With a lighter than normal agenda on Jan. 15, Reed Jones, the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s chairman, took the open time to launch a discussion on the town’s agricultural policy, as applied by his board.

       Ian Calder-Piedmonte, himself a farmer, led the discussion. He has expressed concern over the past two years about the growing number of subdivisions with agricultural land being set aside in name only. The problem, he told fellow board members, is that the wealthy buyers of large properties in these new subdivisions, which also have large agricultural reserves, simply look at the reserved land as a big lawn. “You have to try a little harder than say, ‘I’m going to buy a big house and have this huge lawn,’ ” he said.

       It was important, he said, to try to get owners to see that the land is actively farmed. “Now, that farmland is lost if they can’t find a tenant, or somebody to do the farming.”

       Currently, under the town’s zoning code, land set aside as an agricultural reserve cannot be used for any other purpose, say as a croquet court, though what constitutes an agricultural use is fairly broad, under the code. It includes “the production or raising of field crops, vegetables, fruits, trees, horticultural specialties, flowers, livestock (including cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and poultry) and livestock products and other ordinary farm products.”

       Bob Schaefer pointed out that many crops in the Midwest are subsidized. “What if you’re farming and you can’t find anybody to buy your product?” he asked.

       “Perhaps it is growing cover crop,” Mr. Calder-Piedmonte responded. “The details here are going to be a little tricky but we can’t just throw up our hands,” he said.

       Patrick Schutte questioned how it would be possible to enforce what is already on the books. “We’re creating 70 percent open space, but we have never had a mechanism that could be enforced. Do we want to have a mechanism where the town can force people to do what they don’t want to do? In my mind, we’re creating agricultural land, but we are not enforcing,” he said. But, he pointed out, the land would always be available for agricultural use, if needed.

       “I think our code is stronger than that,” Mr. Calder-Piedmonte countered. An agricultural set-aside “isn’t for open space, it is for farming.” Mr. Calder-Piedmonte also looked back at previous subdivisions, like the recent Estates at Further Lane, a large parcel of beachfront land owned by Ron Baron that includes an agricultural reserve.

       Job Potter, a former town councilman who was appointed to the board earlier this month, weighed in on the issue. “The town board would need to grapple with what happens when farmland is abandoned. It is important to distinguish between land that was bought by the town,” he said, and land that was set aside as part of the subdivision process.

       The board also discussed suggesting that East Hampton follow Southampton Town’s lead and establish an agricultural advisory committee. Members of the board would be interested citizens from East Hampton, but could also include members from outside organizations, like the Peconic Land Trust.

       Mr. Jones promised that the board would continue this dialogue in the coming months. “This is a big topic,” he said. “There are a lot of specifics. It is the board’s intention to keep this open for public comment and input.”

Saunders, Crystal Room

       Hearings on new East Hampton headquarters for the Saunders and Associates real estate firm and a site plan for the former Crystal Room property are on the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s schedule for Wednesday at 7 p.m.

       Saunders and Associates is looking to give the vacant one-story building at 24-26 Montauk Highway a major makeover, including a second story. The lot to the east of the building would be merged with the western lot to allow for parking. Because the lots are in a limited business overlay district, only 2,000 square feet is to be used for business purposes. The existing building is 3,500 square feet. By combining the lots to provide the required extra parking, the owners are hoping to be able to expand the nonconforming building. Kathryn Santiago, the board’s attorney last year, had advised the board that the developer’s plan was permissible under the town’s zoning code.

       However, a new town attorney, Elizabeth Vail, said Monday that the proper person to make that determination is the town’s chief building inspector, Tom Preiato, a point reiterated on Tuesday by the board’s new attorney, John Jilnicki. If Mr. Preiato has not made his determination on the matter by the time of the hearing, the hearing will be kept open to await his decision, Mr. Jilnicki said.

       At the former Crystal Room property on Pantigo Road in East Hampton, the owners are proposing six two-story, 1,599-square-foot units, each with a 238-square-foot garage and 350 square feet of decking. According to Richard Whalen, representing the applicant, the estate of Albert Trages, the approximately 1.5-acre property is one of only four lots in the town where multiple residences are permitted by zoning.

       Those expecting the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals to announce a decision on the Maidstone Club’s application for a new irrigation system may have been disappointed on Friday. Just the same, the meeting included no less than three hours’ worth of debate and zoning minutiae on other hot-bed topics, including the definition of a garage, which is covered separately on A1, and the installation of AT&T antennas and auxiliary equipment on a 180,000-gallon oil tank at P.C. Schenck and Sons at 60 Newtown Lane.

       The Maidstone Club had submitted a draft environmental impact statement on the irrigation system, which was the focus of debate at the board’s Jan. 10 meeting. However, on Friday, Frank Newbold, the board’s chairman, said some  legal notices of the completion of the draft statement had not been distributed to certain interested parties until Dec. 31. Because the state requires a 30-day minimum comment period, the board extended it to Jan. 30 and delayed its determination.

