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Editorials

Nine for Trustee

Among a field of 18 candidates for East Hampton Town trustee, the average voter could be forgiven for voting a straight party line or on name recognition alone. Given all the issues facing the town’s shorelines and waterways, however, the trustee board should be the best that it can be — and this means doing a little homework before making choices.

Oct 22, 2015
Population Matters

During a Tuesday debate among East Hampton Town Board candidates sponsored by the League of Women Voters, there was much talk about how to solve a range of problems, such as water degradation, traffic, noise, and crowding, and yet the discussion consistently sidestepped the core issue: population.

Oct 15, 2015
Out on a Limb in Springs

The Springs School is crowded. There is no doubt about that. A committee charged with finding solutions, however, stopped short of calling for a major construction project.

Oct 15, 2015
A Farm Is a Farm, Except When It Isn’t

Farmers and their advocates have for some time lamented a trend here in which publicly preserved land is lost from crop production.

Oct 8, 2015
Short-Term Beach Fix An Opportunity Lost

At this point it is unlikely that anything would influence in a positive way the work about to begin on the downtown Montauk beach.

Oct 8, 2015
Oyster Comeback: A Good Project

The East Hampton Town Trustees were approached recently about allowing a small pilot oyster-growing program in waters that they control. We believe it would be a good project and should be allowed.

Oct 1, 2015
Massive Water Plan Sidesteps Priorities

Yet another wastewater plan arrives, and again we find ourselves scratching our heads. This time a Massachusetts consultant has produced a set of recommendations for East Hampton Village intended to improve Hook and Town Ponds. These include sewage treatment projects for 87 watershed properties around Egypt Lane and North Main Street, an in-ground filter near the Nature Trail, and perhaps most visually notable, the creation of a million-dollar wetland on the grassy triangle near where Main Street, Woods Lane, and Ocean Avenue come together.

Oct 1, 2015
Action Needed For Affordable Housing

With an important East Hampton Town Board election ahead, any groundbreaking initiatives on affordable housing are somewhat delayed, lest anything upset the status quo. But even if work already were under way on, for example, a modest plan for such housing in the Wainscott School District, it would hardly be enough to meet the demand.

Sep 24, 2015
Courtesy Misfires

The courtesy left — when a driver suddenly stops to let a driver in an oncoming lane cross over to make a turn — is either a last vestige of public decency on the roads or a risk to others.

Sep 24, 2015
Water Quality, Carefully

Water quality has been in the news this summer, thanks in part to Suffolk Executive Steve Bellone’s seizing on it in his re-election bid. Locally, there have been closures of Georgica and Hook Ponds after potentially harmful bacteria were found. At the state level, there is a bid to allow up to a fifth of future income to be skimmed off the community preservation fund for water improvement projects.

Sep 17, 2015
Register Rentals For The Community’s Sake

As the South Fork clears out after what was, by almost all accounts, an unpleasant summer, work continues in East Hampton Town Hall on a proposal for a rental registry. Modeled on those in other towns, notably Southampton, the draft-in-process is expected to set up a procedure by which landlords would have to sign up with the town before offering anyplace for rent.

Sep 17, 2015
Toxic Silt Is Not Okay For Long Island Sound

Long Island Sound is a federally designated no-discharge zone, but apparently no one told the right people at the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers.

Sep 10, 2015
Tumbleweed Tuesday

Go ahead, make a left. Make two, if you want. It’s September! Tumbleweed Tuesday, some call it, the day after Labor Day when we East Hamptoners get our town back.

Sep 10, 2015
Trash and the Town

It is surprising that the big story of the summer of 2015 was not a celebrity drunken-driving arrest or a devastating fire but instead the summer itself. East Hampton Town — and Montauk in particular — hit some kind of tipping point by the Fourth of July, and residents had had enough.

Sep 10, 2015
No Thanks. We’ll Bring Our Own

One of the reasons many people go to East Hampton Village’s ocean beaches is precisely because they are not — underscore not — like those maintained by the Town of East Hampton, where a degree of slovenliness and barely maintained, cement-bunker-like facilities are unfortunately the norm.

