The Montauk Post Office has taken a step intended to help solve its long-running mail and parcel delivery problems, with more changes planned in the near future.

Construction of a ramp on the west side of the building at 73 South Euclid Avenue was completed this month to facilitate loading and unloading of parcels onto post office vehicles. The change is meant to help post office staffers transport the parcels to offsite locations for sorting, and hopefully speed up delivery times to patrons. 

In the past, parcels have sometimes languished on the loading dock at the building — especially during the summer high season — because there wasn't enough room to store the packages inside as they awaited processing or delivery. Patrons often get alerts that their mail has arrived, only to find when they visit the post office that the clerks can't locate the parcels or say when they will be available.

The post office has also ordered new parcel lockers that will be installed in the lobby to allow patrons to bypass the counter and pickup their packages directly from the lockers.

While the lockers and ramp could address some of the complaints, residents have also reported days when mail isn't delivered at all to their homes or it arrives very late in the evening. Some residents also reported packages being left by their roadside mailboxes, where they are susceptible to damage, or discovering their mail is routinely delivered to the wrong location. Staffing changes have left the branch with carriers who are not familiar with the area. 

Representative Lee Zeldin, who made a formal inquiry into the branch's long-running problems after some fed up Montauk residents contacted his office in December asking him to press for improvements, released a statement saying the ramp construction is a positive step.

“The U.S.P.S. provides a critical service to Long Islanders, especially those in less accessible communities, such as Montauk, and it is critical that local residents receive the postal services they need,” Mr. Zeldin said.

Mr. Zeldin also said he is now supporting three pieces of legislation intended to improve the quality of the post office's service nationwide. One of the bills would ensure the continuation of deliveries six days a week, and another would mandate door delivery for all residents and businesses.

Due to a clerical error, the East Hampton Town Trustees canceled a special meeting scheduled for last evening to discuss revising the terms of leases to tenants on trustee land at Lazy Point in Amagansett. 

The trustees have added Lazy Point leases to the agenda of their next regular meeting, on Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

Though passengers have been few in the first days of the South Fork Commuter Connection, the coordinated rail and bus system operating during peak commuting hours to provide a public transportation option and alleviate traffic congestion, East Hampton and Southampton Town officials expect more passengers as the weather warms and attendant traffic snarls proliferate. 

The connection comprises expanded Long Island Rail Road service and the “last mile connection” shuttle service to take passengers to their workplaces on weekday mornings. Late-afternoon bus and train service returns riders to their stations of origin. The program was launched on Monday. 

Fifteen passengers were on Monday’s first train, which left Speonk at 6:16 a.m., and a dozen were aboard the second morning train, which originated in Hampton Bays at 8:26, according to a release issued by the Town of Southampton. Supervisor Jay Schneiderman and Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming rode the latter train on Monday to officially launch the program. 

Several passengers disembarked upon the trains’ 7:03 and 8:54 a.m. arrivals in East Hampton on Monday, according to a train conductor. One person took the Hampton Hopper to get to work. 

“We don’t see today’s ridership as representational, and expect it to grow as the word gets out and traffic gets more challenging,” Joanne Pilgrim, executive assistant to East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, said on Monday. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Van Scoyoc said that he believed ridership was low on Monday because of inclement weather and a two-hour delay in school openings. There were more passengers on Tuesday, he said, and “we expect that will continue to increase.” 

A driver of the Hampton Hopper, a bus company the town contracted to shuttle riders to and from their workplaces in East Hampton, confidently made the same prediction on Tuesday morning. 

Southampton Town selected the Hampton Hopper for shuttle service in Southampton Village and the Hampton Jitney to service Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. 

“I want to thank State Assemblyman Fred Thiele and State Senator Ken LaValle for their strong leadership to make this happen,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “This commuter service took years of hard work at the state and local levels to bring on track.” Ridership is expected to build as traffic grows on Sunrise Highway and County Road 39 in the spring, according to the statement. 

