"Citizens Advisory Meeting Regarding the Dust," reads the flier announcing the meeting on Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Amagansett Firehouse, and for anyone who works, lives, or shops on Amagansett's Main Street, it's no surprise that people are frustrated and ready to talk about it.

Twice last week, the dust blowing off the dry farm field just north of Main Street created thick clouds of particulate that swirled over the hamlet, coating parked cars and sidewalks, finding its way through invisible cracks to settle on bottles at Amagansett Wine and Spirits, the pots and pans in the kitchen at Organic Krush, the bookshelves at the Amagansett Library. 

"I feel it in my lungs, I feel it on my skin. You can taste it," Michael Cinque, the owner of Amagansett Wine and Spirits, said Monday morning. "It's the finest dust; it goes through the finest cracks. Every bottle in the store is dusty." 

On Monday, three days after the most recent dust storm, sidewalks and stoops on Main Street were still covered in a thick layer of fine golden dust. On the south side of the street it lay in piles almost to the top of the curb. In the public parking lot behind the Main Street businesses a gentle breeze blew eddies of dust off the barren field. 

Without an apparent cover crop, there was nothing to hold the silty top layer of soil in place. 

"It's happened three times in a 10-day span," said Michelle Walrath, an owner of Organic Krush, a Main Street takeout shop. Her shop has been covered "from front to back and from top to bottom." Not only does the cleanup take "hours and hours and hours of extra work for the staff" and affect inventory, but it's also "not a healthy situation for the employees," she said.

While inventory is an issue, "I'm more worried about our lungs," said Craig Wright, the owner of Innersleeve Records on Main Street. 

"Who knows what's in that silt," Mr. Cinque said.

"This is not a new issue," said Mr. Cinque, who has run his Main Street shop for 40 years and says the field north of Main Street has been without a cover crop for the past six or seven years. "I've met with the [Suffolk County] Farm Bureau, the [town] agriculture committee." 

"We've called the town over and over and over again," Ms. Walrath said. "We've sent photos and emails." 

"It's beyond aggravating," Mr. Wright said. 

The land is owned by the Bistrian family and is leased by a farmer. While the family has long been interested in selling the land to the town for preservation, and the town has long been interested in buying development rights, the two parties have failed to reach an agreement on a purchase price. 

East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys, the liaison to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, said Monday that as an Amagansett business owner himself he is "acutely aware" of the issue. As frustrating as it may be, there is little the town can do, given its regulations. Agriculture and markets laws regulate "crop cover . . . as a best practice management only," Mr. Lys said. In East Hampton, "There is no town legislation that requires crop cover." It is, however, regulated in Southampton Town, something East Hampton's agricultural advisory committee will now consider, Mr. Lys said. 

"I wish they'd just find a solution," Mr. Cinque said. "There really should be a fund to help the people of Main Street clean up from this." 

The dust is just one of many items on the Amagansett committee's agenda tonight, but given how frustrated residents, business owners, and employees are, it is likely to dominate the discussion.

Moving forward on a plan to build a vehicle impound yard on a site adjacent to the Long Pond Greenbelt, the Sag Harbor Village board awarded a contract for the lot’s construction at a meeting on Tuesday. Aidan Corish, who has been the only member of the board to oppose the project, registered the sole “no” vote, but the room was filled with people who voiced objection to the proposal. Some yelled, “shame,” and “no,” as the board voted to approve nearly $100,000 for the lot’s construction.

They believe the environmental health of the greenbelt, part of an ecosystem of coastal plain ponds, will be negatively impacted by the impound yard. 

The village intends to use part of a 24-acre site off the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike to build an 80-by-60-foot paved parking lot, where vehicles seized by the Police Department would be stored. The plan was approved by the Southampton Town Planning Board in June, and, in October, the village board authorized an engineering firm to begin preparing for the lot’s construction.

In defense of the proposal, Mayor Sandra Schroeder referred to a report from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which determined that the location of the impound yard would be sufficiently far away from freshwater wetlands, and that the project would not likely pose a threat to endangered species that inhabit the area, such as the tiger salamander. 