Sep 3, 2015
Getting to Work After Labor Day

As the 2015 high season comes to a close, East Hampton Town officials should begin working on to-do lists in an effort to make next summer a better one.

Sep 3, 2015
Managing Public Lands

Recent dustups over public land in East Hampton Town have a common thread. In two instances, neighbors worry about what would happen if the public actually showed up. And, while the specifics of the debate about Dolphin Drive on Napeague and the opposition to the upcoming purchase of two house lots overlooking Three Mile Harbor are worth a close look, the underlying sense of dread is also noteworthy.

Aug 27, 2015
Democracy’s Weak Link

Quick: If you live and pay taxes outside one of the incorporated villages in East Hampton Town, name one of your fire commissioners. Can’t do it? You’re not alone.

Aug 27, 2015
Tone Down The Trash Talk

A trash-talk war over trash on the beaches has heated up among some members of the East Hampton Town Trustees, the East Hampton Village Board, several village employees, and assorted members of the public.

Aug 20, 2015
Missing Rider Numbers And Crowding Concerns

Reading last week’s story about the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, we were struck by a brief mention of that hamlet’s train station and the vehicle congestion during high-season weekend arrival and departure times.

Aug 20, 2015
Cyclists Matter Too

Crews under contract to the State of New York will begin resurfacing Route 114 between East Hampton and Sag Harbor sometime in the fall. The work follows a larger effort on Montauk Highway, Route 27, which was completed in the spring.

Aug 13, 2015
Fighting Chaos

Congratulations are due the East Hampton Town Board for unanimously voting last week to ban parking on a significant portion of Edgemere Street, where patrons of the Surf Lodge bar and restaurant (and lately, full-on concert venue) have made the road treacherous.

Aug 13, 2015
Diverting the C.P.F.

A bill awaiting Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s signature that was recently approved by the State Legislature could signal the beginning of the end of the much-vaunted community preservation fund program. The proposal is to allow local governments to take up to 20 percent of the money for water quality projects, including new and upgraded sewage treatment plants.

Aug 6, 2015
The Beaches II

The village has been ahead of the town, however, in the regulation of beach fires. About two years after it banned blazes built right on the sand, the experiment has proven worthwhile.

Aug 6, 2015
The Beaches I

Pizza boxes, cracked lobster claws, napkins, beer cups, empty bottles of good wine, plastic tablecloths, half-eaten salads, disposable forks, paper plates, a box of fava beans, broken umbrellas, blown-out chairs, a snapped body board.

Aug 6, 2015
For the Dog Days

Kicking a few ideas around at last week’s editorial meeting, we hit on the subject of pet peeves. Everybody has a few, and with the Hamptons high season at full boil, a lot of us are happy to share. In no particular order, here is a list of a few things that get the staff’s collective goat.

Jul 30, 2015
Emerging Information About That Seawall

The latest developments in the United States Army Corps of Engineers project to build a 3,100-foot-long sandbag wall on the downtown Montauk oceanfront warrant close attention. Though a private lawsuit could still derail this massive boondoggle, the Corps, East Hampton Town officials, and the state appear to be moving forward.

Jul 30, 2015
Pull the Plug On Outdoor Music

One of the solutions that has been floated regarding Montauk’s too-much, too-wild party scene is eliminating outdoor music altogether. At an East Hampton Town Board meeting in the besieged easternmost hamlet this month, however, the general sense among the hundreds who attended was that doing so would be going a step too far.

Jul 30, 2015
For the 24 Percent

Against a photo of two codgers clinging for dear life to a contraption that looks to be an iron lung but is actually a piece of playground equipment, an online publication called Wellness Warrior reports that the latest phenomenon sweeping Europe and Asia is the “multigenerational playground.”

Jul 23, 2015
D.J. Out of Bounds

Several weeks ago, we briefly described an ostentatious party on one of East Hampton Town’s ocean beaches and suggested that a little more restraint by all concerned would not be a bad thing.

Jul 23, 2015