One of the people who have been thinking a lot about a proposed surf club on the old East Deck Motel site at Ditch Plain in Montauk stopped in at The Star office the other day to point something out. Mike Bottini, an outdoorsman and member of the Surfrider Foundation’s local chapter, laid out a set of papers on our front desk, showing that a string of public and largely protected lands extend from Montauk Point nearly to the hamlet’s commercial downtown. East Hampton Town officials are believed to be in talks with ED40, the new corporate owners of the East Deck, about using the community preservation fund to buy the site. As Mike said, adding the property to the string of public and largely untouched lands would help complete a wonderful picture.

With the rebirth of longboarding and the rise of Montauk’s surfing lifestyle, Ditch Plain with its dependable and mostly forgiving break became what you might say is the center of the universe for many visitors, part-timers, and year-round residents. If the waves are only occasionally world-class, no matter; you can surf there almost every day of the year with the right equipment, and, in summer, some of the sport’s greatest stylists, including Joel Tudor, Robert August, and Wingnut Weaver, have been known to put their toes over the nose there.

ED40 never threatened the wave itself, but that hardly mattered. Its plan for a two-story private club with restaurant, pool, and other amenities would have not only altered the look of Ditch Plain but, what is more important to devotees, the feel of the place. For those lucky enough to own houses or rent in the neighborhood, the personal and commercial traffic the club would generate would become a source of continual annoyance. East Hampton Town’s buying the former motel and either keeping it as is or restoring parts of the beachfront to a natural state would eliminate the threat. While this alone might be enough to argue in favor of a deal, there are additional considerations.

Over the last decade or so, town officials have puzzled over how to provide more bathing beach capacity. Using some of the East Deck site for parking could help ease pressure elsewhere and better accommodate the numbers of beachgoers’ vehicles that already try to shoe-horn into Ditch Plain’s three inadequate lots. The site could provide a staging area for town lifeguards and improved access for emergency vehicles. Also, the single public restroom at Ditch is in desperate need of an upgrade; a second, more modern facility with a more environmentally appropriate septic system is in order.

Taking an idea from the Village of East Hampton, which very lucratively rents out the Sea Spray summer cottages near Main Beach, we can envision a setup at Ditch Plain in which the town actually gains revenue by retaining or renovating some of the motel for guests or coming up with a new arrangement.

The downside as we see it is cost. ED40 paid $15 million for the property last year; the price cannot have fallen since then, and the owners will undoubtedly want to be repaid for the dune-building they did there and on adjacent town land. The town cannot pay more than its appraisers say the property is worth, and a large deal might knock out a good chunk of the community preservation fund’s cash on hand. However, the town has the ability to borrow against future transfer-tax receipts for the fund, so the money is available one way or the other.

Setting aside highly politicized recriminations about the Keyes Island purchase in Three Mile Harbor, hardly an ill word has ever been said about preservation fund acquisitions. And, going further back in time, land buys have always been viewed favorably. Purported damage to a municipal property at Sammy’s Beach in East Hampton may have cost one town supervisor a shot a re-election, and an attempt to sell off a town property in Montauk badly sullied the reputation of another.

It has been understood for a long time here that preservation is the best investment. The huge outcry over the ED40 plan is an indication of how deep and heartfelt affection for Ditch Plain has become. It is difficult to come up with a significant downside to public purchase. Officials should proceed with talks knowing that they are on the right track and will enjoy wide community support.

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. 

When the numbers are laid out, they are stark: This year, between Thursday, May 22, and Memorial Day, a four-day span, there were 475 complaints about noise coming from aircraft using East Hampton Airport. This was nearly double the number recorded during the same period the previous year and, just as significant, the calls came from more than twice the households as in 2013. East Hampton Town officials clearly have a noise crisis on their hands.

The sheer scale of airport use is stunning. Over the four-day weekend, there were 872 “operations,” as takeoffs and landings are called in regulatory parlance, about 20 percent more than during the same weekend the year before. Of these, 341 were window-rattling helicopters, which led to the greater share of the public’s complaints. Furthermore, traffic controllers at the airport are beginning to say that the route changes designed to limit helicopter noise are instead creating potential problems.

Fiddling with routes only moves the problems around — and may be a danger to those in the air as well as those on the ground. Setting curfews on the noisiest aircraft and perhaps implementing curbs on the number of helicopters that can use the airport per hour appear to be ahead. East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said on Tuesday that there must be limits. How right he is.

