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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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 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.

Americans are used by now to the too-fast-to-think ecosystem that is Twitter, the online forum in which posts are limited to 140 characters and in which the like-minded essentially echo one another in endless spirals of wit, while antagonists go for sharp rejoinders. Twitter is also a place where politicians sometimes lay bare their odder passing thoughts. Such was the case on Monday when Representative Lee Zeldin made an almost incomprehensible comment following the capture of the man suspected of the recent Manhattan bombing. In its entirety, Mr. Zeldin wrote, “Suspect in custody. You are welcome, Colin Kaepernick.”

Mr. Kaepernick is the San Francisco 49ers football quarterback who has declined to stand for the national anthem in protest of police shootings of people of color. Figuring out exactly what Mr. Zeldin meant by his post is difficult; even he probably does not know. That did not stop plenty of people from going to Twitter to turn his point around, however.

One reaction read, “13-year-old Tyre King shot down by police from behind in cold blood. Thanks, Lee Zeldin.” Others made the point that Ahmed Khan Rahami, the terror suspect, was taken alive, unlike the many black, unarmed Americans killed by police. Another Twitter user offered “. . . if only Kaepernick had stood for the anthem these past two weeks, we could have caught the terrorist three hours sooner probably.”

Mr. Zeldin’s outburst mirrors the recurring bombast on Twitter from Donald Trump, who has made a campaign out of this kind of drivel. The comment can be heard as a kind of racist code, intended to speak directly to an embittered, paranoid fringe among First Congressional District voters. In a statement, Mr. Zeldin subsequently defended his post, saying, “I unapologetically love our country and our heroes who defend us. I’m insulted and disgusted when someone refuses to say the pledge or stand for the national anthem.” 

We have previously criticized Mr. Zeldin for jumping on the Trump bandwagon and called him unfit to continue to serve in Congress. He has shown that to be the case once again.

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!