       Friday’s meeting was the second public forum on the AT&T antennas and six ground-level equipment cabinets. The project is intended to increase coverage for AT&T’s cellphone subscribers, but it requires setback variances.

       At a hearing last month, the board told the applicant’s attorney, John Huber, to address concerns  about noise and possible health hazards due to radio frequency emissions expressed by adjacent property owners.

       With regard to noise, Mike Patel of Tectonic Engineering of Newburgh, N.Y., said the worst-case scenario, with fans running at full capacity to cool the equipment, would produce 65 decibels at a distance of five feet from the cabinets. By comparison, a base level of ambient noise at the site, measured during lunchtime when the company’s trucks were idle, was around 44 decibels, he said. By comparison, Mr. Patel said, “When a fridge kicks in in a house, that’s around 55 to 60” decibels. “This is without any kind of baffling or any other sound attenuation put around the proposed facility.” Vegetation would further reduce any sound traveling to nearby properties, he said.

       Mr. Patel added that his analysis showed 53.8 decibels  at the property line of 19 Barns Lane, about 33 feet from the proposed cabinets. “If you go farther,” he said, “at the house line it would be around 52 decibels.”

       “The problem,” Lysbeth Marigold, a  member of the board, said, is that “the worst-case scenario is probably when the homeowner is sitting outside on his patio, which would be, let’s say, Sunday afternoon in August, so it’s very hot. The cellphone usage is intense because all our visitors are here. I don’t know about you, but I’m aware when my refrigerator kicks in.”

       Ms. Marigold also questioned placing the cabinets near the property line. “We considered the entire property and there is no other space available at the location,” Mr. Huber said flatly. “If he wants antennas and the income of that — I imagine that’s the driving force — why not find space?” Ms. Marigold asked.

       Mr. Newbold was also concerned about the location of the cabinets, saying they were “going to be hard up against the cinderblock wall, and basically the noise is going to bounce out toward the residential area.” He too asked if they could be relocated or enclosed to minimize noise. “We have conferred with Mr. Schenck directly, and the guidance I was given is that there’s no other available location on the property,” Mr. Huber repeated.

       Furthermore, he said that Mr. Patel’s analysis had concluded that sound baffling would require a 10.5-foot-tall fence. Such an installation would reduce the sound to the ambient level, Mr. Patel said. But to comply with the village code, the applicant had already agreed to reduce the height of the fence from eight to six feet.

       “We’ve had other industrial situations where they do use a six-foot sound-baffling fence and it seems to work,” Ms. Marigold said.

       “The reason for the ten-and-a-half foot fence was because we were also looking at the top floor of the neighboring house,” Mr. Patel answered. 

       Mr. Huber asked the board to remember that “this is a fuel-dispensing depot with trucks rolling in and out.” The sound associated with trucks is 90 decibels, he said, nearly double the level from the proposed cabinets.

       Mr. Newbold said that Drew Bennett, the village’s consulting engineer, had addressed other concerns raised at last month’s meeting, including the advisability of welding antennas to a fuel tank and the effect of radio frequencies emitted from the antennas. According to Mr. Bennett, the welding can be done safely if done in accordance with federal procedures, and the radio frequency levels would be less than 5 percent of the maximum exposure set by the Federal Communications Commission.

       Residents were still not convinced. “I feel like a dinosaur is coming to eat East Hampton Village,” Naomi Salz said. “I think this is a very inappropriate place to put up such a facility.” She suggested East Hampton Airport as an alternate site. “It would be very unfortunate if years from now we find out that, yes, there is some radioactive effect and it has been affecting people or the community in some way,” she said.

       Joseph Lambiase, who recently bought the property at 19 Barns Lane and had spoken against the project at the meeting in December, reiterated his opposition on Friday. “It’s already very noisy,” he said of the Schenck site. “There’s other options for them that they just don’t want to take,” he said.

       Nearby residents had bought their houses with knowledge of an existing level of noise, Mr. Newbold told Mr. Huber, but “to introduce additional noise is a burden on them.” He asked that the applicant return in two weeks with the best recommendation of “what would be the most silent way to install this.” Mr. Huber agreed, and the hearing was adjourned to Feb. 14.

    East Hampton Town Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the town board’s new liaison on East Hampton Airport matters, rolled up her sleeves and dove into the long-controversial subject of the airport during her first month in office.

    At a town board meeting on Tuesday, she outlined a plan of action on several fronts.

     The town’s budget and finance advisory committee will be asked to conduct a financial analysis of the airport, focusing on operating expenses, including maintenance costs, current revenue as well as prior revenue trends and possible new revenue streams, and airport property leases. The focus, according to a statement read at a town board meeting Tuesday by Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, will be on “obtaining reasonable estimates of airport net cash flow under various operating scenarios.” That, she said, will provide information on money available for payments on bonds that may be issued for airport capital projects.

