Across New York State, fire commissioners are elected on the second Tuesday in December. Five commissioners on each of the boards oversee the firefighters and emergency medical service personnel in their districts, and elections are coming up in Montauk, Amagansett, Springs, and Bridgehampton, which all serve residents in East Hampton Town. However, few people show up to vote except in rare cases where there are heated races or big-ticket items, such as proposed real estate deals or firehouse renovations. There are no fire commissioners in the villages of East Hampton and Sag Harbor, where elected trustees oversee the Fire Departments. 

Uncontested elections last year saw between 24 and 59 votes cast. Blame low voter turnout on voter apathy or that these elections are held on dreary December nights amid the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, who knows. What is certain is that more people should pay attention to boards, which handle what are arguably the most important public services residents receive and so many tax dollars.  

Because the commissioners construct the budgets for how your tax dollars are spent in their districts, candidates for commissioner should have business acumen and a working knowledge of fire and emergency services, whether they are members of their district’s departments or not. It has been encouraging in recent years to see commissioners loosen the reins and institute much needed paid paramedic programs to supplement a stressed volunteer emergency medical system. More big decisions lie ahead as paid programs evolve.

Only two districts in East Hampton Town have contested races this year, but voter turnout is important nonetheless. The five commissioners on each board are elected to staggered five-year terms. Don’t like what they are doing? It would take a long time to vote them all out of office and start fresh. 

Show your fire districts that you are watching and that you care what’s going on at your firehouse. Like town or school board members, the commissioners are elected officials who work for — and should be answerable to — the community. Voting on Tuesday is one way to reinforce this.

The Maidstone Club has at last, it seems, gone too far, what with a spate of recent projects including a massive new irrigation system and with a proposal now for a new bridge over an upper reach of Hook Pond. The bridge has drawn the attention of no less formidable opponents than the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society’s landmarks and nature trail committees, as well as well-known local environmentalists.

The question is why. The club’s representatives have told East Hampton Village that safety is paramount. We are not buying it — and neither should the village. Pedestrians, golf carts, the club’s greens keepers, and passing motor vehicles have co-existed for years on Dunemere Lane. The village lowered the speed limit there to 25 miles an hour relatively recently, and police frequently hide their patrol cars nearby to catch those who might scoff that particular law. 

Similarly, the club got along just fine since its founding in 1891 — and the first golf rounds three years later — without a major irrigation system. That it now needs to pump water from underground to spread on its fairways and greens has never been adequately explained. Taken with the request for the bridge, it is fair to suspect that something may be afoot.

By itself, the bridge, as laid out for the village zoning board, seems a bit much. It would be 352 feet long and made of steel and timbers, resting on 42 pilings driven into the mud. Sited to the north of an existing vehicle bridge, it would bisect the Hook Pond dreen — a habitat where ducks, swans, herons, and grebes often feed and aquatic turtles are seen from time to time — and destroy the scenic vista.

Among the standards that the zoning board is supposed to consider when granting variances is whether an applicant can solve a perceived problem by another means and whether the hardship for which relief is sought is self-created. Given that there has been golf at the club for more than a century, with players and employees sharing the existing Dunemere Lane crossing, and that the impact of the new bridge on the pond and surrounding wetlands would be substantial, there can be no reasonable basis for the board to approve the project.

“Oh, but we have been such a good neighbor,” the club’s representatives say. Well, tell that to the residents who used to be able to take an off-season stroll along the golf course or fish from one of its existing bridges who are now rudely chased away.

If there is something the club is not telling the board — perhaps that it hopes to host large-scale professional golfing events — it needs to come clean. And those officials and village consultants who may be willing to show deference to the Maidstone’s wealthy members instead of the public or the environment should think again about whose interests they are really supposed to represent.

As the year draws to a close, it is worth reflecting on the ongoing success of the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund in East Hampton Town. As of this week — and with several deals pending — money from a 2-percent tax on most real estate transactions had saved 2,063 acres of land from development. The money went for environmentally significant parcels as well as historic sites and properties that provided public access, recreational opportunities, and helped link the town’s growing woodland trail system. 

In November, voters here approved extending the 2-percent tax until 2050 and okayed a measure to allow up to 20 percent of future preservation fund income to be spent on water protection measures other than straight-up land acquisition. These could include rebates to help homeowners replace failing septic systems, which leach contaminants into ponds, bays, and harbors. 

In 2014, the fund brought in a record $32.3 million. With two months left before the final figure for this year is known, the town is on track to pull in somewhere upward of $27 million; in 2015 the year-end total was just under $29 million. Its low point in the past decade came in 2009, when a mere $10.4 million was banked.

