There is irony in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s recently coming out in favor of free in-state tuition to New York’s public colleges and universities. In an era when his signature 2-percent tax cap is causing school districts to struggle to meet expenses, his support for a higher-education program estimated to cost $160 million in the first year of full implementation is, well, astonishing.

Given Mr. Cuomo’s presumed presidential ambitions, this apparently is not a contradiction for him. He spoke up with a raft of progressive measures almost as swiftly as Hillary Clinton’s defeat became known and the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination opened up. To prevail in the primaries, and possibly in the general election, Mr. Cuomo would have to continue to take steps that speak to a broad set of voters. As the governor of a high-tax Eastern state, he could point to the 2-percent cap as evidence of fiscal discipline. Free college tuition could pay off for him with young voters as well. Indeed, Senator Bernie Sanders, who called for free tuition at public universities nationwide in his primary bid, accompanied Mr. Cuomo as he made the announcement.

State programs already exist for New York’s poorest students. Mr. Cuomo’s idea is to help middle-class families and scholars whose household incomes are between $55,000 and $125,000. As envisioned, the state would step in to fill the gap between other grants or scholarships and the full cost of tuition. He called for the State Legislature to act fast, with the program to be fully implemented by 2019 — conveniently smack in the middle of his expected Demo­cratic primary bid.

The 2-percent tax cap is a bit of a misnomer. What it does is limit the amount by which school districts and other local governments can increase the amount of money raised by taxes for operating costs from one year to the next. This presents little problem for five-member town boards, which vote on their own spending plans. But even with the figure somewhat less than 2 percent in practice, the stakes are much higher for school districts, where voters are asked to approve budgets each year, and a two-thirds majority is required to exceed the cap. Strict austerity is mandated otherwise.

When Mr. Cuomo first proposed the tax cap, his argument was that the hard line on spending would gradually reduce the number of local governments and ultimately save money as property taxes fell. It has not really worked that way; school districts in particular jealously guard their autonomy even in the face of crippling financial pressures, and over the years few school districts have dared ask voters to pierce the cap.

 Mr. Cuomo’s tax cap has turned out to be all stick, no carrot. He has put his hands around the throats of the districts without offering meaningful leadership on state aid, school consolidation, or other cost-saving solutions. It is disappointing to see him support state spending for college students so eagerly while continuing to ignore the fiscal demands of elementary and secondary education. Tuition help is a worthy goal, but Mr. Cuomo must not continue to look past the rest of New York’s educational system.

Voters in two school districts will let their boards of education know what they think about plans for major projects next week. Although some residents argued that voting was inappropriate at this time of year, the votes, which are expected to be decisive, are scheduled for Tuesday in Bridgehampton and Wednesday in Sag Harbor. 

The Bridgehampton School was built in 1939 and is the only local school building that has never had a major renovation. Along with Shelter Island, the district is rare because it educates students from kindergarten through 12th grade. To do so it has relied on portable classrooms, which are now nearing the end of their practical lifespan. Although the student population remains small, it has grown by 35 percent in the last three years.

In order to provide the courses mandated by the state and the activities its diverse student population deserves, independent study takes place in a hallway. Corrosion is evident in the sole science lab, which houses physics, earth science, biology, and chemistry. And the robotics and computer lab in the basement is not accessible to the handicapped. Students study and do research in the library, but they also take classes in art and sewing there. Most of the second-floor classrooms have a capacity for 12 to 16 high school students while 18 or more are in the elementary grades now and expected to move up. The state has given the district a waiver so that its championship Killer Bees basketball team can play in a gymnasium that doubles as an auditorium, with the stage a fitness and weight-lifting room and the equipment moved when the drama club has a production. 

The Bridgehampton School Board has been forthright in going to voters, re-evaluating the amount needed — $24.7 million — and increasing estimates of what it will cost to borrow the money. After announcing different bonding details earlier in the process, it decided to issue bonds over 20 years rather than 15 and announced the interest rate would be 3.5 percent rather than 2 percent.

Bridgehampton faced the elimination of the high-school grades and sending students in those grades elsewhere in 2009, when three residents who were in favor of doing so ran for the board, but the community voted overwhelmingly to keep high school students at home. The time has come to bring the school into the 21st century by approving the renovation plans. 

The issue in Sag Harbor is about the renovation of the athletic field, which may sound easier for voters to grapple with, but, unlike in Bridgehampton, where a citizens committee has had moderate objection, the proposal has caused intense division. 

