Sagaponack residents have until Sept. 8 to vote on whether to become their own village.

The deadline to challenge the residents' petition for incorporation passed on Monday without comment.

Most of them were surprised to learn that no one had spoken against the petition. "Wow" was the operative word at Tuesday night's Sagaponack Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. "Be careful what you wish for," was the reaction of Peter Wadsworth, a committee member.

Lee Foster, whose family has a potato farm on Sagg Main Street, and who is the spokeswoman for the proposed village, said yesterday that she had just learned the news herself. "We have the green light," she said. "We'll move in the direction required to have a vote."

The Southampton town attorney's office and the town clerk will be very busy in the next few weeks organizing the election. Kathleen Murray, an assistant town attorney, said that the town expected to hold a vote at the Sagaponack School on Sept. 2, from noon to 9 p.m.

State law requires that a notice of the vote be posted in five places within the proposed village limits - the Sagaponack School District - and that a notice of the election be published twice before Tuesday. Those two notices will have to be published in a daily newspaper - Newsday, in this case - in order to meet the deadline.

Those who can vote are residents of the proposed village who are registered to vote in Southampton Town. "Those registered in New York can't come out," Ms. Murray said. Absentee ballots are also prohibited. Her office is determining whether there is time to register in Southampton Town before the vote is held.

A simple majority of votes will decide the matter. Marietta Seaman, the town clerk, is working with the Board of Elections to provide one voting machine.

No Challengers

The hamlet, whose petition for incorporation was accepted by Southampton Town Supervisor Patrick A. Heaney on June 30, had anticipated a challenge from the petitioners for Dunehampton.

A recent letter signed by Daniel Breen and Stuart Baker indicated that the writers intended to challenge the petition. If such an action had been taken, 18 months of litigation was expected to follow.

Dunehampton was a village proposed by oceanfront property owners in response to the passing of the town's 2003 coastal erosion law, which they felt was too restrictive in its protection and rebuilding measures.

Sagaponack residents decided to begin their own incorporation efforts as a defensive measure against what they saw as an effort to carve off their beachfront and redraw boundary lines that were centuries old.

Mr. Breen, a resident of Water Mill and a Dunehampton petitioner, said he had become convinced recently that Sagaponack would fight to protect the coastline from erosion caused by the Georgica groins. "After speaking to a number of residents, I believe they are not going to be a puppet village."

In forming a proposed coastal village, Mr. Breen said, "long range, our primary objective was a commitment to beach nourishment and fighting beach erosion." As long as a Sagaponack Village is aggressive in these efforts, Dunehampton petitioners will support them.

Sagaponack Village supporters confirmed that they will address the groins more aggressively than the town has. The town joined a lawsuit last year against the county by Gary Ireland, whose mother has an oceanfront property on Potato Road.

The suit asks for relief from the jetties in Georgica, which the county approved in the 1960s despite recommendations against them by the Army Corps of Engineers. Mr. Breen believes the town has recently weakened its resolve to forcefully pursue the suit.

Representatives of Sagaponack met with Mr. Breen in the early stages of Dunehampton's petition. "We always said we would be for preserving the coastline against erosion, but were told that the train had already left the station," one said.

If Sagaponack Village fails to protect its beaches, Mr. Breen said that another petition, for a village called Southampton Beach, could be circulated. That village would include a similar area to Dunehampton, but with more inland properties.

The validity of Sagaponack's election can be challenged within 10 days of its certification, an option that Ms. Murray thought might be the Dunehampton supporters' next gambit. Southampton Beach could also move forward if Sagaponack residents vote no on the referendum.

"We have the population. We just never had the opportunity to demonstrate it," Mr. Breen said. "We have 850 inhabitants. Sagaponack was a third of that number. Without them we still have over 500."

"At the end of the day, if there are three villages, so be it," Mr. Breen said. He believes that a village is the best way for local government to serve the needs of a community. Southampton Town is "too big, too diverse, and too political" to serve most of its residents, he said.

If the vote for a Sagaponack Village passes on Sept. 2, the results will be certified and, if approved, a report of incorporation will be filed with the secretary of state after 10 days but no more than 15. Such a report will include a map of the village's boundaries, the certificate of election, a statement of population, and a statement that the time to file a review of the election has expired.

The state will recognize the incorporated village as of the date of the report so that administrative tasks can get under way. But for financial purposes, the incorporation will become effective only on Jan. 1, 2006.

The new village will have five days after the report is filed to appoint a clerk and 60 days after that to hold a special election for a mayor and trustees. For two years after the official date of incorporation, all town laws will continue to apply to the area while the village works on its own code. Village residents will have unhindered access to town services until June 1, 2006. The village will then need to make a contract with the town for any services it wishes to continue.

Two lawsuits filed this week against East Hampton Town claim the town has engaged in a "coerced acquisition policy" in an attempt to force owners of lands it wants to preserve to sell them to the town.

The suits challenge the validity of the recently updated town comprehensive plan and the new zoning maps that were adopted along with it

They were filed in federal district court by William Esseks of the Riverhead firm Esseks, Hefter, and Angel, on behalf of Catherine Lederer-Plaskett and Rodney A. Lederer-Plaskett, the owners of 16 acres off Neck Path in Springs, and Salvadore, Eileen, and Anthony S. Iacono, whose chicken farm is on 7.7 acres on Long Lane in East Hampton.

