East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell expressed the feelings of many residents this week when he sent a strongly worded letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo objecting to PSEG Long Island’s ongoing project to run new, high-voltage power lines between East Hampton and Amagansett. We applaud his effort and hope that he is joined by others, such as State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., in calling for a different approach.

    PSEG Long Island, a subsidiary of a for-profit New Jersey company, Public Service Enterprise Group, has a 10-year, $5 billion arrangement with the Long Island Power Authority to operate the electric system in Nassau and Suffolk Counties subject to state oversight.

    Calling the work a “travesty,” Mr. Cantwell cited the town’s comprehensive plan and inclusion in a statewide scenic areas inventory as ample justification for a halt to the project, in which the utility has been installing tall poles in residential areas. Mr. Cantwell said the new lines should be buried underground and out of sight.

    At a meeting in East Hampton Village earlier this year, PSEG Long Island representatives said that burying the lines would be too expensive, but they did not provide dollar estimates to back up the claim. Whether or not this is true, they made clear that they were not going to do it.

    Elsewhere, the company has angered Montauk residents by embarking on drastic tree-cutting with scant advance notice. One suspects that such aggressive work would save the company money by increasing the length of time between prunings, hence making things look better for investors and shareholders.

    Under the terms of the LIPA deal, PSEG Long Island agreed to a rate freeze through 2015. You don’t have to look too deeply to see that without a way to pass on expenses to its customers, the company is trying to contain costs wherever possible, including by not burying lines despite a community outcry.

    Officials should press Mr. Cuomo, who can wield influence with the New York Department of Public Service if he so chooses, to force the issue. An out-of-state company cannot be allowed to run roughshod over East Hampton’s long history of preservation, and then hide behind vague claims that doing the right thing would cost too much money.

    Mr. Cuomo, are you listening?

    Following House passage earlier this month of a bill that would repeal some of the sharpest rate hikes in the federal flood insurance program, pressure is building in the Senate to rapidly approve the measure without amendment.

    The matter is of tremendous importance on eastern Long Island, where second-home owners and new buyers have had to deal with huge increases in annual premiums. This not only affects waterfront properties; residents, heirs, and would-be sellers in many of the town’s, and the country’s, low-lying areas must now deal with sudden, surprising, and in some cases, unbearable costs.

    A change of ownership even after a family member’s death or the re-mapping of risk areas now triggers rate hikes of as much as 100 percent in the first year, with more to come unless Congress acts. The rules are brutal, unfair, and make no sense.

    The changes came from the 2012 Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which attempted to close a deficit in the program that only worsened after payouts for Hurricane Sandy. But the revision, which sought to end a taxpayer subsidy, came at too high a cost. The outcry was immediate as those impacted realized they were being asked to pay to cover gaps in the program as a whole.

     Representative Tim Bishop, whose district includes East Hampton, was among the sponsors of the House’s Flood Insurance Affordability Act (H.R. 3370), and said in a release that it would prevent rapid leaps in premiums. It seeks to balance the books through annual surcharges on everyone in the program, which covers 5.6 million properties. The surcharge would be $25 for owner-occupied residences and $250 for vacation houses and commercial sites. This is far more even-handed than penalizing the relatively few people every year whose houses change hands or whose property statuses are altered in revised flood maps.

    The Senate appears ready to quickly pass the House bill instead of seeking to reconcile it with its own, which was approved in January. Senator Charles E. Schumer, who has spoken out on behalf of Rockaway residents and others hurt by the new rules, is a strong backer of the reform effort.

    Beyond the question of fairness, the Biggert-Waters rules threaten to erode the flood program if too many property owners opt out. Insurance only works when there is a big enough pool to cover potential losses. Keeping as many people in the program and spreading the costs as widely as possible appears the only course toward solvency. Saving the program and helping homeowners is the right thing to do.

    New York’s swans may have been unaware that their goose was nearly cooked when the state announced a plan to eliminate them in a decade. But abandoning the swan population’s reduction raises a basic question about public pressure and legislative interference in science-based policy.

    In a sense, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation picked the wrong creature to mess with earlier this year when it said it hoped to eradicate nonnative mute swans, a Eurasian species, by 2025. The D.E.C. reasoned that the swans have a negative effect on other wildlife, contribute to water pollution, and destroy aquatic vegetation. In addition, although the large birds are beautiful, they are often aggressive toward people and can present a risk to aircraft. A hunting season for swans was among the options for controlling their numbers.

