Editorials

It has often been said that if you weren’t for impeachment already, you were not paying attention, but nothing has been quite enough.

On Saturday, voters in the East Hampton, Wainscott, and Springs School Districts will have a chance to support an institution that is a cultural and educational hub for the community. The East Hampton Library, on Main Street overlooking the Village Green, is asking residents to approve a modest tax increase to help pay for its growing services.

Thousands of young people are expected to rally around the world tomorrow in a students’ day of action to call attention more aggressively to the need to combat the looming crisis of human-caused global warming. New York City leaders are taking climate change seriously, to the point that they are allowing the 1.1-million public school students to leave classrooms and take part in the protests without penalty. Closer to home, some students are expected to walk out on their own; others are likely to be among those headed to the city on rented buses.

While the White House either is or is not hurtling toward war with Iran, the Democratic primary, and, not to overlook it, the beginning steps of a presidential impeachment, we should not forget that thousands of residents of the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas remain in dire need of assistance.

Members of the Springs Fire Department were upset that a town planning board hearing on a controversial radio and cellular telephone monopole behind the firehouse was scheduled for last night — that is, Sept. 11, the same evening that the somber annual memorial ceremony is held at Hook Mill.

For East Hampton voters who have not followed the bumpy and bruising run up to the November town election, the lack of choices will be surprising. Notably, there will be no Republican candidates for supervisor or town board because the county party would not sign off on the local party’s choice of nominees, a requirement since none of them are registered Republicans.

A recent little-noticed report about East Hampton Town’s wastewater system upgrade program deserves wider attention. Produced by the town’s water quality advisory committee, the report offered five ways to increase the rate at which property owners are signing on.

It seems only right to offer a tip of the cap to the professionals and volunteers who answer the call at any time of day or night even as the population of residents and day-trippers doubles and then doubles again then returns to normal after Labor Day.

Term limits are great talking points during political campaigns, but after getting elected, most officials lose interest in them. National Democratic strategists looking to push Representative Lee Zeldin out of office have seized on his 2014 victory over the incumbent, Tim Bishop, as evidence of just such a flip-flop.

And just like that, the tropical Atlantic came alive. After an August with minimal swell and no hurricanes, two named storms popped up, one as we went to press Wednesday threatening to make a first landfall in already battered Puerto Rico and projected to arrive as Hurricane Dorian in northern Florida on Monday. At the same time, but less of a threat to shore, another storm developed off the Carolina coast but was to move away into the open ocean by the end of the week.

A proposal to force New York private schools to report more than their local boards of education now require is circulating in Albany and has some educators and parents worried.

The Village of Sag Harbor gets it. In a ceremony marking its new Steinbeck Park, Southampton Town and Sag Harbor elected officials celebrated the creation of a public waterfront asset. Officials in other towns and villages should be watching this closely. This park might never have been a reality had the village, over many years, failed to resist pressure from developers.