In a town that is largely affluent, where sterile and perfect lawns and grounds are a powerful aspirational symbol, a small group of ban-the-blower advocates has sprung up, but it is fighting a Quixotic battle.

       One of the rules of civil behavior is that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you necessarily should; for us, leaf blowers fall into the realm of maybe not. Their use comes less from homeowners than from hired workers whose employers know the value of getting a job done as fast as possible, irritating those nearby, which can be considered collateral damage, as they race to the next lawn.

       Because a growing number of people work from home here, many on intellectual pursuits that demand quiet, there is likely to be a hidden economic cost in lost productivity as a result of the noise blowers make, not to overlook plain old sanity. In a place where deference is given too often to intrusive business over the interests of ordinary residents and taxpayers, there is little hope of a quick respite.

       This does not mean that those pressing for quieter seasons should give up. One small step would be to promote the use of leaves as mulches in garden beds and around delicate trees. Cities and towns everywhere, however, have either banned the blowers or strictly limited their maximum sound output. Gas-powered units are the main culprit; they tend to be excessively noisy and their exhaust, especially from the common two-cycle models, are a source of dusty allergens and carbon-based air pollution.

       A sample regulation could come from the City of Palo Alto, Calif., which allows gas blowers only in commercial areas within business hours, and limits their use in residential areas to those that are electric powered and only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday; Sunday is a day of peace. The trick in Palo Alto and elsewhere is a speedy and meaningful response when complaints come in.

       The alternatives are hand rakes or, heaven forbid, a little tolerance of a few leaves here and there. 

    As if traveling along the scorched shoreline of the River Styx, we were dismayed recently by what we saw among the wrack at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett. The season’s first meaningful storm had dredged up a summer’s worth of bonfire remains. Blackened logs and chunks of burned wood littered a full third of a mile to the west — in December.  

    There were few other signs of human presence, save for a few footprints. Litter was at a minimum, except for  a suspiciously high number of Corona beer caps and what apparently was the accidental losses of children’s toys. Several dozen yellow roses had drifted ashore, the result perhaps of a heartfelt memorial? But the appalling prevalence of bonfire detritis among the sea grass and shells left us saddened, upset that beachgoers would leave such messes behind and profoundly disappointed in the town officials who let this happen. It is much the same at the town’s other popular beaches.

    Gripped by a nostalgia for decades gone by, those responsible for setting policy have blinded themselves to the reality of the present age. We wonder if the members of the East Hampton Town Trustees may not walk these same shores themselves. And the town board — we cannot believe that these unbroken rills of charred wood are how its members want to present our most-cherished asset to residents and visitors. We doubt they need to be really afraid of a bonfire-loving backlash at the November polls. So why the inaction?

    Clearly, it is unpractical to ask town employees to enforce the existing no-burying regulation or make sure that the remains of fires are dug up the morning after. More must be done. For guidance, town officials need look no farther than East Hampton Village and the Town of Southampton, which have both in recent years instituted rules that all fires have to be within metal containers. These beaches are cleaner as a direct result.

    It is completely unacceptable for beaches to be so mistreated and for a winter’s walk to be so disheartening. The trustees and town board need to recognize that times have changed and to work on new rules that take into account the much more intensive uses to which our public lands are subjected. There may still be a few places where uncontained bonfires are appropriate, but East Hampton Town’s most popular ocean and bay beaches are not among them.

    It is unfortunate that the final days of the East Hampton Town Board’s Republican majority have come down to this: a poorly considered proposal to amend the town’s zoning code in a way that would violate the comprehensive plan and, perhaps, state law.

    A public hearing expected tonight at Town Hall is on a proposal to create a new high-density land classification for older residents which could, by some estimates, add as many as 1,000 new housing units. Given that the sites that could be included in the new zone are largely ones for which the comprehensive plan has recommended less intensive uses, it is doubtful whether the proposal would be legal unless the comprehensive plan, the overarching vision document, were amended.

    The debate surrounding this does, however, bring to the forefront the question of whether elected officials are adequately meeting the needs of the town’s demographics. A perspective shared, we believe, by many employers and workers here alike is that much more must be done to make housing available for people with low and moderate incomes.

