Suffolk voters will be asked on Tuesday to consider a law intended to tighten financial aspects of the county’s Drinking Water Protection Program, which is funded by a quarter-percent sales tax. It should be approved.

Suffolk officials have taken money out of the water protection fund several times since it was created in 1987, mostly to balance the county budget and avoid the political damage associated with raising taxes or cutting services. The proposal, “A Charter Law Amending the 1/4 Percent Drinking Water Program . . . ,” would put an end to such diversions. It would also force the county to repay the money the Legislature improperly took from the fund in earlier years and, at the same time, create a $29.4 million open-space and water-quality reserve to be spent by 2020.

East Hampton residents should take note of two things. The measure could result in county protection program money becoming available for sewage treatment improvements and new, environmentally friendly nitrogen-removal septic systems, necessary projects that are called for in a recent wastewater study commissioned by the town. This ballot measure, if approved, could help avoid a dangerous precedent that would almost certainly undermine the effectiveness of land preservation here and keep open the likelihood of additional raids.

A community like East Hampton’s that saw the administration of former Town Supervisor Bill McGintee brought down over the misuse of a dedicated fund, should be especially eager to keep politicians’ sticky fingers off a key environmental program’s budget. Vote yes.

After nearly two decades of debate there is no resolution about whether long-term Lyme disease exists. What is clear is that some patients diagnosed with Lyme do not feel better after standard antibiotic treatment. This has led some physicians to prescribe exceedingly long courses of medication, which has led, in a few cases, to investigations for misconduct by the New York State Department of Health. A bill that would help protect doctors under these circumstances has been passed by the State Legislature and awaits Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s signature.

On first look, the bill appears to make sense. It would free doctors from the threat of investigation solely on the grounds that they might have treated patients in a way not “universally accepted” by the medical profession. However, as written, the legislation gives individual medical practitioners too much latitude to, in effect, experiment with unproven treatments without safeguards, control groups, or adequate disclosure.

Related legislation that seeks to make insurers cover more of the cost of long-term tick-borne illness is said to be nearing completion in Albany. This is something that ought to happen, provided it does not provide a carve-out for those who would try untested treatments on patients without their informed consent or outside of a clinical research setting.

It is becoming evident, as recent scientific studies have suggested, that New York’s ticks are likely to be carriers of several pathogens, not just the one that causes Lyme disease. Researchers have begun to suspect that other bacteria or viruses carried by ticks may actually be why many of those treated for Lyme disease feel chronically ill long after their antibiotics run out. It is also being reported that the drugs used against Lyme are not necessarily effective against these co-infections. As a result, well-meaning doctors could well be ordering the wrong drugs or prescribing them for lengths of time that carry their own risks.

One of the new bill’s sponsors, Assemblywoman Didi Barrett, told Northeast Public Radio recently that the specter of multiple diseases in a single tick was a good reason why the governor should sign the bill. “It’s more important in legislation like ours that just passed that doctors have the ability and the opportunity without risk of someone looking over their shoulder to make the best decisions possible for their patients,” she said. That may make a good sound bite, but it is bad science.

Looking over one’s doctor’s shoulder with regard to standard practices and in the form of peer review is precisely how modern medicine is supposed to work. Cowboys may have a place on the range but not in your primary provider’s office. The bill, though honorable in intent, is too broad and not yet ready for the governor’s signature.

The local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation sent around a photograph last week that made an inescapable point about Montauk’s downtown beach: There just isn’t that much of it any more, and the planned fix by the Army Corps of Engineers may well wipe away what little is left.

In the image, six members of the group appear roughly arm’s length apart, holding placards that when read together spell out the message: “Don’t Bag Our Beach!” Arrayed in a line from the water’s edge to a partially buried row of snow fencing, they span the 50-foot width of the project on which work could begin within months. By design, the group has said, the beach itself would be gone, an observation supported by the Army Corps’s own plan, available on the Town of East Hampton website.

Hoping to see this for ourselves, we went for a look the other day. Yes, Surfrider is right. At the end of the summer beach-building season, when you would expect the distance from the dunes to the water to be at its widest, there was only a narrow expanse. Guests at several motels, who sat on outside decks taking in the sunset, seemed to be perched above the water itself, with the buildings only one or two bad storms from the brink.