Over the years, the village has used the parcel as a place to dump the leaves gathered during seasonal cleanups. It has also allowed the PSEG utility company to use the property as a temporary parking lot for its trucks. Southampton Town leases another part of the land for its recycling center.

“It’s a historically compromised site,” said James Larocca, a village board member, explaining his vote in favor of the measure. 

During the public hearing before the vote on Tuesday, a long procession of people, including Diana Kolhoff, the president of the Sag Harbor School Board, Dai Dayton, the president of the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt, and April Gornik, vice president of the Sag Harbor Partnership, expressed their disapproval of the vote. 

Ms. Kolhoff suggested that the school board could work with the village to find a workable alternative, including, perhaps, using a section of a school parking lot, which is often empty during summer, as a site for the impound yard. Mr. Larocca and Kenneth O’Donnell, the deputy mayor, dismissed that idea, pointing out that impounded cars need to be properly secured to safeguard evidence for the police. 

During her time at the podium, Ms. Dayton said that she was disappointed that board members had convinced themselves that the greenbelt would not be negatively impacted by the project.

Ms. Gornik asked Mr. Corish to state his reasons for opposing the project. He cited environmental concerns, and said he did not believe the village had exhausted its search for an alternate location. 

“I agree,” responded Ms. Gornik. “It seems like there’s a growing sentiment that if we could all work together, there could be a better solution found.”

A GoFundMe page has been established on behalf of the family of Shannon Whelan, a Sag Harbor native and mother of three who died on Jan. 6 after going into cardiac arrest upon her arrival in Sydney, Australia. Ms. Whelan, 38, had spent 17 days in the States over the holidays, her mother, Mary Whelan, said on Friday.

David Whelan, Ms. Whelan’s father, and her sister, Christa, remain in Australia to deal with logistics before returning to this country, according to an update posted on the site. Information about funeral and memorial services will be reported when it becomes available.

“We are continuing to raise funds which the family will be able to apply to medical expenses, travel, and logistical expenses and costs that may be associated with future visits to see Shannon’s children in the months and years to come,” Elizabeth Merrick, a family friend, wrote. “Thank you for your generosity, prayers, and love.”

Anyone wishing to contribute can visit Ms. Whelan’s GoFundMe page by searching “support for Shannon Whelan and her family” at gofundme.com.

If local fields, back roads, and woods seem populated with hunters or the echo of gunshots more than usual right now, it’s not your imagination. Deer hunting season began Sunday in Suffolk County and runs through Jan. 31, joining small-game hunting and waterfowl hunting on the calendar, and renewing the annual push-pull between hunters pursuing an age-old pastime and residents concerned about safety.

“It’s often a very sensitive subject,” said Terry O’Riordan, director of the East Hampton Sportsman’s Alliance. “People have their opinions about hunting, period. And some people are uncomfortable with people hunting on their property as well. It’s getting harder and harder to hunt on properties that aren’t public land.”

Still, both Mr. O’Riordan and Harvey Bennett, a hunting and fishing guide who operates the Tackle Shop in Amagansett, independently stressed that there are state laws in place that are meant to help everyone coexist. The regulations can be found on the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s website, though getting the answer to every question sometimes requires patience and a labyrinthine search.

One example: A Montauk resident who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals from hunters said she felt put off when she called East Hampton Town police office recently to complain that “armed men in fatigues” were walking down her street. She said she felt it was “lunacy” that it was happening in her residential neighborhood, but she didn’t know her rights and felt she was treated like, “Yeah, so?” by the staffer who took her complaint.

But state rules actually don’t forbid hunters from walking down even residential roads as long as their gun is not loaded.

The regulations do specify that hunters may not discharge their guns within 500 feet of a structure, and bowhunters must leave at least 150 feet. The word “structure” is meant to be liberally interpreted as anything from a shed to a camper, a house or barn — anywhere where people could be inside.