    Without a clear benefit to the community in the form of affordability or handicapped access, for example, allowing higher-density zones on individual properties would be illegal spot-zoning. Put another way, courts have said that if the benefits flow mostly to the developers, or run counter to a town’s comprehensive plan, a project may be invalid from the start.

    The concept is that in properly thought-out senior citizen zones, developers can be given permission for greater residential concentrations than normally allowed in return for assuring affordable housing. Special permits are granted only in exchange for reasonable rents, environmental protections, and other considerations, such as proximity to medical facilities, shopping, and public transportation. Then, too, such “floating” districts can be designed so that all ages might live there.

    Planning for an aging population cannot be overlooked. The proposal that prompted the hearing tonight, for luxury residences for people entering their golden years, is at best a faint response to that need. Nor can a case be made that well-to-do weekenders over 55 are in need of special accommodation. The market-rate concept put forward at a Connecticut developer’s behest is not the way to go.

    East Hampton Town may well require more housing options for young people, the work force, and its older residents. The proposal that was to be considered tonight meets none of these needs.

    Online petitions and a well-funded legal challenge aside, South Fork local officials who are moving toward large-scale killing of deer, politely called culling, have a difficult time ahead. Leadership is never easy when policy gets mixed up in emotion, and wildlife management is one of the most emotional aspects of government. Few other issues draw as much attention and heat from the public, making the job of deciding how to proceed fraught with tension from the start. But rational, dispassionate policy-making must be foremost in such instances. The key for officials is studying precedents in other communities and what science says.

    The problems are well understood. A spike in deer populations in the eastern United States has come at the same time as sharp increases in the type and number of disease-carrying ticks. Deer cause huge and nearly unmeasurable damage to landscaping and crops. Those struck by vehicles often meet terrible, painful deaths, which are heart-wrenching for us. Deer have radically altered the forest understory in many places, leading to habitat loss for other native species, such as songbirds and small mammals, and threatening biodiversity.

    Deer are not the only large animals for which aggressive control measures are being taken. Black bears as nearby as suburban New Jersey have adapted to life close to people and are being targeted by wildlife managers. Time magazine featured a cover story this month about what it called America’s “pest problem.” Expanded hunting and professional harvests have been pursued from Florida to California. Closer to home, Block Island officials recently voted to hire sharpshooters to reduce the deer herd from 800 to 100 individuals, according to low estimates. The target there is to maintain the deer population at 10 to 15 per square mile.

    No one knows for sure precisely how many deer there are on the South Fork, and their distribution is not in even numbers across the island. The Town of East Hampton’s two surveys came in with widely disparate numbers — 877 in a March aerial study and 3,293 in a 2006 roadside count. Estimates of the density in East Hampton Town are all over the map, but could be as high as 100 per square mile. Though a clearer total should be known before a long-term program is undertaken, by all appearances there are just too many deer. There are few residents who have not at one time or another struck a deer on the road or had someone in the family touched by tick-borne illness. And now there is a rising count of people with a serious and life-threatening allergy to red meat caused by the bite of the lone star tick.

    Those opposed to hunting claim there is no valid link between deer and ticks, but scientific studies say otherwise. Large, warm-blooded hosts such as deer have been clearly implicated in this regard — one must not overlook that it is the deer tick that carries Lyme disease as well as babesiosis, ehrlichia, and borrelia. True, the rodents that larval ticks first feed on are believed to be the reservoirs for the illness-causing spirochetes, but it is undisputable that concentrations of all tick varieties have soared along with the deer’s numbers.

    A public health crisis is under way, with deer clearly implicated. Research has demonstrated that maintaining deer at 8 to 12 per square mile essentially eliminates ticks and the diseases in humans. Deer birth control has not proven to be an adequate alternative to hunting. Nor does applying pesticides at feeding stations solve the problems of habitat devastation and deer-vehicle collisions. It is also not acceptable for residents to have to avoid the woods and wild places for fear of ticks in other than the coldest months.

    Those passionately opposed to the planned killing appear to overlook the fact that the present environment is one in which nature’s balance has been overturned by centuries of human presence. In the case of deer and other highly adaptable wildlife, there still is no substitute for lethal management.

