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

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.

Attention in Albany may be focused on the apparent downfall of the Legislature’s top Democrat, Sheldon Silver, in a corruption scandal that cuts very close to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but the critically important work of settling a budget for the coming fiscal year goes on. Two recent reports from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation have raised valid questions about the agency’s capabilities where wildlife is concerned and painted a picture of it as a failed agency.

The most disturbing report came at the end of the year and said that without aggressive action as many as 186 animal species could be imperiled in the state within 10 years. The other described the state’s ocean and estuary waters as in a state of crisis and said greater efforts were necessary to head off human impact, habitat degradation, and climate change. Sadly, Mr. Cuomo’s budget offers little in the way of good news in these regards. The D.E.C. simply needs a lot more money right away and perhaps a top-to-bottom redesign for the long haul. Here’s why.

The D.E.C. manages a huge range of properties, including about 4.5 million acres of land, more than 300 boat launching and fishing sites, 102 flood-control structures, 52 campgrounds, 12 fish hatcheries, 4 camps, 2 environmental education centers, and 1 tree nursery. That’s just the hardware.

On the program side, the agency oversees coastal projects, pollution control, hunting, fishing, mining, oil extraction, air quality, and even runs what amounts to its own armed police force. In Mr. Cuomo’s budget for the coming fiscal year, funding for the D.E.C. is increased by an insignificant 1.2 percent to $898 million. The spending plan’s priorities, too, seem out of touch, with the focus on industrial site cleanups, oil spill preparedness, farmland preservation in the Southern Tier and Hudson Valley, parks infrastructure, and public access. Needed or not, the budget also includes $50 million for improvements at the state fairgrounds outside Syracuse. Remember, this is at a time when the agency’s staffing levels are down about 10 percent from their peak and funding off by nearly a quarter from that of pre-Great Recession days.

For those concerned with wildlife, visiting migratory species, and marine ecosystems, there is little to be happy about in the near-term D.E.C. budget. Looking further out, things do not get much better. Capital spending increases slightly for 2016, then begins to fall off in subsequent years. The Environmental Protection Fund, which is supposed to help pay for critical habitat preservation and other programs, will see a modest increase of $10 million, which is far from enough.

That the D.E.C. is overtasked is clear, and the vast span of its responsibilities can lead to some peculiar conflicts. For example, it is both the lead agency for the Army Corps’s downtown Montauk erosion-control project and the regulator of the sand mines from which the raw material for the project will be dug. It was little surprise that the D.E.C. declared that the Montauk plan could go ahead without formal environmental review.

Breaking up the D.E.C. into several parts might be the best hope for the New York environment. In one scenario, one might think of one division as a regulatory agency concerned with pollution, extractive industries, and human health. Another might be responsible for activities such as hunting and fishing. And a third, and perhaps most important, would concentrate on the state’s wildlife and wild places.

As the two troubling reports indicate, the D.E.C. that New York has now is just not working.

What to do about large commercial vehicles left overnight on residential properties has plagued Town Hall going back to the Wilkinson administration. Now, after protracted discussions among town board members and various segments of the public, a more or less reasonable policy appears near. The process of working out some new limits on trucks has been conducted with respect for all sides and a minimum of personal distraction, and this speaks well of the tenor of the town board as now configured.

Let us say first, that our own view regarding truck parking differs from that of those who have said these commercial vehicles are unwelcome neighbors and hurt property values. For us, the real issue is whether a property is wrongly used as a place of business, not what is parked there. As East Hampton Town Councilman Fred Overton said recently, many of the people who own these trucks are the same people who answer ambulance calls or put out fires. For some, he said, holding down more than one job, often one that requires a sizable vehicle, may be the only way to make ends meet.

Then, too, East Hampton has a long tradition of working people keeping the tools of their trade at home. Think of commercial trap fishermen who store nets and long wooden stakes in their yards. To say that house lots are not the place for parking or stockpiling much other than a family’s personal vehicles runs counter to that tradition. Sterile suburbia, we’d like to think, is still someplace way west of the Shinnecock Canal.

In a community where so much of the economic base comes from people who work in the trades, be it carpentry, landscaping, house painting, pool care, or a host of other jobs, it is unfortunate that some residents sound as if they are willing to hurt others. Also unfortunate would be the chance that the new rules could give an additional advantage to the large contracting firms, which are more likely to already have their own appropriate sites for parking.

In its recent revision of the draft ordinance the town board narrows in on the problem. The law would ban vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of 12,000 pounds or greater, with an 18-month phase-out period for locally licensed professionals who own vehicles up to a 14,000-pound weight rating. Pickup trucks would be exempt. All others that exceed the maximum figure would have to be parked on a commercial property. This would effectively remove box trucks, larger panel vans, delivery vehicles, and most dump trucks from residential areas except when they are on a job.

