Now that the East Hampton Town Board has a problem on its hands of a long queue of people willing to be arrested in protest of the Army Corps of Engineers’ project in Montauk as well as some 250 others who pressed the matter at a meeting on Tuesday, the question is where the town can go from here. But it is even more important to consider whether coastal policy all the way from Town Hall to Albany and Capitol Hill must be overhauled.

Several local figures who sought money for the sandbag seawall, including former Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his then-allies on the town board, have remained out of the limelight although they more or less handed those who followed them into Town Hall a done deal.

However, the final responsibility for what is going on rests entirely with the current board, which signed off on the project and helped negotiate necessary access agreements with adjacent property owners. To be charitable, perhaps they, like many of the past days’ protestors, could not envision what the project would actually look like until the bulldozers rolled.

Up to last week, only a handful of individuals and just one organization, Defend H20, were on what we see as the right side, arguing against the seawall and pushing for a sensible, long-term program of moving endangered businesses and residences away from the shore — or condemning them and building a resilient dune in their places.

Supervisor Larry Cantwell and the rest of the town board had a chance early on to apply the brakes but chose not to. Perhaps they, like the project’s individual supporters and the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, allowed themselves to be conned by the idea of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the form of millions of federal dollars to be spent here as part of the Army Corps’s Fire-Island-to-Montauk study. They should have known better: Destroying a beach and setting aside years of environmental regulation on the mere wisp of a promise of cash from Washington was outrageous.

As we have argued before, local governments, as well as the State of New York, are doomed when it comes to managing a rapidly changing coast unless a major change of policy occurs. The Army Corps, with its single-headed focus on preserving property, is the wrong agency for the task. Change must come from the very top after a frank national conversation about how sea level rise and storm risk is going to be dealt with, and by whom.

What is happening today on the Montauk beach makes it clear that the current regulatory structure is a failure, and that new, more far-sighted leadership will have to come from Washington.

It’s about the money, and it’s about the desire of some, if not many, East Hampton Town landlords not to see the party end.

Seeking to reduce the overwhelming number of illegal group rentals, too much turnover, and so-called party houses, the East Hampton Town Board has for months been contemplating a registry system. Its goal would be to provide law enforcement with adequate tools to make sure landlords comply with existing regulations.

Think of it this way: If enough landlords were following the law now, there would be no need for additional bureaucracy. If self-regulation, as the opposition to a registry seems to favor, really worked, there would be no need for the proposed measures, right? While many landlords operate within legal bounds, the registry is a creation of a collective failure to do so by others. Those who say that the town should enforce the laws on the books are missing the point. Frankly, the registry is an admission that the rules the town has now are difficult to enforce and that better tools are necessary.

One commenter on a website run by the registry’s opposition added what may have been unintended honesty, implying that income-tax cheats had better watch out because the town “can and probably will” provide the rental list to the state and Internal Revenue Service. He or she neglected to mention cash-strapped Suffolk County, which loses out on piles of money annually from short-term leases, which probably should be paying 3-percent hotel-motel taxes.

At next Thursday’s hearing on the registry, the town board should turn the tables and ask the no-registry speakers what kind of regulation they would find acceptable. Would a free registry be okay? What about one in which tenants’ names were not required? If the answer is no registry at all, officials will get a pretty good sense of what the town is up against.

Taken together, it all adds up. Excessive turnover, people crammed into shares, and short-term leases have helped contribute to a sense that East Hampton has surpassed the limits of its geography and infrastructure. It is sad, but not all that surprising, that the anti-regulation crowd fails to see this. The registry is one way to restore the saner, more peaceful East Hampton that most residents really want.

Sag Harbor Village officials and their counterparts on the Southampton Town Board appear in agreement on a wish to see a portion of the Sag Harbor waterfront revert to public ownership. A developer has been working on a plan for townhouse-style units there and has filed application paperwork with the village. In effect, the structures would wall off that side of Sag Harbor from the water.

