A pedestrian and cyclist-friendly Amagansett characterized by its walkability is the long-term goal, as outlined by the hamlet study that will be the subject of a public hearing at the East Hampton Town Board’s meeting tonight at 6:30. The hearing will be held in the Town Hall meeting room. 

“The consulting team prepared illustrative master plans for Amagansett’s commercial centers that are meant to capture the community’s shared vision of a preserved historic Main Street hamlet center” and a complementary, service-oriented and pedestrian-friendly eastern business district, according to a report issued in January by the consultants engaged to study each of the town’s hamlets, Peter Flinker of Dodson and Flinker, a Massachusetts consulting firm, and Lisa Liquori of Fine Arts and Sciences, a former town planning director. 

Protection of the farmland north of the hamlet’s center; new mixed-use buildings clustered within a landscaped, pedestrian-only zone; parking consolidated across several lots and sharing access, and extended pedestrian links are among the recommendations for the hamlet’s commercial center, as proposed by the consultants. A solution to wastewater treatment that would allow the addition of second-story apartments to existing buildings is another. The town might rebuild the municipal parking lot north of Main Street with a bioswale to capture and filter runoff, with new trees for shade, the consultants suggested. And pedestrian paths and plazas might replace unnecessary curb cuts and driveways. 

“One of the ongoing economic issues in Amagansett is the lack of affordable worker housing near the commercial centers,” the report said. “Even many of the business owners in these commercial areas are increasingly unable to afford real estate in the hamlet. Providing lower-cost housing in the hamlet is therefore linked to the long-term viability of these businesses.”

In the area of Amagansett’s Long Island Rail Road station, east of the business district, the consultants proposed relocating the station’s entrance farther to the east and adding parking spaces, “pocket parks,” and landscaping in transition areas. Parking on the north side of the railroad track, with a separate pedestrian crossing of the track, should be considered, the report said. 

The awkward intersection of Old Stone Highway, Abram’s Landing Road, and Montauk Highway, over which the railroad track also crosses, should be realigned, the study concluded, and the Bistrian building materials yard might be relocated and replaced with a mixed-use structure that could be an attractive landmark at the hamlet’s eastern entrance. 

Farther east, around the I.G.A., the supermarket’s existing parking lot could be replaced with a new interior street with angled and parallel parking, sidewalks, and street trees. New mixed-use structures along the street frontage would reflect the character of the hamlet’s center, and a small park or plaza could serve as a focal point. A continuous parking area across lot lines would provide for parking and circulation behind stores. Proposed housing east of the I.G.A. complex should be situated farther from the road to create a larger mixed-use recreation field and preserve the view from the road, the report said. 

Some participants in the information-gathering stage of the hamlet study expressed the hope that the sidewalk on the south side of Montauk Highway could be widened to accommodate bicyclists. Adding and improving crosswalks was another theme.

Public hearings were held for the Wainscott hamlet study on Oct. 4, and East Hampton’s on Oct. 18. Hearings will continue at the board’s Nov. 15 meeting, at which Springs will be considered, and at its meeting on Dec. 6, when a public hearing is scheduled for Montauk’s hamlet study. 

The studies began in 2015, with public input beginning the following year. The consultants have presented updates since then based on public comment from individuals, the hamlets’ citizens advisory committees, chambers of commerce, and East Hampton Village. The goal is to adopt recommendations for each hamlet to be incorporated into the town’s comprehensive plan.

Representative Lee Zeldin’s campaign first paid for a night at the conservative mega-donor Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas in June 2016. 

Zeldin for Congress paid for a stay there amid the gilded faux-Italian decor again the following month. Other visits followed, in September 2017 and three times in the first half of 2018. 

The long-game bet paid off; Mr. Adelson’s companies made direct contributions to the Zeldin campaign committee of at least $14,000 this year alone. Far more flowed to House Republicans indirectly from super PACs that Mr. Adelson supports financially.

As Mr. Zeldin’s political star has risen in his two terms in Congress, so too has his campaign’s spending on travel and related expenses.

These have included trips to Los Angeles and to Florida golf resorts, as well as dozens of flights whose destinations cannot be determined from official disclosures.

Congressional campaign committees are required to give records of their fund-raising and spending to the Federal Election Commission each quarter. Zeldin for Congress has dutifully sent reports to Washington since 2014. An examination of these by The Star showed that the campaign’s travel spending outpaced that of other members of the Long Island Congressional delegation, as well as that of his Democratic opponent in Tuesday’s midterm election, Perry Gershon.

If hotel stays and airfare are a measure of a Congressional candidate’s fund-raising effort, Mr. Zeldin’s campaign has been going all out. Between Jan. 1, 2017, and June 30, 2018, his committee spent more than $49,000 on air travel, hotels, taxis, and related expenses, according to the F.E.C. By comparison, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York spent about $40,000 during the same period.

Mr. Zeldin’s campaign travel expenses are in addition to a House allowance from which he has drawn more than $95,000 since he was first sworn in in 2015.

Gershon for Congress listed $640 in travel expenses and no expenditures for airfare. The two campaigns have amassed roughly the same amount in contributions and loans.

Hotel stays paid for by Zeldin for Congress from 2014 to June included a Miami Marriott, the Boca Raton Waterstone and Waldorf Astoria, and the PGA National Resort and Spa in West Palm Beach, Fla. There were three stays on separate occasions at the Dallas Hilton and three nights in April at the Wequasset Resort and Golf Club in Harwich, Mass.