“The exception to the distance rule is if the hunters are shooting over open water, any structure has to be at least 10 feet behind them — and a lot of nonhunters don’t know that, either,” Mr. Bennett said. “The way the state law reads, you can literally go duck hunting now in, say, the Georgica Pond bottomland, which is owned by the trustees. But the surrounding land is probably owned by some of the richest people on earth. As long as the hunters are shooting in that direction toward the water, you can shoot all day long. So yeah, to see hunters or hear gunshots so nearby can be intimidating, I’ll give people that. I understand why people get rattled.”

“It’s possible if you’re a homeowner there you’re going to freak out when someone wakes you up at 5 in the morning shooting at ducks and, at the same time, that hunter doing the shooting will be perfectly within his rights.”

Hunters should know that licensed hunting on private land over 10 acres is forbidden without written permission from the property owner.

Hunters are not permitted to discharge rifles anywhere on Long Island. But they are permitted to use shotguns with single-slug ammunition or muzzle-loaded guns and pistols. Bow hunting is also permitted, but using a crossbow is not.

Because of the need to manage the deer herd in particular, there are rules and special permits issued around that as well. The D.E.C. issues “nuisance” permits to landowners and towns for places such as East Hampton Airport, where hunting is allowed 365 days a year to hopefully keep the runways free of deer and prevent plane accidents.

The D.E.C. also manages how many individual hunting permits are issued for each region of the state, as well as how many bucks or does can be legally taken by each hunter. “Out here, people say we’re overpopulated by deer because the area of browse available to them is cut down so much by deer fencing and so on, and the deer are compressed into such small areas it can have a catastrophic effect on the woods where they feed,” Mr. O’Riordan said. 

As a result, the D.E.C. is currently allowing hunters here to take more than one antlerless deer, since most antlerless deer are females that re-stock the herd. The caveat? The hunter must tag the deer, take it to a D.E.C.-approved site to be checked, then go to the town office to obtain another antlerless deer permit before he can shoot another.

Taken all together, Mr. Bennett said, “It’s a lot to keep straight.”

The D.E.C.’s website has a list of state and town-managed lands in Suffolk County where hunting is allowed. Lotteries for hunting permits on D.E.C.-or town-managed lands were held in December, and hunters who received those permits have to make reservations once they receive a drawing number via the mail.

Some jurisdictions, like the Town of Southampton, also require hunters to get a town permit, but the Towns of East Hampton and Shelter Island do not. The East Hampton Town Hunting Guide, found on the town’s website, ehamptonny.gov, provides a comprehensive list of rules, helpful phone numbers, and maps of lands available to hunt. Some of the larger spots are located at Hither Woods in Montauk, Sammy’s Beach Preserve in East Hampton, and portions of Maidstone Park in Springs and Fresh Pond Park in Amagansett.

The Long Island district manager of the United States Postal Service has confirmed longstanding problems with customer service at the Montauk branch, but asked residents for more patience as attempts are made to implement changes. 

Frank Calabrese, the executive in charge, wrote to Representative Lee Zeldin last week, summarizing the problems as hiring difficulties, inexperience of new employees, limited space, and the volume of mail. The letter was forwarded to some of the Montauk residents who had filed formal complaints with the congressman’s office in December after months of tolerating what they characterized as poor service.

The problems mentioned in the letter include mail being delivered to the wrong addresses or not at all, delays and damage to parcel deliveries, and days when no mail is delivered at all.

Mr. Zeldin responded, saying, “U.S.P.S. provides a critical service to Long Islanders, especially those in less accessible communities, such as Montauk. It is critical that local residents receive the postal services they need, and I will continue to monitor this ongoing situation as the U.S.P.S. Long Island regional management team seeks to improve service.”

Some postal customers who read Mr. Calabrese’s letter said they were grateful the district office had been pressed to issue some kind of response but they expressed continued frustration with being asked to remain patient. They also questioned some of Mr. Calabrese’s conclusions.

