The East Hampton Town Board voted unanimously last Thursday to authorize new legal action against Cyril’s Fish House, a popular Napeague bar and restaurant that is the subject of a complaint by the town in State Supreme Court.

       The resolution paved the way for the town’s attorney to seek a court injunction to stop ongoing alleged violations of the town’s building and zoning codes.

       Elizabeth Vail, the East Hampton Town attorney, declined to provide details about what is now planned but said in an email that the town board’s vote allows Joseph W. Prokop, the town’s outside counsel in the case, “to seek all appropriate relief to ensure town code violations at the subject property are removed.”

       She said that the move follows a section of state law that “authorizes seeking injunctive relief to stop violations of the town’s building and zoning codes.”

       It is not clear if the town will seek an injunction barring the seasonal opening of Cyril’s for the coming summer. The roadside bar and restaurant is popular with weekend afternoon crowds, which spill into its parking lot at the edge of Montauk Highway.

       The site is owned by several members of the Dioguardi family, including Michael and Bonnie Dioguardi of Hicksville. The business is owned by Cyril Fitzsimons, who closes up shop each winter. Cyril’s generally reopens in early spring. All are named as defendants in the Supreme Court complaint.

       The property owners had been in town justice court after hundreds of summonses were issued over several years for alleged town zoning code violations, including citations for unauthorized expansion, lack of permits for structures on the property, lack of site plan approval, and wetlands clearing.

       The conflict between the town and the property owners, who have expressed a desire to address the issues and work out a solution with town officials to legalize the property, centers largely on the pre-existing, nonconforming status of the business, which is now in a residential zone. What legally existed prior to the residential zoning may remain, but may not be expanded.

       Dianne LeVerrier, an East Hampton attorney for the Dioguardis and Clan-Fitz Inc., the corporation behind Cyril’s, said in an email this week that “all zoning violations were dismissed by the justice court on Nov. 20, 2013,” and no cases are pending.

       However, Mr. Prokop said on Tuesday that, in fact, “there are charges that are pending in the justice court.” He declined to elaborate because of ongoing litigation.

       In the Supreme Court case, he said, the town is alleging the illegal expansion of a pre-existing, nonconforming use.

       Two citations for alleged town code violation were recently issued. In late January, Tom Preiato, the town’s chief building inspector, issued a stop-work order and two summonses for the removal of fuel tanks at the Cyril’s property without building permits.

       In a response to the Supreme Court case filed with the court in November, Ms. LeVerrier denied all of the claims and brought counterclaims against the town for abuse of process and malicious prosecution.

       Many of the structures that are the subject of the town’s complaints either predate today’s zoning laws or are structures for which permits are not required, the defendants claim.

       Beginning in February 2012, Ms. LeVerrier wrote in her counterclaim, the town improperly charged Michael Dioguardi and Clan-Fitz Inc. with multiple alleged violations of the town code that were the subject of a conditional discharge, ultimately issuing 450 duplicative summonses.

       Those summonses were an abuse of the criminal process, Ms. LeVerrier says. Attempts to meet with the town’s attorneys to resolve the alleged violations that were the subject of the conditional discharge were in vain, she says, until last May 2.

       According to the counterclaim, Mr. Prokop was instructed by the town justice court to propose a stipulation of settlement by May 8 indicating what, if any, violations remained.

       Instead, Ms. LeVerrier wrote in the counterclaim, Clan-Fitz Inc. was served with citations for 58 alleged fire code violations and Mr. Dioguardi’s attorney was notified that the town would seek a temporary restraining order to halt the use of the property.

       The attorney claims that Mr. Prokop misrepresented his intentions to the court “simply to ambush defendant in the civil action he was secretly planning to commence.” She called it a “vindictive action, motivated by a mere intent to harass and injure.”

       “The timing and nature of the town’s application for injunctive relief was not motivated by any legitimate concern for public safety,” she said.

       Ms. LeVerrier claims that it was illegal for the town to issue the summonses while the conditional discharge was still in place, and that the town’s motivation “was simply to harass and injure the defendants by summoning their appearance to Justice Court — and subsequently in Supreme Court — based upon fabricated public safety concerns that were so trivial that the town never even bothered to convey them to defendants on the date they were identified — despite the fact that all parties were present.”

       The issuance of hundreds of summonses imposed economic harm, Ms. LeVerrier claims, and “has compromised the defendants’ standing in the community.” Reports in the press, she wrote, “where the defendants were portrayed as renegade business owners who care nothing about the environment or the community,” have negatively impacted the restaurant’s business.

       “The defendants cannot get the town to sit down and make a determination that comports with its own town code,” she wrote.

       The town, Ms. LeVerrrier said in an email this week, has failed to prosecute the Supreme Court case. The defendants obtained a discovery order from the judge last week, and depositions of town officials are scheduled to begin on April 30.

       The summonses issued by the town, she said, also negatively impacted the property owners’ zone change request, which was denied last year by the town board.

