.m. It was located in the middle of the road and fully engulfed when the first chief arrived. 

Due to the hazardous road conditions that included freezing rain, snow accumulations, high winds and low visibility, firefighters were told to use extreme caution while responding. The chief ordered all volunteer firefighters to report to the firehouse, and not to bring personal vehicles to the scene. He also wanted only one engine and a tanker truck to respond. Firefighters were able to douse the flames, and the tanker truck was sent home before it arrived.

No one was injured.

The fire chief called for a tow truck to remove the burned truck from the middle of the road. 

Stephen Lynch, the East Hampton Highway Superintendent, was heading to Montauk to assess the situation. 

Check back for more information as it becomes available.

With a dangerous, icy commute expected Monday evening, East Hampton Town police are urging residents and workers to get off the roads as early as possible.

"I think the roads will be terrible," Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo said Monday afternoon. "As all this snow melts and sits on the roads, as we head toward 5 p.m., it will freeze and become a sheet of ice. No amount of salt or sand is going to stop it from becoming very dangerous," he said.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone issued a travel advisory Monday afternoon for all county roads, decreasing the speed limit to a maximum of 45 mph unless a lower speed limit is posted.

The National Weather Service issued a flash freeze warning for all of Long Island, after the mix of snow, rain, freezing rain, and sleet left the roads slushy. While highway crews in East Hampton and Southold tried to clear the slush off and lay out sand and salt, the roads will still ice over as the temperature plummets to the 20s, and even the teens in some areas, on Monday evening. Additional snow accumulations are expected on top of the ice.

"I think it's going to be treacherous," Stephen Lynch, the Town highway superintendent, said Monday morning. He said workers would be out later on Monday to sand and salt, again.

The road conditions were already proving dangerous. Just before 2 p.m., a 14-wheel truck skidded off the road into the woods near Cedar Street. The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association and the East Hampton Fire Department responded to remove at least one person from inside. 

Flooding is part of the issue. "There's flooding all over because a lot of the drains are unopened because they are full of snow," Mr. Lynch said. In Bridgehampton, the portion of Butter Lane under the train trestle was flooded, and at least one car got stuck as it tried to go through the water Monday morning.

Schools canceled after school activities so that students could get home early. The East Hampton YMCA RECenter also canceled its afternoon and evening classes. The Wellness Foundation's Potluck Dinner and "Souper Bowl" contest, scheduled for Monday night at the East Hampton Middle School, was called off, too. The Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee also postponed its meeting, rescheduling it for next Monday.

In Southampton, Town Hall and other government officers were to close early at 3 p.m. The Amagansett Library and East Hampton Library also will close early at 4 p.m.

Looking ahead, the town board work session that was scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. has been postponed to Wednesday at 10 a.m. due to the "severe icing" that is expected on the roads Tuesday.

Never underestimate the power of three women — and three plastic snow shovels.

During pickup at Springs School on Friday afternoon, Jennifer Haagen saw students walking home in the street, forced to wade through foot-high water at the corner of Gardiner Avenue and Springs-Fireplace Road.

And while driving home on Sunday night, she noticed that the sidewalks in front of Springs School still remained densely packed with snow.

Though two of her own children, ages 10 and 11, are eligible for bus transportation since they live more than a mile from Springs School, as a Springs alumna and former walker herself, she saw it as her duty to ensure a clear passageway for other children.

On Sunday evening, after posting on Facebook, Ms. Haagen, Linda Kernell, and Maria Reininger, all Springs parents, agreed to meet in the morning. Ms. Haagen and Ms. Kernell met at 8 a.m. Monday morning, shovels in hand, to begin clearing the sidewalks. Ms. Reininger joined Ms. Haagen in the afternoon.

Before stopping work for the day, the women cleared a wide swath of School Street — nearly making it to the intersection of Springs-Fireplace Road before it was time to pick up their children from school.

Last week's blizzard immobilized the South Fork, ultimately dumping two feet of snow. Local schools had three snow days and sandwiched by two more of weather-related delays and cancellations. A new round of early closings and delayed starts began on Monday.

"This morning, it's frozen solid," Ms. Haagen said Tuesday, when schools again saw two-hour delays because of freezing temperatures and slippery roads. "But maybe if it thaws out a little bit, we'll go back and make more progress."

Though more than a little sore, she refused to point any fingers.

"Everyone was working their tails off around the clock and their equipment wasn't working. This is not normal snowfall," said Ms. Haagen. "We did what we could. I want to be part of the solution and look out for our neighbors. Let's all take responsibility."