    The need for such information has long been cited as a key to making a decision about whether or not East Hampton should continue to accept Federal Aviation Administration grants, which come with obligations as to how the airport must be operated.

    Several adjunct appointees with financial expertise and knowledge about airport matters will be added to the committee to do this work: Frank Dalene, David Gruber, Gene Oshrin, Pat Trunzo, and Tom Twomey. They will work with Arthur Malman, the budget and finance committee chairman, Bonnie Krupinski, and Peter Wadsworth, in conjunction with Jim Brundige, the airport manager, and Ms. Burke-Gonzalez.

    “Ultimately the financial analysis will help guide the board on how the airport can best be financed in the future, either self-financing or through F.A.A. subsidies, as it is the board’s desire to have it operate without cost to taxpayers,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said. The goal is to have the analysis completed by the spring. The information, according to the resolution to be offered tonight, will serve as a “baseline of agreed-upon data for further discussions and policy decisions by the board.”

    On the noise abatement front, the town board is expected to pass a resolution tonight hiring DY Consultants to draft a request for proposals, so that the town may hire analysts to review operations and noise data. That, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said, will help the town “narrowly define the noise problem” and identify methods for addressing it. In order to gain F.A.A. approval for possible airport use restrictions, the town must pinpoint the cause of noise problems, and target proposed restrictions.

    Also expected tonight is approval of a new airport planning committee comprising two subcommittees, one with representatives of the aviation community, and one of noise abatement advocates.

    The two groups, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez explained Tuesday, will be asked to draft a plan for the airport that address noise abatement, operations, and capital improvements.

    “Maintenance at the airport has been virtually ignored,” the councilwoman said in her statement, and both capital and routine improvements are needed to sustain a safe facility. The prior town board adopted a five-year, $5.3 million airport capital improvement plan, and a $5.2 million maintenance plan in December, she said, but “with very little input from the community.”

    Noise-abatement advocates who will be tapped for the new group are Kathleen Cunningham, Mr. Dalene, Charles Ehren, Mr. Gruber, Tom MacNiven, Jim Matthews, Mr. Trunzo, and Peter Wolf. That group will have its first meeting on Monday at 4 p.m. at Town Hall. The public will be welcome to attend.

    The aviation community representatives have not yet been named, but will be members of the pilots’ association and owners of airport businesses.

    The involvement of the budget and finance committee and the new airport planning committee, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said, will allow the town board to “operate a safe and efficient airport serving the East Hampton community, resolve the noise problem that has remained unaddressed for 30 years, and determine whether the airport will be self-financing, or continue to rely on F.A.A. subsidies.”

    Increased litter on East Hampton’s beaches, which apparently has followed the growing tide of summer visitors, has prompted Dell Cullum, a photographer and wildlife specialist, to do something about it. In addition to alerting local officials to the problem, last summer he made and posted a short film on Facebook about the accumulated debris on the beaches and the East Hampton Village Nature Trail, “The Sad Truth: Summer In the Hamptons.” He had planned to lead a an ambitious beach clean-up effort in cooperation with the East Hampton Town litter committee this weekend, but due to the buildup of snow and ice, has postponed the cleanup until Saturday, Feb. 15, starting at 9 a.m. "Our volunteer sign-up was extraordinary," Mr. Cullum wrote in an email Friday morning, "and rather than waste the efforts of such wonderful volunteers, I prefer to wait so we can  properly and thoroughly accomplish our mission." (Mr. Cullum is one of The Star's contributing photographers.)

    Five groups will sweep the ocean shoreline. Group One will meet at Georgica Beach and comb the sands from there to Two Mile Hollow Beach. Group Two will start at Napeague Lane and sweep west to Two Mile Hollow. Group Three will also start at Napeague Lane, but head east to the campground at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk. Group Four will start at Kirk Park Beach in Montauk and head west to the campground. Group Five will start at Montauk Point and sweep west to Kirk Park.  Bags and gloves, provided by the town, will be distributed at each site.

    Those wishing to participate can go to Mr. Cullum’s website, imaginationnature.com, and click on the “Shoreline Sweep 2014” button for information and to sign up. The page will be updated right up to the event’s 9 a.m. start.

    The idea for a beach cleanup on this scale, Mr. Cullum said, came from his having lived in a wooded area in Tuxedo, N.Y. An eight-mile stretch of road with “Adopt-a-Highway” signs bearing various corporate names was never tended to, he said, making the signs “more like an ad for these companies.” Mr. Cullum spent a year cleaning the stretch himself. “I got the signs removed, and a really nice letter from Bernadette Castro,” the former commissioner of the New York Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. “I knew that with a minimal amount of resources, you could still pull off a big project.”

    Mr. Cullum has enlisted Deborah Klughers, an East Hampton Town trustee who is the chairwoman of the town’s litter committee, and Supervisor Larry Cantwell has endorsed the project. Mr. Cantwell, who had pledged at a candidates’ meet-and-greet in the fall to help address litter, will participate in the cleanup, Mr. Cullum said. “He’s a man of his word.”