       The Dioguardis had asked the town to change the property’s zoning designation from residential to neighborhood business, in the hope that the less-strict regulations would allow them to resolve some of the issues.

       Despite support from two members of the previous town board, the request failed to get a majority after a large turnout at a hearing last March by citizens opposed to the change. The Suffolk County Planning Commission also expressed concerns about the site.

Recent developments have made the prospect of a planned mass killing of deer in East Hampton Town and Village appear extremely unlikely during 2014.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said that a hunt that had been proposed by the Long Island Farm Bureau in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture would not take place this winter because a state-required environmental impact study could not be completed in time, among other issues.

Mr. Cantwell said on Friday that he and other town officials had concluded that "a cull was not something we were going to be able to participate in in the next couple months."

In a memo sent Thursday to the other members of the town board, Mr. Cantwell and Town Councilman Fred Overton wrote that an environmental impact statement was likely to be "required before we formally agree to participate in the Long Island Farm Bureau program, based on existing case law."

The memo also cited a "minimal" response from private property owners willing to allow federal sharpshooters on their land. Mr. Overton is the town board liaison to the deer management program.

"There is a lot of work that has not been done to this point in order for the town to carefully consider signing an agreement," Mr. Cantwell said on Friday. "There are more questions than answers."

Whether the board wants to consider participation in the program next year, Mr. Cantwell said, "is an open question."

Meanwhile, in what opponents called a significant victory, Judge Andrew G. Tarantino Jr. issued a temporary restraining order on Friday in State Supreme Court in Riverhead preventing the Town and Village of East Hampton and the town trustees from engaging in a lethal deer population reduction.

In his order, Judge Tarantino said that East Hampton Town's deer management plan was delayed pending a return to court by the sides on Feb. 10 or 13.

Fifteen individuals, along with the East Hampton Group for Wildlife and the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Center of the Hamptons, all represented by the New York law firm Devereaux, Baumgarten, filed the lawsuit against the town, village, and trustees last month.

The suit followed the previous town board's November vote authorizing a contract with the Long Island Farm Bureau and United States Department of Agriculture for an organized cull. East Hampton Village okayed the plan in December.

Opposition erupted soon after the plan was announced. An online petition had 11,689 signatures as of Friday, and opponents, led by Bill Crain of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife and Ron Delsener, a concert promoter and animal activist who has a house in East Hampton, drew some 250 people to a rally at Hook Mill and Herrick Park in East Hampton on Jan. 18.

The sides have disagreed on the rationale behind a cull, with proponents arguing that Lyme and other diseases and deer-vehicle collisions constitute a public health emergency. The destruction of residents' landscaping and subsequent proliferation of deer fencing have also been cited.

Opponents dispute the scientific basis of the proponents' argument. "I see the [temporary restraining order] as a significant victory for the deer," Mr. Crain wrote in an email. "I believe the cull will be stopped in the long run, too, because it lacks scientific basis. Whereas the town board's deer management plan and the village mayor's comments point to growing deer abundance, the scientific surveys indicate an East Hampton deer population in decline. The cull actually threatens to wipe the population out."

In addition, Mr. Crain wrote, "contrary to what the cull's advocates say, researchers have not found a link between deer populations and Lyme disease because disease-carrying ticks also feed on other animals. The cull is based on a false sense of panic and resorts to killing rather than seeking humane ways of co-existing with the deer."

Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. of East Hampton Village did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Joe Gergela, the executive director of the Long Island Farm Bureau, would not comment on the temporary restraining order, citing advice of counsel.

      Waving placards and chanting, some 250 people marched from Hook Mill to Herrick Park in East Hampton Village on Saturday afternoon, proclaiming their opposition to the deer culling planned by the village and East Hampton Town. The common ground on which many sportsmen and animal-rights activists found themselves was in evidence, with a number of those taking part arguing that local hunters should do the culling rather than professionals.  A small number of proponents of the sharpshooter hunt, which is set to begin next month, also milled among the crowd, resulting in sporadic angry confrontations.            

       The East Hampton Village Board voted to appropriate $15,000 for the first of what its members say will be a multi-year culling effort. This decision followed a September presentation by representatives of the Long Island Farm Bureau and the federal Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services division, which have solicited participation from municipalities across Long Island. In addition to East Hampton, culls are planned in Southold and Brookhaven.

       East Hampton Town adopted its own deer management plan, calling for measures to reduce the deer population, last year, and Larry Cantwell, supervisor since January, has expressed his support for town participation. In addition to $15,000 earmarked for deer management in the current budget, another $15,000 could be appropriated for culling, Len Bernard, the town’s budget director, said yesterday.

       Lyme disease, deer-vehicle collisions, destruction of landscaping and undergrowth, and the proliferation of deer fences, which impact the character of this area, are the most-cited rationales behind the culling program, which calls for sharpshooters to be stationed above baited areas at night. 

       Those demonstrating on Saturday argued that deer are not the sole or even the primary vector of ticks that carry Lyme and other diseases, that a slow-driving campaign would reduce collisions, and that a wealth of flora unappetizing to deer exists for landscaping.