In July 2017, Zeldin for Congress spent $1,700 at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Farmington, Pa., between the 17th and 24th. Also during that period, the campaign fund was billed three times for Amazon purchases of $3.99, $5.99, and $78.18 that were listed as “social media.” Chris Boyle, a Zeldin for Congress press spokesman, said that Mr. Zeldin has been at the resort for a National Republican Congressional Committee meeting and that two of the charges had been disputed with the credit card company and the other was for office frames.

Campaign money raised by candidates and members of Congress are largely restricted to election efforts and duties while in office. They cannot be used for their own or their family’s personal use or enjoyment.

In May, the campaign paid for several days at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manhattan’s Times Square, during which Mr. Zeldin appeared on Fox News, then took his wife and children to a Mets game against the Phillies.

Spending at gas stations on Long Island is one of the several areas in which Zeldin for Congress also stands out as an anomaly.

Well over half of the stations where Mr. Zeldin’s congressional campaign spent money since 2014 were beyond the First Congressional District boundaries. Federal Election Commission regulations prohibit the use of campaign funds for personal travel.

A close look at the campaign’s gas expenses by The Star showed:

• Well over half of the Zeldin for Congress gas spending from 2014-18 was at six out-of-district stations, all within Representative Peter King’s Second District.

• From mid-2014 through June of this year, Zeldin for Congress paid for gas on more than 400 separate occasions, totaling above $20,000. Of that, between $10,000 and $11,000 was spent at the six stations in Mr. King’s district. 

• One station in particular, a 76 East on Carleton Avenue off the Sunrise Highway in Islip, was listed as making 185 sales to the Zeldin committee since the end of 2016 alone; it has since closed. Another 23 sales were made at a USA Gas less than a block south on Carleton Avenue. Forty-two transactions took place at a Husco gas station about a mile away on Route 27A. All three are in Mr. King’s Second District.

Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Zeldin for Congress, said that the gas purchases were for Mr. Zeldin’s rides to and from John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia Airports when traveling to and from Washington. He said none of the trips were for personal travel by either the congressman or his wife, Diana Zeldin, a legal assistant who works for a Melville firm.

Zeldin for Congress made more than 400 gas purchases between mid-2014 and June, 2018, spending  more than $20,000, half of which was in another member of Congress's district. (Click to enlarge.)

On its face, the amount the Zeldin committee spent on gas is a tiny slice of the campaign’s millions in expenses over the years, but it has drawn attention nonetheless. Almost all of the transactions have been on Long Island, among just a handful of stations, including during periods when Mr. Zeldin was in Washington and his campaign efforts in hibernation.

The only other out-of-district gas charges were on four separate dates in winter 2017, at the same Speedway station just off Interstate 80 in Harrisville, Pa., and a handful in Washington, D.C. 

The top eight gas sellers listed in the disclosures cluster around Brentwood, Bay Shore, and Patchogue. Mr. Zeldin’s five campaign offices are more widely dispersed, in Smithtown, Port Jefferson, Center Moriches, Riverhead, and Hampton Bays; his district office is on Oak Street in Patchogue, a two-minute drive from a Mobil gas station that has been frequently used by the campaign, according to the F.E.C disclosures.

Zeldin for Congress is an outlier among members of the Long Island House delegation in billing gas costs to the campaign committee. Representative King listed just three such fuel charges in 2017 and 2018, although his campaign racked up more than $72,000 in unitemized American Express charges. 

For all of 2015 and 2016, an election year, Representative Kathleen Rice of the Fourth District had no gas expenses, though her campaign logged dozens of trips on the Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak.

Some unknown portion of the Zeldin campaign gas station expenses may not be for automotive fuel as well; 29 transactions for less than $20 are found in the F.E.C. reports. Gas cards for campaign staff are listed separately; those generally were in the thousands of dollars and were mostly paid for at Speedways in Farmingville and Bayport.

The Federal Election Commission uses what it calls the “irrespective test” to determine when campaign spending is a legitimate expense and when it is not. The rule of thumb is if the cost would arise irrespective of a candidacy or an official in office, then the personal use ban applies. Things like household food and clothing, tuition, or entertainment outside of a campaign event are off limits. 

With vehicle expenses, determining what is allowed and what is not is trickier. Campaign committees are supposed to keep contemporaneous logs to help the election commission review questionable costs. If identified, the beneficiary of the banned personal use expenses must reimburse the committee within 30 days. 

Also notable among Mr. Zeldin’s filings are Uber car charges, including in February 2017 on the same day that the congressman appeared on Fox News from a New York City studio. One aspect of the Uber trips is that they often came on the same day that the campaign was also apparently filling up on gas at one of its preferred stations. Because of the way Uber handles transactions, the locations of the nearly 200 trips the campaign paid for could not be determined.

Questions about Mr. Zeldin’s personal financial disclosures have come from First District Democrats. In June, Sue Hornick of Bellport filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics alleging that he had neglected to provide his and his wife’s income and bank account details as well as having no assets other than an Arizona rental property.

Two days removed from the latest mass shooting and with a fresh backdrop of domestic terrorism directed at Democratic leaders who are frequent targets of President Trump’s rhetoric, gun policy and other national issues dominated Monday’s debate between Representative Lee Zeldin and his challenger, Perry Gershon. 

The event, held at Hampton Bays High School and hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, was one of the only public face-to-face debates between the candidates seeking to serve New York’s First Congressional District.

Mr. Gershon, the Democratic candidate who polls suggest is trailing the Republican incumbent, repeatedly accused Mr. Zeldin of “performance art” and distraction, and many in the standing-room audience agreed with him, sometimes erupting in jeers at Mr. Zeldin’s remarks. The tension in the auditorium reflected the national mood: Saturday’s shooting of 18 at a Pittsburgh synagogue, 11 of them fatally; last week’s racially-motivated double homicide in Kentucky, and the dozen-plus bombs mailed by a Republican supporter of President Trump to Democrats, CNN, and Democratic donors cast a pall over a lively and sometimes heated discussion. 

