An East Hampton Town permit for Ben Watts’s Shark Attack Sounds party, slated this year for Friday, July 5, at the Montauk Yacht Club, was approved in a split 3-to-2 vote at an East Hampton Town Board meeting last Thursday.

    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who voted against issuing the permit, cited the size of the party — 3,900 guests are expected, according to the permit application, although thousands showed up last year at a party slated for 800 — and the inability of the board to fully review the application, given the time constraints.

    Plans are to have parking at Rita’s Stables in Montauk, but this week it came to light that the town had some time ago purchased the development rights on the land there with the community preservation fund, precluding its use for anything other than agriculture-related activities.

    Both Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who voted to issue the permit despite some misgivings about the short review period, noted that the party organizers had provided details and addressed concerns, such as traffic and emergency vehicle access, that arose after last year’s party.

    “Last year, we said never again for this event, and since that time they have put this together,” Mr. Wilkinson said of the proposal. “They put [together] what [East Hampton Town Police Chief Edward] Ecker described as one of the most comprehensive things that he’s seen.”

    “The reason it comes to the board is to look at policy,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said, “and whether or not we think it’s appropriate for the community. It’s really not the nuts and bolts of where the traffic’s going and everything.”

    Organizers had submitted the application within the required time period, on June 4, but town board members received it only weeks later, after it had been routed for comment to various town officials, such as the fire marshal and police. None expressed severe concern about the event, according to the town board.

    “I just think that’s a huge imposition to put on the overall community,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said last Thursday night. “And the residences, and the lake. I just think the impact of this. . . . It’s taking on too big a project, and an application on too short a notice. If you booked a motel anywhere around there, it might be a problem,” he said. “If you’re planning on coming to Montauk and spending the night on your boat, it might be a problem.”

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley pointed out that the event permit application had been vetted by all of the appropriate town departments, and that the event has taken place annually for several years. “The point is this is not an event that’s brand new,” she said. Last year’s party was shut down by officials before midnight.

    “I believe the chief of police reviewed it, and I’m not going to start analyzing,” she said.

    Mr. Stanzione said that he had spoken to Chief Ecker and was satisfied that plans to stage the party had undergone “due diligence. But I’m still not happy with the way it was processed,” he said. He suggested that, in the future, applications for permits for events of a similar size reach the town board earlier, so that there is time for discussion before a decision must be reached.

    “That is a lot of people to put on Star Island,” Ms. Overby said, “whether you bus them in” and especially “on the busiest weekend of the year.”

    Ms. Overby questioned the cost to taxpayers for police overtime, fire marshals, and the like.

    Mr. Stanzione asked whether the party sponsor would be charged, as is the town’s policy, but none of the board members had an answer.

    While many event permits include a tally of the cost of public services that will be charged to the organizers, the resolution approving the Shark Attack party does not. It states only that “the applicant has made arrangements for an ambulance and two emergency medical technicians to be on site,” and that they will “maintain contact with town police and the Montauk ambulance squad “to advise and request additional assistance if required.”

    Another question centered on a reference in the permit approval resolution to the party serving as a fund-raiser for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. “I don’t know how it got in the resolution,” Mr. Wilkinson said, noting that the reference was not in the permit application.

    Board members revised the terms of the permit to require that music at the event end at 11 p.m. The party is slated to go from 6 p.m. till 2 a.m.

    Proposed changes to the East Hampton Town noise ordinance, whereby unacceptable noise would be calculated by the degree of its loudness above a reading of ambient noise, drew criticism almost across the board at a hearing before the town board last Thursday night.

    Some said that tying a standard to the ambient noise level is a fair way to go, though the draft law needs work. Others said the town should stick to its existing code — which restricts noise above 65 decibels during the day and above 50 decibels from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. — and abandon the proposed new approach. The proposed ordinance, they said, sets no acceptable maximum standard for noise, so as the town gets noisier, the threshold for a noisy activity to be deemed a disturbance and subject to summons also goes up.

    “It has no limit,” Jeffrey Bragman, an East Hampton attorney, said. “I call it a ‘battle of the bands’ law. If you have three bands cranking, then the fourth band gets to play even louder. Wherever the most noise is, we’ll legalize more.”

    “East Hampton has exceptionally quiet ambient noise throughout,” he said. “This is a part of the fabric of enjoyment of living here.”

    The existing noise ordinance is “a good law,” Mr. Bragman said, and is consistent with others throughout the country. “It’s a stop-sign law. It has a fixed standard that’s relatively clear.”

    Sixty-five decibels, he said, “isn’t an excessively strict limit.” The proposed ordinance, Mr. Bragman said, “fails to look at noise as a community impact. From my point of view, it looks at, ‘Gee, how can we make it easier for businesses?’ ”

    “Let’s not legalize escalating noise,” he said.

    Under the current code, said John Jilnicki, the town attorney, business owners have been complaining that they are receiving summonses for noise violations when the ambient noise in an area itself exceeds the maximum decibel level prescribed by the code. Under the proposed new system, he said, “a business owner isn’t penalized for the high background noise.”

    “We’re here tonight because of 15 years of bad code, and with this law, the town will continue that streak,” said Lawrence Kelly, an attorney representing the Sloppy Tuna, a Montauk bar, and other establishments.

