Editorials

   A battle for the future of the ocean shoreline is shaping up at Georgica Beach in East Hampton, and, as state and local officials nudge the matter slowly toward a court showdown, the beachgoing public’s right to use the beaches is threatened. The dispute points to a difficult time ahead in which the self-interest of waterfront property owners will be increasingly at odds with the desires — and rights — of the public.

   It is good news indeed that the Village of Sag Harbor appears to be moving forward with a project to reduce the amount of polluted run-off that crosses Havens Beach and flows into the bay. A short creek there, more of a drainage ditch, has for years carried water from surrounding upland properties and several roadside sumps. The public bathing beach there has been closed pre-emptively by the Suffolk Department of Health after heavy rainfalls, and shellfishing nearby is banned year round.

   A coffee shop in Sag Harbor may be closing at the end of the month after its landlord handed the lease to someone else. It is an old story: A property owner decides to go in a new direction, or raise the rent, or renovate. Happens all the time.

   As the Springs School Board continues its struggle to find ways to pay for educating students while not asking taxpayers for more and more, a cost-savings idea is gaining ground. The notion of eliminating the district superintendent’s position and handing those duties to the school principal was discussed at a forum on Dec. 22. Meanwhile, in the East Hampton School District, the board is grappling with the prospect of overcrowding in the elementary and middle schools even as the last details of its recent $79 million expansion are finalized.

Welcome Opposition

It is early yet, with only one East Hampton Town Board meeting so far this year, but already it appears that the three-people-in-a-room way local government has been run may be coming to an abrupt end.

    East Hampton Town may be getting into the fuel-regulation business in a small way, but not without  concern about possible spills and unfair competition.

The East Hampton Town Board’s new interest in how Cablevision franchise fees are apportioned is a good idea, with the possibility that the hefty sum might be spread more equitably.

Like Ernest Hemingway’s character who married the “first girl who was nice to him,” the Town of East Hampton is on the verge of a rushed deal to sell the office condominiums that house various departments with no plan on the horizon for where they would ultimately go.

    The pending one-month suspension of Larry Penny, the East Hampton Town director of natural resources, on what may be exaggerated charges, does not bode well for the environment here. Though Mr. Penny has the right to a hearing to contest the claims, the outcome appears preordained, and the town board’s move against Mr. Penny seems a precursor to his firing.

    Many people were pleased to see the excellent turnout Sunday afternoon at a gathering at the Town Marine Museum to talk about the Amagansett Life-Saving Station on Atlantic Avenue. This is a hopeful signal that the town-owned building may soon be restored, and the Life-Saving Service and its successor, the United States Coast Guard, at last be awarded the local recognition they deserve.

    Once again, a landowner is trying to expand a commercial use of a residential property, and once again, it appears that some East Hampton Town officials are eager to help him do it.

    In this most recent example, the applicant wants to move a business structure closer to Montauk Highway at the intersection of Sayre’s Path in Wainscott, rebuild it, and add a stand-alone house at its rear. Michael Davis, who is well-known for developing houses, mostly in Sagaponack and Wainscott, has undertaken the project, calling it Wainscott Wombles.

    After years of legal struggle, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, Bloomberg Markets magazine got what could be the scoop of the decade. While Americans were squabbling over the 2008 $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, the Federal Reserve was secretly handing out more than 11 times that amount at a ridiculously low interest rate to the nation’s biggest banks. In fact, TARP distributed far less than its authorized amount: $392 billion.

    You have to wonder why the owners of small private planes want so badly for East Hampton Town to seek Federal Aviation Administration money for a deer fence. At a hearing last Thursday, pilot after pilot came to the Town Hall microphone to support the Republican board majority’s plan to pursue funding from the F.A.A. But why? Really, why?

    A White House effort to expand help for homeowners who have been unable to refinance mortgages because the value of their properties has fallen could have a stimulating effect on the year-round East Hampton economy.

    With its outsize economic reliance on real estate transactions, East Hampton is a bit of a company town. And, like many other communities in the United States that have suffered in the long recession, it has seen a significant slowdown in many of the related trades.