"The town, through the exercise of its zoning powers, has the ability to reduce the market value of properties affected by the zoning code, such as by rezoning land," the lawsuits state.

The rezoning of properties that are on the town's Community Preservation Fund Project Plan, a list of lands the town hopes to protect or acquire, the lawsuits say, was "aimed at reducing the utility and value of numerous properties . . . that the town covets for its own acquisition but whose owners refused to sell voluntarily to the town."

The rezonings are designed to give the town, "in its capacity as a purchaser," an unfair bargaining advantage over landowners, as well as other potential purchasers.

By considering and adopting the rezonings at the same time that the town still "desired to acquire those properties for its own benefit," the town had a conflict of interest, the suits allege.

That action, Mr. Esseks said, violates his clients' constitutional rights to equal protection rights and due process.

Public purchases made with the Community Preservation Fund, which comes from the 2-percent real estate transfer tax, must be from willing sellers, according to the law.

In fact, the lawsuits allege, "the town's rezonings are such an arbitrary and gross abuse of the town's governmental powers," that they meet the definition of "larceny by extortion" under the New York Penal Law.

"The allegations are absolute rubbish and not based on any facts whatsoever," said Supervisor Bill McGintee yesterday. "We have no such policy."

The zoning changes enacted, he said, "have nothing to do with our C.P.F. program," but had been initially recommended by Dr. Lee E. Koppelman, a planner, and subsequent consultants hired to help draft the town comprehensive plan, including Horne Rose, a consulting firm, and State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Lisa Liquori, a former town planning director, who worked together to complete a final draft of the plan.

"All we did was we moved forward with recommendations in the comprehensive plan that were long overdue," Mr. McGintee said. He noted that, though the Iacono and Lederer-Plankett properties are on the preservation fund list, "we have no offers on them."

"We've actually gone to great lengths to keep one process separate from the other," he said of the acquisition program and the rezonings.

The lawsuits claim that the town's proposal to rezone properties in which it was interested was a "threat," and that the town "underscored its threats by announcing to the public during the deliberations on the rezonings that landowners who agreed prior to the adoption of the rezonings to sell their properties to the town would be exempted from the zoning changes, but those who refused to sell would be rezoned."

The suits allege that the town "has a longstanding but recently intensified pattern and policy of coercing owners of subdividable vacant properties on the C.P.F. . . . acquisition list into selling their properties to the town against the owners' free will, at less than market value."

Mr. Esseks argues that many of the properties rezoned to five or 10-acre residential zoning under the new comprehensive plan will not be affected, for one of a number of reasons, including that they are already protected with easements or reserves, or are not large enough to subdivide even under current zoning.

Of the remaining parcels that are "truly impacted by the upzonings," according to the suit, approximately 90 percent are on the preservation fund list.

In addition, the lawsuits also claim that town agencies, such as the Planning Department and planning board, zoning board of appeals, and town attorney's office, "impose purposefully lengthy and unnecessary delays in the administrative land use and environmental approval processes for properties on the C.P.F. Project Plan list, especially during the subdivision review process."

Brad Loewen, the chairman of the town planning board, said yesterday that that assertion is "not true. The process goes through as it goes through whether a property is on the C.P.F. list or not."

In fact, Mr. Loewen said, memos from the Planning Department to the board outlining applications do not specify whether a property is on the list. Because the list is public, he said, board members "may or may not know about that." But, he said, "never is it part of the planning process. We do not consider it as a factor in our deliberations. In the planning process, C.P.F. land is not delayed unduly. We treat it as we treat every other piece of land."

Supervisor McGintee noted that "this board, at the suggestion of local attorneys, has gone to great lengths to streamline the planning process. We continue to do everything to make town government user-friendly."

The lawsuits also cite the town's policies on open-space subdivisions, which require between 25 and 70 percent of the land to be preserved, the adoption of "unprecedented clearing restrictions" that further reduce the "use and value of vacant properties on the C.P.F. list," and "numerous excessive moratoria . . . to secure the town additional time either to coerce the landowners into selling to the town or to punish the landowners by amending the zoning code." Moratoriums on the development of certain lands were in place while the comprehensive plan update was completed.

When a public land purchase is agreed to, the lawsuits state, the town encourages owners to deem it a "bargain sale," claiming that the purchase price is below the market value price, so that they can obtain a charitable donation deduction for the difference in prices, which, according to the court papers, is "improper (if not illegal or fraudulent)."

The Lederer-Plaskett land was zoned for two-acre residential lots, which would have allowed its subdivision into six parcels. Rezoning the site for a minimum lot size of five acres was recommended. The owners had asked the town to rezone it instead for three-acre lots, and filed a four-lot subdivision application. The property was placed in five-acre zoning.

The Iacono property is one of the few subdividable properties left on Long Lane that is not in government ownership or otherwise preserved, according to the lawsuit. The purchase of development rights on the property is recommended in the preservation fund plan.