    Mr. Kelly said that the proposed law, by allowing, in some instances, noise reaching only five decibels above the ambient level, “outlaws normal human interaction.” The limit, he said, should be 15 decibels above ambient noise, and the sound should be measured at a complainant’s residence, not, as proposed, at a point 15 feet from the source of the noise.

    The proposed law would allow readings to be taken from a public right of way. That, said Laraine Creegan, executive director of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, would allow passersby to call in a complaint. Potential violations should only be measured at the property of those who are bothered by the noise, Ms. Creegan said. While tying the measure to ambient sound is the way to go, she said, “This ordinance is really not ready, as is. It’s pretty restrictive.”

    Margaret Turner, the executive director of the East Hampton Business Alliance, agreed. Definitions used in the code, such as that of “unreasonable noise,” are vague and could be subjective, she said.

    “Nice attempt to try to clarify current law,” said Paul Monte, the chief executive officer of Gurney’s Inn in Montauk, who said that, in making his comments, he wore a number of additional hats, including as a resident, president of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, member of the Montauk Citizens’ Voice, and a patron of establishments that present music. But, he said, “I would appreciate if this would go back to the drawing board,” with a business representative participating in new discussions. “Business zones should have a little more leeway, because it’s business,” he said. And, said Mr. Monte, the status of places that pre-exist and do not conform to current zoning should be considered.

    “This issue is always posed as an issue of resident versus business,” Mr. Monte said. “But let’s not lose sight of the patrons. They enjoy music that may be too loud for other people. But they have rights also. They need to be recognized also.”

    “Mr. Monte just nailed it,” said Tom MacNiven, an East Hampton resident. “I like loud music; maybe louder than it should be. But I also like peace and quiet at my home. So hopefully we can strike a balance.”

    Mr. MacNiven said that he would like to see the noise ordinance changed to decrease the hours that noise made by contractors or landscapers is allowed. “Seven is too early,” he said, referring to the time in the morning that they may start, “and eight is too late,” he said, referring to an 8:30 p.m. stop time prescribed in the current code. “I know it’s a short season to make money,” Mr. MacNiven said. “It’s a short season to barbecue, too.”

    And, he added, he would like to see the town address helicopter noise, too. “None of this matters if you can’t hear” the other noises due to aircraft noise, he said.

    The proposed noise ordinance is “very confusing,” said Debra Foster, a former town board member. It has “absolutely no standards. None. Zero.”

    “There is no incentive to just lower the volume a little bit,” she said. “It rewards people that are cranking it.”

     “You are rewarding ambient noise that’s louder and louder. There’s a continuing vortex of escalating sound that’s just going to go on, because you’re always going to have some decibels above ambient. So let the good times roll.”

    Chris Pfund, a sound engineer who works for a number of Montauk establishments, said that comparing an alleged noise disturbance to the existing ambient sound is extremely important, as under the current law, “it’s become impossible to comply, and the reason we have such enforcement issues.”

    Standards used across the country, he said, allow 10 decibels of sound above the ambient noise level, or 5 decibels above after 11 p.m. The various levels outlined in the draft ordinance, and other details, he said, are problematic, and the draft needs more work. He offered to participate in fine-tuning it.

    Anne Maegli shared comments made by her husband, a sound engineer who, she said, “owns one of the biggest sound companies in New York,” and had reviewed the new and proposed noise ordinances.

    She said he questioned “why a quiet town like the Town of East Hampton” would set a 50-decibel level for “noise” when New York City has a “hard and fast number at 42 decibels.”

    And, she said, there should be a difference between what’s allowed in a business district and in a residential zone, “because you go to a business district” by choice, and do not have to be subject to its activities.

    The couple lives near Ruschmeyer’s bar and restaurant, and they have come to the board often to complain about disturbances in the neighborhood because of that site.

    “Is that our ambient?” she asked. Much of the public discussion, she said, centers on music, but that’s not always the problem. “It’s too many people,” she said. “I’m more concerned about crowd noise.”

    “Noise is a symptom of the fact that we’re letting a lot of the pre-existing, nonconforming businesses expand well beyond” their original size, Ms. Maegli said.

    “I’m looking at this as a cultural issue,” Joe Nye said. “People come out to let their hair down. I guess I’m asking for a tolerance,” he said.

    Take a look at real estate ads and you will notice that the names of certain brokers keep cropping up on the ultra high-priced listings: Gary DePersia, Harald Grant, Tim Davis, the mother-and-son team Susan and Matthew Breitenbach. . . .

This week’s column is devoted to exploring the secrets of success of some of these top producers while also checking in with others who are hoping that there’s room for them at the top.

    Robert Lohman, an agent who works out of Corcoran’s Southampton office, calls the superstar agents “whales,” a term used in Vegas for high rollers who wager more than $500,000 an hour at the tables. “The rest of us,” he said, “are second tier.” He also mentioned a third tier of those agents who drop out of the game as the going gets tough.

     Mr. Lohman began his real estate career in 1985. It was a natural segue from his work as an interior architect, in which he was often asked to prescreen houses for clients. A glance at his pages on the Sotheby’s site shows that he currently lists several properties, from a First Neck Lane estate for $4,999,999 to a waterfront parcel of land in Quogue for $245,000. His listings total about $16 million, nothing to sneeze at, but nowhere near the juggernaut of someone such as Mr. DePersia, whose site claims his current listings at $400 million.

