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.

The congregation of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett voted unanimously on Sunday to become a Reconciled in Christ congregation, meaning it is publicly welcoming to all, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people. At its annual meeting, members of the church adopted a resolution to welcome all “without regard to race, ethnicity, cultural background, economic or marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical or mental abilities, age, and all those the world seeks to separate or isolate.”

It was the culmination of a yearlong process, said the Rev. Katrina Foster, who is also pastor of Incarnation Lutheran Church in Bridgehampton, which is already a Reconciled in Christ congregation. That process included two members’ attendance of a workshop called Building an Inclusive Church.

On a recent Sunday, four members of the church addressed the congregation, in lieu of a sermon by the pastor, on how they came to believe that St. Michael’s should be welcoming of G.L.B.T. people. Marge Harvey, whose late husband was a minister, was the first to speak. She observed how the church has evolved, including allowing the ordination of women.

“It was important to the congregation because it was an affirmation of what they have been believing and doing,” Ms. Harvey said yesterday. She was referring, in part, to Ms. Foster’s coming out as gay on the floor of a churchwide gathering in 2007, when the Lutheran Church allowed openly gay pastors but forbade same-sex relationships. Ms. Foster is married, and she and her wife, Pamela Kallimanis, have a daughter, Zoia.

Ms. Foster’s move resulted in several bishops threatening to defrock her bishop if he did not defrock her, but two years later, the church abandoned its policy forbidding same-sex relationships.

Zoia spoke of an experience at the funeral of a close family friend in which the preacher “started shouting at the entire congregation about how homosexuals are going to hell,” Ms. Foster said. “My daughter talked about how shocking and devastating that experience was . . . and why we need to be welcoming.”

Another spoke of his difficulty in marrying his wife, who had been divorced, in the Catholic Church, while another discussed her own coming out and how that experience allowed her, at age 50, to “finally be herself,” Ms. Foster said. “We need to be public so others know that we are here.”

“Many people come here to visit and vacation,” Ms. Harvey said. By the church’s becoming a Reconciled in Christ congregation, “they know they are welcome,” she said. “It’s not only G.L.B.T. people, but all people — all races, ethnicities, backgrounds. We want to be known as a welcoming congregation to everyone. That’s the key thing.”

New York officials have issued a 10-year plan calling for greater efforts to preserve the state’s marine environment in the face of human impact, habitat degradation, and climate change.

The Ocean Action Plan, released last Thursday, did not identify any new sources of funding for its more than 200 recommendations or offer estimates of their cost.

A separate study published last Thursday in the journal Science found that the risk of massive extinctions among animals that live in the earth’s oceans had increased due to the same factors. According to the authors of that study, new pressures have begun to emerge, among them mining, oil exploration, and some kinds of aquaculture.

In the state’s preliminary draft, which took about three years to complete, the Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of State pointed to environmental changes and the unsustainable exploitation of ocean, bay, and estuarine resources. It identified global warming as the most pressing challenge and listed a broad range of other reasons for concern. These included bycatch and other destructive fishing practices, ocean acidification, habitat loss, and water quality problems.

“This plan will help protect the more than 300 marine fish species reproducing and growing in these waters, support the valuable commercial and recreational fishing industries, as well as the 94 miles of New York State beaches that attract millions of visitors each year,” Joe Martens, the D.E.C. commissioner, said in a release.

The plan comes less than a month after a report from the state conservation department that listed 186 animal species at risk of catastrophic population declines within the next 10 years unless rapid steps are taken to reverse the trend. That document also did not include funding or cost estimates.

The 90-page document released last week outlined steps to protect the state’s marine waters and the creatures and businesses that depend on them over the 10-year period. It said that New York’s economic sustainability was inextricably tied to maintaining the integrity of its ocean ecosystem, including its estuarine, coastal, and offshore waters. They included inshore waters, such as those under local jurisdictions, as well as their watersheds, as essential parts of the puzzle.

The authors acknowledged that state funding was limited and that help from Washington as well as local governments and private groups on Long Island and elsewhere would be essential to protecting the remaining resources and making improvements.

The draft identified lapses in existing sea-grass mapping, understanding tidal wetland losses, and shellfish monitoring. It also laid out timetables for new initiatives designed to protect the marine environment, but did not provide estimates of how much they would cost to implement.

“The whole funding piece is missing. It is as if they just left that whole chapter out. It’s like buying a car and they don’t give you the keys,” said Robert DeLuca, the president of the Group for the East End.