    Well, that was just about all many people could take, especially here on the East End, where opposition to a proposed deer-herd reduction by hired sharpshooters had animal activists already riled. The D.E.C. reported that it was deluged with more than 1,500 direct comments, 16,000 form letters, and 30,000 signatures on a variety of petitions from people upset by the swan’s elimination. Meanwhile, lawmakers got involved, presenting bills in the Albany Legislature demanding another look.

    State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. were among those sponsoring measures that would tie the D.E.C.’s hands. Both the Senate and Assembly bills demanded that state scientists look again at mute swans and demonstrate “actual damage” to the environment. Sounds good, but we doubt that the state’s wildlife biologists had made their recommendation without ample consideration, even though the agency is understaffed and underfunded.

    In response, Joe Martens, the D.E.C. commissioner, headed off the Legislature and has taken the swan-kill plan back for a second look. A new version is due in the spring and may include regional differences, such as leaving Long Island’s population alone but taking a harder line upstate, where negative impacts may be more pronounced.

    While the reprieve may satisfy the swans’ many fans, it is an emotionally driven victory in decision-making that should really be based on the views of the professionals at the D.E.C. As with the collapse of the proposed deer cull here, affection for the photogenic species clouded the matter.

    It is not surprising that the agency was attacked for its plan. However, it would be unfortunate if it abandoned a serious, dispassionate study of them — and other invasive species — simply because many people like the way swans look. What lawmakers should do is provide more funding for the D.E.C. and the environment; what they should not do is micromanage science.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees’ concern about a possible alcohol ban at some ocean beaches should not be allowed to derail it. They own most of the beaches and should have been included in the discussions so far, but there is still time to join the conversation.

    High-season weekend crowds at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett have reached a point of beer-drenched popularity that makes many residents uncomfortable and members of the lifeguard corps worried. The time has come do something about it, regrettably perhaps for those who remember how things used to be.

    Under present rules, East Hampton Town beaches are among the very few on Long Island where open drinking of alcoholic beverages is tolerated. For the past few years, this has helped give rise to huge, if informal, gatherings that have to be seen to be believed. And seen them we have.

    On several visits in the last two years we watched as hundreds of young adult visitors gathered at Indian Wells to socialize, play Frisbee and volleyball, and drink themselves into a warm, happy glow. During one visit, we watched an impromptu drinking game that involved men throwing full cans of beer from the beach to others in the water. By evening, Bud Light cans (the beer of choice for some reason) littered the sand or were piled with their empty packaging at the overflowing trash cans. Family friendly, Indian Wells is no longer. This repeats over and over until Labor Day, and has disturbed many regulars who are now looking for other places to go.

    In response, East Hampton Town officials have been working on what amount to half-measures, changing traffic routes, attempting to block taxis and buses from getting close to the beach, and adding parking. But these steps miss the central problem: Given a place to gather and drink themselves silly, some people are just going to do it, even if they have to walk to get there.

    The East Hampton Town Board has hoped to hold a hearing to gauge public opinion on prohibiting alcohol at beaches where and when lifeguards are present — or a variation on that theme. Giving law enforcement the ability to issue tickets for violations would go a long way to tamping down the party, but new rules cannot be put in place at Indian Wells or Atlantic Avenue Beach nearby without the trustees’ consent.

    This is a reasonable proposal. In East Hampton Village, among others, alcohol is banned at all times in public spaces, including the beaches. The trustees appear cool to the idea, fearing, as their elected clerk, Diane McNally, put it, a domino effect at other beaches.

    Ms. McNally is, of course, correct that further bans might follow, but that does not make the concept wrong. On the contrary: Large crowds, water, and alcohol do not safely mix. Confining drinking to the evening hours and beaches where lifeguards are not present would appear to be good policy. And, unless a better alternative can be found, the trustees should at least agree to a trial period.

    Perhaps the single most important story in any recent Star was the one that appeared on the front page of last Thursday’s edition about the desperate need for adequate mental health services for school-age children.

    Think about what that means for a moment. What pediatricians, teachers, school nurses, administrators, and others are saying is that there are more kids at risk here than there are practitioners able to help them. This must change — and fast.

    School officials here would be the first to admit that there is a crisis under way. With few other choices for care, the East Hampton School District has referred 20 students with apparent suicidal thoughts to Stony Brook University Hospital in the last year and a half alone. Three South Fork students have killed themselves since 2009, and countless other forms of harmful behavior are reported, including substance abuse, eating disorders, and self-mutilation among students as young as 12.