    “Everyone has something they bring to the table,” said Mr. Lohman. In his case, it is an eye for seeing “design potential.”

    “Some come from Wall Street,” he said, and bring a client base, while others “come from marketing and know how to get the property out there.” When it comes to the whales, he said, “Each had a hook and were able to keep it going.”

    Mr. Grant credits his big break to his former mother-in-law, Pat Patterson, who was an agent at Sotheby’s. Ms. Patterson got the former Ford model an interview at the firm in 1987 and then sent him referrals, including the client who put him in the “big leagues,” David Koch, who purchased the most expensive house in the Hamptons at the time, 1990, for $7.2 million.

    Still at the Sotheby’s Southampton office, Mr. Grant claims on his Web site that The Wall Street Journal cited him as the “Hamptons’ number one agent for individual sales volume.” It also reads that he has “ranked among the top 10 nationwide for several years,” boasting more than $1 billion in sales so far.

    Norwegian by birth — he moved to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn when he was 7 — he currently maintains well over $200 million in listings. Up until a couple of weeks ago that included Bridgehampton’s Two Trees Farm for $55 million. However, the owner took it off market to “develop it into private homes sites,” according to Mr. Grant. His current listings include Linden, a 10-acre Southampton estate, for $45 million, a Norman Jaffe oceanfront for $24 million, and a $36 million bayfront estate on North Haven.

    But he maintains that he’s not opposed to working with properties under $1 million. “I’m taking a nice lady out now,” he said, “showing her condos up to $750,000.” When asked what he has sold so far this year, he rattled off a few properties off the top of his head: “an oceanfront asking 28, another for 26, one for 14, a Mecox Bay for 19. . . .”

    Like Mr. Grant’s site, Mr. DePersia’s also claims that his real estate transactions total more than $1 billion. “His inventory is currently more than $400 million including Bridgehampton’s incredible Sandcastle residence, Shelter Island’s 36-acre waterview horse farm known as Paard Hill, Water Mill’s Mecox Bay estate Rose Hill Point, as well as over a dozen new construction projects,” it reads. The Paard Hill estate was recently sold.

    Mr. DePersia, whose early career was in the “rag trade,” credits many factors to his success. Joining Allan M. Schneider Associates (now the Corcoran Group) at the outset is one, he believes. “If I’d started at a small firm, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am.” At Schneider he met Peter Hallock, a legendary broker “who was instrumental in my early success.”

    He also recalls a couple of “aha” moments that kept him on track. One was his realization that, though he found himself based in East Hampton, many clients didn’t want to make the trek that far east. So, “I learned all the other markets,” he said. “Seventeen years ago, that wasn’t the case; you mostly sold in your area.”

    His next “epiphany” came when he started spending big money on advertising. He was surprised that his fellow agents used “mundane” images and descriptions in their ads. He hired an ad guy full time, John Lasurdo, who now has his own design firm but still counts Mr. DePersia as a client. “As I made money, I put it back into the business,” in the form of advertising. Mr. DePersia wouldn’t speculate on the size of his current ad budget, but he did say that his operation is so large he leases his own printer. “I think I’m the only broker to print an 8 to 12-page booklet, monthly.” In this brochure he features a selection of his current listings and distributes them from here to Aspen, Colo. “I probably have 40 listings at any time.”

    Mr. DePersia also has a team of agents who work with him, his “machine,” according to Mr. Lohman. Each shows houses as well as performs special tasks including proofing collateral, paying bills, and in the case of Dan Shafonda, handling overseas deals. When you’re such a powerhouse, why remain merely local?

    Having a team allows him to be thorough in his job. “When I get a listing, we do a full audit to know everything about it,” from the location of the gas tank to the well (if there is one). “We don’t show up to a presentation with a tear sheet,” he said. Instead, they bring those glossy brochures.

    And Mr. DePersia has WordHampton, a public relations firm, on retainer to further promote his doings.

    Every broker interviewed for this article cited “hard work” and “honesty” as the biggest components of their success, but that still doesn’t explain why all the hard-working, honest agents are not making killings.

    Some “second tier” agents such as Cynthia Kolbenheyer, with Corcoran in Southampton, need to be resourceful and clever. Ms. Kolbenheyer also runs two other businesses, a personal shopping club and Open Minded Concierge, a firm that refers her clients — often wealthy homeowners — to her local partners, mostly services from chefs to photographers to pool companies. The good news is that any one of these contacts can, and often do, become her real estate clients.

—

    Debra Scott is a recovering real estate agent, having plied the trade at Whitbread Nolan in Manhattan (back in the day), Vicki Bagley Realty in Washington, D.C., and Braverman Newbold Brennan before it was purchased by Sotheby’s International Realty.

    Arthur Schneider, a Montauk resident who is the former owner of the Memory Motel there, was brought into East Hampton Justice Court last Thursday in handcuffs, led by Joseph T. Conley III, an assistant county district attorney who handles tax crimes, and a county detective, Don Conste, to be arraigned on a charge of grand larceny.

    “Between Jan. 1, 2007, and Dec. 31, 2010, the defendant allegedly stole approximately $120,000 in sales tax and occupancy tax from the State of New York and Suffolk County,” said Robert Clifford, spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office, in an e-mail sent later that day.