“I think they thought maybe they’d send us that letter and we’d all go, ‘Yay!’ ” said Melissa Berman, one of the Montauk residents who filed the formal complaint. “But this problem has been going on so long, and their best answer is it takes time to hire and train people? Really? That’s not making anything better. This has been happening for a couple years. . . . How much time does it take? It doesn’t seem to me they’ve figured out the big-picture issues. The service is still a problem now, even though there are far fewer people here in the winter.”

In the summer, especially, parcels at the Montauk branch could be seen outside overnight in large piles on the loading dock because there was no space inside. Even though it’s now the off-season, mail trucks are still making deliveries late into the evening and branch employees can be seen outdoors on the ramp long after dark, trying to sort and process items for delivery.

Numerous residents say they frequently get text or email alerts saying their mail or packages have arrived, but when they go to the post office they’re told the items are not there or they haven’t been processed yet. Montauk businesspeople also say they have problems getting payments or needed stock in a timely way.

There is also skepticism that another of Mr. Calabrese’s stated solutions — perhaps installing pickup boxes for parcels in the lobby so customers could get them without having to wait in line — is doable. How will that work when the branch is admittedly strapped for space?

“There is no place to do that,” said Richard Brown, one of the former Montauk carriers who retired. “They’d have to build another building to do that, and they’re not going to go to that expense.”

Mr. Brown was not among the residents who filed formal complaints with Mr. Zeldin, though his mail service at Camp Hero is spotty. But Mr. Brown said he continues to care about the mail service for all Montauk residents and questioned the claim that four months isn’t enough time for the carriers hired in September to learn their routes.

“It does take some time to learn, but four months? There’s no excuse. You either have it down by then or you’re never going to get it,” Mr. Brown said. “I’m only speaking to you because I’m concerned for the people of Montauk getting their mail. What we’re asking the post office is really simple: ‘Hey, just do the job you’re paid to do. . . . The job you’re supposed to do.’ That’s all. It’s really not that hard.”

In his letter, Mr. Calabrese expanded on the causes and possible solutions for the branch’s problems:  

• Hiring difficulty: “The Montauk Post Office has had significant changes to their staffing due to retirements and employee transfers to other offices. The demand to hire new employees on the East End of Long Island has been a challenge. . . . We have hosted seven hiring fairs on the East End to fill the vacated positions we have had over the past year.”

• Training problems: “All carriers assigned to a new route that they are not familiar with go through a learning curve. As of September, we have hired two full-time rural carriers and a rural carrier associate assigned to cover for a carrier on extended leave for the Montauk Post Office. As each of these new carriers gets accustomed with their route, they will become more familiar with the residents, as our past carriers had.” 

• Space problems: “The U.S. Postal Service has had a tremendous increase in the volume of packages we receive daily in most offices. . . . We understand that this is a year-round issue, and we are taking measures to process this increased volume for the Montauk Post Office. The back doors at the Montauk facility are too small for the large equipment that the parcels arrive on, so we are working on plans to process the parcels in another facility earlier in the morning and then transporting them to the Montauk office already sorted for the route. This will reduce the processing time currently spent by our employees on the dock.”

• Renovations needed: “We will also be installing a ramp at the back dock of the post office to allow access to our postal vehicles to ease the burden of our carriers so that loading and unloading can be done quickly and safely.”

Second House, the oldest structure in Montauk, will benefit from a $450,000 restoration project, the East Hampton Town Board announced at the close of its business in 2018. 

At its Dec. 20 meeting, the board accepted a bid of $453,442 from Ronald Webb Builder of East Hampton for the first phase of a restoration that will focus on the foundation, first-floor frame, and removal of nonhistorical additions, according to Robert Hefner, a historic preservation consultant and East Hampton Village’s director of historic services. Councilman David Lys said at the town board’s work session on Tuesday that the work might begin as soon as next month. 

A 2016 report prepared by Mr. Hefner said that in its present state, Second House, adjacent to Fort Pond on the western edge of Montauk’s downtown, more closely resembles an early-20th century summer cottage than the residence of livestock keepers it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. The tim­ber frame has deteriorated, wiring and plumbing are obsolete, and “an infestation of raccoons and other animals in the attic and cellar has made the cellar inaccessible and has tainted the air to make the interior inhospitable to visitors.” 

