The Beat Goes On

Eastbound in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Tuesday just before noon this week, we wondered why East Hampton Town officials seem unwilling or unable to come up with a sensible, long-term approach to gaining a measure of control over summer crowds. Ask a member of the town board directly about this, and you get a polite, if vacant, stare. 

The temptation is strong to say we told you so. Some decades ago, The Star came out in favor of a Montauk Highway bypass that would have diverted traffic around some of the Main Streets.

Opposition was strong. “If you build it, they will come!” was the cry, more or less word-for-word. Guess what? The bypass was not built, and they came anyway. Our main drags are often almost impassible and at this time of the year even the notion of driving to, say, Southampton on an errand is enough to bring on a cold sweat. Planning for the decades out remains in short supply. 

Talking to a town staffer the other day about how the proposed diversion of up to 20 percent of the community preservation fund for water quality projects might affect what the town will look like down the road, we several times got the same response: The work is intended to provide immediate solutions.

Separately, the Planning Department appeared to have missed the fact that a 200-seat sports bar in the offing for a site near the East Hampton Airport would bring a batch of people, and their vehicles. 

Unlike what we said when Bill Wilkinson and his compatriots ran Town Hall, we believe the elected officials and staff there now are good, well-intentioned folks. However, they are, from The Star’s point of view, failing to prepare for what’s ahead. Frankly, we think they must not see what is going on right now. 

Aside from traffic, consider for a minute a couple of pet peeves: beach fires and illegal commercial signs. Both could be dealt with easily, but are not. Your guess is as good as ours about why. 

In the case of fires, the recently revised — and unlikely read by the public — rules have failed to keep the beaches in several popular locations entirely free of staining charcoal and half-empty beer cans. (Earlier this year, it appeared that the new regulation that fires be kindled only in metal containers was adequate; now, deep into the season, we see that it is not.)

In the case of signs, though the rules are simple, enforcement is negligible. This is weird since one code officer told us that in most cases all it takes is one phone call to a business owner to get compliance. Are officials afraid of upsetting business owners? What about the bad message it winkingly sends that town law need not always apply? 

On signs and beaches and many other things, maybe it’s just that the people in Town Hall are overwhelmed. Or, maybe they just don’t get out of their offices often enough to actually see what is going on.  Either way, a number of their apparently good ideas did not turn out to work, and it seems that government will have to act accordingly.

We have to acknowledge that the town cops are doing a great job. For example, Chief Michael Sarlo paid close attention to the mess in Montauk last summer and moved things around in response. 

But in other areas, town officials seem perennially to be playing catch-up, acting as if time had stopped sometime in the 1990s, thinking that the party is on no matter what they say, and the best they can do is mop up. We, and many residents, don’t think that is enough.