A proposition appearing on the back of Tuesday’s ballot that would add 20 years to the life of the community preservation fund and allow up to 20 percent of its future income to be used for water quality projects is almost sure to get a majority of “yes” votes. Multiple advocates have pushed hard for the measure, and many voters will have heard only that it will advance environmental protection and want to sign on.

Assuming that the proposition will be approved, it now falls to its supporters, both in and out of government, to do what they should have done in the first place — get the details right. 

East Hampton Town, having been burned once by vague language in the enabling preservation fund law, should have been way more rigorous this time around. If the water program is allowed to operate as written, the costly projects that could be provided for under the proposition are an invitation to misuse and corruption. Environmental groups, excited about the prospect of millions of dollars to further their goals, have been blindly willing to look past the vague proposal’s shortcomings.

It is likely that some of its backers have glimpsed problems with the proposition but agreed to rush, calculating that aligning the vote with an expected high turnout for the presidential election would assure its chances of passing. Were it scheduled in a midterm election year, its prospects might have been diminished. Tying the water quality question to the extension of the fund for its original purposes was another way to assure its approval. In fairness to the public and for the quality of the debate, the issues should have been the subject of separate referendums.

After Tuesday, the lack of clear definition of what can and cannot be done in the law must be remedied right away. 

A “no” vote on Proposition 1 would be a way to warn officials and the environmental community that they still have a great deal of work to do to assure that the public’s money is spent properly and does not spur excessive development while at the same time sharply cutting funding for land acquisition.

Time was, during the weeks after Labor Day, the leaves magically changed into technicolor and blew down Main Street in a scratchy buzz, but otherwise there was mostly silence.

Although that blessed time is still celebrated in certain ways — champagne brunches on the beach in anticipation of the mass exodus come to mind — fewer people are actually leaving, opting instead to stay put for most of the year or at least 52 weekends. Many are refugees from the city and the suburbs who are attracted to a quieter, yet cultured life. Families, artists, writers, foodies, and other creative types are no longer transients but fully rooted in the year-round landscape.

In addition to peace and quiet, many full-timers are here for the artistic and cultural attractions. In the past few years, longtime museums and venues like Guild Hall and the Parrish Art Museum have expanded year-round programs, new institutions such as the Southampton Arts Center have begun contributing their own full schedules, and the Bay Street Theater has gone from mostly seasonal offerings to live events throughout the off-season.

Fall arts and music festivals have grown out of successful local events, including Sag Harbor’s American Music Festival and Southampton’s SeptemberFest. Throw in the annual Hamptons International Film Festival, and some might even say the South Fork has an arts scene like that of a small city.

What has been called the shoulder season, the first few weeks before and after summer, has been padded all the way through the holidays. It then emerges again, like the groundhog, on or about Presidents and Valentine’s Day weekends.

A quick peek at the region’s cultural calendars shows staged plays and readings, gallery and museum openings, comedy shows, film screenings, theater and opera simulcasts, book talks and lectures, a fully evolved music scene, and so much more.

You say there is nothing to do in the fall and winter? You’re not looking hard enough.

East Hampton Town and Southampton Hospital are moving quickly toward breaking ground on a emergency-care facility, possibly off Pantigo Road just east of Town Hall. Many questions remain, and we are concerned that in the eagerness to get moving, some of the numbers used to justify the roughly $40 million project are being overstated. A hospital adjunct of some kind appears necessary within the town’s borders, especially since Southampton Hospital may be relocated westward in a few years to a new site on County Road 39.

For East Hampton’s ambulance services, a treatment center closer by makes a lot of sense. Even now, a routine trip to the Southampton emergency room takes a considerable amount of time. During the peak season, ambulances frequently have to return east after an emergency with lights flashing and sirens blaring in order to get to another call. Being able to turn an ambulance around at an East Hampton facility and put it back in service awaiting another emergency could mean the difference between life and death.

