It was standing room only at East Hampton Town Hall as snow fell outside on Thursday morning during a swearing-in ceremony for new town officials.

Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell commanded the attention of the crowd, which filled the meeting room after a half-hour of coffee, Dreesen’s donuts, fruit, and chit-chat in the atrium. Mr. Cantwell's quiet “Good morning,” prompted a round of applause.

East Hampton Village Trustee Barbara Borsack was introduced by Mr. Cantwell as a “lifelong friend” and led a chorus of “God Bless America.”

Former East Hampton Town Justice James T. Ketcham rose to don his black robe – “to make it official,” he said – before swearing in Mr. Cantwell

Steve Tekulsky, who would be sworn in a few minutes later as town justice by his friend Alex Walter, stood in his brand-new judge’s robe, his hand on the shoulder of his elderly mother who was seated in the front row and wearing a wrist corsage.

“You knew what to do right away,” Judge Ketcham teased Carole Brennan after her swearing-in as the new town clerk. As a longtime deputy town clerk, Ms. Brennan had participated in many similar official ceremonies.

She did the honors for her former boss, Fred Overton, who eschewed an incumbent run as town clerk and instead sought and won a seat on the town board. “We’re switching sides,” she told Mr. Overton as the two stood at the front of town hall, Ms. Brennan with a face full of emotion and a huge, barely repressed grin.

Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, also taking a seat on the town board, was sworn in by Town Justice Lisa Rana. Her husband, Joe Gonzalez, flashed her a smile and a big thumbs-up as she stepped to the side of the room following her oath.

Ms. Rana then swore in incumbent Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch and his deputy, Kevin Ahearn.

“Now we’re going to swear in the new Carole,” Ms. Brennan said before doing the honors for Jeanne Hamilton, a three-decade veteran of positions at Town Hall, who is now the deputy town clerk.

During a brief break before the board began its annual organizational meeting, handshakes and congratulations were shared throughout the room.

       The  resolution of a problem caused  when East Hampton Town began to build a sump on farmland along Route 114, allowing farm soils to be trucked away, maybe forthcoming, Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc reported this week.

       The project, under former Councilwoman Theresa Quigley’s oversight, was an effort to address severe flooding in nearby neighborhoods. It was commenced without county and State Department of Environmental Conservation permits, and was halted some time ago after the county learned of it and objected, but not before a deep hole had been dug and the soil hauled away.

       The county owns the development rights on the property, and the project should have been vetted by a county farmland committee. When the town asked retroactively for the county’s permission, that permission was not forthcoming.

       The site, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence, has been untouched since the county put the town on notice that, should the matter not be satisfactorily resolved, East Hampton could be sued for violating its farmland preservation program. Councilman Van Scoyoc has been working to soothe ruffled feathers.

       The détente resulted in a plan that has initial acceptance from the county and will result in at least a partial solution to the nearby flooding, Mr. Van Scoyoc said at a town board meeting on Tuesday.

       “All along I’ve insisted that we address the flooding problems,” said Mr. Van Scoyoc. And, he said, both the town and the county agreed that the land should remain farmable.

       Under the aborted plan approved by the previous board majority, a 12-foot water catchment basin was created, which eliminated the ability for a farmer to till the property.

       Regrading of about half the dug-out area will create a swale that can still be farmed once it is replenished with good soil, Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

       Pursuant to a contract approved by the previous board, Keith Grimes, the contractor hired for the job at $293,000, was given the soil dug out of the original hole, and it was carted off.

       At the time, the board majority rejected the option of having Mr. Grimes spread the excavated farm soils around the site, which would have cost $28,000 more. An engineering company was paid $35,100 for the project design.

       Mr. Van Scoyoc’s negotiations with county officials “really centered on the amount of prime agricultural soils that were removed from the site,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. It was “a major bone of contention with the county and the farmland committee.”

       To compensate, he said, the town would commit to a future purchase for preservation of farmland or farm development rights — something already on the agenda, Mr. Van Scoyoc said.

       Under the new proposal, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, a new, six-and-a-half-foot-deep sump will retain runoff from the field, stopping it from spilling across Route 114 and causing flooding. It will hold about 40 percent less water than the original basin, the councilman said, but run-off containment work being done by the county along Long Lane, at the other side of the field, will improve the overall situation. The plan, he said, “greatly reduces the possibility of there being severe flooding.”

       The efforts of Mr. Van Scoyoc and others who helped broker the solution were acknowledged Tuesday by Supervisor Larry Cantwell and Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who thanked the councilman for “facing an angry farmland committee.”

