Kicking a few ideas around at last week’s editorial meeting, we hit on the subject of pet peeves. Everybody has a few, and with the Hamptons high season at full boil, a lot of us are happy to share. In no particular order, here is a list of a few things that get the staff’s collective goat.

Landscape trucks parked in the lane of travel while the crews are off mowing or what have you. Those people who think nothing of parking in handicapped-only spaces “just to run in for something for a minute.” Rows of stakes on public property along the roadside; are they intended to protect the grass from errant tires? Large items, like beach chairs, umbrellas, and body boards, left at beach trash receptacles. Benches left sticky from a fallen ice cream. Don’t get us started about price-gouging for staple groceries. And one that is really more serious than a peeve: Drivers who fail to get out of the way for emergency responders’ vehicles.

There’s plenty to grumble about. What’s on your list? Let us know.

It is remarkable to think that Soldier Ride began here, with the vision of a single man, Chris Carney, who wanted to raise some money and increase awareness for a fledging organization that was helping injured military veterans. Back in 2004, when Mr. Carney first decided to ride more or less alone across the United States, the Wounded Warrior Project had a single employee and had raised about $10,000 in all. By the time Mr. Carney reached the West Coast that August, he had tallied over $1 million in donations. The next year, he was joined by two soldiers, Ryan Kelly and Heath Calhoun, who had endured the loss of limbs after combat, on a ride from Los Angles to Montauk that brought in millions more.

Wounded Warrior has grown from there. Among its milestones has been a $100 million contribution for veteran’s mental health care at hospitals in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles. It also provided $30 million in seed money for a nationwide in-home care. In addition to the annual Hamptons event this weekend, there have been 27 rides all over the United States and several overseas. The organization predicts that by the end of next year it will have provided services to about 100,000 veterans and their families, including educational opportunities.

For those readers who are not taking part in Saturday’s ride or party afterward, there are other ways to give, and the Wounded Warrior Project website can explain how. There are also other charities set up to help United States veterans in a range of ways.

Soldier Ride is East Hampton’s homegrown effort to embrace and acknowledge those injured in the line of duty. It is a source of pride that it all started here.

The latest developments in the United States Army Corps of Engineers project to build a 3,100-foot-long sandbag wall on the downtown Montauk oceanfront warrant close attention. Though a private lawsuit could still derail this massive boondoggle, the Corps, East Hampton Town officials, and the state appear to be moving forward. Recently described details concern pedestrian and vehicular access over the planned artificial dune and what happens to rainwater there. Barring a court ruling, work is expected to begin in October.

Now, unbelievably, the same people who brought us the Katrina disaster are considering installing some kind of a floodgate to allow rainfall and runoff to escape to the ocean. Sorry. We are not convinced.

From the start, the project has been marked by rule-bending, false claims, inadequate review, and, going back several years, an embarrassing, overstated back-of-the-napkin economic analysis. All this has not appeared to shake current town support. Politics plays a role; woe be the elected official who speaks out to block the effort then sees heavy damage caused by a hurricane or bad winter storm. But expediency comes at the expense of sound planning and a responsible answer to the long-term issue of erosion.

Downtown Montauk was built where it should not be. It’s that simple. No Army Corps seawall by itself is going to change that fact. The Corps’s poorly conceived project only delays the day of reckoning, which should have taken place after Hurricane Sandy’s near miss in 2012. Tough leadership is desperately needed, but it is not coming — from any level of government.

Voters can go to their polling places on Tuesday to give their respective school district budgets the thumbs-up or down, though the turnout is not expected to be large. In several places — Sag Harbor, Amagansett, and Montauk — there are contested races for school board positions; in others, the incumbents stand unopposed.

Over all, we sense a degree of satisfaction with the schools, the unexpected opt-out test mess notwithstanding. Complacency may come from a feeling of futility; budgets are sharply constrained by a state cap on tax increases, and curriculum largely set by the Department of Education. Disinterest may also play a role. A larger, consolidated educational system here might well spur board of education races and capture public interest, while providing financial and programmatic advantages. That, however, is not on Tuesday’s ballots.

