For the first time ever, East Hampton High School’s annual homecoming game, held on Sept. 20, was not played by the football team. The match featured varsity soccer, and the boys defeated Hampton Bays by a score of 3-0, therein making history and signaling a change that was coming for a long time, accelerated by local demographic changes.

The Bonackers were not able to field a varsity football team this year, as many would-be players opted for other sports. There is a degree of interest in football among younger kids, but whether this will endure as they get older is a big question, especially in light of growing public concern about concussions and other injuries linked to the game.

Meanwhile, the East Hampton soccer players are on a tear. They played strongly last year, were county champions in the two seasons before that, and are in the hunt for a League VI title for 2014.

Hot on the heels of a World Cup that drew solid viewer ratings in the United States, high school soccer is poised become the next big thing. In East Hampton, it appears, it already has.

A yes vote would appear assured on Proposal Two, which would allow the New York State Legislature to forgo printing materials that cost some $325,000 a year by distributing them in electronic form. This averages out to about 9 million pages every year and tons of waste. Lawmakers barely read most bills anyway; getting them into a format that they can access via their tablets or smartphones while on the move might actually improve the legislative process. Saving money and reducing waste makes this worthy of the public’s support. Vote yes.

Proposal Three would authorize $2 billion in borrowing to pay for school technology, including broadband, electronic boards, computers, and high-tech security. It would also provide money for pre-kindergarten facilities, moving the tykes out of temporary classroom trailers. The funding would be available to all schools, both public and private.

Though this would appear to be a feel-good, for-the-kids idea, the details are problematic. Large-scale technology initiatives have had mixed results across the country, and this proposal has been criticized for providing money for gear without doing anything to pay for instruction on how to use it. Allowing religious and other private institutions to receive public funding may be well intentioned but is misplaced. Disparities among districts should be addressed through much needed statewide changes in how education is paid for, not by handouts for expensive and quickly outdated equipment. Vote no.

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.

Proposal One on Tuesday’s ballot is a redistricting proposition that could actually make things worse in Albany. It would establish a commission on Assembly, Senate, and Congressional districts to be appointed entirely by the State Legislature’s leadership or their proxies. It should be rejected.

New York has long been faulted for having one of the most dysfunctional state legislatures in the United States. This measure would cement that dubious distinction by concentrating additional power among those with an overwhelming interest in keeping things the way they are. Voting districts would be set by the 10-member commission, which would be dominated by people handpicked by the Senate’s and Assembly’s majority and minority leaders. This would leave in place the tradition of insider horse-trading in the state capital, reducing to nearly zero the chances of district lines being drawn to accurately represent changing demographics.

New York State should have a thoroughly independent redistricting process. Approving this proposal would lock in an unfair system, creating partisan gridlock if and when meaningful district changes were necessary. Real reform would be just about impossible. Vote no.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Justice will bring peace,” Lesley McSpadden said during a television appearance this week. Ms. McSpadden is the mother of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9. While the focus now is rightly on the circumstances of the death of the 18-year-old, whom friends called Big Mike, the anger in the streets appears to be equally about how those in authority in this country treat people of color, particularly young black men.

Incidents of racial and ethnic profiling are a persistent stain on the United States’ ideals. It was evident in the arrest of a black Harvard professor while he was trying to get into his own house and can be seen in the targeting of Latino drivers for greater scrutiny by police on patrol.

As unacceptable as the nights of destruction in Ferguson have been, they cannot be dismissed as the work of “outside agitators”; Al Qaeda or some other unseen hand is not at work in Missouri. The homegrown rage in the streets is genuine and deep, the product of a law enforcement ethos still steeped in the policies of repression.

Justice might indeed bring quiet to the streets of Ferguson, but it will do little to remedy the increasingly militarized police from coast to coast, which sees minorities and young men of color as adversaries. The list of those brutalized by police in racially tinged circumstances is long and should be a continuing source of shame. So, too, is the record of judicial imbalance in criminal sentencing and so-called “three strikes” laws.

Once Michael Brown’s death no longer commands the headlines, the key test will be if Americans will find a way to embrace one another and celebrate all of us — our differences and similarities alike. Teaching police to stand down and not view young black men as the enemy is one place to start.

Justice for Big Mike and the others, yes, but the re-examination of what we stand for as a nation must not and cannot stop there.

Saturday is International Coastal Cleanup Day, and East Hampton Town is joining the effort by providing trash bags, gloves, and collection sites for volunteers who want to help pick up trash from the beaches. Then, on Sunday, the organizers of the People’s Climate March expect it to be the largest demonstration in New York City since the anti-Vietnam War protests. Both are worthy.

The People’s Climate March promises to involve leaders from the labor movement, faith-based organizations, and people from across the nation, along with 32 marching bands and a single call by trumpets, bells, drums, and whistles for change. The beach cleanup here, sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, may present an opportunity for change of the sometimes overlooked but growing problem of the mess left behind by bonfires. East Hampton Village allows fires on the beach provided they are kept inside a metal brazier or other container. Southampton does the same, and requires a permit. Many other Long Island municipalities ban them altogether. East Hampton Town, on the other hand, allows fires to be built right on the sand, subject to a host of regulations about size, location, and hours, which are largely ignored and in any event fail to address the enduring problem that fire debris, be it half-burned logs or the more-difficult-to-remove bits of charcoal, are leaving many popular bathing beaches almost permanently scarred.

 If you look closely (and we invite you to), dozens of small, black chunks can be picked up within an area no bigger than a single beach towel at Indian Wells in Amagansett. Downtown Montauk’s shore one morning this summer was a wasteland of smoldering wood and empty beer cans. It’s time for town officials to realize something has to change. Fires on town beaches could be permitted only within metal containers for a distance of perhaps 300 feet in either direction from beach road ends. Fires could be allowed on the sand beyond those limits, but only if a way can be found for marine patrol officers to obtain identification of responsible parties to whom littering tickets could be directed if a mess were found in the morning.

It is high time that beachgoers here began to practice the old backpacker’s mantra of “leave no trace.” As for time, it is running short to protect those very beaches from eventually falling victim to climate change.