As if the proceedings of East Hampton Town’s citizens advisory committees weren’t strange enough much of the time, in recent weeks there has been a fuss over who was to be elected head of the Amagansett committee and, a few days later, a member of one committee asked to be appointed to contemporaneously serve on another one.

The citizens committees are made up of residents selected by the town board as sounding boards for their respective hamlets. They meet monthly, ostensibly to hash out matters of varying importance to neighbors. We can’t help but wonder, though, if these groups of nonelected people truly function as conduits for ordinary residents’ concerns or have become actually dominated by people with personal and/or political agendas.

They were created for a good purpose, of course. In concept, informal conversations among neighbors were to lead to better and more-responsive governance. It just doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. Town board members attend committee meetings and report back on what they hear, but they usually are listening to a self-selected, small subset of any given hamlet’s residents, activists who do not necessarily speak for a majority.

East Hampton Town is not alone; the Bridgehampton citizens group made noises this spring that it might actually sue the Town of Southampton over plans for a CVS pharmacy at a busy Route 27 intersection, obviously a departure from its advisory role. Looking backward, there have been tussles about the use of letterhead to communicate with outside government agencies, improperly going around the town board. In general, the committees seem to be bereft of formal procedure or a clear expression of their missions.

While we are not convinced the time has come to disband the citizens committees, doing so is worth considering. An alternative might be for each hamlet’s designated town board liaison to hold open hours in a library or over coffee in a semipublic place, along perhaps with an associated online chat or email hotline to gauge local concerns. As things have evolved, the give and take during the East Hampton Town Board’s twice-weekly meetings has turned out to be much more of a big-tent forum, where anyone can talk directly to those in authority.

Battles and bickering over who is or is not a leader of one of the citizens committees or over what a committee’s role should be suggest that the current model is not entirely successful. Small changes might do the trick, but it may actually be time to try something altogether new.

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!

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.

A lot has been heard at East Hampton Town Hall meetings lately about adding to local laws to meet a new, more complicated reality, but not enough attention has been given to the lapses among those who are supposed to see that existing rules are enforced. That appears to be changing. In a hearing this evening, the town board will take public opinion on expanding the roster of those who can, in some cases, issue summonses for violations and stop-work orders.

The problem has been that the Ordinance Enforcement Department, whose chief, Betsy Bambrick, doubles as the town’s lead animal control officer, has proven not to be up to the task or perhaps is just unwilling to do the job for some reason. Under her lax leadership, obvious violations, including some that are simple to deal with, have not been corrected. A shared sense is that, dating back some years, she and her subordinates have responded only to complaints from the public; they do not look for potential violations and, what’s worse, they flat-out ignore even those in front of their noses. Some of this may be the result of do-nothing pressure during the Wilkinson-Quigley years, but, to be fair, complaints about enforcement go back at least to the 1990s.

This is not to say that the town code is adequate in all respects. Many of its key quality-of-life provisions are outdated or contradictory or both. Consider one example in the news this week, that of short-term rentals, on which the law is entirely inadequate. On the one hand, East Hampton property owners are forbidden from renting out their houses for fewer than 14 days more than twice in any six-month period. On the other hand, it is perfectly okay with officials for the house right next door to yours to be turned into a de facto bed-and-breakfast, accommodating scores of guests a year so long as it has no more than two guest rooms. None of it makes any sense. And forget about the proliferation of illegal group rentals; the law — and enforcement — has proven nearly hopeless in this regard.

We expect the main outcome of this evening’s hearing will be that the director of public safety, David Betts, is added to those able to issue tickets for alleged violators to appear in court. Mr. Betts came to the post by way of Southampton, where, as the chief investigator in its code enforcement division, he earned a reputation for action. To cite one instance, he aggressively went after a party-house promoter in Southampton while at the same time his East Hampton colleagues failed to prosecute the same person for essentially the same offense in their jurisdiction and instead issued a citation to one of his victims.

Giving Mr. Betts and his eventual successors in East Hampton Town the tools to do the job will go a long way toward signaling that the town means business on local laws. Adding him to the list of enforcers should also send a signal to those who have been letting violators go unpunished that they should step it up or start polishing their résumés.

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.

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.

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.

It is difficult to imagine a more convincing argument for the immediate consolidation of school districts than the president of the Wainscott School Board’s plea that a modest affordable housing development be kept out of that school district. That this was not roundly rejected from the start is disappointing, to say the least.

David Eagan, the board president, cautioned East Hampton Town officials last week that it would be difficult to accommodate the perhaps 40 additional students the housing would bring in and that it could lead to higher taxes and the need to expand the tiny lower-grades schoolhouse. Take it elsewhere, he seemed to say, like Springs or East Hampton. And therein should lay the death knell of the anachronistic smaller South Fork school districts.