       “We have a groundswell of objection to this that’s visible,” Wendy Chamberlin, a Bridgehampton resident who has been active in the anti-culling campaign, said at the demonstration. “I just don’t know how these officials can ignore this now, but I’ve been surprised before.” Ms. Chamberlin said the Young/Som mer law firm of Albany and Saratoga Springs, N.Y., had been retained and is poised to sue any municipalities that begin culling.

       Ms. Chamberlin advocates an approach that would rely on immunocontraception. “They haven’t done their due diligence, they haven’t shown cause, they haven’t listened to alternatives,” she complained of village and town officials. “We see no other choice. We’ve tried to talk, we’ve tried to negotiate, but it’s not working.”

       Ron Delsener, a part-time East Hampton resident, led the march along with Bill Crain of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife. Mr. Delsener, a well-known concert promoter, has been outspoken in his opposition to the cull, paying for advertisements in local newspapers.

       Between arguments with the East Hampton art dealer Ruth Vered, who angrily recounted near-death experiences involving deer, and Patricia Hope, the president of the East Hampton School Board who taught science at East Hampton High School and was distributing literature advocating immunocontraception, Mr. Delsener spoke bluntly about local officials.

       “It’s easy to shoot,” he said. “Most towns do, because they’re illiterate. This town, I thought, had some class. They have 250 people — these people — who have class.”

       Ira Barocas of Springs marched with his niece. “We had a bogus count,” he said, referring to population surveys conducted in 2006 and 2013 that reached varying conclusions. “We don’t know what the problem really is, and we’ve just got this knee-jerk reaction being led by special interests in the form of Joe Gergela.” Mr. Gergela is the executive director of the Long Island Farm Bureau.

       Mr. Barocas said the cull was not based on science, but he was not optimistic about efforts to stop it. He called the protest “a gesture that needs to be made.”

       Observing nature in its natural state is “one of the greatest joys I’ve had in living here from the time I was an infant,” said Michael Dickerson of Northwest Woods, East Hampton. “My great concern is that every time we interfere with nature’s plan, we screw stuff up.”

       Shawn Christman of Montauk said local hunters rather than hired sharpshooters should be able to take enough deer to reduce the population while feeding their families and supplying food pantries. “It’s just not something we need the federal government to step in and do,” he said.

       “People come out from the city and they want a piece of the country,” Mr. Christman said. “They build big fences around their properties and then leave for the winter. These habitats are fenced off. . . . That’s why we have a concentration in small areas and deer running out in the roads — there’s nowhere for them to go. We have a people problem, not a deer problem.”

       Mike Tessitore of East Quogue, who is with a group called Hunters for Deer, came to the demonstration to show that hunters and animal-rights activists alike reject the rationale behind a professional cull.

 The Farm Bureau and U.S.D.A.’s wildlife services division, he said, “are shoving it down our throat, saying, ‘You have to pay for a problem that we don’t even know exists,’ when we have hunters that could take care of the situation if legislation was passed to provide less stringent hunting regulations.” It has been reported that Hunters for Deer will ask the State Department of Environmental Conservation to allow its members to shoot at night and use bait, as sharpshooters are.

       Dave Stevens, who also lives in Northwest Woods, did not participate in the demonstration but observed the crowd at Hook Mill. “You can’t have untrained people running around with guns. I would think that a well-placed, high-powered rifle round provides for a cleaner and more humane kill than letting a deer run through the woods with an arrow sticking out of its side,” he said, arguing that allowing deer to overpopulate is crueler than killing them.

       Ms. Chamberlin was also scornful of the U.S.D.A., likening its officials to “sociopaths that have been let out of jail.” Surveying the crowd standing along Newtown Lane, she was confident that opponents of the planned cull would prevail. “We’re definitely going to stop it,” she said. “There’s no question.”

       A vacant one-story building on the Montauk Highway in East Hampton that once housed antiques shops and a plumbing contractor could become the eastern headquarters of Saunders and Associates if an apparently unprecedented zoning proposal is approved by the town planning board. The makeover would depend on the transfer of building rights from one adjoining parcel to another.

       The lots are at 24-26 Montauk Highway, just west of the Exxon gas station, where a portion of the town juts into East Hampton Village. The western one of the lots is 14,300 square feet and has a now-vacant 3,266-square-foot building on it, which most recently was divided into four retail spaces. The eastern lot, which is vacant, is somewhat larger, at 19,440 square feet. Both parcels are zoned for residences with a limited business overlay, which permits commercial structures to be no more than 2,000 square feet. The existing building is larger, but is a legal, nonconforming use since it predates current zoning.

       Saunders wants to add the 2,000 square feet that would be allowed on the eastern lot as a second story on the existing building. The eastern lot would then be used for parking, according to Eric Brown, a partner at Ackerman, O’Brien, Pachman, and Brown. A former town staff member, he is shepherding the application through the planning board process.