Among the findings cited in the plan was that eelgrass, a marine plant considered essential habitat for many species, including bay scallops, juvenile fish, and up to 50 million small invertebrates per acre, had suffered massive declines. In the 1930s there were an estimated 200,000 acres of it in New York, but today only about 22,000 acres remain. The majority of the loss can be attributed to human activity, the authors concluded.

Recommendations included new policies on ocean aquaculture, a study of lobsters, and a look at the impact of beach nourishment on horseshoe crab spawning grounds. Also on the wish list were greater protection for Atlantic sturgeon, sea turtles, whales, and seabirds, and combating invasive species. It called for environmental assessments to better understand effects of offshore renewable energy development on wildlife.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, was cautiously optimistic. She said, for example, that a proposed inshore trawl survey, if funded, “would be a huge help to further improve the fisheries data that is plugged into fish population models, which ultimately determine quotas.”

Regarding sea level rise and coastal erosion, the authors advised a shift away from structural solutions to what they called living shorelines. These, they wrote, are an “alternative to shoreline armoring because they not only reduce erosion but can be cost effective, preserve land-water connections, mimic the natural landscape, and provide better environmental services in comparison with structural measures.”

Mr. DeLuca said that the absence of funding in the plan raised what in his view should be a key question. “If it is going to cost us money that we do not have, maybe we need to back off on coastal development,” he said.

The draft plan was a start, Mr. DeLuca said. “It calls attention to the resource, identifies problems, but it doesn’t give us a sense of who is going to do it, how it’s going to happen.”

“The public should really ask, ‘What is the state’s level of commitment?’ ” he said.

“If you just heap this up on top of the D.E.C., when are they going to get it done — 1,000 years from now?”

There will be hearings on the state plan on Feb. 10 at the Suffolk Parks Department office in West Sayville at 10 a.m. and at Riverhead Town Hall at 7 p.m. Additional meetings are planned on Feb. 24 in Freeport and on Feb. 26 at the Long Beach Library. A final meeting in New York City will be announced.

Written comments on the report have been invited and will be accepted by the Department of Environmental Conservation until March 9.

Business owners and their representatives spoke out against proposed amendments to East Hampton Village’s lighting code, enacted in 2004, at a hearing on Friday.

Under the amendments, lighting deemed nonessential would have to be turned off between dusk and dawn, and lighting in violation of light-trespass limits could be ordered removed or altered. Foliage illumination and “wall-washing” by upturned spotlights on nonresidential properties would be prohibited. The regulations would also apply to automatic teller and vending machines.

In his first meeting since taking a medical leave of absence in November, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and his colleagues on the village board heard one merchant after another criticize what they called onerous rules that would not only compromise safety and security but impose a financial burden.

Monte Farber was the first to speak. “From every aspect as a store owner, I am against this motion,” he said.

Mr. Farber, who owns the Enchanted World Emporium at 8 Main Street next to Rowdy Hall, cited “a safety issue in our little mews there. It’s hard enough to walk there already. Someone’s going to get mugged.” As a jewelry-store owner, he said he also feared an undetected break-in. “I’m also worried for you all,” Mr. Farber told the board, “because if somebody falls and the reason is because there’s no light, and it can be shown that there was no light because of this motion, they’re going to come after the village.”

David Eagan, an attorney, spoke on behalf of Ben and Bonnie Krupinski, who own several restaurants and retail properties in the village. His clients, he said, consider the definition and concept of “unnecessary lighting” to be extreme. “They feel it’s been a bit too narrowly focused on special interests,” he said, asking that landlords and tenants be taken into consideration in the board’s deliberations. “Slow down, reassess it, come up with a more balanced process,” Mr. Eagan advised.

The amendments would require interior lighting on commercial properties to shut off automatically one hour after the close of business, except for display lighting, which would have to go off by 11 p.m. Such a provision would be bad for business, some merchants said, citing nighttime window-shoppers who might come back in the morning.

The village is already very dark, said Ed Dressler of London Jewelers. “In a business where security is a top priority, to me lights mean safety,” he said. Many times, he said, the store’s security alarm goes off and he has to check the building. “I’m not about to enter a dark store and possibly be ambushed.”

Anthony DeVivio, managing director of Halstead Property, told the board that his building had recently been vandalized. According to the police report, several people had climbed onto the roof and spray-painted “Satan is Waiting” on the building’s exterior wall. “And now you’re asking us to turn all the lights off in the village,” Mr. DeVito said. “This is an absolute security risk.”