Banning commercial vehicle parking should be just a first step. Additional effort must be taken to enforce meaningful controls on the business use of residential property — and, frankly, we see noisy, overflowing bars and de facto rooming houses as the more significant concern. At the same time, the town might want to provide reasonable-cost parking and staging areas for contractors — a concept that has been floated in the past. If East Hampton’s small-business owners are going to be asked to shoulder a financial burden to make their neighborhoods more attractive, the community should be willing to provide something in return.

Among the wild-eyed robins feeding in a holly bush outside our office window this week we spotted a cedar waxwing. A well-dressed fellow, he perched in sharp contrast to the tatty-looking, larger robins pulling greedily at the red berries. Below his buff-colored shoulders, two white lines, like pinstripes, ran down toward his tail. The pointed tuft atop his head stood crisp and proud.

Winter brings birds close. Those berries, less desirable perhaps than were available when the weather was better, are good enough. For the waxwing and his companions, the robins, they were worth sticking around for despite the faces at the window, looking outward in wonderment.

Town officials have struck the right balance in deciding in whose interest the East Hampton Airport and the skies for miles around it will be managed.

After years, if not decades, of deference to commercial demands, the town board last week proposed tough rules that put residents first. Board members, especially Coucilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who spearheaded a monumental effort, deserve gratitude. Thanks comes not only from the immediate community but from the many thousands of people who live in the North and South Forks’ other towns and villages and have had to put up with aircraft noise for far too long.

East Hampton’s proposed solutions center on strict limits on when loud aircraft can land and take off, and how often. The noisier ones, including almost all makes and models of United States-certified helicopters, would be banned from the airport between 8 p.m. and 9 a.m. year round. Helicopters, except those summoned for emergencies, would be prohibited from May 1 through September, while other aircraft classified as noisy would be banned from noon Thursday through noon Monday and limited to a single trip per week during the high season. A hearing on the rules is planned for March 5 at LTV Studios in Wainscott.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of all this is that the voices of protest and threat of legal action have come almost exclusively from those with a financial stake in maintaining unlimited access to the airport. The private, recreational pilots who had, perhaps reflexively, opposed anything having to do with meaningful noise controls have for the most part seen the light — and a common enemy in the for-profit helicopter companies. As for all the well-heeled passengers who fly in on all those leather-seated noisemakers, cold drinks in hand? No one has heard a peep from them so far.

Expect the legal fight over the new limits to be long, hard, and expensive. East Hampton Town officials should proceed with confidence, knowing that residents here and across the East End have their backs.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has taken on the state’s public school teachers, and they are firing back — hard. It’s about time.      

Schools and students have struggled under Mr. Cuomo’s signature 2-percent tax increase cap. Now, in his 2015 budget, the governor has proposed education policy changes linking half of a teacher’s evaluation to students’ standardized test scores. The greatest flaw in this disastrous reform is the fact that test results can depend on socioeconomic factors, notably wealth, and that linking teachers’ careers to scores could provide a strong disincentive for them to work with the state’s neediest students.

Mr. Cuomo has proposed increasing state education aid by as much as 5 percent for schools that sign on to the reforms. Rich districts could perhaps afford to sidestep them, but poorer districts, desperate for cash, might not have that luxury. He also has proposed sweetening the landscape for charter schools, which can draw away scarce funding, and he supports a backdoor path by which tax dollars could go to private and religious institutions.

As one education scholar said, the Cuomo plan would make teaching in the State of New York a very high-risk career choice. “You have made us the enemy,” 7 of the top 10 New York State teachers in the last decade wrote in a joint letter to the governor. The head of the New York State United Teachers union said, “He has declared war on the public schools.” This at a time when educators and students need all the support that can be mustered to cope with a rapidly changing world and altered job market.

One can see plenty of politics here. Teacher evaluations and school vouchers are popular with some Republicans interested in education reform. Mr. Cuomo’s 2-percent tax cap could be a message, intended for a future presidential campaign, that even though he is a Democrat he has reduced taxes in a traditionally liberal, high-tax state like New York and can do it anywhere. Unfortunately, the governor’s ambition has gotten in the way of sound policy.

What is called for now is a truce. Teachers have a tough enough job without having the governor as adversary-in-chief. Mr. Cuomo should rethink his education agenda to make it fair and especially provide for those school districts in greatest need of help.

The latest in a string of shockers out of Albany came this week when it became known that the Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo administration had begun automatically purging the computers of state workers of email messages more than 90 days old.

In a world that now runs on email, it is difficult to imagine anything more immediately destructive to the interests of government oversight and an open society. For the news media and the courts, as well as ordinary citizens, the right of access to official documents and communications is absolutely fundamental to the separation of democracy from the siren temptations of authoritarianism. Other than those eager to cover up malfeasance or embarrassment, as well as to scrub the record in the face of a prospective presidential bid at some point by their boss, few could see this as even a remotely good idea.

