As if to prove a point we made in an editorial last week about the various hamlet advisory committees’ going off the rails, the Amagansett group outdid itself on Monday night. The occasion was a visit by the Rev. Denis C. Brunelle of East Hampton’s St. Luke’s Episcopal Church to talk about the summer chapel on the corner of Indian Wells Highway. The Episcopal bishop of Long Island has been reviewing some of the diocese’s underutilized properties and has an idea that the Amagansett chapel might be a suitable place for a new year-round Latino ministry.

The welcome Mr. Brunelle received on the bishop’s behalf from the citizens committee was less than friendly, which may not be surprising. But what should give pause is that the membership thought it even appropriate to take up discussion of the diocese’s preliminary ideas.

Citizens advisory committees were created to be just that — advisory and to give thoughts on policies affecting their hamlets, but solely to the East Hampton Town Board. If and when the diocese decides to seek permission for changes that might intensify the use of the property, the matter would be handled by the planning board and perhaps the architectural review board or zoning board of appeals. The town board — and by extension the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee — would get no say. That did not stop many of its members from doing what they could to discourage Mr. Brunelle under a spurious mantle of authority and under the pretense that they speak for all of the hamlet’s residents.

This and other examples of the various committees’ overreaches are wrong and should be curtailed.

An old acquaintance wrote recently to ask on behalf of a friend if we knew of any year-round rentals in the Southampton Village vicinity. The friend, a medical professional who is frequently on call to see emergency patients at very short notice, had indicated it might be necessary to leave the area if a place to live proved impossible to find. If this isn’t an example of a housing crisis, we don’t know what is.

At a different end of the workplace spectrum, a look at the classified ads in this week’s Star suggests that employers are having a tough time finding staff, due to no small degree, it is safe to assume, to a lack of housing. The summer of 2015 is shaping up to be worrisome for businesses that can’t find enough help.

There’s more evidence, of course. The so-called trade parade of eastbound morning traffic through Southampton has become a fact of life drawing little notice. Still, when the two-lane Sunrise Highway is backed up and barely moving from well before the Hampton Bays-Riverhead exit, as it was at 7:15 last Thursday morning, there is something far out of whack.

Those businesses that do not provide housing for their employees find themselves in desperate competition for help, and workers themselves are consigned to either battling the traffic or living in illegal and sometimes unsafe group rentals.

One number jumped out at us from a story in last Thursday’s Star, too. According to a town official, less than a third of the houses in Wainscott are occupied year round. The other 70 percent or so were seasonal. Of the small portion who live in Wainscott year round, an even smaller number could be expected to be employed here, be it as waitstaff or newly minted professionals with lots of degrees.

It is a safe guess that vacation rental websites like Airbnb have eaten away at the availability of year-round or reasonably priced seasonal rentals. The ease of online bookings has turned anyone with an extra room or cottage into a host, with the promise of good money and less wear and tear on properties. It is hard to imagine how local officials can figure out how to put that particular genie back in the bottle, but something has to be done.

An obvious step, though one that town and village governments would be loath to take, is to sharply limit all new development until studies are concluded giving material recommendations on providing work force housing, as well as adequate infrastructure. To permit growth without taking its impact into account is foolhardy. Finding ways to assure places to live for the people who keep the South Fork humming — and even some of us alive — should be a top priority.

East Hampton Town may test a radical trash concept this summer, asking those who go to the popular Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett, or perhaps another location, to take away all the waste they generate, removing all of the receptacles usually there.

“Take only pictures, leave only footprints” is a mantra for the use of many public lands, including national wilderness areas. Whether it would work here is an open question, but it is an experiment worth taking on.

As things stand now, during the peak summer season the margins of the ocean beach parking lots often look like disaster areas at the end of the day. This is when everyone floods off the sand toward their vehicles, dropping anything and everything at the bins and leaving bags, broken chairs, beer boxes, and busted umbrellas alongside them when there is no more room. If you pause for a moment and reflect on the scene, you may wonder exactly why, when these beachgoers brought all this stuff there, they do not take it home, especially when the garbage cans are filled to overflowing.

