During a Tuesday meeting, the East Hampton Town Trustees showed clear irritation at what they called pressure from residents of trustee-owned land at Lazy Point.

Susan Knobel, who wants to move her house from a shorefront lot where the beach is severely eroded to a lot at a significantly higher elevation, again asked that the trustees transfer her lease from the former location to the latter.

She read a statement detailing her efforts to save her house, saying that the meeting was the one-year anniversary of the one at which she had first brought the issue of erosion to the trustees’ attention. A surveyor agreed, she said, that the lot she seeks is the most appropriate, not only for its elevation but because her house could be moved to it with minimal disruption to the area and at a cost she is able to bear. “I’m asking you once again to please consider this,” she said.

Elaine Jones, who has spoken on her behalf at recent meetings, chided the trustees for what she said was needlessly sluggish consideration. “Everybody seems to agree, this is the property she should be able to move her house to,” she said.

The trustees took exception to that characterization. “We have to give this the proper deliberation,” Dr. Forsberg said. “For the public record, it’s not as if we’ve been sitting idle. . . . To make a rapid and a hasty decision will have repercussions. The bell cannot be unrung.”

The trustees, who have indicated their support in principle, maintain that alternative sites should be studied. Meanwhile, their concern for setting a precedent remains. When Bill Taylor, a trustee who has repeatedly expressed support for the move, cited predictions of sea-level rise, Ms. McNally made her own prediction. “I don’t think you need to wait for global warming,” she said. “All we have to do is approve one and they’ll be knocking at the door,” she added, referring to residents of Lazy Point asking to move, or raise, their houses.

The trustees will speak with the surveyor for his comments, they said, and repeated that even with their approval Ms. Knobel will need variance relief from the town’s zoning board of appeals, which is not guaranteed.

“I’m in favor of the project, Susan, but it’s not happening tonight,” said Brian Byrnes, a trustee. “A decision, I’m sure, will be rendered very soon.”

Alexander Peters, who wants to sell two lots in a groundwater protection district in Amagansett to the Town of East Hampton, filed suit in State Supreme Court last Thursday against several members of a family who claim to have the right of first refusal.

Mr. Peters, president of the advocacy group Amagansett Springs Aquifer Protection, has agreed to sell the 3.5 acres of undeveloped land atop the Stony Hill aquifer, part of the former Bell Estate, to the town for $3.6 million. The aquifer is a primary source of drinking water for Amagansett, Springs, and Montauk.

Mr. Peters, who is known as Sas, bought the property from Richard Smolian in 1992 and 1997. The deed to each lot, however, gives Mr. Smolian, along with Randy Smolian, his former wife, Darielle Smolian, his daughter, and Jonathan Smolian, his son, a right to repurchase the land so long as the family retains ownership of an adjacent lot. Richard Smolian has waived his right of first refusal and supports preservation of the land, but his family members do not.

The lots in question, 42 and 46 La Foret Lane, are designated as part of a Long Island special groundwater protection area and the town’s water recharge district. The town’s policy, according to its comprehensive plan, is to preserve such lands using money from the community preservation fund. The town board held hearings in June and authorized the acquisition of the lots, plus a third owned by Mr. Peters at 82 Stony Hill Road. The $3.6 million that Mr. Peters would receive is reported to be below market value.

Mr. Peters said yesterday that the right of first refusal was included in the deeds “for the very simple purpose of making sure that the land was always conserved. I promised Dick I would never develop the land and never have, and now am trying to nail that down forever.”

Through an intermediary, Ian Warburg, Mr. Peters said he had offered a settlement of $100,000 to Jonathan Smolian. Mr. Smolian refused, and the suit claims that he told Mr. Peters “he had enlisted ‘partners’ who he intended to work with in order to develop the property and achieve a substantial profit.” Randy Smolian and Darielle Smolian, the suit alleges, will not waive their right of first refusal unless Jonathan Smolian also does.