First described by The Albany Times-Union, mass deletions of email messages began last week at as many as 27 state agencies and departments. In a statement already chilling to open-government activists, the governor’s new chief information officer wrote that the goal was a new, centralized, easy-to-clear email record “making government work better.” Nonsense. This is an attempt to make Albany more secretive than it already is and to help officials evade scrutiny when things go awry.

Few public initiatives take less than three months to complete, so getting rid of records at that point could well make the state’s work less efficient, not more, as important documents slip away. Allowing wholesale clearing of in-boxes will only make state officials’ jobs more difficult. Imagine the chaos as regulators have to think months back, perhaps to find out who may have received something of interest when a difficult task was tackled, and then circle around to get a replacement copy.

The state put out a list of categories of email that should be saved manually, as reported by ProPublica, but they covered conclusive or final actions rather than the process or reasoning behind them. In addition, the rules ran to an impossible 188 pages, itemizing 225 different types of records. Most troubling for the news media, plaintiffs, and outside groups, messages concerning administrative analysis, planning, and the development of procedures can be tossed out as soon as they’re “obsolete.”

The impulse for secrecy and to dodge accountability appears endemic on the American political scene from top to bottom. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private account for much of her communication while in that post. Former East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley maintained a personal gmail address from which she circulated board agendas to a select group of supporters. In each case, they appeared able to skirt document-retention rules.

It is only by hindsight that the importance of some messages can even be known. Consider a recent example in the State of New Jersey, where, five months after an unexplained lane closure on the George Washington Bridge, the discovery of a brief email exchange pointed to its political nature. The details of this scandal could not have been lost on Albany’s executive chamber. Under the new Cuomo retention policy, had that email emanated from a New York office, it would likely have been deleted well before it and other damning communications could have come to light.

With regard to open government, New York State officials at all levels already find it almost impossible to comply with Freedom of Information requests. Allowing massive quantities of email to dissolve into the ether will make things worse. For example, The East Hampton Star has been seeking without success a key document from August sent to the State Department of State that apparently laid out a suspect legal rationale for the planned Army Corps of Engineers downtown Montauk erosion-control project. Could that have been among the records deemed not worthy of preservation?

The new state rules also contain a disturbing Catch-22. Although those that might be subject to a Freedom of Information request are to be preserved, such requests must be filed within the allotted 90 days. Seek something on day 91, and it will be gone, in most cases. Moreover, those seeking information from government often do not know exactly what documents they want, only the subject and approximate date. It would therefore make sense to save everything. Certainly, the Microsoft system the state uses has the capacity — up to 30 years’ worth of email, according to reports. Federal policy is to hold on to email for at least seven years, and permanently for executive staff.

If the wholesale destruction of email is allowed to continue, it will leave huge gaps in the record, diminish confidence in government, and hide wrongdoing. The policy must be reversed, ideally by the New York Legislature’s passing a bill that forces Mr. Cuomo’s hand.

The East Hampton Town Board should look beyond an apparent impasse on the airport’s budget and finance advisory subcommittee, which has stymied a financial review of planned limits on the noisiest kinds of aircraft.

By all appearances, the problem is a manufactured one in which some members of the subcommittee, those aligned with aviation interests, deliberately derailed the calculations in an effort to depict the proposed changes as costly to taxpayers. In fact, according to other members, the group tried to accommodate the dissenters’ demands for a minority report, among other things. However, when it became clear to the aviation side that a separate analysis would have had to be based on massaged assumptions that would not stand up under scrutiny, they just walked away from the process altogether.

As if on cue Tuesday, a lawyer hired by some of the helicopter companies that stand to lose a lucrative East Hampton route issued a statement. In it, he mischaracterized the deadlock, which, he said, “confirms the true economic hazards of the plan.” But this claim was based on no numbers whatsoever and should be suspect anyway, considering the source.

What is known and was previously acknowledged by the subcommittee as a whole is that the town’s plan to sharply limit helicopter flights would not result in financial Armageddon. In fact, the subcommittee told the town board late last year that fees would cover the expenses of running the airport and that long-term bonds could still be issued to pay for improvements.

One wild card described in that initial report, and repeated this week, was that legal challenges to new restrictions were likely and could be substantial. However, it is safe to say that town residents would be willing to shoulder the costs of litigation if quieter skies were the ultimate goal, and that the money need not come entirely from airport receipts.

In advance of a hearing on the proposed restrictions to begin this afternoon at LTV Studios in Wainscott, the East Hampton Town Board should not be dissuaded from the path it has set toward meaningful reduction in the number and frequency of the noisiest aircraft. This latest objection is just noise of a different sort.