    Mr. Schneider’s attorney, Colin Astarita, entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of his client.

    In a brief interview before Mr. Schneider was brought to the courthouse, Mr. Astarita minimized the arrest, calling it “just a misunderstanding.”  On Saturday, the lawyer sent a text message: “When Mr. Schneider sold the business, the contract was ambiguous with regards to who was responsible to pay the outstanding taxes, as well as any future sales tax liability.” He said Mr. Schneider had agreed to pay all taxes owed from the time when he owned the Memory, and that he was cooperating fully with the investigation.

    “Mr. Schneider is a very hard-working guy who did not intend to defraud, or avoid any responsibility,”  the lawyer wrote.

    “It doesn’t involve me,” said Brian Kenny, who now owns the motel with Chris Reenock, adding that he and his partner had worked hard to build a strong working relationship with the town and to clean up any leftover problems. He referred questions to his attorney, Michael Griffith, who is in London at the moment and was not immediately available for comment.

    Much of the Memory’s business is in cash. Its bar caters to a young crowd, with many of Montauk’s seasonal workers congregating there at night after their shifts are over. It rents rooms to the seasonal workers as well as to tourists.

    Mr. Conley has a history of prosecuting cases, in conjunction with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, and obtaining convictions. In June 2012, Thomas H. Mattox, the commissioner of the state’s tax department, praised his work in obtaining a guilty plea from a Dix Hills man, Rong Q. Liang, for failing to declare over $2 million in corporate revenue.

    Mr. Astarita told Justice Lisa Rana during the arraignment that he was waiving his client’s right to a speedy trial, a step often taken in criminal cases to allow more time for negotiations with the prosecutor. The step also frees the prosecutor to continue and/or widen the investigation.

    Mr. Schneider, head bowed, did not speak during the proceedings except for saying one word, “Memory,” when Justice Rana asked him about his employment status, indicating that he is still affiliated with the motel.

    Mr. Schneider was apparently taken into custody at his Montauk residence by county police. East Hampton Town police were not involved in the arrest.

    Justice Rana released the defendant without asking him to post bail, in consideration of his longtime roots in the community. The charge against him, second-degree grand larceny, is a class C felony, punishable by between a minimum of one year in prison or up to 15 years.

     Fourteen 7-Eleven stores in Virginia and on eastern Long Island, including the one in Sag Harbor, were seized by the United States Justice Department on Monday morning, their owners accused of identity theft, conspiring to commit wiring fraud, harboring illegal immigrants who were employed at the stores, and simultaneously skimming their wages.

     The United States Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn indicted the owners on Monday. In a press release from the office of Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York, the government said that the eight men and one woman charged would use stolen identities to smuggle “dozens of illegal immigrants” into the country, then employ them at the stores, providing housing for them, while stealing “substantial portions” of the vulnerable workers’ weekly pay.

     The identities stolen included those from children as young as 8 years old and from “three dead people and a Coast Guard cadet.” The defendants “stole significant portions of the illegal immigrants wages, rather than paying the workers in full,” the statement said.

     “From their 7-Eleven stores, the defendants dispersed wire fraud and identity theft along with Slurpees and hot dogs,” Ms. Lynch said in the statement. “These defendants ruthlessly exploited their immigrant employees, stealing their wages and required them to live in unregulated boarding houses, in effect creating a modern day plantation system,” Ms. Lynch said.

     The press release calls the investigation one of the largest ever into criminal immigrant employment, and said it is being conducted by the Justice Department, along with Immigration Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.

     The Justice Department believes the operation has been going on since 2000, resulting in over 50 illegal immigrants being brought into the country.

     The investigation is still ongoing, with more stores possibly targeted by the investigators, according to Ms. Lynch’s office.

     Arraignment of the nine was to occur Monday afternoon. They include Farrukh Baig, 57, and Bushra Baig, 49, both of Head of Harbor, Malik Yousaf, 51, of South Setauket, Zahid Baig, 52, and Tariq Rana, 34, of Chesapeake, Va., Shannawaz Baig, 62, of Virginia Beach, Ramon Nanas, 49, and Azhar Zia, 49, of Great River, and Ummar Uppal, 48, of Islip Terrace.

“Little Beasts”

Matthew McGevna

Akashic Books, $15.95

Let me begin by skipping a reviewer’s reserve and saying up front that I loved the idea of “Little Beasts” before I read a word: A young writer who could have stayed in his pajamas downing energy drinks and composing Internet “content” and Twitter posts instead practically took up residence in a bunker-like public library in an aging strip mall in Shirley to obsessively research a 1979 murder that haunted his childhood.

When four teenagers killed a 13-year-old behind a Smithtown school by stuffing rocks down his throat it became a cautionary tale for kids like Matthew McGevna, who went on to fictionalize it into his debut novel in a tried-and true attempt to get at the crux of the matter through storytelling. After all, there must have been more at work in the horror than the ill will of a few Long Island dirtbags.

Bourgeois niceties do not apply. Mr. McGevna has fashioned a gripping exploration of teenage alienation and temporary depravity that’s all the more so for its working-class setting. That would be hardscrabble Turnbull, based on the Shirley and Mastic Beach area, where the author grew up.