Voters had approved $1.6 million for the installation of synthetic turf on the fields in 2013, but a delay in state approval put the project on hold. In the interim, the cost went up and the district is now asking permission to use $365,000 from its capital reserves for the installation. The intervening years brought concerns about the health effects of the toxic materials used in manufacturing the turf to the public’s attention, however. 

The turf field would be used by all grades at Pierson Middle and High School for gym classes and by the field hockey, soccer, and junior varsity and middle school baseball and softball teams, not to mention other student activities. The district plans to use CoolFill, a coating of the crumb rubber pieces of which the turf is made that reflects heat, rather than absorbs it, and moderates the turf’s temperature.

Nevertheless, last week both the Sag Harbor Elementary School PTA and Pierson Middle and High School Parent Teacher Student Association voted against the additional money, in effect ruling against artificial turf.

The sticking point was the safety of the material, which has an infill made of recycled tires. According to the website of Grassroots Environmental Education, based in Port Washington, which made a presentation at a recent forum, “artificial turf fields are typically filled with up to 10 tons of ground-up truck and automobile tires. This recycled rubber contains high levels of toxic substances which prohibit its disposal in landfills.” Arsenic, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, lead, zinc, along with acetone, ethylbenzene, tetrachloroethylene, toluene and xylene, and phthalates were identified.

Those who favor the use of artificial turf have good intentions. They see it as an investment in a long-term installation that will keep players out of the mud. But the parent organizations’ decisive vote against it is persuasive. Sag Harborites would be right to ask for natural grass. 

East Hampton and Sag Harbor Villages want drivers to slow down, way down. In separate votes, elected officials in both jurisdictions recently decided to reduce the speed limit on a number of streets — to 20 miles per hour. Forget Sammy Hagar, who rode his hit “I Can’t Drive 55” to modest fame in the 1980s, the powers-that-be seem to think even 25 is too fast.

In Sag Harbor, it is easier to understand the lower speed limit, which was imposed last week on most of the streets in its historic district. That village’s narrow, doglegged streets often require drivers to proceed at a creep. But on Mill Hill Lane, one of the streets the East Hampton Village Board voted on Friday to change to 20 miles per hour, it simply does not make sense. Other streets on which the new turtle-speed rules will apply are King Street, McGuirk Street, Middle Lane, and Meadow Way.

Although villages have the authority to make these rules, it could be a mistake to do so. With so many visitors from away here in the warmer months, limits that defy familiar expectations could lead to tailgating and unsafe passing as out-of-town motorists whip around vehicles they think are moving at abnormally slow speeds. Just think about going 25 on Dunemere Lane in East Hampton Village in July as some hotshot in a $100,000 sport utility vehicle rides your rear bumper. Imagine how much road rage would be the result if the speed were lowered to 20! 

If speeding is a problem, more enforcement is the solution, not maddeningly low limits that will make scofflaws of even the most conscientious drivers

From an East Hampton perspective a baffling document from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation arrived last week, a draft policy paper designed to encourage  natural, or “living,” shorelines, as opposed to hard structures, for erosion control. 

The policy draft is puzzling in that a preference for so-called soft solutions has long been expressed, and is, in fact, state and local law. The regulations, of course, have been notably ignored, as in the downtown Montauk Army Corps project, which was illegal both in concept and execution. 

For the most part, the proposed guidelines are concerned with bay and estuary shorelines, not high-energy ocean beaches, but they are worrying nontheless. They call for sand replenishment and replacing native vegetation instead of building seawalls or rock revetments. But they still allow for “structural components,” a provision that should be eliminated in the final document. 

Boulder revetments allowed in a state living shoreline policy paper would create challenges for environmental planners working for eastern Long Island governments, where they are for the most part banned. And, as state authorities should know, structural responses to erosion inevitably result in the loss of beaches. Troubling, too, is a section that would allow for looser regulation of the kind of fill material that could be placed on beaches and in restored estuaries. This would have to be tightened and made consistent with town-level regulations.

More favorably, the draft acknowledges climate change and related sea-level rise, calling for a better estimate of possible coastal inundation in years to come and how living shoreline projects must take them into account. But this is contradicted in the details by the allowance for even limited revetments. 

State policy statements like this should include adaptable, living shorelines. However, the core idea must be managed retreat. By promoting structural answers in the coastal zones, the state risks violating any number of existing laws, such as East Hampton Town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, as well as its own regulations.

A comment period ends on Feb. 8. Interested readers can find the draft at dec.ny.gov.