The fund has come a long way since the first acquisition, in 1999, but in many ways the goals of the program remain unchanged. That year, the town bought a half-acre on the Sammy’s Beach side of Three Mile Harbor from John and Betty Ulrich for $145,000. The Ulrichs wanted to build a house on a lot that was mostly a saltwater wetland, but the zoning board of appeals did not approve it. Among the problems with the property were that it did not have its own source of potable water. The Ulrichs sought the board’s approval for a well on a property on the other side of Sammy’s Beach Road. Among the zoning board members apparently favoring its public acquisition were Jay Schneiderman, who is now Southampton Town supervisor, and Peter Van Scoyoc, now a member of the East Hampton Town Board.

Watershed protection and its improvement are today still at the top of the priority list for the people who oversee East Hampton Town’s preservation fund. Inner harbor sites, like the one bought from the Ulrichs in 1999, or the roughly 40 properties purchased in a multiyear effort to improve Lake Montauk, are highly desirable. 

Though we remain concerned about the potential for abuse of money for water quality projects, over all, the preservation fund has been an unqualified success, and its extension is good news. We look forward to more and bigger purchases using this powerful program in 2017.

Sea level rise is the single greatest long-term threat to eastern Long Island, yet it is one that our towns and villages are least able to combat for practical and political reasons. 

The problems already confronting property owners and local officials are immense. In many places on the South Fork, beaches are shifting over time at a foot or more a year. This has put even some houses and other structures that were built well back from the water in the 1970s right on the beach today.

Much of the erosion is seen on the bay and Block Island Sound, rather than at the ocean. In bulkheaded parts of Springs, Amagansett, Lazy Point, and on the north side of Montauk, at Soundview from Montauk Harbor to Captain Kidd’s Path, there no longer are passable beaches. The next big trouble spot may be west of Shadmoor State Park in Montauk, where a number of houses loom on a bluff only one or two big storms away from disaster. Then there is downtown Montauk, where a $9 million Army Corps of Engineers project to save a row of motels and private residences may soon be bolstered by a far more expensive effort to pump sand there from offshore.

If that isn’t enough bad news, consider the ecological effects of rising seas, particularly in estuaries. In many places vital marsh habitats cannot migrate landward because they are hemmed in by houses. Additional losses among of these important breeding and feeding places would have dire effects on wildlife. The cause, scientists agree, is climate change, the result of human activity.

Any discussion of climate change cannot ignore Donald Trump and the fact that the president-elect described it as a Chinese hoax and has chosen a notorious climate change denier to lead his remake of the Environmental Protection Agency. This poses a grave threat to international emissions control initiatives, as well as to leadership from Washington on responsive coastal policy. A more forward-thinking president might shift responsibility away from the armor-first Army Corps of Engineers, for example.

Doubts from the top could also have a chilling effect on educators, who might water-down the message that warming is human-caused, helping create an uninformed electorate unlikely to pressure officials to take steps to reverse current climate trends.

The news is not all bad, however. New York is among a group of states taking on pollution from power plants on their own through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The Long Island Power Authority may soon greenlight an offshore wind farm that is expected to generate enough electricity for 50,000 houses, and East Hampton Town has set a goal of meeting all its power needs from renewable sources by 2030. Individual homeowners also can take steps to reduce consumption by switching to renewable energy.

Still, the president and Congress have an essential role in setting the nation’s climate policy. If Mr. Trump’s early signs are an indication of what will be his administration’s approach to climate change, bleak days are ahead.

As to the idea that climate change is a hoax, with consensus among every kind of organization from the National Academy of the Sciences to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to major oil companies including BP and Shell accepting anthropogenic global warming as real and scientifically supported, it is impossible to take the armchair protests of the deniers seriously. They should be given no credence, especially from the White House.

Two recent bits of news concerning the area’s citizens advisory committees have further added to our sense that the concept needs a little refining. Instances involving the Amagansett and Bridgehampton groups, while unrelated, indicate that they could be stepping beyond their intended role.

Citizens committees were devised some years ago as a means for residents to speak about neighborhood concerns in an informal setting. The goal was to hash out truly grassroots opinion, then relay their ideas to the respective town boards; in many cases, a supervisor or board member would be on hand at their meetings. In some recent cases, however, these committees have become unelected influencers of policy, sometimes improperly communicating with their towns’ planning and zoning boards and meddling in controversies. 