       Former East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who joined Saunders as executive managing director and general counsel at the end of the year, is expected to run the new office.

       JoAnne Pahwul, the town’s assistant planning director, said Tuesday that she was not aware of a building rights transfer ever having been completed in the town. In an initial memo to the planning board, dated July 17, 2013, she said the applicants proposed the transfer and intended to merge the lots. Mr. Brown, however, said on Tuesday that it was the Planning Department that first broached the idea of a transfer as a solution to the applicant’s dilemma.

       The initial application was for the second-story addition to be 2,687 feet. But, according to a memo written by Ms. Pahwul to Reed Jones, the planning board chairman, on Sept. 27, “the applicant met with the town attorney earlier this week at which time it was determined that the project would be re vised to reduce the size of the addition to 2,000 square feet.”

       The planning board also sought guidance from its attorney at the time, Kathryn Santiago, as to whether such a transfer was feasible. In a Dec. 3, 2013, memo, Ms. Pahwul wrote that “the memorandum from Ms. Santiago states that the applicant is allowed to transfer 2,000 square feet of total gross floor area from the vacant easterly parcel to the existing 3,266-square-foot, legally pre-existing, nonconforming building on the westerly lot on a merged lot.”

       In determining that the application could go forward as proposed, Ms. Santiago and the applicant’s attorneys referred to a section of the town code that says the limits imposed on the size of commercial buildings in limited-business zones shall not be applied to legally pre-existing commercial structures within that zone when they are converted to another commercial use.

        In other words, buildings that exceed the maximum size may remain that way, even if they are being put to a new commercial  use. That section of the law is also being interpreted by the attorneys to mean that not only can the outsize building remain, but that it can be added to.

       Ms. Pahwul said this week that she did not believe that was the intent of the code, and had told Ms. Santiago so. She said she has recommended that the town board take a look at clarifying the code.

       In advising the planning board, Ms. Santiago, who was replaced as its attorney at the beginning of 2014, had apparently consulted with the then-lead attorney for the town, John Jilnciki. Mr. Jilnicki has since taken Ms. Santiago’s place as the planning board’s legal counsel.

       Mr. Brown said Tuesday that the two parcels were small parts of what was once a much larger subdivision, laid out early in the 20th century. “It was all owned by a woman named Larkin,” he said. The original property ran from Toilsome Lane to Route 114, to Cove Hollow Road, and all the way down to Montauk Highway.

       The western lot is rather evenly squared, to the eye. It once had a house on it, Mr. Brown said, which was moved onto another lot in the subdivision.

       The eastern lot, the larger of the two, also once had a house on it. It was owned by Dr. Albert Pontick of the East Hampton Animal Hospital, which is on property behind the eastern lot. After he retired in the 1980s, he moved the house to Dune Alpin Farm, according to Jack Humphreys, a longtime friend of the late Jay Moorhead, who purchased the two parcels in the 1980s. It is from the Moorhead estate that Saunders is purchasing the land.

       While the western lot was the smaller of the two, it was also the busier. A gas station was built on it in 1973. “Jay bought the property from the Shell Oil company, and Ernie Dayton did the renovation, and conversion into four shops,” Mr. Humphreys said Tuesday. Mr. Moorhead used one of the shops as an antiques store and rented out the others, with Mr. Humphreys eventually moving his own business into one of the stores.

       Mr. Brown, along with Billy Hajeck and Richard Whalen of Land Marks, both also former town staffers, has worked extensively with the town’s Planning Department and planning board regarding the requirements for buildings in limited business districts. Ms. Pahwul said that what is now a street-side asphalt parking lot on the western property would be replaced by lawn, trees, and shrubbery. The parking will be screened from the street by trees.

       With reporting by Joanne Pilgrim

    Johnny Rade is Montauk’s undisputed king of rod-and-reel commercial fishing. He’s “high-hook” in dockside parlance, a man who has been fishing the area for a half century, knows the bottom features like the palm of his hand, and the tides. He can smell weather coming, and he can tell you what kind of fish is mouthing his bait before he sets the hook. In short, he’s a fishing seaman, a “salt.”



    Do you think it strange then, that John Rade is a birder? “I had six juncos this morning. Six!” he said last week while standing in line at Becker’s Hardware store in Montauk holding two big bags of birdseed in his powerful hands. “I feed them all year. I’ve got robins, five blue jays, and cardinals,” he said meaning in his yard after the big snow, and with pride in his piercing blue eyes.



    Wasn’t it Odysseus, when, turning his back on the sea — and who could blame him — swore that he would carry an oar landward and put down roots when and where a person asked him what the oar was for?



    I asked John if he thought it was because of all the time he’s spent at sea that he was so passionate about the birds in his backyard, the species that nest in the trees and bushes that grow from his slice of terra firma. He pondered this for a few seconds and said, yes, that was possible, but then again he liked seabirds too.