Getting people to change their ways and to clean up after themselves and take responsibility for the waste they produce is likely to take time, but that is no reason not to try. If anything, it would be hard to imagine that the immediate outcome of such a move could be any worse than the seagulls’ smorgasbords that already ensue.

When a dozen new names were added to the membership roster of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee last month it pointed to a core problem. Appointed by the East Hampton Town Board, citizens committees are supposed to be a conduit for the concerns of those who live in the various hamlets — and sometimes they work that way. As often as not, however, the committees become places where old grudges are nursed, petty factionalism runs amok, and misinformation reigns.

From time to time the committees have overstepped their advisory role, sending, for instance, official-looking letters to outside government agencies or dispatching representatives to weigh in at land-use hearings. None of this could rightly be considered appropriate.

The recent Springs dustup came about when a Democrat active in the local party solicited new members, as she put it, to counter “Republican high jinks” on the committee. This chafed the other side to no end and prompted the committee chairwoman to go out and round up a few new members of her own. Though the town board agreed in a 4-1 vote to apppoint the 12 new members, it was not without objection. Councilman Fred Overton, who attends the Springs Citizens meetings as the town board’s liaison, was furious and cast a no vote.

Two changes, one minor, might help avoid such dramatics in the future. The town’s other appointed boards, zoning, planning, architectural review, for example, are generally assigned new members during the town board’s annual organization meeting in January or when there is a resignation. Opening the advisory committee rosters once a year would avoid hasty deck-stacking of the sort seen recently.

Going further, though, the committees’ ersatz official trappings and sometimes their members’ airs suggest that they are fundamentally flawed and should be rethought if they are to continue to exist at all. They have evolved to be less neighborhood sounding boards and more unelected and frequently unaccountable circuses, holding votes that their members alone consider representative of the respective hamlets’ views.

Instead, the public interest might be better served by the town board’s appointing only a chairman and an alternative for each citizens committee, doing away entirely with members, and welcoming one and all to take part in meetings called by the chair. Whatever the approach, the current model has outlived its usefulness.

We had known for a while that we had honeybees in the attic. But the way things are in The Star’s century-old Main Street building, it was really no big deal. Until roofers exposed their sprawling hive last week, the bees never really bothered anybody as they came and went from a gap in the soffit high above the sidewalk. In fact, the only time they had any impact whatsoever on the ground floor was one hot summer’s day when a thin trickle of honey appeared on the inside of one of our front windows, hardly enough to spread on toast.

Honeybees are in trouble due to something known as colony collapse disorder, as well as a variety of other factors. Reports of losses of 30 percent or more a year by beekeepers are common. But bees are an essential part of the food web; as much as $20 billion worth of the food crop in North America is dependent on the relentless pollination these social and generally peaceable creatures perform. Given this, it is cruel and wholly counterproductive to call in an exterminator at the first sign of a swarm, as many do in fear and ignorance.

So our first call when the roofers alerted us was to Dell Cullum, a well-known East Hampton photographer and wildlife relocation expert. After taking a look, Dell phoned East Hampton Town Trustee Debbie Klughers, who also happens to be a beekeeper. Suited in protective mesh to keep bees out of her hair and off her face, but with bare hands, Debbie, with a little help from some Star staff members, methodically removed sections of hive from between the rafters, placing the milling bees into a wooden box for transit to their new home, while Dell recorded it all on video.

There was elation when they spotted the colony’s queen, which, to us, looked like an oversized bee. Debbie explained that the brood clustered around the queen to keep her warm and that if we were able to get her into the transportation box, the rest would go along placidly. It took a bit over an hour to complete the task. During this, bees buzzed everywhere in the room, crawling on our hands and arms, but only one person, Debbie, was stung, and just once, on a finger.