A questioner noted that the mayor of Pittsburgh had responded to the president’s suggestion, in the wake of the slaughter, that armed guards be present at houses of worship by saying that “the approach that we need to be looking at is how we take the guns — which is the common denominator of every mass shooting in America — out of the hands of those that are looking to express hatred through murder.” Mr. Zeldin, a strong supporter of the president, said that he agreed, and that criminals, terrorists, and the mentally ill should not have firearms, but pivoted to “tackling the hate that caused it,” remarks on religious freedom, and the need for unity in the country. 

“The question was on guns specifically,” Mr. Gershon said, adding that he was equally disturbed by both the mass shooting and the bombs sent to “perceived opponents of the President of the United States.” Both acts, he said, were “an out-product of the poisoned rhetoric that’s filling our country,” and called Mr. Trump its “major proponent.” “He wants to blame the press as the enemy of the state, but he doesn’t take responsibility himself for his own words,” he said. 

Mr. Gershon referred to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, criticizing the president’s equating of white supremacists and those demonstrating against the former group’s “ultra-disgusting display of racism and hatred.” The president’s words, he said, “give license to lunatics who may have deep-seated anti-Semitic rage but keep it quiet to come out and show their passion. If we allow people like that, because of the tone in the country, to come out and show their emotions, they’re going to do it.”

The Pittsburgh shooter had posted anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim as well as anti-Semitic invective and conspiracy theories on a social media network. He was also critical of HIAS, which was founded as a Jewish immigrant aid group but now focuses on refugee resettlement for non-Jews. HIAS had recently issued a statement urging the federal government to respect the right to seek asylum by migrants in a caravan walking toward the United States from Central America. Mr. Trump has repeatedly cited the caravan as a threat to the country. “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” the shooter wrote on the social media site Gab. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.” 

Mr. Zeldin rejected Mr. Gershon’s statement. “For so much of that answer to be focused on putting blame on the president of the United States for what happened in Pittsburgh, I think, is pretty outrageous,” he said, to scattered jeers. In fact, he said, the shooter “carried out the act because he thought the president of the United States was being too friendly toward Jews.” Both Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Gershon are Jewish. 

“What’s outrageous,” Mr. Gershon said, “is the way you love to twist my words.” Mr. Trump was not responsible for the shooter’s anti-Semitism, he said, but “the atmosphere that Donald Trump has created in this country that suggests that certain bad acts can be tolerated, encouraging violence at rallies, creates an atmosphere where the lunatics come out and do their thing.” The president is “enabling anti-Semitism in America by not taking responsibility for his own words, and not condemning hate and violence the way he should be. It’s not the media that’s responsible for what’s happened, it’s the rhetoric in this country, and it’s got to stop.” 

The tension reached a crescendo when state and national gun policies were soon revisited. Mr. Gershon, who said he supports the Second Amendment, also said that the ban on assault weapons should be reinstated, and he criticized the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would require all states to recognize concealed carry permits by other states and allow permit holders to carry a concealed weapon in any state. Mr. Zeldin is a co-sponsor of the legislation, which passed in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate. 

Mr. Zeldin said that he introduced the Protect America Act, which he called “a very clear-cut, common-sense way to ensure that any known or suspected terrorist is not able to purchase a firearm.” But the burden of proof, he said, “should be on the government to show that there is evidence that an individual is a suspected terrorist. I do believe there should be due process for that purchaser to have notice to a hearing, right to counsel at a hearing.” Existing laws should be better enforced, he added, but “as soon as there is a shooting, that you automatically go blame your member of Congress as if they pulled the trigger, it’s not helping.” 

Mr. Gershon blasted congressional inaction in the face of regular mass shootings in schools and other public places. Mr. Zeldin responded by citing a message Mr. Gershon posted on his campaign’s Facebook page on Monday. Referring to the shooting in Pittsburgh, Mr. Gershon wrote, in part, “If you want to say I am politicizing a tragedy, I most certainly am! If one does not speak up for change, it never occurs.” 

“You want to know why nothing happens?” Mr. Zeldin said angrily. “I give you credit for it: You didn’t just politicize it, you actually said, ‘I am politicizing this tragedy.’ You haven’t even buried the people yet in Pittsburgh, and you are. . . .” The rest of his statement was obscured by a loud and sustained chorus of boos, along with scattered applause. 

The candidates also clashed on health care. Mr. Gershon said that the Affordable Care Act, the legislation popularly known as Obamacare and which Republicans have repeatedly sought to repeal, must stand so that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied insurance. “The ultimate goal must be universal health care,” he said. “I support a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system,” he said, but added that implementation of such a system is not imminent.

Mr. Zeldin, who voted in favor of the American Health Care Act of 2017, dubbed Trumpcare, said that he is not in favor of Medicare for all. The American Health Care Act “specifically states that an insurer cannot deny coverage for someone with pre-existing conditions, including all sorts of other coverage and protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions,” he said. “We put it right into the text of the bill to make sure that we were covering people with pre-existing conditions.”

While that may be so, Mr. Gershon said, “it didn’t specify cost, which meant an insurer could charge extra for people with pre-existing conditions. . . . It gave states the ability to really let pre-existing condition coverage go away.” 

