The Hamptons International Film Festival is spreading its wings. The festival, scheduled to open on Oct. 15 with a premiere and big party, will occur at the Sag Harbor Cinema and the Westhampton Performing Arts Center this year, as well as at the East Hampton Cinema and Guild Hall as before.

Also new will be three films by three international directors at different stages in their careers; Subversive Cinema, late-night screenings of three dark-natured films; other possible changes to festival venues; changes to the short film programming; a new corporate sponsor, and perhaps more awards.

The additional venues will allow more people to see the films with the largest ticket demands, as well as allow the festival to add to the number of films it shows, bringing this year's total to 65 or 66, Stephen Gallagher, program director, said. The full lineup is not expected to be finalized until the end of the week.

Quite A Number

"Things change every day," he said. But, he promised, "we have a really strong lineup."

One insider surmised this week that the festival was reluctant to announce its selections until the Sundance Film Festival, the country's premier festival, had done so. It is expected to inform filmmakers chosen for inclusion this week. Sundance will not accept any films that have been shown at other festivals.

About 650 feature length and short films, not including student films, were submitted for this year's festival, Mr. Gallagher said, the highest number ever. Among them are three chosen for a new category of films, Subversive Cinema, which will be shown once in East Hampton and again in Sag Harbor.

One of these films is "Funny Games," a contemporary Austrian film about a family terrorized by two Austrian men who call themselves variously Tom and Jerry and Beavis and Butthead. The film "both revels in and condemns . . . [television] violence," Mr. Gallagher said.

"Pan-Hamptons"

The other two are the English film "Preaching to the Perverted," about a politician in an election year who sends a young aide into a fetish club he wants to close down, and "Killer Condom," an American film noir shot by Germans in New York.

The scheduling of films as far afield as Westhampton will allow the festival to be "pan-Hamptons," Mr. Gallagher said, adding that festival organizers hope to attract more film-goers than in the past.

There are other possible changes in venues. The Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor may no longer be the site of panel discussions, since its distance from the festival's epicenter in the Village of East Hampton makes it difficult for festival staffers to attend.

The tent under which opening and closing night parties and other events take place may not be set up in the parking lot of Nick and Toni's restaurant on North Main Street in East Hampton, either. A bigger field that can accommodate a bigger tent is hoped for, Mr. Gallagher said, noting that ticket sales to these events could be increased and the tent could be sectioned off for use for other festival functions.

With "far fewer" high-quality short film submissions this year, the festival will screen one of the 10 short films selected before each of the 10 independent American features competing for the Golden Starfish award.

Picking the winner of the Golden Starfish award will be Anouk Aimee, the French film star, A.M. Homes, the novelist, the actress Rosie Perez, and the two winners of last year's Golden Starfish award: Matt Mahurin, the director of "Mug Shot," and Jay Chandrasekhar, the director of "Puddle Cruiser."

Inviting past winners back as jurors is a tradition the festival hopes to start this year, Mr. Gallagher said.

Lifetime Sponsor

Two autonomous programs of shorts will be scheduled as well, one titled "Cartoon Noir" and another, as yet untitled, that will highlight shorts done by or for women.

The women's shorts segment is being sponsored by a new festival sponsor, Lifetime Television for Women, which is considering giving an award for the film that best addresses women's issues, Mr. Gallagher said. As part of Lifetime's sponsorship, he added, the festival will include a special screening of Lee Grant's "Say It, Fight It, Cure It," a Lifetime film about breast cancer.

Making this year's Contemporary International Cinema feature different from past festivals' will be a special tribute to Sogetel, Spain's largest film production company, and the Three-by-Three program. Six films that were produced or co-produced by Sogetel will be featured on one day of the festival.

Spanish Films

In addition, three films directed by the Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem, and produced by Sogetel, are slated to be included in Three-by-Three, though Mr. Medem's participation was not confirmed by Monday. The Three-by-Three program will showcase three films by each of three filmmakers that are not well-known to American viewers in what Mr. Gallagher termed "mini tributes."

Each trio will include the filmmaker's most recent project as well as two from earlier in their careers.

Three-by-Three serves two purposes, Mr. Gallagher said: "One is to introduce terrific international directors to the American public," and the second is to show how filmmakers and their styles have changed during their careers.

Documentary Jury

Also to be highlighted in Three-by-Three are the Argentinian filmmaker Alejandro Agresti, and Nicolas Phillibert, a French documentarian whose most recent film, "Every Little Thing," will also compete for the festival's juried best documentary award. The film is about the residents of an insane asylum outside Paris, rehearsing a play written by an absurdist theater director, Mr. Gallagher said.

The documentary film award jury will include R.J. Cutler, the producer of "The War Room" and director of "Perfect Candidate": Robert Hawk, the associate producer of "Chasing Amy"; Bill Greaves, a veteran documentary filmmaker whose most recent project was "Ida B. Wells: Passion for Justice"; Ian Birnie, who heads the film department at the Los Angeles County Museum, and Renee Tajima-Tena, a documentary film director who most recently made "My America."