In a landmark decision, the United States National Marine Fisheries Service has listed the scalloped hammerhead shark as an endangered species, making it the first shark protected under the Endangered Species Act. This is only one of the top ocean predators left vulnerable because of fishing and other human activities. Many additional species of shark are considered at risk of extinction, thanks largely to a continuing demand for their fins for soup.

In the waters off eastern Long Island, there is little commercial fishing specifically for sharks. Instead, they are harried by sportfishermen, often during tournaments in which money and bragging rights are at stake. It is surprising that there is just one catch-and-release tournament here, the $10,000 Shark’s Eye competition, which debuted last summer at the Montauk Marine Basin and will be held again this weekend.

By all accounts, the tournament was a success. Sharks were caught, tagged with tracking devices, and then released. No weigh-in system was used; instead, each shark caught was photographed and allotted a set amount of points based on its species. To make sure all competitors played fair, a member from a rival team was on board at all times.

Last year’s winner, Richie Nessel, said the Shark’s Eye was the “most fun” he had ever had in a tournament. It provided education and entertainment for students at the Montauk School as well, who named a 200-pound blue shark Beamer. His movements were tracked at Ocearch.org, so it is known that he traveled over 9,000 miles since the tournament last July. As of this week, his satellite tag was somewhere off Costa Rica.

The Shark’s Eye tournament and others like it also provide valuable scientific data. Tracking systems allow scientists to gather information about sharks’ health as well as travels. Furthermore, they promote public interest in sharks. If people become interested enough in a shark like Beamer to track his progress, perhaps they will care enough to avoid turning him into soup. Six other sharks are expected to be tagged during this weekend’s tournament.

Conservationists would welcome the expansion of catch-and-release tournaments, and we believe more of them would not reduce enthusiasm. The model exists, it isn’t difficult to copy, and it has proven successful. Montauk is known worldwide as a fishing community and has the ability to influence the fishing world. There is no better place for ocean conservation to take hold. Better, more progressive tournaments could help make that happen.

The East Hampton Village Police Department has dipped a nightstick, so to speak, into social media, joining Twitter a while back and posting alerts about incoming weather and the like. One recent tweet, as the 140-maximum-character messages are known, got our attention. In its entirely, it read: “Traffic Hint: Mid day or afternoon heading toward Main Street? Avoid Newtown Lane = Gridlock.”

Years ago, if we recall, a plan was drawn up that would have closed Newtown Lane to vehicles from about Main Street to the middle school. This was in a more idealistic age, perhaps, one in which it was thought that people might actually get out of their cars and stroll along a verdant median, enjoying an ice cream cone or reading a newspaper from the comfort of a park bench.

These days, you might practically be able to leaf through your paper while sitting behind the wheel as the weekend line of vehicles creeps up Newtown toward the train station, not that this is advised. Avoidance, as the village police’s Twitter voice says, is just about the only strategy left.

It is astonishing, particularly for those like Josephine DiSunno who were around when the Amagansett Fire Department was simply middle-aged, that it has now passed the century mark. Mrs. DiSunno, who was a charter member of the department’s ladies auxiliary, was among the many who took part in a celebratory parade on Saturday, which included delegations from departments from as far afield as Eastport and Ronkonkoma.

We have often marveled at how Amagansett serves such a demanding area. There are miles of beaches to which its ambulance company is frequently summoned, often to deal with emergencies among some of the hundreds of weekend guests at the Napeague motels and condominiums. It has responsibility for the dangerous Napeague stretch of roadway. Then there are the houses and businesses extending from Further Lane almost to Hither Hills, over Town Lane and out toward Barnes Landing. It is fitting that Montauk Highway was shut to traffic through the hamlet at the peak of the season for Saturday’s parade, an unintended but vital reminder to the summer crowds that this dedicated corps of volunteers is always on call.

Saturday’s party was a real small-town American salute at its finest, made all the more surprising coming in the middle of summer, when so many people who live and work and volunteer here are at their busiest. It was a reminder of what is important and what is special about living here or in any small town: a sense of place, knowing your neighbors, and counting on the fact that even people you don’t know have your back when you need it.

Here’s to another 100 years, Amagansett Fire Department!

Pity poor Montauk. First it comes under attack from hordes of people partying on weekends, then it becomes overrun with guests in illegal short-term rentals, and now, parts of the public’s property are being usurped by private businesses.