The Army Corps is getting ready to use money from the Hurricane Sandy relief package passed by Congress in a misguided effort to protect the row of motels and residences closest to the ocean there by installing a 3,100-foot-long barrier of sand bags. They would be filled with and initially covered by sand quarried from upland mines — something of great concern to the members of Surfrider and others.

Even worse, the bags would function as short-lived seawalls, resulting in the near-certain total loss of a passable beach and creating massive down-drift scouring to the west. Described by the corps as a temporary measure, the price tag would be approximately $9 million. And it is nothing less than a looming disaster.

Few experts who study the Atlantic Coast recommend anything other than structural retreat from eroding areas outside of the large cities. Here on the South Fork, where wide, clean beaches are an essential basis of the second-home and visitor economy, so-called solutions that result in the loss of quality shoreline are counter to the greater public interest.

The Army Corps plan for Montauk, if it is allowed to go forward, would do more harm than good. In an effort to protect the roughly 10 privately owned properties there, the beach itself, a cherished public asset, would be sacrificed. The notion that someday money would be forthcoming to pump sand in from offshore is little more than fanciful thinking; it cannot be the cornerstone of real-world policy. And without a multimillion-dollar ongoing source of funding, keeping the Montauk sand bags covered is a pipedream, one that, unfortunately, East Hampton Town and Suffolk officials appear ready to sign on to.

So far, the town has seemed to have taken an irresponsible hands-off approach, one that may violate its own Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan on coastal armoring and skirt rules requiring detailed, independent analysis. There are no reports on the corps’s proposal from the Natural Resources or Planning Departments and no sign of an independent environmental impact statement being prepared or a qualified coastal geologist on board. As critics have rightly charged, the Army Corps is guilty of relying on old science — or no science at all — and Town Hall is playing right along.

For its part, the Army Corps has produced a statement finding no significant environmental effects, based in part on a dubious designation of the thousands of bags filled with quarry sand as “nonstructural,” though they would function, by design, precisely the same way as a boulder, steel, or wood seawall. And the Corps’s notion that long-term damage from the sandbags would be mitigated by the Fire Island to Montauk Point project, which is now more than a half-century in the making with still no hope of progress, is just plain wrong.

It would be far better to set aside the money the corps has for Montauk as a down payment on a long-term approach to condemn and buy out the owners of the oceanfront properties, then build a high, more natural dune to protect the rest of the downtown. That would be a big-think, radical response, but anything less would only delay the inevitable, waste taxpayers’ money, and destroy the beach. The East Hampton Town Board needs to withdraw support for this project in a hurry.

Voters will decide on Tuesday whether Suffolk will continue to have both a county treasurer and a county comptroller. Both are elected positions. This should settle a lengthy dispute between Angie Carpenter, the longtime treasurer, and County Executive Steve Bellone. Mr. Bellone has sought to eliminate the treasurer’s post to streamline government and reduce the cost to taxpayers by as much as $800,000 a year in departmental salaries and related expenses. If approved, the comptroller would assume the duties of the treasurer, which for the most part are paying the bills. It’s a good idea.

Ms. Carpenter’s time in office ends on Dec. 31, 2017, because of term limits. If the proposal were approved, the post would be eliminated at that point. She has said a treasurer is important to provide checks and balances. However, the County Legislature could follow the lead of most other New York counties and appoint less highly salaried personnel to serve that role, while the comptroller provides oversight.

At a time when Suffolk faces continual struggles on spending and residents bemoan high taxes, every dollar that can be saved matters. Vote yes.

On paper, East Hampton Village’s proposed code changes to allow some duneland projects to proceed with reduced official scrutiny may make sense; on the ground, however, one of the proposals — to allow property owners to place “beach-compatible” sand on the dunes without applying for a variance from the code — is regrettable. Hearings on these and several other changes are scheduled for tomorrow’s village board meeting.

