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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

East Hampton Town Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch has quietly been doing a very good job since taking on the job in 2012. But one thing he should be more aggressive about is the cordoning off of public roadsides by private property owners.

Ostensibly, the rows of stakes, and sometimes rope, are placed to protect well-tended grass from the wheels of passing vehicles. Given the substantial cost involved in terms of time — and more realistically landscapers’ invoices — one can sympathize with the impulse. The thing is, it is wrong and potentially dangerous.

Time and again we have seen runners and pedestrians remain in the roadway rather than step onto a staked-off grass apron. A couple of bad places that have caught our notice are on Sayre’s Path in Wainscott and at the east end of Further Lane in Amagansett. Also on Further Lane, some time ago the town allowed a property owner to raise the side of the road by more than a foot, eliminating the shoulder and creating a precipitous little cliff impossible for a bicyclist to climb in an urgent situation.

As far as we can tell, the roadside stakes are illegal and should not be tolerated. That they are tacitly allowed through inaction is wrong and speaks to what might appear to be improper kowtowing to mostly wealthy property owners at the expense of the rest of us.

Also on the subject of roadsides, East Hampton Town officials need to reconsider the approach to so-called temporary signs. Placards announcing builders’ names and subcontractors’ firms and architects looking to drum up a little more business are far too many, and they are allowed to remain up far longer than the limits imposed in the town code. Frankly, the rules regarding size and how long signs of this kind can remain in view are impossible for the town to enforce, which means the only realistic solution is for them to be banned entirely. 

Notable among the offending signs are those that are not put in front of construction sites at all but are set out on a contractor’s own property, in effect becoming a small billboard not unlike those the town banned decades ago. Come on, East Hampton Town, if we know who these folks are, you certainly should, too. And we would lump in the real estate “for sale” signs that stay up until a place is sold, which in some cases means for years.

We believe any harmful effects on businesses of a crackdown are overstated. East Hampton and Sagaponack Village have very strictly enforced limits, and property values have hardly been hurt. In parts of coastal Florida, Palm Beach, for example, “for sale” signs are no bigger than a sheet of letter-size paper. 

The public roadsides are just that. They should not be allowed to continue on as private extensions of lawns, nor should they be tarted up with commercial messages. A beautiful town should begin right at the pavement’s edge.

For all the attention being paid to the hamlet studies being conducted about commercial centers in East Hampton Town, there is reason for worry that larger issues could be overlooked.

Led by Dodson and Flinker, a consulting firm brought in by the town board, officials and residents have been looking at business sections in Amagansett, East Hampton, and Wainscott, and were to have started gathering information in Montauk this week. The work was commissioned to fill out the town’s comprehensive plan, a kind of a master policy and vision document last updated in 2005. And therein lies the problem.

Though the comprehensive plan was intended to be useful for 20 years or more, enough has changed in the last 11 years to make the existing plan seem obsolete. To cite but a few examples of how different things are today: In 2005 online vacation rental websites were barely functional; today they are the basis of a booming sub-economy. In 2005, Montauk had yet to become “hip” or subject to very deep-pocketed corporate development pressure. Additionally, concern about waterways and the airport had nowhere near today’s fever pitch. We can’t help reminding our readers (even though they know) that traffic was only a fraction as bad as it is now, and there were still a few affordable places for year-round residents to rent if they looked hard enough.

The hamlet studies so far seem to be most concerned about traffic and aesthetics and how far one has to walk to shop. This could change, of course, as the consultants begin to study what they have learned in their weeks here and report back. However, it’s hard to escape the feeling that, given all the new realities, these individual efforts will, in the end, produce little of lasting value without a new look at the overall town comprehensive plan.