Student Submissions

Meanwhile, student film submissions for this year's festival continued to roll in on Monday, the deadline day, and this year's entries are different from those of the past: They have come not just from American students but from such places as Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia.

That the festival had opened submissions to international film students this year was not widely publicized. However, the number of submissions continued to be in the area of 150 said Jeremiah Newtown, co-founder of the festival's student awards program.

As in past years, monetary awards will be given to the five undergraduate and five graduate film students picked as the cream of this year's crop. The jury, which will meet next week to screen the films, will include Candy Clarke, an actress, Gill Holland, a producer whose latest film, "Hurricane Streets," is expected soon, and Gerald Dolezar, a music representative and short film producer.

The quality of the student films continued to be "very good" this year, Mr. Newtown said. The only problem, he added, was that "the students are making longer films." The logistics of having to fit five films into each of two one-and-one-half or two-hour segments is not easy, he said, when some of the films are as long as 60 minutes each.

"I get a lot of calls from high school students saying, 'What about our films?' " Mr. Newtown said this week. "And they're right."

More Awards?

The festival may expand the number of awards given, the program director added, and jurors may be given the freedom to recognize more films and actors as they see fit. This year will be the first that an award for the film with the best original score will be given; last year, the jury declined to award the brand-new honor.

There are even more possible changes for Hamptons International Film Festivals of the future, Mr. Gallagher said this week. The possibilities include screenings at the Movie at Montauk and the Southampton Theater, script readings at a place like the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, and a category for films made by high school students.

Mr. Gallagher said the media were showing increased interest in the festival this year, as well, perhaps because filmmakers are turning to the smaller regional festivals like this one, where films have a better chance of being noticed and recognized.

The festival will run through Oct. 19 and is expected to end, as it has in the past, with a free day of films on Oct. 20.

In the days before school starts each September, familiar posters, reminding motorists to watch out for schoolchildren, begin popping up on utility poles. This year, petitions in favor of requiring all students in New York State to buckle up when they're on a school bus have appeared all over town as well. It is an idea, coming from the mother of an East Hampton kindergartener, that has merit.

Children and adults in every other vehicle must, under a widely publicized and reasonably well enforced law, buckle up. Why not children in a school bus?

Another law requires school buses manufactured after July 1, 1987, to be equipped with lap belts; it does not say anyone has to use them.

Existing practices among local school districts vary widely. Jack Perna, the Montauk School Superintendent, says two of his district's five buses, provided by the McCoy company, have lap belts, and Mr. Perna encourages students to use them. John Mensch Jr., the owner of Seacoast Transportation, which has contracts that cover all or part of five town districts, says all his buses have belts but that drivers generally do not ask students to use them.

In the East Hampton School District, buses are provided by the Schaefer family, which has a fleet of a dozen that were mostly manufactured before 1987, that is without belts.

The primary concern of those advocating seat belts on school buses is the possibility of injuries to unrestrained children during a collision or rollover. It is a legitimate one.

However, a bill that would have required seat belts in all school buses and a second that would have mandated their use stalled earlier this year in the State Assembly, after its Transportation Committee was unable to come to terms with the matter of responsibility. Should a driver, with so many passengers to watch, be held responsible if a child unbuckled and was injured after the bus was in motion?

State lawmakers, in cooperation with the automotive industry and safety experts, ought to be able to work out a practical and enforceable law. As the ads say, seat belts save lives.

On Friday Governor Pataki vetoed a bill that would have allowed the people of East Hampton Town to vote for themselves on whether to impose a 2-percent tax on higher-priced real estate sales. The tax would have raised $20 million over a 10-year period to preserve farmland and open spaces, its supporters estimated.

No one asked the Governor to endorse the tax itself, only to allow those who would profit by it - and pay for it - to decide if they liked the idea. We won't get that chance this year. Too bad.

In his veto message, Mr. Pataki mentions not the state real estate and construction industries that lobbied so diligently against the transfer tax, but those who actually work the land. The bill, he wrote, "inexplicably lacks provisions for the protection of farmers."

Not so inexplicably. The Ways and Means Committee asked that an exemption for farmers be omitted before the legislation was approved in the Assembly. It was the Governor himself who failed to sign a last-minute exemption for farmers that Senator Kenneth LaValle had tried to restore with a "message of necessity" in the State Senate.

Local farmers supported the bill with the understanding that an exemption could be worked out after the November referendum. Following its longstanding policy against any transfer tax on real estate whatsoever, the State Farm Bureau, 27,000 members strong, issued a letter opposing the bill. Had the exemption stood, the Long Island Farm Bureau, 5,000 strong, was willing to stay silent on the matter, however.

