Editorials

The tone was cordial, though the message from the massive crowd of citizens at Tuesday’s East Hampton Town Board meeting at the Montauk Firehouse was unmistakable: Do something and do it fast.

It is remarkable to think that Soldier Ride began here, with the vision of a single man, Chris Carney, who wanted to raise some money and increase awareness for a fledging organization that was helping injured military veterans.

Faced with residents who have become more vocal about unwanted changes, the Sag Harbor Village Board is getting serious about how land-use decisions are made, and by whom. It is about time.

By any measure, East Hampton Town officials have a massive crisis on their hands. Forget about the airport. Forget about pollution of the waterways. At this moment, right now, it’s all about quality of life and a widely shared sense that Town Hall is not able to keep up.

A couple of weeks back on a Thursday evening a Star staff member sent a text message to one of the editors about a massive party on the beach at Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett, suggesting we had to see it to believe it.

Madonna, the pop star known as the Material Girl for her 1985 hit, is becoming Exhibit A in the case for better protection of farmland.

Now in its second year, a joint Concerned Citizens of Montauk-Surfrider Foundation water testing program continues to show worrisome bacteria levels in several locations.

In light of this week’s report that a 4-year-old girl was badly burned on one foot after stepping on the smoldering remains of a beach bonfire at Maidstone Park one thing is clear: The era of freestanding fires at the town’s heavily used public beaches is over.

By now too many questions have been raised for the Village of East Hampton to move forward with a second phase of its controversial deer-sterilization project.

East Hampton Town’s double standard on group housing is something that deserves attention.

To what degree restaurants and bars are an essential part of hotels, motels, and the like will be considered this evening at East Hampton Town Hall.

The remarkable thing about the online blowup last week over Uber “ride sharing” service’s decision to stop operating in East Hampton Town is that both Uber and local officials are trying to solve the same problem.

Downtown Montauk business owners and others are beginning to hear about a sewage treatment project for that area that could get started soon.

A federal probe into Albany corruption has reached yet closer to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. A report this week from the International Business Times says that his administration has confirmed it is being investigated over ties between the state and Mr. Cuomo’s top campaign donor.

After a successful start buying watershed properties around Lake Montauk, the East Hampton Town Board is targeting land around Accabonac Harbor.

We found ourselves stewing last week about a worsening situation on the Napeague stretch of Montauk Highway as three of four restaurants there, the Lobster Roll, the Clam Bar, and Cyril’s Fish House, grow ever more popular.

After years of frustration, open-government advocates in New York State may have reason for optimism. A bill before the Legislature co-sponsored by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. could revolutionize the way the Open Meetings and Freedom of Information Laws are enforced.

It’s about the money. That was the clear takeaway from the reaction at a May 15 hearing on additional limits on large-lot house sizes proposed by the East Hampton Village Board.

Back in 2010, the Economist magazine observed that railways in the United States were the mirror image of those in Europe. Instead, May 12’s Amtrak crash in Philadelphia underscored the differences, which extend to safety and maintenance.

On the eve of Memorial Day weekend, when for many of us on the East End distractions and frustrations abound, we would do well to think of those for whom the holiday was intended — the many servicemen and women lost in the country’s armed conflicts.

Voters can go to their polling places on Tuesday to give their respective school district budgets the thumbs-up or down, though the turnout is not expected to be large.

If they did not know already, long-suffering residents of the East End, frustrated by helicopter noise, now truly know who their friends are — and who they are not.

Eastern Long Island’s own State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle came out of a closed-door meeting on Monday night to express the Republican conference’s confidence in Dean Skelos following the Senate leader’s arrest on extortion and bribery charges

A bill introduced recently in the New York State Legislature by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. to deal with the enduring problem of too little available housing for the region’s work force has a worthy goal

As Baltimore erupted this week after the death of yet another person of color at the hands of police, it has become ever more clear that the ill treatment of minorities by police, particularly young black men, is not limited to any one city or town.

It was disappointing, to put it mildly, at a recent East Hampton Town Trustees meeting, for the presiding officer, Diane McNally, to put off responding to a question from the audience about whether it would be okay to record a discussion about the terms of their Lazy Point leases on their smartphones.

It may be a reach for critics of the current East Hampton Town Board to liken what is known so far about the Suffolk County district attorney’s probe into the town’s use of the community preservation fund for a $10 million acquisition in Amagansett to the debacle that brought down the Bill McGintee administration, but it is a big deal nonetheless.

One wades into the maelstrom swirling around the Common Core tests with extreme trepidation. The battle lines are sharply drawn, with parents and teachers who favor the opt-out position quick to vilify those who may not quite agree, and vice versa.

Heaven help Montauk if it gets another Surf Lodge, Beach House, Ruschmeyer’s, or Solé East.

As if to prove a point we made in an editorial last week about the various hamlet advisory committees’ going off the rails, the Amagansett group outdid itself on Monday night.