    Bill Becker’s cash register was adding up snow shovels and salt while this discussion was going on, John generously waving people ahead of him while we talked birds. He asked if I’d seen the vast rafts of “coots,” the local name for sea scoters, black sea ducks, so many dotting the surface south and east of the Montauk Lighthouse a few weeks ago that the sea looked like it could use a shave. “The farther east I went, the more there were. Sand eels,” he said, the likely reason.



    We talked about the coots’ amazing submarine swimming ability, flying under water with their powerful wings after small fish and bottom vegetation.



    And yet, there were relatively few gannets this season, we agreed. Strange, because there were herring, their favorite food, around in late fall, weren’t there? I asked.



    He smiled knowingly. Yes, he said, there were herring, but nothing under them to force them to the surface, no frenzy of feeding bluefish and bass. They were out of synch this year — the herring, and the big fish that feed on them, and those white, swept-winged dive-bombers, the blue-billed gannets, whose flocks some years look like white tornados touching down on the sea as they cascade out of the sky, the surface erupting as they enter to go deep after the oily herring.



    “I’ll tell you what I had, I had seals,” John said. He told about the day while catching herring outside the harbor entrance he had 11 seals around his boat. “Big ones, 300-pounders.”



    “I have” — that’s how birders talk. Did you ever listen to them bragging their life lists? “Yesterday I had an oyster catcher,” one might crow. But, today he or she “has” an oyster catcher on the life list. Birdwatchers are able to possess birds just by seeing them, even through binoculars from great distances. What a great concept. What a treasure.



     I left Becker’s thinking about Johnny Rade’s vast treasure, the life list of seals, land birds, sea birds, and finally the fish he sees underwater using the sonar of his 50-plus years at sea. These he knows how to catch.

       Angus Wilson knew this was an unusual year when surfers at Shinnecock Inlet asked him recently if he was there to see the owls.

       Mr. Wilson, a research scientist at New York University Medical School and avid birder with a house in Springs, said that public interest in the owls had been sparked as dozens appeared along the Eastern Seaboard this fall in a massive migration that has left experts puzzled and casual observers pleased.

       The surfers Mr. Wilson met were among the many people for whom awareness of snowy owls had reached beyond the usual birdwatchers’ circles. News stories, including on National Public Radio, fanned attention, as did social media.

       An outcry earlier this month greeted news that the Port Authority had added them to the list of birds it kills at New York-area airports, after five planes were struck by snowy owls. Following objections, authorities said they would begin trapping and relocation rather than shooting.

       Mr. Wilson said the increase in sightings was the result of a “major incur sion” of the Arctic species.

       The Cornell Lab of Ornithology said 2013’s snowy owl numbers were an “incredible invasion.”

       In ordinary years there might be one or two of the large, mostly white hunters wintering on the South Fork; 11 were seen during the annual Christmas Bird Count on Dec. 14 — a record.

       In the 85 years that the Montauk Count, as the local effort is called, has been conducted, the previous high for snowy owls was six individuals. Mr. Wilson said he believed he had seen the first of this season here, in November at Hicks Island, off Lazy Point, which is a dependable location for those looking to see one for themselves.

       More of the birds have been arriving ever since. There were five recorded on Gardiner’s Island during the Dec. 14 count. Mr. Wilson said his group watched as one plucked a duck from the surface of Great Pond at the island’s southern end.

       Others were seen along Cartwright Shoal, a narrow isthmus of sand, cut in several places into low islands. These, Mr. Wilson said, might be observed by someone with a strong spotting scope from Gerard Point in Springs.

       Another has pleased viewers at the entrance to Lake Montauk. This owl alternates from one side of the inlet to the other, he said.

       Reports of the owl invasion are coming from Atlantic Canada and the Northeast and Great Lakes region, with sightings as far south as North Carolina and Bermuda. They have been seen in recent weeks in Arkansas, Minnesota, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Michigan. One bird with an apparent fondness for traffic has been photographed several times perched on a highway bridge-approach sign in Queen Anne’s County, Md.

       There is little consensus on what prompts the birds’ periodic and dramatic florescence. One clue, Mr. Wilson said, was that the individuals here appear to be young, distinguished from their nearly all-white elders by the dark barring on their breasts. A glut of young owls indicates a highly successful breeding season during the preceding high-Arctic summer, with the birds fanning out far and wide in search of food as they mature.

       A population explosion among lemmings, which are a favorite meal for the owls, can result in females incubating as many as nine eggs per nest. Many of the snowy owls seen along the East Coast this year are first-winter, or immature, birds, according to Cornell, which maintains a web page updated daily with sightings of them at ebird.org.

       Vicki Bustamante, a participant in the Montauk Christmas Bird Count, was part of a team that saw two snowy owls on Dec. 14 — one at Gin Beach, Montauk, and the other at Oyster Pond.

       “All owls, it’s just a magical event when you see them, but a snowy owl, it just does something in your core when you see one,” she said.

       She does not remember anything like this before. “It’s a crazy, eruptive year,” she said. “Experienced birders are shocked.”