As the Farm Bureau recognized, the issue was a local one, the bill a local one. The decision to have a referendum should have been a local one, too. It could not have come at a better time, coinciding as it did with the recent cuts in capital gains taxes, which will leave property sellers with more money in their pockets than expected. Even members of the East Hampton real estate industry favored the tax.

Two cents on the dollar when the price of a house creeps over $250,000 or the cost of land goes over $100,000 is little to ask for the great returns all of us, both longtime residents and new settlers, can enjoy when the last best places are saved. Thankfully, East Hampton Town voters have supported preservation measures time and again - and can be expected to do so in the future by whatever means it takes.

The Governor's veto came as a surprise; not until the final day was there any indication that he would not give it his support. He alone bears responsibility for this slap in the face to home rule.

Within a week of the untimely death of Princess Diana, the world lost an extraordinary woman: Mother Teresa, whose humble dedication to fighting hunger and poverty and giving the poorest of the poor hope was boundless.

And yet, despite her revered life and the fact that she was an international symbol of unselfish devotion to humanity, her death and the worldwide grieving that followed was, and continues to be, overshadowed by that of the woman who passed before her.

The circumstances surrounding the death of the Princess of Wales have spurred a great deal of discussion by the media about the media. It is talk about where to place blame - on a pack of paparazzi, on the media as an institution, or at the feet of the voracious public at large. And still the celebrity of the fairy-tale Princess continues to dominate the news, even at the cost of diminishing Mother Teresa.

What sort of judgment is used in determining that the news value of the more than week-old death of a young, pretty woman, who once was married to royalty and who cared in her own way for the afflicted, was of greater import than the death of a woman whom the Catholic Church may at some time canonize?

For all the discussion and supposed inward reflection by the media (as well as its readers and viewers), it seems that nothing more than lip service has been paid to the debate over the role of the press, to questions of public values. Has nothing been learned? Have no seeds of change been sewn?

As a newspaper in a community that also sees, on a much smaller scale, the constant struggle between news for its own sake and "news" for celebrity's sake, we had hoped for more. The innocence of Diana and the true celebrity of Mother Teresa demand it.

It was not an entirely satisfying evening, either for the fans of the eminent novelist Kurt Vonnegut or for those who have, over the years, considered the original libretto and music of Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat" a classic not to be tampered with.

The occasion was a performance, at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, with a new text by Mr. Vonnegut as counterpoint to the music. The novelist, who served in World War II and was captured at the Battle of the Bulge, made light of the original tale- in which the Devil tempts a soldier to teach him to play the violin.

He had accepted the challenge to write a new text with the intention of complementing the music with something "real," said Mr. Vonnegut.

Comparisons Made

He noted that a long letter to the editor had appeared in this newspaper last week from Donald Kennedy of East Hampton, criticizing him for attempting to recast the work.

"We invited the writer to attend. Is he here?" Mr. Vonnegut asked. No response was forthcoming.

A number in the audience had seen "L'Histoire" presented earlier this season by a group under the direction of Lukas Foss at the Hamptons Music Festival. The readers then were the playwright Peter Stone, the theatrical director Gene Saks, and the artist Larry Rivers.

To these theatergoers, the Vonnegut play, based on the true story of an American soldier executed for desertion in World War II, had a relevancy the original, by the Swiss poet Charles Ramuz, lacked.

A Putdown

Among the detractors in the audience who thought otherwise was none other than Stravinsky's grandson, John Stravinsky, who manages the Stravinsky estate. Mr. Stravinsky was offended and said so. According to those who heard his comments, Mr. Stravinksy called the Vonnegut work a "piece of crap" and suggested it should die an immediate death.

Mr. Vonnegut, whose friend George Plimpton asked him to write the text as a benefit for the New York Philomusica and The Paris Review, two institutions close to Mr. Plimpton's heart, said this week he had "had no idea" it would cause controversy.

"Great musicians ordinarily pick completely uninteresting stories in order not to detract from their music," the novelist said, calling the Ramuz text "the most inane, uninteresting folk tale ever heard."

"Not A Nickel"

Instead, Mr. Vonnegut said, in using the story of the only American soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War, he "gave language equal power" that "harmonized."

"I thought I had honored Stravinsky's music," he said.

Furthermore, Mr. Vonnegut said, Mr. Stravinsky seemed to think he was going to make a "pot of money" on the work. "I did not make a nickel," he said, adding, "I'm done with it."

"Controversy was to be expected," the Philomusica's director, A. Robert Johnson, remarked afterward.

Unfortunately, although the Philomusica, an ensemble of winds, strings, and piano, is a fine musical group, the music suffered somewhat on Saturday night.

There were times when it seemed to be tamped down to allow for the dramatization and others when it seemed overwhelmed by the vigorous choreography.

Mr. Vonnegut had told the audience that after several workshop performances and some reworking he thought the text was done. Nevertheless, to this viewer at least, the music, stage action, and text still need better integration.

First-Class Acting

The acting, even with scripts in hand, and choreography, by the acclaimed Pat Birch, were first class.