The service will operate Monday through Friday year round except for major holidays and on Fridays during the summer. It offers local L.I.R.R. trips stopping in Speonk, Westhampton Beach, Hampton Bays, Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton, Amagansett, and Montauk. Select trains connect with the shuttle bus services to workplaces and employment centers. 

The current schedule will be in effect through May 17. Summer timetables will be available early in May.

One week after members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife asked the East Hampton Town Board to institute a ban on hunting on one weekend day, a representative of the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance delivered that group’s contrasting point of view.

Members of the Group for Wildlife told the board that, beyond their belief that hunting is inhumane, some residents feel that hiking and other recreation in the woods are hazardous during hunting season, while others are upset by the noise of firearms. Banning hunting on one weekend day, one said, would provide “one day of peace, quiet, and safety.” 

Terry O’Riordan, a director, treasurer, and secretary of the Sportsmen’s Alliance, told the board on Tuesday that the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service control hunting regulations, “and believe me when I say they are very specific, detailed, and strictly enforced. Counties, towns, and villages cannot usurp these higher authorities” with respect to hunting regulations and wildlife management, he said. 

Referring to the Group for Wildlife’s message to “share our town land” in an ad in last week’s issue of The Star, Mr. O’Riordan said that hunters “have been sharing East Hampton Town lands with non-hunters for centuries.” The alliance numbers roughly 100 members, all of whom are residents or own property in the town, he said, and East Hampton’s hunters are a diverse group that includes conservationists and scientists. “They are the very fabric of our town and have been so for many generations.” 

Hunters, Mr. O’Riordan said, “have never asked to have exclusive rights to town-owned land for hunting,” while “the proposed ban contradicts the very word ‘share.’ ”

For most people, weekends are the only time for leisure, Mr. O’Riordan said, and deer hunting with firearms was permitted for just 26 days in January. “That is only 7 percent of the entire year!” he said, and just seven of those 26 days were weekend days. Losing half of those weekend days to a ban, and perhaps more to extreme winter weather conditions, would be unfairly restrictive, he said, while “non-hunters still maintain all 365 days to occupy and use town woods and lands.” 

No member of the Sportsmen’s Alliance could recall an incident in which a hunter shot a nonhunter, Mr. O’Riordan said. “Considering how much the population of our town has grown in the past 15 to 20 years, that’s a pretty good safety record.” 

The Sportsmen’s Alliance “adamantly believes that any such hunting ban on town lands would contradict centuries-long local traditions,” he said. “As Woody Guthrie sang, ‘This land is your land, this land is my land.’ ”

A plan for a tree farm in Bridgehampton that would include housing for agricultural laborers has been met with fierce opposition from neighbors. 

The owner of a nine-acre agricultural reserve at 625 Butter Lane in Bridgehampton is seeking permission from the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to construct two buildings totaling more than 2,000 square feet for the workers. The proposal requires variances because the structures would fall within the allowed setbacks from adjoining properties. Adam Shapiro, the manager of the limited liability company that owns the parcel and a co-founder of the investment firm East Rock Capital, was represented at the Feb. 7 meeting of the zoning board by his lawyer, John Bennett. 

According to documents submitted with Mr. Shapiro’s application, the agricultural reserve was created in 1996 when the land, which had been owned by the Hampton Day School, was subdivided. At the time, the town’s planning board designated a 200-foot-wide building area for accessory structures on the western side of the property. 

When that building area was drawn, Mr. Bennett said, the board failed to take into account the town code’s requirement that agricultural buildings “shall be no less than 200 feet from any side or rear lot line and 150 feet from any front lot line.” The size of the building area, he said, makes it impossible to meet the required setbacks. 

The proposed site plan for the parcel also calls for a nearly 3,000-square-foot greenhouse, located to the east of the housing, a 648-square-foot structure for storage, a parking area, a freestanding bathroom facility for customers of the greenhouse, and an outdoor kitchen. 

Although residential housing is not allowed on an agricultural reserve, Mr. Bennett said that the proposed buildings, which would house six people who would run the farm, should be considered agricultural accessory structures. 