    The problem also extends beyond the school’s reach. Medical professionals and those in related fields have been talking for some time about how to respond. As with nearly everything, however, money has been lacking. State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. is helping the East Hampton High School principal, Adam Fine, with a new approach that might provide funding for better and more abundant mental health services for the region’s youth. The energy and flexibility of private-sector groups should be tapped as well.

    This is a matter of the highest priority, and those working toward solutions are to be supported and commended. The kids need us; we must do everything and anything we can to help.

    By now local school boards are deep into the annual budget-writing season, and once again we hear that tax increases must be kept below the 2-percent cap. We believe the time has come, however, for boards to deal head-on with the state-imposed curb by bringing spending plans that would result in exceeding the cap to voters, if necessary, or by taking serious steps toward reducing costs by consolidating districts.

    Some history is necessary to understand the precarious place our schools are in thanks to the cap. In 2011, then-new Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislative leaders forced through a measure to provide tax relief to suburban homeowners. They had a point: New York had, and continues to have, some of the highest property tax rates in the country, although taxes on the South Fork are generally far less than in other parts of Suffolk.

    The rules now hold the increase in the amount brought in by property taxes for any local government in the state to 2 percent year-over-year or to the rate of increase in the consumer price index, whichever is less, although the cap is subject to some carve-outs. Schools and municipalities can increase property taxes beyond the cap provided that they do so with 60-percent approval. This would be relatively easy for a five-member town board, for example, in which taxpayers have no direct say on budgets, but it is tough for school districts, which must present their spending plans to the voters every spring. Very few have attempted to exceed the cap, as it has turned out.

    At the time the cap became law, education groups decried what they said would be negative effects on some programs and classroom quality. These fears now appear to be coming to pass. To some degree, districts stole time as the inflation rate remained flat during the Great Recession. Now, however, with costs of all sorts rising, notably salaries and utilities, pressure is increasing to find even more cuts to stay within the cap.

    The effects of the 2-percent cudgel already can be seen, both on educational quality and in terms of Mr. Cuomo’s presidential ambitions, in which he is hoping to avoid the label of a tax-and-spend Democrat. In his 2014 State of the State address, Mr. Cuomo repeated the tax-cutting theme, pointing out that there are more than 2,000 separate taxing entities in the state and calling for spending reductions.

    Locally, there are several examples of how the tax cap is crimping programs and harming kids. This year, the cap is set at a miserly 1.46 percent because the increase in the consumer price index is lower than 2 percent. In Springs, the board is deciding whether to skip a needed purchase of computers for students. At East Hampton High School, there have been cuts in art, home, and career classes. Middle school classes in East Hampton are packed, with as many as 30 students to a room in some cases — more than can be adequately taught, according to some teachers. And at the John Marshall Elementary School, kindergarten field trips and programs for advanced students have been eliminated, along with some take-home projects and Spanish instruction. This is not sustainable.

    The quality of education provided to this community’s children will only suffer as the years go on unless something is done. Further cuts to classroom activities, essential equipment, and extracurricular programs would gravely weaken the educational system itself. We believe school district voters would support well-presented programs even if they mean a tax increase that exceeds the onerous state limit.

    But if South Fork school boards cannot muster the courage to ask voters whether to exceed the cap, they must look for an alternative, and it appears that the only other option is pursuing an inevitable course toward consolidation.

    That East Hampton is divided into two camps these days — those who want to live here and those who simply want to make a buck — is worthy of particular concern as summer approaches. Finding a balance between them is what makes the job of those in Town Hall and the village’s Beecher House so tough. It is up to them to make decisions about the direction of the community and to keep in check those of a more, shall we say, extractive mind-set.

    Montauk has become the front line in this fight. As the hamlet has grown more popular, so too have the pressures on officials to find that elusive balance. Recent history and the scale of wealth among some here make that even more difficult. In an astonishing passage in a recent New York Times profile of Michael Walrath, the 38-year-old tech millionaire and owner of the Montauk Surf Lodge, he was described as having “befriended” then-East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and, by implication, was able to use that relationship to resolve the bar and restaurant’s numerous code violations with a $100,000 settlement in town court.

    The article went on to describe how Mr. Walrath “reduced capacity” at the Surf Lodge from 1,500 customers on some nights to 500. By any measure, 500 people is still too many by more than half for the Surf Lodge’s sensitive site on the edge of Fort Pond in a residential area. Of course, the Surf Lodge is hardly the only gathering place that’s gotten too big.