The novel opens with a poignant dissection of an eviction, a common occurrence that three local boys, James, Dallas, and Felix, turn into a chance for spying and adventure as the gorilla movers toss stick furniture and bad motel room art into a pile out front that by all rights should simply be set aflame. Inside, social services and bankruptcy attorney phone numbers are penciled on a kitchen wall, notes from a disintegrating life.

Stimulation is wanting in Turnbull. It’s the early 1980s, and these kids are so bored they’ll get themselves chased out of Zambrini’s Brick and Masonry yard just for fun.

What they do have is the woods — the pull of coursing the winding footpaths, befriending stray dogs, and brazenly raiding other kids’ forts for materials to build their own. Naturally that’s where the trouble starts.

Mr. McGevna sets two distinct storylines on trajectories for collision, the other involving a sensitive 15-year-old, David Westwood, who is artistic and somewhat politically aware — he’s skeptical of Reagan-era jingoism, at least. He has a couple of sketchy friends, but at school he’s ostracized. Adding to his isolation is a lonely home life in which his mother waits tables at Windmills Diner and his father works a double shift as a security guard at a King Kullen “in a rich town farther east.”

The psychological portrait of David is astute, and thus sympathetic. After he is branded a commie over a mural he painted, he retreats, for instance holing up in the school library, where he pores over encyclopedias in search of arcane facts, as though “tearing up the floorboards of the world and discovering what lay beneath.” (“The umbrella was not originally intended for rain,” he tells his girlfriend as he stands soaked on her doorstep. “It was intended for shade from the Egyptian sun.”)

Though he is taunted, he’s not exactly bullied, a la Klebold and Harris of Columbine fame, and though he is an outcast, there is always the “rejected camaraderie,” as Mr. McGevna puts it, of fellow losers. No, David’s halfhearted dumping by a girl he is too much in love with, who in turn is enamored with an in-crowd football player, is emotionally crippling, compounding his other largely self-inflicted agonies.

Mr. McGevna has a lot to say here, come courtroom time memorably skewering the local press’s nonsense pontificating, hasty conclusions, presumption of intimate knowledge, and thudding, metaphor-mixing prose: “To look at David Westwood’s sketchbook is to gaze down the barrel of a mind poised on the edge of destruction.”

More galling still, this windbag columnist sees his fortunes rise at the expense of a confused adolescent, echoing a kind of a karmic seesawing experienced elsewhere in the novel, as when the murder victim’s devoutly Christian dad is brought low, while a surviving friend’s useless drunk of a father, Ivan, is so moved by the funeral service, with its invocations of the trials of Job, that he quits the bottle and re-examines what he’s doing with his life.

Renewingly so, you might say: In bed with his wife, “For the first time in years, she gripped his hand and drew him to her.”

As Ivan would later tell his young son — about a bruise, a weakness, a circumstance, you name it — “Don’t worry. A thing doesn’t stay ugly forever.”

Matthew McGevna has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Southampton College. He lives in Center Moriches with his wife and two children.

After being shut down by town officials last year mid-rave, the annual Shark Attack Sounds party may move to the Montauk Yacht Club on Star Island for a nearly all-night bash during the Fourth of July weekend.

Ben Watts, a photographer and organizer of the event, is seeking a last-minute East Hampton Town mass-gathering permit for the July 5 party for 3,900 guests. The 6 p.m.-to-2 a.m. event is described in town documents as a fund-raiser for the Montauk Playhouse community center.

The Shark Attack was held last year at Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe on East Lake Drive in Montauk and reportedly drew thousands more than the 800 guests town officials had been expecting. When it was shut down by town officials just before midnight, there was still a line to get in.

East Hampton Town Board members will be asked tonight to vote on the permit in a resolution sponsored by Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson. The permit would allow 20 tents, a lighted stage, and 32 portable toilets. The plan includes parking at Rita’s Stables on West Lake Drive in Montauk, with 15 40-passenger buses to get guests to and from the Yacht Club.

According to the permit request, Mr. Watts, whose sister is the actress Naomi Watts, has arranged to have an ambulance and two emergency medical technicians on site and to keep in touch with town police and the Montauk Fire Department volunteer ambulance squad. Security officers will man sobriety checkpoints to keep intoxicated people from attending and will enforce a minimum age for entry of 18 and 21 to drink.

Last year, according to reports, town police, code enforcement officers, and a Montauk Fire Department ambulance had trouble getting to the Crabby Cowboy during the party due to parked vehicles partially blocking the roadway. According to the permit request, there will be no parking along Star Island Road.

At a town board meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Wilkinson did not detail the nature or name of the party when reviewing the resolutions he planned to offer tonight. The board meeting Thursday begins at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

—

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the Shark Attack Sounds party would be held on July 4. Ed.

    The value of an aerial deer-population survey conducted in East Hampton Town in March, which counted 877 animals in its flyover of the town using infrared cameras, was debated at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Board on June 18. Based on the survey methodology, it is not expected that all of the town’s deer were counted and some town officials assume that the deer counted are only a fraction of those that actually live here, the 877 number being far fewer than the 3,293 estimated in a 2006 count. (That number resulted from a “roadside distance sampling” in which only some deer were actually counted. The total was extrapolated from the count.)

    “I have no idea what the value of this survey is. Is the survey faulty?” asked Supervisor Bill Wilkinson. “I assume that we didn’t get what we asked for.”

    “Should we pay the $13,000?” he asked. “What’s the current population?”