       Snowy owls generally hunt at night, Mr. Wilson said, feeding on roosting waterfowl. “They just swoop in and grab one.” Their highly sensitive eyesight gives them an advantage at nighttime, he said.

       Snowy owls can also pick off prey during the daytime, one of the few large-bird species that can feed around the clock, on water or land.

       Most of the time during the day, the owls settle to rest in exposed places, such as this area’s more desolate beaches. There they can gain easy access to the evening’s feeding grounds and see any potential predators, such as foxes, coming.

       Roosting on the bare beaches and dunes they are quite visible, and their size makes them seem all the more exotic. At rest, their size, color, yellow eyes, and bulbously round heads are key identification marks. Flying, they appear huge, with wide wings tipped by finger-like, spread feathers.

       Mr. Wilson said he was always concerned about the possibility that spectators might disturb the owls. He said that observers should use common sense about keeping their distance, and stay out of fragile dune areas, remaining in their vehicles or on roads or trails when looking at the birds. 

       Snowy owls will signal when they are becoming nervous, shuffling and stretching their wings. “If they are looking at you, that is an indication that you are too close,” he said.

       Viewers will likely be able to see the owls on the South Fork until mid-March, when they depart for their summer range in the far north. Until then, people who frequent the outdoors will stand a good chance of sharing the beaches with them.

       “This connects us to the Arctic,” Mr. Wilson said. “It shows us how connected we are to these places.”

A Suffolk Planning Commission decision on Wednesday against a zone change that would have allowed a 79-unit luxury housing complex on 24 acres of farmland in Amagansett has set the odds that the project will be approved at essentially zero.

The developers of the so-called 555 Amagansett project had asked East Hampton Town to create a new senior citizen housing zoning district and to rezone the Montauk Highway property to that designation. The proposed development is not allowed under current zoning.

Although the Suffolk Planning Commission's opinions are largely advisory, leaving ultimate authority for zoning decisions to the town, when the commission votes against a proposal, a majority-plus-one vote of a local board is needed to override the denial.

The East Hampton Town Board, in a split vote along party lines, had set a Dec. 19 date for public hearings on both creating the new zone and then applying it to the property.

The board's two Democrats, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, have spoken out against the proposals, but there was fear that the outgoing Republican majority might vote after the hearings — which are set for the board's last scheduled meeting of the year — to approve the developer's request.

A new Democratic board majority will take office next year, which would have made approval of the controversial zone changes highly unlikely. According to David L. Calone, the Suffolk Planning Commission chairman, the entire incoming East Hampton Town Board had written to the commission asking it to reject the project.

Since the Dec. 19 hearings were scheduled, a growing public campaign against the zone changes arose. With the super-majority vote needed now to override the county commission, the opponents' fears have likely been assuaged.

County planning staff had recommended that the commission give a thumbs-up to both requests, but, after hearing comments from East Hampton's representative on the commission, John Whelan, and a number of speakers from the public, the commission voted 11 to 2 in opposition to the requests.

Mr. Whelan said Thursday that the commission's primary concern was that the zoning changes would allow development counter to several goals of the town's comprehensive plan. In addition, he said, commissioners noted that the 555 plan lacked affordable housing, that appropriate environmental review of the proposals had not taken place, and that it would allow development on prime agricultural soil, saving virtually none of it. The allowable development of the site under current zoning would require preservation of 70 percent of the farmland.

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival returns to Sag Harbor's Bay Street Theatre this weekend with 11 features, 11 shorts, and programs devoted to the cinema verité pioneers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus and this year’s Filmmaker’s Choice Award winner, Lana Jokel. A panel will discuss the creative impulse prior to a screening of Alexandra Branyon’s film “Treasures From the Rubble.”

Subjects of this year’s films range from the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign to the iconic conservative Barry Goldwater; from the power of baseball in a remote Indian state to growing up as a child of Jewish refugees in Kenya during the 1950s and 1960s, and from Coney Island’s carnival attraction the Zipper to a Benedictine monastery in Bethlehem, Conn. The Young Voices program features six shorts, including one by Ross School students.

An event in observance of World AIDS Day will kick off the festival Thursday. A 7 p.m. screening of the Academy Award-nominated film “How to Survive a Plague” will be preceded at 5 p.m. by a panel discussion, “AIDS: Then and Now.” A break with light fare and a cash bar will follow the discussion. The program is free.

The festival officially opens Friday at 4 p.m. with “Hot Water,” Kevin Flint’s examination of how uranium mining, atomic testing, and nuclear energy contaminate our planet. Two films by Neil Leifer, “Portraits of a Lady,” in which former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor sits for 25 portrait painters, and “The ConVENTion,” shot at a gathering of more than 500 ventriloquists, screen at 6 and 6:45, respectively. The evening concludes at 8:15 with “The Only Real Game,” Mirra Bank’s study of how baseball provides release from the daily struggles of the residents of Manipur, India.