An amendment to the AHCA legislation would permit insurers to set premiums based on an individual’s current and past health status and make predictions about future medical care. The American Medical Association cited that amendment in an April 2017 letter to House leadership urging Congress to oppose the act, predicting that coverage could be rendered unaffordable for people with pre-existing conditions and that millions of Americans could lose their coverage. 

The candidates also quarreled about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. While both expressed support for the programs’ long-term existence, Mr. Zeldin seemed to equivocate. “For our seniors [and] those who are close to retirement, we have to 100-percent completely preserve and protect that commitment,” he said, but pointedly added that “at some point . . . our country needs to have a conversation” about how to ensure the programs’ survival for younger generations. “You can’t go out and scare someone who’s a 95-year-old right now,” he said, “making them think that we’re trying to change Social Security or Medicare as we know it and they’re going to lose a benefit that they desperately need.” 

“I wish you’d tell that to Mitch McConnell,” Mr. Gershon replied, referring to the Senate majority leader, who last month said that cutting programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is the only way to lower the nearly $1 trillion federal budget deficit projected for the 2019 fiscal year, a figure that has ballooned in the wake of the Republican-led tax overhaul of 2017. 

Each candidate turned a question about nitrogen overload in the district’s waterways and the proposed installation of a tidal floodgate on Dune Road in Quogue into an attack on his opponent. “Why are you are voting to support coal over renewables?” Mr. Gershon demanded of Mr. Zeldin. “Why are you voting to reduce our air quality standard? Why aren’t you standing up in opposition when the Trump administration wants to relax all of our clean air standards? Our fuel emission standards? Why aren’t you on top of these issues, which really have the long-term impact on us and our environment? And why are you happy when Trump pulled out of the Paris [Climate] Accord and made us a world pariah?”

Mr. Zeldin had a question of his own. “Why is it that your financial disclosure has an investment between $250,000 and $500,000 in offshore oil?” he asked. Mr. Gershon had lied when asked about it, he charged, referring to a Sept. 4 event at which Mr. Gershon was asked if he had investments in offshore drilling. “Why not tell the voter what the truth is?” he demanded. 

The argument continued through a question about whether or not businesses in Montauk’s downtown should retreat from rising sea level, as envisioned in the hamlet study being conducted for the Town of East Hampton (both candidates said businesses should not be required to relocate). Mr. Zeldin said, “The answer isn’t telling everyone who lives in the First Congressional District that they need to move away from the coast. This is our district, this is our home.” The Fire Island to Montauk Point reformulation project will soon be implemented to help protect the coastline, he said. 

Mr. Gershon, anxious to revisit Mr. Zeldin’s accusation, denied that he is invested in offshore oil drilling. “That was what I was asked in Mastic Beach,” he said. “I answered that I don’t, and I don’t.” The investment is in a Louisiana port that transfers oil from offshore tankers to a refinery, he said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with offshore oil drilling, and you know that, but again, you like to deflect.” 

The candidates also discussed, with fewer disagreements, the opioid epidemic, air and drinking water quality, the Trump administration’s plan to narrowly define gender, protection of the nation’s borders, and term limits. 

Election Day is Tuesday. The deadline for absentee ballots to be postmarked is Monday.

Representative Lee Zeldin was elected to a third term in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, holding off a challenge from Perry Gershon, an East Hampton resident and commercial real estate lender, in New York’s First Congressional District. 

An unofficial tally on the Suffolk County Board of Elections website had Mr. Zeldin, the Republican, Conservative, Independence, and Reform Party candidate, winning 130,919 votes to 115,795 for Mr. Gershon, who appeared on the Democratic and Working Families tickets. Mr. Zeldin’s 52.5 percent of the vote represents a far smaller margin of victory than his 2016 re-election campaign, in which he defeated former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst by 16 percentage points. 

Kate Browning, a former Suffolk County legislator and a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination, won 2,756 votes on the Women’s Equality Party ticket despite having conceded and thrown her support to Mr. Gershon after finishing second in the five-way Democratic primary election in June. 

Though victorious in his re-election campaign, Mr. Zeldin will no longer enjoy majority status in the House of Representatives; as of yesterday, Republicans appeared to have suffered a net loss of 33 seats in the election and are expected to hold 206 seats in the 435-seat chamber. The Republicans had controlled the House since the wave election of 2010, four years before Mr. Zeldin was elected. A very different dynamic will greet him in January when the newly elected Democratic majority takes over, its members assuming leadership of committees that are likely to aggressively investigate President Trump’s finances, Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. Mr. Zeldin is a stalwart supporter of the president.

“As a community and country, we must do a better job unifying to solve important challenges in front of us,” Mr. Zeldin said in a statement issued Tuesday night. “That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ever disagree with each other and productively debate substantive issues, because that is one of the reasons why this is the greatest nation in the world. I realize I can’t be all things to all people. That’s impossible, but I look forward to working with absolutely everyone and anyone to find common ground however possible to move our community, and great nation better.”

“We ran a very good campaign, an excellent campaign,” Mr. Gershon said yesterday. “We made a statement and energized our party.” He predicted that he will have earned 125,000 votes once absentee ballots are counted, which he noted is 30,000 more than Mr. Zeldin earned when he won the seat in 2014. “We did a lot right,” he said.

Mr. Gershon said he will take some time off before deciding his next course of action, and did not address a future campaign for office. Of Mr. Zeldin, he said, “I hope that Lee will use this term to do a better job of governing for all the people of New York 1. The rest of us are going to hold his feet to the fire.”

At approximately 52 percent, turnout in the First Congressional District was the highest of any midterm election in at least 20 years, according to unofficial results posted by the board of elections, which tallied 246,714 votes in the race. Approximately 16,000 absentee ballots, according to an official at the board of elections, are to be counted. 