    At the trustees’ meeting on Jan. 28, Ms. Klughers relayed plans for the cleanup to her colleagues and got them to agree to collect the bagged trash with the trustees’ truck. Ms. Klughers, Mr. Cullum said, “is a very big environmentalist. I applaud her work. Because she’s doing this, I told her I would become part of the litter committee.”

    Volunteers will separate out the recyclables from the trash so that data on the type of debris found on the beaches can be collected. Group leaders are still needed to hand out supplies and tally results, Mr. Cullum said, as are donations of warm beverages for the volunteers.

    On Tuesday evening, hours before freezing rain resulted in yet another day of school cancellations across the South Fork, members of the East Hampton School Board heard that the weather was likely to impact this year’s spring break and that the district expected to go to trial over its longstanding dispute with Sandpebble Builders.

    Patricia Hope, the board president, reviewed the policy on snow days. Yesterday was the third day that school was cancelled so far this year. “Students in New York State must by law attend school for 180 days per year,” Ms. Hope said, explaining that two snow days had been built into the calendar. Given this year’s weather, and the possibility of further closings, Ms. Hope said any additional cancellations would mean subtracting days from this year’s spring break, which is set for April 14 to 18.

    “We would start with that Monday, go into Tuesday, and Wednesday, if need be,” continued Ms. Hope. “ We will obey the law and do our best. State law says you can’t do it in July.” The last day of school is June 27.

    During the first opportunity for public comments, Paul Fiondella, an East Hampton resident, expressed frustration at the duration and expense of the Sandpebble lawsuit, which has stretched on for more than a decade. At issue is a multimillion-dollar contract for a construction project dating back to April of 2002. Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said that with depositions nearly finished, the lawsuit was finally expected to go to trial in the fall, echoing a similar prediction more than a year ago.

     “In event we lose this lawsuit, what is our liability? The public never received an answer,” Mr. Fiondella said. “You should think seriously about suing the attorneys you hired at the beginning of this lawsuit to recover some of the $3 million spent by this district for litigation. I haven’t heard about what this district is liable for, and we should have had that answer 10 years ago.”

    Several board members, including Jackie Lowey, expressed similar frustration during the meeting, noting that the decision to continue the fight occurred under a prior superintendent and an entirely different school board. 

     Earlier in the meeting, Michael Espina made a presentation about School Source Technologies, a firm that helps link various technologies used by school districts into a single user interface. He said he is now working with 10 districts on Long Island and 20 across the state. Though the initial platform license would be free, he said later fees could be negotiated. “We try to keep the price point for an integration platform below $10,000,” he said.

    Turning to educational matters, Theresa Grimaldi, the district director of assessment and reporting, made a presentation on advanced placement and S.A.T./ACT scores at East Hampton High School. The high school offers 16 A.P. courses, with student participation going up, she said. In addition to a significant number of sophomores and juniors, she said a large number of seniors are taking as many as four to five A.P. courses at one time.

    With a population of around 900 students, about one-third are enrolled in at least one of these courses. The goal over the coming years is to increase student performance. Among students scoring a 3 or higher on the ACT (the usual score needed for college credit), East Hampton generally ranks below national and New York State averages. But on the 2013 S.A.T., East Hampton consistently ranked above the state in critical reading, writing, and math.

    In other action, the board voted to extend the appointment of Ryan Mahoney, a leave replacement social studies teacher, through the remainder of the school year. The board also extended a medical leave for Stephen Bock, a custodial worker, until Feb. 26. A decision on whether to help fund a proposed boys’ varsity lacrosse  trip in April to see an Army vs. Navy game at West Point was delayed. At a cost of $1,450, several members expressed reluctance to sign off on such an amount, raising issues of equity with other school trips.

    It was also noted that the district is looking into how  it might be affected by the Affordable Care Act. The law requires that health insurance be provided to employees who work at least 30 hours. Isabel Madison, the assistant superintendent for business, said that the district didn’t have any part-timers who went over that number of hours.

    When Bryan Bantry built a theater two decades ago at Goose Creek, his compound in Wainscott, his was one of the few on the South Fork at the time. He thinks he remembers that Ronald Perelman, Barry Sonnenfeld, and Ronald Lauder each had one, with Mr. Lauder’s being in a barn. In that pre-digital age, he had to source his equipment from Germany and prints had to be delivered. Times have certainly changed.

    “Now in your high-end market [a home theater] is almost a given,” said Gene Stilwell, managing director of Town and Country Real Estate. “Buyers now expect it’s part of the package.” He describes the high-end at $5 million and above. “It’s a selling point in the high-end rental too,” said Nanette Hansen of Sotheby’s. “People want to have a movie night and have their friends over.”

    “They’re over the top as far as what they’re doing,” said Mr. Stilwell, mentioning one where a night sky appears on the ceiling replete with assorted twinkling heavenly bodies. “You can even adjust how many shooting stars.” He was referring to the fiber-optic ceiling tiles that can be installed by the several home theater companies doing a thriving business on the South Fork.

