In the waning days of the Wilkinson administration in East Hampton Town Hall we have found ourselves wondering if anything could be done to prevent future town leaders from amassing similarly flawed records. The answer may lie in something other local governments have had for years — an ombudsman whose responsibility is vetting residents’ complaints and weighing in on whether proper procedures are being followed.

       Criticism and legal setbacks have beset Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his two Republican allies almost every time they strayed from what voters first put them in office to do — complete the process of righting the town’s financial ship, which actually began under the authority of the state comptroller’s office before they took office.

       Mr. Wilkinson’s two terms have been notable for the number of times officials have ignored zoning and environmental regulations and even the town’s comprehensive plan and waterfront program. They have stood by as businesses have expanded illegally and looked on in approval as commercial uses crept into residential areas. The town board majority also managed to anger Suffolk officials by destroying a parcel of preserved farmland, and they actually encouraged property owners to ignore the law on state coastal permits in at least two instances. Media coverage seemed to have little effect, and public outcry at meetings fell on unheeding ears.

       Some have said that hiring a town manager would go a long way toward making local government more professional and rational. Such a post, however, was not likely to have helped during the past four years, when department heads were intimidated by the executive suites and worked in fear of repercussion if they spoke up. Someone outside of the range of fire, who could call the members of future town boards — of any political party — on their missteps might have been the solution.

       Key to an ombudsman’s office would be impartiality and independence. A national organization that promotes the idea, the United States Ombudsman Association, describes the role as ideally filled by a person of considerable stature appointed in an apolitical way, with protection from changing electorial winds. An ombudsman would be able to initiate investigations and respond to the public directly, as well as to hire and fire his or her own staff. The office would also have guaranteed access to department records and personnel without interference from members of the town board or others.

       An ombudsman would, in short, be a potential nightmare for elected officials, but it could well be just what Town Hall has long needed — a people’s advocate.

      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. 

      A Dec. 31 deadline for renewing enrollment for school tax relief, or STAR, is approaching fast. Those who do not register with the state by that date could lose their share of the 2014 break. Even those who have previously been in the STAR program have to sign up; state tax officials hope the process will check for income levels and help weed out cheats, such as those with double exemptions. Eligibility requirements are that a house be a primary residence and owner-occupied, and that household income be less than $500,000. Re-registration is with the state, not at local assessors offices. Property owners should have received a letter from the state with a code to use on the application. If they did not, or have questions, help can be found at tax.ny.gov.

       For South Fork property owners, the savings are not nearly as much as those in UpIsland areas with far higher school taxes. Still, a dollar is a dollar, and the program is well worth the couple of minutes it takes to re-up.

    East Hampton Town should not seek or accept additional funding from the Federal Aviation Administration until there is agreement on what strings would be attached.

    These conditions, or strings, could be significant. As best we understand it after listening to statements at hundreds of hours of meetings and reading and writing about airport battles for decades, there is a demonstrable, if slight, advantage if the town gets out from under the so-called grant assurances made in earlier deals with the F.A.A.

    After all the talk, it boils down to this: Without grant assurances, the town would have a marginally better chance of success in imposing curfews and other noise-curtailing measures than it would if it continued to take federal money. Take the money, and the town may be committed to negligible control and a more difficult process if it tries to set its own landing and takeoff rules. In either scenario, the law requires any actions the town takes to be “reasonable, non-arbitrary, and not unjustly discriminatory.” And, if a new rule goes into effect as expected, communities that have taken money from the F.A.A. may soon have an even greater hurdle to surmount.

    Pilots en masse appear to support further ties to Washington based on the fear that a future town board could close the airport altogether in the absence of a federal contract to the contrary. Their anxiety has been fanned by special interests, such as the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, which paid for a study that hyped the airport’s contribution to the local economy and further raised the specter of its being shut down. But this narrow view pits neighbors against resident aircraft owners, who are in effect acting as proxies for those who stand to profit from unfettered access — or those very fortunate few who prefer to arrive in their Gulfstreams at whatever hour of the day or night they please.

    Noise-control advocates have been painted unfairly as “airport opponents.” This is a convenient fiction based on the misperception that the Quiet Skies Coalition and others have a secret agenda. Sure, there may be one or two outliers for whom tearing up the tarmac sounds like a good idea, but the majority of residents here and in nearby towns would just like the airport to be less loud and its future growth limited. Unfortunately, by hardening their position, aviation interests may only be increasing the possibility of their own apocalyptic vision as community outrage rises.