       The extent of the breach was made apparent last fall in online comments by Sarah Lansdale, the county’s director of planning. The town, she said, “blatantly caused extensive damage to farmland,” and “unlawfully violated a piece of preserved property.” Allowing Mr. Grimes to sell the agricultural soil, which Ms. Lansdale called “the ‘Cadillac’ of soil,” only made matters worse, she said, as did the “hostile manner” in which town officials at the time responded to the county’s concerns.

       “They had their pitchforks,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said on Tuesday. He was authorized by the board to formally submit the negotiated plan for county approval.

       What could be the juiciest rental deal in the Hamptons just came on the market for the summer season. One of the coveted Sea Spray Cottages in East Hampton, a vestige from the glory days of the Sea Spray Inn, which dates from the 19th century and burned down in 1978, can be had by the highest bidder.

       East Hampton Village, which owns the 13 cottages near Main Beach, is soliciting sealed bids for the summer season, May 9 through Sept. 14, through 2 p.m. on Jan. 27 for number 14, a one-bedroom, one-bath cottage (named thus most likely for reasons of superstition).

       In the book “Images of America: East Hampton” John W. Rae writes that the Sea Spray Inn was built as a private house on Main Street, before being converted into a boarding house frequented by artists in 1888. It was moved to the dunes east of the one-year-old Main Beach pavilion in 1902. In 1924, both the inn and the pavilion were purchased by a cadre of summer colonists. When it burned down, only its cottages and a lone flagpole survived.

       The village purchased the 16-acre parcel with 1,200 feet of oceanfront and the cottages after the fire for . . . are you ready . . . $3 million (a true fire sale). The cottages are “nestled behind ocean dunes on a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Hook Pond just east of Main Beach,” according to a page from 2010 on the village website. 

       Though some of the cottages have both ocean and pond views, alas, cottage number 14 has neither. However it is standalone (some are attached), and is “one of the more secluded units,” according to Rebecca Molinaro, the village administrator. It is also located in the picturesque Ocean Avenue Historic District. According to the district’s guidelines, “the open space of the Sea Spray property makes an important contribution” to the beachscape.

       A writer for Forbes, who stayed in one of the cottages in 1976, called it “a grey driftwood beach shack . . . [that] smelled ocean-y and mildewy all at once.” She loved it. Once, the cottages were a true bargain, but rates were adjusted drastically upward when the village decided to award summer leas es by public auction in 2010.

       Rental rates in 2013 ranged from $34,067 to $108,150 for the season. The minimum bid for cottage 14 was $35,000 in 2010 when the leases were last auctioned off. This time it is $40,000.

       “You can’t touch anything like it for that kind of money,” said Nanette Hansen of Sotheby’s.

       “The prices are bargain basement for Hamptons’ standards.” Fifteen months ago Ms. Hansen sold a cottage across Ocean Avenue, in the little-known Bayberry Close (where Andrew Farkas recently bought a 500-square-foot unit for $1 million) for $1.25 million, which her customer flipped in November for $1.7 million.

       After leasing the cottages for three years in 2010, the village abandoned plans in 2013 to put their leases up for auction again because of damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, when most of the cottages suffered roof, shingle, and chimney damage. Tenants were allowed to renew and pay rent increases at the time. The vacancy of a cottage is a rare occurrence. As of 2013, all tenants had remained for the duration of their leases. The tenant in cottage 14 has decided not to renew for the 2014 season.

       Speaking on behalf of the village, Ms. Molinaro said, “I’m not sure when the full slate will be up for bid again.”

       As Gene Stilwell of Town and Country Real Estate said, “They’re tiny, tiny, but little jewels and gems, and they’re not making any more of them.”

       Inspection of the cottage is by appointment only. Information can be obtained from the village administrator’s office, 86 Main Street, or by e-mailing [email protected].

       It was crunch time for fourth graders at Springs School, with only six rehearsals remaining until the school’s annual opera debuts.

       Since early September, the 52-student company, comprised entirely of fourth graders, has been hard at work writing the script, composing the songs, painting the set, designing the costumes, and memorizing their lines.

       Titled “Dogs Don’t Talk,” the opera will debut on Wednesday night at 7 at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Additional performances are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. next Thursday, with a final performance on Friday, Jan. 17 at 9:30 a.m. The opera, which is free and open to the public, lasts about 45 minutes.

       At Springs School, the annual opera, which is now in its 17th year, is a highlight for both students and staff. Over the years, more than 800 students have participated.

       “The opera is one of the cornerstone programs at Springs School,” said Eric Casale, the principal. “Graduates come back years later and it’s one of the programs they consistently refer to and say that they cherished. The students and staff spend countless hours on the process, which makes the production what it is and has been over the years.”

