Come January and February —  and, come to think of it, March — when the days are cold and the nights colder, cultural events are few and far between. This isn’t really surprising; half the year-round population of the South Fork is in Florida or Rincon, Puerto Rico, and the other half doesn’t feel like leaving the house. Yet for those motivated to put on an overcoat and venture out, there are options. 

Quogue has theater, Sag Harbor and Amagansett have rock and country music, Southampton can be depended on for group artist exhibits and free classical music, Bridgehampton has artists and writers nights at a restaurant from time to time as well as live music, Guild Hall has staged theatrical readings and broadcasts of live theater from Great Britain as well as the Metropolitan Opera, and there is always something doing at the Parrish Art Museum and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Nevertheless, the off-season can some weeks feel like a drought.

One thing we find ourselves wondering as winter sets in for real is whether there is an audience here for small events despite the weather. Could small “black-box” theater performances fill enough seats to justify the effort? What about a spoken-word series? How big would the turnout have to be for an event to be judged a success? And would free beer or coffee be necessary to sweeten the deal? Count us among those who would be eager to find out. At least parking won’t be a problem.

So what gives? Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says he wants the state to spend $3 billion to redo the gloomy Penn Station in Manhattan, and at the same time he has his hands on the throats of school districts, which are being squeezed by his signature tax cap. 

This year, the tax-levy increase allowed for schools that are unable to win an almost two-thirds majority in a budget vote is .12 percent. This means that for a district like Springs, which is expecting enrollment to continue to climb, getting enough in taxes to adequately educate all of its children will be more difficult. Proposed increases in state aid are not likely to make up the difference. It’s odd, frankly, that Mr. Cuomo would want to be so generous with city commuters while kicking struggling public schools in the shins.

The tax cap is grossly unfair. Town boards and other government entities that do not face public votes on their budgets can easily vote to exceed the annual limit. In East Hampton, just three of the five town board members need agree to go past this year’s .12 percent. For a school tax to rise more than that, it would take 60 percent of those voting to say yes — a very high hurdle indeed.

Fredrick U. Dicker, writing in The New York Post last week, cited an unnamed Albany source that claimed Mr. Cuomo’s leftward posturing — money for transit! — is all about returning to Washington, where he was secretary of housing in the Bill Clinton administration. The calculation is complicated, but would center on Mr. Cuomo’s seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. In the meantime, you would hope he would at least try to improve the public schools. Instead, he has short-changed prekindergarten funding and has hopes for an education tax credit for wealthy parents of private school students.

Critics of the governor’s education policies have pointed out that at a time when the state is enjoying a billion-dollar annual surplus, the tax cap, at least for schools, should be scrapped entirely. But, of course, if Mr. Cuomo is indeed thinking about a run for the White House someday, a tough-on-taxes record might be something he wants to protect. 

It is in many ways good that Mr. Cuomo’s tax-levy cap forces school districts to be wiser with their finances, but it is wrong to have left it at that. With ultimate control over education resting with Albany, more must be done to help either consolidate districts or control costs without impacting students. As things stand, the governor, State Education Department, and Legislature earn a failing grade.

With the governor’s signature, a proposed 20-year extension of the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund that could divert up to 20 percent of the 2-percent real estate transfer tax to water quality projects is well on its way to the November ballot. At first look, this might appear to be terrific news, but given what we know about state and local government, there is very real reason for caution.

The enabling law approved by the State Legislature is far too vague and leaves too much to local officials’ discretion. On close inspection it amounts to not much more than a framework, leaving it up to the region’s town boards, with tepid oversight from an understaffed and underfunded Department of Environmental Conservation, to make sure there is no room for future abuse. First and foremost, iron-clad, independently vetted safeguards about how the money is to be used were not written into the process.

In all, the extension of the program is expected to bring in perhaps another $1.5 billion. It is telling that state and local officials chose to carve out one of every five future dollars for water quality, leaving little for other critical goals, such improving residential options for the area’s work force. But then, as recent anti-housing reactions in Wainscott and Amagansett illustrate, providing for this community need can be decidedly unpopular. Under the state law, preservation fund revenue could be used for upgrades to existing sewage treatment plants, so why not for preserving access to houses and apartments for the people who actually keep the communities up and running?

Then there is the question of land use and if improvements in wastewater treatment will lead to overdevelopment. There is strong evidence that the authors of the state bill feared that it would: The law that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed last week specifically mentions this concern but fails to provide any guidelines about how to prevent it.