It was rezoned from two-acre to five-acre residential, making it impossible for the land to be subdivided.

The lawsuits, which were delivered to the town clerk on Tuesday, ask that the rezonings be set aside and seek an award of compensatory damages and attorneys' fees.

Mr. Esseks has also recently filed a lawsuit against East Hampton on behalf of Dick Cavett and Carrie Nye, the owners of two Montauk parcels totaling about 97 acres that was rezoned from five-acre to 10-acre residential. That suit claims that, in adopting the zoning changes, the town failed to follow the proper procedures, under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

Similar Article 78 lawsuits, seeking to overturn new zoning designations, were filed in June on behalf of the Benson Point Realty Corporation, the Montauk Yacht Club, and the Ross School and its landholding corporations.

After learning last week that only one member of the East Hampton Library's board of managers knew in advance about a state bill that would have streamlined zoning review for the library's proposed children's wing, seven of 23 board members at a July 27 meeting called on the president, Tom Twomey, to step down.

When their motion was defeated, six of the seven resigned from the board.

"I think we've lost the fund-raising public," one board member, Suzanne Dayton, said at the meeting. "Tom . . . it's time for you to wake up and do the right thing."

Henrika Conner, Patricia Mercer, and Lawrence Randolph, the three board members who called the special meeting, agreed, as did Helen T. Abel, Ellen Cromack, and Eleanor Ratsep, but there were 14 others who did not want Mr. Twomey to leave, so the seven were overruled.

Of them, only Ms. Cromack had decided to remain on the board by the end of the July 27 meeting. (Last week's Star omitted Ms. Abel's name from the list of those who had resigned.)

"I don't want to be a board of one," Ms. Dayton told the group. Ms. Ratsep, who had served on the board for 20 years, said she was resigning because she could no longer trust the board's president, "and you shouldn't either."

"I think the board has been hijacked by one person," Mr. Randolph said.

"I apologize to the board for the mistake I made which helped create the turmoil for which we're all here," Mr. Twomey said at the start of the meeting. "I'm really quite embarrassed. My enthusiasm for libraries and this library in particular colored my judgment. I feel terrible about the turmoil but we're here to talk about it."

He said he had poured his "heart and soul out" to help the library and wanted to continue working with the board.

At issue was a bill passed by the State Legislature in June that would have made the East Hampton Library, a free association library, exempt from special permit review by the village zoning board of appeals. The very specific language of the final bill, which was vetoed by Gov. George E. Pataki on July 26, made it applicable to only two libraries in the county - East Hampton's and Port Jefferson's.

Village officials were staunchly opposed to the legislation, saying it would undermine the local zoning process and charging it was crafted by State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, who is of counsel to Mr. Twomey's law firm, to help his associate.

Mr. LaValle denied this and said the original bill introduced in January was much broader. Mr. Twomey said last week that he realized only at the end of June that the final bill was so specifically targeted to East Hampton.

In his veto message, the governor agreed with the village's point about home rule. "Should the Legislature desire to exempt libraries from local zoning laws, it should propose to do so through the passage of a general law applicable to all such libraries in the state," he wrote.

The bill passed by the State Assembly and Senate would have allowed free association libraries in historic districts that have added two or more school districts to their service area in the last five years to expand by 8,000 feet or less without a special permit, provided the expansions met other zoning requirements and had been approved by the village design review board. The East Hampton Library has proposed a 6,800-square-foot expansion of its children's wing.

The bill was considered a "pilot project," Mr. LaValle said last month.

"I believed it would probably never see the light of day," Mr. Twomey said on July 27. "Things steamrolled and out pops that bill that I immediately realized had some implications here. It was Fourth of July weekend. I immediately should have called a special meeting then."

That explanation was not enough for some board members, who worried that the situation had put the library at odds with the village. "When I read this, I said, 'Oh my God, this is cutting the feet from under the zoning board of appeals,' " Ms. Conner said. "It wasn't any action specified by the board. The board was never told about it."

Mr. Randolph said he also felt there had been "a lack of candor" on the part of Ed Reale, the attorney who has been working pro bono on the library's expansion application, and that Mr. Reale and the firm Twomey, Latham, Shea, Kelley, Dubin, Reale, and Quartararo should be removed as counsel to the library. Seven board members agreed with him, but 14 wanted Mr. Reale and the firm to continue to work on the application.

"Ed here donated dozens and dozens of hours to help the library. He is a planning and zoning expert," Mr. Twomey said.

Ms. Mercer said she wished Mr. Reale had given the board more updates on the status of the children's wing application. Ms. Conner wondered whether the application before the Z.B.A. was put on the back burner in hopes that the library legislation might pass in the meantime.

"By really playing hardball with the village Z.B.A. . . . our counsel has assisted in alienating the village from the library," Mr. Randolph said.

The zoning board requested an environmental impact statement on the children's wing proposal last September. Mr. Reale said he had discussed that with the library board at several meetings.

"If you want to talk hardball, an [environmental impact statement] is a highly unusual step to take for such a small project," he said. "The village is playing hardball."

The impact statement is expected to be finalized by the end of the summer.

"We've been methodical here and there is no apology needed for the time it took," Mr. Twomey said.