In a recent vote, the Southampton board agreed to add the property, which includes several parcels near the village’s 7-Eleven, to the town’s community preservation fund list. This will allow an official appraisal to be made and then, perhaps, an offer to the property owners. Therein lies the rub: Representatives of the partnership that controls the site have insisted that it is not for sale.

If you have ever driven over the bridge from North Haven approaching Sag Harbor and looked out to the right, you have seen the site. For Sag Harbor residents, as well as for the thousands of visitors who pass by each year, we hope that Greystone Property Development, a Manhattan company believed to own the controlling interest, reconsiders.

A deal should be struck to buy the developers out. A park would be much more welcome than residences and tie in well with the village’s existing walkable waterfront. Sag Harbor and Southampton should be willing to do whatever it takes to make the publicly accessible open space there a reality.

News last month that two more sections of Accabonac Harbor had been permanently closed to shellfishing was met with little more than a collective shrug. We were surprised by the lack of outcry, and hope that other announcements of this depressing sort are not ahead.

About 20 acres in the harbor were declared off-limits year round by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation after it said routine water sampling had found unacceptable levels of fecal coliform bacteria, a sign of possible contamination by sewage. Shellfish taken from areas with high bacteria have the potential to cause human illness if consumed.

That these sites had already been listed as seasonally contaminated suggests that efforts to improve water quality have a long way to go. Concerned about the harbor, East Hampton Town officials have bought a number of parcels that are in the southern Accabonac watershed in Springs, but not enough to make a real difference. Ideas about septic system upgrades have not made it past the most preliminary stage either.

As with perennially troubled waters in parts of Montauk, the newly verboten Accabonac Harbor areas should be subject to a vigorous restoration effort by both citizens and government. As it looks to the coming year, East Hampton Town Hall must make reversing this trend a top priority.

New York State has released a first-draft plan for considering sea level rise. But for all the effort, and a self-congratulatory public relations flurry, there is little promise of improving coastal policy. This is a regrettable failure.

The problem is this: Though the overwhelming evidence is that sea level is creeping upward, threatening low-lying and beachfront areas, government officials from New York’s villages to the state capital have been unable, or unwilling, to respond in ways that matter. East Hampton’s project to sandbag the downtown Montauk ocean beach, consistently opposed by independent experts, is a case in point. So, too, is the entire region’s continued expansion of development in the danger zones.

Three years after Hurricane Sandy and decades after warnings were issued, the state is only now getting around to making official predictions about how high the water is expected to go. But the state is not taking the next logical step of imposing new construction standards and changing permit requirements. Instead, Albany is handing responsibility down the line to those who might or might not be able to incorporate the predictions into routine decision-making.

The Montauk Army Corps effort was to a large degree the product of a misrepresentation by the previous town supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, who claimed Sandy was to blame for ongoing erosion. Those who followed him in Town Hall were hamstrung: Had they blocked the work and some of the motels begun to fall, the responsibility would have been theirs.

The East Hampton Town Board recently named a coastal resiliency committee to study the issue and make policy recommendations. The obvious risk is that whatever the committee comes up with will be left to elected officials to enact. Consideration should be given to changing the way shoreline projects are evaluated, especially in East Hampton Town. It might be better to give erosion-control project review to the town planning board, whose members’ seven-year terms are supposed to insulate them from politics. Free from fear of being turned out of office, planning board members might indeed be more likely to make the most difficult decisions.

Whatever the solution, it is clear that local governments cannot by themselves meet the political and emotional challenges of saying no to certain waterfront property owners and beginning a program of managed retreat. Albany’s estimate of how bad the problem will be for shore areas is a start, but falls short. Without real guidance from the top, business will continue as usual along the coast, with slow-moving disaster the most likely outcome.

Some time ago East Hampton Village passed an ordinance prohibiting anything other than street and directional signs on public property. And it has worked; passers-by are able to enjoy this fall’s unusually vivid foliage unencumbered. This is something the East Hampton Town Board should look into in light of the unsightly proliferation of political come-ons stuck along on nearly every roadside.