Clean water is a vital but feel-good goal. Reflecting on past examples of the misuse of government funds is of the highest priority as officials prepare proposals for voter approval in November 2016. Consider, for example, that stealing money from environmental funds, as occurred to paper over holes in the Suffolk County budget, has not always been fatal to the careers of those officials who did so.

Closer to home, local examples of poor judgment (the Montauk Army Corps project) and outright law-breaking (the East Hampton Town Bill McGintee scandal), add to the likelihood that politicians will seek ways to take advantage of anything they regard as “free” money. It would be foolish to believe that this could not happen again. Watchdog groups, as well as the public, must monitor the process closely in advance of the expected referendum.

“Trust us,” as the bill’s authors and its supporters seem to be saying, just won’t cut it.

Since its start, the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton Recenter has never quite seemed to get it right. Now, amid renewed concerns about respiratory ailments some say are caused by an inadequate ventilation system, the time may at last have arrived to get serious about changes.

 The RECenter is an odd hybrid, owned by the Town of East Hampton and yet run by a private organization under contract. Taxpayers contribute about $600,000 annually for its upkeep; Y memberships fund the rest. In some ways, this leaves no one really in charge; not the town board, not the out-of-town Y.M.C.A. bureaucracy.

 Aside from questions about air circulation or lack therof, the RECenter is far less appealing than other facilities in the tristate area, notably, the well-appointed S.Y.S., the Southampton Youth Services Recreation Center. Troubles at the East Hampton site are indicated by its crowded workout area, threadbare sofas that look as if they were frat house rejects, and often filthy floors and shower drains, particularly in the cramped women’s locker room. And then there is the continuing tension about just which user groups the place is supposed to be for: youth, for whom it was originally built, or adults, just there for a workout.

The town recently committed $750,000 for repairs at the RECenter, an indication of the scale of the problems, perhaps. But when all things are tallied, this is just a beginning. An honest conversation among all involved, and the public, is overdue about the facility’s direction, leadership, and, ultimately, if an entirely new approach is needed.

For East Hampton Town officials, these are the easy days, but January and February’s quiet pace will soon yield to frenetic spring preparations for the season to come. Then it will be summer 2016, which, if last year’s experience is any guide, will be busier and crazier than before. Despite a public uprising in July in which hundreds of people at an overflowing meeting at the Montauk Firehouse begged the town board to do something, anything, there is much work left to do.

 An unfortunate truth about East Hampton Town policy is that for three busy months, officials have to hustle to keep up with the demands, but then, once September comes around, the pressure dissipates and doing something to head off the next season’s troubles loses urgency.

On the plus side, the town board added additional enforcement power to the coming year’s budget. It banned parking near the Surf Lodge, which has been a perennial source of public frustration in Montauk. And it created a new registration process for property rentals with a goal of improving landlords’ compliance with existing limits. All in all, these are worthwhile measures, but, unfortunately, they do not go far enough toward shifting us back toward the way most residents would like it to be — and we dare say most folks would like it to be clean, quiet, and easy to get around, hardly the way anyone would describe the peak season last year.

East Hampton should not be Party Town U.S.A.; none of the current town board members would say that it is. Still, we cannot escape the notion that a hands-off approach still holds sway. Think for a moment if any of the commercial excesses that draw hundreds of partyers each weekend night between Memorial Day and Labor Day popped up in East Hampton Village; they would be shut down in a second. So what, one might ask, is different about the town? Town officials seem to spend almost as much time making excuses about what they cannot do for one reason or another than about what they actually can accomplish.

After the July outcry, the town tried to get serious, dispatching additional police officers to Montauk for late-night crowd control, for example. And Supervisor Larry Cantwell at the time even mused out loud about phasing out some nightclubs. That was an intriguing idea, but nothing has been heard of it since. It should be resurrected.

Yes, the East Hampton Town Board has a lot to deal with. But no, its members should not get a free pass when it comes to protecting and improving residents’ quality of life. Those who live here, pay taxes here, and love it here must always come first. Controlling the forces that are turning the town into a place few of us find attractive should not be an afterthought, even in the year’s coldest, dimmest months. The time to get busy is now.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo renewed his push for a smaller New York this week. Well, not exactly, but for a smaller bite into its residents’ pocketbooks, to be achieved through municipal consolidation. The governor is putting the state’s money where his mouth is, offering a $20 million reward to the local government partnership that achieves the greatest reduction in property taxes. Here on the South Fork, when one thinks about consolidation, one thinks of school districts, among which taxing disparity can be stunning. 

