Editorials

Fires in two huge South Fork houses, one in Bridgehampton on Dec. 19 and another in Water Mill on Saturday, should remind residents and visitors of the tremendous commitment of our volunteer firefighters and ambulance personnel.

No matter what the project is, there are always going to be people opposed to it. It is just human nature to watch out for one’s own interests, to suggest that new infrastructure and essential services are fine as long as they are put somewhere else.

As 2019 rumbles to an end, it is fair to think about the year to come and to make wishes about things that we think should change and things that we would like to see improve.

Something had to be done. The North Main Street bridge had only 10 feet of clearance beneath it, and the one at Accabonac about three inches less than that.

As evidenced by the police-blotter stories in the South Fork newspapers, spray-painted swastikas have turned up with some regularity over the years here — at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, written in shaving cream on Newtown Lane in East Hampton on Halloween, and on a soccer team photograph at East Hampton High School, among other places.

Why the United States has remained in a state of war in Afghanistan for 18 years is not clear. It is not clear to the American people. Nor is the purpose clear to U.S. military and Foreign Service leadership, much less Congress. We were lied to.

A new sewage treatment system may be installed at a public restroom at the edge of Herrick Park in East Hampton Village using money from the community preservation fund, which should give both environmentalists and good government observers pause.

An early snow remained yesterday morning, thinly painting the Mulford Farmhouse roof and Village Green in white. Highway Department workers have been wiring the temporary firs on Main Street and Newtown Lane. The guy with the holiday light show in the back of his pickup truck has been out once again, new and improved with blinking LEDs making patterns as he rolls through town at dusk. Just like that, a Christmas feeling comes to East Hampton. How quickly the year turns.

East Hampton Town's citizens advisory committees seem to have forgotten that their roles are as advisers, not decision makers.

As the House Judiciary Committee takes over the process of impeachment looming over the Trump presidency, one central figure with strong East End ties will almost surely not appear at any hearing, though his actions are close to the core of the allegations. This is a person whom many on the South Fork social scene have sat next to at a benefit or lifted a glass with at an informal dinner. Unlike Paul Manafort, who has family here and had owned a Water Mill house that helped him launder millions in illegal foreign payments, Rudolph Giuliani, a part-time Bridgehampton resident, could be considered a regular on the circuit. How he went from an apparently mild-mannered former New York City mayor and Hamptons summer hobnobber to someone making a mockery of both the legal profession and democracy itself is a matter of speculation.

Sympathy for a Cooper Lane couple whose house may soon be over-loomed by an extra-tall utility pole should lead to action by PSEG-Long Island to find another location.

An extraordinary lineup of women running things gathered earlier this month to share the message with high school girls that they, too, can make a difference.