To darken an already “quiet, sleepy little town,” he said, “will make it look like a ghost town.”

“We don’t know where the problem is that triggered this,” said Margaret Turner, executive director of the East Hampton Business Alliance. She said storeowners had gone to great lengths and expense to create tasteful exteriors. “Don’t pass sweeping legislation that hurts everyone,” she pleaded. “Problems already exist with vacancies in the village.”

Susan Harder, the state representative of the International Dark Sky Association, defended the proposed amendments, calling merchants’ fears unwarranted and based on a lack of understanding. A majority already comply with the law, she said, calling the amendments “common sense and reasonable.”

“The thought that streets or sidewalks would be dark is not part of this code,” said Ms. Harder. The Dark Sky criteria, she said, are such that “we know what it takes to see well and for safe passage of pedestrians, and we conform to that.”

Mayor Rickenbach, along with the board members Richard Lawler, Bruce Siska, and Elbert Edwards, said nothing had been decided. “The board supports the general intent” of the proposed legislation, he said, “but you folks here today, mostly in opposition, have raised some valid points.”

“Nobody’s trying to blindside anybody,” Mr. Lawler said. “We have to have some sort of a template. Obviously, quite a few people are unhappy with that.” He called the legislation “a work in progress.”

Mr. Rickenbach said the hearing would remain open; public comment on the proposed lighting changes will be accepted until the board’s Feb. 5 work session.

Also at the meeting, the village authorized Lombardo Associates, the consultants who prepared East Hampton Town’s comprehensive wastewater management plan, to undertake a water quality improvement project at Hook Pond. Unless authorized by a separate resolution, the cost is not to exceed $35,000.

The board also heard from Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer, regarding the women’s bathroom facilities at Main Beach. Mr. Bennett summarized plans to increase the number of stalls from five to eight, at an anticipated cost of $31,000 or $32,000. The board told Mr. Bennett to “move ahead without further delay.”

In a report to the East Hampton Town Board this week, an airport planning subcommittee recommends banning the noisiest helicopters from the airport and limiting other aircraft classified as among the noisiest to one trip per week all year round.

The report, presented to the town board on Tuesday by David Gruber, the subcommittee chairman, also suggests that those “noisiest” aircraft allowed to make one trip per week be subjected to a 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. curfew and a “noise pollution surcharge” on summer weekends and holidays.

Aircraft classified as “noisy” — but not the noisiest — should be subject to a 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew, the committee says. Helicopters in the noisy category should be banned from the airport on weekends and holidays and limited, overall, to one trip per week. Practice touch-and-go landings and takeoffs should be prohibited on summer weekends.

The proposed rules, according to the report, will achieve immediate relief from noise while allowing the airport to accommodate sufficient traffic so that it can be financially self-sustaining, and remain open.

The subcommittee has been working for a year, Mr. Gruber said, to analyze the airport’s history, finances, capital repair and safety needs, and data on noise and noise complaints, as well as pertinent aviation law and other elements.

The recommendations are based on the results of an ongoing airport noise study by consultants hired by the town board. Results of a third phase of that study are to be presented to the board on Feb. 3.

  Mr. Gruber said the recommendations were designed to address three problems: aircraft operations in the evening, night, and early morning; high-frequency operations, particularly on summer weekends and holidays, by the noisiest aircraft, which are largely commercial; and helicopter flights, which cause the most disturbance.

They were also intended to “provide an incentive for airport users with noisiest types of aircraft to transition to quieter types in order to avoid restrictions,” the report says. They have little effect on recreational aviation, described in the report as “the intended and traditional use of the airport,” because most recreational aircraft are among the least noisy. No restrictions have been proposed on planes labeled quiet or those that provide emergency services or are in distress.

As of Jan. 1, the town is free of several agreements with the Federal Aviation Administration regarding the airport’s operation, which were attached to the acceptance of previous federal grants.

Town officials have held off accepting new grants in anticipation of determining what restrictions should be imposed to reduce aircraft noise, which has engendered ongoing complaints from across the East End. The noise study and reports from both the subcommittee that made the report this week and another on aviation concerns are part of an information-gathering process to lay the groundwork for new rules, which would be put in place before the 2015 summer season.

The committee report notes that initial noise study results concluded that “at some point in its flight, every aircraft . . . exceeds the permitted noise level” as defined by the town noise ordinance, and that the second phase of that study had found that airport noise complaints were “overwhelmingly attributable” to helicopters and jets.