    The good news in a recent New York Times Science section story about sea level rise is that Montauk’s tide records lag behind those in places along the eastern United States coastline that are becoming inundated the fastest. The bad news is that the advantage is not by much. According to the numbers, the waters have come up about a foot every 100 years and are coming faster, with the greatest increases in the mid-Atlantic states. This means that the landward migration of the shoreline will continue unabated here, and even get faster. Property owners and local officials who ignore this are simply kidding themselves.

    In December, the Eastern Long Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group, issued a statement supporting major changes along the Montauk oceanfront. It called for one of the Army Corps of Engineers options: rebuilding protective dunes after removing several motels and residences that are now in harm’s way. This echoed a view expressed on this page earlier in 2013 to the effect that think-big solutions were the best choice.

    Pumping sand in front of exposed properties at this late stage would be a temporary solution at best and a waste of both money and precious time before a better one is at hand. Rather than outright property condemnation, however, town and federal officials should consider more creative redevelopment of the seaward edge of downtown Montauk, perhaps granting motel owners air rights over existing retail parcels or the use of nearby lots that are vacant or underutilized.

    Meanwhile, away from the most obvious at-risk spots, shoreline restoration projects continue. These, too, must be re-evaluated and incentives found to coax property owners into long-term decisions. East Hampton Town needs to rethink fast how it interacts with the waters that surround us. The sea will not wait while policymakers wonder what to do.

    Members of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee were proud last week as they unveiled large new signs at the eastern and western ends of the hamlet. For the life of us, we cannot figure out why adding to the already jumbled roadside clutter along Montauk Highway is desirable, but, if that’s what they want to do, so be it.

    While we are on the subject of signs, however, there is one practice that bears stopping in its tracks — slapping the town supervisor’s name on everything from the billboard-like placard at the airport road to the sign at the Abraham’s Path youth park.

    Try as we might, we cannot remember just when this began. Time was, you had to really accomplish something — or depart for the great beyond — before your name went up. These days, the sign painters get busy at the turn of each administration to put up the supervisor’s name wherever they can.

    What is misleading about East Hampton Town supervisors’ names on signs is that the job really does not come with much more authority than that of the other members of the town board. The supervisor gets to write the annual budget, but he enjoys precisely the same number of votes when it comes to its approval — one. And, to be honest, more often than not disaster has been the result when town supervisors have gone it alone.

    As the confident Larry Cantwell takes over, along with a new board majority, we hope he and the others will resist the siren song of such pointless self-aggrandizement. Good reputations will build themselves.

    Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell announced the names of the new East Hampton Town attorney’s office staff this week. While judgment must be reserved until the public gets to know Elizabeth Vail and the members of her team, their résumés appear to be strong. Next comes the task of sorting out the town’s appointed boards, in particular deciding who should lead them.

    The prime examples are the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards. It is difficult to overstate just how important these boards are. They are the main line of defense against ill-thought projects and overbuilding. It is important to note that with so much of the town already subdivided, it is often the seemingly small decisions, when aggregated, that can cause major changes. The fight for East Hampton has, in effect, moved to our backyards.

    Builders, business owners, and some homeowners have lamented that the process takes too long. To them, we point out that, indeed, complicated projects will require detailed review, as will those in environmentally sensitive areas. Conversely, work for which zoning variances or site plan studies are not needed will get building permits speedily. The complainers should get over it.

    One thing that must be considered is whether a distinct tilt toward the appointment of people in real estate, building, architecture, and related fields should be countered. Roughly half the 17 people who make up the planning and zoning boards and the A.R.B. are either in these professions or in a closely allied industry. Residents should also be troubled that there are only four women among the total. As bad is that there is not a single African-American and only one Latino among the town’s key appointed boards.

    As Mr. Cantwell and the rest of the town board look over candidates for 10 open positions — and the chairmanships — they should keep in mind that diversity of backgrounds and between the sexes is more than warranted.