Particularly notable were Jason Danieley, as the ill-fated soldier, Ben Gazzara, who played the general who follows Dwight D. Eisenhower's orders to have the soldier killed by firing squad, Michael Rupert, as an M.P., Lynne Godfrey, who stepped in for the promised Ann Reinking, and the dancer Starla Pace.

"L'Histoire" was preceded by an unconnected short piece by Philomusica's director, Mr. Johnson, "The Duffer's Strut." It was strutted by Deanna Dys, who also appeared in the Stravinsky, as a majorette.

Sheehan Tribute

"L'Histoire" is quite short, just over half an hour, and it was prefaced on this occasion by an on-stage interview of Mr. Vonnegut by Mr. Plimpton.

The evening was also conceived as a memorial to the late Rosemary Sheehan of East Hampton, whose efforts on behalf of many worthy causes were remembered by Anthony D. Duke, the head of the Harbor for Girls and Boys, at a champagne and dessert party that followed the performance.

Mr. Vonnegut has written an affecting antiwar play; Stravinsky wrote compellingly beautiful music; more rehearsal and/or different stage positioning of the instrumentalists might help the two coalesce into an extraordinary theatrical experience.

Neighbors raised strong objections last week to Clare Tolchin's proposal to build a 640-square-foot, one-and-a-half-story house on an undersized (4,772 square feet) lot on Morrell Boulevard in East Hampton.

However, said Ms. Tolchin's attorney, Jeffrey Bragman of East Hampton, with the lot on the market for the past 10 years the neighbors should not be surprised at hearing plans were afoot to build there.

The irregularly shaped lot, in an area now zoned for one-acre (roughly 40,000 square feet) parcels, is additionally constrained because it has three front yards and because of the location of an easement, Mr. Bragman said at an East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals hearing Aug. 26.

Only The Basics

Ms. Tolchin's request for numerous variances - three front-yard setback variances of 8 feet, 25 feet, and another 25 feet; a 5.9-foot variance from the pyramid law, which regulates the height of buildings relative to their distance from property lines; a 1.2-foot rear-yard setback variance, a 2-percent variance from lot coverage restrictions, and a 4.3-foot scenic easement setback variance - are dictated by the property, not the proposed house, Mr. Bragman said.

"It is clearly impossible to build" without variances, the attorney told the board.

Besides the small house, he noted, Ms. Tolchin is asking only for the basics - a well, a sanitary system, and two parking spaces.

Neighbors Worried

But neighbors said any development on the small lot would ruin the wooded character of the area and devalue their properties.

An adjacent neighbor, Lynda Welch of New York City, said she built her East Hampton house with the intention of renting it in the summer to offset its cost. A house on Ms. Tolchin's lot, Ms. Welch said, would discourage prospective tenants and affect the resale of her house should she then be forced to put it on the market.

Ms. Welch told the board she had looked into buying the small lot when she bought her own property, but the owners at the time were not interested in selling. The price Ms. Tolchin paid for it in December 1993, $15,000, was not acceptable to her, Ms. Welch added.

Ms. Tolchin, Ms. Welch said, bought the property "with full knowledge" of its size and the town's restrictions. She called Ms. Tolchin's request "unreasonable."

"Woefully Inadequate"

Daniel O'Connor, speaking for himself and the owners of nine other nearby properties, raised similar concerns. "This lot is woefully inadequate for building purposes," he said. A house there would be an "eyesore," he added.

The board's vice chairman, Philip Gamble, suggested it might not be too costly for the neighbors as a group to buy the lot.

Both neighbors who spoke cited a recent New York State Court of Appeals decision that said an owner of a property restricted by wetlands could not claim an illegal taking of his property if he was denied a wetlands permit to build.

Mr. Bragman argued in return that a case involving wetlands dealt with a much more direct threat to the health and safety of the public and its natural resources, which he said was considerably different from the sort of variances Ms. Tolchin is seeking.

"Home Hamptons"

Cindy Fowx told the Zoning Board that the Town Planning Department had no objections to Ms. Tolchin's request because her lot is so highly constrained. She too said the case cited by the neighbors concerned natural resources, a different matter from the one in front of the board.

The town has known that this property existed and that, eventually, an application like Ms. Tolchin's would come up, Mr. Bragman argued last week. An application like this, to grant relief for lots that pre-exist current zoning, "is precisely why" the Zoning Board exists, he said.

This was a request to build a house for a young working family, Mr. Bragman told the board. "This is not an application about the chic Hamptons, glitzy Hamptons, Hollywood Hamptons, but about home Hamptons."

Ms. Tolchin's husband, John Jilnicki, is a deputy town attorney.

Thompson and Barbara Chase's proposed house in Beach Hampton would be okay, but, according to neighbors, a proposed swimming pool and deck will endanger a secondary dune that extends onto their properties and under their houses.