We were excited to learn recently about plans for a small museum focused on paintings of old Long Island which is to be created at the historic Gardiner house on James Lane. The village, using money from the town’s community preservation fund, bought the property in 2014. Since then, an accessory structure has been removed and minor repairs done on the house. 

The museum will be devoted to 19th and early 20th century landscape paintings, many collected over the years by Terry Wallace, who has a gallery here. Funding is to come, in part, from a grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation; the East Hampton Historical Society will be the curator.

Considered together with the ongoing restoration of the Thomas Moran house and studio on Main Street, more or less diagonally across Town Pond, the new museum will expand the cultural heritage of the village.

East Hampton has long been thought of as a birthplace of the Abstract Expressionist movement, what with such massive figures as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning having done some of their most important work at their studios in Springs. Moran, however, and some of the lesser-known painters who came before the Ab-Ex giants, are significant, too. The landscape museum will help us all have a better understanding and appreciation of this area’s artistic legacy.

Friday’s devastating fire in Sag Harbor did more than destroy several buildings, including a beloved, if fusty, cinema lobby and facade, it struck at the very heart of the village’s identity. It also proved resilience and compassion among residents and business owners as well as the wider South Fork community.  

Sixteen fire departments and emergency medical services from Montauk to Eastport and Flanders and Shelter Island were called to take part in freezing weather or to stand by in others’ firehouses, and local and county officials came to see what they could do to help. Fund-raising for two men who lost everything in an apartment they shared and shopkeepers’ understanding about their loss of Christmas revenue proved compassion and resilience. The South Fork is blessed to have men and women such as these. 

As for the cinema, to call its Art Deco “Sag Harbor” sign iconic would be an understatement. It is difficult to imagine the village without that warm, welcoming light at night or as the backdrop to thousands upon thousands of visitors’ snapshots by day. In an age of dwindling art-movie houses, it was a source of pride in Sag Harbor’s literary tradition that so quirky a venue had survived. 

Credit for this is not due to audiences, which could be thin at times, but to the cinema’s owner, Gerry Mallow. Mr. Mallow has at various times sought to sell the place, which he bought in 1979, but has preferred to keep its ever-eclectic selection of films coming to the screen. We hear that a group of local moviegoers had been talking with him about a purchase, and we share the wish that it can be restored. The other buildings damaged or destroyed are sure to be rebuilt, and we hope that the “Sag Harbor” sign will rise again.

On the eve of Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, opposition to his presidency is at a historic high. As few as 40 percent of Americans polled this week said they had a favorable opinion of the incoming president. 

Disapproval of Mr. Trump is much more a matter of personality than politics. Though in the past, Republicans and Democrats might have thought ill of a new president, never has support been so meager at the outset. The opposition is well deserved.

 Try as one might, it is difficult to look past Mr. Trump’s racist remarks, defiance of the Constitution, ethical conflicts, misogyny, and threats to abandon international alliances. With all this it is impossible to conclude that he is the right person to lead this diverse nation in the face of ever-increasing social and political challenges. This is what is reflected in public opinion. 

It should not be overlooked that some among our neighbors on the South Fork are eager Trump supporters. The East Hampton Republican Committee is to hold a black-tie party tomorrow night at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett to celebrate his ascension to the White House. A question is how, if they say they believe in American values, they could approve of someone who is a such shockingly poor role model and a threat to global stability, the environment, the rule of law and precedent, and even public education.

Are we to take their partisan glee as a full embrace of what Mr. Trump has said and stands for? If so, they should not present themselves as leaders of one of this town’s two major political parties. His views — and his dangerous cabinet picks — should not be so casually endorsed. That some in our community will do so tomorrow is, as Mr. Trump likes to say on Twitter, sad.

We have long believed that limiting the size of new and renovated houses was a must if the South Fork’s beloved sense of place was to be protected. In this, we are, we think, joined by many of our friends and neighbors for whom what might be called Hamptonization is an affront. In traditional opposition to limits, of course, are many in the real estate and building professions, who welcome the dollars that maximizing square footage may represent. 

The East Hampton Town Board is to hear views, pro and con, on revisions to the law that determines just how much house is allowed on a given parcel. The proposed changes would cut house sizes by 2 percent, hardly enough to have a discernable effect. 

The problem with the current law is evident in several places. New, bloated-looking houses out of scale with those nearby have appeared in Beach Hampton and Ditch Plain, for example. The Amagansett lanes, which run toward the beach from Main Street, are a distorted caricature of their modest former selves. The town’s 2-percent takeaway is not likely to amount to the loss of even a mudroom on one of them.