Location is a question. The hospital administration prefers the town’s 4.5-acre ball field on Pantigo Place over a much larger town-owned property on Stephen Hand’s Path. Whichever site is chosen, it is highly likely that a new traffic light on Montauk Highway will have to be installed. A light controlling the entrance and exit at Pantigo Place may be less disruptive of through traffic, though this would have to be studied closely before anyone could say for sure. 

For patients from Montauk, Springs, and Amagansett, whether going to the new emergency facility in an ambulance or getting there by other means, the Pantigo Place location would be better. It also is important to consider our summer visitors, many of whom stay in motels and other accommodations on Napeague and in Montauk. According to Suffolk County figures, there were beds for about 11,400 motel and hotel guests in East Hampton Town in 2010 — most of them from Amagansett east — an astonishing figure with obvious implications for first responders.

Other numbers warrant more clarity. The hospital has proposed eventually having a 64,000-square-foot building, which would make it among the largest structures in East Hampton Town. Does it really need to be that large? Maybe. Another startling statistic offered by the hospital is 17,000, the number of patient visits to the hospital originating from East Hampton annually, which needs a bit more explanation. It ought to be made clear just how many of those thousands of visits would be handled at a new site and how many would still require going to the hospital in Southampton. It is not clear at this point how either the patient or building plan numbers were arrived at and whether they justify the calculations that led to the East Hampton plan.

Another concern is that the Pantigo Place property is adjacent to a Suffolk County Water Authority well and water tower. What the environmental impact would be of such a massive facility and whether sewage treatment would be adequate to keep chemical and pharmaceutical contamination from reaching drinking or surface waters must be studied.

A $10 million promise of a state grant puts pressure on East Hampton Town and the hospital to get moving on construction as soon as possible. However, making sure the facility is the right size, built in the best location, and would result in only minimal ecological harm should take precedence over haste.

One of the perennial problems in East Hampton Town is a kind of amnesia that falls on residents and policy makers alike once summer ends. The cool and quieter days of late September and early October wash away the high season’s many frustrations, and the torments that had marked July and August are forgotten.

We were reminded of this two Saturdays ago during a Concerned Citizens of Montauk forum, at which the conversation focused entirely on what to do about the eroding downtown oceanfront and not about how to tame growth and summertime chaos.

It was a good discussion, to be sure, with a larger and more interested audience than one might have expected in other parts of East Hampton Town. This was likely due to the freshness of the subject matter, as the Army Corps’s sandbag seawall had only recently been exposed by a prolonged ocean swell, but it also came from the impressive level of civic involvement you see everywhere in Montauk. 

Montauk’s problems involve far more than the oceanfront. Indeed, during the 1938 Hurricane, destruction mostly swept in from the north rather than the ocean as the storm passed over Long Island. The Army Corps’s new idea of pumping a larger quantity of sand onto the downtown beach than had been envisioned might help in the short term, but, human nature being what it is, it would take the pressure off and dangerously delay a long-lasting solution.

In the more immediate future, the imbalance between an increasingly corporate tourism economy and the desires of Montauk residents for peace and quiet must be addressed. Years ago, Sag Harbor went through a similar struggle, pitting business owners against ordinary folks who just wanted to continue enjoying their village and to keep taxes modest. For the most part, they got it right. About Montauk, we are not so sure. 

Some years ago, there was talk among some resort operators about incorporating Montauk as its own, stand-alone village in order to evade restrictions on building. Now, as East Hampton Town proves it is ill-equipped to deal with the barrage of new commercial projects and never-ending violations of the town code there, it seems as if they got their wish.

We would like to think that the results of a village bid would be different today. If Montauk were to incorporate, there is a good chance that voters would put in place a mayor and trustees more in line with their views about how the hamlet should be and less inclined to give business everything it wanted — a good question for another day.