Kenny Mann’s “Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots,” which will be screened Saturday morning at 10, tells the story of her parents’ affinity for Africa and her own search for identify, while illuminating Kenya’s colonial history. The Young Voices program includes Scott Sinkler’s “Living With Tourette Syndrome,” “Ross Goes West,” in which students discover small-town America, and four shorts from Downtown Community Television, which has been affording access to electronic media for 40 years to those not otherwise able to afford it.

“Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater,” produced and narrated by the late senator’s granddaughter and directed by Julie Anderson, will unspool at 1:15 p.m., followed at 3:15 by “All Me: The Life & Times of Winfred Rembert,” Vivian Ducat’s portrait of an African-American artist’s journey from a Georgia chain gang to a gallery on Madison Avenue. “Treasures From the Rabble” tells the story of Lois Wilson, a folk artist originally from Fayette, La., who moved to Yonkers and persevered despite poverty and ill health. She gave her entire body of work to her hometown, where it became the foundation of the Fayette Art Museum.

“Treasures From the Rabble” will be preceded from 3 to 4:15 by a panel at the American Hotel on “The Unstoppable Creative Impulse.” Moderated by Faith Middleton, host of the eponymous NPR show, the panel will include Alexandra Branyon, director of the film; Edward Butscher, a poet and critic; Juliana Driever, a curator and writer; Aaron Louis, audio visual director at the Museum of Modern Art; Maria Maciak, media director at the Ross School, and Mercedes Ruehl, Academy Award-winning actress. The event is free but reservations are required and can be made by calling the hotel.

The HT2FF Gala, a tribute to Mr. Pennebaker and Ms. Hegedus, begins Saturday at 7 p.m. with a wine and light fare reception, followed by opening remarks at 7:45 by Susan Lacy, creator and longtime producer of the WNET-PBS "American Masters" series. “The War Room,” Mr. Pennebaker and Mr. Hegedus’s behind-the-scenes look at the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary and the Clinton campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Ark,, will screen at 8. Ms. Lacy will lead a conversation with the filmmakers after the screening.

“Shut Up and Look,” Maryte Kavaliauskas’s intimate portrait of Richard Artschwager, a quirky, irreverent artist who died in February, will open Sunday’s schedule at 10 a.m. Amy Nicholson’s “Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride,” which will be shown at noon, focuses on the 38-year-old carnival ride whose rented lot became the object of a power struggle between a real estate developer and New York City.

The Best Shorts program includes Mark Nickolas’s “My Life in the Canyon of Heroes,” Thanachart Siripatrachai’s “Words I Love,” and Rebecca Cammisa’s “God Is the Bigger Elvis,” the story of Dolores Hart, an actress who left Hollywood to become a nun. The shorts begin at 2 p.m.

“Two: The Story of Roman & Nyro” documents the journey of Desmond Child, a noted songwriter-producer, and Curtis Shaw, his lifelong partner, as they create a family. Combining more than 12 years of home movies and narrated by their twin 9-year-old sons, the film spans the period from preconception to the present. “Two” will start at 4 p.m.

The festival will conclude with a 7 p.m. screening of Ms. Jokel’s “Larry Rivers Public and Private."

Tickets for individual programs cost $15 ($13 for senior citizens), $30 for the Saturday night gala, and $100 for a pass to the entire festival, including the gala. They can be purchased from HT2FF.org, baystreet.org, or at the Bay Street Theatre box office.

       Five years ago East Hampton Town was barreling toward financial disaster. Against that backdrop, a small group began holding informal meetings with the goal of improving the way the town was run, while reintroducing what they saw as sorely lacking civility to the political process.

       Jeffrey Fisher, the chairman of Fisher Industries, and Steven Schwartz and Arthur Malman, both attorneys, were all part-time residents of East Hampton. Dominick Stanzione, a bond trader and investment advisor, was a relatively new year-round resident of Amagansett.

       Out of their gatherings came the East Hampton Group for Good Government.

       “The number-one motivation was the McGintee mess,” said Mr. Schwartz of the administration of former Supervisor Bill McGintee, which drove the town deep into debt, “but also the level of discourse, the way people were treated at Town Hall.”

       Today, after three town elections, the G.G.G. has become a well-established civic organization with hundreds of members. Its mission is to vet candidates for public office, encourage voter turnout, and, perhaps most important, ensure that those voters are informed about the tough issues facing the town through well-publicized forums.

       Those forums have focused on topics ranging from waste management to whether a town manager form of government would be more efficient, an event that was co-sponsored with the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons.

       Early on, the group’s founders planned to create a political action committee that would throw its support behind candidates for local office, “but it soon became apparent,” said Mr. Fisher, “that we’d have more credibility if we were nonpartisan.”

       “We started with the premise, which we realized wasn’t necessarily true, that we had to be financial supporters to have any say,” added Mr. Malman. “We’ve really stayed away from backing individual candidates or parties,” instead focusing on studying issues and suggesting solutions.

       G.G.G. members came to the conclusion that a nonpartisan approach would be best after meeting with East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and the village administrator at the time, Lar ry Cantwell, who was elected town supervisor in November. Both urged the fledgling organization to stay above the political fray and not concentrate on the problems of past governments but on making future improvements.