"The adjacent properties are extensions of this dune and have a vital interest in its well-being," Randy Parsons of LandMarks, a planning consultant, wrote to the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on behalf of his clients, Lee and Stewart Klein.

The Zoning Board held a hearing on the Chases' application on Aug. 26. The present plan calls for a minor shift in the location of the pool but an increase in the lot coverage, from an application heard in July.

Pool Or No Pool?

Sensing at the first hearing that the board might see room to move the pool, the Chases' planning consultant, Tim Collins of East Hampton, came in with the revised proposal before the board made its decision. The Z.B.A. then scheduled the new hearing.

The Chases' plan for their 14,000-square-foot Hampton Lane lot includes tearing down much of an existing house and building a new one with a first-floor footprint of 2,788 square feet, a 640-square-foot pool and surrounding deck, brick-and-sand patios, and a sanitary system. A natural resources permit is necessary because of duneland and beach vegetation on the property.

Other, smaller issues aside, the neighbors' primary concern was that the pool would have an adverse effect on the dune, Mr. Parsons said, adding that the location now proposed would place the pool up against the steepest dune slope on the property.

It "will likely have a greater impact . . . than the previous proposal," he said.

Concern For Underpinnings

Denying the pool "would go a long way to minimizing" his clients' concerns, Mr. Parsons said.

A retaining wall for the pool, proposed earlier, has now been eliminated. Mr. Parsons questioned, however, whether the pool could be built without it and the dune still maintained.

The proposal, he concluded, was too intensive for an environmentally constrained lot.

Jerry Owen, Frank Urrutia, and Mrs. Klein all expressed concerns for the dune; all three said their houses rest upon it. Mr. Owen foresaw the dune "slowly and gradually depleting," and Mr. Urrutia wondered whether disruption to the dune on the Chase parcel would eventually undermine the dune on his.

Mr. Parsons also questioned why a new environmental assessment was not done by the Town Planning Department in light of the revised application.

Vegetation

Mrs. Klein said the proposal also meant "a large portion" of vegetation "is going to be wiped out." She and her husband also said, in a letter to the board, that they believe the Chases have no intention of building the improvements themselves but rather are in contract to sell the lot, with permits for a large house and pool as requirements for the sale.

Cindy Fowx, speaking for the Planning Department, said she had no objections to the Chases' proposal, but suggested the board require any disturbed areas be revegetated with native plants.

"I don't think it's any more intrusive than the last proposal," Ms. Fowx told the board.

Natural Features

Mr. Collins called the shift in the pool's location - five feet to the north with another two feet gained to the east by reducing the size of the deck - "a positive change" that will offer "further protection to the dune."

The retaining wall would not be necessary, he said.

Much of the property is already disturbed, Mr. Collins told the board, and the owner plans to put in plantings at the bottom part of the dune in question. No variances are needed for the proposal, Mr. Collins reminded the board, and it meets the town's lot coverage restrictions.

The main issue for the board to consider, Mr. Collins said, was whether the Chases' proposal will have a negative impact on natural features. "And my answer to that is no," he said.

Their patience growing thin, neighbors of Boom Bistro, Chili Peppers, and the Harbor House returned to the Sag Harbor Village Board on Tuesday demanding it do something to curtail the noise, rowdy behavior, and parking problems caused by the popular night spots.

"You're all guilty of doing nothing," said George DeVictoria. He is one of a half dozen residents, most living on Garden Street in the shadow of the clubs, who chastised the board for dragging its feet since complaints were first aired a month ago. "Nothing has been proposed. Nothing has been done."

"Why are they allowed to stay open?" asked Shirley Plattner, citing possible fire-code and noise-ordinance violations. "Why aren't they shut down?"

"It just got worse," said Eva Stern. Over the Labor Day weekend, "people were lying drunk in the street," she said. "Every corner had a girl laid out."

Sleep Snatchers

Mia Grosjean, representing the Coalition of Neighborhoods for the Preservation of Sag Harbor, urged board members to "really pull up your sleeves and start working" on the problem caused by the arrival of the night clubs.

She called for a stricter noise ordinance that would require businesses to contain music and crowd noise inside and set higher fines for violations. A first offense now carries a fine of $250, which Ms. Grosjean suggested be raised to $1,000.

In a letter read by his daughter, Stacy Pennebaker, D.A. Pennebaker complained that the neighborhood had been "invaded by sleep snatchers" and questioned how "local officials, most of whom are neighbors, could so easily stand by" while the neighborhood was turned into "a drive-in, after-hours night club."

In, Not Out

Mr. Pennebaker complained that the clubs were open all night and that their patrons disturbed the peace as they returned to their cars in the early morning hours. A village ban on parking along Long Island Avenue had merely forced them to park their cars on quiet side streets, exacerbating the problem, he wrote.

Residents, expecting some response from the board, were clearly frustrated.

"I'm new here. Don't you answer?" asked Priscilla Dunhill after the board listened to the complaints.