“It is the recommendation of this report that the Second House be restored to its appearance in 1886 when George A. Osborne, the last keeper employed by the proprietors of Montauk, departed,” Mr. Hefner wrote. “The essential work would be removing the 1912 east addition, dormers, and porch, and reconstructing the early east lean-to (of which some framing remains) and reconstructing the circa 1880 porch.” Also recommended are clearing the animal infestation, testing for and removal of material containing asbestos, and installation of new plumbing, electrical, and, possibly, a heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system. 

The barn on the property, built in 1809, also needs a complete restoration of its timber frame, Mr. Hefner said, and removal of the privet hedge on the east property line would enhance the setting. 

Second House was built in 1746, when Montauk was pastureland. It was replaced in 1797, when the town allotted “three gallons of rum to raise the house at Fort Pond,” according to town trustee records. The keeper of Second House was responsible for tending sheep to the west and cattle to the east, according to Henry Osmers, historian of the Montauk Historical Society. Further alterations to the structure were made in 1879, 1880, and 1912. 

In 1968, the town and the New York State Historical Trust purchased Second House for $75,000 from the David Kennedy family, which acquired it early in the 20th century and used it as a summer residence. It opened as a museum the following year under management of the Montauk Historical Society, but was closed in recent years due to its dilapidated condition. Twice-yearly craft fairs on the grounds are a popular draw in the summer. Those will continue, Mr. Lys said on Monday, whether or not the restoration is underway. Mr. Lys, who played a prominent role in the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station’s restoration effort, also encouraged public participation in the restoration of Second House. “What I found with the Life-Saving Station,” he said, “is that once you start getting the hypothetical snowball rolling, it only gets better from there. We hope community members will step up in kind and do some potential work along with the town.” 

Montauk’s First House, built in 1744 and rebuilt in 1798, was located where Hither Hills State Park stands today. It was destroyed by fire in 1909. Third House, still standing two miles west of Montauk Point at what is now Montauk County Park, was built in 1747 and replaced in 1806. 

Once it has reopened, Second House is to offer educational programs for elementary and high school students.

This month, most of us will be struggling to remember the new year when we write down the date. If you grapple with this annually, can you imagine having to write three different years in a span of 367 days? If you think the extra day in leap year is confusing, imagine skipping 11 days, which actually happened in September 1752. People went to bed on Sept. 2 and woke up the next morning on Sept. 14.

This was part of the Gregorian calendar change, which took place following Pope Gregory’s realization that a 20-minute difference in calculating the length of a year could really add up over a few thousand years. When Pope Gregory issued an order for Catholic countries to change their calendars and catch up in 1582, Britain had recently dumped the Catholic Church in order to do its own thing in terms of church and state. Most mainland European countries made the change sooner, leading to dates written with two years, like “February 22, 1722/1723.” This was known as double dating.

In January 1750, the British government finally gave in and decided to change the empire over to the Gregorian calendar. Parliament passed An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year, a copy of which is seen here. The act outlined the steps required for this convoluted changeover and strove to make sense of the steps one needed to line up the two calendars.

Before the Gregorian calendar, the year legally started on March 25, so the act also switched the start of the new year to Jan. 1. In the first phase of the calendar change, the year didn’t change to 1751 on the day after Dec. 31, 1750. Instead, the next day was Jan. 1, 1750. The year finally changed to 1751 on the day after March 24, 1750. 

For the last step, the entire British Empire jumped ahead 11 days to sync with the new calendar, making the day after Sept. 2, 1752, into Sept. 14, 1752. 

Andrea Meyer is a librarian and archivist in the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.

Last year began with home sales skyrocketing across the East End, but it soon became clear that 2018 would be mostly a dud for residential real estate. “The housing market continues to soften across the country, particularly in some of the most expensive areas like the Hamptons and New York City,” said Matt Daimler, the general manager of Out East, an online marketplace for East End listings launched by Zillow in February. “With so many homes for sale right now, and listings lingering on the market for longer than in the past, it’s a tough time to be a seller.”