"I got involved because I thought what you wanted to do made sense for the community," Mr. Reale said. "I don't want to be working against the board's interests."

"I think it would be counterproductive to start over with someone else," Ann Chapman, another board member, said.

Donald Hunting, a board member who is also the chairman of the village planning board, said he would "hate to think that the process with the village is about personalities rather than the application of law and good planning principles."

When the six board members announced their resignations on July 27, several others urged them to change their minds. "I think this is a sad day for the library," Howard Lebwith, a board member, said.

"The heart and soul of this library board just walked out of the room," commented Averill Geus, one of more than two dozen people in the audience at the meeting.

The remaining board members agreed that they needed to begin mending their fractured relationship with the village. That may not be easy.

"We have a zoning board and they in their wisdom have been doing their very best to work with the library," the mayor said at a village board meeting Friday. "I am cautiously optimistic that at the end of the day, all the parties . . . will be satisfied."

When Mr. Hunting stood up to "clear the air" about the library board's position, the mayor told him, "I actually think the entire library was remiss."

"The board is very happy that the governor did not sign this legislation," Mr. Hunting told the village board.

A mystery oar has found its way to the beach at Ditch Plain, Montauk, evidentially from out of the past. It was found two weeks ago by a reporter walking his dog in the fog, the waterlogged oar stranded by the tide on a pile of rocks at the foot of a bluff less than 100 yards from where the Ditch Plain station of the U.S. Lifesaving Service, founded in 1878, was located. The service was a precursor to the modern Coast Guard. "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back," was the surfmen's official motto. There were 30 stations on the South Shore from Coney Island to Montauk Point.

An oar is an oar, of course, but this one is short, about eight feet long, and branded on each side of its blade with the letter and numbers SO2875 - or 802875. Years spent underwater have eroded the brand.

"I know we had numbers on the oars. They was heavy oars. Wouldn't take much for them to sink," said Milton Miller, a former member of the Lifesaving Service from Springs, now living in Florida. He was stationed at the Ditch Plain station, as was his father, who spent 38 years in the Lifesaving Service-Coast Guard. His duty years began during the Spanish-American War and ended after World War II.

Mr. Miller said he was very familiar with oars, having put his back into them while rowing the service's lifeboats before they were motorized after World War II. Before the U.S. entered the war, he crewed on other motorized craft as well. "I went out on the first sinking of a tanker off Block Island - torpedoed by a U-boat before we entered the war. Another was torpedoed off Shinnecock somewhere. Never forget that one."

"I was never on a self-righting boat before. We went through waves that day. A northwest wind. We were strapped down. It was all right once we got around the point." Later in the war, Mr. Miller was transferred to a 365-foot L.S.T. landing craft in the South Pacific. The lifesaving stations were either moved or torn down after the war.

"The Lifesaving Service was tied in with whaling," Mr. Miller said. "My father was in Amagansett and lived across from the station. . . . The people did other things, but they had duty days, watches. They knew how to handle different boats. They were the best oarsmen they had," he said, going on to distinguish the "Up-street" whale boat captains, of the Hedges and Loper families, from the "lifesaving men" who manned the oars.

Mr. Miller said he reckoned the mystery oar was made of ash. "Very possible it is ash. The best were ash oars. The best you can get." The dense wood was easily waterlogged and liable to sink, he said. "The sand covered it up, and then uncovered it," he said, postulating how the oar might have found its way to shore.

Mr. Miller said the oar was shorter than the 12-footers used in the regular surf boats. Ralph Carpentier, who helps curate the East Hampton Town Marine Museum on Bluff Road, Amagansett, suggested the short oar might have been cut down from a broken long oar. Mr. Miller said it was unlikely a private boater would number the oars of his or her tender.

"All government issue has names and numbers on it. Ditch Plains had a number and a platform 25 by 50 feet square with the numbers on it for the airplanes to tell. We didn't have radio communications. We had a branding iron alright. Had names and numbers. Each side of the blade, yeah, that's right."

But the numbers don't correspond to the lifesaving service's designation given station Ditch Plain in the 1920s. It's number was 65, according to Barbara Forde of the Long Island Maritime Museum in West Sayville, which has a permanent display of Service memorabilia. The numbers could refer to the oar's place on the station's equipment inventory. Perhaps it's not military issue at all, but was lost from a freighter instead. Or, the oar might have washed down from Amagansett where it was lost, in 1942, by the Nazi spies that rowed ashore from a U-boat before hopping on a train to New York City.

The mystery remains. A Star baseball cap will go to anyone who knows where oar number SO2875 or 802875 came from.

Over 300 law enforcement officers from as far away as Old Brookville in Nassau County honored the late Sgt. Ryan Lynch, a 10-year veteran of the East Hampton Town Police Department, on Monday morning. Sergeant Lynch, 34, was diagnosed with cancer in January. He died on July 27.

At 9:30 a.m. on Monday, 16 officers on motorcycles led a hearse from the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home on Pantigo Road, East Hampton, to Amagansett's Main Street.