    When it comes to tricking out these babies “the sky’s the limit,” said Zac Allentuck, proprietor of Hamptons Technology Group, an East Hampton company that has installed “basic to elaborate” media rooms.

    Indeed, Crescendo Designs in Southampton, which employs an in-house team of 24, has installed home theaters in these parts at far above $1 million. “I don’t believe we’ve hit the $2 million mark yet,” said Michael Brody, who co-founded the company with his brother, Chris Brody, but they’ve gotten close to it.  Spending that kind of moolah is “really for the ultimate enthusiast” — not necessarily a media maven, but rather “someone who cares about the experience overall,” he said.

    The ultimate Hamptons home theater owner desires the most luxurious reclining seats, swathed in supple leather, and sporting heated cup holders, pilasters to emulate the architectural details of a traditional cinema, velvet-covered acoustic panels (for enhancing sound), motorized curtains, sophisticated lighting, and, of course, the best audio and video equipment money can buy, not to mention a service that provides access to films before they’re released to the general public. Popcorn machine optional.

    Home theaters combine the latest in electronics and interior design. While some installers, such as Crescendo, do both, others specialize. Both Hamptons Technology Group and Home Technology Experts, a Southampton company, focus on audiovisuals. And both report that $600,000 is about what it has cost their most-demanding Hamptons customers for all the bells and whistles. As an example, one of Hampton Technology Group’s clients has a theater with a 135-inch projection screen, 12-foot ceilings, and 7.1 surround sound, meaning seven speakers and one subwoofer placed front, sides, and back.

    As technology progresses and TVs become bigger, projection screens are losing some ground to TVs. Everyone is buzzing about the latest TV technology, 4K or Ultra HD. “The resolution is so high that when you look up close you don’t actually see pixels,” according to Robert Gulli, the lead technician at Hamptons Technology Group. “You can’t decipher [the image] from reality.” The technology has advanced to make the dots smaller and to blend them together so that “there’s no space between them” and you lose that “mesh effect,” he said. “Everybody wants the latest and greatest.”

    In January LG debuted a 105-inch curved HD TV using 4K technology. At a comparable size to a typical home theater projection screen, what makes it revolutionary is that it does not require a dark room, unlike projection screens whose images are destroyed by ambient light. It also imparts a Cinemascope experience. The price tag for it is $70,000. While the cost is obviously high, there is a strong demand for it, according to Mr. Allentuck. “We live in a great market. Our business has been relatively unaffected by the ups and downs of the economy.”

    It’s not as if Hamptonites aren’t already used to paying that kind of price. “There are digital projectors that cost $175,000,” said Alex Karoussos, owner of Home Technology Experts. “A pair of fully digitally designed Meridian front speakers can cost $125,000,” and are so powerful “you can almost feel the sound and emotion.”

    Some pretty nifty accessories have also found their way into South Fork home theaters, according to Mr. Karoussos. Kaleidescape, which starts at $3,500, is a server that digitally stores and organizes all your movies. “It also bypasses credits and immediately starts the movie,” he said. He has also installed PRIMA Cinema Players, which, at $35,000, allow users to be the first on their block to view first-run movies. There’s an additional $500 rental fee if the film is still being shown in theaters.

    The evolution of home theaters continues apace. It was the advent of flat screen TVs that spurred the transition to home theaters in the Hamptons circa 2002, according to Michael Brody. The thinking was: “If I have a large TV on the wall, now I want surround sound, then I want a larger experience for projectors.”

    It seems that home theaters as we know them may have hit their peak. These days “they are getting away from the movie theater look and getting moved out of basements,” according to Ms. Hansen. “There’s a push to having them in a very high-end family room rather than a cavernous hole.” These new theaters look more like “a cocktail lounge in Tribeca,” she said. She has observed new home theaters decked out with “tasteful sofas and Berber carpets.”

    These hybrid multipurpose rooms have been on the upswing since 2011, according to Michael Brody. Sandy Gallin, a former producer whose Further Lane, East Hampton, property is on the market, has such a room. His theater boasts rows of sofas and ottomans, as opposed to seats, and a large antique cabinet lined with glass jars filled with candy and nuts, according to Linda Haugevik, his listing agent.

    What’s next? According to Chris Brody: your own private outdoor theater. A new TV on the market called C Seed unfolds from underground and raises about 15 feet to transform into a screen that is bigger than an S.U.V. “It’s like having a drive-in in your backyard.”

    Six years ago, during a routine visit to Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan’s East Village, Julie Resnick realized she had to make a change.

    With the park undergoing construction, her older daughter, Chloe, darted in one direction as the younger, Mae, headed in another. For a moment, Ms. Resnick lost sight of Chloe.

     “If I can’t take both of my kids to the playground by myself, that’s a problem,” she said to herself.