The housing plan is worthwhile. A local nonprofit, with county, state, and federal money, would build a 48-apartment complex on about 31 acres of town-owned land off Stephen Hand’s Path. Current residents of East Hampton Town would be eligible for preference as renters. One of the project’s backers estimated that in addition to the 20 students who would be educated at the Wainscott School, the costs for another 20 who would attend middle school and high school elsewhere could well be added to tax bills. Even so, these numbers are small when compared to several neighboring school districts.

If a school system is too microscopic to handle even the children of a modest work force residence project, something is out of balance. What Wainscott’s board members seem to be saying is that they might welcome the labor of those who live in publicly underwritten houses, but that they had better live elsewhere. One might easily expect the same walls to be thrown up in Sagaponack and Amagansett. The latter school district, in what may be an effort to maintain the exclusivity inherent in its tiny size, has a no-visitors policy that crimps district-shopping by prospective parents.

Speculating, we have long been under the impression that much of the resistance to district consolidation comes from the respective small-school administrators, some of whom stand to lose high-paying jobs in the inevitable shakeout. Scare tactics in the form of studies claiming huge tax increases are trotted out as these leaders begin to see a threat to positions with top compensation packages of around $300,000 a year, when benefits are added.

Larger districts might make for positive change on the school boards, which are made up of well-meaning ordinary citizens who find themselves in thrall to superintendents and their intricate knowledge of the complex functions of running an educational system. So complete is the capitulation that in several districts, notably East Hampton’s, the superintendent sits at the head of the table at board meetings, instead of in the audience.

From the parents’ perspective, small schools are a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want a good education in an idyllic setting for their children that is paid for by someone else? But parents’ wishes do not always make for sound policy. By all accounts, East Hampton Town is in an affordable housing crisis; even less-desirable neighborhoods are priced out of reach of working people as gentrification goes on. There are many causes for this, including the impact of more than a decade of nearly complete town failure to enforce group-housing laws, which has lead to an artificial inflation of prices at the low end of the market.

Let’s amplify that point for a moment: Houses in Springs, for example, are priced beyond the means of local middle-class families in part because illegal multiple rentals allow owners to cover mortgages that would otherwise be unaffordable. This is yet another reason why code enforcement matters, but whether at this point there is any way back is an open question. The result is that there really is little hope for someone starting out or getting by on the area’s modest average salaries to find a decent, year-round rental, and almost no way toward homeownership without breaking the law along the way.

Wainscott’s position is understandable, but must not be the end of the discussion. A neutral analysis could resolve the question about higher taxes, but its not-in-my-backyard stance should be ignored. A regional school district that could spread the tax burden around would be the best course. Of course, a change in state law about how schools raise money might help shift some of the cost off the backs of property owners and more equitably onto this area’s considerable summertime sales and hotel tax income. Then, too, townwide property reassessment might reveal large untapped reserves among long-undervalued parcels.

Education, housing, and taxes are massive and interrelated issues. Progress on these fronts is not going to be made by Wainscott’s thumbing its nose at the rest of the community.

East Hampton Town officials were on the right track last week when they denied a last-minute request for a permit from the operator of an annual for-profit bicycle ride to Montauk. Unfortunately, with as many as 1,500 participants already having paid up to $300 apiece, officials had little choice but to reach a settlement and allow the ride to go on.

However, the town asked the correct question this time around: Whether big, organized weekend outings with only marginal local benefit should be encouraged. Put another way, the issue was, and is, to what degree should residents have to put up with living in a playground for others.

Most people were only slightly inconvenienced as the Ride to Montauk throngs wound their way east. Still, drivers had to wait on Wainscott Main Street for a turn to get around groups of cyclists, and in some instances, bunched-up bikers swerved into the Montauk Highway traffic lanes. But, unlike last year, there were few calls for emergency assistance.

The intrusions are not limited to roads and bike events, of course. Commercial uses of public spaces are many and include paddleboard outings and kayak rentals at otherwise secluded locations, fitness classes on the sand and in parks, and resorts annexing portions of adjacent beaches for their guests’ exclusive use.

A new town committee has been taking a closer look at permit requests, particularly with an eye toward distinguishing between those that genuinely benefit local organizations and those that make inconsequential charitable donations as a form of cover. One key element of the committee’s work will be to convince officials to resist the temptation to review late permit requests, such as the problematic one from the Ride to Montauk organizers. An encouraging signal can also be found in the recently revised town mass-gathering law, which may soon be used to bring increased scrutiny to crowds at bars and restaurants, particularly outdoors, that are well in excess of those places’ legal maximum occupancy.

We expect to hear “no” a lot more often from Town Hall to requests that might have been swiftly green-lighted in the past. The balance, we hope, may be tipping back toward preserving peace, tranquillity, and less-hectic roads for those who call this place home — and none too soon.