East Hampton Town will soon undertake an in-depth study of this region’s precarious Atlantic Coast and how it can better manage risk to property and environment protection. But the real question is whether, when the work is done, it will lead to meaningful change.

It is not like these questions are new; the United States Army Corps of Engineers has been trying to figure out what to do about eastern Long Island for more than 50 years, and the town itself completed a decade-long process that led to the adoption in 1999 of a Local Waterfront Revitalization Program (although it took another seven years to be approved by state and federal agencies). But no one has ever really answered the hard questions brought forward by sea level rise, and Hurricanes Irene and Sandy only increased the sense of urgency.

It is clear that existing regulations are not adequate. Following Sandy, town officials gave highly questionable “emergency” permission for erosion-response projects, some for prohibited permanent, or “hard,” structures. The looming Army Corps fortification of downtown Montauk comes right up to the line between what is permissible and what is not, and it binds the town and county to costly annual maintenance at a dollar figure that cannot accurately be anticipated, as well as unknown millions more for the project’s eventual removal.

Meanwhile, private construction in danger zones continues, which will only add to the expense when the bills come in for future publicly funded rescue efforts. Though there are some bright spots, such as a planned buyout of low-lying properties on Lazy Point in Amagansett, the overriding status quo can fairly be said to show that our collective head is still buried in the sand.

Ideally, the $500,000 study about to get under way will address the future of the coastal portons of East Hampton Town and provide clear arguments for retreat, where it is called for. We have been down this road before, however, notably when the town took over from the state after adopting its own coastal hazard policy. The rub will be if the current town board and those that follow will be able to heed the study’s advice.

History suggests that nothing short of a total disaster will really change how those who live here think about our relationship with the coast, but this new initiative provides a glimmer of hope.

Week in, week out, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s office labors on with a gasoline price survey. With the Long Island average price for regular unleaded of $2.88 a gallon now, Mr. Thiele’s most recent report noted that the average price on the South Fork on Friday west of Amagansett was 11 cents higher. In Amagansett and Montauk, however, gas was a mind-boggling $3.39, or 51 cents more. As if to rub salt in our wounds, North Fork stations were well below the regional average, at about $2.69. All of this was, Mr. Thiele said, further and ongoing evidence of consumer-unfriendly zone pricing by fuel distributors.

Okay, so the prices of a lot of things are more expensive out here than they need to be, like deli sandwiches, but you can’t make a gallon of gasoline at home the same way you can pack a lunch. That’s why this matters. Gas, like heating oil and electricity, is an essential component of modern life whether we like it or not. It would be nice if gas station owners skipped the bull about higher delivery costs and other malarkey and stopped taking advantage of an all-but-captive market. Those lucky enough to have reason to head to Hampton Bays, for example, can fuel up at a significant savings of as much as $8 to fill a 20-gallon tank.

Back in June, the Assembly passed a bill that Mr. Thiele sponsored following a recommendation from Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman that would outlaw zone pricing. The bill now sits with the Senate Rules Committee, apparently bottled up because of opposition from major oil companies.

It is imperative that the Senate leadership allow a vote. The rule might not solve all the issues that cause higher gas prices here, but it would send a message that someone was watching.

It was disheartening last week to learn of the Sag Harbor School Board’s decision to end video recordings for local public television broadcast and on-demand viewing of the public comment portion of its meetings.

According to an account in The Sag Harbor Express, the board, by a 4-to-3 vote, opted to allow recording only of matters on the board’s agenda, cutting off the cameras when anyone in the audience stands up to speak on matters of their concern. The reason offered was that someone might say something that, if replayed, could get the board in legal hot water. That, of course, is utter nonsense: Elected boards have an almost zero chance of losing a lawsuit for anything said during a meeting regardless of how off-base it may be. We can’t help but wonder what might be next — failing to keep accurate records of what the public has to say or banning reporters?

If there is any doubt about the motivation behind this it is dispelled by proponents of the change, who said the district’s attorney had advised them to stop recording meetings altogether. From that, one can conclude that the real reason some members of the school board want to cut off public access to information is to reduce the chances that something controversial or embarrassing gets noticed or repeated.

The liability issue is a smokescreen to disguise the fact that at least a majority of the board would like to do the public’s business without the public watching. This is a dreadful idea that should not be allowed to spread.