Our objection to exempting oceanfront property owners from prohibitions that now cover work on the dunes comes down to the simple fact that there is not enough sand to be found of sufficiently high quality. One thing is clear: The junk that passes for beach-compatible sand is garbage, pure and simple.

Take Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village, for example. Stone-flecked yellow sand from who knows where was dumped there to protect the exposed foundation of a guest house. To the east, a lot of the material brought in to protect threatened Montauk resorts has left the beach altered. In several places on the bay beach as well, we picked up bits of asphalt roadway and even what appeared to be a chunk of a green-painted concrete tennis court. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation later told us the detritus came from an A-okay project.

With the standard for what passes as beach sand these days so low, village officials should not ease the way for property owners to fast-track coastal work. In the worst-case scenario, you could expect high “privacy dunes” to arise in these extraordinarily fragile micro­environments. It doesn’t seem as if the village trustees actually thought this through.

Another duneland regulation the board has proposed is reasonable, however. Property owners would be able to seek permits for elevated walkways with reduced paperwork and a minimum of delay. We support this change. On the matter of dune-building, however, the board should take a long, hard look before acting. Exempting property owners from thorough review would be likely to damage natural habitats and diminish the quality of one of East Hampton Village’s most precious assets — its beaches. At a time when projects near the beach should be getting more scrutiny, not less, the proposal is moving village government in the wrong direction.

Everybody eats; not everybody plays golf. And there, in a nutshell, you have why a private club’s offer to take over most of a large parcel of town-owned former farmland in Amagansett should be rejected out of hand.

Some weeks ago, after successfully negotiating a community preservation fund purchase of a multi-parcel site for which luxury housing for the over-50 crowd had been planned, the East Hampton Town Board called for proposals about how the property might be used. Among the responses was a thick document from the South Fork Country Club offering to set up a driving range and instruction tees and greens there. A fine horse barn there would be used for club equipment and about a third of the land would be returned to farming. While the new site would serve the club’s members, the proposal notes that the public would be able to use the facility, presumably for a fee. The club said it would pay the town $75,000 a year for the land’s use and return it in better shape than when it was purchased.

Even though the preservation fund law allows municipalities to buy land for recreation, and golf is indeed a form of recreation, the South Fork’s proposal should be rejected. Perhaps 1 in 10 people in the United States occasionally golf, but only a fraction of that number do so more than a few times a year. According to a recent report from the National Golf Foundation, the sport suffered a net loss of 400,000 players last year. Looking toward the future, golf’s biggest defections were seen among those under 35. This is hardly the kind of trend the East Hampton Town Board should consider hitching itself to — especially on such a visible and, at $10.1 million, expensive recent land buy.

As we understand it, there are several other proposals making the rounds, and apparently most of them involve better agricultural purposes. Several East Hampton Town Board members have expressed a preference for farming or related uses there, and we agree. Food production is preferable, as it would revitalize the site, preserving community access and providing educational opportunities for a much larger proportion of local residents than golf ever could. You can’t fault the South Fork Country Club, which has an 18-hole course and clubhouse nearby, for asking. Nevertheless, its option should be placed on the bottom of the pile.

As a discussion heats up about what — if anything — should be done about commercial trucks parked in residential parts of town, greater focus is needed on the underlying question: whether a house lot has become a place of business.

Aesthetic concerns about trucks and other equipment are less important than whether the use of a property is in violation of the town code. From a regulatory point of view, this may be considerably more difficult than banning vehicles based on weight or other physical criteria. However, parking trucks and storing gear necessary for making a living is a longstanding tradition in East Hampton Town, and officials should move with extreme caution on legislative changes that might hurt small, owner-operated concerns.

During a hearing earlier this month in Town Hall, the owners of a number of small businesses urged the town board to take on the number of vehicles that should be permitted overnight in residential areas, but they also asked that no restrictions be imposed on the types of trucks. This is a reasonable suggestion; it protects the interest of small operations but discourages fleet parking that can turn the yard next door into an industrial zone.

On the other side of the coin, however, business owners must work to be better neighbors. Far too many seem to feel they have an unfettered right to run noisy landscaping, construction, or plumbing operations from their properties. In fact, while the town code allows “home offices,” such as those one might use to run the bookkeeping side of such a concern, commercial activities themselves are banned in residentially zoned areas.