       For the better part of the past two decades, Sue Ellen O’Connor and Margaret Thompson, two Springs teachers, have overseen the yearly production, which is based on the principles of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

       Every September, students complete a rigorous process, including an audition, before roles are assigned. Besides performers, students also work as composers, set designers, costume designers, makeup artists, lighting and sound assistants, and public relations personnel. The entire process takes place during after-school hours, with parents responsible for supplying transportation. 

       “Because they write and create it themselves, it’s so alive for them. We’re not just handing them a script,” Ms. Thompson, who has taught music at Springs for the past 29 years, said during Tuesday afternoon’s rehearsal. “It’s the highlight of our year. It’s exhausting, yes, but every year, it gives me chills. And when it’s over, they all really miss it.”

       Mrs. O’Connor started the opera during her second year at the school. A Springs School graduate, where her grandmother also taught, she has been a teacher for 41 years, working in Baltimore before returning to Springs.

       “This program really changes lives and has a broad impact,” said Mrs. O’Connor, while the cast received considerable coaching from Terie Greene, the stage director. “These kids are subjected to a great deal of testing and the opera gives them such confidence. Once you’ve done an opera, you’re not intimidated by tests. They’re empowered.”

       During the week of the opera, Mrs. O’Connor said that members of the fourth-grade class attain celebrity-like status, with many walking the hallways bolstered by a newfound sense of self-confidence after having earning the respect and admiration of their fellow students.

       “There aren’t many ways that fourth graders get recognized,” she said. “It’s a great age, they’re becoming very sure of themselves, with their identities beginning to emerge. The second and third graders, they can’t wait, they’re already preparing for their opera.”

       Year after year, it is the writing process that most enthralls Mrs. O’Connor — watching her students see the lines that they’ve written finally come to life under the bright lights of the stage.

       And in 17 years, despite any rough edges beforehand, opening night always goes off without a hitch. How the dress rehearsal goes on Sunday will determine how well she sleeps for the remainder of the week, she said.

       Even so, the pressure is on.

       With only a handful of rehearsal hours left — and a final dress rehearsal planned for Sunday afternoon from 1 to 4 p.m. — many students are busy running their lines during any available free time.

       Sophia Yardley, 9, has taken to rehearsing on her long driveway, learning to speak loudly enough so that her mother can hear her all the way at the other end. Meanwhile, her classmate, Natalia Flores, also 9, runs lines every evening in her bedroom, “over and over again.”

       “I’m really excited,” said Corrina Castillo, 9, during lunchtime on Tuesday, in between bites of a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich. She wore a neon green sparkly sweater with tiny blue dolphin earrings and Ugg boots to ward off the cold. “Each opera teaches a lesson,” she explained. “Ours is about not bragging.”

       But Kimberly Bermeo, also 9, was nervous that she would inevitably screw up a duet that she and Corrina share. “It’s a rhyming song and I’m worried that I’ll ruin it,” she said, with a flip of her long ponytail.

       Daniel Piver, 9, will play the part of Dexter, a character that he wrote. He shared her sentiment. “I’m really nervous,” said Daniel. “I’ve never been up on a stage before.”

       When stage fright proves too much, Kimberly has devised a simple solution. It is a strategy she shared openly with her fellow cast members: “I imagine everyone in their underwear. And for the women, I imagine them in their bras and underwear,” she said, with a laugh.

       So, the house you bought way back when is now worth a pile of cash. Trouble is, you are struggling to keep up the monthly mortgage payments. Or, you own the house free and clear, but your income isn’t adequate to keep you in the style in which you feel you deserve.

       You have a couple of choices. You can sell your house and live off the proceeds. Or, if you’re over 62, you can ask Uncle Sam for a handout in the form of a reverse mortgage, and stay put.

      “Most people want to stay in their houses,” said Pattie Romanzi, the chief executive officer of Par East Mortgage Company in East Hampton. “They tell me, ‘I’m going to die there.’ ”

Ms. Romanzi arranges about two reverse mortgages a month, and that number is growing. “We’re getting busier with them all the time.” Though, she admits, her colleagues “farther west” up the Island do many more.

       “There are a lot of people who are house rich and cash poor,” said Hilary von Maur, the branch manager of Guaranteed Rate in Southampton. “If you can’t meet your monthly nut, but are sitting on a house worth a million, you’re the perfect candidate.”

       Actually called Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (H.E.C.M.s), these loans are the Federal Housing  Administration’s way of allowing homeowners of retirement age to “convert a portion of the equity in your home into cash,” according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development website. It is like a traditional mortgage, according to Ms. von Maur, but instead of the owner making payments, the owner receives payments (either in installments or in one lump sum). According to HUD, “Borrowers do not have to repay the H.E.C.M. loan until [they] no longer use the home as their principal residence.” Alas, that point usually comes when the owner dies. 

