Editorials

About every expert on coastal erosion and sea level rise will tell you that the only solution for at-risk areas is to retreat. But right now, the only significant retreat appears to be by the East Hampton Town Board, which collapsed notably amid ill-informed pressure from some Montauk residents and resort owners who objected to a part of a long-range planning study.

In the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, there is a reminder of how buildings can hold a community together. Churches, old houses, beloved places provide a feeling of permanence in an impermanent world. They give us a sense of who we are, simply because they are an icon we can call our own. For France and for much of the world, as one man on a Paris street told The New York Times this week, the Notre Dame tragedy was like losing a member of the family.

The Long Island Rail Road’s South Fork shuttle train service was launched with high hopes in March. The experiment was years in the coming. Public-transportation advocates and elected officials had long considered trains to be the most likely solution to the hellish trials of the morning and evening commute along our east-west highways.

The East Hampton Town Trustees appear close to drastically changing the way they manage the rented sites of the old fishing cottages at Lazy Point.

There will never be room enough in East Hampton for all the tradespeople who stream in every morning from the west.

With the passage of its 2019 budget bill, New York State will become the second in the nation to prohibit so-called single-use shopping bags.

Suffolk’s 10 towns are right to ask for a portion of the proposed internet sales tax now being considered in Albany.

By Hamptons standards, it is a good deal. Bookings opened this week for new luxury tent accommodations at Cedar Point County Park in East Hampton, starting at $300 a night, and, from where we sit, there is every reason to think the venture will be successful.