Two-thirds of the landings at the airport last year were by commercial operators, the committee says, and of the remaining 33 percent, only a third were by private pilots based at East Hampton Airport — “the local aviation community that the airport has traditionally served and is intended to serve.”

The proposed restrictions are within the town’s legal rights as the airport proprietor, the committee asserts, and will not run afoul of the F.A.A., which retains a degree of authority over all general aviation airports, regardless of whether they are financially independent.

The report cites several court cases that show airport owners may enact restrictions based on community standards and goals, such as supporting recreational versus commercial aviation (as is suggested for East Hampton), and may limit airport use by the noisiest craft.

Airport data show an estimated two-thirds of landings here in a recent 12-month period were by commercial aircraft, and that, of almost 7,000 aircraft operations that would fall into the proposed “noisiest” category, 90 percent were by commercial operators.

The noise subcommittee proposes prioritizing aviation uses at East Hampton Airport, with recreational flying receiving the highest priority and access by travelers from afar next. Commuter flights, “in light of the multiple alternative means of access to the East End from New York City and environs,” should have the lowest priority, according to the report.

In a press release issued Tuesday, the Quiet Skies Coalition, which has several members on the committee that wrote the report, endorsed its recommendations. “All over the East End, our neighbors and colleagues have been suffering the impacts of unwanted, unregulated aircraft noise, particularly that of helicopters,” Kathleen Cunningham, the coalition chairwoman, said. “These proposed access limits will finally bring substantial relief to affected communities.  This is a first pass, and we will take stock at the end of 2015 to see how it worked, but it’s an excellent start.”

The East Hampton Village and Town and Sag Harbor Police Departments named their “top cops” this week, in preparation for an annual Southampton Kiwanis Club event in Riverhead Friday honoring the finest of the finest across the East End.

Detectives Steven Sheades and Bryan Eldridge are East Hampton Village Department co-honorees. They ran an investigation that took several months and resulted in the arrest of a Turkish couple charged with making false threats against the Jewish Center of the Hamptons on Woods Lane.

East Hampton Town tapped Officer Arthur Scalzo as its top cop, with Chief Michael D. Sarlo citing two events in the past year that he said exemplified determination and intuitive skills.

Sag Harbor named Officer Nick Samot tops on its force “due to his overall performance during the year,” Sag Harbor Village Police Chief Tom Fabiano said Tuesday. “He has a superb work ethic,” the chief said. Officer Samot is a member of the Emergency Services Team, a rapid-response team that confronts potential armed, violent situations across the East End.

The Jewish Center investigation led to the Department of Homeland Security’s stopping Asli Dincer, 44, and Melih Dincer, 30, at Kennedy Airport as they returned from a trip to Turkey last summer.

“It was a very involved case,” Chief Gerard Larsen said Tuesday.”We were able to determine, at the end of the day, that the threats were made up.” 

The couple said they were trying to foil a radical Islamic plot. However, the investigation alleged that they were trying to set up several fellow immigrants, with whom they had had a falling out.

Detective Sheades, a native of East Hampton, is 34. Detective Eldridge, originally from Northport, is 36. They frequently work as a team and agreed that the aid of outside police organizations was instrumental in breaking the case. Involved were the New York State Joint Terrorist Task Force, the Suffolk County Police Intelligence Unit, United States Customs, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The detectives added that John O’Grady and Bill Behrn of the Suffolk Intelligence Unit were particularly helpful in following the cyber trail that led to the Dincers.

“What was important, in the end, was being able to tell the center that they were safe,” Detective Sheades said. The Dincers are being held in Suffolk County jail in Riverside. Bail was set at $50,000 each, but it appears that the Department of Homeland Security has a hold on them. They are due back in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Feb. 11.

The first example of Officer Scalzo’s praised work given by Chief Sarlo involved the traffic stop of a truck at 2 a.m. on March 6 on Further Lane. The officer thought that the two men in the truck, Freddie Parker and William Lagarenne, were behaving suspiciously. He found that the truck lacked proper paperwork and then discovered $26,000 worth of copper gutters in the back of the vehicle. The investigation showed they had been stripped off an Oceanview Lane house in Amagansett’s Devon Colony.

Both men eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. Mr. Lagarenne is serving a one-year sentence in county jail. Mr. Parker served his time, and has  been released.