In January, data from real estate companies had suggested a far more upbeat year lay ahead.

Town and Country’s home sales in the last quarter of 2017 were up 36 percent from the previous year, the Corcoran Group’s were up 34 percent, Saunders and Associates posted a 28-percent increase, and both Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens saw their numbers rise nearly 27 percent. The trend, however, did not continue.

At the time, Judi Desiderio, the chief executive officer and president of Town and Country, credited the uptick to the robust national economy. Even as the economy continued to flourish, however, home sales fell in each quarter of 2018 and, Ms. Desiderio said, “I think the fourth quarter is probably going to be the slowest of the year.”

Ms. Desiderio, who said she decidedly was not a “Debbie Downer” and remains bullish on local real estate (“we’re surrounded by water so we’re never going to have too much inventory”), blamed an onslaught of media reports for making buyers skittish and souring the housing market. 

The volatility of the stock market, which has an outsize impact on real estate sales here, is also “affecting the psyche of buyers, sellers, and brokers,” she said. However, those with “true wealth” are still making extravagant purchases, she said. 

Out East recently released a list of the highest-priced residential sales during 2018. Number one was a Further Lane oceanfront estate in East Hampton that sold for $40 million. Runners-up included three other oceanfront houses, including one in Southampton that sold for $32 million, one in Water Mill for just over $26 million, and another in Montauk for nearly $23 million.

“This list of transactions proves that there is still demand for the unique, high-end homes in the Hamptons,” Mr. Daimler said. 

The commercial real estate market, however, was extremely active in 2018. “It’s been a good year for me, might be a record year,” said Lee Minetree, a broker at Saunders and Associates who was the agent for the $12 million listing for a group of Sag Harbor buildings that sold in the fall. The sale led to the closing of two longtime businesses on Main Street, the jewelry store Adornments and the Country Lane gift shop.

Mr. Minetree was also the agent for two other commercial Sag Harbor properties. He negotiated the sale of the building that now houses Donna Karan’s Urban Zen and the Tutto Il Giorno restaurant owned by her daughter, Gabby De Felice. He said Murf’s Backstreet Tavern, which went on the market in August with a listing price of $3.5 million, was expected to change hands this month.  

Other notable commercial sales on the South Fork recently include the Montauk Yacht Club Resort and Marina, which was bought by Gurney’s Resort in May, and the Atlantic Terrace, a Montauk hotel, which was sold in July to Bridgeton Holdings, a New York-based company that recently opened the Journey East Hampton hotel on Pantigo Road and has an ownership stake in the Hero Beach Club in Montauk.

In addition, two properties that contain high-profile food businesses drew public attention when they were put on the market, including the East Hampton building with Goldberg’s Bagels shop, which was listed this summer for just under $6 million, and Stuart’s Seafood in Amagansett, which was put up for sale last month at an asking price of nearly $7 million. The Sag Harbor building that housed the Bay Burger restaurant, which closed in October, is listed for sale for $3.25 million.

Meanwhile, notable noncommercial real estate activity included the sale of the former Sag Harbor Methodist Church, which had languished in purgatory for years. April Gornik and Eric Fischl, married artists who plan to develop it as a center for creative arts, purchased it earlier this year.

In early July, Southampton Town made a much-heralded purchase in Sag Harbor Village, using $10.5 million from the community preservation fund to buy 1.25 acres that will become the John Steinbeck Waterfront Park. 

Federal prosecutors also landed an impressive South Fork parcel. When Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, pleaded guilty in September to two felony conspiracy charges, he agreed to hand over an estimated $22 million in real estate assets to the government. The most valuable was his nearly 5,600-square-foot Bridgehampton residence, which has 10 bedrooms, a swimming pool, and a tennis court. The Zillow website, which now describes the estate as “off market,” estimates its worth at more than $9.7 million.