“Dick said he was absolutely horrified by what his family was doing, and it was splitting his family in half,” Mr. Peters said. “It’s quite astonishing that one greedy little son would endanger the water a supply of some 50,000 people,” citing the town’s full estimated summer population. Neither a telephone call nor email to Jonathan Smolian seeking comment was returned.

Mr. Peters’s lawsuit asserts that Randy, Jonathan, and Darielle Smolian are not parties to the 1992 and ’97 deeds, and that a New York common law “stranger to the deed rule” nullifies their claim to first refusal. The suit also statesthat the town’s purchase is subject to a requirement that the public be allowed to use and enjoy the land. Even if the Smolians were legally able to exercise their right of first refusal, the suit states, they would be compelled to match those conditions, which would preclude development.

Anthony Pasca, an attorney representing Mr. Peters, said on Tuesday that he is confident his client will prevail. “These are questions of law,” he said, “first, whether there is any valid right of first refusal left, and second, what happens if there is. On both questions, the law is on our side.”

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said on Monday that the town would await the court’s decision. “We’ve done what we should do,” he said. “We negotiated a price, and he” — Mr. Peters — “has the responsibility to produce clear title to us.”

The East Hampton Town Board is considering a proposal to rein in new bars and restaurants at hotels and resorts and ensure that the establishments have adequate onsite parking to accommodate the additional business that these extra amenities might bring.

The proposed changes would not effect establishments like Montauk’s Surf Lodge or Beach House, which already have accessory bars or restaurants. The law would, however, prevent future similar ventures from becoming nightclubs that dwarf their parent hotels.

The proposed law, which is still under review, would require that any hotel seeking to open a restaurant have at least 25 guestrooms. The restaurant, including its kitchen, would be limited in size to either 20 percent of the total square footage of the hotel or 2,000 square feet, whichever is less, and would have to be constructed within the confines of the existing building. Hotel bars and taverns, which are different from restaurants under town code, would be limited to 10 percent of the total square footage or 1,000 square feet. The motel would have to be operating as such when the restaurant or bar is open.

The regulations could affect 91 existing hotels and resorts in the town, with over 40 having the required 25 or more rooms, according to Elizabeth Baldwin, an assistant town attorney who is working on the legislation. The goal, she told the town board on Tuesday, is to prevent such businesses from “morphing into nightclubs.”

The draft law also attempts to address residents’ complaints about overflow parking which crowds nearby streets. It would mandate that the motel provide not only the parking spaces required for its overnight guests and employees, but an additional space for every two seats in the restaurant.

Special permits for new restaurants would only be issued by the town planning board if the businesses can demonstrate that they meet the parking requirements and are “compatible with the neighborhood.” Heavy screening and double setbacks would help protect residential neighbors.

In addition, “We prohibit takeout. The purpose of accessory use is that it is supposed to serve the guests,” Ms. Baldwin said.

“We should proceed through this,” Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said. “The devil is always in the details.” Other board members seemed equally supportive of the measure. Mr. Cantwell encouraged Ms. Baldwin to meet with the Montauk Chamber of Commerce and other like-minded business organizations as the bill is honed to its final form.

The supervisor then asked a broaderquestion: “How many more nightclubs do we want?” He said that nightclubs were not simply a byproduct of hotels and resorts.

A number of cautionary tales in Montauk prompted the proposed changes. Two years ago, when the Montauk Beach House in the downtown area was looking to open a poolside bar, the town’s zoning board of appeals had to first settle the question of whether that constituted a second business on the property. Richard A. Hammer, the owners’ attorney, offered the board legal precedent in the form of a 1968 New York State Appellate Court decision, which said that “the service of liquor refreshment is inseparable from a modern hotel and as a matter of law a bar therein is an accessory use.” The Beach House bar has become a popular destination in its own right, with hundreds of poolside guests arriving for weekend music shows.

Perhaps even more popular is the Surf Lodge on Edgemere Street, which new owners renovated into a chic hotel and nightspot. During the season, patrons’ cars line Edgemere Street in both directions to the consternation of many residents.