In a Dec. 13 letter to the zoning board, the town’s planning board, which had been asked to review the application, said it was “generally supportive” of permitting the reduced setbacks for the housing, but recommended that the Z.B.A. limit the number of people who could live there. It suggested locating the buildings farther east (away from adjoining properties), and moving the greenhouse farther west. 

Michele Green, whose backyard abuts the property, is one of several neighbors who have vehemently opposed the proposal, both in letters to town officials, and during appearances at Z.B.A. meetings. 

The proposed housing would be “steps away from our family pool,” Dr. Green wrote in one letter. “I have two young daughters ages 10 and 14 who would no longer be comfortable using the pool if workers were indeed being housed steps away from them.” 

At the Feb. 7 meeting of the Z.B.A., Patrick Fife, a lawyer representing Dr. Green, asked the board to deny the variance request, and to send the applicant back to the planning board to determine a conforming location on the property where the housing could be built. He also submitted studies, which he said showed that only one or two employees, rather than six, would be needed to tend to the farm. 

Kevin Cox, another neighbor who spoke at the meeting, distributed a 20-page pamphlet outlining his objections to the buildings, which he said would “cause severe, negative consequences to the integrity and character of the community” by disrupting the existing open vista. The proposed 27-foot height of the greenhouse, he said, was neither “reasonable nor necessary” and would be visible to neighbors for most of the year.

In response to the critiques of the site plan, Mr. Bennett said that his client intended to install a vegetative buffer that would screen the proposed buildings. The planning board’s suggestion to swap the location of the housing and the greenhouse would not be practical for the operation of the tree farm, he said. As for limiting the occupancy of the housing, he said that his client was open to signing a covenant stating that no more than six people would live there. 

Addressing Mr. Fife’s recommendation that the applicant be sent back to the planning board, Mr. Bennett said it would be a “waste of time and absurd to send it back to them” because the board had already offered its support for the proposal. 

Adam Grossman, the chairman of the zoning board, said the public hearing on the matter will remain open. The application will be revisited at a meeting on March 21.

A plan to relocate East Hampton Town’s shellfish hatchery that envisions a combined educational center and exemplar of environmentalism and sustainability was unveiled at Town Hall on Tuesday, as a proposal to consolidate the hatchery and nursery at one site moved closer to fruition. 

The Gann Road Environmental Education and Nature Center, or GREEN Center, would be housed at 36 Gann Road on Three Mile Harbor, a 1.1-acre property the town purchased with $2.1 million from the community preservation fund last year. Conceptual plans, as illustrated by Councilman David Lys at the town board’s work session, call for solar panels and walkways, a low-nitrogen septic system, rainwater collection, rain garden, bioswales, a permeable reactive barrier, and permeable pavement on Gann Road to capture runoff before it enters the harbor. 

It would also house the shellfish hatchery, which seeds town waterways with millions of filter-feeding juvenile clams, oysters, and scallops, and for myriad reasons should be moved from its Fort Pond Bay, Montauk, site, said its director, John (Barley) Dunne. 

Along with the purchase of 36 Gann Road, which is contiguous to the town’s aquaculture nursery site, Marine Patrol headquarters, and the commercial dock, last year the town was awarded a $400,000 Empire State Development grant to expand and upgrade its shellfish hatchery. The town plans to allocate that grant toward design, permitting, and preliminary construction costs for the new facility, and then apply for further grant money to finance construction. The town must match 10 percent of the project’s estimated $2.65 million cost. 

The oceanic waters of Fort Pond Bay, significantly colder than inner bay waters and lacking the nutrients shellfish need to grow, are unsuitable for a nursery, Mr. Dunne said, hence the nursery’s 1998 move to Three Mile Harbor. “It works as a hatchery,” Mr. Dunne said of the Montauk location, “because we supplement the hatchery stage with food.” Of the 30-minute travel time between the hatchery and nursery, “off the bat that’s over 12 percent of your day gone,” he said. “That transport between the hatchery and nursery stresses juvenile shellfish. Not only are they being put into bucket or cooler and driven half an hour, we’ve got different temperatures, salinity, pH, everything.” Some 45 percent of the juvenile scallops can be lost, representing 5.2 million fewer gallons of water filtered every day, were all of those scallops to reach maturity, he said. 