    “They ‘surveyed’ 877 deer,” Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town planning director, told him. “That doesn’t mean there are 877 deer in the town . . . The [state Department of Environmental Conservation] is extremely confident that we have too many deer.”

    The recent survey recorded deer concentrated mostly in populated areas, and not in open, preserved spaces.

    “Obviously it did not meet our expectations,” said Councilman Dominick Stanzione. “We expected that it would count thousands of deer and help us set a baseline metric so that we could define the success” of a deer-management program that could include culling.

    Repeatedly interrupting Ms. Wolffsohn, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley appeared incensed with the assumption that the aerial survey did not count all of East Hampton’s deer.

    “I don’t understand,” she said. “We hired these people, we paid them $13,000. . . . But because we don’t like what they say, they’re obviously flawed?”

    “Did anyone in the town reach out to the company and say, wow, do you think there was a problem?” Ms. Quigley asked. “I did,” Ms. Wolffsohn said. “What did they say?” asked the councilwoman. “No,” Ms. Wolffsohn replied.

    The company hired is reputable and widely used in the field, including by New York State, Ms. Wolffsohn said, but several conditions could affect the ability to capture all the deer out there on tape, such as their proximity to houses or evergreen trees, which can block the view even in winter.

    Based on mapping the results of the aerial survey, there are 6.9 to 23.1 deer per square mile in the town. A Cornell wildlife expert later contacted by Ms. Wolffsohn estimated, based on other existing information, that East Hampton might actually have 100 deer per square mile.

    But, Ms. Quigley said, given that the deer that were seen were mainly in populated areas and not on preserved land, maybe the number is correct and people are just seeing deer more often. “It’s absolutely wrong to assume that we know the answer and that we are going to manipulate the data to show that. I agree I think the numbers are peculiar. But I don’t know that they’re wrong.”

    The D.E.C., Ms. Wolffsohn said, does not attempt to pinpoint actual deer population numbers but uses information such as the annual hunting “take” in a particular area as an indicator of population and trends. In 1990, 70 deer were taken here by hunters. In 2012, with fewer hunters in the town, 525 were “harvested,” the planner reported to the board. Reports of deer-vehicle collisions numbered 25 in 2000 and 108 in 2011.

    But, she said, the “primary indicator in our town is that our biodiversity has really suffered,” with the middle layer of vegetation in woodlands and in neighborhoods decimated by browsing deer. “In addition to young trees, we have lost wildflowers,” she said. In a PowerPoint presentation, Ms. Wolffsohn presented photos showing the evidence of deer overbrowsing and its increasing effect over the years on the woods understory.

    “I think we know that it’s flawed,” said Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc of the survey’s number. “Between the automobile strikes and the deer take, we have completely wiped out the population on an annual basis . . . I don’t believe we can obtain empirical data about the number of deer. At best we could look at other methodologies.”

    While an aerial survey is only just that — a survey, not a count — Ms. Wolffsohn said that other, more expensive, efforts may get the town closer to an actual count, or at least collect population data in a way that the margin of error can be calculated, and true numbers extrapolated.

    But, she suggested, pinning down the exact number of deer here may not be a key objective, as the evidence of deer overpopulation is clear.

    “I’m just saying, we had a plan that was going to be so scientific, and now we’re just saying let’s throw out the science,” Ms. Quigley said. “There’s something so fundamentally flawed with getting a scientific study and then throwing it out. . . . My point is, we’ve spent $13,000 on some expert. If we are going to be basing a plan on data, then the data we have doesn’t really support the plan.”

    “I mean, isn’t history replete with examples of people taking action foolishly?”

    The draft deer management plan, Ms. Wolffsohn said, “is not a plan based on that survey. It’s a comprehensive plan that gives us options on what to do.”

    Terry O’Riordan of the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance applauded the board for its efforts to adopt a deer management plan. “The method . . . of the survey was not supposed to give you a finite number of deer,” he said. Of the 877 counted, he said, “Perhaps adding a zero to that number might be more of what we expected.”

    Both he and Councilman Van Scoyoc described how, in one location or short period of time, they had seen 80 to 100 deer. “Do you think I saw about 10 percent of the deer in the Town of East Hampton?” Mr. O’Riordan asked. “No,” he answered himself.

    Ms. Wolffsohn, he said, was “100-percent accurate” in her description of the way deer have decimated the forest understory.

    The Sportsmen’s Alliance, he said, believes the management plan “has merit,” and that the board should “approve it and then adapt it accordingly.” Taking action will help address a problem that “we know is out of control because of the physical evidence that we have available to us.”

    The deer distribution information provided by the survey is helpful, said Mr. O’Riordan. “It shows that we need to have more private property involvement in hunting.”

    Zachary Cohen, chairman of the town nature preserve committee, urged the board to organize a program through which homeowners could authorize hunting near their lots. He also suggested fencing in several wooded areas to observe undergrowth there in the absence of browsing deer, in contrast to surrounding areas.

    “A lot of deer management takes what we might consider anecdotal evidence,” he said. Mr. O’ Riordan agreed. Rather than counting deer before and after management efforts, including, potentially, a cull, to see if the efforts are effective, “we may have to use barometers here to get to the management,” he said. For instance, he said, after the town undertakes projects to get the herd under control, if the woods outside a fenced-in area then begin to resemble the fenced-in vegetation, “you could start to back off.”