At its meeting on Tuesday, the town board also discussed the future of Second House Museum. Built in 1797, it is the oldest house in Montauk. It was purchased by the town, in partnership with the New York State Historical Society, in 1968.

Now Second House’s electrical wiring is dangerously outdated, Gregory Donahue of the Montauk Historical Society told the board. “It could burn down on a summer day,” he said.

The town spent $350,000 on the structure’s rehabilitation less than 10 years ago, he said, but the work was slipshod. For example, he told the board, ungalvanized nails were used to attach shingles to the roof. In addition, work done previously on the interior of the building lacked a cohesive plan.

“Last summer we were not able to open it, and this summer we won’t be able to open, again,” said Dave Webb, another member of the society.

Mr. Cantwell said that the town was in the process of putting together a lease agreement allowing the society to take over the building, the first step toward doing the needed renovations.

It was a packed house at Springs School on Monday night as more than 50 residents, teachers, and parents grappled with overcrowded conditions and weighed a multimillion-dollar expansion.

Following concerns expressed at last month’s meeting by Eric Casale, the principal, that the school was now at “101 percent capacity,” the board listened to a presentation by Roger Smith, president and principal architect of B.B.S. Architects and Engineers, a Patchogue firm. Mr. Smith last visited the board in June, when he made a presentation related to spatial analysis. This time, however, he showed sketches for a possible expansion, with costs estimated at between $12 million and $20 million.

Based on current and future needs, Mr. Smith suggested the addition of 16 classrooms and a gym. “If you’re counting numbers, it sounds like almost a building,” he said. “It kind of is.”

Under his plan, the existing school building would house grades pre-K to 5 (currently, three classes of pre-K, two kindergarten classes, two first-grade classes, and an English as a second language room are housed off-site), with a new structure built to accommodate a separate middle school and gymnasium for grades 6 to 8. Construction would be in two phases, breaking ground in June 2016 for eventual occupancy by September 2019.

Mr. Smith told the board that the new structure would put Springs at 85 percent occupancy, allowing it future room to grow. A cafeteria and a middle school library were not included in the plans. The architect also noted that the existing building is not strong enough for the addition of a second story.

At a “rough ballpark” of 32,000 square feet, and at $400 per square foot, he estimated construction costs between $12 million and $15 million. Such estimates do not include “site work,” he said.

Given the expense, the district would likely fund the project through bonding. Should Springs voters agree to a $15 million bond referendum, said Thomas Primiano, the board treasurer, homeowners whose properties are valued at $600,000 would see an initial annual tax increase of $275. Should final construction costs approach $20 million, the increase would rise to about $365.

“It’s cheaper than a private school,” said Karen Pardini, a parent.

Over the past decade, the school hasseen enrollment soar by nearly 200, from 555 students in 2004 to 743 as of this week. District-wide, in grades pre-K to 12, Springs now enrolls almost 1,100 students.

Mr. Casale told the audience that while 66 students had graduated from Springs in June, East Hampton High School now reports an enrollment of 85 Springs ninth-graders. “It’s a huge spike,” said the principal. On Tuesday, Elizabeth Mendelman, the board president, clarified: 15 students are new to the district and 4 others are repeating the ninth grade.

Projecting future enrollment accurately has been a persistent source of frustration. Though the district budgeted for 267 students at East Hampton High School, 285 attend. Nineteen Springs children were budgeted for at the Child Development Center of the Hamptons, where 31 now attend. Annual tuition at East Hampton High School costs roughly $25,000 per student; C.D.C.H. costs around $22,500. All told, the district now faces a $650,000 budget gap due to higher enrollment and increased tuition costs.

Several members of the audience expressed concern later in the meeting about the issue of illegal occupancy, several families living under one roof. As Ms. Mendelman explained, whether a house is occupied legally or not, New York State law requires school districts to educate all children residing within district boundaries.

Carol Buda urged school officials to check up on residents twice each year, saying that “there seems to be a lot of moving around among renters.”