       The nonpartisan stance soon forced Mr. Stanzione, whom Mr. Fisher had met after reading his letters to The Star on town finances and on an effort to limit the size of houses on small lots, to step down from the group’s board when he was asked by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson to run for town board in 2009.

       Mr. Stanzione, an early member of the town’s budget advisory committee, had personally paid for those committee’s meetings to be broadcast on LTV in what he said was an effort to encourage transparency.

       “I believe that the G.G.G. has developed into a respected grassroots organization with a commitment to a nonpartisan review of issues,” said Mr. Stanzione, who was defeated in his reelection bid earlier this month. He remains a supporter of the G.G.G.’s mission. “We have to advance to a new paradigm of government here, and the G.G.G. has helped establish that vision.”

       Not that it was easy to convince everyone of the group’s good intentions. Mr. Fisher said that early on the group met with both Trace Duryea, then the chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, and Jeanne Frankl, the chairwoman of the Democratic Committee, to explain their organization.

       “At first, Trace thought we were all closet Democrats and Jeanne was certain we were all Republicans,” he said.

       “I was very skeptical at the beginning and I’m still a little skeptical,” said Ms. Duryea this week. Although she thinks the group “has the best interest of the community in mind,” she said, “I don’t know that they have been that effective.”

       “I think the important thing is they have gotten people who might not otherwise focus on how town government is run to take an interest,” said Ms. Frankl. “But they have shied away from some of the most controversial issues,” she continued, listing the environment, “historic preservation, development, and overdevelopment.”

       “Their focus, which has been on management and keeping taxes down, has been to the exclusion of the needs of the citizenry that sometimes causes taxes to go up,” Ms. Frankl said.

       While Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Fisher said they would like to see the day when most, if not all, local candidates are cross-endorsed by both major parties, Ms. Frankl is dead set against that idea.

       “They are religiously apolitical and I really believe in politics,” she said. “I don’t think it’s politics that’s bad. It’s bad politics that’s bad.”

       She said that the rough and tumble political process, while messy, was effective in allowing citizens to gravitate toward candidates who respond to their particular concerns and for politicians to hammer out compromises.

       Although most of the G.G.G.’s founders are part-time residents who make their principal homes in New York, “we didn’t want to be confused for being second homeowners trying to tell the locals how to run their town,” said Mr. Fisher.

       To that end, he said the organization has sought out people such as the local businessmen Charlie Whitmore and Steve Talmage, the educators Laura Anker Grossman and Connie Rudolph, and East Hampton Village Police Captain Mike Tracey to serve on their board over the years.

       Despite that effort, Ms. Duryea said the group was not inclusive enough. “To my knowledge, their kids aren’t in the schools and they aren’t volunteering at the local fire stations or on the ambulance corps,” she said. “It exemplifies what East Hampton is becoming and it’s not something I like very much.”

       “There’s no question that we started out with a couple of people who were second homeowners who were not destitute, but our whole effort has been to become broader in appeal over time,” countered Mr. Malman. “We’re not going to get rid of the fact that when we have a meet-the-candidates party at my house, which is south of the highway, we’re going to hear that.”

       In the meantime, he said, the group is intent on continuing its efforts. Next on the horizon, sometime in 2014, will be a public forum, sponsored with the League of Women Voters, to discuss improving school district efficiencies by encouraging more shared services.

       That discussion, whenever it is held, will be in keeping with the G.G.G.’s focus on gentility. “At all our forums, the questions from the floor are presented civilly,” said Mr. Schwartz.

In what would appear to be a stunning defeat for an incumbent, East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione failed to win re-election today, coming in last among four candidates.

According to unofficial results from the Suffolk Board of Elections, which did not include absentee ballots, Fred Overton and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez are the winners for the two open seats for town board.

The vote totals from the polls were Mr. Overton with 3,216, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez with 3,125, Job Potter with 2,764, and Mr. Stanzione with 2,293. Mr. Overton appeared on the ballot on the Republican, Conservative, and Independence lines. Ms. Burke-Gonzalez had Democratic and Working Families backing.

Running unopposed for town supervisor, Larry Cantwell had 4,802 votes; there were 87 write-ins.

Steven Tekulsky defeated his Republican challenger, Carl Irace, 3,487 to 2, 367 for town justice, a roughly 60-percent margin of victory.

Eugene DePasquale will retain his post as East Hampton Town assessor, defeating Joe Bloecker, 3,209 to 2,449.

It was a big night for Jay Schneiderman, who scored a 60-percent win over Chris Nuzzi in the Second Suffolk Legislature district.

The mood was subdued at Indian Wells Tavern in Amagansett, where local Republicans had gathered to wait for results. Mr. Overton said that he had believed that his chances had been good but that he was very surprised to lead the pack. Mr. Stanzione had no comment.

Mr. Irace said that running for town justice had been an "awesome" experience.

 

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With reporting by Stephen J. Kotz