    “I will say that the survey was really disappointing,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said. But, she said, Ms. Wolffsohn’s presentation was helpful. “The environmental damage, the destruction that we’re seeing, just doesn’t jibe.”

    “In hindsight, we shouldn’t have spent the money,” she added.

    “We were going to refer to a document that’s saying, okay, Dominick, you want to cull, you can kill this many. Should we discount this by 80 percent?” asked Mr. Wilkinson.

    A survey, regardless of the results, is a required prerequisite for a culling program, Mr. Stanzione noted.

    “Despite the results . . . we still need to reduce our deer population to restore our biodiversity, reduce vehicle collisions, and, hopefully, reduce tick-borne diseases,” said Ms. Wolffsohn.

    Let’s say you would like some extra income and you decide to rent out your house. But the thing is, you live in your house, so you don’t want to rent it for the summer, or even a month. Did you know that in the Town of East Hampton you are only permitted to rent it out for fewer than 14 days twice in a six-month period? Otherwise it is considered a motel. Trouble is, on day 15 you have to report that income to the federal government in order to pay taxes.

    While the feds consider it a business if you rent your house for more than two weeks, the town considers it a business if you do it for less than two weeks. And that’s why they don’t want you doing it. According to East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the law was put on the books to discourage a house from “becoming a business in the center of a neighborhood.” While she understands that a homeowner may want to defray costs by renting, the town code is meant to encourage longer-term renters, whom she feels can “become part of the community.”

    In other words, transients are not welcome. (Which is why, according to Ms. Overby, there’s a ceiling on the number of hotel/motel rooms in the town, to limit traffic. And we all want that.) However, it is perfectly legal to rent your house out every 15 days to more, allegedly, permanent residents.

    Just visit the multitude of short-term rental Web sites including homeaway.com, vrbo.com, and airbnb.com, and you will find dozens of houses renting by the night. On Homeaway alone there were 355 listings in East Hampton and 226 in Southampton as of Monday. On Airbnb, there were 457 and 468 respectively. Naturally, many are duplicates.

    Airbnb.com lists a room in a Springs house described as a “creative sanctuary by the beach.” The listing is by a woman named Elissa, who is pictured in blond dreads along with images of her attractive abode. Elissa promises “physical and spiritual rejuvenation in a secluded rustic house steps from bay beaches for only $125 a night.” (You are required to list by the night on these sites.) Elissa, hold a room for me, please.

    But Elissa’s place is one of the few affordable to just plain folks. An “exquisite new house with private beach” that looks like a palace on Gardiner’s Bay is listed at a weekly rate of $7,500 to $25,000 (seems as if there’s wiggle room for the negotiator). On roomamrama. com a “European-style three-bedroom villa” in East Hampton, 1.5 miles from the beach, is going for $4,333 a night while a “gorgeous and traditional” house with seven bedrooms and 8.5 baths is listed for a relatively mere $2,000 a night. I’ve missed my calling.

    Agents handling short-term rentals here are few and far between, partly because short-term rentals are a pain in the you-know-where for agents, so they point clients toward these sites instead.

    In Manhattan, a court ruled in May that a man who rented out his East Village apartment for less than a week via Airbnb is subject to $2,400 in fines, sending short-term “hosts” in Gotham reeling. Turns out, a law was enacted in the city two years ago forbidding apartment rentals of fewer than 29 days.

    No doubt the city’s hospitality industry is miffed. Crain’s New York Business reported that around 30,000 New York City residents are Airbnb “hosts” — with 365 days in the year, you do the math. Actually, Crain’s did it. They estimate that such activity will “generate around $1 billion” in the local economy “outstripping the impact of the city’s booming cruise-ship industry five times over. . . .”

    And Bloomberg et al. would be remiss if they didn’t want to tax this Internet-enabled blockbuster.

    Here on the South Fork, Dawn Neway, an agent at Douglas Elliman in East Hampton, told me “I’ve been getting more and more requests for short-term rentals. It’s unheard of; I’ve never seen it before.” Ms. Neway, with her partner Jordan Daniel, closed nearly 40 rental deals since January, though only a few were short-term.

    The recent demand may be a reflection of the economy: Many renters cannot afford to rent for the season, coupled with the fact that many owners need extra income. Ms. Neway also offered another explanation: Hurricane Sandy. “People thought that everyone who normally went to the Jersey Shore would come out here, so they raised their prices” for seasonal rentals. But many of the owners asking high prices didn’t reel in renters, hence a substantial inventory of owners desperately seeking tenants.

    “Not everybody wants to rent for three months,” said Scott Murphy, an interior designer and real estate agent who rents his Shelter Island house on a short-term basis a couple of times each summer. Some renters, he said, prefer to split up their vacation time and “go other places: upstate, down South, out West, Europe.” They don’t necessarily want to get “locked into to coming to the Hamptons every weekend,” said Mr. Murphy who, himself, gallivants off to Nicaragua or Biarritz when tenants occupy his house.

    And they probably can’t afford to either. In a place where $300,000 per summer month is not unheard of, our area has become affordable primarily to the uber wealthy. And they, my friends, are a part of only their own community — of other UHNWIs (ultra high net worth individuals). Somehow I just can’t see the Russian oligarch renting on Lily Pond Lane joining in a local VFW breakfast.