Though U.S. Census figures project further increases in Springs’s school-age population, Ms. Buda’s husband, David, questioned the need for a 950-student structure. “This is a building for 950 students and a price tag that’s significant,” he said. “Why would you want to bring in those pre-K and kindergarten students that are currently being outsourced in a more efficient manner than build a new space to accommodate them?”

Several teachers and parents promptly fired back, citing aging portables and inclement weather that poses an additional hurdle when transporting young children from building to building.

But with class sizes swelling, Christina Friscia, a parent, said students already face overcrowded conditions, and that four years was simply too long to wait. “My concern is, we don’t have any space. What’s going to happen right now? Where do our kids go for the next four years?”

“We need to figure out our needs for the short term and come up with a master plan that makes sense for the long term,” said Ms. Mendelman on Tuesday. “It’s a process we need to go through. This is the first step. This is just the start.”

Mr. Smith’s full presentation can be found on the school’s website.

Later in the meeting, which lasted over two and a half hours, Carl Fraser, a consultant, said that a corrective action plan had been submitted to the state following a recent audit. A copy of the full plan is available on the school’s website, springsschool.org.

Earlier this year, state auditors concluded that Springs had accumulated an unrestricted fund balance nearly four times the allowable amount. They also recommended improved oversight of employees’ sick-leave accruals.

“The work is completed,” said Mr. Fraser, who was hired in September. “I’ve been getting us back on track in terms of accuracy in record-keeping.” He said the district was working to bring its unassigned fund balance within state limits and has budgeted to hire an additional employee to better track attendance. Among other fixes, the purchase of a new accounting system is also being explored.

Earlier in the meeting, Lisa Matz, the PTA president, said its recent “turkey trot” fund-raiser, to benefit the school’s swimming and ice-skating programs, had raised $9,500. The swimming program costs $13,000 each year, and the PTA is hopeful that additional donations will offset the difference.

The board will next meet at 7 p.m. on Jan. 12.

East Hampton Town announced Thursday that it had won a $250,000 grant from New York State to develop a coastal assessment and resiliency plan.

In a release from the town, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said the plan will examine “erosion risks, storm vulnerability, and natural recovery.” He credited the Natural Resources Department and Concerned Citizens of Montauk with helping to secure the grant.

From the earliest days of his campaign for town supervisor in 2013, Mr. Cantwell spoke of the importance of developing “a mitigation and recovery plan to protect against the threat of coastal erosion and sea-level rise.”

The grant includes the $250,000 from the state and a matching $250,000 from “other private and public sources,” according to the release.

East Hampton Town was a co-sponsor earlier this week of a three-day climate adaptation training course at Stony Brook Southampton led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s office for coastal management and other experts in the field. The conference was also sponsored by Southampton Town, the Peconic Estuary Program, Concerned Citizens of Montauk, the Peconic Institute, and Stony Brook University.

A driver who struck and killed a Scottish golf caddy bicycling home from his first day of work in Southampton in May pleaded guilty on Friday to two felony charges, including manslaughter, for recklessly causing the death of Neil Fyfe, 28.

Jesse Werner Steudte of Southampton, 22, admitted that he was drunk and drove through a stoplight at about 6:30 p.m. at the intersection of Country Road 39 and Sandy Hollow Road while driving a 1990 Jeep when he struck Mr. Fyfe in a crosswalk. He also pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and a misdemeanor driving while intoxicated charge,

Mr. Fyfe was returning from the Sebonack Golf Club when he was hit. People on the scene tried to revive him, but he was declared dead at Southampton Hospital.

Mr. Steudte is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 3 by New York State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho.

Mr. Fyfe was originally from Aberdeen. According to the Glasgow-based Daily Record, he had been pursuing his dream of becoming a caddy on the PGA tour, and had been planning to return to Aberdeen to marry Jennifer Mouncy, 25. They had been dating for 11 years, The Record said.

The Record also spoke with Mr. Fyfe’s sister, Angela, in May. “I keep thinking he’s going to text, asking us what we’re all going on about 'cos he’s fine and well,” she said. 