In East Hampton, we are pleased to see John Ryan Sr. seek to return to the school board. The current group appears in lock-step with the district administration too frequently, reflexively defending its missteps, as in a recent spate of criticism from some Latino students’ parents over pressure they thought had been put on them to get their children to take the disputed Common Core tests. It is also vaguely unsettling that the three incumbents, Christina DeSanti, Liz Pucci, and Deme Minskoff, are seeking to retain their seats as a bloc. That alone might well be an argument in Mr. Ryan’s favor. However, his strong advocacy for a fully realized youth aquatic safely program is well worth voters’ returning him to the board for what would be a seventh term. Our picks are Mr. Ryan, Ms. Minskoff, and Ms. DeSanti.

Montauk’s race for one seat pits Carmine Marino Jr., a newcomer, against Diane Hausman, the school board president. Ms. Hausman has been a Montauk School Board member for 20 years. Mr. Marino is a Montauk fire commissioner who has made an issue of the school board’s need for more openness, a valid point. However, Ms. Hausman earns our endorsement in recognition of her experience and steady hand.

While Springs does not have a contested board position, an important referendum will be on the ballot: whether to use $2 million from a reserve fund for reconfiguring vehicle drop-off areas. We support this with misgiving; the last time the district took on a large project of this type, an unsightly and widely hated blacktop bus parking area was the community’s reward. The board must do better this time if the money is authorized on Tuesday, which it should be.

In Amagansett, the choice is between Mary Lownes, a 13-year incumbent, and Steve Graboski, a newcomer. Ms. Lownes should cruise to re-election.

Sag Harbor’s board race is a lively one, with five in the mix for three seats. Right off the bat, we cannot support Tommy John Schiavoni, who as a board member has opposed video recording of the public comment portion of board meetings for the flimsiest reasons. The other incumbent, Chris Tice, deserves re-election. Stephanie Bitis and James Sanford round out a good slate.

Ballot hours vary by district. A list of times can be found in this issue and on school websites. Whatever you decide and whomever you support, please vote.

If they did not know already, long-suffering residents of the East End, frustrated by helicopter noise, now truly know who their friends are — and who they are not.

East Hampton Town officials could find out soon if the set of new restrictions they adopted on the noisiest aircraft will go into effect before the summer season. A hearing is expected today in United States District Court in Central Islip in which opponents of the rules hope a judge will impose a restraining order and call for a trial. If the consortium of commercial interests, backed by the Federal Aviation Administration, prevails, it could be months, if not years, before anyone knows if the restrictions will be upheld.

If nothing else, the East Hampton Town Board’s move in imposing curfews and weekly trip limits on the louder classes of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft finally made the battle lines clear. On one side are all the elected municipal governments of the East End, the area’s Congressional delegation, and thousands of residents, all hoping for quieter skies. Opposing them are the National Business Aviation Association, the Analar Corporation, Associated Aircraft Group, Heliflite Shares, Liberty Helicopters, Eleventh Street Aviation, Helicopter Association International, Sound Aircraft Services, and, it seems, the F.A.A.

It should also be noted that, publicly at least, not a word has been heard from the supposedly put-upon passengers who would have to find other ways to get to the South Fork. So far the voices that have been loudest are the companies that are unwilling to invest in quieter, if perhaps more costly, aircraft to comply with what are reasonable solutions to a real noise crisis.

East Hampton Town officials must stand tough as the fight drags on.

Back in 2010, the Economist magazine observed that railways in the United States were the mirror image of those in Europe. Instead, May 12’s Amtrak crash in Philadelphia underscored the differences, which extend to safety and maintenance. Much has been said since the accident about a system known as positive train control that, had it been in place on that line in Philadelphia, might have spared eight lives. Having been on the same rails recently, we can attest to deplorable conditions in some urban stations and poorly maintained and apparently unsafe conditions along the tracks.