Mr. Zeldin’s unofficial vote total, not including his eventual absentee ballot tally, is 57,580 fewer than he earned in 2016, although turnout is typically higher in a presidential election year. In the last midterm election, in 2014, he defeated the six-term Democratic representative Tim Bishop with just 94,035 votes to Mr. Bishop’s 78,722. 

On the East End, Mr. Gershon won every district in East Hampton Town and all four districts on Shelter Island. He also took 26 of Southampton’s 42 election districts and tied in one of them. Mr. Zeldin won 18 of 22 districts in Riverhead Town, and 12 of the 19 districts in Southold Town.

The candidates waged a furious campaign that included charges of fraud and the vandalism of both candidates’ campaign signs. A mailing from Mr. Zeldin’s campaign listed the wrong date as the deadline for absentee ballots to be postmarked, which had also occurred in his 2016 campaign. Mr. Zeldin also complained that voters in historically Republican areas had received absentee ballots from the board of elections with the names of the Third Congressional District Candidates, rather than those of the First.

Mr. Zeldin served four years’ active duty in the United States Army, and later in the New York State Senate. Along with his support for President Trump and frequent appearances on cable news programs, his re-election campaign events featured appearances by divisive figures associated with the president including Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, a former strategist and former deputy assistant, respectively. 

Mr. Gershon, a political newcomer, said that Mr. Trump’s 2016 election was a galvanizing event that inspired his candidacy. Throughout the campaign he hammered Mr. Zeldin for enabling the president and for votes pertaining to gun policies, the environment, and immigration, among other issues. 

Other Races

In other races in Suffolk County, Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, the Democratic, Working Families, and Women’s Equality Party candidate for comptroller, was narrowly defeated by the Republican John M. Kennedy Jr. Unofficial results gave Mr. Kennedy 50.9 percent to Mr. Schneiderman’s 49.1 percent. Judith Pascale, the Republican, Conservative, Independence, and Reform Party candidate for county clerk, defeated the Democratic candidate, DuWayne Gregory, by 52.7 percent to 45.3 percent. 

Longtime State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle was easily re-elected, the Republican, Conservative, Independence, and Reform Party candidate besting his Democratic challenger, Gregory-John Fischer, who won 41.6 percent. Demo­crats, however, took control of the State Senate on Tuesday, picking up four seats for what is expected to be a 35-to-28 majority. 

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., running on the Democratic, Working Families, Independence, and Women’s Equality tickets, was also re-elected, winning 59.8 percent to the Republican and Conservative Parties’ Patrick O’Conner’s 40.2 percent. 

In statewide races, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul were re-elected, beating back a strong challenge from the Republican candidates Marc Molinaro and Julie Killian. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, prevailed in her race against the Republican candidate, Chele Chiavacci Farley, with 54.2 percent of the vote. Thomas DiNapoli, the comptroller, was re-elected with 55.8 percent of the vote. The Democratic, Working Families, Independence, and Women’s Equality Party candidate defeated his Republican and Conservative Party challenger, Jonathan Trichter. Letitia James appeared victorious in her race for state attorney general, the board of elections’ unofficial tally giving her 50.9 percent to her Republican challenger’s 47.2 percent. 

With Reporting by Carissa Katz

Citing strong interest, the Town of East Hampton is continuing the Solarize East Hampton campaign that affords residential and commercial property owners a discounted price on solar panel installation beyond the original Oct. 31 sign-up deadline.

Discounted solar array installation is offered through GreenLogic Energy, a Southampton company selected as the campaign’s designated solar installer. Upon signing up for Solarize East Hampton, GreenLogic guides property owners through the process, which begins with a free consultation, site assessment, and estimate. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc had a rooftop solar electric system installed on his house through the program this year. “We paid nothing out of pocket; roughly half of the total cost will be covered by state and federal tax credits, and low-interest financing covers the rest,” he said in a statement issued yesterday. “We are meeting all of our energy needs, while also providing clean, renewable energy to the grid.”

The campaign is part of Energize East Hampton, a renewable energy initiative launched in May that connects residents and businesses to programs that lower energy bills and consumption, and furthers the town’s efforts to reach its communitywide 100-percent renewable energy goals. The program is available to building owners in East Hampton Town, including East Hampton Village. Information and sign-up are at energizeeh.org/solar, or at the town’s Natural Resources Department at 300 Pantigo Road, Suite 107, in East Hampton.

Energize East Hampton also offers free home energy audits under the East Hampton Green Homes program, which identifies areas of energy waste and recommended energy-efficiency improvements, and South Fork Peak Savers, which offers free energy-saving “smart” thermostats to residents with central air-conditioning, rebates for some existing smart thermostats and pool pump replacements, and free commercial energy audits and LED lighting upgrades.

A full house greeted officials of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Deepwater Wind at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett on Monday as the bureau took comments on Deepwater’s construction and operations plan for the 15-turbine wind farm it proposes to construct and operate approximately 35 miles from Montauk.

The session was a chance for people to weigh in on issues they think should be considered in an environmental impact study of the plan, which Deepwater sumbitted to the bureau in June. A 30-day public comment period began on Oct. 19. The plan is available for review at public libraries in East Hampton Town and on the bureau’s website. After the comment period is up, the agency can approve the plan, disapprove it, or approve it with modifications. 

A draft environmental impact statement on the plan is expected next summer, and a final document in the fall of 2019. Separately, the State Public Service Commission is reviewing an application from Deepwater Wind under Article VII of the public utilities law, for which another round of hearings will be scheduled next year. 

Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company, built and operates the nation’s first offshore wind farm off Block Island. 

While many in the audience asked questions and delivered comments on topics ranging from commercial fishing, impacts on marine life, and utility rates, a succinct-yet-lengthy litany of concerns was read into the record by Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilman David Lys along with Francis Bock and Rick Drew of the town trustees. With individual comments limited to two minutes, they took turns reading from a joint statement that asked for more detailed studies and answers to lingering concerns.

As affected property owners and stewards of the environment, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, the town board and trustees are both legally and morally responsible “for protecting the local environment and safeguarding the values of the community.” While past studies will inform the environmental impact statement process, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, he and others pressed bureau officials to identify and evaluate the unique ecosystems to be impacted by the proposed wind farm, particularly the habitat of some 50 species of commercially valuable fish. “We insist that the Deepwater E.I.S., rather than relying on studies of similar or neighboring areas, conduct an individual review of the species present in and adjacent to East Hampton,” he said. 

Given the likelihood that the South Fork Wind Farm will ultimately be one of several offshore wind farms along the Eastern Seaboard, “greater emphasis must be given to the issues of cumulative impacts and the growth-inducing impacts of this project, given that this project may encourage and facilitate other actions that could significantly affect the environment,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. 

Deepwater’s plan states that the wind farm’s construction will minimize impacts to harder and rockier bottom habitats to the extent practical, the supervisor said, but does not explain how the impacts will be mitigated. 

Mr. Lys said that the environmental impact statement must evaluate pollution, particularly via sediment disturbance in construction and operations; ecosystem impacts on individual species, stocks, spawning, and migratory patterns, and impacts on birds, sea turtles, whales, and other marine life. He also asked for an evaluation of navigational risks posed by the wind farm’s turbines, loss of fishing gear to entanglement with the installation, and transit lanes. 

The environmental statement, he said, should also identify and evaluate impacts on near-shore fish and other species; impacts on land species due to installation and maintenance of the wind farm’s transmission cable, and interference with public recreation during the cable’s installation, maintenance, and decommissioning. It should also address any health effects of the cable’s electromagnetic field on beachgoers and those living in proximity to its underground route from the wind farm to the Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton. (Deepwater Wind has chosen the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott as the preferred landfall site for the transmission cable.) 

Short and long-term impacts of the project may not be initially known, Mr. Bock said. “Accordingly, protocols must be developed for baseline data collection and the ability to adjust operating procedures based on the occurrence of unforeseen negative impacts.” The environmental impact statement should consider measures including routing the transmission cable to avoid sensitive habitat areas and attenuation or elimination of electromagnetic fields from the cable, he said, and the costs and benefits should be weighed against alternative courses of action. 

“There are clear gaps between the submitted information and what is minimally acceptable,” Mr. Drew told the officials, returning to a complaint he has voiced repeatedly as a deputy clerk of the trustees and member of its harbor management committee. 

Questions and comments from the audience mostly pertained to the wind farm’s environmental impact, its impact on commercial fishing, the need for additional electricity generation, and the potential for hundreds or even thousands of turbines to follow the 15 under consideration at Monday’s meeting.

Many were skeptical. Noting the importance of an environmental impact statement, Brad Loewen, chairman of the town’s fisheries advisory committee, complained about the two-minute limit on comments. “I view this as stifling of public comment,” he said. “We fishermen know the high cost to our businesses and families, our heritage, our way of life. We’re not unsophisticated climate deniers. . . . Why should we be the only ones who sacrifice ourselves for Deepwater Wind and their profit?” He asked that the wind farm be sited away from the fishing grounds at Cox’s Ledge, and that Deepwater Wind be liable for compensating fishermen for negative impacts to their livelihood. “Fisheries are bearing the full weight of this and future wind farm projects all by themselves,” he said. 

But Don Matheson, a member of the Long Island chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, said that the environmental impact statement will have to compete with last month’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasting catastrophic climate change as early as 2040 absent a radical and unprecedentedly rapid decline in fossil-fuel emissions. Climate scientists, he said, are telling us that, “to avoid creeping chaos, we need to disassemble 58 percent of the Industrial Revolution in 12 years. . . . This creeping chaos is going to creep over the town, the fishing industry, in terms of acidification of oceans. We don’t have a choice. We and communities like us all over the world have to make a decision to name our poison.” He thanked the Deepwater Wind officials for taking the financial risk “to take a baby step forward to fight climate change” and asked those in attendance to “look at this E.I.S. on fishing and the town in the context of the E.I.S. provided by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] from thousands of scientists all over the world.” 

Krae Van Sickle referred to “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters report that asserts a vast migration of fish toward the poles as the oceans warm. That report states that in the North Atlantic, “fisheries data show that in recent years, at least 85 percent of the nearly 70 federally tracked species have shifted north or deeper, or both, when compared to the norm over the past half-century.” 

“I know fishing is a way of life and I appreciate that,” said Janet Van Sickle. But, she added, citing acidification and warming of the oceans, “this way of life is far more endangered by climate change” than it is by a wind farm. 

The bureau also held a public scoping meeting last night in New Bedford, Mass. Another is scheduled for tonight in Providence, R.I.

“Please,” said Joan Tulp of Amagansett, “you do not have to make us the ideal hamlet, because we already are the ideal hamlet.”

Ms. Tulp, a member of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee and the hamlet’s unofficial mayor, addressed the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday during the public hearing on Amagansett’s hamlet study. She spoke for many residents when she asked that the document, to be incorporated into the town’s comprehensive plan if adopted, be light on sweeping transformation. “Please don’t make too many changes to Amagansett,” she said. “Most of us live there and came there because it is what it is. I would like to see it remain as much the same as possible.”