East Hampton Town police have identified two Montauk men who crashed their all-terrain vehicles into each other behind the Montauk recycling center on Sunday afternoon.

Henry O. Sjoman, 24, and John R. Veitch, 31, were listed in critical, but stable, condition at Stony Brook University Hospital after they suffered serious injuries, according to Lt. A.J. McGuire. A police investigation found the two, who had been riding four-wheelers, hit each other head-on while riding on a dirt road between North Shore Road and the recycling center at about 3:25 p.m. The collision took place on town property.

State and town codes prohibit riding A.T.V.s on public lands. "You can only ride on private property with permission of the owner," Lieutenant McGuire said.

Both men were wearing helmets. They were riding with a third man, who was one of the men's brother. 

Montauk Fire Department personnel treated the men, and called for helicopters to transport them to Stony Brook, the nearest trauma center. However, Mr. Sjoman's condition deteriorated and he was taken to Southampton Hospital. He was later flown to Stony Brook.  

For a change the Old World is the source of some new thinking. On Saturday when a ribbon is cut in Sag Harbor to mark the opening of a hamlet-to-hamlet trail system on the South Fork, it will be the realization of a waking dream that struck Tony Garro while hoofing the footpaths of southern England.

“A bunch of us went to England,” he said of his Southampton Trails Preservation Society compatriots, “specifically to hike the moors, and one of the first things I noticed was how many trails were on private lands,” even, for example, those at Dartmoor, near Devon, the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“The public has the right to hike trails on private land in England,” Mr. Garro, who used to teach in the Massapequa School District and has lived in Noyac for about 18 years, said Monday.

“Many villages in rural England are connected by footpaths, and this is what fascinated me the most. They’re miles long, some of them, connecting villages in a web of trails. So I started to do a little research. Every May all the trails are hiked by British hikers to ensure that the right to hike them is kept open. And most of the landowners have no problem with it. The only thing I ever found, a farmer left a sign saying, ‘Please close the gate,’ for after we passed.”

“Back here, it would buzz around in my head. We have these quaint towns and really beautiful wild lands. We have two invaluable features — the glacial moraine and all these ponds, relics of 20,000 years ago. So why couldn’t we create those footpaths here?”

On Saturday at Mashashimuet Park, after the 10 a.m. ribbon-cutting and refreshments, there will be two hikes on newly opened trails, one, of about three and a half miles, will follow the Long Pond Greenbelt and head along the old railroad bed to Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton.

A second one will trace five and a half rolling miles of the glacial moraine, with water views and large rocks left by the retreating ice sheet, cross the Mulvihill Preserve and skirt the Bridge Golf Course, and wrap up by circling Trout Pond in Noyac.

“And we’ll provide transportation back,” Mr. Garro said.

“We’ve worked on this for a year and a half to two years. We took existing trails and linked them, and created new trails to link. . . . Others will go from Mashashimuet to Elliston Park,” on Big Fresh Pond in North Sea, “and from Elliston to Southampton Village.”

Hampton Bays is a 90-percent certainty, he said, with negotiations still to be ironed out with some residents of Shinnecock Hills, and Flanders and Westhampton Beach are possibilities.

The hamlet-to-hamlet footpath will be marked by green oval blazes, and three new kiosks are up at the Trout Pond, Lumber Lane, and Mashashimuet trailheads.

“There’s so much public land here, a lot has been preserved, so there are no crossings of private land, not yet. . . . Most of the trails are on town lands, but some cross Nature Conservancy lands too. And then there are places like Laurel Valley, which is a county park.”

Every Thursday Southampton Trails Preservation Society volunteers have what Mr. Garro called a work party to blaze trails and clear footpaths. “I would estimate there are 300 miles of trails in Southampton Town, and we’re the primary caretaker. We do hikes every weekend, year round,” this time of year being a particularly good one to hit the woods, tick-wise.

For Mr. Garro, who has had Lyme disease in the past, forgoing his walks is simply not an option, so in the warm-weather months he has taken to wearing clothes pretreated with the insecticide permethrin.

“That’s the only thing out here that keeps it from being Eden, the ticks.”