    After renting on the South Fork for several summers, the family decided to move here full-time in May 2009. Though considerably smaller than their two-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side, a 1,000 square-foot house on Napeague Bay in Amagansett ultimately won their hearts. Both the proximity to the ocean and, even more, the caliber of the Amagansett School were big factors in the decision.

     “It has a great public nursery school program,” Ms. Resnick said. After touring a handful of private preschools in the city, where tuition bills can soar upward of $40,000 a year, a free high quality public school apparently came as a shock. “When I took a tour of the school, it seemed to me to be at the same level, if not better,” she said. “We really fell in love with it.”

    Chloe, now 7, is in second grade. Mae, now 5, is in kindergarten. And come September, Ms. Resnick’s now 2-year-old son, Vance, will enroll in the full-day prekindergarten program for 3-year-olds.

    Ms. Resnick, a former technology start-up employee, owner of a digital agency, and culinary school graduate, is currently putting the finishing touches on feedfeed, which she described as “a mobile-app-based social network for food inspiration.” Her husband, Daniel, is a radiologist.

    The Resnick family is hardly alone in its affinity for a school that now enrolls 110 students from pre-K to sixth grade. The small class sizes, the dedication and experience of its teaching staff, and the full-day early childhood programs are among advantages commonly cited by families with children at the school. 

    Four years ago, Juliet Scott and her family moved from San Diego to East Hampton. Two years ago, they moved to Amagansett.

    “The number one motivating factor was the school,” said Ms. Scott. Her daughter, Caitlin, now in kindergarten, started in pre-K shortly after their move.

     “A full-day program is unusual anywhere,” said Ms. Scott, a stay-at-home mother who works part-time from a home office. Her husband, who grew up in Amagansett, works for a music publishing company. Previously, the family had been paying $500 a month for five hours a week of private nursery school. “I have friends in Michigan, Indiana, and California, and no one’s ever heard of having a full day of preschool offered at their school for free,” she said.

    While Ms. Scott initially thought the full day might prove too much, Caitlin has thrived. “I thought she would be so tired, and she’s not.” In her daughter’s kindergarten class of 13, Ms. Scott said it was not uncommon for four teachers to circulate through the room, each working with students in small groups. Her son, Aidan, nearly 3, will enroll this coming fall.

    “Amagansett is very welcoming. I love the small-town feel,” said Ms. Scott.

    On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Caitlin attends an after-school program for the lower grades. “They stay an extra hour and run around, play sports, and do various activities, and then the bus takes them home.” The school bus deposits the child at the end of the family driveway at around 4:15 p.m.

    “In recent years, families have relocated for a variety of personal reasons,” said Eleanor Tritt, the Amagansett School superintendent. “I have a sense that some families relocate to the East End schools from the city because they prefer the more individualized attention, the sense of community, and the high quality of education, as well as to avoid the very high tuition costs of private schools in the city. All of the East End schools have great programs and probably experience families moving in as well.”

    A request to tour the pre-K program was not granted.

    Though some local schools, notably Sag Harbor’s, allow nonresidents to pay for their children to attend, Amagansett does not. More than two dozen families  are paying $16,622 this year to send their children to the Sag Harbor Elementary School.

    At Amagansett, the full-day agenda for 3- and 4-year-olds sets it apart from neighboring districts, most of which offer only half-day programs. Bridgehampton is the only other district offering a full-day pre-K program for both 3-year-olds (which it is running this year as a trial) and 4-year-olds; Montauk offers a full-day program for 4-year-olds only.

    Across Long Island, full-day pre-K programs are few and far between. Though New York State provides some funding for 4-year-olds, much less is available for younger children. Dana Friedman, president of the Early Years Institute, a Plainview-based nonprofit that works with early childhood programs across the island, counts Amagansett among a handful of districts in the entire state that offer such programs.

    Though both Bill de Blasio, New York City’s new mayor, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo have endorsed universal pre-K, the finances have yet to be sorted out, with a number of districts funding early education with their own resources, or, more commonly, not funding it at all.

     “When we prepare the budget each year we review all programs to ensure that we are as efficient as possible while maintaining the quality of our programs,” said Ms. Tritt. “Since the tax levy cap legislation has been in force, we continue to carefully scrutinize and evaluate the efficacy of all non-mandated programs, which includes review of the pre-K 3 program, among several others.”

    No Amagansett School students qualified for a free or reduced-price lunch in the 2011-12 school year, according to state figures, unlike many of their peers in neighboring districts. Of the student body, 74 percent were white, 13 percent were multiracial, 10 percent were Latino, and 2 percent were Asian.

    Last summer, when schools across the state saw plummeting test scores, Amagansett far outperformed other local districts, with 71 percent of third graders passing the English language arts test and 57 percent of sixth graders passing both the English and math exams.

    Some cite an academic rigor that begins early on.

    Britton Bistrian, whose family has lived in Amagansett for six generations, counts the pre-K program among the district’s biggest assets. Her older daughter, Clemens, who attends the 4-year-old program, can already write her name and identify the letters of the alphabet. Her younger daughter, Merritt, will begin the 3-year-old program in September.