Some examples to illustrate the point: Sag Harbor School District taxes are almost three times those in Amagansett, and Springs’s are approaching seven times those of Wainscott. 

Among the districts, classroom opportunities are far from equivalent. The Springs School struggles for more space every year and faces perennial budget crises, while Amagansett enjoys virtual country-club exclusivity. Considering that much of the work force to keep all those big houses in Amagansett up and running probably lives in Springs, it would be much more equitable for the larger community to pay for schools altogether. And, tangentially, it is reprehensible that the Wainscott School Board agitated successfully to block town affordable housing that would have added only a relative handful of students to its small school. Taxes should not be so high in one part of East Hampton Town, or so low in another.

The problem with the governor’s $20 million bounty is that in order to work, all participants in a hypothetical partnership would have to want to take part. It has been generally understood that Amagansett does not want to be part of a consolidated school entity of any kind, and it appears that Wainscott is simply opposed to any change.

  School consolidation is not new. Far from it. For decades now, people have looked at the patchwork of small districts and thought that something had to be done. Studies have been commissioned, reports completed, but generally the conclusion has been that consolidation was not worth it. We have long believed that the opposition came as much from individual school administrators concerned about losing their jobs as from anything material. Certainly, among the first cuts as districts were combined would be the newly duplicative six-figure superintendents’ and assistant superintendents’ salaries.   

Looking past the resistance, the numbers have long been thought to be favorable for taxpayers should the number of districts be reduced. A citizens group that looked at the problem in 2009-10 observed that the East Hampton district spent far more per pupil than the county average. Consolidation, it found, would cut as much as 10 percent from tax bills. It was no surprise though, that no action ensued.

For there to be meaningful improvement in the way schools are funded — and to assure equal education for all — leadership will have to come from the top, whether from Mr. Cuomo or the Legislature. Left on their own, most school districts will simply maintain the status quo.

A request from Sag Harbor Village to the East Hampton Town Trustees to discuss ways to manage an all-but-unregulated seasonal anchorage is an example of how demands on the area’s natural resources and infrastructure have outpaced government control.

What prompted Sag Harbor’s request to the town trustees was the expanding presence of private vessels kept on moorings or anchored for a night or two beyond the village breakwater. At present, the village has jurisdiction only within the breakwater, where moorings are strictly regulated and waste pump-out boats are available. 

Beyond the breakwater, things get wooly. According to a member of the Sag Harbor Waterways Committee, as many as 70 boats at a time might be found off Havens Beach and east toward Barcelona Neck. Some have broken loose in storms and washed up, becoming the village’s problem. Others have been known to illegally discharge sewage. Then there is the question of boaters coming ashore in Sag Harbor for shopping, services, and even to dispose of garbage, adding to an already crowded community in the busy months. “We’re getting the brunt of it,” the village harbormaster said. 

State Assemblyman Fred. W. Thiele Jr., whose other paying job is Sag Harbor Village attorney, recently introduced a bill in the State Legislature that would expand the area under village control from the current 1,500 feet from shore. But 1,500 feet is also the distance that East Hampton Town Trustee jurisdiction extends. This means that a cooperative approach is necessary no matter where a new line might be drawn.

Mr. Thiele is in an odd position, particularly since the bill he sponsored on behalf of the village could be seen as a land-grab attempt against the town trustees, whose interests he is also supposed to represent as a member of the Assembly. To avoid questions of an ethical nature, Mr. Thiele should swiftly seek to have his bill withdrawn. 

Meanwhile, Sag Harbor officials and the town trustees are continuing to talk. This is good. The waters beyond the breakwater cannot continue to be a no-man’s land, regardless of which local government asserts authority in the end.

East Hampton Town’s planned purchase of the development rights on the 35-acre Whitmores landscaping nursery on Long Lane presents a dilemma. On the one hand, the $3.2 million deal would prevent the site’s ever being turned into a housing development. On the other, it does not appear to do much for the town as a whole, provide public access, or assure the land’s return to crop growing. A hearing on the purchase is scheduled for tonight at 6:30 in Town Hall.

When development rights programs were first created on the East End decades ago, advocates envisioned them as a way to protect farming and scenic vistas. What they did not foresee was the value of the sites for other purposes, be they raising nursery stock, stabling horses, or as annexes to extensive private lawns. What is unarguable is that development rights purchases have kept houses off the land; what is less clear is whether the town and county programs worked as intended. Groups like the Peconic Land Trust have for some time said these programs needed updating — even going back to property owners in some cases to negotiate food-friendlier arrangements.