Business owners and the town board alike should work toward a one-person, one-truck compromise. There really is no reason why someone should not be able to head home in his or her plumbing or pool-service vehicle, for example, at the end of a long day. Beyond that, only limited storage of material, equipment, and supplies should be allowed, perhaps based on a percentage of lot area, as loading and unloading operations could easily grow into noisy — and already prohibited — uses.

Regulating all this is, of course, easier to talk about than to do. Town officials will have their hands full rooting out those construction companies or others that have in some cases entirely paved backyards to accommodate large numbers of vehicles. The goal should be community peace and quiet. That someone might consider someone else’s work truck unsightly takes a distant second.

In and of itself, a massive members-only club proposed for the former East Deck Motel site at Ditch Plain does not represent the end of Montauk as we know and love it, but it comes close.

Here is what is understood so far: An anonymous new owner has come up with a plan to more than double the use of the property by building a two-story complex with an Olympic-size swimming pool, a restaurant, and below-grade parking. The club would be open to some 179 members, along with their families and guests, based apparently on the space available on the beach in front of the parcel.

Built to meet Federal Emergency Management Agency standards, with a ground floor about 15 feet above sea level, the proposed 12,000-square-foot main building would tower over the area, cutting off views from nearby houses, and greatly change the look and feel of the area — for the worse. It could be that a grandiose plan for the new club was presented as an initial ante to be bargained down to what the owner really wants. But even at half the size, it would represent an unwise doubling of the former motel. And remember, this comes in part from the legal team responsible for the Montauk Beach House, another intrusion on parking, public property, and the community.

Viewed another way, the project amounts to a proposal to privatize a longstanding, popular public beach. If the plan eventually is approved, the club’s members, by force of numbers alone, would take over the sand between the so-called East Deck parking area and the legendary Dirt Lot. Though passage would not technically be blocked, amenities, like daybeds and beach lounge chairs, might well make it clear that ordinary folks are not welcome. Surfers at Ditch, already often frustrated by the crowded lineup, might well have to swallow a new and more self-entitled breed less willing to share the waves because they’ve paid for the privilege. And East Hampton officials will also have to consider what additional burden the additional club crowd might put on the town lifeguards just to the west.

The plan was the talk of Saturday’s Montauk Playhouse fund-raiser, where Alice Houseknecht, a former East Deck owner, was among the honorees. It appears that Ms. Houseknecht was hornswoggled by the mystery owner or his or her representatives when she sold the property. She reported last fall that she had been assured there would be no second story on the new structure and that the integrity of the site would be maintained. Based on the paperwork submitted to town planners so far, this is not true, which suggests that the people behind the scheme cannot be taken at their word. Town officials must proceed with the greatest suspicion in reviewing their project.

Our doubts also have been raised by the faceless owner’s successfully getting the town to accept a questionable gift of an expensive dune restoration project that looked then, as it does even more now, like a pot-sweetener for requests that were to come. We wonder just how ethical, or even legal, it was for a municipality to accept a donation from a party with an active plan working its way through its regulatory offices or about to be. Whether or not the gift was intended to curry favor (which it almost certainy was), it was unwise of officials to accept it.

Unfortunately, the project makes it clear that the site’s zoning, and that of other attractive parcels, especially around Montauk, is too permissive. In the 2005 East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan, no changes were recommended for the resort zoning at Ditch Plain, including the Montauk Shores Condominium trailer park. This means that well-funded investors could further try to maximize their returns in spite of a widely held view that Montauk is already at its saturation point in terms of resorts and visitors.

What happens at East Deck aside, as pressures continue for more, bigger, and fancier projects, officials need to take a hard look at whether existing rules are adequate to assure that the town’s shoreline remains one residents can be proud of. Concepts like the Ditch Plain club, which only add to congestion and environmental impacts and at the same time use public resources as if they were their own, have little place here.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals has it exactly right in asking an applicant for a rock revetment in Montauk for a full environmental impact study before proceeding.