    The small classes, however, can be both good and bad, Ms. Bistrian and several other parents said. When there are only four to six children in a class, particularly in the youngest grades, there can be difficulty achieving an ideal  boy-to-girl ratio, she pointed out. (School-wide, the average class size was 15 for the 2011-2012 year.)

    When she hears from friends in Boston and New York who must subject their young children to aptitude tests when they apply for kindergarten placement in both public and private schools, Ms. Bistrian feels sympathy but also relief.

    Ms. Bistrian, who is trained as an architect, runs a consultancy firm specializing in land use. Her husband is a contractor. “Signing up babies while in utero for nursery school waiting lists is unfathomable to me,” she said. “I’m relieved we don’t have to deal with all of that.”

    East Hampton Village officials were asked to apply for an injunction to stop PSEG from all work on the East Hampton to Amagansett transmission line when residents of McGuirk Street and the surrounding neighborhood crowded into the conference room at Village Hall on Tuesday.

    PSEG (Public Service Electric and Gas) Long Island, which took over from the Long Island Power Authority at the beginning of the year, is in the midst of increasing the power in its electric lines, with the stated goal of improving the reliability of transmission and making it more resilient to extreme weather.

    The work has meant the installation of taller poles to carry new transmission lines, which residents fear pose a health hazard. Many also complained that they were not notified of the public hearing the village board held on the matter in September.  

    The old poles carry a 13-kilovolt distribution line, Bob Parkinson, the PSEG project manager, said. That line is to be transferred to new poles that will also carry a new, 23-kilovolt transmission line. The latter would be capable of transmitting 33 kilovolts if necessary, a PSEG spokesman said.

    Helene Forst, a resident of the neighborhood through which the lines run, asked that town as well as village officials seek a court injunction until it could be conclusively established that the installation would pose no health risk. Ms. Forst also asked at what distance from transmission lines electromagnetic fields dissipate and would have no detrimental health effects.

    “The first thing is the assumption that it’s dangerous,” Greg Olson, a distribution team leader with PSE&G New Jersey, a division of PSEG, replied. “There have been no definitive findings of magnetic fields having adverse health effect or any direct link to any health issues,” Mr. Olson said. He said electromagnetic fields  dissipate very quickly with distance, and the fields here would be no different from those in other communities, where they are commonplace.

    Terri Rauch, a McGuirk Street resident, asked Mr. Olson if he was “1,000-percent comfortable” that a new transmission pole at the corner of her property, from which electricity is provided to her house and “the headboard of my 17-year-old’s bed” is safe. 

    The 23-kilovolt transmission lines already coming out of the East Hampton and Buell Lane substations, which run along the railroad tracks, feed everything east of East Hampton, Mr. Parkinson said. The new 23-kilovolt line is apart from them because if, in the event of extreme weather, one pole fell on another, for example, they would take each other out of commission and “the entire South Fork goes out.” Hence, a diverse route, involving McGuirk Street.

    The new poles, residents further complained, contain a hazardous chemical preservative. That chemical, said Wei Chiang, an environmental manager for PSEG Long Island, is diluted, pressurized, and injected into the wood, locking it in. “With time, a very small amount leeches out,” he conceded, but “the highest concentration you will see is right at the perimeter of the pole.”

    Residents also asked about whether the lines could be buried, but were told by Mr. Olsen that burying them would typically cost 6 to 10 times more than an overhead installation. Underground installations are also vulnerable to failure, he said, and pinpointing the location of underground failures is difficult.

    “We hear your concerns,” Vincent Frigeria, a regional community relations person for PSEG, told residents.  “We’ll take them back.”

    Residents criticized Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach and the village board, some suggesting that the September hearing was “clandestine” and that the project was being quietly shepherded to completion.

    “If we’re going to take the heat, we’re going to take the heat,” the mayor said. “We’re trying to come up with substantive answers to your inquiries.”

    The matter was to be discussed again at the board’s meeting this morning. “There are potentially certain legal actions the village may take,” the mayor said. But, he warned, local government may be powerless to halt the project.

    “I am hard-pressed to say the work will not proceed,” he said. Ms. Forst objected. “You should be positive, and fighting for the people,” she said. “We’re not going to back down.”

       Last week “Company Town” offered a list of the top 10 house sales in 2013 as compiled by Town and Country Real Estate. We reported on that list because it was the only one we had in hand at press time. Later, however, Sotheby’s sent out a preliminary list of high-end sales, which included several not listed by Town and Country.

       The most notable was Wooldon Manor at 16 Gin Lane in Southampton, a former Woolworth family estate. At $75 million, it was by far the biggest sale of the year. Another house on Sotheby’s list was built by Michael Davis at 79 Parsonage Lane in Sagaponack; it sold for $21 million. These properties knocked out two properties in East Hampton and Wainscott on the Town and Country list, each under $17 million.