More creative ways must be found to regulate the mass impact of residential construction in many neighborhoods despite what promises to be strong opposition in some quarters. This is especially true in erosion-prone areas, where federal rules require houses to be elevated by as much as 14 feet. Coupled with existing allowances for the number of stories, these houses mar views and the landscape itself.

East Hampton Town officials are on the right track in seeking additional limits. Unfortunately, the 2-percent option to be considered this evening in Town Hall will not, in and of itself, be sufficient.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has said he would like to close a loophole that allows the use of handheld cellphones by drivers when vehicles are stationary but on the roadway. This is a terrific idea.

Horror stories abound about the dangers of motorists distracted by their phones. Numerous studies have definitively connected cellphone use to increased numbers of accidents. In as many as one in five car crashes in the United States, a driver was talking on a cellphone at the time of impact. Federal statistics show that drivers were distracted, often by the phone, in about 10 percent of fatal accidents involving teenagers. A 20-year-old Amagansett driver who recently admitted he had been texting when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the woods was indeed lucky that he wasn’t hurt.

Credit is due The Albany Times Union for noticing the proposal in Mr. Cuomo’s State of the State report this month. In it, the governor would prohibit any use of cellphones by drivers under 18, although hands-free use by adults would still be permitted, as would calls and other functions when a vehicle is stopped on the side of the road. The idea that motorists at traffic lights always stop texting or looking at email messages until they have started moving again is wishful thinking. 

Banning the use of phones in vehicles that are on the roads but not moving would make law enforcement more effective, as officers could more easily spot offenders. One can imagine how many tickets might be issued if a spotter was stationed at the intersection of Main Street and Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village, for example. In fact, someone could look out from The Star’s front office windows and tally up any number of violations any day of the week.

One study, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that drivers who flout cellphone bans tend to engage in other risky behavior, such as speeding, unsafe lane changes, tailgating, and sudden stops. Giving police an additional way to impress on them the importance of following the rules, in the form of a ticket and points on a driver’s license, before they cause a serious accident could help increase road safety for all of us. This is similar to the tough rules on drunken driving, which have been cited in helping to reduce fatalities.

A pending bill that could get at Mr. Cuomo’s goal of safer roads has come from State Senator Carl Marcellino of Oyster Bay. The proposal would redefine the existing cellphone law’s meaning of “in motion” to include vehicles stopped in heavy highway congestion. (We have all been behind someone on the Long Island Expressway who did not notice that traffic was moving again as he or she played Candy Crush or texted mom.) Mr. Marcellino’s bill would also prohibit the use of cellphones when a vehicle was stopped at a traffic signal, railway crossing, stop sign, or any other traffic control device.

The drivers of commercial vehicles are already subject to similar restrictions. It makes sense to extend them to the rest of New York State’s motorists.

In his “state of the town” speech last week, East Hampton Supervisor Larry Cantwell made note of the effort to build a medical center on Pantigo Place. Southampton Hospital envisions an emergency room here, with doctors’ offices and related medical services, as it prepares to abandon its existing location and move to the Stony Brook Southampton campus on County Road 39. Patients and health care responders, especially Montaukers, have for years bemoaned the time it takes to get to Southampton Hospital in emergencies, particularly in summer. While that is a serious concern, we question the location and size chosen for a new facility.

Among the most important considerations is traffic and commercial density. The Pantigo Place property is in a portion of town just outside East Hampton Village that is already showing signs of unwanted sprawl. Adding a massive medical building to the mix would have numerous negative effects. Concerns also have begun to be voiced about the considerable amount of wastewater that would be produced, and how it might affect drinking water.

Important to consider as well is that the site is now used for Little League baseball and would require a change from parkland and conservation status to commercial use — setting a risky precedent. The former Child Development Center of the Hamptons charter school property off Stephen Hand’s Path might be a better location. In justifying the need for an emergency room, the hospital says it serves 17,000 patients from East Hampton a year, a figure that is hardly credible. We suspect that money is a hidden factor. East Hampton’s deep-pocketed donor community, unlike Southampton’s, has not traditionally been a strong supporter of the hospital. It is plausible, therefore, that fund-raising is likely to have played a part in recommending a shiny new facility in more or less the very center of town.

East Hamptoners are sure to welcome an emergency medical center, but at a minimum our elected officials should think again about whether the hospital’s grand plan is really right for the place it has been proposed.