"This is a 15-minute public input," Mayor Pierce Hance responded tersely.

"Then there's no output. I'm so glad I came," said Ms. Dunhill.

Must Show A Pattern

But after the meeting, Mayor Hance said the village was taking the complaints seriously. "I can't sit here and tell those people everything we've tried to do and everything we're going to do," he said.

The village had "rounded up the usual suspects" by asking police to cite them for noise and parking infractions and the fire marshal's office to look into possible fire-code violations, he said. But he added the village had to show a "pattern of continued violations" before it could take legal action.

"We have to follow the law," he said, "and there is a presumption under the law that when people are made aware they are in violation they will comply."

Smythe Added

He added that a committee formed last month to review the village zoning code "would make many recommendations on how to put an end to this."

The committee, which already includes Mayor Hance, Ed Deyermond, a board member, Bradley Hansen, the chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals, and Anthony Tohill, the village attorney, has gained a new member. Mr. Hance said Jim Smythe, the owner of the Corner Bar, had volunteered to serve as well.

Separately, the board's decision to pay Dunn Engineering Associates of Westhampton Beach up to $8,500 for a plan to improve traffic "safety and efficiency" at the intersection of Main Street, Jermain Avenue, and Brick Kiln Road drew a rebuke from Ms. Grosjean.

The Wrong Firm?

"I'm absolutely furious. I can't believe you're doing this," she said. "You said several times, 'We have to go to bid.'" In the past, CONPOSH had asked the board to undertake a villagewide "traffic calming" study.

But Mr. Hance said the village was acting legally to hire the firm to study a single intersection and only would have been required to put the job out to bid if it undertook a broader study. "You're not comparing apples to apples," he told Ms. Grosjean.

Complaining that the company had not done a good job when it redesigned the traffic circle at the corner of Main Street and Route 114 several years ago, Ms. Grosjean said, "I still think you picked the wrong engineering firm."

Reduced Speed Limit

Part of the firm's work will be to see if it is possible to move the entrance to Mashashimuet Park to relieve congestion at the corner. To do so would require the approval of the park's board of trustees.

As expected, the board also adopted a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit on village streets, except Route 114, within the historic district. The board has considered the proposal for several years, but it has so far been unsuccessful in obtaining a "home rule message" from the state, allowing it to reduce the 30 mile-per-hour limit on Route 114, a state road.

To get around the restriction, the village was required to list each street included in the new law, a task it assigned to Police Chief Joseph Ialacci earlier this summer.

Other Action

In other action, the board:

Rejected the $67,437 bid of Carter-Melance Inc., the only one it received, to replace the roof of the firehouse on Brick Kiln Road. James Ramunno, a board member, said the bid was more than the village expected to pay. The board approved Mr. Ramunno's request that it allow him to discuss with village engineers ways to scale back the project and put it out for bid again.

Approved a final payment of $13,132 plus interest to Carter-Melance for the renovation of the Main Street firehouse. The payment had been withheld until the source of a leak in the new building could be found.

Mr. Ramunno said the problem appeared to be caused by the improper installation of flashing on an atrium roof at the American Hotel, which abuts the Municipal Building. Mr. Ramunno said he would talk to the hotel about correcting the problem.

Approved the request of a group of Sag Harbor veterans led by Paul Sauer to erect a flagpole and a plaque listing the 19 veterans of the American Revolution who are buried in the cemetery next to the Old Whalers Church. Mr. Sauer said the plaque would be put up only during the annual Sag Harbor HistoricFest weekend, Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July. The flagpole would be used to occasionally fly the American flag and regimental flags, he told the board.

Appointed Joe Markowski as the new village historian. He replaces George Finckenor, who resigned earlier this year.

Recent sightings of the New York Fast Ferry in Lake Montauk and Fort Pond Bay have renewed fears that a ferry service will be established in Montauk and touched off a pre-election political squabble among members of the East Hampton Town Board over its ferry moratorium on Tuesday.

The ferry company has been operating a trial weekend passenger-only service between Manhattan and Greenport since mid-August. On the weekends, its 125-foot, 350-passenger catamaran has been seen sailing in Noyac Bay, off Sag Harbor, and around Shelter Island.

Last week, John Koenig, a partner in the firm, said the company decided to run the day trips rather than leave the boat idle at the dock in Greenport, where it has been moored over the weekends. The company had no plans to expand its service, he added.

No Such Rule

But when the boat made at least one visit to Lake Montauk, sailing to Star Island before turning around, and at least two visits to Fort Pond Bay, the alarm went off.

Rumors have circulated that ferries must visit a potential site at least 10 times before applying for the right to dock, but Bill Taylor, the town's senior harbormaster, said there was no such rule.

He said, however, that his office had received a report last weekend that the boat was approaching the Perry B. Duryea and Son lobster company dock on Fort Pond Bay. By the time a patrol boat arrived to investigate, the ferry had already sailed out of the bay, he said.