Consolidating the hatchery and nursery would eliminate that condition and reduce costs and inefficiencies, he told the board, and a hatchery more centrally located in the town would enhance educational opportunities. “We think there’s innumerable benefits,” he said.  

The town has until April 1 to formally accept the grant. Assuming that it does, design of a new hatchery would begin based on current needs and technology and using current equipment. The 2,500-square-foot house on the property would be converted to offices and an educational center, and the driveway might be changed from the Babes Lane access to Gann Road, Mr. Lys said. 

Classrooms and meeting space for the town’s water quality technical advisory committee and the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee could be housed at the site, Mr. Lys said, and volunteer training for water quality-related projects, septic-system informational events, and partnerships with local environmental groups were also envisioned. 

Construction could begin sometime next year, Mr. Lys said. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc called the grant “a $400,000 jumpstart” to further the concept of consolidating the shellfish hatchery and nursery, one that puts the town in a better position to receive additional grants. “Sustainability, improving energy efficiency, using renewables, treating stormwater runoff, public education — a myriad of cases strengthens our position for grant funding.”

Long Island was once a primary producer of shellfish, which in addition to filtering water create habitat for other species and increase biodiversity on bottomlands. Overharvesting and development on land led to depletion, and algal blooms in the mid-1980s devastated local shellfish populations along with eelgrass, which provides critical habitat. The shellfish hatchery was established in response, and a 1987 grant from Gov. Mario Cuomo allowed the former Navy building on Fort Pond Bay to be converted to a hatchery. Three decades later, the state, under Mr. Cuomo’s son Gov. Andrew Cuomo, provided the grant allowing its upgrade.

Simmering tension on the East Hampton Town Board erupted last Thursday during a discussion about the town’s settlement with Marc Rowan, the billionaire who bought Duryea’s fish market in Montauk in 2014. 

There was nothing pertaining to the settlement on the meeting’s agenda, but in the public portion David Buda, a Springs resident and frequent critic of the board, spoke disparagingly about the town’s action, which brought to an end several years of dispute over the use of and plans for the property. As part of the settlement, Mr. Rowan, co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, will apply to the town’s planning board for restaurant use, legalizing table service where it was technically disallowed.

As he has in the past, Mr. Buda complained that information pertaining to litigation is not aired publicly, nor had the board publicly voted on whether to settle with Mr. Rowan’s corporate entities. The town could be engaged in multiple lawsuits at any given time, he said, and “the vast majority of this litigation occurs out of the public’s view.” 

Councilman Jeff Bragman, who himself has criticized his colleagues with respect to environmental review and other procedural matters, sometimes casts a lone dissenting vote, and often demonstrates a frustration that is impossible to miss, supported Mr. Buda’s contentions. “I’ve been concerned about this settlement since it was first disclosed to me,” he said in what would become a lengthy monologue. “It was never discussed in public. I do want to say, this is a pretty good deal for the other side. I don’t see this as a good deal for the town.” 

Such matters should be discussed and voted on publicly, Mr. Bragman, who is also an attorney, continued. He said he opposed not only the settlement but “the almost supine reaction” of the town in crafting it, which he said “completely greenlights a major restaurant.” 

“I don’t think we fought hard enough for the Town of East Hampton, or for Montauk,” Mr. Bragman continued. Mr. Rowan, one of the wealthiest men in America, will turn Duryea’s into “an upscale, high-society restaurant. I don’t think we have to sit back and salute him in doing that. I want to see some fight here. . . . It does seem to have glided through the board behind the scenes.”

As the other board members listened to Mr. Bragman’s remarks, Michael Sendlenski, the town attorney, asked for the floor. The town has five “very dedicated” attorneys “who work very hard, every day, fighting for the people of the town,” he said, his voice quickly rising. “I cannot sit, and will not sit in this seat and be told that someone in my office didn’t fight hard enough. I won’t sit quietly and let him besmirch my office. . . . I won’t sit here and have people tell me my office doesn’t work hard enough, especially by the councilman who has refused to meet with me.” (Mr. Bragman later disputed that assertion.) 