       The size of the loan depends on the homeowner’s age and the value of the property, but is capped at $625,000. It’s a fairly complicated set of equations, according to Ms. von Maur, which are based on an “insurance table of your projected lifespan.” There’s no pussyfooting about it: These are end- they got $20 million, why can’t I?’ ” Ms. Desiderio said. Many sellers want to test the market. “There are always people who say, ‘If you can bring me $20 million I’ll sell.’ ” Otherwise, there’s no rush. “If you want to test the market, we’ll test it with you,” she said. “But if it doesn’t go, don’t shoot the messenger.”

       Sometimes overpricing can work, she believes. If you reduce your price a couple of times, by the time it’s back to where it should have begun in the first place, a buyer can feel good about his astute deal-making: “ ‘Oh, I bought an $18 million house for $12 million,’ ” Ms. Desiderio said.

       It’s not only greed that fuels the Hamptons overpricing phenomenon. “It probably happens a little more out here [than elsewhere],” said Mr. Shaheen. The reason being, “It’s not a primary housing market.” The significance of that is that second-home owners often don’t need to sell.

       “There are an enormous amount of overpriced houses that have been on the market a long time,” Mr. Pellman said. “A lot are in the high end . . . people can sit and hope the market comes up to their number.”

       There are two prominent examples. One in Bridgehampton that started at $75 million has been on the market for more than 10 years and is considered grotesquely overpriced by industry cognoscenti. The other, in Wainscott, has been on and off the market also for many years — currently on. Instead of lowering the price, the owner has consistently raised it, missing last decade’s boom market and continuing to miss the current upswing.

       The vast majority of houses, of course, are not overpriced. “I think what we saw this year is prices coming down to meet the market,” said Nanette Hansen, an agent at Sotheby’s. “I believe that properties are being priced closer to the bone than ever before.”

       When it comes to a property’s selling quickly, she has noticed that it happens when priced within 5 to 8 percent of the asking — “a price a buyer feels he can come into striking distance of and not insult the seller.”

       The sad truth is that “a lot of agents will take a listing — even if overpriced,” according to Mr. Shaheen. It helps the agent, if not the seller. “It might draw phone calls” so that an agent can then direct customers “to a house at a price that’s realistic.” But this is not something he would do, he said.

       As Ms. Desiderio said, “No matter how good a broker is, the broker can’t make the market. The market tells us where the market is.”

       Stating that the East Hampton Town Board is acting “arbitrarily and capriciously without scientific and evidentiary support” in its plan to reduce the deer population this winter, several local residents as well as the East Hampton Group for Wildlife and the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Center of the Hamptons took action last week to halt the deer cull planned for this winter.

       The town, the East Hampton Town Trustees, and the Village of East Hampton are named in a lawsuit filed by the New York law firm Devereaux, Baumgarten on behalf of opponents of the deer plan. The town was served on Dec. 18, the village last Thursday. On Friday, the village board voted unanimously to move ahead with the plan. (A story on that appears elsewhere in today’s paper.)

       “In 2012, a scientific survey of the deer population” in the town put their number at 877, according to the lawsuit (the survey actually took place on March 9, 2013). Given the count of 3,293 concluded in a town-commissioned survey in 2006, the plaintiffs complain that the assertion of an “uncontrolled explosion in the deer population” is not supported. A statement in the deer management plan that “we have too many deer,” the complaint says, is “unfounded, unsupported by science, reason, and the evidence.”

       The complaint challenges the validity of the plan itself, disputing a causal relationship between deer and the prevalence of Lyme disease, and citing statistics on deer populations and Lyme disease in other parts of the state that do not support such causality. It also disputes the town’s claim that deer-vehicle collisions have increased over the past decade.

       “The facts are not there: You can’t say that there’s an explosion in the deer population,” Edward Lebeaux of Devereaux, Baumgarten said on Monday.

       The governing bodies named in the complaint are compelled to file an answer within 20 days. “If they don’t,” Mr. Lebeaux said “there can be a default rendered against them.” His firm is seeking all documentation and evidence the town used to inform its deer management plan, including medical records pertaining to Lyme disease and data on automobile accidents.

       “Statistics show that the [2013 deer] count was down by 70 percent,” Mr. Lebeaux said. “How can it be down and they’re using the term ‘epidemic?’ Their own survey says 877. Those are numbers that are arbitrary and capricious.” Mr. Lebeaux said he was confident that the plaintiffs would prevail in halting the town and village’s culling plans.