       We had tallied the numbers based on limited data last week and owe Southampton an apology for reporting that East Hampton’s sales out-performed those of its neighbor. When all is said and done, Southampton is most likely to be ahead by more than $50 million.

       It would seem that Judi Desiderio, the chief executive officer of Town and Country, had a bit of mud on her face because she had sent out her list before two major sales in December were recorded with the county. Twenty years ago, when she was the only broker sending out reports, she was able to wait a month or so till all the information was in, she said. Because of today’s competition, however, she had begun to release her lists earlier. “To remain relevant, I had to pick a date.” That date, she said, is going to change next year. “I think next year I’ll wait till the end of January to do my top 10.”

       Sotheby’s didn’t provide a top 10, but it reported that 12 properties went for more than $20 million. Unlike Town and Country’s list, the Sotheby’s list included vacant land. An example is 322 Ocean Road in Bridgehampton, which sold for $25 million. Two separate sales, recorded together as 50 Hither Lane, East Hampton, sold for a combined $21 million. John Gicking of Sotheby’s said the sales were listed together because they went to a single buyer who planned to build a compound.

       “This is how it can get very confusing, and how different agencies can choose different properties,” he said.

       Another reason agencies have different data is the lack of a centralized multiple listing system, which would provide all deed transfers when they are recorded with the county. Mr. Gicking said agencies here share an unofficial M.L.S., which they all subscribe to. According to Mr. Gicking, this system is “only as good as the information agents put on it.” 

       Chris Chapin of Douglas Elliman said the result was that “everyone is going to have a largely similar, but substantially dissimilar picture of what is going on. There’s always somebody who misses something that everyone thinks is common knowledge.”

       The accurate deed transfer reports from the county, can take up to six weeks to show up. Mr. Gicking said some agencies “wait a period of time to see what late-breaking data comes in.” However, were he to publish early data, he would put a disclaimer on it: “Based on info we have at this time.” He noted that the Parsonage Lane property showed on the county compilation only last Friday.

       Ms. Desiderio called the Parsonage Lane house sale the “most glaring” example of the problem with obtaining timely data. “The closing was Dec. 10,” she said.

       Meanwhile, as of Monday, there were at least 10 or 12 real estate agencies alive and well on the South Fork. Additional lists of top sales were a distinct possibility.

       William C. Hurley of Sag Harbor pleaded guilty Tuesday to all charges stemming from an accident on Route 114 in East Hampton last July that left a 6-year-old with a fractured skull and sent the boy’s mother to the hospital as well.

       The most serious of the charges against Mr. Hurley, 61, was assault in the second degree, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison. He was also charged with two felony counts of vehicular assault, one for each victim, misdemeanor driving while intoxicated, reckless driving, and recklessly causing a serious injury.

       On July 6, Mr. Hurley was driving a 2003 Toyota pickup truck north on Route 114 at a little after 6 p.m. when his car veered into the southbound lane, hitting a 2006 BMW driven by Elizabeth Krimendahl, whose son, Thaddeus Krimendahl, was in the back seat. While Ms. Krimendahl and Mr. Hurley were both hospitalized, their injuries were not considered as serious as the boy’s.

       “I’ve been up since 5:20,” Mr. Hurley told East Hampton Town police when first questioned, Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Thomas J. Spota, said Tuesday, adding that Mr. Hurley also told police he had had two vodka-and-grapefruit drinks before leaving his East Hampton business, Peconic Beverage, for the drive home to Sag Harbor. His blood alcohol level was .14 at the hospital, police said. The legal limit is .08.

       “We are recommending four years,” Mr. Clifford said Tuesday. In Suffolk County Criminal Court in Central Islip that day, however, Justice Fernando Camacho said that he would cap the sentence at two years.

       Mr. Hurley’s attorney, Edward Burke Jr., would not comment about the case after he left the courthouse. He had been in negotiations with the district attorney’s office throughout the discovery process, during which the prosecutor shares with the defense the evidence likely to be produced during a trial. The case was adjourned four times.

       Mr. Burke has pointed out during previous court appearances that Mr. Hurley has no previous criminal record and has great support from the community. Justice Camacho will pronounce a sentence on April 22.

       The prosecution of Mr. Hurley was led by Elizabeth Miller of the Vehicular Crime Bureau, which Mr. Spota set up less than two years ago. The goal of the bureau, Mr. Clifford said Tuesday, was to have a small cadre of assistant district attorneys who would focus specifically on felony cases involving vehicles in accidents that cause serious injury or death, when alcohol or drugs, prescription or otherwise, are involved.

       The attorneys, Mr. Clifford said, are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, available to go right to the scene of such accidents to aid local police investigators from the outset and strengthen the likelihood of successful prosecution.

       Besides having to deal with the newly formed bureau, Mr. Hurley faced another hurdle: Justice Camacho was appointed as a temporary Supreme Court justice specifically to deal with the backlog of cases in Suffolk County Court. After four adjournments, Mr. Hurley apparently had run out of time.