    New York Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Tim Bishop are among a bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers pushing for a second round of reform of the recently reformed National Flood Insurance Program. Their call for action comes as an increasing number of property owners here and around the country have become aware of steep increases in their premiums, the result of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, which sought to answer the program’s longstanding deficit. Debate in the Senate on a new Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act is expected this week. From the perspective of many on the East End of Long Island, change is necessary.

    The intention of the authors of the earlier reform of federal flood insurance was good: Since Hurricane Katrina, the program had accumulated a deficit as large as $25 billion. Biggert-Waters was supposed to address that by phasing in premium hikes to reflect actual risks and reduce the subsidy from American taxpayers at large, which kept premiums low. In the new math, the safer a property from flood damage, the lower the cost. The reverse was applied to the most at-risk properties, as set out on federal maps.

    As things unfolded, however, the increases soared beyond belief — as much as 1,000 percent in some cases; in isolated examples rates were said to be leaping from $4,000 a year to more than $40,000. As a result, real estate deals have been jeopardized or called off. Outrage is mounting.

    There is a hidden risk to the federal program if prices rise to the point that some property owners decide to drop coverage. In that scenario, Congress might well be inclined to spend billions following the next major flood or hurricane to pay for uninsured losses. It is interesting to note that the $50 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package is just about double the accumulated deficit of the entire program over its nearly four decades of existence.

    Reducing taxpayer subsidies for flood insurance is necessary and reasonable. Doing so without destroying real estate markets or pricing some people out of their homes is reasonable too. The measures outlined in the proposed affordability act attempt to strike that balance and deserve swift passage.

    A practice that East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell described at the first meeting of his tenure would be a simple fix to a fundamental problem of the previous administration, which frequently added resolutions on both routine and controversial matters to meeting agendas at the last minute and without public notice.

    Some of the more notable instances of this were several airport matters, scheduling a hearing for zoning changes at the behest of the Amagansett 555 developers, selling town land to a Montauk motel owner, and an apparently punitive audit of the town’s Human Resources Department.

    Also troublesome was the previous town leadership’s withholding of meeting agendas entirely — with the unfortunate exception of a private email sent to key sympathizers — until moments before meetings were to convene. Mr. Cantwell has said he will see that agendas are circulated at least two days before each meeting and work session.

    State open meetings law requires only that meetings be announced in advance so that members of the public can attend if they so choose. The law is also specific about what constitutes a meeting and what records must be kept, but it has little to say on the subject of agendas. It is clear, however, that prior distribution of a list of subjects to be covered is both standard practice and good government. A two-day rule, such as Mr. Cantwell has proposed, would keep interested parties — and minority party members — in the loop. This shift toward a more open Town Hall is to be commended.

    A corollary is that the board should decline to hear requests for mass gathering permits that do not meet the required application time frame. Those planning large events, which have in some cases proved controversial, should be expected to provide materials in a timely manner; they should be aware that they can no longer be the beneficiaries of limited scrutiny by town officials and the public, which occurred when late requests were considered. If there is time to plan a big party, there is time to get an early okay.

    Forget the polar vortex, there’s a word for the weather we have been having this week and it’s — drumroll, please — winter.

    If there is one thing old iceboaters can tell you, the South Fork usually experiences a cold snap right around the second week of January, and only a few years ago, relatively speaking, there would be weeks of hard-water sailing even on Three Mile Harbor. And, in what might be termed real winters a number of decades back, you could drive a car to Gardiner’s Island on the frozen bay if you were especially brave, or foolhardy. This winter? Feh. It’s supposed to hit the 40s by Saturday.

    For all the talk of sub-freezing temperatures and good-intentioned suggestions to “stay warm,” this winter’s story has not been one of cold but rather how mild it has been. The National Climate Data Center, a government weather records agency, has reported that there have been more than four times as many record high temperatures than record lows for the 30 days that ended on Sunday. For example, Baltimore had its warmest winter day ever on Dec. 22, when it reached 62 degrees.

    Whether these records can be linked to human-caused climate change is beside the point. The planet is getting warmer, no doubt about it. Face-numbing days like we’ve seen this week are difficult to cope with, but they are becoming fewer and further between, and that is the real and important story. Just ask any old iceboater.