    Airport policy cannot be held hostage by those who put profit or personal convenience ahead of the common good. Any measures, no matter how small, that can aid in the fight against noise should be welcomed by all.

    Rebates for the use of energy-efficient lighting are available, and more residents should know about and take advantage of them. The Long Island Power Authority offers several ways that those buying compact fluorescent or L.E.D. bulbs can save money, including a whole-house, bulk-buy incentive that ends on Dec. 31.

    LIPA and others have been pushing consumers to switch from traditional electricity-hungry incandescent lighting to the more expensive, but power-thrifty alternatives. Compact fluorescents, or C.F.L.s, use only a quarter of the electricity that the old bulbs do, and L.E.D.s less than that. About 90 percent of the energy emitted by regular bulbs is heat — which made the Easy Bake child’s oven possible and safe — but all that electricity has to come from somewhere, notably power plants linked to atmospheric pollution and global warming. The newer bulbs last longer, too, about 3 years for C.F.L.s left on five hours a day and around 15 years for L.E.D.s. You can get only about six months from an incandescent in the same use.

    The one downside of C.F.L.s is their disposal. They contain a small amount of mercury and should not be included in ordinary household trash. Some big-box retailers accept used bulbs for recycling, but for residents of the South Fork, getting to these locations is a bother. As we have urged before, officials should look into reasonable ways to provide safe disposal for them.

    Local retailers taking part in LIPA’s rebate program include the Ace Hardware stores in Montauk, East Hampton, and Sag Harbor, as well as the Revco outlets, and the Riverhead Home Depot. There are online sellers as well, including energyfederation.org/lipa, where you can key in your LIPA account number for instant savings. The new bulbs may take a little attention to figure out and purchase, but making the switch is well worth the effort.

    A friend was on a public radio show recently describing the seven things she believes you should never talk about if you don’t want to bore the pants off everyone. We suggest you use these as guidelines for the Thanksgiving table — a do-not-discuss list, or, at least, pointers to help stifle the tryptophan yawns.

    Maria Matthiessen, whose daughter Sarah Koenig once worked at The Star and is now a producer at “This American Life,” listed her conversational taboos for the program. They are: menstruation stories, diet updates, health reports (of a trivial sort), how you slept, your dreams, money, and “route talk,” as Mrs. Matthiessen calls it (that is, those fascinating recountings of how you got from point A to point B).

    If you have not yet heard the episode, which runs about an hour, let us just say that it is a very funny mother-daughter duel and well worth tracking down on the website of Chicago Public Radio, which offers a stream or podcast. In the program, several “This American Life” producers take turns in a contest of sorts in which they try to prove Mrs. Matthiessen wrong by offering up stories on her verboten subjects that they hope are non-boring. Sarah keeps score, and we will not reveal who wins in the end.

    Among a certain N.P.R.-listening set, anyway, Mrs. Matthiessen may have vaulted into an exalted position as not just a new “This American Life” favorite, but a champion of decorum, a bane of dullness, a modern-day Miss Manners. We resolve to try to follow her lead at our own holiday table: We pledge not to bring up the red patch on our calf that may or may not be evidence of Lyme disease, and to leave out how we avoided a bottleneck on Main Street by slipping through the Reutershan parking lot. We promise not to even discuss how we can’t eat the stuffing because of gluten issues, either, because she is right: Nobody cares.

    By announcing this week that Len Bernard, the East Hampton Town budget officer, will stay on in what has traditionally been a political post, Supervisor-Elect Larry Cantwell has signaled that he will stress pragmatism over party. While the news is not a big surprise — Mr. Cantwell had hinted about this earlier — the hope is that the appointment indicates a new professionalism in how the town does business.

    Mr. Bernard’s credentials are long. A former town councilman, he was the budget officer during Supervisor Jay Schneiderman’s terms, then moved among several related posts before returning to Town Hall at Supervisor Wilkinson’s behest. By now he knows the ins and outs of town finances as well as anyone. In a spirit of cooperation, he was quick recently to agree to look into a longstanding error in the way the costs for some town projects have been shared by village residents. The stability his remaining in the post will provide will be valuable.