       Larry Cantwell, the incoming town supervisor, had not seen the lawsuit as of Monday and would not comment on it. But, he said, “I do think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what the farm bureau is proposing. . . . You’re talking about a fairly limited number of parcels on a townwide basis that this program is going to apply [to]. The farm bureau is asking municipalities to identify parcels and obtain permission from property owners where this might occur. As a result of that, any target hunting that takes place is going to be on a fairly limited number of parcels. The question becomes how much interest is there from private property owners, especially farmland owners in places like Town Lane, Long Lane, other places where there are large herds of deer. There’s a ways to go with this.”

       Linda Riley, the village attorney, said on Monday that she had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it except to say that the village would likely hire an outside attorney to address it. “But I’ll take a look at it first,” she said.

       Diane McNally, the clerk of the trustees, said on Monday that she was surprised that the trustees were named in the suit. “We had asked a year or more ago that a deer management plan exclude any trustee property, only because . . . it’s easier to have our property exempt. I’m not sure these folks who initiated this were aware of that,” she said.

       The trustees manage the town’s common lands, including beaches and waterways, on behalf of the public. Ms. McNally said that John Courtney, the trustees’ attorney, received a copy of the suit last week and would likely contact Mr. Lebeaux so that “he can explain who we are and what we do.”

       Decisions affecting the future of the 24 acres in Amagansett where Putnam Bridge, a Connecticut developer, had proposed building 79 houses and apartments to be marketed to people aged 55 and up, have been punted to the incoming East Hampton Town Board. Hearings last Thursday on zoning changes requested by the developer will be continued in February.

       The controversial project, which engendered several organized groups of opponents, cannot go forward as proposed without a change in its current zoning. The developer had asked the town board to establish a new zoning district for senior housing, and to rezone the property, known as 555 for its address on Montauk Highway, into that district.

     The hearings drew a crowd to Town Hall, including a number of people carrying signs opposing the project, despite assurances last week from a local consultant to the developers that the rezoning application had been withdrawn and the hearing on it canceled.

       In fact, neither of Putnam Bridge’s two proposals, to create the new zoning district and to put 555 into it, has been rescinded. Instead, the developers asked that the town board hold open the hearings on both matters until the new year, and reconvene them after three new board members, including incoming Supervisor Larry Cantwell, take office.

       In a Dec. 18 press release issued by WordHampton, an East Hampton public relations firm representing Putnam Bridge, and in a letter from Richard Whalen, the Connecticut company’s Amagansett attorney, the developers said the delay would allow a “full vetting of the issues and concerns” and an opportunity for them to “present and explain our proposals to the community and the new board members at a duly noticed hearing before the new board.” The letter was delivered by hand to Supervisor Bill Wilkinson on the day of the hearings.

       A number of people who had intended to speak had gone home by the time the hearings began at a late hour, following protracted hearings on other matters. A handful of speakers, most of them opposed to the development, went to the podium.

       “This zoning district isn’t even really for seniors,” said Paul Fiondella of East Hampton. Before enacting a zoning district for senior housing, he said, town officials should take steps to ascertain “the housing needs of seniors” here.

       Jeanne Frankl of Amagansett agreed, calling the process, driven by the developers’ requests, “backward.”

       “There has never been a determination by the public,” she said, to have a “conversation” about the issue of housing for senior citizens. “What happened here was a design was crafted by a developer for a particular place.”

       “This feels like spot zoning for economic gain,” said Susan Bratton, an Amagansett resident.

       “What benefit will this development bring to us?” asked Averill Geus of East Hampton. “Why should we be doing all this for them?”

       “Amagansett is virtually unanimous . . . equally important is that the whole town is virtually unanimous,” said Ms. Frankl. She said most people oppose both the senior housing district proposal as drafted, and its application to the 555 property.

       Katherine Casey, director of the East Hampton Housing Authority, noted that housing for senior citizens could be created on the parcel without the zone change. The proposed new district, she said, “really is designed to increase the profit margin, pure and simple.”

       “This really is designed to increase the density, to increase the yield, to increase the profit,” she said. “It’s not really about seniors.”

       “Conspicuously absent” from the conversation, said Ms. Casey, have been local residents already involved in and knowledgeable about affordable housing for older people. She mentioned Gerry Mooney and Kathy Byrnes of the Windmill affordable senior housing developments as examples.

       Changing 555’s current zoning, which would eliminate an existing affordable housing district there, would result in “a net loss of 26 affordable units,” Ms. Casey told the board.

       Debra Foster of Springs, a former town councilwoman, submitted a petition bearing 1,200 signatures of people opposed to the proposed new zone and its application to the Amagansett site. Many more, she said, had signed a similar petition online.

       So many opponents had been expected to attend the hearings last week that organizers of a group called Stop 555 had asked town officials to provide a venue larger than the meeting room at Town Hall. After news outlets called to inquire about that request, Britton Bistrian, an Amagansett land planner and a consultant to Putnam Bridge, e-mailed Ms. Frankl, an organizer of the opposition, saying that “the rezoning petition for the property . . . was withdrawn last week and therefore will not have a public hearing.” That information, also sent to a Stop 555 representative, proved incorrect; the zone change application has not been withdrawn.