As spring’s warmth encourages honeybees out of their winter torpor, people will undoubtedly see their swarms. Many beekeepers will perform hive rescues, and if they do not, will know someone who will. Lethal methods of control should be the very last resort. The bees aren’t looking to harm anyone, and right now, they can use all the help they can get.

WATCH: What To Do When You Have Bees in the Attic? Call a Bee Rescuer

Unfortunately, it has come to this: a lawsuit to stop the illconsidered United States Army Corps of Engineers plan to fortify the downtown Montauk oceanfront with thousands of sandbags and tons of imported sand.

A small group of opponents of the project filed notice late last month that they will challenge the project in court. Central to their position is that the undertaking is actually prohibited in town and, by extension, state law. They appear to have a good case. Though perhaps not quite a smoking gun, a top town environmental planner in separate communications to the Army Corps and state authorities had said that East Hampton Town regulations might have to be changed to make the effort meet the actual letter of the law. The town and corps lawyers will have a pretty difficult time explaining that one to a jury if things ever get that far.

Other towns and villages should be watching closely. The rules that are being bent in this matter are part of the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan and its component Coastal Erosion Hazard Area program. In East Hampton Town, as in other jurisdictions, permits for work on the beaches are supposed to be handled locally, not at the state level. Why East Hampton officials abdicated this responsibility and why a least two state agencies went along with it is anybody’s guess. That does not, however, make it right — or legal. The project, if allowed to go forward by the courts, would be a huge precedent, essentially undermining local control, not just in East Hampton, but Southampton, Southold, and Brookhaven as well. And it should give the public pause about having faith in government — its commitment to law and to the protection of natural features. The suit calls out this inexplicable, regrettable collusion among the town, state, and Army Corps, and we honor the courage of those who brought it.

It is their hope that the court will uphold the view that when the town’s law says that sandbag seawalls are structures, that definition must hold sway. Certainly, it would be valuable if a judge told East Hampton officials, as well as the state and Army Corps, that they cannot cherry-pick some sections of the law, ignore other sections, and buck legal precedents regarding environmental review. We would be pleased if the court compelled the authorities, whose actions so far have been inexcusable, to look at alternatives, such as removing the 10 or so structures in harm’s way in Montauk and building a new, more natural dune to protect the rest of the area from storms.

East Hampton Town officials should take this opportunity to rethink their go-along support of the Army Corps plan. Supervisor Larry Cantwell, who vowed to defend against the lawsuit vigorously and who, as a lifelong resident and surf fisherman, might have been expected to know better than to seek to fight the ocean, should instead insist that all involved follow the town’s law as written. And Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who was against it before he was for it, needs to take another look. If this looming Montauk debacle goes forward, the consequences will be on their heads.

Because it appears the project may not begin until fall, there is still time to pull the plug and do what would be right for the long haul. Building a seawall, whether of sandbags or stone, is simply the wrong way to go — as the former town board members who approved our waterfront laws not all that long ago understood.

If enough harvesters take up a surprise opportunity provided by the state, fresh local bay scallops could again be in supply this month.

We have been very critical of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation over the last few months, but this is one thing that the stressed agency has gotten right. Normally, scallop season in state waters, those outside the bays and harbors, which are controlled by the East End towns’ elected trustees, would have ended on Tuesday.

Instead, in a nod to an especially hard and cold winter, from about the end of January to now, the agency announced that scalloping could continue through April. Since scallops have a fleeting lifespan of just two years, those of legal size were not likely to survive until the water warms later this spring and summer when spawning begins. And, for those harvesters looking for a modest financial bonus, the limited fishery could be a needed boost.

This policy change, albeit temporary, shows that the D.E.C., for all its painful budget cuts and staff losses, can still be responsive. In the long term, however, there are questions about its function and whether it can really be, in its depleted condition, the kind of environmental watchdog New York needs. That it cannot is evidenced by local governments now taking the lead on important initiatives, such as groundwater quality, nitrogen runoff, and habitat protection. Far more should be done in Albany to restore the D.E.C.’s funding to pre-Great Recession levels. For now, however, we’ll take the scallops, and hope that lawmakers eventually return environmental protection and remediation as among the state’s the highest priorities.