Locally, it is frightening to think that the Long Island Rail Road is at least two years away from installing positive train control. In light of the wildly over-capacity passenger loads on the Montauk Branch on holiday weekends, with all seats filled and hundreds of people crammed atop their luggage in the aisles, even a derailment at a relatively low speed could result in almost unimaginable chaos. If an accident happened on a remote section of track, local emergency responders and medical facilities could almost instantly be overwhelmed.

Of course, it comes down to money. It would cost at estimated $10 billion to install positive train control on all of the country’s railways. Congress set 2015 as a deadline to do so but came up with only about $250 million toward that goal, according to Newsday. Now, some Washington legislators want to delay implementation until 2020. There is also resistance from freight companies, which would bear much of the cost and whose trains run at speeds that would make the system appear less than essential.

The United States’ infrastructure deficit, unlike the rest of the developed world’s, is not limited to train travel. A ride on any of this region’s highways should dispel any lingering doubt. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave the U.S. a cumulative grade of D-plus for its roads, bridges, rails, dams, and other essentials, with an estimated $3.6 trillion as necessary to bring it all up to par. And putting off repairs only adds to the cost, as any homeowner can tell you.

The sooner Congress gets serious about infrastructure the better. Delays are deadly.

We found ourselves stewing last week about a worsening situation on the Napeague stretch of Montauk Highway as three of four restaurants there, the Lobster Roll, the Clam Bar, and Cyril’s Fish House, grow ever more popular. During Memorial Day weekend, parked vehicles narrowed the roadway, creating unsafe passage for motorists and dangers for pedestrians.

As usual, the tie-ups were the worst at Cyril’s. The stop-and-go traffic extended about a half-mile to the east after staff there illegally cordoned off the road shoulder with more than 100 feet of orange cones to make room for taxicabs. Stuck waiting to get through the chaos, we wondered, if not this, just what would it take for officials to impose some semblance of control?

But it’s not just about what happens on Napeague. Successive generations of East Hampton Town officials have proven unable to tamp down the mayhem from Montauk Point to Wainscott as the summertime crowds descend. As one letter-writer put it last week, over Memorial Day weekend “. . . you may have witnessed a town out of control.” All this raises the question of whether our local government, as configured today, can meet the real-world demands of a 21st-century resort community. As Ken Walles, the author of the aforementioned letter, said, “Town officials need to be strictly held accountable and should not allow the continued misuse of our cherished resource.” And that is being polite.

So the issue is to decide just what effective government for the Town of East Hampton would be. Elements would obviously include more police on the streets as well as ordinance enforcement officers, but it would also have to include a shift in attitude among officials away from what appears to be too much deference to money-making ventures. Those who sit in Town Hall must remember just whom they were elected to represent — and whom they were not.

Such a change in control would come with a cost, of course, but we believe that public support for shifting budget priorities — and perhaps even higher taxes — could be attained if a quieter, saner community was the guaranteed reward.

East Hampton was at one time derisively called the Land of No. It is well past time for some of that get-tough spirit to return

After a successful start buying watershed properties around Lake Montauk, the East Hampton Town Board is targeting land around Accabonac Harbor. Using money from the community preservation fund, the board and Department of Land Acquisition and Management have embarked on an ongoing effort to acquire and prevent development of a number of privately owned parcels in Springs that drain toward the harbor.

The importance of this initiative is underscored by a massive fish kill recently in parts of Peconic Bay, which has been attributed to runoff and other man-made causes. Concerns about water quality at Accabonac are not new; its southern reaches are off-limits to shellfishing in all but the winter months.

One aspect of recent town land buys, that some parcels have houses on them, has prompted some argument against acquisition. It is important to remember that in ecologically sensitive areas removing habitable structures is entirely in keeping with the goals of the community preservation fund law. And yes, the extra expense is justifiable and legal as long as the houses are removed.

To the town board, we say, buy them now while you still can.