John Ryan, who owns a bluff-top house overlooking the Atlantic, has a big problem. Erosion is eating away at the property. But East Hampton Town banned so-called hard structures on the beaches there, and in much of the rest of town, in about 2005 when it adopted a comprehensive Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan. This plan was the product of more than a decade of effort, and it carries the weight of state law. It should bind the zoning board’s hand.

The rationale behind setting out zones where seawalls were allowed and where they were not was based on considerable observation and thought. It is clear that in the places where dunes or bluffs are fortified with stone, wood, or steel, security for private property comes at an unacceptable cost — the loss of beaches over which the public has a centuries-old right of passage. Armoring also results in the loss of habitat, potentially including that of the plover, on the federal list of endangered species, and myriad others that depend on untrammeled nature for nesting, feeding, and resting places during migration.

Mr. Ryan is hardly alone in his hope to stem the tides. This week the town zoning board also heard from a group of property owners whose Louse Point area bluffs in Springs are being eaten away. Together, they are asking for hundreds of feet of rock, which would almost certainly mean the end of the beach there, as it has nearby, and dire down-drift effects.

Officials at every level must begin to recognize when protecting private property comes at the too high price of the loss of the people’s access to the shore. East Hampton’s beaches are valuable to all of us, residents and visitors alike, and no more should be sacrificed to save anyone’s house.

The board will study the environmental impact as presented by Mr. Ryan, but that work was done long ago as part of the town’s coastal hazard plan. The conclusion was clear: There can be no hard structures there.

Things are bad in the air around East Hampton Airport. Even though just how bad may be open to debate, there is no question that residents across the North and South Forks have been suffering from aircraft noise. The good news is that relief may be on the horizon.

According to the latest numbers, flights in and out of the town-owned airfield have increased substantially over last year. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 4 helicopter traffic jumped by almost 44 percent over the same period in 2013. Fixed-wing aircraft using the airport rose as well. The surprising 2014 numbers come as officials are already grappling with accumulated complaints about noise from earlier years and a previous town administration that spent four years basically giving helicopter operators a free pass. Better weather this summer may have played a part in the dramatic spike, but people were also complaining last year, which underscores the fact that noise is a longstanding problem and cannot be ignored.

Unless East Hampton Town acts, route changes mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration could be approaching that would only anger a different set of residents. At a meeting last week in Southold with that town’s supervisor, F.A.A. staff, Representative Tim Bishop, and aides to Senator Charles E. Schumer, the discussion was about shifting flight paths away from the North Fork. But the numbers show that moving traffic around is not going to make a meaningful difference on the ground here. Whether the F.A.A. agrees to direct the loudest aircraft over Northwest Woods, Georgica Pond, Noyac, or the North Fork, some people are going to suffer unfairly for the convenience of a tiny portion of summer visitors and part-time residents.

Paid spokesmen for the helicopter industry have predicted dire consequences if airport limits are put in place. These claims, even if credible, do not outweigh the expectation of peace and quiet by residents of both forks. Officials from all of the affected towns and villages should work with the F.A.A. on an aggressive plan to reduce the total number of flights and curtail the hours helicopters can use the airport. The rights of those who live here must take precedence over commercial interests and the desire of some of the well-off to avoid the maddenly slow Long Island Expressway. You know what? If a certain number of weekend hedge-funders and others decide to spend their vacation time elsewhere, we’ll manage just fine without them.

Unfortunately, as the debate over airport traffic raged, conditions there deteriorated, particularly putting private pilots at risk. East Hampton Town officials are moving quickly now on several safety upgrades. These include lighting, tree work, and reconstruction of a crumbling and dangerous secondary runway. All of this can be paid for without F.A.A. money by using income from landing fees and other airport revenue. This is important because federal dollars come with attached strings, which make local regulation of noisy aircraft more difficult.

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez has taken on a monumental task in getting many of the airport’s constituencies to talk to one another. She is to be congratulated for helping to guide the town toward likely new rules on noise and much-needed repairs.

The emerging united front among local pilots and anti-noise advocates must include the F.A.A. as well, since its cooperation will be essential if the town, as expected, imposes helicopter curfews, so-called slot limits on the number of landings and takeoffs, or other measures.