Editorials

When a mostly wooden bridge over the Long Island Rail Road tracks in Amagansett dating to 1895 began to fall apart and was abruptly closed to traffic recently, few residents who frequently use it were surprised.

A well-intended plan to address a profound shortage of places for working people to live could have unintended consequences.

When it comes to road safety, it is not just the holiday weekends to watch out for.

We’re writing in the hope that the East Hampton Village Board has not forgotten Roy Lee Mabery. It is in his memory that the basketball courts — recently bulldozed at Herrick Park — were dedicated.

Going from place to place on two wheels on the South Fork is nerve-racking.

Tuesday could represent a pivotal moment for public education here, with several school districts asking voters to approve larger than usual property tax increases.

A rash of luxury homebuilding on the South Fork has prompted East Hampton Town to appoint a committee to look into revamping the rules that govern how houses are built and where. Expect meaningful results.

In under two weeks’ time, Sag Harbor School District voters will be asked if they approve of a $9.4 million proposal to buy five residential vacant lots on Marsden Street understood to be for an expansion of school athletic fields. We have concerns.

The annual leaf blower rule shifts are coming, with two glaring exceptions: Sag Harbor and East Hampton Village.

How much do people who live in the right-wing news ecosphere know about Fox News’s $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems? Not much.

Here on the South Fork, now is the time that the landscape-industrial complex is in full swing.

The idea of a construction moratorium has resurfaced amid a boom in supersize home construction.

There is a curious pairing of the mounting troubles at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter pool and the news that a private operator from Manhattan appears likely to manage a new aquatic center at the Montauk Playhouse that will be constructed largely with public money.

We were stunned last week to learn that Suffolk led by a huge margin among all of the counties in New York in pesticide and herbicide use.

Governor Hochul has a chance to pass a critically important lifeline to local journalism as negotiations on New York State’s 2024 budget come down to the wire.

East Hampton Town officials say they are getting tough on so-called temporary measures to save properties from erosion. We’ll believe it when we see it.

It is increasingly accepted that alternative ways of getting around, ones that do not require fossil fuels, can help reduce planet-warming gases, but there is another direct benefit: money.

In Springs, the school board may very likely seek voter approval for increasing taxes above a state-mandated safety valve for the first time.

A heartbreaking story in The New York Times this week described in detail some state legislatures’ disastrous ideological rejection of federal Medicaid payments.

A tip of the hat goes to Lou Cortese, a member of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, for calling out a certain flexibility in the way land-use laws are applied.

From here, it is difficult to understand what the holdup has been on saving Plum Island.

Members of the East Hampton Town Board are correct in asking the question once again about the commercial use of beaches. A conversation they had recently about capping the number of guests at some events may not have gone far enough.

Since ex-police chief and current East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen first started his campaign against the Village Ambulance Association, the main public reaction has been if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

The East Hampton Village Board again seems intent on handing over its modest Sea Spray Cottages at Main Beach to a for-profit hospitality management company. This is a bad idea. The land should be open to the public, if anything.

When the basements of about six shops, a cafe, and a gallery in East Hampton Village flooded on Feb. 26, it was bad news at the toughest time of the year.

It is no coincidence that just as damaging and embarrassing revelations from a lawsuit by a voting machine maker against the Fox television corporation are released, the network’s Tucker Carlson has gone all in on a false retelling of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

For ordinary gun owners, the safety protocols stressed at the Maidstone Gun Club and places like it are in the public interest.

With elections every two years, it has been said that the main job of members of the House of Representatives who want to remain in office is fund-raising. This puts them at a great distance from actual voters.

The people running for town board seem steady and competent, but there is a lackluster quality to them at a time of unprecedented change for the town as a whole.

One of our favorite things that libraries are doing these days as they expand their roles in their communities is providing flower, vegetable, and herb seeds, as well as the know-how to sow them.