In Amagansett the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee appears poised to have a deciding say on how town-owned property on Montauk Highway will be used. The town bought the parcel, called 555 or Ocean View Farm, using the community preservation fund two years ago. Proposals from private entities for growing crops there or other uses are expected soon. The town board would have to sign off on any deal, but it appears to be shirking its responsibility by offering the committee a decision-making role. 

In Bridgehampton, town planners solicited the citizens committee’s opinion on a commercial expansion, and the committee offered one in a voice vote to be followed with a letter. Then, when the expected letter did not arrive, holding up a ruling on the pending application, it turned out that the citizens committee’s shadowy steering committee had changed the group’s position. That the planners were relying on a definitive view from an essentially ad-hoc group was a mistake. It was made doubly so when the membership’s decision was apparently overruled by an informal leadership subset.

In our view, citizens advisory committees, if they are to persist, should be just that — purely advisory.

East Hampton Town officials and beach-driving enthusiasts celebrated this week as news spread of a court victory in a lawsuit brought by a number of Amagansett property owners seeking to end most four-wheel-drive use on two portions of Napeague oceanfront. However, the win does not mean that the fight is over. The residents who brought suit will probably appeal, and new conflicts are sure to arise.

State Supreme Court Justice Ralph Gazzillo’s Nov. 4 ruling came down strongly in the town’s favor, rejecting the property owners’ claims of beach ownership and ruling against their argument that summer activity on what has come to be known as Truck Beach was a nuisance and public health hazard.

What Justice Gazzillo did not do was give the town or trustees guidance about how to control beach use in the future — something they have so far refused to do and that will prove more necessary as time goes by. 

This year, those on Truck Beach appeared a little bit more spread out than in previous summers, although regulars continued their efforts to keep litter to a minimum and police the beach for drunks or people driving too fast. That cannot entirely be said for the free-for-alls seen elsewhere. Already there are valid complaints about vehicles in other places, such as Little Albert’s Landing in Amagansett, Navy Beach in Montauk, and on an inner sand spit at Maidstone Park on Three Mile Harbor.

Town officials must know that new conflicts about how the beaches are used are bound to arise and that they will increase as the population grows. Tougher policies governing what happens on the sand will be needed.

Unaccustomed lines were seen at some South Fork polling places on Election Day, but it would be hard to call the wait times long compared to those elsewhere in New York State. Various problems, especially in some parts of New York City, led to waits that appeared to New York Times reporters to be as long as five hours. Such delays for citizens simply trying to cast their ballots are a powerful argument for change, both within the separate county election boards and in state policy.

New York is not among the states that allow early voting. Considering the complicated lives many New Yorkers lead, even getting to the post office or the grocery store can be a challenge. Adding optional early voting would help increase participation in the political process.

This year, 34 states allowed early voting. That New York does not is in part the result of its antiquated elections infrastructure. Opposition also comes from the Republicans in the State Legislature, who have shown little interest in getting bills to allow early voting onto the floor. According to an advocacy organization pushing early voting, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. supports the idea; Senator Kenneth P. LaValle has not come out in favor of it.

Estimates are that about two million eligible New Yorkers are not registered to vote. And among those able to vote, New York ranked nearly last in turnout in the 2012 and 2014 elections. Early voting could help change that, especially in urban areas, where long commutes can make finding time to visit the polls on a workday and still meet family and personal obligations all but impossible.

Another matter that early voting might reverse is the tone-deaf preference among local governments and some school districts to take the day off. The message sent by staying away from work to golf, shop, or just putter around the house does not encourage voting, particularly by parents of schoolchildren. Giving voters the chance to vote early might help keep municipal and school district staff members on the job instead of enjoying a vacation day at the public’s expense.

In the post-Trump victory period there has also been much talk about the Electoral College and whether this centuries-old relic should be scrapped. Not since Ronald Reagan in 1984 have New York’s Republican voters been on the winning side of a presidential race. This means that the will of millions of state voters who favored Donald Trump or Mitt Romney or John McCain mattered not a whit in the overall results in their respective years.

In May, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed a bill that committed New York to award its electoral votes to the candidate who received the national majority. If and when enough states join the National Popular Vote Compact, as it is called, all New York voters, regardless of party, would once again have a voice in choosing a president. That, and allowing early voting, would go a long way to assure the Empire State matters when it matters most.

The East Hampton School Board should push administrators and the district’s architects to look for a better solution for student transportation than the proposed $5 million bus barn planned for high school property near Cedar Street. The proposed maintenance building, fuel pumps, and parking have been gaining opposition almost by the day. It should be heeded.