The election this year has been marked not only by the stunning amount of helicopter money that poured in to aid the local Republican candidates but the perhaps related number of signs supporting them. Sure there were placards out for Democrats, but far fewer. You have to hand it to the Republicans’ side for industriousness — and bad taste. The otherwise lovely fall roadsides have been diminished by the red-white-and-blue folderol. Theft has been a distraction as well, with one vocal Democrat having been caught in the act on video. Enough is enough, we say.

Let’s hope that both political parties quickly dispatch volunteers to take down their respective signs. Once that is done, officials should work on adopting new rules to keep East Hampton’s streets and public green spaces clear of visual clutter as the next election approaches.

Voters will be asked on Tuesday to select two people to serve four-year terms on the East Hampton Town Board. The job involves setting the town’s spending priorities, overseeing land-use policy, protecting water and the environment, appointing members of the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards, and the hiring and firing of many town personnel. They will earn $68,000 next year, plus benefits. Board members sit in on advisory committees and each is assigned as a point person on a portfolio of town departments and issues. 

Only one incumbent is in this year’s race, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who has been a steady and dedicated presence on the board and distinguished herself by taking on the noise problems stemming from East Hampton Airport. The others are first-time candidates: Jeffrey Bragman, Paul Giardina, and Gerard Larsen. Should Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc (whom The Star has endorsed) win as supervisor, there will be a one-seat vacancy on the town board next year. More on that later.

Considering many years of involvement with environmental matters, Mr. Bragman has more experience with East Hampton government than any other candidate, including Ms. Burke-Gonzalez and Mr. Van Scoyoc. When one considers the ins and outs that he has had to understand to advocate as a lawyer for clients against some of the worst missteps by officials, Mr. Bragman has time and again demonstrated his commitment to upholding the town code, particularly on environmental and neighborhood concerns. Over his career, he has shown willingness to take on entrenched powerbrokers, including working on behalf of Save Sag Harbor and on the problems at the town airport. We see Mr. Bragman as continuing in the long tradition of Democratic board members of putting community and the environment first and crafting an effective town code to protect them.

Mr. Giardina is a relatively new arrival on the local political scene. He popped up a little over a year ago as a critic of the then-proposed use of the community preservation fund for water improvement projects, calling it “a bit of a political issue, to say the least.” While he has positioned himself as a groundwater expert in his campaign, this is not supported by his education as a nuclear engineer who spent years running an Environmental Protection Agency office dealing with radiation and indoor air pollution. 

This is not to say he should not have offered an opinion on water issues nor does it disqualify him as a serious candidate for local office, but it was disingenuous to sell himself as the water guy when his expertise was in another field. Mr. Giardina is full of other good ideas, however, on opioid use and affordable housing, for example, making him worthy of consideration for the town board. Like many other Republicans, he has expressed doubts about sea-based wind power.

Mr. Larsen’s main pitch for town board, if there was one that could be discerned, was that he was East Hampton Village police chief, retiring earlier this year. He has correctly pointed to issues on which current and past town boards have failed to follow through, but since he has scarcely made an effort in the campaign, judging how he might do things differently is impossible. One thing about Mr. Larsen that would not change if he were elected, he has said, is his ownership of a private security business, which he started on the side while he was police chief and among whose largest accounts is the billionaire Georgica Pond-front property owner Ronald Perelman. 

Mr. Larsen is suing the Village of East Hampton, his former employer, alleging unfair competition because the mayor and one of the village trustees tried to force him out of the security business while they themselves took on similar outside work. East Hampton Town Hall does not need this kind of ethical circus, and voters would do well to steer in the another direction.

Our endorsements are for Ms. Burke-Gonzalez and Mr. Bragman, based on their unquestionably superior experience. However, the effort that Mr. Giardina put in during his campaign suggests that he could be a valuable public servant. With a win by Mr. Van Scoyoc as supervisor, the resulting Democratic majority on the board should appoint him to the open seat, thereby avoiding one-party rule and demonstrating to the community that they would welcome the full airing of opposing views.