The end of the year brings a plea from charities and nonprofits for donations, and as people really think about giving, it is worth remembering the organizations that do good but may not always be at the top of the list.

Statistics suggest many Americans could do more — and make a big difference for very little out of pocket. According to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service data, the amount of money given by people whose annual incomes were more than $200,000 has declined while donations from low and middle-income people grew dramatically in recent years. Experts say that as little as a 1-percent increase by high-earners would pay huge dividends for the nation’s neediest causes, as much as doubling the total.

For 2014 tax purposes, donations must be postmarked or sent electronically before midnight on the last day of the year. Nonprofits say there is an uptick in giving in December, but we should remember that the need — and the opportunity to help — does not expire when the ball drops in Times Square.

The East Hampton Village Board should go forward with the revision of its 10-year-old outdoor lighting rules despite an 11th-plus-hour ruffle. Excessive nighttime illumination is both an annoyance and an affront to a community that is proud of its ambience. The aspect of the proposal that some would like eliminated is the regulation of wasteful and unnecessary landscape lighting.

Of all the inane practices, pointing spotlights up into one’s trees strikes us as among the silliest, but it is also a serious matter. Electrical power generation is a major source of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

It would be a substantial contradiction for a village that took an early and progressive stand against waste by banning thin, single-use plastic shopping bags to encourage this practice. Either the health of the planet matters or it does not. A homeowner’s ability to gaze up into his or her trees while sitting on a patio or walking in or out of a house is not worth throwing out a perfectly reasonable code change.

The village board is to return to the issue next Thursday, continuing a hearing on an update to the lighting code which was reviewed by the village design review board, among others. It seeks to reduce the spilling of light beyond property lines, as well as reduce the glare that can make finding one’s way at night difficult.

The board should approve the changes and tell those who prefer the amber-hazed hues of suburban nocturnal gloom to a sky full of stars that the nights here should remain dark.

Those trees? We’ll look at them in the morning.

Offshore wind power, which until quite recently seemed to be coming to the Northeast, hit a stumbling block in the past few months. First, in mid-December, the Long Island Power Authority rejected a plan for turbines in the waters about 30 miles east of Montauk. Then, early this month, the utilities that would have bought power from a proposed $2.5 billion project being readied for Nantucket Sound by a firm called Cape Wind backed away, citing missed deadlines by the developer.

LIPA’s board decision has a potentially direct impact on East Hampton Town, which has vowed to get 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. More broadly, the projects were seen as bellwethers for an improved long-term energy strategy for the region — and the country. In wind’s place, LIPA has said it will develop solar generation plants, but at most, it said, these will produce about half of the 280 megawatts of clean energy it had once set as a goal.

Some powerful people funded by fossil fuel interests, such as David Koch, have celebrated the apparent end of Cape Wind’s Nantucket Sound effort. They say this represents a break for ratepayers and a triumph of the free market. Looked at from another perspective it seems that those who tied up the project in the courts can claim the real victory.

In the 12 years since its Nantucket Sound proposal, Cape Wind has been buffeted by more than two dozen lawsuits. These were so frequent that a fed-up federal judge wrote in May that the opponents were engaged in “a vexatious abuse of the democratic process” by continuing to seek to overturn decisions by the Massachusetts governor, Legislature, public agencies, and other courts.

Coal-burning electric plants remain the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Utilities operate with government oversight to one degree or another, and officials are going to have to force them to adapt to alternatives that may be more costly but are essential, including wind.

A progressive energy future will require leadership and incentives from Washington in the form of tax credits to allow alternatives to compete with cheaper, heavily subsidized oil and coal.

The bottom line is that wind is a clean source that can provide a large part of the country’s needed electrical generation, and it must be allowed to do so.

News last month that the Springs School Board was beginning to work toward an overdue building project came as no surprise. Nor was the estimated cost of expansion of the district’s buildings, as much as $20 million depending on the options selected, surprising.

The district has been struggling for years to educate far more students than its classrooms can handle — and doing a truly commendable job. The school’s year-in, year-out student opera, which will be seen at the John Drew Theater next week, is but one example of a vibrant, can-do institution. Parent buy-in is terrific as well, with outstanding fund-raising efforts and classroom visits by artists among their contributions.