There, officers from the Eastern Long Island Police Pipes and Drums headed a procession to St. Peter's Catholic Church in Amagansett, where Sergeant Lynch and his wife, the former Jennifer Cidlowski of Montauk, had been married three years ago. A huge flag was suspended above Amagansett's Main Street by two firetrucks.

Capt. Kevin Sarlo of the East Hampton Town Police Department held Sergeant Lynch's bagpipes under his arm while the Eastern Long Island Police Pipes and Drums played. Sergeant Lynch, who lived in East Hampton, was a longtime member of the pipes and rums organization, attending practice sessions in Hampton Bays each week, said Bob Boden, another member.

Nearly 225 people crowded into the church while the hundreds of law enforcement officers waited outside, according to Todd Sarris, chief of the East Hampton Town Police Department. The Rev. Joseph Coschignano of Center Moriches officiated. Sergeant Lynch's brother, Kyle T. Lynch of Glen Cove, and his cousin, Lt. Thomas Mackey of the Sag Harbor Village Police, read from the Gospel.

Ms. Lynch gave the eulogy, Chief Sarris said.

"Ryan was a caring, conscientious, good-natured guy who treated people the way he wanted to be treated," Lieutenant Mackey said yesterday. The outpouring of people at his funeral was a testament to that, the lieutenant said.

After the service, officers on motorcycles from the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office, Suffolk County Police Department, East Hampton Village Police Department, and the Southampton Village Police Department led the hearse to Cedar Lawn Cemetery on East Hampton's Cooper Lane. A Suffolk County police helicopter flew overhead.

Officers who attended Monday's services, Chief Sarris said, included those from Old Brookville, Southampton Village, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office, the Suffolk County Police, the New York State Police, the Westhampton Beach Village Police, the Shelter Island Town Police, the Quogue Village Police, the Riverhead Town Police, the New York State Parks Police, the State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the East Hampton Town, Southampton Town, Southampton Village, and East Hampton Village Police.

Representatives of the United States Coast Guard, the East Hampton Town harbormasters, and the Suffolk County courts also attended Monday's ceremonies. Firefighters from Amagansett, East Hampton, and Montauk were on hand as well.

"East Hampton Town police did a tremendous job paying tribute to Ryan," Lieutenant Mackey said. Sergeant Lynch was the first East Hampton Town police officer on active duty to die in 10 years.

At the graveside, the Eastern Long Island Police Pipes and Drums major, Mike Smith of the Southampton Town police, played "Amazing Grace," then presented Sergeant Lynch's bagpipes to his widow.

A reception was held afterward at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett.

In the spring, East Hampton Town police, as well as police from other jurisdictions, had united to help their colleague's family defray the costs of treating Sergeant Lynch's cancer.

Town police officers set up a Ryan Lynch Cancer Fund, showed their support by wearing ribbons inscribed with his badge number, and held fund-raisers, including a dinner and raffle at the Montauk Firehouse and a dinner at the Boardy Barn in Hampton Bays, both in April. The two events raised $60,000.

In May, the East Hampton Town Board and the police union voted to allow members of the East Hampton Town Police Department to donate their unused sick day pay to Sergeant Lynch. He had been on sick leave with esophageal cancer since Jan. 13.

A week before Sergeant Lynch died, doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center found additional tumors in his brain that were untreatable, according to Lieutenant Mackey. At that point treatment was stopped and Sergeant Lynch was moved to a hospice.

Ms. Lynch and their two children, Cailyn, 2, and Alexander, 12, are staying with Sergeant Lynch's father in Glenwood Landing. They will ease their way back into life in East Hampton, Lieutenant Mackey said.

Accused by the Suffolk County Health Department of operating a bathing beach without a permit, proper supervision, or bathrooms, East Hampton Village installed portable toilets at Two Mile Hollow Beach on Friday and agreed last week to patrol the beach for the rest of the summer to remind people that swimming is not allowed there.

If the village does not comply with the terms of the agreement, the Health Department can impose fines of up to $2,000 a day and order the beach closed until the village gets a bathing beach permit.

The Health Department has given the village until May 27, 2006, to get the permit. A bathing beach, as defined by the state sanitary code, must have public bathrooms, full-time lifeguards, and lifesaving equipment. Health Department officials had not returned calls as of press time.

Because it is too late in the season to staff the beach, Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, said the village has opted instead to have the Police Department and village lifeguards pay regular visits to Two Mile Hollow to "advise people" there that they swim at their own risk.

Those visits, which began last week just as beachgoers were seeking refuge in the water from some of summer's most oppressive heat and humidity, came as a surprise to many. With little explanation offered for the sudden change in procedure, some at Two Mile Hollow said they felt it was being singled out because it is popular with the gay community.

"It's obvious that it is just this beach," Brian Moran of East Hampton said on Aug. 3. "It's because it's the gay beach."

"That's the furthest thing that we want to portray here," Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said Monday. "Historically, that beach has been used by the gay community, but it's also used by a fair number of families." The mayor said he explained the situation to the leaders of the East End Gay Organization.

According to those who were at the beach on Aug. 3, lifeguards arrived offshore on Jet Skis and village police rode all-terrain vehicles onto the beach to tell them that they were not allowed to swim in the ocean. One person said a lifeguard had told him he could be ticketed if he went in the water.