New York State has a big push under way to promote what is known as agritourism. On the East End, this is mainly the phenomena of drawing large masses of paying visitors to wineries, as is seen on the North Fork. And it also extends to breweries and distilleries. This week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced a $2 million program to promote destinations and events. A mobile app backed by the state will be revamped to further pump up food and beverage travel.

Growers and producers have come to depend on direct-to-consumer sales. Many say the money that comes in that way is what keeps them in business. But for neighbors and public safety officials agritourism comes at a high cost. Traffic on the North Fork is intolerable on weekends when the wineries are full and wedding season under way. In an extreme example, four young women were killed and four injured when a limousine in which they were riding to a bridal party at a winery in Cutchogue made an illegal U-turn in front of a pickup truck whose driver was allegedly under the influence of alcohol.

Local planning and zoning laws are supposed to help guide potentially problematic business development. However, thanks to favorable state laws, certain tasting rooms and agricultural retail operations are exempt from them. This upends meaningful land use and can lead to an unfair commercial advantage for brewers and farmers over other businesses. The rapid growth of Balsam Farms in Amagansett, the big crowds outside the Montauk Brewing Company in Montauk, and the booming success of the Wolffer Estate stand on Montauk Highway in Sagaponack are examples of enterprises that would be much more difficult, if not impossible, had they been entirely subject to the rules that apply to ordinary retailers, restaurants, or bars.

On the plus side, wineries, farms, and beer makers provide jobs and, in downtrodden areas of upstate New York, for example, can be an important source of economic activity. On the South Fork, however, their benefit is less obvious and the rationale for special treatment is a little bit muddy. 

It is good that Albany as been putting money toward promoting agriculture. However, as agritourism appears only ready to grow — especially here on the South Fork — more control must be returned to local government. As much as we might like our wine and beer, it is important to make sure retail tasting rooms and wineries expand in keeping with their communities’ rules and expectations.

Visitors who passed the green at East Hampton Town Pond on Columbus Day weekend may have been puzzled by its appearance. After an excavation that created several pools, new grass had just begun to appear, and the place almost had the look of an abandoned industrial site.

The intent of those behind the so-called bioswale project, undertaken by East Hampton Village, is good. The depressions are supposed to stop the flow of road runoff during rainstorms from reaching the pond. The pond, in turn, drains into Hook Pond, which has been environmentally compromised for years, with low levels of the oxygen necessary for aquatic life, according to a consultant’s study last year. A similar set of drain pools are being dug behind the Methodist Church to filter water that reaches the pond via the Nature Trail. The bioswales, at a cost of about $100,000, are expected to help remove pollutants.

From our standpoint, though, Hook Pond should hardly have been the first priority. Georgica Pond, which borders on the Town of East Hampton as well as the village, has far more recreational use as a site for crabbing and sailing. At one time it also supported a small commercial fish and crab harvest.

Georgica has had dangerous algae blooms in recent years. The dominant restoration effort there has come from a private group, the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, however, rather than government. That said, East Hampton Town’s moratorium on potential pollution-causing industrial and retail development in a portion of the Georgica watershed is smart and timely.

As strange as the village bioswales might seem to visitors, residents also should take note. Voters in the East End towns are going to see a ballot proposition in November asking whether to extend the community preservation fund’s 2-percent transfer tax until 2050 and to allow up to 20 percent of its future income to go to water quality efforts. This is a feel-good measure and very likely to pass. However, the problems with the proposal are considerable, given the vague framework in the enabling state legislation and “trust-us” assurances from officials.

East Hampton’s bioswales may or may not work in the end; they certainly were not among the principal recommendations in the consultant’s 2015 study of Hook Pond. They point to a “Hey! Let’s see if this can work!” approach, which is not sound policy for the water remediation efforts that could unfold if the referendum passes next month. The future of our ponds — and drinking water — is at stake, and the public should keep a steady eye on the proposals officials come up with.