The problem is hardly one of Springs’s own making. By dint of ill-thought early zoning and East Hampton Town’s decade-plus failure to control group houses, parts of the hamlet add up to an overburdened bedroom community for people who work in the trades. But at the same time it is home to a great number of retired people, as well as weekenders and others whose awareness of the school and its needs may extend only as far as their tax bills.

Making things more difficult, the Springs School District has suffered financially because town officials have delayed, and delayed again, a state mandate for a full property reassessment. This appears to have resulted in the district being essentially cut off from the deeper sources of potential funding that would otherwise be found among the taxpayers who own houses along the hamlet’s miles of now highly desired waterfront. There is tons of value there, money that could help pay for the expansion, teachers, and other educational costs, but it is all but untouchable until someone in Town Hall steps up.

Failing that, any number of Springs taxpayers, already feeling put upon, can be expected to howl about paying for school expansion. Consider the recent brouhaha over Town Hall’s rocky effort at regulating large commercial vehicles parking overnight in residential neighborhoods. Why should Springs bear the brunt, people opposed to the trucks ask. This question may well be heard again, with regard to the Springs School’s student population, as plans begin to solidify for its next big undertaking.

Meanwhile, the Wainscott School Board continues its reprehensible opposition to a modest affordable housing project that could bring in a handful of new students. And in East Hampton, a school board member recently intimated that the district was somehow less than absolutely obligated to cover the full cost of educating children from an existing low-income complex.

Solving the disparities between hamlets and school districts must come from above, in the form of state guidance toward consolidation and the East Hampton Town Board grabbing the bully pulpit. A super-district made up of all of the town’s tax base would spread the financial burden of the Springs expansion, as well as future costs in Springs and elsewhere, more equitably.

In the absence of a regional authority, narrow interests can be dominant (witness Wainscott). Providing a good public education in adequate surroundings is an obligation that we all share as Americans. The cost of seeing that we live up to that obligation must similarly be a collective responsibility in as equitable a way as possible.

Looking back at the year just ended provides insight into what might be called the to-do list for local officials, as well as an indication of successes worth celebrating.

East Hampton Town government has in just 12 months experienced a dramatic turnaround. The accomplishments are both procedural, such as ending the anti-open government practice of last-minute “walk-on” resolutions by the town board, and practical, such as the closing of the money-losing Springs-Fireplace Road sewage processing site. Other big steps have been the beginning of buyouts of flood-prone and watershed properties, halting a massive luxury condominium project planned for Amagansett, passing new limits on commercial gatherings, and continuing sound budget practices.

There is much more to be done, however. On the 2015 agenda are such high-priority concerns as sea level rise, groundwater protection, affordable housing, airport noise, and mental health services for the young and the poor. Nuts-and-bolts needs include better regulation of taxis and so-called ride-sharing services (such as Uber and Lyft), road repairs and bike lanes, closing a deal to preserve the East Deck property in Montauk, resolving the PSEG utility pole debacle, assuring access to farmland for farmers, and dealing with deer, “formula” stores, and the commercial use of residential properties.

Taking the bully pulpit, the town board needs to do more to speed school consolidation, restore the use of the state-mandated environmental quality review procedure known as SEQRA, and broker a deal among the various agencies for a better first-responder system for emergency medical calls.

The town board also needs to do more where there has been little progress. This includes cultivating better diversity among the members of appointed boards, clamping down on illegal rentals and excessive vacation-house turnover, saving Wainscott from its current and too-permissive highway business zoning, and doing something about the appalling charcoal messes left even deep into the fall months by beach bonfires.

The East Hampton Town Board has much to be proud of in 2014. We raise a toast to its members, and wish them continued energy and the best of luck in the year to come.

East Hampton officials are reported to be thinking about seeking state authorization to tap the community preservation fund for wastewater projects. This potential funding source should be a last resort.

To be sure, the problems surrounding drinking water and the area’s creeks, harbors, and bays are critical. A recent study commissioned by the town that looked at conditions on every parcel of land found that at least 1,760 properties had failed or insufficient septic systems, which were likely to contribute to water pollution. Further analysis could push the number of substandard systems over 3,500. How to pay for new, localized sewage treatment and individual upgrades is a major question.