The East Hampton Town Board should stay the course in seeking meaningful relief from the noise of flights headed to or leaving the town airport. Following a March 12 hearing on new, get-tough rules, one began to see signs of second-guessing among some observers. This reticence may have been amplified by the strong turnout at the hearing by the helicopter charter industry, which rightly sees East Hampton’s approach as a potentially risky precedent.

Unfortunately, instead of trying to reduce noise through technical means, investing in better helicopters, or adopting flight paths at higher altitudes, the industry appears to favor putting its money on legal challenges. That stance reinforces the impression that helicopter operators care little about the East End of Long Island other than as a place where they can make a profit.

A legal battle is likely to quickly ensue if the town board approves the restrictions as proposed. This should not deter officials from doing what is right, both for residents and for those who live in noise-affected communities beyond town limits.

East Hampton Town’s legal advisers seem to believe the regulations have a good chance of being upheld by the Federal Aviation Administration and the courts. The board should be willing to stand up to the inevitable onslaught, keeping in mind that the taxpayers have shown strong support for their effort and that a quieter, more livable community is the ultimate goal.

A fire last week that consumed an oceanfront house in East Hampton Village is a reminder of the astonishing commitment of this area’s fire and emergency medical volunteers.

As many as 100 East Hampton firefighters responded to the blaze, which apparently was sparked by workers and made impossible to contain because of high winds. The volunteers remained at the fire well into the night, but were summoned twice to return, already exhausted, as flames erupted anew from the rubble.

Neighboring departments provided additional engines, tankers, and manpower both to help contain the flames and provide backup in the case something else happened. And it did: While the Fire Department was busy at the West End Road house owned by Peter Morton of Hard Rock Café fame, a small plane had a hard landing at East Hampton Airport, and a North Sea fire crew rushed to the scene.

It is a shame that the fine old house could not be saved. Ellery S. James had it built in the 1920s, and it had outlasted hurricanes and the vagaries of changing tastes. However, its spectacular end gives us an opportunity to acknowledge the many volunteers who responded to the call, as well as those who respond to emergencies large and small each and every day.

At this sorry point, you would probably be asking for ridicule to seriously mention ethics reform in the same sentence as the New York State capital. But calls for change have been heard recently following former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s indictment on corruption charges. Most interesting among them perhaps is one from Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who said last week that state lawmakers should be barred from outside income.

This potential solution should be taken seriously — and not just because of outright graft, as alleged in Mr. Silver’s case. Avoiding conflicts of interest is ample reason to bar members of the State Legislature from continuing in jobs other than the ones they were elected to do.

If there was any doubt that many of Albany’s elected officials most assuredly have something to hide, reflecting on the fact that the members of the Legislature have exempted themselves from the kind of financial openness required of other state workers can dispel it. Mr. Silver’s replacement as speaker, Carl Heastie, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reached a tentative agreement that would require elected officials to reveal the details of any moonlighting, but the State Senate has not signaled that it will go along. Disclosure is hardly enough; reports can be falsified. Far more is necessary to turn around the long, dysfunctional tradition of Albany.

The outside work of the South Fork’s own state legislators, though they are not implicated in any wrongdoing whatsoever, should also give pause. Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. are good, honest representatives of the people, but both are also of counsel in the largest law firm in eastern Suffolk, and, on top of that, Mr. Thiele pulls in a $50,000 annual paycheck as the Sag Harbor Village attorney. As with so many of their peers, they should make state government their sole professional concern.

Mr. Schneiderman has it right in calling for a complete ban. He has also suggested paying elected officials more to wean them away from outside income; New Yorkers should be willing to accept the cost if it would make for better, more transparent government. And if some lawmakers don’t like it, they can go work fully in the private sector.