To date, public hearings on the hamlet studies, conducted by the consultants Peter Flinker of Dodson and Flinker, a Massachusetts consulting firm, and Lisa Liquori of Fine Arts and Sciences, a former town planning director, have drawn mixed reviews. The hearing on the Wainscott hamlet study, held on Oct. 4, was mostly positive, its residents seeing opportunities to alleviate traffic congestion and the critical shortage of affordable housing, connect parking lots and pedestrian and bicycle pathways, reduce nitrogen and phosphorous inputs to Georgica Pond, and reduce the strip-mall look and feel of its commercial core in favor of walkable, connected outdoor public spaces. 

By contrast, the East Hampton study was criticized at its Oct. 18 hearing, largely by residents of Springs, who predicted further stress on the already crowded corridors connecting East Hampton with their hamlet, chiefly Springs-Fireplace Road. 

The consulting team prepared master plans meant to preserve the existing character of the Amagansett Main Street commercial district while improving an eastern business district. The Amagansett residents who spoke last week were not uniform in their responses, but, apart from a nonresident’s suggestion as to how summer traffic congestion might be reduced, Ms. Tulp’s remarks conveyed the shared sense that with respect to changes in the hamlet, less is more. 

Jim MacMillan, chairman of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, summarized that group’s two years of discussions about the hamlet study. “In general, most of the members really, really like Amagansett just the way it is,” he said. “We sort of enjoy being the ‘un-Hamptons’ hamlet left, out of all of them.”  

With that said, the group did want to make its collective opinion known to the board. The committee shares the goal of “keeping as much open green space as possible,” and supports a realignment of the intersection of Montauk Highway, Old Stone Highway, and Abram’s Landing Road, near the Long Island Rail Road Station and the Long Island Power Authority substation. 

Mr. MacMillan said the advisory committee was pleased with the town’s purchase of the 555 Montauk Highway property, but felt it “should be preserved as open space and passive recreation, and never be developed or the uses increased.” The town board had drawn many Amagansett residents’ ire earlier this year when it announced that the East Hampton Library’s annual Authors Night fund-raiser would be held there. 

The committee issued a thumbs-down assessment of a recommendation for development of an eastern business district, where the post office and I.G.A. supermarket are situated. Across the country, Mr. MacMillan said, “brick-and-mortar stores remain empty due to online shopping. To add to that is sort of redundant.” The committee “absolutely does not want new mixed-use structures along the street frontage of the I.G.A. area,” he added, citing traffic congestion.

Complications due to the Suffolk County Health Department’s septic requirements and ongoing parking congestion “lead us not to recommend 

pursuing additional second-story apartments above retail stores on Main Street,” Mr. MacMillan said. Such development might also result in buildings not in character with those of the historic district, he said.

Nor does the committee recommend that five lots bordering the municipal parking lot north of Main Street, currently zoned commercial business and containing residential houses or cottages, be included in the hamlet’s historic district. “There are not any known historical features contained in any of them,” he said. 

A plan to construct affordable housing at 531 Montauk Highway will help address the lack of work force housing, he said, noting that the hamlet is already the site of a senior citizens’ housing complex at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church. “However, we still recommend a more thorough traffic study if possible,” as well as a long-term analysis of any new housing’s impact on traffic. 

Tina Piette, a member of the advisory committee who owns both property and a business in Amagansett, said that she agreed with many of the committee’s recommendations, though not with its rejection of affordable apartments over commercial buildings. “I would recommend the board, or future boards or members, look at allowing these projects to continue, which would include a study of how or where a centrally located septic system might be,” she said. “We’re way under the number of apartments that have been recommended, over and over, for people to live and work throughout the community.”

Krae Van Sickle, who lives in Springs, suggested that the Amagansett Fire Department, which has solar panels atop the firehouse and a windmill on the grounds, serve as a demonstration project to show how intermittent, renewable energy can be tapped at all times “by having batteries that store that energy for use when the renewable energy isn’t available, instead of having that facility have to run on fossil fuel that’s brought in on power lines.”

Citing last month’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserting that the window in which to avoid cataclysmic climate change is rapidly closing, Mr. Van Sickle said that “we need to take control and proactively engage with” LIPA to preclude additional fossil fuel-derived energy on the South Fork. “Be really forward in saying, ‘This is what we need in this community,’ ” he advised the board. 

An equally audacious suggestion came from another nonresident of Amagansett. “Nobody has said anything about the traffic in Amagansett,” Averill Geus told the board. “Boy, is it bad in Amagansett. Trying to get through the Main Street of Amagansett in the summer is one of the worst things anyone could imagine.” 

To alleviate the congestion, Ms. Geus, who is the East Hampton Town historian, said that Bluff Road and Town Lane, south and north of Main Street respectively, should be designated one-way streets. She did not “want to start World War III,” she said, but “if you have Bluff Road going to Montauk and you have Town Lane going back west, what’s wrong with that?” 

The hearing was closed. Finding a consensus on any further changes and a review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act will follow, Ms. Liquori told the board, and the plan will be sent to the Suffolk County Planning Commission for review before adoption. 

The hamlet study focusing on Springs will be held at the board’s meeting next Thursday. A hearing on Montauk’s hamlet study is scheduled for the board’s Dec. 6 meeting. Both will happen at 6:30 p.m. in the meeting room at Town Hall.

Basil Seggos, the commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, has announced that he will step down from that post.