A bill introduced recently in the New York State Legislature by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. to deal with the enduring problem of too little available housing for the region’s work force has a worthy goal. However, it may not be quite ambitious enough. The housing crunch is acute and getting worse. There are just too few reasonably priced, safe rentals to go around. Workers often crowd into illegal group houses, which can have a negative effect on neighborhoods and in some areas cause septic contamination of groundwater, among other effects. People are forced to move away, not because jobs are scarce, but because there is nowhere for them to live, and it is only getting worse.

Several factors have contributed to the lack of starter or lower-end housing, including the conversion of second-floor apartments in commercial districts to office space and the rise of online services like Airbnb, which facilitate short-term rentals at high prices and deplete the availability of year-round residences.

Mr. Thiele’s bill would fund zero-interest loans with a maximum of $250,000 to help those who earn up to 120 percent of the median income, or about $130,000 today, to buy houses. It also would provide money to prod the towns to protect existing work force housing by buying easements and through other means. The fund would be created from a residential construction fee of $10 per square foot, exempting the first 3,000 square feet of floor area. The legislation, like the community preservation fund before it, was designed for the five East End towns and residents in each would have to authorize the creation of respective housing programs in a ballot referendum.

There may be wide support for the idea. In a report delivered to the East Hampton Town Board last year, an official committee recommended the expansion of existing efforts. This might include new zoning rules to allow multifamily residences, subject to income caps, as well as seasonal “dormitories” for some workers. Such changes are necessary, the committee said, because the incentive programs already in the town code have failed to work. Hundreds of names remain on waiting lists for housing, and few new units have been created in the private sector.

One concept floated by the committee is an additional real estate transfer tax, similar to the 2-percent preservation fund levy, to pay for affordable housing. This might be difficult to win support for on the ballot. Instead, an alternative could be reducing the C.P.F. tax by half a percent and creating a new, separate fund specifically dedicated to housing. Combined with Mr. Thiele’s luxury tax on larger house construction, the two sources of income could go a long way toward putting roofs over the regions’ workers’ heads. It is an idea worth a serious look given the seriousness of the crisis.

The remarkable thing about the online blowup last week over Uber “ride sharing” service’s decision to stop operating in East Hampton Town is that both Uber and local officials are trying to solve the same problem.

Before you laugh, take a moment to consider that Uber’s phenomenal growth and success have been built on providing an alternative to taxi service, which can be spotty, inadequate, chaotic, overpriced, and unsafe. Town officials, after hearing all manner of complaints from about three years ago on, sought to do something about spotty, inadequate, chaotic, overpriced, and unsafe taxi rides, which were assumed to be the fault of out-of-the-area drivers.

East Hampton’s solution eventually was to require licenses and background checks for drivers and cab companies, as well as a local physical address in order for them to operate. It was the latter requirement that prompted Uber to pull the plug on Friday; neither it nor many of its drivers are based in East Hampton. The town board had assumed that the new requirements would help cut down on complaints if not eliminate them entirely, as well as reports of cabbies sleeping in their cars during the day while taking up parking spaces that would otherwise be used by shoppers.

The defensibility of the town’s residency requirement is uncertain. We can think of no other example of a business blocked from operating here because it is based elsewhere. Contractors such as plumbers, builders, and electricians from UpIsland work in East Hampton every day, subject to town licensing laws. It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which the town would — or could — ban them, even if local tradespeople begged for it, the way some local taxi operators asked for help from the town.

A regional solution has been delayed as Suffolk officials try to implement a new law that would require all taxi drivers to have a county-issued license. This seems a step in the right direction. But whether, when the regulation becomes fully functional, Uber would consider its drivers subject to it is questionable; operating in 58 countries and with a market value estimated at $50 billion, it could well choose to fight instead.

Beyond all this, Uber and its competitors have clearly found a market for their services in East Hampton. An Uber spokesman interviewed in a television news report this week said that his company had provided service to 15,000 riders here last year. Town officials should acknowledge that some residents and visitors may want to use these services and for whatever reason avoid traditional cabs. An accommodation, one that does not improperly infringe on the rights of businesses no matter how unfamiliar, should be found.

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This has been changed to reflect a clarification provided by Uber regarding the number of riders using its service in the Town of East Hampton in 2014.