The second example cited happened on Nov. 5. Officer Scalzo was the first to arrive at a Clearwater Beach residence in Springs, where a 26-year-old male had overdosed on heroin. Officer Scalzo administered Narcan, a brand of naloxone which reverses toxic effects on the central nervous system. Officers had been taught how to administer Narcan earlier in the year. Officer Scalzo is so far the only member of the force to have applied the drug in the field, saving a life, Chief Sarlo said.

Officer Scalzo is an eight-year veteran of the force and an Army National Guard veteran who served two tours of active duty as an intelligence officer in Iraq.

East Hampton High School’s auditorium was the place to be Tuesday night, as upwards of 75 parents and residents turned out to air their grievances at a school board meeting and subsequent athletic forum.

Joseph Vasile-Cozzo, the district’s athletic director, began with a presentation detailing current offerings. The district now has 19 varsity sports — with participation rates generally highest in the fall, dropping in the winter, and rising again in the spring.

Regarding the varsity football program, Mr. Vasile-Cozzo explained that a lack of participation, not cost savings, ultimately forced the district’s hand in deciding to abandon the program last fall.

Come fall, he said, 23 eighth-grade students and 12 ninth-grade students would allow for a “solid junior-varsity team.” He described next year as a time of rebuilding, hoping for a varsity football team to be back up and running by 2016. Meanwhile, four coaching candidates are also being interviewed. “That’s the football plan,” said Mr. Vasile-Cozzo. “It’s probably not going to happen as fast as people would like, but it’s methodical, and thorough.”

He said that participation rates are also trending down in wrestling, from 52 to 12 students, and in boys’ lacrosse, from 99 to 47 students. Meanwhile, field hockey, swimming, track, and girls lacrosse are surging in popularity. “My wrestlers are swimming,” concluded Mr. Vasile-Cozzo. “Kids are still playing, they’re just doing different things.”

Across the district, for the 2013-14 school year, 71 percent of students at East Hampton Middle School and 50 percent of students at East Hampton High School participated in at least one sport. Citing college applications and academic pressures, Mr. Vasile-Cozzo said it was uncommon to see a three-sport athlete competing on a varsity level.

In terms of challenges, Mr. Vasile-Cozzo cited geography as a significant hurdle, with students required to travel long distances to compete in games, often not returning home until late at night. Hiring qualified coaches has also proven a consistent stumbling block. Going forward, Mr. Vasile-Cozzo hopes to explore school-sponsored summer sports camps, youth clinics, additional middle school teams, and the development of a parent-run athletic booster club.

Tensions ran high as more than a dozen speakers approached the podium. In all, the forum lasted nearly two and a half hours, with an administrator expressing exasperation that moderators failed to curtail speakers, as nearly all went past the three-minute time limit.

Mary Lownes, a member of the Amagansett School Board and parent of three children, questioned why so many middle school students have been allowed to play varsity sports. She also noted a lack of community and student attendance at sporting events. “We lost our way somewhere and there are a lot of things we need to do to get back on track,” she said.

Dennis Lynch said that low rates of varsity football participation could be blamed on an “arrogant” coach. “The kids will play if the right coaches are in place,” said Mr. Lynch, who put his name forward as a potential candidate, even agreeing to forgo a salary. “If you allow football to fall off the calendar, you’re screwing this community, a part of our culture that you know will never come back.”

“Success breeds numbers,” he later urged, citing the popularity of soccer among middle school students. “If we get the football program back, you’ll see the same thing happening in middle school as it is with soccer.”

Mary McPartland described East Hampton as a “sports-crazed community,” not unlike several others on Long Island. “We have really good ingredients,” she said. “The question is what kind of cake are we baking?” She wondered whether participation rates or state championships signaled a successful program. She also advocated on behalf of preseason and postseason surveys to get student feedback.

Midway through the meeting, Jackie Lowey, a board member, explained that the board has never cut any athletic programs, and asked for an honest, open dialogue.

“We’re here in this forum because there’s a problem,” said Tom Cooper, a parent. “We want it addressed now, so when our middle schoolers are coming up, we will have strong programs.”

Throughout the night, several speakers expressed frustration with the hiring of teachers who commuted long distances, making them unlikely candidates to also coach after-school sports.

Kerri Jurkiewicz, a parent of two children, expressed her frustration at a lack of consistency among the coaching staff. “My son is in 10th grade and he’s never had the same coach twice. Get better coaches, get coaches who are here for more than one season,” she urged. “Why is that not happening? What’s the problem? Are we allowed to know? Is this politics?”