       Ms. Bistrian said Monday that Putnam Bridge had decided on Dec. 11 to suspend its effort to have its Amagansett acreage rezoned, so that the senior citizen housing zone concept could go forward initially before next year’s town board.

       “Our intent was to not hold the hearing last Thursday night,” she said. “There was too much of a heightened hysteria about that meeting. In response to the hysteria, let’s say, about the public hearing, Putnam Bridge wanted to turn down the volume.”

       “I wasn’t intentionally trying to confuse people,” Ms. Bistrian said of her e-mails.

       A call from Putnam Bridge’s attorney, Mr. Whalen, to Reed Jones, chairman  of the town planning board, which had the proposed new zoning district and the requested zone change on its Dec. 11 agenda, was intended to “withdraw 555 from discussion,” Ms. Bistrian said. The planning board nonetheless discussed both issues, and, said Diana Weir, a board member, voted unanimously to advise the town board against both.

     Ms. Foster said last Thursday that the various assertions being made about the zone change request and the hearings had been “confusing.” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc wondered if more people might have appeared at Town Hall to speak if the misinformation had not been circulated.

       Mr. Van Scoyoc argued against Mr. Wilkinson’s suggestion to hold both hearings open until Feb. 6, calling it “unnecessary.”

       “This application I don’t even think rose to a level where we should even have scheduled a public hearing,” he said.

       Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who, with Mr. Van Scoyoc, will continue on the board next year along with new members Mr. Cantwell, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, and Fred Overton, agreed.

       They were outvoted by the board’s three outgoing Republicans.

       The Suffolk County Planning Commission had come down strongly against both Putnam Bridge proposals, and the town board could only have overridden that action by a 4-1 vote.

       He had not cleared the shelves of the mementos and books in his office at East Hampton Town Hall last week, but Bill Wilkinson was ready to move on. As he looked back at his four frequently contentious years as town supervisor, it was with a mixture of satisfaction for what had been accomplished, sharp words for some of those who criticized him, and concern for the town’s future.

       “It was a total disaster,” he said about the crisis he and his fellow Republican town board members inherited when they took office in 2010. Bill McGintee, the previous town supervisor, left a financial mess when he resigned in 2009.

       Focusing on how to trim the town’s expenses, Mr. Wilkinson said that, at the beginning of his time in office, he realized that the budget of the Town of East Hampton was roughly equivalent to the budget of the Town of Southampton. “Yet Southampton had three times the population and twice the land. That didn’t make any sense.”

       “There were a lot of people that were just going through the motions, who didn’t understand what the appropriate priorities should be, and had no clue on how to fix it,” he said. “We knew what to do, how to do it, and we knew we had limited time to get it done. The pace of play had to change dramatically. With that, some people got offended.”

       For the past four years, Mr. Wilkinson routinely clashed over matters big and small with the Democrats on the board, Pete Hammerle and Julia Prince in his first two years and Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc in the last two. For Mr. Wilkinson it was a matter of philosophy.

       “There is the philosophical challenge of smaller government versus bigger government. I chose a smaller operation. Some people think government is in the business of employment. I have a problem with that. Fiscal responsibility is based on your value system. That’s the way I was educated.”

       A graduate of the University of Scranton who attended the Harvard Business School’s executive education program, Mr. Wilkinson had been in the Reserve Officers Training Corps and served as a first lieutenant in the Army from 1971 until 1973, stationed in Europe. After the service, he became an executive and consultant to major corporations in the human resources field. Mr. Wilkinson believes it was his private-sector background, along with those of his fellow Republicans on the board, Dominick Stanzione and Theresa Quigley, that was key to the town’s financial turnaround.

       “When I took over, we didn’t know which fund was paying for which activity. That is straightened out. The C.P.F. [community preservation fund], which was raided to the tune of $16 to $18 million, has been paid back and is sacred again. We are in surplus in all accounts except for one. The total debt of the town has been reduced from $150 million to slightly under $100 million by 2015. Twenty-six departments were shrunk to 13, and I have 13 managers that are doing things that they hadn’t done in the past. You have to prioritize.”

       Now that the town is on firmer financial footing, affordable housing is an issue he believes the next town board will have to address, but in a way that doesn’t increase overall debt.

       “Probably 70 percent of the trades that come into this town are from outside the town. Seventy percent of the businesses can’t afford to live here,” he said. The solution in the future, he believes, must be shared responsibility. It should not be just Montauk and Springs that shoulder the load of new affordable housing. It should be spread equally through the hamlets, he said.