East Hampton Town officials will be certainly met with howls of outrage when, as we suspect, they take on restaurant owners and others who have in rapidly increasing numbers this summer been placing tables out on the sidewalk for their patrons. Any number of downtown eateries are getting in on the act, expanding their seating capacity to make the most of a short season. One can understand why they  do so, but that does not make it right or fair to the taxpayers whose property they are using. Perhaps these businesses are taking a cue from Gurney’s Inn, also in Montauk, which has set out dozens of chairs and daybeds apparently in the traditional right of way over the beach. If those charged with regulating public properties here see no harm in these instances, they should at least charge fees for the privilege.

Then there are places, like the Memory Motel, which has in effect stolen public property by turning most of its off-street parking lot into an outdoor bar. As a result, more patrons of the popular drinking spot have to put their vehicles elsewhere, and this is hardly the worst of it. By all accounts, chaos rules there late at night as far too many revelers roll off into the darkness. This is similar to what happened at the Montauk Beach House, which added a club and live music venue without providing a single additional off-street parking space.

Now, though apparently within legal bounds, the mysterious owners of the former East Deck Motel have presented the town with plans to expand and become a members-only beach club at Ditch Plain. This, too, will have an impact on the surrounding area and undoubtedly add to the sense of a hamlet out of control, in which the love of money takes precedence.

The chief executive officer of the Starbucks corporation and the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals together have a world-class stall job under way, though the Z.B.A. appears to be inching toward putting a stop to it. This display of backbone, however cartilaginous, is overdue — though we will believe it when we see it.

Howard Schultz, with his wife, Sherri, had formally asked the zoning board back in April for permission to retain a garage that mysteriously became a good-size guesthouse on their Gracie Lane property. The village zoning chairman, citing a family responsibility involving one of the Schultzes’ lawyers, presented a request last week for a delay of two more months before the board’s deliberations might begin. Conveniently, this would push the eventual moment of reckoning past Labor Day, when, one can assume, the Schultzes would no longer regularly frequent their East Hampton spread or need to house their visitors, extended family, staff, or whomever, in the much debated structure.

The thing about this particular request is that the Schultzes are not seeking to build something new. On the contrary, they have been asking to keep unchanged a garage that had been improperly expanded. Though legally entitled to a garage of only 650 square feet with a single apartment for a caretaker, the building now has 1,000 square feet of floor area, with four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. According to their lawyers, when the Schultzes bought the property they were assured by the brokers that everything was legal. Nevertheless, when they applied to the Z.B.A. for permission to expand their house two years ago, they agreed to return the garage to its original size. They did not do so.

Every day that the zoning board has given over to the lawyers’ maneuvering and artful delays is one in which the couple continues to have the use of the wrongly altered structure. By failing to call a halt to the dodge last week when the matter was, at least on paper, to reach conclusion, the board essentially agreed to a fifth extension of time.

The principal lawyer for the couple, Leonard Ackerman of East Hampton, is supposed to appear at the next meeting, on Friday, July 25, or otherwise make the case for adjourning deliberations until the middle of September. Another postponement is hard to swallow, however, given that at various times the Schultzes have been represented by a coterie of attorneys, including a moonlighting Fred W. Thiele Jr., who just happens to also be a state assemblyman.

By contrast, extensions of time on matters before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals are extremely rare. At Town Hall, applicants and their attorneys make their cases in hearings, the gavel comes down, and decisions are forthcoming in 60 days or less, as state law requires. Once in a while, the record might be kept open for one side or the other to respond to a late document, but only long enough for that purpose rather than for indefinite months on end as in the village in this and many other matters. It is a fair model, one that requires all involved to be well prepared, and it offers swift solutions, benefiting both applicants and the community.

Concerns about the absence of timely and efficient review are not idle or without importance. By allowing matters to drag on, the village zoning board is effectively cutting the public out of the process. Few residents have the means or stamina to attend every continuation of such protracted hearings. Interest becomes diluted; attention wanes. This drastically reduces the potential role of neighbors and other parties and makes government an insiders’ game that only the pros can win.

What is infuriating about this is that it all comes down to money. If a middle-class homeowner or even a run-of-the-mill millionaire promised to reduce the size of a clearly illegal structure but neglected to do so, one would expect no leniency. There is a double standard at work here.

Credit Mr. and Ms. Schultz’s hubris with finally forcing the issue and bringing the zoning board to the point where some of its members appear to be moving toward what they should have said months ago: No.

For residents concerned about the speed and ability of emergency medical care, the news that the East End Ambulance Coalition has proposed a significant improvement should be welcome. Some resistance has emerged, however, to its idea for a regional first-responder program, something that appears necessary and overdue.