The agenda of Tuesday night’s meeting of the East Hampton School Board focused on whether to expand the district’s prekindergarten program from a half day to a full day, and on forthcoming budget work sessions, which the board vowed to have televised despite added expense.

The matter of expanding the half-day pre-K program has been discussed several times over the past year, with the added cost weighed against budgetary constraints. On Tuesday, the board announced that it had decided to seek competitive bids from organizations for a full-day program.

“We really see the need for the full-day program and if we can afford it, the benefits certainly speak for themselves,” Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said. He explained that a formal request for proposals, now in draft form, would explore pricing for both half and full-day programs, including costs of programs within the district or off-site. Mr. Burns set a deadline of mid-January for bids.

The district now contracts for a half-day program for 4-year-olds at the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, which is adjacent to the John M. Marshall Elementary School. Montauk runs a full-day pre-K for 4-year-olds and Bridgehampton and Amagansett offer full-day programs for 3 as well as 4-year-olds. Figures for what the program costs the district were not immediately available.

Anticipating the line-by-line budget work sessions, which will begin on Jan. 27, the board agreed to cover the anticipated $1,400 cost of having them broadcast. LTV now records the board’s twice-monthly meetings at no cost to the district, but the agreement does not extend to budget work sessions. At its Nov. 18 meeting the board had said it would welcome local businesses or individuals interested in covering the added expense but apparently none have come forward.

In other news, the board approved a seventh and eighth-grade foreign language field trip for 40 students to Montreal and Quebec from Feb. 5 to 8 at an estimated cost of $829 per student, with costs to be subsidized by individual fund-raising.

Ashley Pite and Nancy McMullan were approved as replacements for teachers on leave, each at a per diem rate of $262, and Wendy Albrecht was appointed senior clerk typist for a probationary period of 12 weeks at an annual salary of $53,460.

The board also accepted donations of young adult books for the East Hampton Middle School from Kathleen Doherty, publisher of the children’s and young adult division of Tom Doherty Associates, and a large Meade Autostar III telescope from Alan Weinschel.

Before adjourning, Adam Fine, the principal of East Hampton High School, said an anonymous donor had approached him with the possibility of supplying lights for the school’s athletic field. Mr. Burns said the issue would be tackled at a future meeting. 

The board also acknowledged student athletes in golf, volleyball, soccer, and cross-country for various honors.

The board will convene next on Dec. 16 at 6:30 p.m.

Limiting the use of the East Hampton Airport based on the season, day of the week, and time of day would be a reasonable way to address aircraft noise, an environmental consultant told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday. The board, in response to a tide of complaints and pleas from local residents and town officials from both the North and South Forks, has vowed to put new rules in place by next summer.

Information compiled about the effects of aircraft noise, including data on the type of aircraft that fly in and out, their patterns of approach and departure, and the complaints themselves, defines the problem, said Ted Baldwin of Harris Miller Miller and Hanson, and points to limiting use during certain days and times as part of the solution.

Other actions, such as limiting the number of takeoffs and landings by time or type of aircraft, or banning certain aircraft such as helicopters, which have been identified as the most disturbing to residents, could also be feasible but would require more study, he said.

Mr. Baldwin was charged with reviewing the results of a phase-one noise study by another firm, presented to the board in October, as well as updating data on airport operations, noise, and complaints, in order to hone a draft statement on the aircraft-noise situation. A “short list of the most promising alternatives” was also created.

The consultant summed up the problem as follows: “Noise from aircraft operating at East Hampton Airport disturbs many residents of the East End of Long Island. Residents find helicopters more disturbing than any category of fixed-wing aircraft. Disturbance caused by all types of aircraft is most significant when operations are (1) most frequent and (2) in evening and night hours.”

In concert with Mr. Baldwin, Catherine van Heuven of Kaplan Kirsch & Rockwell, the town’s aviation law firm, assessed a list of potential airport use restrictions that were laid out in the noise study’s first phase. She weighed them against the data-driven description of the noise problem to determine how, or if, they might address the issues and also meet the Federal Aviation Administration’s standards for acceptable local regulations.