       Mr. Wilkinson expressed frustration that East Hampton does not benefit from sales tax or hotel tax revenues, despite the fact that it is a tourist destination three months a year and revenues from tourism have increased. The money, under state law, goes to the county. He said that he has, for the past two years, tried to get an accounting of how much Suffolk County collects in East Hampton versus how much is returned to the town in goods and services. Although the figures were hard to obtain, he believes that East Hampton may be getting as little return as 30 cents on the dollar.

       Mr. Wilkinson is also unhappy that this tax revenue is controlled by county politicians. He commented that they were “from west of the Shinnecock. And they don’t give a damn about what happens out here.”

       Mr. Wilkinson was effusive, however, in his praise for Democratic Representative Tim Bishop, and the money Washington has earmarked for a beach restoration project on Montauk’s downtown ocean beaches.

       “Tim Bishop didn’t have to get Montauk this money. When you think about it, he could have gotten a lot more smiles from Brookhaven by giving them $50 million, as opposed to Montauk and its 4,000 lives.”

       Toward the end of the interview, Mr. Wilkinson unleashed his opinions about some of his critics. He said the Concerned Citizens of Montauk “would just let Montauk fall into the ocean.” He called the editorials in The East Hampton Star “ill-founded” and “un-analytical.” He said that opponents of the 555 proposal for market-rate senior citizen housing in Amagansett used “a campaign of hysteria.” He called their tactics “the scariest thing this town has seen.”

       Mr. Wilkinson said he had seen a series of outrageous text messages that seemed related to that controversy. He declined to say to whom the texts had been sent. One read: “Those three are bastards. We’ve got to get the dirt on Stanzione out.” He also reported that Councilwoman Quigley and her family had been threatened. Indeed, he said the whole 555 controversy stemmed from a misunderstanding of his administration’s intent. It did not plan to vote for 555 the same day as the hearing on its proposed new senior citizen zoning district, but wanted simply to involve the public in the discussion.

       “Why should this gang of eight people in Amagansett determine what happens?” he asked, referring to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee. “We want to hear from the public. Since when has this town been so intimidated by a public hearing?”

       Looking ahead, he expressed concern about the potential for the town to return to poor fiscal planning, even though Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell has asked Len Bernard, Mr. Wilkinson’s budget officer, to stay on. He feared, he said, that the new Democratic administration would be under political pressure to undo many of the reforms his administration had put in place. He also warned that Mr. Cantwell was going to find that running the town, with its 72 square miles and $70 million budget, is quite different than running East Hampton Village.

       Mr. Wilkinson has no plan to retire. “My wife would throw me out of the house,” he said with a laugh. He is going to get back into business, almost certainly locally, he said, but is going to wait to see what the New Year brings.

       During his term in office, Mr. Wilkinson said he had never met once with the Republican leadership. “I came in with no political background at all, no appreciation for the nuances of politics, and I can confirm that I leave with no appreciation for the nuances of politics. If it were to run a business, I think our administration would have gotten an A."

Crime, real estate, and a tragic accident in which a young teen was killed while riding her bike were among the top stories on The East Hampton Star's website in 2013. The page with the most traffic, however, was a tribute to the late Lou Reed from his wife, the performer Laurie Anderson. Wide media and blogger attention temporarily overwhelmed the site as hits soared.

The most-clicked story and the third-most popular involved accusations against Jason Lee, a Goldman Sachs executive who was said to have raped an Irish woman in August. A subsequent account added detail, including that Mr. Lee was said to have been found by police crouching in a Range Rover during their initial investigation. Mr. Lee has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is expected.

A story by Irene Silverman shedding light on the sale of Gurney's Inn in Montauk was number two for the year.

When Courtney Ross, the founder of the Ross School in East Hampton and Bridgehampton, announced that she would be departing for a life aboard a newly purchased yacht, an account of her decision, the fourth-most read in 2013, and some reactions to it drew wide attention -- and strong criticism from some in the school's community.

Katie Beers's interview with Joanne Pilgrim on the release of her book about her 17-day imprisonment as a young girl by a family friend and her return to normalcy was number five.

A contributor's account of being fired at age 64 was number six. Hy Abady wrote in The Star's Guestwords column in January, "I love the advertising business. I hate the advertising business."

The seventh slot was occupied by another contributor, Rebecca deWinter, the pseudonymous author of The Star's Tales of a Hamptons Waitress column. Like the Ross School story, Ms. deWinter's columns got a lot of attention, not all of it supportive, and she was fired from her job in an East Hampton restaurant when her bosses caught on.

Fans of the Beales of Grey Gardens renown drove a story about a pending Christies auction sale of an Andy Warhol Polaroid of Little Edie up to the eighth place. It turned out that the price paid, $9,375, exceded the pre-sale estimate.