For years there have been signs at Two Mile Hollow, Old Beach Lane, and Wiborg's Beach, all of which are within the village, warning that they are not bathing beaches. In posting the signs, "We thought we had lived up to the intent of a stipulation made back in 1976," the mayor said.

"As long as people using the areas were advised . . . that was adequate in a rural environment," Mr. Cantwell said yesterday, and no one complained about the lack of a bathroom or lifeguards.

Two years ago, neighbors calling themselves the Further Lane Association began to complain to police about problems at the beach. They hired private investigators to patrol it for several weeks and to videotape evidence of public urination, public sex, trespassing on the dunes, and littering. Police responded by stepping up patrols of the beach and in one night arrested several people for public lewdness and disorderly conduct.

As the dust settled, the Further Lane Association proposed in a letter to the board that the beach be open only during the day and that it be established as a bathing beach with lifeguards.

There had been few problems since then until last month, when police received a number of similar complaints. Apparently, someone also called the Health Department, Mr. Cantwell said.

Health inspectors visited the beach on July 22 and 23 and cited the village with several sanitary code violations. The village was to have answered those charges in Yaphank on Aug. 16, but instead reached an agreement to meet the department's mandates, including that the village regularly enforce its "policy of not allowing bathing at Two Mile Hollow Road and other unprotected beaches within the village borders."

Despite its citations concerning Two Mile Hollow, the mayor said the Health Department did not have a problem with the situations at Wiborg's or Old Beach Lane. Mr. Cantwell said he could only assume that the department was more concerned about Two Mile Hollow because its 200-car parking lot is so much larger than those at other non-bathing beaches.

Beachgoers unaware of the Health Department's mandate were confused by the presence of lifeguards and police last week.

"It's a village beach, you pay for a parking permit," said Scott Newman of East Hampton, who has gone to the beach for 15 years.

"I've never seen them stop people swimming, never,"

said Helena Flecker, who lives in Springs and has been going to the beach for five years.

More than a dozen people on Wiborg's Beach that same day said that neither the lifeguard on the Jet Ski nor the police on the A.T.V. had stopped anyone from swimming in the ocean.

Ed McGintee, the village's head lifeguard, based at Main Beach, said lifeguards regularly patrol both Wiborg's and Two Mile Hollow Beaches. "We always go there, since we got the Jet Ski," he said.

At its next meeting on Friday, Aug. 19, the village board is expected to discuss plans for the bathrooms. The mayor said that Two Mile Hollow will be a supervised bathing beach next summer. The meeting will be held at 11 a.m. at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.

With Reporting by Jonathan Saruk

The good-bye events have been tearful: a ceremony at the school, a surprise party at East Hampton Point. Dawn Zimmerman Hummel, the founder and executive director of the Child Development Center of the Hamptons, will move to San Diego in mid-August to enroll her son, Jon, in a school for autistic teenagers.

When she decided to build a place for special education students close to their South Fork homes, Ms. Zimmerman Hummel became an unstoppable force, enlisting support from everyone from local softball players, Jimmy Buffett, and Peter Jennings to Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Gov. George E. Pataki.

A decade ago, faced with a lack of services on the East End for special education students like Jon, Ms. Zimmerman Hummel started a program of her own, and that skills group for preschoolers grew into the Child Development Center of the Hamptons Preschool, where ordinary youngsters learned alongside children with special needs. The preschool spawned a charter elementary and middle school, which opened in 2001.

Now that her son is entering a new phase of his life, Ms. Zimmerman Hummel is ready to move on. "It's a natural progression of what happens - you take things as far as they can go," she said. She is in fact moving "back home." Ms. Zimmerman Hummel grew up in a Los Angeles suburb and was once a junk-bond trader with Michael Milken on Rodeo Drive.

She will not entirely abandon her ties to the East End - she and her husband, John Hummel, will keep their house here, and she will remain a member of the Child Development Center board. But she is handing over the reins as the center's executive director, chief advocate, fund-raiser, and driving force to Donna Colonna.

Ms. Colonna, a resident of Sag Harbor and New York, is the executive director of Services for the Underserved, a nonprofit organization in New York City. Founded in 1978, it serves people with special needs, providing services and serving as an advocate for the elderly or disabled, the mentally ill or homeless, "marginalized" families living with H.I.V./AIDS, and teens and adults with developmental disabilities.

"She's the new me," Ms. Zimmerman Hummel said. Services for the Underserved, Ms. Colonna said yesterday, will help expand the center's mission by providing "more services that kind of wrap around the schools." Examples, she said, will include vocational and life skills training for older students, opportunities for high-school graduates with special needs, and continued development of an early-intervention program for young children.

Construction of a separate building for the C.D.C.H. Preschool, now housed at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton, is high on the agenda. The preschool, with its 120 young students, must vacate its rented space in two years.

Ms. Colonna, who has a background in psychology and 30 years of experience in her field, said she met Ms. Zimmerman Hummel about five years ago, and had helped her set up the charter school. She said she was "honored" to have been asked to step into her shoes. "I give her an incredible amount of credit," Ms. Colonna said. "Besides being a beautiful person, it's so hard to create something from nothing."