Mr. Seggos has not set a date for his departure but issued a statement confirming the move. "After nearly seven years of serving New Yorkers and implementing Governor Cuomo's steadfast commitment to the environment, I made the difficult decision to leave the best job I've ever had," he said. "I'm proud that we have re-established the state's national leadership on environmental issues -- and it couldn't come at a better time, as we face an unprecedented attempt at the federal level to undermine our efforts to stave off climate change and safeguard clean air and water for future generations." Mr. Seggos said that he would remain in his post into 2019.

His statement touted accomplishments including increasing and sustaining the state's Environmental Protection Fund at $300 million for the last three years, finalizing the largest forest preserve addition in Adirondack Park's history with the Boreas Ponds acquisition, shepherding the governor's $65 million initiative to reduce the frequency of harmful algal blooms, advancing the $2.5 billion Clean Water Infrastructure Act and investing hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the state's water infrastructure, action to investigate and clean up unregulated contaminants like PFOA and PFOS, and encouraging sustainable and responsible outdoor recreation.

Orsted, Denmark's largest energy company and the world's largest offshore wind developer, has completed the acquisition of Deepwater Wind from the D.E. Shaw Group. The $510 million transaction was announced last month.

As a combined organization, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind becomes the leading American offshore wind platform, with a goal of delivering renewable energy to the eight states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia that have committed to a combined 10 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

The acquisition comes as Deepwater Wind's proposed South Fork Wind Farm, to be constructed approximately 35 miles from Montauk, is undergoing review by federal and state agencies, and the East Hampton Town Board and trustees ponder whether to grant easements or leases allowing the 15-turbine wind farm's transmission cable to make landfall at the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott, the company's preferred site. From there it would be buried along a route to the Long Island Power Authority substation near Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held a public scoping session in Amagansett on Monday, at which members of the public asked questions and made comments. The wind farm is opposed by commercial fishermen who have raised multiple concerns about its impact on navigability, fish migration patterns, and the electromagnetic field emanating from the transmission cable. Others have expressed concern about the wind farm's impact on whales and other marine life, as well as birds and bats. Questions have also been raised about the wind farm's effect on electricity rates paid by LIPA's customers.

Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind will be based in Boston and Providence, R.I. The company will begin integration over the coming weeks and months. Its Amagansett office will remain, as will all of its staff on the South Fork, Jeffrey Grybowski, co-chief executive of the newly renamed company, told The Star last month.

"We have created a world-class team, with both deep experience building large-scale offshore wind projects and intimate knowledge of the U.S. markets," Thomas Brostrom, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind's chief executive officer, said in a statement issued on Thursday. "The approval of this deal signals the importance of growing the U.S. offshore wind industry. We are moving quickly to integrate the two U.S. organizations so we can deliver large-scale clean energy projects as soon as possible. We look forward to continuing Deepwater Wind's first-class work along the Eastern Seaboard and taking the U.S. market to the next level."

"It is very exciting for two pioneering companies to join forces to create the clear leader in the U.S. offshore wind market," Mr. Grybowski said in a statement. "Our teams will now begin to merge together to advance our existing projects and to prepare for our next round of projects for the East Coast. We have very big plans for the U.S."

Tuesday is Election Day, with candidates on the ballot here for town, county, state, and federal offices. Voting takes place from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

Normally, there would be no East Hampton Town races on the midterm ballot. This year, however, Councilman David Lys, who was appointed to a vacant seat on the town board in January when Peter Van Scoyoc became supervisor, faces Manny Vilar in a special election for the one year remaining in Mr. Van Scoyoc’s term. 

Mr. Lys is running on the Democratic, East Hampton Unity, and Working Families lines. Mr. Vilar is on the Republican and Conservative tickets. A first sergeant with the New York State Parks Police, he is also the founding president of the Police Benevolent Association of New York State. He ran for town supervisor last year. 

Most watched among the other races here is the one for United States representative, in which Congressman Lee Zeldin, a Republican, faces a challenge from a Democrat, Perry Gershon, in the First Congressional District. While Kate Browning’s name appears on the Women’s Equality line, she withdrew from the race following the Democratic primary and has endorsed Mr. Gershon.

Voters will also select a governor and lieutenant governor, a state comptroller, state attorney general, United States senator, seven State Supreme Court justices for New York’s 10th Judicial District (which includes Nassau and Suffolk Counties), a Surrogate Court judge, three County Court judges, and a Family Court judge. There are races as well for county clerk, county comptroller, and state senator and state assemblyman. (A sample ballot with all the candidates appears in today’s paper.)

The race for county comptroller will be watched closely by those on the South Fork. Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, who was elected to his second term last year, is challenging the incumbent Republican, John M. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Kennedy is also on the Conservative, Independence, and Reform Party tickets, while Mr. Schneiderman is on the Democratic, Protect the Taxpayer, Working Families, and Women’s Equality lines. 

Many see this year’s midterm election as a referendum on the president and the direction of federal government, but in recent history, voter turnout in Suffolk County has been low in midterm and other off-year elections.

In the last midterm, in which Mr. Zeldin unseated the Democratic incumbent, Tim Bishop, in 2014, only 39 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Mr. Zeldin beat Mr. Bishop by 15,313 votes, while a whopping 270,015 people who could have voted decided not to. 

Turnout was only slightly better — 40.51 percent — in the 2017 general election in East Hampton, in which town voters selected a supervisor, members of the town board, and a range of other local officials. 

In the last presidential election, however, turnout in Suffolk County was just under 71 percent. In the congressional race at that time, pitting Mr. Zeldin against Anna Throne-Holst, turnout was 68.4 percent, with Mr. Zeldin beating his challenger by 53,221 votes. In that race, 145,864 people who could have voted did not.