Although the F.A.A. maintains a degree of authority over airports (and the sole authority over planes in flight), proprietors of local airports such as the townmay enact restrictions if they are nonarbitrary, nondiscriminatory, and “narrowly tailored to a local problem” that is clearly defined, Ms. van Heuven said.

The town, for instance, “cannot be overly responsive” to citizens’ complaints about noise, she said, by enacting broad restrictions that are unsupported by facts.

In a recent 12-month period, Mr. Baldwin said Tuesday, 24,000 complaints were received about aircraft noise — “an extraordinary number,” he said, in comparison even to major airports such as Boston’s Logan, where 1,000 to 1,200 noise complaints are received each year.

Of eight alternatives for action presented to the board in the first-phase noise study, four can be disregarded, Ms. van Heuven said. Three may eventually prove viable, but that will “require a little more digging” to ascertain.

But, she said, establishing restrictions on landings and takeoffs based on the season, day of the week, or time of day, such as, for example, an evening, night, and early-morning curfew, would clearly help the town address the noise problem as defined and borne out by the data.

And there is “clear data,” the attorney said, showing that helicopters prompt the most noise complaints. Decibel levels have often been used as the measure for a disturbing noise, she said, but while helicopters may not be as loud as some other aircraft, the tone and pattern of their noise and vibrations has been found to be more disturbing than louder sounds. Should the town target helicopters in potential regulations, a “more sophisticated analysis” could be warranted, she said.

In a recent court case, the F.A.A. successfully used the number of complaints generated by helicopters, rather than their absolute loudness, to support the imposition of a mandated flight route over the water off Long Island’s north shore.

Eliminated as workable alternatives for East Hampton Town, said Ms. van Heuven, were “mitigation” — decreasing noise disturbance by installing sound insulation in houses or buying up affected properties — and instituting fees that would deter specific planes from using the airport, or during peak periods. A fee would “have to be high enough to change behavior,” the lawyer said, but such a fee in East Hampton, where there are numerous wealthy airport users might not be considered “reasonable” under the F.A.A.’s definition.

In the federal agency’s view, she explained, airport fees must be linked to “the burden on the airport . . . not necessarily aggravation to the community.” For instance, she said, a heavier plane might be charged a higher landing fee, as it causes more runway wear and tear.

In addition, she said, setting high fees could have “unintended consequences,” limiting use of the airport by local small-plane pilots, who, it was agreed at the meeting, are not part of the problem.

David Gruber and Pat Trunzo, both of them attorneys who have been vocal in discussions of the airport and aircraft noise, questioned Ms. van Heuven’s depiction of the F.A.A.’s legal stance on fees and asked for further citation.

Taking no action at all was also “not a reasonable alternative,” Ms. van Heuven said. “Your ultimate solution is not going to be just one thing,” she told the board.

The town board continues to seek public comments on the issue; they may be submitted by email to [email protected].

More than a dozen members of the public spoke during Tuesday’s meeting, most of them imploring the board to do something about noise from the skies. But Kathryn Slye, a pilot, said the board had ignored the needs and opinions of local pilots. She said she had been asked not to speak at an aircraft noise hearing in August, where more than 50 members of the public made comments, and that she had signed up to speak on that day, but had not been called. She wondered whether the aviation subcommittee of the town-appointed airport planning committee had been asked to weigh in on potential airport use restrictions.

It had been, said Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, but had not submitted comments.

Ken Lipper, a former New York City deputy mayor, and Peter Wolf, a planner, have mounted a public campaign to ban helicopter and seaplane landings and takeoffs at the airport, among other restrictions. Mr. Lipper reported Tuesday that Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a leading and “conservative” law firm hired by the two men to provide an opinion on whether the regulations they have proposed would be on firm legal footing, had said their proposal “fully comports . . . with existing legal constraints on the ability of localities to regulate airport operations.”

The firm is available for consultation with town officials and the town attorney, Mr. Lipper said.