    As the new town board begins work in January, its members should seek other ways to develop a greater degree of long-term, steady capability to key offices. For example, the critically important Building Department and the town attorney’s office have been underserved in recent years. Then, too, departments such as Planning and Natural Resources must be more fully incorporated into policy-making.

    The big question is whether the logical next step, a hired town manager, is a good idea. Given Mr. Cantwell’s 32-year tenure in a similar role for East Hampton Village, this will probably get a meaningful look. There are a considerable number of local government observers who believe the time has come for a top town staffer. On the other hand, there is reason for concern about the increased concentration of authority in one person’s hands. A town manager would be a very big step and may not be a cure-all for Town Hall’s ills. While this idea is being worked out, keeping the best people on the job — and respecting their views — is a sure way to improve local government.

    In a dramatic move supported by the governor and historical precedent, the State of New York is expanding its post-Hurricane Sandy buyout offer to an entire Staten Island neighborhood. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that all 129 developed properties in an at-risk neighborhood called Ocean Breeze would be eligible, with prices based on their values before the storm. Some 117 owners already have indicated they will say yes.

    The program is remarkable in that residents and government appear to agree that a stand-and-fight approach to the coast will not work in all cases. Speaking on Staten Island on Monday, Governor Cuomo said, “As many communities who want to participate, we have money.” Those with imperiled houses on the East End of Long Island should pay close attention.

    Ocean Breeze is a low-lying community surrounded by salt marsh, but it is not beachfront; it is separated from Lower New York Bay by Father Capodanno Boulevard, a couple of hundred yards of scrub, and a boardwalk before you get to the water. Nor, with an elevation of about 10 feet, is it even in the worst-rated federal flood zone.

    If enough people agree to sell and move on, the roughly four-block area would be restored to nature. The idea is to remove houses from a danger zone and to create an environmental buffer to protect others. It is a smart, aggressive concept, one that meets the increasing threat to coastal development with eyes wide open. It also stands in sharp contrast to the approach taken here when it comes to thinking about hurricanes, northeasters, rising sea level, and the danger to structures too close to the shoreline.

    Money for Ocean Breeze comes not from Congress’s Hurricane Sandy relief, which unfortunately is turning into a slush fund for ill-thought-out undertakings. Instead, the New York Rising Home Buyout Program is funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. This means that in contrast to the armor-first mentality of the Army Corps of Engineers — and those contractors who stand to make money performing the work — a more pragmatic, long-term approach is possible.

    State Assemblyman Michael Cusick, whose Staten Island district was devastated during Sandy, understands the stakes. In a press release this week, he lauded the program, saying that the region is seeing more frequent extreme weather and that Ocean Breeze is “at risk of getting hit hard again by another storm.”

    Also recently, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. issued a statement calling attention to the danger. “As we pass the one-year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy and pass the two-year anniversary of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, we are reminded of the destruction that was left in the wake of these storms. Storms of this magnitude, which used to be considered ‘once in a lifetime’ occurrences, are happening more and more frequently,” he wrote.

    On the South Fork, where by historical hurricane standards Sandy barely registers, it may be some time before the preponderance of public opinion matches that of residents of the worst ravaged areas. Here, local officials are allowing waterfront residents to expand their houses, which will only increase the cost of any hypothetical buyouts or disaster recovery. At the same time, they are, as in the case of the Dune Road elevation project in Southampton, investing in infrastructure without considering whether it is the right thing to do. At Montauk, current town officials are backing a response to ongoing erosion that seems to date from an earlier era when we understood far less about the forces of nature.

    Unfortunately, when Congress funneled taxpayers’ millions to the Army Corps of Engineers in the wake of Sandy, it all but predestined a retrograde approach. It is up to informed citizens, civic groups, and enlightened elected leaders to recognize that other solutions, perhaps such as proposed for Ocean Breeze, are well worth consideration and may offer the better course for decades to come.

    With Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell sitting in the audience last Thursday, the Republican majority on the East Hampton Town Board put on one of its most regrettable performances to date, thumbing a collective nose at all who came before it and leaving yet another stink in the punch bowl for the next administration.

    Hot on the heels of what can be read as a stinging repudiation at the polls in Councilman Dominick Stanzione’s coming in last among four town board candidates, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley continued their arrogant practice of slipping controversial matters onto the board’s agenda at the very last minute.