One-time sources of funding, such as the state or federal government, are a possibility. A large bond offering — borrowing to be repaid by future tax income — is another. Then there is what some mistakenly see as “free” money, available by raiding the community preservation fund provided state and voter authorization were obtained. This would be a bad idea and dangerous precedent.

The Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund came into being in 1998 after years of struggle by conservationists and lawmakers. Its sole source of income is a 2-percent tax on most real estate purchases. Its objective, generally stated, is to acquire land to help the participating communities preserve their treasured character. Allowable uses of the money include purchases for parks, nature preserves, farmland, wetlands, beaches, wildlife refuges, historic places, and aquifer protection. A modest portion of the fund also can be set aside for upkeep on such properties, but that’s it — and that’s enough.

Misuse of land preservation and environmental set-aside money has haunted governments for years. East Hampton’s reviled former Town Supervisor Bill McGintee’s administration faltered and his then-budget director pleaded guilty to misdemeanors over the diversion of money from the community preservation fund to pay for routine operations. In Southampton Town, there have been iffy, politically motivated payments of about $5 million in C.P.F. money to school districts, drawing the scrutiny of the state comptroller’s office.

For its part, Suffolk County has more than once helped itself to dedicated water-quality money to paper over budget shortfalls. On Tuesday, however, voters agreed to a measure that would repay the fund and stave off further raids.

Much as we know and admire many public officials, we have seen it before: The minute those in office find a funding source that does not threaten to raise taxes in the short term, they try to grab it. Moreover, time and again officials have acted less responsibly and thought less clearly when they were not directly answerable to taxpayers for a particular initiative. (Think of East Hampton Town Hall’s mindless acceptance of an inadequate Army Corps of Engineers plan for downtown Montauk.)

Make no mistake: East Hampton has a huge problem with water quality. However, tapping the preservation fund other than to buy up and neutralize lots in critical watersheds would be a dire mistake. Once that bridge is crossed, there would be far less to stop officials from grabbing again at the fund for the next big thing. Hands off the C.P.F.

A homeowner sees her house threatened by erosion, and public officials do what they can to help. Not the newest story, but the most recent example of this narrative comes with an interesting twist.

As it turns out, a rapidly shrinking lot on Shore Road at Lazy Point belongs to the East Hampton Town Trustees, while the house on it belongs to someone who leases the site for a modest fee. This arrangement, while unusual elsewhere in town, is the norm at Lazy Point, where an occasional near-million-dollar purchase takes place on what is actually leased public land.

At a recent meeting the trustees all but committed to helping Susan Knobel save her house by allowing her to move it to a vacant parcel nearby. This is a feel-good story, for sure, but it is doubtful that it is sound policy or even legal.

It seems almost impossible to believe that the trustees could give valuable assets, in this case land leases, to individuals of their choosing. Public agencies, a class to which the trustees certainly belong, must follow certain proscribed procedures when handling real estate and any other disbursements. For a transaction like this to be fair, it would have to be open to public, competitive bidding, as we understand it. For example, East Hampton Village officials not too long ago realized this in connection with the Sea Spray Cottages and instituted a system for prospective tenants in keeping with state rules.

Further, at a time when the trustees should be concerned about water pollution and moving lease-holders away from fragile areas, they appear ready to give Ms. Knobel another waterfront lot. This, as one trustee pointed out, makes little sense. Are there other trustee plots in less endangered areas? It didn’t come up. Heck, there are plenty of other taxpayers and business owners facing severe erosion in East Hampton Town; you do not see other government agencies falling all over themselves to provide them with new sites.

Though there have been previous instances of a trustee lessee swapping one lot for another, that does not make this plan right — or in the community’s best interest. In their rush to do good for a neighbor, the trustees might be violating the law and are certainly moving in the wrong direction on habitat protection and coastal retreat.

Whether they see it or not, the trustees have before them now a not-insignificant opportunity to lead by example. Erosion exacerbated by sea level rise brought on by human-driven climate change is a fact of life for East Hampton and much of the rest of the globe, and the truestees should be, as stewards of the beaches and of most town waterways, at the forefront of a reasoned response. What is called for now is their dispassionate decision-making that responds to real-world conditions, not personal sympathies and gauzy notions of tradition. Responding to a shifting shoreline does not mean swapping one threatened site for one that will likely be in danger in the not-too-distant future.

An immediate reconsideration is warranted.