Stephen Lynch, the town highway superintendent, confirmed Monday that the sidewalks near Springs School weren't cleared because the Highway Department's machines couldn't handle snow of such depth.

Mr. Lynch explained that the town's current machine can clear between 18 inches and 24 inches of snowfall. "We're never had that much snow before," he said, adding that when workers tried using the machine, they "made it about 30 feet — and got stuck."

"The town did the best they could," said Elizabeth Mendelman, the Springs School Board president. "The piece of equipment that does the sidewalks wasn't operational."

She applauded the group of parents who shoveled, adding that yesterday's mix of ice and freezing temperatures made for "back-breaking work."

Going forward, she is hopeful that plans are put in place for the safe passage of children to school and back, no matter the weather forecast. At Springs School, about 150 children are not eligible for bus transportation because they live a mile or less from school grounds.

"Looking ahead, I hope we can get the equipment back up and running," said Ms. Mendelman. "We have to think about the safety of our kids. The sidewalks have to be cleared."

With reporting by Taylor K. Vecsey

While the snow stopped falling in East Hampton Tuesday evening, town officials are still asking people to stay off the roads Wednesday as highway workers continue to contend with the more than 20 inches of snowfall.

East Hampton Town and Village government offices will be closed on Wednesday, and classes at all local schools have been canceled. Southampton Town, however, is opening government offices at noon. 

East Hampton Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who is the deputy supervisor and was in charge while Supervisor Larry Cantwell was away this week, said the hope is that people will stay home and give the Highway Department another day two make the roads safe enough for travel. "We are still in a state of emergency. We want to keep people off the roads. Driving restrictions are still in place," he said, adding that there were "virtually zero accidents" reported because people were heeding the travel bans. 

Speaking by phone on Tuesday night, Mr. Van Scoyoc said he had just spoken with Stephen Lynch, the highway superintendent, and that 90 to 95 percent of the town roads, not including urban renewal roads, had been opened or would be opened by the end of the night. That does not mean they have all been completely cleared. Workers were going to take a break at midnight, and then get back out on the roads at 5 a.m. Urban renewal roads will be plowed by private contractors due to the state of emergency declaration.

"If everyone comes out [Wednesday], it will just make the plowing that much more difficult, and dangerous," Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo said Tuesday night by email. "Highway crews are making progress, but it is going to take into Thursday evening before everything is passable. . . . There is only so much they can do," he said, adding that he hopes everyone will show patience, "and recognize this was a major storm."  

In East Hampton Village, the Highway Department worked for over 20 hours to plow the snow, according to Deputy Mayor Barbara Borsack. On Tuesday evening, she said all of the village roads had been plowed once, and some twice. "This snow is so deep it's taking a long time for them to get the roads cleaned," she said.  Crews were taking a break, but were going to be back on the road at 9:30 p.m. to work through the night because additional cleanup was still needed.

While Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's travel ban on all state and local roads in 13 counties, including Suffolk County, was lifted Tuesday morning, Southampton Town's travel ban remained in effect overnight. Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst's order making it illegal to drive starting Monday at 7 p.m. will be lifted on Wednesday at 6 a.m.

Mr. Van Scoyoc said that East Hampton officials will meet again on Wednesday and assess the road conditions, possibly relaxing the restrictions later in the day. Town officials will also further assess coastal erosion and damages, though Mr. Van Scoyoc said he wasn't aware of any loss of property. "What I understand is that while the tides came up high they did not breach," he said. "Tides certainly didn't go up as high as some forecasted." Hurricane-force winds were predicted, but never materialized he said. 

Warming centers and shelters were not opened because power outages were not widespread. Early Tuesday morning, PSEG Long Island reported about 630 customers in Montauk without power, but power was quickly restored. "At this point the threat of power outages seems very low," Mr. Van Scoyoc said. The East Hampton Town Senior Center was kept open and staffed for people who had medical equipment that needed to stay plugged in. It was also used as a place for highway workers to rest throughout the day.

Also worth mentioning, several organizations are following East Hampton's lead and keeping doors closed on Wednesday. The East Hampton Library will not open, and the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton will put off, again, its much anticipated $1 sale another day, and stay closed at least until Thursday. 

The travel ban in the Town of East Hampton will be officially lifted at 10 a.m., but officials said the Town is still in a state of emergency and they are urging people to stay home.

Roadway conditions are "still treacherous and travel is dangerous," according to East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo, who said earlier that drivers ignoring the ban were spinning out. "If you feel you must go out, there is no parking along roadways, you must not park in a lane of travel, and use extreme caution behind the wheel — leave distance between vehicles, take turns slowly and yield to plows and emergency vehicles," he said.