    True to form, and front and center of this display of bad government, was the  majority’s decision to schedule a hearing on a zoning change for an Amagansett parcel at the last meeting of the year — the last of the so-called Wilkinson team’s stormy tenure. From the start, observers have had the sense that the 79-unit condominium project known as 555 Amagansett had an inside line to Town Hall. This all but confirms it.

    First, by a 3-2 vote along party lines, the board set a Dec. 19 hearing on an amendment to the town code that would create a new zoning classification for high-density housing for “senior citizens” — those over 55 who are able to pay Hamptons market rates. Then, by the same vote, the board set a second hearing for the same night on applying the new zoning to the Amagansett parcel.

    The proposed law is very strictly worded, making it seem almost impossible to apply to any other parcels in town of similar size. In the fine print, the developer, who apparently had a heavy hand in writing the proposed law, seems to be trying to block would-be competition. This makes it appear to be prohibited “spot zoning” intended to benefit a single applicant, rather than a generous concession on behalf of older residents.

    This second hearing is not only of questionable legality but totally beyond the pale because the zoning category under which 555 Amagansett would be permitted would not yet exist, and could not until some later date after required filing with the state.

    There will be time in the coming weeks to debate the merits of creating the new zone and plunking it down on a single site in Amagansett. But one point should be stressed: Although some real estate brokers would probably receive commissions from sales, the plan benefits its developers most.

    At the same town board meeting in a similarly split, and antagonistic, vote, the board majority set a hearing on downzoning a Cedar Street parcel and eliminating its restrictive farmland protection. The move, if approved, would allow more houses in an already crowded section of the town over neighbors’ loud and repeated protests.

    All of this would be easier to understand if there were any reason to believe Mr. Wilkinson and his allies were taking money under the table for their votes. Indeed, it is all the more distressing to think they would so violate the public will, bend the law, ignore precedent, and override prior town administrations’ work because of half-baked ideology.

    All that a number of recent developers, nightclub owners, and party promoters have had to do, it seems, is utter a few magic words about benefiting the local economy, and the three outgoing Republicans signed on to whatever was presented. It is a shame that this will be the lasting legacy of a group who took office at a time of legitimate anger over the McGintee-era’s financial debacle and perverted their mandate to serve their own ends and those of their few friends and last-lingering supporters.

    Mr. Cantwell and the new and old board members of both parties who will be sworn in come January will have much work to clean up the mess well before they can turn to the agenda on which they campaigned.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees’ new lawsuit over a stone sea wall being put in at Georgica Beach is among the most important developing stories to have come along in some time. In it, we may be seeing a glimpse of what is ahead here as sea level rise and erosion pit private interests against the public’s three and a half centuries’ of assurances that the beaches are theirs to use.

    In short form, the dispute is over the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals and appointed officials handing a permit for the sea wall to a property owner whom the village itself had previously fought in court over a similar grab at Georgica Beach. Attorneys hired by the town trustees brought suit last week to block the project — though work got under way, suspiciously, on Monday when public officials had time off for Veterans Day.

    The trustees’ argument centers on the point that the original 1902 deed to the property, which is now owned by Mollie Zweig, describes its southern boundary as the general line of beach grass. Now that the beach grass ends atop a 15-foot bluff, the trustees say, the sea wall and related excavation going on now is actually on the public beach. In a fascinating wrinkle, they say that a precedent from another recent case supporting the beach grass definition of a waterfront property line cements their claim that the project is, in fact, not even in East Hampton Village’s jurisdiction at all, but is on town trustee land.

    Ms. Zweig’s lawyers have yet to file a formal answer, but in previous statements they have said, in error in our view, that because the loss of dune was caused by Hurricane Sandy, the land remains hers. It is an unconvincing position not supported in law, the trustees will counter, and anyway, erosion on that section of beach has been well documented back to the mid-20th century at least.

    In a similar matter, the trustees have taken on the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals over a Mulford Lane project at Lazy Point, for which approval was granted without their consent. As we have said before, the trustees are emerging as the true defenders of the public’s cherished right to go to and enjoy East Hampton’s beaches.

    It is regrettable that different branches of local government are at loggerheads in this way and, as a consequence of trustee authority being illegally ignored, unnecessarily spending taxpayer money on litigation that could have been avoided. From here on out, officials in Village Hall and on Pantigo Road must work harder to include the trustees in deliberating all applicable applications. The trustees have longstanding tradition, and, it appears, the law on their side. The earlier they are fully brought into the process the better.