    Mr. Murphy places his three-bedroom, 2.5-bath converted boathouse on VRBO, which gets him “a lot of hits.” He charges $7,500 per week including cleaning and tax, a rate that goes up to $8,500 in August. He even gets the occasional family requesting a weekend, so a family can stay in a place with a full kitchen and living room for coming together, while on the island to attend a wedding or the like. At Mr. Murphy’s house, which has a dock, they can come and go by boat.

    There are a limited number of hotel rooms in the area, he said, and “you pay hundreds of dollars a night for a tiny box.” He is using this season’s income to travel and renovate his kitchen.

    Meanwhile, according to Jordan Daniel, the short-term rental market heats up at the end of the season, when bottom feeders look for houses that didn’t rent. He’s got a house in the Amagansett dunes available for $35,000 for two weeks then.

    Every Tuesday, from September until June, a handful of Latino mothers gather with their young children to participate in Cantemos, a family literacy program at the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton.

    One recent morning, eight children between the ages of 5 months and 4 years sat with their mothers in a semicircle, where they shook tambourines and maracas, waved pink and orange scarves, and wriggled their tiny bodies in time to the music.

    “Your children are learning like crazy. You really have a chance to set new patterns,” said Leah Oppenheimer, who has directed the Cantemos program for the past three years. “Learning rhymes are part of learning English. Rhymes are rhymes, whether they’re in English or Spanish. When you sing to them in Spanish and they hear rhymes, it’s a really good thing.”

    Organizers see the program, which is subsidized by the museum, as a badly needed resource among a population of working poor who couldn’t otherwise afford the luxury of enrolling their young children in music classes. Participants pay not a penny. On Friday mornings, CMEE also offers Music Together classes, an early childhood music program for which 10-week classes usually run upward of $200.

    “All of the studies show that early intervention is vital for academic success,” said Stephen Long, CMEE’s executive director. According to Mr. Long, part of the reason behind the museum’s opening in 2005 was the deficit in educational resources on the South Fork. Cantemos, along with a new program that teaches science literacy, is working to expand those offerings among the growing Latino population.

    Recent data suggest that early learning revolves around a child’s exposure to language — the more, and the earlier, when their minds are like sponges, the better. In particular, data from the late Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, who formerly worked as University of Kansas child psychologists, showed that children of different socioeconomic backgrounds had radically divergent home lives insofar as language was concerned.

    The researchers found that children whose families received public assistance heard an average of 600 words per hour, children of working-class parents heard an average of 1,200 words per hour, and a child raised in a professional home heard an average of 2,100 words an hour. By the age of 3, such a discrepancy resulted in a poorer child having heard an average of 30 million fewer words. In subsequent years, a greater number of words resulted in not only higher I.Q. scores among the wealthier children, but also far better performance in school.

    In between Spanish and English renditions of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” Ms. Oppenheimer and Barbara Blaisdell, who co-teaches the program, emphasized the importance of reading and language. Ms. Blaisdell handed out copies of two board books, “You Are My Sunshine” and “Little Ladybug.” The Target store in Riverhead donated this year’s books. Over the course of the year, each family receives upward of 20 books.

    “There’s something about the small book that’s important,” Ms. Blaisdell said. “At home, if you have a box or a basket, it’s helpful to keep the books together for your children to read. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can even be a shoebox.”

    Together, the two women have spent more than 50 years making music with children. They see music as a great equalizer and useful tool for eliminating the intimidation often associated with learning a new language.

    Ms. Oppenheimer, a former Music Together instructor in East Hampton who sold her business to Ina Ferrara, sees the program as providing a valuable resource to a constituency who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend such classes. She also sees it as an extended support network for the mothers, many of whom live apart from extended family members. “Sometimes, they just need someone to tell them what a great mom they are,” she said.

    Following the success of Cantemos, the Long Island Community Foundation, a Syosset-based nonprofit, provided CMEE with a $15,000 grant to expand the program from early childhood to school-age children.

    Ciencia, which runs after school on Tuesday afternoons from September until June, currently enrolls 19 children from 17 families. As with Cantemos, parents and children both participate. The program’s goal is to develop a replicable national model that promotes science literacy among immigrant families. It also works to assist families in learning to navigate local education resources, whether museums, schools, or libraries. This past spring, children and parents learned the basics of natural history, developed observational skills, and studied native species and the local habitat.

    After singing a goodbye song, the children and their mothers zigzagged their way to the art room, where they decorated canvas book bags with glitter, puffy paint, and fabric markers.

    Fanny Espejo, a resident of Sag Harbor, has been attending with her 10-month-old daughter, Zoe, since March. “She likes dancing to the music, and I learn a lot,” said Ms. Espejo, who works in a beauty salon.

    Nube Farez has taken her daughter, Kalie, since she was 2 months old. She is now 5 months. Ms. Farez, a resident of Southampton who works as a housekeeper, said Kalie loves looking at the books.

    For the past two years, Yadira Luna, who lives in Sag Harbor, has taken her daughter, Mia, now 3. Ms. Luna, who worked as a doctor in her native Colombia, said she reads to her daughter in both Spanish and English, often using the books provided by the program.

    “It’s good for her and it helps to open her mind to the language,” Ms. Luna said. “And it’s good for me, too, to be with the other mothers.”