With every new outrage from Donald Trump, his support among Republicans dwindles. At press time, reporters around the country were describing a “civil war” within the G.O.P., as leaders of Mr. Trump’s own party threw up their hands in disgust and responsible members fled in droves. Yet Lee Zeldin, our first-term representative from the First Congressional District, is hanging tough in his support of the rogue nominee.

Mr. Zeldin is a true believer. 

In May, he was among the earliest backers of Mr. Trump in the House of Representatives. This was disappointing, given what was already known about Mr. Trump’s character at that point — his statements about Mexicans and Muslims, for example, his pandering to the worst xenophobic impulses of the American electorate.

In June, Mr. Zeldin took a deep swig of the venomous brew, saying in a CNN interview that President Obama was the racist. Mr. Zeldin stood by Mr. Trump after he insulted veterans in general and Senator John McCain in particular, then went on to denigrate the parents of Humayun Khan, an American serviceman killed in Iraq (where, from July to September 2006, Mr. Zeldin served as a military legal officer). 

It is now October, and Mr. Trump has said that, if elected, he would “instruct” his attorney general to “get a special prosecutor” to investigate his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and throw her in jail — boasts worthy of a banana-republic dictator that also betray an abject ignorance of the way the justice system works. Mr. Zeldin is an attorney. We wonder how he can ignore Mr. Trump’s reckless and ignorant disdain for the law. 

In the meantime, Mr. Zeldin has failed to repudiate Mr. Trump’s views about women. (We wonder what he expects his twin daughters to make of the disclosure that Mr. Trump has bragged about sexual assault.) Mr. Zeldin has failed to repudiate his candidate’s praise for the Russian president, Valdimir Putin. He has failed to contradict Mr. Trump when he said that veterans who return from combat with post-traumatic stress disorder are weaklings.

So what would it take for our representative to say enough? So far, it looks as though nothing would do the trick other than Mr. Trump’s becoming a clear threat to Mr. Zeldin’s own chances of re-election.

Perhaps this is because Mr. Zeldin is rather full of hot air himself: He is a tough-talking frequent commentator on cable news shows, but missed scores of House Foreign Affairs Committee meetings and more than two-thirds of subcommittee discussions of ISIS and Syria. 

We are all entitled to our opinions, certainly, and should all vote accordingly: Those are central American values. But our political leaders should not get a free pass if they continue to support a candidate who is narcissistic, ill informed, predatory, and a threat to both the security of our nation and the rule of law. 

As with Mr. Zeldin, they should be held accountable.

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to listen this evening to what the public has to say about a planned one-year moratorium on changes on most commercially used properties along Montauk Highway in Wainscott. As members consider the proposal, they should think about whether a similar building pause should be imposed in Montauk, where, if anything, the stakes and pressures are far higher.

We strongly support the board’s effort to prevent additional inappropriate land use in the Wainscott hamlet gateway. Already, most of the north side of the highway is marred by hodgepodge construction and visual blight. Under current zoning, there are few effective limits on how intensely the area eventually could be developed. Notably, the so-called pit, several parcels where sand was excavated, will someday soon be ripe for development. How that occurs could affect the entire western end of East Hampton Town for decades to come. 

As in Wainscott, a study of Montauk’s business districts is being conducted under the guidance of an outside consultant. A large part of both the Montauk downtown and dock area is undeveloped or under-developed, and with deals in the works for a couple of key properties, such as Gosman’s, the look and feel of the entire waterfront could change almost overnight given the town code. Much of the area near the docks, as well as some of its periphery along West Lake and Flamingo Roads, is given over to parking, boat storage, and rundown rental accommodations. Smart rethinking might seek to put some essential services — food stores, medical centers, and decent work force housing — there. But this would be unlikely if new site-plan applications arrive in Town Hall for less vital uses.