Simone Johnson blamed parents for what she perceived as a widespread lack of respect toward coaches. “When you bad-talk coaches in Starbucks, Waldbaum’s, the movies, the kids hear it,” said Ms. Johnson. “There’s a lack of respect for the coaches. It comes from home. You can’t have a good team if you don’t support your coach.”

Chris Corwin, a parent of three children at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, worried about next steps. “What I fear is that we walk away tonight and nothing happens,” said Mr. Corwin. “We need accountability going forward.”

Earlier in the night, the board sped through a truncated agenda.

In early December, the board briefly discussed whether to expand its current prekindergarten program from a half-day to a full-day program. With cost-savings in mind, the board put out a request for proposals from organizations able to offer full-day programs. Richard Burns, the superintendent, explained that three proposals were received by the mid-January deadline, from the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center (which currently runs the district’s half-day program), Long Island Head Start, and SCOPE Education Services.

Each organization will make presentations at the Feb. 3 school board meeting, when financial implications and types of programs will be examined in further detail.

The board also discussed the school calendar for the coming year. Since Labor Day falls late this year, on Sept. 7, students and staff will return on Sept. 8. Traditionally, the first day back has been a day of professional development for administrators, teachers, and staff. As such, East Hampton schools will see a two-hour delayed opening for students.

In addition, the board approved paid leaves of absences for child-rearing purposes for both Annemarie Brown and Erin Abran. Megan Cavanaugh was appointed to a three-year position as an English teacher at an annual salary of $60,416.

The board approved a girls varsity softball team trip to the Walt Disney World Sports Complex in Orlando, Fla., from April 2 to 13 at an estimated cost of $800 per student. The district will cover $722 in transportation costs. The board also accepted an agreement from J.C. Broderick and Associates, an environmental and ecological service company based in Hauppauge, to conduct a drywall inspection at each campus, per a new recommendation from the Environmental Protection Agency. The estimated cost is $2,900.

Finally, the board accepted a donation of 30 standard and 6 large Googolplex geometric building sets from Glenn and Edie West to be used at the elementary school. DiSunno Architecture also donated four printer cartridges and a 24-inch paper spool for use in the high school’s art department. 

The board will next meet on Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. in the district office for the first line-by-line budget workshop of the 2015-16 school year. Payroll and benefits are first on the docket. While the public is welcome to attend, comments are not allowed.

The following is a list of early dismissals and school closures. The list will be updated throughout the day as they are announced:

• The Amagansett School will close early on Monday at 11:30 a.m. Classes are canceled for Tuesday.

• Bridgehampton School students will be dismissed at 12:45 p.m. on Monday. The school will be closed on Tuesday, as well.

• East Hampton schools will have an early dismissal on Monday. East Hampton High School students will be dismissed at 1 p.m. East Hampton Middle School students will be dismissed at 1:15 p.m., and the John M. Marshall Elementary School will be dismissed at 1:45 p.m. In addition, the district be closed on Tuesday, with all classes canceled.

• The Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center in East Hampton will close at noon on Monday, and will also close on Tuesday. 

• Nursery students at the Green School in Sagaponack are being picked up early at 1 p.m. Classes have also be canceled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

• Montauk School students will be dismissed at 11:30 a.m., while prekindergarten students will be dismissed at 11 a.m. The school will also be closed Tuesday. Jack Perna, the district superintendent at Montauk, also noted that buses transporting students taking Regents exams at East Hampton High School would continue running so long as the high school remains open.

• Pierson Middle-High School students in Sag Harbor will be dismissed on Monday at noon and Sag Harbor Elementary School students will be dismissed at 12:45 p.m., with the afternoon prekindergarten class canceled. All after-school and evening activities are also postponed. Classes are canceled for Tuesday.

• At the Ross School, Upper School students will be dismissed at 11:30 a.m., with Lower School students dismissed at Noon. Classes are cancelled on Tuesday.

• The students at the Sagaponack School will be let out at 12:30 p.m., and it will stay shuttered on Tuesday.

• Springs School students will be dismissed at 11:30 a.m., with classes canceled on Tuesday.

• In Southampton, all students will be dismissed early today. Southampton High School will be dismissed at12:30 p.m., Southampton Intermediate School will be dismissed at 12:45 p.m., and Southampton Elementary School will be dismissed at 1:30 p.m. All schools will be closed on Tuesday

• The Wainscott School will send students home at 11:45 a.m. Classes are canceled on Tuesday.