While three of the five attorneys had recused themselves with respect to the Duryea’s settlement because of conflicts of interest — “my office does it the right way,” Mr. Sendlenski said — he and John Jilnicki, a senior assistant town attorney, were thorough in working toward a settlement that would bring the property “into compliance and order,” he said. “No one is giving them anything.” 

The stipulation of settlement had been circulated to the board, Mr. Sendlenski said, and he is always available to board members. “I really couldn’t sit in my chair and be told my office wasn’t fighting hard enough for East Hampton,” he repeated. “Each board member, with the exception of maybe one . . . knows how hard my office works every day.” 

Mr. Bragman replied that he had “never ducked a meeting with you,” which Mr. Sendlenski disputed. The councilman said that he was not criticizing Mr. Sendlenski or the other attorneys, rather that his comment about “not fighting hard enough” was directed at the board itself. 

“Did you work hard enough on this?” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc pointedly asked Mr. Bragman. The question went unanswered, and the discussion continued.

On the heels of the East Hampton Town Board’s Feb. 7 vote to ban the intentional release of balloons, the town trustee who was among those drawing attention to their detrimental impact on marine life is now advocating an outright ban on the sale or distribution of Mylar balloons. 

“It’s not too soon,” Susan McGraw Keber, who last year designed a “balloon fish” illustration crafted from found balloons to convey the message that they pose a hazard to marine life, told her colleagues on Monday. Mylar balloons are banned on Block Island, and other jurisdictions have enacted similar prohibitions, she said. “I’d like to see us ban Mylar balloons. They’re really deleterious to the environment. . . . This is singling out a specific material that is very harmful. And they seem to be everywhere now.”

Her colleagues agreed. “They show up on our beaches all the time,” said Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk. 

Mylar is the brand name for a type of stretched polyester film. It is found in products such as food packaging, and is used as a protective covering, an electrical and thermal insulator, and reflective material. 

Unlike latex balloons, Mylar balloons can be manufactured to form shapes when inflated, such as hearts, stars, letters, and numbers. They feature a shiny surface and often bear birthday, holiday, or other special occasion messages. 

At the town board’s Feb. 7 meeting, speakers including Kimberly Durham of the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society spoke of the mortal danger that balloons and the ribbons or strings typically tied to them pose to animals such as sea turtles, seals, dolphins, and whales. “Ingestion, whether directly or indirectly through their food, is a major threat to New York’s marine mammals and sea turtles,” she told the board. The ribbon or string can constrict and cut deeply into flesh, restricting breathing. 

The trustees agreed to draft a letter supporting a ban, which will be forwarded to the town board.

Members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, asserting that residents are unsafe in the woods during hunting season, are asking the East Hampton Town Board to institute a ban on hunting on one weekend day. 

Hunting rules and regulations are set by the state and enforced by state conservation officers, as well as by federal Fish and Wildlife agents where migratory birds are concerned, according to the town’s hunting guide for the 2018-19 season. While local municipalities cannot pass laws regulating hunting seasons, they can decide whether to permit hunting within their jurisdiction. Private landowners may also permit hunting on their properties. 

Deer hunting with firearms was permitted from Jan. 6 through Jan. 31 this year. Bow hunting for deer was permitted from Oct. 31 through Jan. 31. Hunting for some types of smaller game and some birds extends into February and March. 

A longtime state ban on weekend hunting was lifted four years ago. While the Group for Wildlife considers hunting inhumane, some residents are upset by the noise of firearms as well as what they say is a hazardous condition for hiking and other recreational activities, for themselves as well as their pets. 

At the town board’s meeting last Thursday, Carol Saxe of Springs, who is the group’s representative to the town’s wildlife management advisory committee, asked the board to partially reinstate the weekend ban, suggesting that hunting be prohibited on Sunday. 