Sea level rise and the threat that a storm might topple oceanfront structures in the Montauk downtown and flood the streets add extra urgency. In a 2011 state report on climate change and its impacts, municipalities  were urged not to invest in infrastructure projects in high-risk locations, calling them “perverse subsidies” and describing them as economically inefficient policies that are environmentally damaging and benefit the few (often the wealthy and politically well connected) at the expense of the majority of taxpayers. Allowing any new low-lying construction in downtown Montauk, when we know the water is coming sooner or later, would be irresponsible.

If a moratorium is appropriate for Wainscott, it is more than doubly so for Montauk. That one could be considered and the other not, at least so far, has not been adequately explained.

Much as we like the Hamptons International Film Festival and the action it brings at this time of year, one aspect deserves more attention: Main Street in East Hampton Village.

Even before the festival’s opening night, it seemed as if the jaywalking Olympics has come to town. Moviegoers and festival staff seem to think nothing of sauntering across the street’s four lanes, more or less from in front of Starbucks to the Regal Cinema, and dashing back again.

Factor in low light at evening screen times — and the fading eyesight of many of us drivers of a certain age — and there is the risk of a real life tragic ending, one we have seen here before. This is despite a traffic light at Newtown and Main Street and two nearby crosswalks fitted with buttons that instantly trigger flashing yellow lights to warn motorists that someone is about to cross their paths.

No solution is perfect — and jaywalkers are going to do what jaywalkers are going to do — but it seems to us that the village police, working with the film festival, should take the situation a little more seriously. At a minimum, temporary signs should be placed on Main Street at the obviously tempting spots, directing pedestrians left and right to the crosswalks. It is baffling that something this simple has not been tried before.

One other thought: The good intentions of some drivers, particularly those in the middle lanes on Main Street, who stop to let pedestrians cross, are an invitation to disaster when an unwitting motorist is approaching in the outside, or right-hand, lane. Too frequently, the person on foot is obscured by the Good Samaritan’s vehicle and emerges suddenly into the path of a second driver. Those Star readers inclined to stop to allow jaywalkers to finish their risky crossing should think twice and at least make sure no other vehicles are approaching.

But back to the main point: With extra foot traffic during the festival, an effort should be made to make sure more people use the crosswalks — and keep safe. Here’s to happy endings for all!

Drivers passing the former East Hampton Bowl property on Montauk Highway have been doing double takes in recent days as the steel frame for a hulking new building was erected nearly atop the roadway. According to East Hampton Village, the structure is to be leased to CVS, the pharmacy chain, and meets all zoning requirements. Expect things to look even worse as the frame is sheathed and an approved 24-foot-long illuminated corporate sign goes up.

We would have hoped that in the wake of the HomeGoods store in Wainscott, a debacle if ever there was one, village officials might have taken a look at the law and asked themselves whether changes were necessary. At least East Hampton Town may be on a path toward changes that would restrain future big-box store developers in the parts of Wainscott under its jurisdiction and other commercial areas. 

The new CVS store is the product of good intentions to be sure. Years ago, zoning laws were written to place parking at the rear of new commercial construction in both the village and town. This was intended to avoid what was known as strip-zoning, in which streetscapes become barren swaths of asphalt and freestanding signs, with rows of businesses constructed at some distance off in the rear. As a tradeoff perhaps, property owners were allowed to jam their structures nearly up to the property lines, with sheer, vertical walls extending high. 

Design failures like HomeGoods and the new CVS, which juts much farther out toward the roadway than its neighboring buildings and makes that portion of Montauk Highway canyon-like, are the result. It is so bad that at least one village official, shocked after the beams went up, asked the Building Department whether the building had been properly sited. It had been, and it was perfectly legal. The new CVS runs the risk of devaluing the Red Horse complex across the street by creating a significant aesthetic conflict as well as traffic tie-ups and additional congestion.

What has to happen now mirrors to some degree the initiative under way in the town to understand what is possible in the hamlet centers under current zoning. East Hampton Village must take a hard look at where additional CVS-style boxes could be built and move rapidly to make future ones impossible.