School opened last September for the charter school students in a new, 20,000-square-foot building that cost $2.2 million to build. Almost half of that amount came from fund-raising events; the rest was borrowed.

Nearly 100 students from kindergarten through seventh grade attended last year. An eighth grade will be added this year.

Although Ms. Zimmerman Hummel will be elsewhere on the first day of school, disabled and non-disabled charter school students alike will file past her handprint, which is impressed in cement near the front door of the new school, in the Zimmerman Hummel Building of Humanity.

Two East Hampton Town lifeguards quickly realized they had bitten off more than they could chew on Monday when the creature they planned to liberate with their Jet Ski towed them instead, capsized their craft twice, and identified itself as a very, very large shark, possibly a great white.

The drama began when lifeguards watching from their stand at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett noticed that a white float, marking either a lobster pot or fish trap, was moving against the current about 100 yards from shore. It was a little after noon.

Other guards were completing the endurance swim segment of their recertification test, swimming from shore to about where the buoy was. "It must have cruised right through the area where the endurance swim was," said Sean Thorsen a few hours after experiencing, along with John Ryan Jr., the town's chief lifeguard, one of the scarier rides of his life.

Mr. Ryan said they had decided to launch the Jet Ski to see if a fish, turtle, or marine mammal had become entangled - to free it if it had. "The idea was catch and release," Mr. Thorsen said.

On board was a 15-foot length of polypropylene line that they tied to the buoy line with the idea of towing it, and whatever had fetched up in it, shoreward. That turned out to be a big mistake.

As Mr. Ryan throttled up, the Jet Ski started moving in the opposite direction, backward, fast enough to sink the aft end. It was then the guards saw "a big, triangular dorsal fin." Other than the dorsal, they could clearly see about four feet of the creature's tail section ending in the large tail itself. They said the underside of the tail section was white.

The Jet Ski continued to be pulled backward, making it impossible to disengage the tow rope. "The Jet Ski is 900 pounds and it doesn't go backwards, and with the throttle [engaged]," said Mr. Ryan, still amazed at the shark's power. Then things got even scarier.

The shark altered course, which caused the craft to capsize, tossing the guards into the water. "We turned it over, but then it flipped again. We were lying on the bottom of it," Mr. Ryan said, "but we still had the tow rope and buoy." The shark continued to tow them on their capsized Jet Ski as people on the beach watched. "The whole beach started screaming," Mr. Ryan said.

"The adrenaline was pumping," added his fellow guard, who laughed nervously at the memory of what came next. The guards said they knew they had to get their tow rope off the buoy, but the connection was underwater. "I held his ankles," Mr. Ryan said, as his fellow lifeguard ducked under the Jet Ski with "my eyes open." Mr. Thorsen was successful.

Once free, the guards watched as the white buoy disappeared underwater. Guards stationed at Main Beach in East Hampton were notified. Two other Jet Skis were launched to locate the buoy and the fish that towed it. Mr. Ryan said guards would remain vigilant for the next few days.

The near-shore waters between Atlantic Beach, Amagansett, and Main Beach in East Hampton Village have been frequented by scores of very big, yet harmless basking sharks. However, Nancy Kohler, a shark biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory in Narragansett, R.I., said the description of the animal and the fact that it was close to shore were consistent with a great white.

She said a 15-foot-long white shark found its way over a sand bar and into a bay near Woods Hole, Massachusetts, late last September. Fishermen used nets to encourage the big white to swim back to sea.

At press time, neither buoy nor shark had been seen since the lifeguards' close encounter of the scariest kind.

The East Hampton Town Board heard a report from its airport manager on its new aircraft tracking system on Tuesday. It also agreed to buy a $65,000 weather observation system. That system would make the airport "safer," the manager, Jim Brundige, said, and would allow him to report certain violations to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The $325,000 tracking system, installed at East Hampton Town Airport in May, provides Mr. Brundige with the route and altitude of each and every helicopter or plane that flies in and out of the airport, to a distance of about seven miles.

The system can also read the aircraft identification numbers of newer planes. Older planes that lack transponders can be identified by correlating the tracking system information with airport logs.

The purpose of the system is to determine if aircraft are complying with voluntary noise-abatement procedures the town has asked pilots to follow. East Hampton Town bought the equipment after a growing number of residents pleaded with officials to do something about airport noise.

The system includes four antennas placed within a five to 10-mile radius that relay information to the airport, and one antenna at the airport itself.

Based on the data recorded, the system can generate maps showing the routes of every aircraft that flew to and from the airport on a particular day. Detailed information, such as the plane make, model, serial number, weight class, time, altitude, and country of origin, can be generated with the click of a mouse.

East Hampton Airport, Mr. Brundige told the board on Tuesday, is the only airport of its kind with a tracking system so sophisticated. Other airports where it is used, he said, include Logan Airport in Boston, McCarron Airport in Las Vegas, and Narita Airport in Tokyo.

While the town cannot impose flight regulations on pilots, it has requested voluntary compliance with recommendations designed to minimize disturbance to residents from aircraft noise, particularly helicopters.

The recommendations, published in the airport manual used by pilots, include limits on operations between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. and a request that helicopters use one of two designated approaches, one from the north and one from the south.