    Plenty of residents have wondered how the Montauk Beach House was allowed to expand, becoming a club and music venue hosting hundreds of people without providing more than a scrap of off-street parking. Ruschmeyer’s Inn is another hopping nightspot, while Solé East’s bands and D.J.s provide an unwelcome nighttime beat in the old Shepherd’s Neck neighborhood.

    Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague has been allowed to operate a bar with hundreds of patrons spilling onto the state Montauk Highway right-of-way. Only a short distance from Town Hall, vehicles of summer patrons at Bostwick’s Chowder House regularly overflow into no-parking zones. Meanwhile, an avoidable turf war between the East Hampton Town Trustees and the town board may prevent a solution for Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett, which has taken on a Florida spring-break atmosphere on high-season weekends to the dismay of regulars. We’re probably forgetting a few, too.

    None of these enterprises adequately compensates the community for the disturbances they cause. The jobs they create are generally seasonal and much of the money flows out of town as quickly as it flows in. They also create long-term risks to real estate values and rental rates. Officials are definitely trying to improve things. In East Hampton Village, serious consideration is being given to new rules on mechanized noise. The town board is taking a hard look at large, outdoor parties and other events.

    Going into summer 2014, the yardstick with which to measure policy is to ask: Who benefits and who pays?

    Officials must keep in mind that East Hampton is not dominated by the resort and nightlife sections of its economy. Residents, renters, and second-home owners keep this place going. Operations that flout local laws and diminish the attractiveness of this area for those who really pay the bills should be strongly discouraged.

    The truth about the debacle that emerged recently concerning the East Hampton Town tax receiver’s office is that the buck, apparently, stops with no one. This responsibility gulf presents a most compelling argument for creating the new post of town manager with strong oversight capability.

    For the second year in a row, many town property owners did not receive end-of-year tax bills. In 2012, when the problem first came to light and residents started asking questions, the error was ascribed to an outside firm that had mislaid a tray of envelopes. This time around, no one in Town Hall noticed anything was amiss until taxpayers again started complaining. But it gets far worse. More than 5,000 bills were not printed at all, and tax payment checks went unopened in piles. One, in a FedEx envelope from a mortgage clearinghouse, was for $3.8 million.

    As it turns out there were other problems in what is arguably the second most important town department after the police. An internal assessment done by a town auditor, Charlene Kagel, in October, identified several additional problems, including data-entry delays, at least one taxpayer winding up with an account overdraft due to the office’s being late making deposits, and a bizarre practice of allowing some property owners to leave signed, blank checks in the tax receiver’s office to be filled out by staff when the bills were due.

    Unfortunately, the auditor’s report was discussed in the fall in a town board meeting that was illegally closed to the public and during which no records were made. By way of explanation, Ms. Kagel said recently that the executive session was justified because the discussion would have included details about specific town employees. This was an overreach; any talk of individuals could have been segmented from consideration of the tax receiver’s office’s overall failings.

    More plausibly, we suspect that the previous town administration sought to conceal the fact that the problems had been allowed to persist despite earlier warning signs. Had the report been in the open, much frustration and unknown expense could have been avoided. 

    Several people have questioned whether Len Bernard, the town budget officer and the putative head of the Finance Division, within which the tax receiver’s office operates, deserves some of the blame. This is a good question. Ms. Kagel, who identified the problems in the fall, works directly with  Mr. Bernard, and it is unlikely that he could not have known about her observations. Moreover, as problems had already been identified in 2012, it would have been reasonable to expect him to stay on top of what was going on.

    Which brings a town manager to mind. Had there been one, he or she might have helped avert the tax bill disaster in two ways. First, a manager would undoubtedly have had access to the auditor’s report and the authority to see that timely action was taken. And such a person, with no alliance to a political party in the ideal, might also have forced the issue into the light of day before problems had grown so large.

    One of the sacrosanct principles of East Hampton Town zoning is that no one gets more than one house per property. That is unless one happens to have a large parcel of land and an even larger bank account.

    At an April 1 town zoning board hearing, representatives of Jeff T. Blau, who runs the multinational real estate firm Related Companies, sought to overturn the one-lot, one-house tradition on a Wainscott parcel he bought two years ago for $18.5 million. After voting to grant the request unanimously on Tuesday, the Z.B.A. runs the risk of dealing a major blow to the town’s zoning code.