From what we can tell, Whitmores would continue to use the fenced-in East Hampton site for a retail and wholesale business that puts heavy demands on the soil. After years of use as a nursery, it is likely that major rehabilitation would be needed before food growing might be efficient there. Drawing down the community preservation fund, the source of the $3.2 million, to continue the site’s intensive, commercial use seems shortsighted, and officials should press for additional rights.

Indeed, the wording of the town resolution on the proposed purchase describes it as for agriculture and open space. As things stand, it does not appear that the money would further either goal, even though the state considers tree farming to be agriculture, which would make the purchase legal. Before the town board makes the deal, it might seek some concessions from the sellers to improve the land’s value to the public, perhaps tying it to the nearby trail systems or obtaining assurances that crops might grow there again. The pending purchase becomes even more questionable when you consider that the town’s zoning rules would require an agricultural set-aside of about 70 percent of the land if it were to be subdivided for houses.

In general terms, the development rights approach has to be refigured to ensure that preservation fund money is spent in places of true ecological value or to assure that food production continues. Handouts so that businesses and landowners can pursue non-farming-related activities with the help of public funding should not be tolerated, even if it takes changing state law.

Sag Harbor officials are moving ahead with new, tough rules to regulate the size of houses in reaction to a spate of super-sizing, which has left many aghast over changes to their beloved village. The changes are overdue and should, perhaps, be made even tougher.

Unlike several neighboring municipalities, Sag Harbor’s zoning code has been downright generous when it came to residential construction. This has allowed some speculative builders and well-heeled property owners to radically change several streetscapes. Profit is usually the motive for bloated fancifying; the more bedrooms and amenities, the more dollars a developer can make and the higher the market value. But an individual’s bank account should not be the basis of community planning. A new crop of officials is proving willing to act in the broader interest of preserving the village’s unique sense of place by saying, “Not so fast!”

The new rules, made public only recently, would tie the floor area of a new or renovated house directly to the size of its lot. This would be an extension of the existing zoning code, under which construction has been significantly less constrained. Even so, the proposals would allow more house, inch-for-inch, than is permissible in several nearby villages. Maybe this is fair, considering that Sag Harbor has a somewhat more urban feel than, say, North Haven, but, frankly, we don’t see any obvious justification.

Well-intentioned, but perhaps more trouble than it is worth, would be a separate fee on building permits for houses greater than 3,000 square feet. Money from the fee would be earmarked for affordable housing. Given that the hurdles for lower-priced housing within the Sag Harbor School District are likely to remain high, it is probable that little of the money would ever be used for its stated purpose, instead accumulating, like other towns’ and villages’ parking charges, in an untapped fund.

Worse, perhaps, is that the feel-good fee could, in the wrong hands, be misapplied later on to help squeeze questionably large house plans past future, more development-friendly zoning and architectural review boards. We would love to be proven wrong, but given the laughable record of Sag Harbor’s only to-date affordable housing initiative — buying an existing laborers’ camp outside village limits — skepticism is warranted.

That said, Sag Harbor officials should be supported for being on the right track in general. They should think about decoupling house sizes from the dubious fee and move ahead with overall limits, perhaps even making them more restrictive. 

That the East Hampton School District might radically overhaul its entire energy and heating approach is intriguing news. If the school board signs on, Johnson Controls, a leading national firm, would install 634-kilowatts of solar panels atop the district’s three schools. It would also improve the way oil is burned for heating, decrease heat loss and gain in classroom windows, and seek to make doors more airtight. The heating systems in the three buildings would have better insulation and power-wasting light fixtures would be replaced. 

The cost, $4.8 million, would cut about $366,000 annually from the district’s energy bills. And Johnson Controls has said the district might save even more money as traditional energy costs increase over time. While it is difficult to know the future — who could have predicted oil at $36 a barrel? — the company’s track record appears solid, as does its relationship with other schools in the region. 

One aspect of the proposal, the dismissal of wind power as part of the district’s electrical generation portfolio, however, seems worth revisiting. The stated reason for the omission, that the payback period of 18 years or more for turbines is too long, is odd when the company’s paperwork describes solar as taking nearly that long to break even. School board members should press the firm on this. The Long Lane high school property would seem ideal for wind generation, as several nearby businesses have demonstrated. Moreover, because the wind blows vigorously in the low-light shorter days of winter, wind generation would seem an obvious way to further reduce the district’s dependence on the grid. 

Moving the district toward energy independence and, by reducing its use of electricity generated by fossil fuels, cutting down on its carbon footprint, while saving money, is an admirable goal. Let’s hope it becomes a reality.