The Duryeas could not be reached for comment by press time, but the family has denied reports in recent years that it wants to establish a ferry link to Montauk. Nonetheless, a group, Stop the Ferry, has been formed to oppose such a link, and there is evidence that Cross Sound Ferry, Perry B. Duryea Jr., and the Metropolitan Transit Authority once met to disuss a ferry link.

No Ban On Sailing

Although the town's ferry moratorium, which expires on Oct. 31, bans the vessels from docking in town harbors, it does not prohibit them from sailing in town waters. All five members of the Town Board have gone on record in opposition to allowing ferries to dock in town.

On Tuesday, Councilman Tom Knobel, a Republican, who is challenging Supervisor Cathy Lester, a Democrat, in the November election, tried to quell fears a ferry would be allowed to operate, while questioning whether Democrats were trying to make it a campaign issue.

"We are not going to have a ferry in the Town of East Hampton," he said. "Nancy and I have been pushing for legislation for over a year, and it only seems to be possible to do it at election time," he said, referring to his fellow Republican, Councilwoman Nancy McCaffrey.

Democrats' Ploy?

Mr. Knobel said he found it "strange coincidence that a ferry was wandering around in the bay" with an election nearing. "The only people it can do any good for is the people who want something to stop," he said. "That's why I'm so upset about it."

Supervisor Lester called Mr. Knobel's insinuation that Democrats somehow supported the ferry's visits as "ridiculous" and added that she and Councilman Pete Hammerle, a Democrat, supported extending the moratorium until Oct. 31, so the town could write a good law.

"We should earnestly put legislation together that will stand up in court," Ms. Lester said yesterday. "And it should be a bipartisan effort to make that happen."

Wording The Ban

At Tuesday's work session, Richard Kahn and Russell Stein, two Montauk attorneys representing Stop the Ferry, gave the board a memorandum written by Michael Gerard, an environmental attorney their group has hired. "It is an objective analysis of what the powers of the town regarding ferries are," said Mr. Kahn yesterday.

Ms. Lester said the memo was "a well done paper" and said the board would discuss how it might help it craft a law as early as next week.

Although Republicans have favored an outright ferry ban in town harbors and bays, Mr. Hammerle said Mr. Gerard's report suggested that "would not be the strongest stand the town could take." He suggested the law should be written to include a solid environmental basis for the ban.

"You have a five-member board here that doesn't want to see auto or passenger ferry service come to the town," Mr. Hammerle said. "But we have to be careful of what we do."

Deep in the engine room of his ocean-going yacht Itaska, with his hands working an oil can and his eyes, large behind thick glasses, matching the blue of twin 1,200-horsepower engines, William E. Simon, former Treasury Secretary of the United States, made it plain: "I go into jungles."

He might have been speaking about the one on Wall Street, where he cut a swathe with Salomon Brothers in the 1960s, or the denser one in Washington, where he headed Richard Nixon's Federal Energy Office even as his boss was sinking in the Watergate swamp. Treasury Secretary Simon hacked at the budgetary vines under President Gerald Ford, and, after leaving Government, set a fast pace through the uncharted wilds of commercial banking.

But what Mr. Simon meant in the engine room on Saturday were real jungles, on South Pacific islands, where he once went searching - "in an amateur way" - for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane. He never found it.

World Traveler

Mr. Simon has at least two things in common with the vanished pilot. For one, he likes to travel and explore the world. He's circled it twice. Second, the Itaska, which was given the name by a previous owner, happens to have the same name as a ship that made an early search for the flier.

The yacht, which has been anchored outside Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton for much of the summer, will set out on a three-year circumnavigation of the globe on Oct. 1.

There is no place he'd rather be than on board, Mr. Simon confessed while guiding two visitors through the 175-foot renovated ocean tug. "Whenever I leave on a trip, it's the happiest day of my life."

Money Lubricates

He does have choices. Mr. Simon has owned a house in East Hampton since the late 1960s, and has a mansion on Maui, a ranch house in Santa Barbara, an apartment in New York City, and then some. "I'm a buyer of houses. Sometimes I buy them fast and furious," he said as a matter of fact, not of bravado.

The former Treasury Secretary is a man of means. He is said to be one of the wealthiest in the world. But it's as if money were engine oil, to hear him talk, a lubricant that permits exploration and adventure, a substance that should be as exciting to make as it is to spend, certainly not something to collect for its own sake.

No surprise, then, that after exploring the world for nine years aboard Freedom, a 125-foot ketch, Mr. Simon made the switch to power with an un-gaudy vessel, Itaska is extremely seaworthy, Dutch-built, and was christened Thames in 1961.

She is not a cocktail yacht, as he put it, but a boat outfitted for adventure.