You have to hand it to Amos Goodman for running a credible campaign for Suffolk legislator. As a newcomer to politics, he has offered plenty of ideas and put in a huge effort to get elected. Among Mr. Goodman’s strongest arguments is that he would make tackling Suffolk’s ongoing budget deficits a central focus. He takes strongly pro-environment positions, and like his opponent, Bridget Fleming, is interested in untangling how sales tax revenue is, or isn’t, shared with the South Fork. A major negative are the robo-calls bashing Ms. Fleming, which are irresponsible and serve to diminish his credibility.

• RELATED: County Legislature Hopefuls Spar

For her part, Ms. Fleming tended toward generalizations in recent conversations about what she would do if elected. But, given the limits presented by the county’s dire finances, that is perhaps to be expected. From a South Fork perspective, however, she is the more practical choice for the Second District. It comes down to County Executive Steve Bellone, who is expected to win re-election on Tuesday.

The calculation works this way: There are two East End county legislators, one for the North Fork and one for the South. This means that our end of Suffolk will always be outnumbered by 16 votes in legislative matters. Ms. Fleming, collegial and a Democrat, as is Mr. Bellone, is more likely to be effective and to tip the balance, if only slightly, in the Second District’s favor. Mr. Goodman, who proved himself a bit of a fire-slinger this fall in debates, would find it harder to gain the county executive’s backing on key measures, which would be a hindrance. In addition, Ms. Fleming’s solid experience on the Southampton Town Board makes her the better choice.

When the voting results come in on Tuesday, East Hampton residents might want to take note of the town trustee results. With all nine seats on the trustee board in play, only the most well informed among us would have been able to make a well-reasoned choice. This means that the members of one of the town’s important protectors of the environment, as well as of traditional pursuits, would have been selected on Bonacker name recognition or party affiliation alone. We suggest that readers watch closely to see if candidates who did not campaign at all or who did not respond to requests for interviews or if those with terrible attendance records make the cut.

• RELATED: Trustee Candidate Profiles

If so, the answer is clear: The election of trustees, who now all have two-year terms, should be staggered in some way to allow for improved public engagement. One idea would be for this year’s top four vote-get- ters to receive four-year terms, with the remaining five, those who polled less well, being elected to two-year terms. Perhaps there are other ways to mix things up as well. What will almost certainly be obvious once the votes are counted is that something should change. Democracy means participation; the way trustees are elected now defies that noble intent.

• RELATED: This week's Letters to the Editor about the trustees 

Support for outside commercial interests over home rule and the promise of meaningful noise control is a red line that candidates for East Hampton Town elected office should not cross. But Tom Knobel, Margaret Turner, and Lisa Mulhern-Larsen have been willing to finance their supervisor and town board campaigns largely with money from businesses and individuals seeking to block tough new aircraft limits.

By the most recent count, HeliFlite and related individuals, as well as a handful of pilots and airport businesses, have provided the Republicans with $115,000. It is difficult to see this as evidence of anything except a quid pro quo. However, Mr. Knobel, who is seeking the supervisor’s post, argued that the largess was only because the helicopter companies and others see him as having an “open mind.” We doubt voters are as credulous as Mr. Knobel might wish.

It is regrettable that the once-proud East Hampton Republican Party has come to this, taking money from outsiders who would put their corporate well-being ahead of the wishes of thousands of East Hampton residents for peace and quiet.

The Republican candidates may say what they will about all the other town issues and their qualifications for office, but by being financed almost entirely by airport-related donors, they have shown themselves sorely lacking in judgment and unfit for leadership. On the airport issue alone, Mr. Knobel, Ms. Turner, and Ms. Mulhern-Larsen are not likely to see wide support.

There is still time before Election Day for them to give back the tainted money and work to repair the damage, but not much. Voters should be watching closely in the campaign’s final days.