    Town law carefully sets out limits on what can and cannot be done on residential properties, and with good reason. Banned uses include slaughterhouses and wrecking yards, and, material to this discussion, more than one single-family house per parcel. The one-house rule should apply fairly and evenly across the economic spectrum, and you can assume that even your run-of-the-mill millionaire would have been laughed out of Town Hall had he or she pursued a similar scheme.

    Mr. Blau’s successful request was simple at its core: He plans to build a second house on a parcel where only one is permitted. Rejection should also have been simple. However, during the Z.B.A. hearing, his lawyer offered a smokescreen of reasons why the board should give in, including that the plan would save a Topping family farmhouse already there. But because the original house is not visible from the adjacent Five Rod Highway, a narrow town trustee road, and because no promise to allow visitor access to it is being made, saving it as is serves only the most minimal public purpose.

    Mr. Blau will now build a new, far larger house there and several additional structures, including the renovated Topping house, but he did not want to subdivide the property for reasons that were not convincing. It appears that the reason his request reached the zoning board in the first place was a go-ahead some time ago from then-town attorney John Jilnicki, whose opinion was not put in writing - something that ought to be explained.

    Nor did Mr. Blau want to add his new, larger house on to the farmhouse, as would be his right. In return for being allowed to have two houses, Mr. Blau has offered easements, or perpetual protection, of portions of the property, but these fail to address the key question of an additional house on the site and imply the unblinking acceptance by the Z.B.A. of an improper quid pro quo.

    The town’s Planning Department, in its analysis of the application, did not appear to agree with Mr. Blau’s representatives that subdividing the land would be impossible. Indeed, the department dismissed this argument as moot, to use its word. It issued what can be read as a neutral opinion on the two-house question, and it urged the Z.B.A. to look closely at whether the request met the standards for granting variances. We believe they did not look closely enough.

    Mr. Blau cannot have reasonably claimed that being held to a single house on one lot would have been a genuine hardship. Any alleged difficulties from his situation should have been considered self-created and grounds for denial. New York State law requires that applications for variances must be rejected when they fail to meet these tests and a reasonable alternative - in this case, a legal, if difficult to obtain, subdivision - is available. East Hampton Town officials need to proceed extremely cautiously when it comes to granting such variances.

    Expect a wave now of similar requests from other wealthy property owners eager to build their own dream Hamptons compounds. Unfortunately, the zoning board heaped praise and its okay on an application that was improperly handed to it in the first place. We hope that in the future the members uphold tradition and reject more unjustified assaults on one of the town’s most basic zoning rules.

    An Amagansett development scheme that was met with vehement and nearly unanimous opposition appears headed toward a more than satisfactory solution. A hearing is to be held in Town Hall this evening about whether to use just over $10 million from the community preservation fund to buy the so-called 555 property on Montauk Highway, where a luxury village of some 79 apartments and houses had been planned for those 55 and older. Though specific ideas about how the land will be used are in the formative stage, its preservation for open space and, with any luck, farming, deserve support.

    It is worth reflecting back on what might have been. During the former town board’s tenure, the landowner, a Connecticut company, sought an entirely new zoning designation that would have allowed high-density housing to be sold at market rates at the site. A draft law that would have made this possible foundered after a public outcry and was also roundly rejected by the Suffolk Planning Commission. After a mostly new town board took over in January, the proposal was dropped for good.

    The public will be heard tonight on whether the town should buy the most-visible portion of the 555 site while a smaller parcel to the west, for which affordable housing is a possibility, would remain in the developer’s control. While $10 million might sound like a whole lot of money for 19 acres, it is not entirely out of line given recent prices, such as a recent $18.75 million deal for a single Wainscott parcel. Then, too, had the development been approved, it might have brought the developer 10 times as much in sales.

    As tonight approached, we heard rumblings that the town would be better off paying somewhat less by purchasing only what are known as the development rights on the property. However, as has been increasingly seen, such arrangements preclude public access to preserved acreage, and in the case of farmland, generally come with  no assurance that the land will actually see a plow. A full, fee simple deal would be in the community’s best interest.

    As to the property’s future, agriculture should be the first preference if the soil is suitable or could be restored. In addition, East Hampton actually has few places where large charity events can be held on public sites. The former 555 property has successfully hosted the Wounded Warrior Rock the Farm benefit, which should be allowed to continue. There are other options that could be explored, including a farmers market or riding facility. The first step is to approve the deal with the property owners.