Waterman

"I have been a man of the water my whole life," he said while steering Itaska's Zodiac tender out through the harbor jetties. He first felt the pull of the sea, literally, as a lifeguard at Bay Head, N.J., he said, near his family home in Spring Lake. He remembered body surfing in the swells that preceded the big hurricane of 1942.

"When the boys went off [to war] in 1942, they needed lifeguards. I was 13 at the time and a good swimmer."

Later, when his family began to grow - Mr. Simon and his late wife, Carol, raised 12 children - "I taught them and their friends how to surf. They had to earn a green belt in surfing. I'd wait for a really big day. They'd all do it, and I'd go to an Army-Navy store and get a dozen green cartridge belts. Those were the green belts. We were always a close family. Vacationed together."

His daughter Julie, who visited the yacht over the weekend, admitted she would slip away from school on occasion to meet her father's yacht in places like Bali, or Sidney, Australia.

Northwest Passage

Mr. Simon saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time while in the Army after World War II, stationed in Hawaii. "It was quite an experience for a guy who had never been west of Spring Lake."

The Pacific remains his favorite ocean. "They've killed most of the reefs in the Caribbean," he said sadly. The Pacific is where he spent almost 2,000 hours scuba diving from the Freedom, "down 150 to 175 feet every day for two or three months."

Allen Journing, a native of the Channel Islands in England, has been with Mr. Simon since the days of Freedom, and will be, he said, "until [Mr. Simon] swallows the anchor." He is Itaska's captain.

Most of the yacht's 12-member crew were along for its 23-day journey through the Northwest Passage in 1994, and four months later through Drake's Passage en route to Antarctica, "stopping by East Hampton," Mr. Si mon said, "long enough to thaw out."

Siberia On The Left

The Northwest Passage was navigated west to east and tested the mettle of yacht and crew.

"I knew the chances. We always prepare very carefully for our trips. There is only one season when this was possible. I told the crew, 'You can expect some hairy moments, but we won't turn back. You only get one bite of the apple.'"

The bite was taken, but not without the promised hairy moments, including a storm at the very start, "right before the Bering Strait, with Siberia on the left, Alaska on the right. It tore a steel panel off the deck and me into a TV set," Mr. Simon said.

The short, violent flight was repeated a few months later in Drake's Passage at the bottom of South America, where Itaska met 70-knot winds and 70-foot seas. "I was sound asleep at 3 p.m. and hit the bulkhead on the fly," Mr. Simon laughed.

Ordered To Retreat

The weather closed in behind Itaska almost immediately on the Northwest Passage trip. Mr. Simon said he and the captain heeded the advice of one who had gone before. The crew did not try to outguess the weather, and the yacht did not pull into shelter, "because we'd never come out."

The boat did get trapped in ice six days out. She was lifted so that her single screw was out of the water. "The Canadian Coast Guard came from 50 miles south and pulled us out, but said they wanted us to go back.

" 'I'm ordering you to go back,'" said the cutter's commanding officer.

" 'No, with all due respect. These are international waters,'" Mr. Simon answered.

" 'I'll report you to Ottawa,'" said the Canadian.

" 'Okay, but tell [Prime Minister Jean] Chretien that it's Bill Simon trying to make it.'"

"In three days we got a wire wishing us good luck."

Unexplored Islands

As they approached Greenland at the eastern end of the passage, Mr. Simon ordered up a helicopter, whose pilot had to fly north for six days to reach the landing pad on the Itaska's back deck.

The copter took on fuel from 55-gallon drums placed at intervals in the frozen wastes to accommodate aircraft heading to and from the weather station at Eureka, in the northernmost part of Canada's Northwest Territories.

"The idea was to land on islands people had never been to," Mr. Simon said, and visit places where, for example, members of the doomed Franklin expedition had ventured in the mid-1800s. They never returned.

"We saw graves."

The Itaskans nearly dug their own.

The satellite trips were made, but Mr. Simon and Captain Journing said they narrowly escaped a mountain and certain death aboard the chopper in an Arctic storm on the way back to Itaska.

As though rewarded for surviving their 23-day expedition, the crew was treated to a six-hour display of Northern Lights when the yacht finally made Greenland.

It was thought the Itaska might try the passage across Russia's northern territories, but Mr. Simon said the lawless nature of the area could find them pirated or worse.

Around The World

On various legs of the yacht's forthcoming round-the-world cruise, the owner plans to charter her. She will revisit Antarctica first, then head for the Baltic, followed by a cruise of the Mediterranean.

She will turn down the east coast of Africa, arriving at Cape Town by May of 1998. Itaska plans to make Seychelles by June, Bombay by the following January, Indonesia by March 1999, Hong Kong by April, Fiji by July, and New Zealand by October, in plenty of time for the America's Cup race in March of 2000.

But it was off to Main Beach in East Hampton for the former Treasury Secretary on Saturday afternoon to meet with Tony, his wife of 14 months, and to build sand castles with his grandchildren. He has 22 in all.

"There's nothing better than grandchildren," he said.