Since the state of emergency is still in effect, all urban renewal roads will be plowed by sub-contractors.

The joint Town and Village Emergency Operations Center will remain open until 3 p.m. on Wednesday to answer storm-related questions. Town residents should call 631-907-9743 and village residents should call 631-907-9796. After 3 p.m., all calls are directed to police headquarters at 631-537-7575 or the Town Highway Department at 631-324-0925.

Town government will re-open for regular business hours on Thursday. No word yet on whether schools, which were closed again on Wednesday, plan to open on time or with a delayed start.

As I write this column it is blowin’ and snowin’ up a storm. The weather reports on all of the media say we are in for a big one. The various reports remind us of the “Blizzard of ’88” (that’s 1888 for you millennial readers) and the famous storm of 2006, which dropped 26.9 inches in Central Park.

The biggest Long Island snowstorm that I can remember was the one that occurred in 1947, two days after Christmas. My family was visiting my Aunt Esther and Uncle Jake’s family in West Hills for the holidays. Well, it snowed and snowed and snowed, and when it was done snowing it was more than two feet deep.

My brother, Bobby, then 20 years, had to get back to Mattituck for some event, so he and I hitchhiked back along the Jericho Turnpike, which was a few hundred yards down the hill to the north from where we were staying. There was no Long Island Expressway at that time, and Route 25 was the main thoroughfare to Riverhead, where the two forks separated. The road was mostly cleared, and in less than 15 minutes we thumbed a ride and were on our way east. In those days there were very few weirdos on the road, no busses, and hitchhiking was the best means of transportation for long distances outside of the family automobile.

Snow is frozen rain that starts with a particle of dust, pollen, clay, or some other tiny thing that serves as a nucleus for the collection and freezing of water droplets when the temperature in the upper atmosphere is below zero. As many as a quintillion water molecules can go into the creation of one snowflake, and the snowflake can get as big as a few inches in diameter or more, but most rarely exceed a half inch across by the time they reach the ground.

Everything one can think of is studied by scientists these days, and snow is no exception. In 1951 an International Commission on Snow and Ice created a classification of snowflakes. That classification was much improved by a Japanese physicist, Ukichiro Nakaya, who in 1954 categorized snowflakes into 42 different types. In 1986 Nogono and Lee improved upon Nakaya’s taxonomy and came up with 80 different types. A Cal Tech scientist, Ken Libbrecht, came along and photographed hundreds of snowflakes and wrote four books about his work; one, “A Field Guide to Snowflakes,” was a best seller. (No one has published “A Field Guide to Raindrops,” but I’m sure one is in the offing, even though raindrops aren’t white to the human eye and have a very limited number of shapes.)

Looking at snowflakes under a magnifying glass or microscope is dangerus. They are so damn beautiful one could spend the rest of his or her life in that kind of self-indulgence, especially in a world that abounds in ugliness as never before. It is said that no two snowflakes are alike, but that idea has been debunked by a scientist with the National Weather Service, who, after examining thousands, found two that were  identical hollow-tubes forms.

More than 90 percent of snowflakes are hexahedrally round. The six-sided form has to do with the way hydrogen and oxygen bond when water molecules bond to each other in subzero temperatures around the snowflake crystal’s nucleus. Sometimes the snowflake’s tetrahedron form when viewed head-on looks like a standard two-dimensional hexagon. Most of the time there are “spiny” structures, also very symmetrically composed, radiating out to form a six-rayed star.

Occasionally, snowflakes will ball up under a mucilage of goop, in which case they are known as “graupel.” Linguists have for a long time argued over the assertion that Inuits and other Arctic-Circle peoples have hundreds of different words for snow, while we in English have fewer than six. Much of the support for such a finding comes from the work of Franz Boaz while studying the Baffin Islanders. A woman who recently studied Inuit languages came to the conclusion that the Inuits really have only six different words for snow, not much different than the English lexicon. The jury is out on the matter for the time being, but a fairly recent study of the Sami language of Norway’s aborigines came up with 180 different words for snow and 500 for reindeer.

I would like to stay up and see if the storm raging outside will qualify as a blizzard, but I have to get this in before bedtime or else it won’t make it into print. My bet on Monday night, however, is that for us here on the South Fork it will be just another northeaster and that the snow accumulation will be under six inches, hardly enough to qualify for blizzard status. I should warn the reader that 9 times out of 10 my predictions come out dead wrong.

Here’s another that has to do with winter weather: Deflated footballs will not help New England win the Superbowl; they’ll be playing in Arizona and the temperature will be close to 65 degrees.