Alcohol-fueled weekend gatherings on Indian Wells Beach promoted the Town of East Hampton to try putting a gatehouse of sorts at its parking lot entrance to deter nonresidents' cars and taxis. The experiment was a mixed success as it turned out with daytime revelers simply walking in with their beer and other supplies.

The tenth-most-read story on easthamptonstar.com in 2013 was about the death of Anna Mirabai Lytton on Pantigo Road in East Hampton Village June after the 14-year-old was struck while crossing the road on her bicycle.

       As the East Hampton Town Trustees prepare to convene with two newly elected members on Jan. 14, the board’s incumbents continue to be frustrated by the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s procedures for water-quality assessment.

       In November, the D.E.C. reclassified approximately 15 acres of Hand’s Creek in East Hampton, closing it to shellfish harvesting year-round instead of its previous seasonally uncertified classification. And approximately 14 acres of Accabonac Harbor were reclassified as seasonally uncertified, and are now closed to shellfishing from May 1 through Nov. 30.

       The reclassifications were part of emergency regulations the D.E.C. announced that affected 3,690 acres of Long Island waters. Agency officials said the action resulted from its analyses demonstrating increased levels of fecal coliform bacteria and the potential for shellfish harvested from the areas in question to cause illness if consumed.

       The D.E.C., said Lori Severino, a spokeswoman, adheres to the National Shellfish Sanitation Program’s minimum sampling requirements for certifying shellfish lands. Areas that are certified, or open for shellfishing, must be sampled at least six times per year. “This sampling is conducted throughout the entire year in order to get a good representation of water quality,” she said. “Seasonally certified areas must be sampled at least once per month during the period they are open for harvesting.”

       The department, she said, “does meet or exceed these sampling requirements. In the Three Mile and Accabonac evaluations, D.E.C.’s water quality testing exceeded the required sampling frequency.”

       The trustees, who oversee the town’s beaches, waterways, and bottomlands on the behalf of the public, take exception to the D.E.C.’s conclusions. Following the department’s reclassifications of the water bodies in question, Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk, or presiding officer, said that the D.E.C.’s Bureau of Marine Resources was understaffed and questioned the timeliness of its water-quality data. The D.E.C.’s reclassifications, she suggested, were based more on projections than accurate and up-to-date information.

       Stephanie Talmage Forsberg, a trustee who holds a doctoral degree in marine biology, also questioned the D.E.C.’s conclusions, saying that the reclassifications “do not necessarily reflect the water quality of these systems as a whole.”

       Ms. Severino took exception to the trustees’ skepticism. “The decisions to downgrade the affected areas in the Town of East Hampton were based on the evaluation of fecal coliform data, which were conducted in conformance with the requirements of [the state] and the N.S.S.P.,” she said. “The areas that have been designated as uncertified demonstrated elevated fecal coliform levels and failed to meet criteria for certified shellfish lands. These areas are re quired to be closed for the harvest of shellfish.”

       Ms. McNally remains skeptical. “If they can only get people out here on certain days after a certain amount of rain . . . they can’t get accurate data,” she said last month.

       In the fall, Michael Bye, a bayman who was hired by the trustees in August to operate a pumpout boat, received training in water-quality sampling from the D.E.C. The trustees hoped that Mr. Bye’s assistance would augment the D.E.C.’s testing and provide a more accurate assessment of shellfish beds under their jurisdiction.

       The D.E.C. has authorized Mr. Bye to collect water samples to support the evaluation of conditional harvest programs in Accabonac Harbor and Northwest Creek, Ms. Severino said. “When conditions are appropriate, following targeted rainfall events, Mr. Bye has been approved by D.E.C. to collect water samples in these shellfish growing areas,” she said. But, she added, “The purpose of his assistance will not involve supplementing D.E.C.’s routine water sampling to be used in management/closure decisions,” only the collection of data for future conditional shellfishing programs.

       “I think they’re accurate; I don’t think they’re up to date,” Nat Miller, a trustee and bayman, said of the D.E.C.’s tests on Tuesday. “They don’t have the manpower to test frequently, so instead they close the area down. We have tried to get other people to test and bring samples to them,” he said of Mr. Bye. “I think they’re no different than any government entity — they’re trying to secure and legitimize their job.”

       The trustees will reconvene with two new members, Brian Byrnes and Bill Taylor. Apart from the seven incumbents that ran for re-election in November, all of whom prevailed, Mr. Byrnes and Mr. Taylor won the most votes among a crowded field of candidates. Lynn Mendelman and Joe Bloecker opted not to run for re-election. Their last meeting as trustees was on Dec. 10.