The program would provide coverage in the four East Hampton fire districts as well as Bridgehampton’s and Sag Harbor’s. For many years the ambulance squads in these districts were all volunteer and a system of mutual aid among them was able to meet demands. This area’s aging, growing, and demographically changing population, coupled with ever-greater numbers of seasonal visitors, have strained these ambulance companies. They have struggled with training and recruitment and some have brought on paid paramedics.

As good as these always-ready paid personnel may be, new concerns are becoming apparent. As things stand, the paramedics are forbidden to cross district lines for any but the most serious and likely fatal calls. This jeopardizes the entire mutual aid system in two ways. First, some volunteer companies do not have advanced life support-qualified, or A.L.S., members. If an A.L.S. volunteer in a neighboring district is already at an emergency and cannot respond to a call for aid, there may be no one with adequate skills available — even though a paramedic might be sitting idle in another district. Second, maintaining A.L.S. readiness takes scores of hours of training and near-constant recertification; unfortunately, the presence of a single paid paramedic might be a subtle disincentive for those who would otherwise step up to serve or are conflicted about the commitment because of family or professional demands, or both. The proposed regional responder program could fill the gaps in coverage and get assistance to patients more rapidly. 

A new tax district, encompassing areas from Bridgehampton to Montauk, would be created to pay for  the program. The coalition has estimated that an initial annual budget of about $2.5 million would be enough to provide a 24-hour team of first responders able to go to any call that arises. Volunteers would continue to be essential, handling emergencies, driving ambulances, and doing other tasks.

Some jurisdictions, the Springs Fire Department, for example, and East Hampton Village, which controls its fire and ambulance services, appear cool to the idea. These positions are indefensible considering that in more than a few instances patients have waited far too long for qualified medical help to arrive.

Like the East Hampton  Town and Village Police Departments, which provide professional service and do not hesitate to cross district lines when the need arises, the time appears to have come to give serious consideration to a regional first-responder system. In fact, police are often first on the scene at ambulance calls and have privately expressed frustration at the delays. If the districts continue to balk, officials in East Hampton and Southampton Towns need to step in and use whatever leverage they can to seek this much-needed modernization, even creating fire-responder services in their Police Departments if that is what it takes.

Community comes first, as one of the backers of the regional plan recently said. Providing the best and fastest care possible should be the top priority.

Pressure is mounting for meetings of the East Hampton Town Trustees to be aired on LTV, the town’s public access cable channel. This is a reasonable suggestion and should be explored.

The trustees are the only one of East Hampton’s important boards whose meetings are not televised and available for replay on demand on the LTV website. Town board meetings are shown live and archived online, as are other proceedings, including those of the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards. The sessions of the East Hampton Village Board and Z.B.A. are live as well and available for replay, as are those of the East Hampton School Board. But not the trustees, who gather twice a month. This should change.

To be fair, interest in watching trustees’ sessions started to rise only during a recent debate over a town board attempt to ban alcohol at Amagansett’s Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue Beaches. Some residents who favored the ban were annoyed at the trustees’ opposition and seemed to think more people would share their outrage if they could see the panel’s future deliberations for themselves. But other trustee matters also merit broader public attention. The trustees have an important function in local government and greater public knowledge of their affairs would help dispel the sense that they operate in a vacuum.

Technical issues and cost might stand in the way of the immediate airing of trustee meetings, but this should not be the end of the matter. The Lamb Building, where the trustees gather, is not yet wired for videotaping, unlike other official town and village venues. The trustees could consider meeting in Town Hall, but the zoning board is already there at the same time on Tuesdays. As an interim measure, it might suffice if LTV could assign a single camera operator to tape trustee sessions. That way, even if live broadcasts were not immediately possible, the online version could be made available.

Seeing trustee meetings will go only part of the way toward getting them more in step with the town’s other agencies. Unfortunately, the trustees are elected in one massive, difficult-to-comprehend slate. Unlike all the other boards, which have staggered terms, all nine trustee seats come up simultaneously. Take it from us: It is extremely difficult to interview and assess the qualities of 18 trustee candidates from the two major political parties, and we are paid to do it. Because it is almost impossible for ordinary voters to make reasoned decisions among so many people, the contest becomes one of name recognition.

The trustees are also at a disadvantage because, unlike the boards that meet in Town Hall, they have a tiny staff and few resources to call on. Had the trustees been in the flow of government and the public eye, some of the tension that greeted the alcohol ban discussion might have been avoided. Promoting greater awareness among residents of the valuable work the trustees do, and how they do it, is a fine place to start.