Bermuda Bikes, the shop on Gingerbread Lane in East Hampton that has been selling and servicing bicycles for nearly 40 years, is for sale, Kent and Pamela McDonald, the husband and wife owners, announced recently. 

The business began as an offshoot of Bermuda Party Rentals, which was owned by Mr. McDonald’s aunt and uncle, Alice and Donald McDonald, and originally was in the Reutershan parking lot. 

Although the couple had planned to operate the business for a few more years, Ms. McDonald said it had become clear this summer that due to her husband’s health problems, including macular degeneration, a condition that causes vision loss, it was time to sell. “Kent is retired Air Force, and he’s got some disabilities related to his service, so the cumulative effects of his health history made it apparent to me that we needed to retire,” she said.  

Mr. McDonald decided in the early 1980s to return to his hometown and buy the shop after working as an adjudicator for the Veterans Administration in New York City, It proved to be a perfect fit for his passion for cycling and knack for mending broken-down bikes. “Kent is probably the most mechanical person I know,” Ms. McDonald said. “I don’t think in 40 years, there has been a problem he couldn’t solve.” 

The business first moved to a building on Gingerbread Lane but soon outgrew the space and ended up down the street in a spot that is double the size, she said. “A lot of our customers have been coming in since the very beginning, you know, buying bikes for their children and now their grandchildren.” 

“It’s a great community store,” said Patti Ferrin, a longtime customer who complimented the McDonalds on their commitment to East Hampton. “They donated a bike to the L.V.I.S. fair every summer,” she said.

Cycling trends have changed over the years, Ms. McDonald said. The road-bike market has blossomed, and millennials are more inclined to refurbish retro bikes than purchase new ones, but, she said, business has remained consistently strong.

“It’s afforded us to live in East Hampton in a house with no mortgage, and we’ve had a condo in Florida for 25 years,” she said. 

 Breaking the news of the sale to employees and customers had been emotionally taxing, she said. “I keep crying. It’s like abandoning a child.” Nevertheless, she’s trying to focus on the benefits of retirement. 

“When you’re self-employed, you don’t go to the beach in the summer; there are things you have to put on the back burner.” 

The couple plan to do more traveling, and they recently bought a 100-year-old farmhouse in Tennessee, where Ms. McDonald is looking forward to spending more time with her three cairn terriers. Their house here is on the market, and they plan to stay in town until it sells. 

That will give them the chance to console the customers who considered the store an East Hampton fixture. “I’ve had a couple of people come in who were visibly distraught because they’ve been coming here since they were little kids,” Ms. McDonald said. “For a lot of people who live here year round, when a business like this goes away, it’s hard to imagine, because they’re so used to having it as a part of their lives.”

An auditor delivered an upbeat report on the East Hampton Village government’s fiscal status on Friday.

At the village board’s last meeting of the year, Frank Sluter of the Jericho accounting and advisory firm Satty, Levine, and Ciacco summarized an audit of the village’s finances for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2018. 

Total revenues of $22.7 million exceeded budgeted amounts by $1.6 million, Mr. Sluter told the board. Licenses, permits, fines, forfeitures, and state aid, he said, accounted for most of the increase. 

On the expenditure side, the $20.4 million total was almost $559,000 less than budgeted amounts, “each major expense category contributing to the savings,” Mr. Sluter said. “That was really good.”

The village was able to allocate $270,000 to employee reserves, $250,000 to capital reserves, and $1.7 million into its capital projects fund. The village also paid down $840,000 of principal debt, Mr. Sluter said. 

His firm encountered no difficulties in its interaction with village employees, he said. “Best of all, in my opinion, we were happy to say we didn’t identify any deficiencies in the internal controls on the financial reporting process. That’s very good. Based on our audit as well as the financial statements, I think the village is in great shape.”

“We tend to be fiscally conservative in the application of our expenditures,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said. “We have to take care of our infrastructure, and as is necessary and appropriate at times, we have to spend some money to maintain that high degree of responsibility that this board has. We don’t take that lightly, at the same time.”