Admitting that the plan would lead to noise problems for neighbors, the district’s architect has said that the new building could serve as a sound buffer for people with houses nearby. And he said that trees, shrubs, and a fence would screen it from view. Another indication of the Cedar Street site being inappropriate is that, because of the proximity to houses, the parking area would be laid out to avoid buses backing up, cutting down on beeping noises when they otherwise would shift into reverse. None of this bodes well. When officials start speaking of acoustic blocks, driving buses only forward, and cutting off sightlines with shrubs, the game is already lost. 

The district’s student transportation headaches go back a decade, when problems with the service provided by a private company prompted the school board to take over. Shortly before the school year was to begin in September 2006, the board held an emergency meeting and decided not to seek bids from other companies, instead opting to rent buses, hire drivers, and go it alone. Leonard Schaefer, who had provided bus service for the district for many years, complained that he had been forced out of business because the district lured away drivers with offers of higher pay.

Since then, the district has been in the transportation business, leasing the former Schaefer property on Route 114 for its buses. Recently, however, the property was sold, and the district has use of it guaranteed only until next fall.

In 2010 the board was badly rebuffed by voters in a bid to buy vacant industrial property on King Street for a bus facility. At the time, Raymond Gaultieri, the school superintendent, warned that should the King Street deal fall through, a Cedar Street site was the likely alternative. Mr. Gaultieri resigned to take a job in Pennsylvania the following summer.

The board now believes that moving everything onto its own property once and for all is the best way to go. The site has been chosen and the board seems ready to seek funding through a referendum. 

What the board has not done is seek bids from private companies to once again provide the needed services. This would not only show respect for the neighbors’ concerns, but might even lower costs. The district, and taxpayers, would be able to compare the estimated cost of issuing bonds and paying interest over a period of time with the costs of private services.

“We’re going into the bus business,” Mr. Gaultieri declared in 2010. The time may have come to reverse course.

Voters on eastern Long Island have gotten to know Hillary Clinton over the years, as first lady, as a senator from New York, as secretary of state, and as a summer renter. The latter is hardly a qualification to be president. However, having seen Mrs. Clinton up close, we, like many New Yorkers, can say with complete confidence that she is the best choice to lead the United States forward.

Were Donald J. Trump not her opponent, Mrs. Clinton would still be the right choice to follow Barack Obama in the White House. Mr. Trump has not only not shown the seriousness or breadth of intellect the job requires, he has vigorously stoked the worst among a segment of the American population that is full of hate. Whether at the local level or in Washington, officials and party leaders who have not denounced Mr. Trump’s bigotry, sexism, and delight in descriptions of sexual assault deserve the sternest repudiation.

Democrats have called this election the most important of the modern era. Considering Mr. Trump’s repugnant views, including his unwillingness to agree outright to the peaceful transfer of power after Election Day, this is not just hyperbole. Going to the polls in massive numbers on Nov. 8 to oppose him is the best way to demonstrate to the many groups he has insulted in his vile campaign, and to the world, that America is better than Donald Trump.

In the race for the New York First Congressional District seat in the House of Representatives, we support Anna Throne-Holst. Given the strong support her opponent, David Calone, had in the Democratic primary among those in local office, she may not be an ideal candidate, but she remains a far better potential representative than the incumbent, Lee Zeldin. 

Chief among our problems with Mr. Zeldin is his early backing of Donald Trump for president. Mr. Trump’s views are far beyond majority Republican opinion on eastern Long Island. That Mr. Zeldin continues to embrace him suggests that he is likewise out of step. 

Mr. Zeldin’s opposition to abortion rights and meaningful gun control demonstrates this, and he has only lately begun to mellow earlier skepticism regarding climate change. He goes even further, however, in stating actual support for Mr. Trump, a bigot and self-absorbed tax cheat. As a congressman, of all people, he must put the United States’ exemplary democracy above craven politics, as have many Republicans of conscience.

Voters should not sit out this contest or mistakenly believe that the skill of Mr. Zeldin’s campaign staff in getting him free media attention through many personal appearances here and on cable news programs indicates real accomplishment. 

Those who dislike much of what Mr. Trump has said or done but still say they will vote for him misunderstand the fundamental nature of the American system of checks and balances. An extremist, Mr. Trump cannot be expected to bring sanity to governance.

Unfortunately, in standing with Mr. Trump, Mr. Zeldin also stands for racism, hatred, and sexual assault, none of which is acceptable and all of which disqualify him, in our view, for another term.