    Voter turnout in the Town of East Hampton on Nov. 8 was about average for a nonpresidential year — about 43 percent of the 15,929 people registered. Given the standard by which such things are measured nationally, turnout as a percentage of the voting-age population, East Hampton did a bit worse than might have been expected — about 39 percent — but was still a point or two above the national average.

    New York State has adopted a relatively aggressive position on climate change and offered a number of resources to local governments. Unfortunately, few Long Island villages or towns have taken advantage of them. Though Albany is often seen as an adversary in these parts, the impacts of a warming atmosphere are predicted to be severe and complex, and local officials will need every bit of help they can get in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and crafting policies.

    We wish Stephen Lynch well in his new post as East Hampton Town’s next superintendent of highways, but there is a certain sweet irony in his election. Among the responsibilities he is soon to have is keeping the roadsides clear of anything that does not conform to the town code, notably signs larger than six square feet. This is paradoxical because Mr. Lynch’s campaign billboards and parked, truck and trailer-mounted messages were among the most expansive of this year’s political season and, as such, were obvious violations of the law.  

    With scallop season fully under way now in both state and East Hampton Town waters, reports indicate a good crop, if not quite as good a crop as last year’s for individual harvesters. The dip in the per-boat catch so far is anecdotal; it could be the result of more crews taking to the water or a decline in the scallop population — no one really knows for sure. This raises the question of whether the shellfishery as managed now is sustainable.

    In news of the violence that has broken out in Cairo in recent days, a report has circulated that may indicate that the Egyptian authorities are paying attention to how some police in the United States have responded to the Occupy Wall Street protests.

    Whatever happens next in Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street, after a 1 a.m. eviction by police Tuesday, it is remarkable that the encampment was allowed to remain in Zuccotti Park for so long. This would have been unimaginable in the past. Although the mayor’s responses have been erratic, few were confident at the movement’s outset that he would exercise any restraint.

    Now that the election is over, the East Hampton Town Board is picking up a matter it dropped hastily last month concerning East Hampton Airport.

    Fearing what would happen if a public forum about Federal Aviation Administration money was held just before voters went to the polls, Town Hall went into panic mode in October, scratching a hearing on the deal. Having avoided what could have been a political bombshell, the board now plans to go ahead with a request for a relatively modest amount of money from Washington for  deer and security fences at the airport.

    New York State may come up short of cash as 2011 comes to an end, and the outlook for the 2012 budget has dimmed, according to latest projections. The anticipated shortfalls are renewing attention on Albany’s version of a “millionaire’s tax,” which is set to expire next month.

    Now that the election is over, the town boards of East Hampton and Southampton should move quickly to enact strict laws banning political signs on public property.

    It is a chicken-or-egg puzzle to ask which came first, the signs or the foolishness, but this much we know: Such placards consistently bring out a little too much bad behavior among misguided partisans. Like responsible adults who are forced to remove the toys with which the children are bashing each other in the head, the town boards, having allowed the privilege, now should take it away.

    If East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson ever thought he had a mandate to do more than complete the work of correcting the financial chaos of the Bill McGintee-era, he can no longer make that assumption following his apparent narrow election victory over Zach Cohen on Tuesday.

    As the poll results came in, it was clear that Mr. Wilkinson’s support had shrunk from the election of 2009. That a relative unknown like Mr. Cohen could come so close to defeating him attests to the dissatisfaction of many voters with the supervisor’s record over the last two years.

    Tomorrow is Veterans Day and, like last year and the year before that, it is a day on which the United States is engaged in military conflicts on several fronts, including Afghanistan, which is said to be the nation’s longest war.

With Suffolk Executive Steve Levy’s exit from county government under circumstances that have not been entirely explained, two candidates relatively new to South Fork voters are poised to take his job.

East Hampton Town has two town justices who serve four-year terms and alternate on the ballot. Each appears on the bench for two weeks then uses two weeks for desk work. Each position pays $75,000 despite the job appearing to be less than full time.

One thing East Hampton needs as many of its residents struggle to get along in a sluggish economy is a unifying force at the top.

Voting for East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday is crucially important as much for who is not running as for who is.

Times have changed for the East Hampton Town Trustees, with ever-greater pressures on our shorelines from businesses and homeowners at the same time global warming is causing ecological changes.