The flight tracking system has shown that most aircraft are following the recommendations, at least loosely. But the southerly approach has generated complaints from residents of the Rose's Grove and Millstone Road areas near Noyac and Bridgehampton.

The system, Mr. Brundige said yesterday, "gives me an overall picture of what's going on out over the population, and has allowed me to redesign the recommended routes."

He suggested eliminating the route from the south that had drawn complaints, and board members agreed with him. Pilots will be advised of the recommendation.

Aircraft operators who don't follow the town recommendations receive a letter from Mr. Brundige along with a copy of the tracking data and his observations, a copy of the town's voluntary noise abatement procedures, and a request that they comply with them.

Mr. Brundige said he has told New York State Senator Charles Schumer, who recently suggested that the F.A.A. rerquire helicopters to fly primarily over water in the New York and Long Island area, that flight routes are not as crucial as altitude.

While the F.A.A. imposes a minimum flight altitude of 1,000 feet for fixed-wing aircraft, there is no minimum height for helicopters. East Hampton has asked helicopter pilots to fly at a minimum altitude of 2,000 feet.

Also on Tuesday, the town board agreed to purchase an automated weather observation system that will allow pilots to use instrument landing systems.

Without the system, Mr. Brundige explained, pilots must fly low enough to see the runway, thus creating more noise and a safety risk, especially on overcast days. "They fish their way around and find the airport," he said. "I don't think it's very safe."

The F.A.A. says that pilots can land at airports that lack weather observation systems if they have one mile of clear visibility.

If East Hampton were to install a weather observation system, the airport could apply for a new F.A.A. classification that would trigger regulations requiring pilots either to have three miles of visibility, or to use an instrument landing approach. Mr. Brunige could then report violations to the F.A.A. rather than send pilots a letter requesting compliance.

Using the system is a "much safer, higher altitude situation," Mr. Brundige said. "We're really behind the curve on this; we're about the only airport in this country that doesn't have this."

The cost of the weather system is estimated at $65,000. Councilman Pete Hammerle said that a private resident who owns a plane had offered to contribute a system or pay for it outright. The town will buy the system itself, he said, but could then accept private contributions toward the cost.

Supervisor Bill McGintee said that he would like the public to have access to the airport's weather information. He explained that businesses could benefit if tourists could check the weather in East Hampton before visiting.

Members of the Writers Guild of America East working on a PBS children's program started protesting on Monday outside the LTV Studios in Wainscott.

According to a statement released by the guild, the studio's current tenant, Big Big Productions, headed by Mitchell Kriegman, "demanded that writers take a pay cut of about 66 percent and refused to pay benefits" should they sign on for its latest production.

"That a guy is trying to set up [a non-union] shop out here is unacceptable," said Warren Leight, president of the Writers Guild of America East, who stood with a crowd of 20 writers, their family members, and other supporters picketing in front of the entrance to the studios on Monday. Many of the guild writers picketing have worked on a previous production of Mr. Kriegman's, whose hiring of nonunion writers for his current project has infuriated them.

Mr. Kriegman, who is also a member of the guild, denied the specifics of the statement, saying they were "absolutely not true." He added that the guild had approached him on Friday to negotiate, and that he was "surprised that they were even there."

"I just want to get everybody to move forward," said Mr. Kriegman, who was placed on the guild's writers' strike list on July 14. Mr. Kriegman added yesterday that negotiations continued on Tuesday between his lawyer and the guild. "We never, from my point of view, stopped negotiations," he said.

The writers guild spokeswoman, Sindy F.M. Gordon, released a statement yesterday morning saying that the guild "spoke with a representative of Big Big Productions and the company failed to offer any changes to their original proposal."

"If we would have been silly enough to accept [the original offer], it would be damaging to the writers guild," said Andy Yerkes, one of the head writers, on Monday.

Two representatives from the Long Island Federation of Labor were also on the picket line. "We are here to do what we can," said Roger Clayman, the executive director of the organization.

Whether or not the show is considered animation, for which the writing would not be covered by the guild, seems to be at the center of the controversy.

According to a promotional announcement at the PBS Web site, the program, called "It's a Big, Big World," is made in "shadowmation," which it defines as "a unique, patented, animated process that utilizes real time virtual sets and bun raku-style team puppetry, integrating live action animatronic characters and computer animation in real-time, high-definition virtual environments."

Mr. Kriegman said the technology has advanced considerably since the last project he worked on with Mr. Yerkes, "The Book of Pooh" (2001), during which the writers were covered by the guild.

"It's way more advanced," he said of the current production. "It's really hybrid animation."

But Mr. Yerkes said that was irrelevant, since the current project still involves live-action puppetry, which is considered performance and not animation. That would mean the writers should be covered.

Mr. Kriegman said the writers guild saw the updated version of the animation and agreed that it was different, however.

He added that "the writers guild has told us on the record that they don't encourage people to stop others from going to work."

"This could easily be solved in a day, or we could be here all summer," said Mr. Leight.

The show, "It's a Big, Big World," is scheduled to air in January 2006. The union has already delayed the production several times, according to the guild's press release.