“About 6 percent of the population in the United States hunts,” she told the board, and only around 1 percent consumes their prey. “The vast majority of East Hampton Town residents do not hunt,” she said. Members of the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society had opposed the lifting of the weekend ban, she said, while others complain about gun noise, which she said starts around 5:30 a.m. “If you live anywhere near water . . . sleeping is out of the question,” she said.

Expanding hunting to reduce the deer population is unproductive, she said, referring to studies on “compensatory rebound effect,” the response by which a sudden increase in food resources, due to a sudden decrease in the population, induces a high reproductive rate. 

A partial reinstatement of a ban would give hunters one weekend day to hunt while preserving a day for the public’s safe access to town lands on weekends, Ms. Saxe said. “We’re asking for one day of peace, quiet, and safety,” she told the board. 

Ronnie Manning spoke of how gunfire disturbs the peace and frightens her dog when she is walking it. “It seems a majority of town land is reserved for the hunters,” she said, while harsh winter weather often precludes walking, and walking dogs, on beaches. “If you’re by yourself in the woods and have good control, there’s no reason not to let your dog run free,” she said, “except we have to be in fear that we could be in the crossfire. . . . Why can’t we share the land more?” 

A ban on hunting one day per week represents a “fair and reasonable” compromise, Ms. Saxe said. 

The Group for Wildlife’s proposal was discussed at recent meetings of the wildlife management advisory committee, Ms. Saxe wrote to the town board on Monday, and she asked that it be put on the board’s work session agenda for public discussion. But the feeling among her group is that hunters and their advocates dominate the wildlife management advisory committee. 

“The committee is composed primarily of hunters and individuals who support hunting,” she wrote. “As a representative of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, I have a voice on the committee but no meaningful vote since I’m outnumbered by the imbalance of the group. I vote alone as the only committed voice for nonviolent and humane management of our wildlife.” 

Only three members attended the most recent meeting of the wildlife management advisory committee, Councilman David Lys, the board’s liaison to the committee, said at the board’s Feb. 19 meeting, and two opposed reinstating a ban. 

The sound of gunfire “travels for miles across the harbors and affects residential neighborhoods far and wide,” Ms. Saxe wrote to the board. “Gun noise is not merely disturbing, it can cause fear in young children and pets.” The board, she wrote, “must decide whether it represents only hunters or the entire community, and whether it will maintain safe, fair, and shared utilization of town-owned land.” 

At the town board’s meeting last Thursday, only Councilman Jeff Bragman stated a position on the Group for Wildlife’s proposal, voicing support for a ban on hunting on one weekend day.

The East Hampton Town Board has scheduled a public hearing next Thursday at which comment for or against an amendment to the town code that would require residents to obtain new permit stickers for parking and driving on beaches will be heard. The hearing will be held during the board’s meeting that starts at 6:30 p.m. in the meeting room at Town Hall. 

Current stickers issued for parking and driving on beaches do not expire. Members of the board, mindful that more than 30,000 such permits have been issued — a number that exceeds the population of the town — have voiced the concern that many vehicles bearing current permits were subsequently sold to nonresidents, who would not be authorized to use them. 

The town trustees, who manage common lands, including beaches, on behalf of the public, support the board’s plan to implement a new permit scheme. 

Should the board vote to enact the amendment, new, color-coded beach vehicle permits would expire on Dec. 31 in years ending in 5 or 0. They would still be free to residents, while nonresidents, whose permits would expire at the end of every year, would be assessed $375. 

Permits would become available sometime this year, become mandatory in 2020, and expire in 2025, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in December. Permits for 2025 to 2030 would become available in 2024, he said. 

Another change would require that those operating a vehicle on the beach be equipped with a fire extinguisher, along with the tow rope or chain, jack, and spare tire required at present. 

Councilman David Lys voted against scheduling the public hearing. His concern, he told his colleagues at a previous meeting, is that an amendment to the code at this time could have an unintended effect on a dispute over driving at a section of ocean beach on Napeague. Property owners adjacent to what is sometimes called Truck Beach filed a lawsuit seeking to enact restrictions on driving there. They were unsuccessful but have appealed the decision.