For East Hampton Town Board only one thing is certain: Councilman Dominick Stanzione should not win re-election — and, given his record, it would surprise close observers of the Town Hall scene that he is likely to. Voters are lucky that the three other candidates for the seats open after Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley decided not to run again are among the strongest in years. The tough thing will be deciding among them.

    On policy, the personally likeable Mr. Stanzione’s negatives far overwhelm his positives. He has all but declared war on his own hamlet of Amagansett, backing the Scarsdalization of the South of the Highway lanes from day one and looking favorably on a massive, exclusive luxury housing development for the former Principi property on Montauk Highway. His involvement with the airport has bred controversy, favoring commercial users over the interests of residents. And, for the most part, he has sided with the worst impulses of the outgoing majority, bucking it only on a few issues in a late effort to claim independent thinking.

    The knock on Mr. Overton is that he has been pretty much a ghost town clerk, invisible to those who come to his office and content to let his hired deputy, Carole Brennan, run the show. In fact, as observers have pointed out, it has been Ms. Brennan, as often as not, who has occupied the town clerk’s seat at town board meetings.

    Mr. Overton’s easygoing attitude may be an asset, however, considering the wreckage the current activist town board majority is leaving in its wake. The past four years have caused us to wonder whether the town would be better off if the board met less often; the result might be that it got into less trouble, leaving well enough alone. Mr. Overton is a thoughtful person, and his long public service and community involvement would provide context for many of the decisions that lie ahead. In addition, his perspective as someone outside the pending Democratic majority would be valuable.

    Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, a relatively new face in town politics, has put together an impressive run and strong coalition of supporters. She draws on acknowledged achievements as president of the Springs School Board and has deep friendships in that hamlet and beyond. Her focus on the human side of town government in the campaign has been welcome. In a normal year, hers would be an easy endorsement, that is, if she did not have Job Potter as a seasoned and experienced running mate.

    Mr. Potter has distinguished himself during the campaign as extremely knowledgeable, gently persuasive, and even-keeled. His record on land preservation and environmental questions is solid, and we would expect him to remain a leader in this arena.

    The depth of the candidates’ résumés and a balance of perspectives on the next East Hampton Town Board are what matter. To that end, we endorse Mr. Overton and Mr. Potter. We very much hope that Ms. Burke-Gonzalez will consider another run for town office if she doesn’t prevail on Tuesday.

    After she had loaded up her car and headed to the Montauk waste transfer station, a woman of our acquaintance was surprised Tuesday morning to discover that it was closed. She was not alone.

    New York is among some eight states that have declared the date a holiday for its employees; many other municipalities followed suit. Any number of people have been flummoxed by the Election Day shutdown of nearly all East Hampton and Southampton Town services, Town Hall, and most public schools, ostensibly to give staff an opportunity to get to their polling places.

    This is nonsense, of course. Polls in New York State open at 6 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. — surely anyone who needed to vote early or late would have an opportunity to do so. This is especially true for many town workers, whose days start around 8 or 9 and begin to taper off around 3 in the afternoon. No, something more must be at play here.

    Not to sound old-fashioned, but there seems to be a tinge of laziness about officialdom taking the day off. At least by South Fork standards, many public employees — and nearly all elected ones — are rather well paid for what they do, and, from our perspective, should be on the job more rather than less. It is a puzzlement that on the one day when communities are supposed to focus on their governance, government chooses to stay home.

Nor do we have any reason to suggest voting for the challenger in the race for County Legislator. George O. Guldi, our man on the Legislature, hasn't had the most formidable opponents since he got into office. Kevin L. McCrudden, his current challenger, brings a PR background to the race but little else.

Mr. Guldi convinces anyone who listens that he loves "the fray." He claims to be the Legislature's busiest member. His work against the Long Island Lighting Company-Long Island Power Authority deal has been impressive, especially given the issue's complexities. His record of hard work and his willingness to represent all the people, speaks for itself. Even Newsday, which doesn't like his opinion about the LILCO-LIPA deal, for example, had no choice but to endorse him.

    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.

    In a last-minute attempt to tarnish a Democratic-leaning organization, East Hampton Republicans recently sent a formal protest to the New York State Board of Elections about the East Hampton Conservators, a self-described political action committee founded by the actor Alec Baldwin, among others. While the timing of the complaint may have been part of October’s political warfare, the issue is serious and merits attention.

    The Republican letter to the state accused the Conservators of breaking the law by buying advertisements in this newspaper and others promoting specific candidates. The law requires such organizations as political parties and candidates’ campaign committees, which spend money in support of specific candidates, to comply with more detailed campaign finance reporting than political action committees.

    Nonaffiliated committees like the Conservators may give money to others to buy advertising, for example, but the minute they name a candidate in their own advertising it would appear that they can no longer follow the rules for PACs but the same requirements as traditional committees. In other words, organizations that spend money on behalf of specific candidates must file reports as if they were political committees. After the G.O.P. letter was made public, the Conservators said they would file the necessary paperwork stating their support of specific candidates.

    The complaint and the Conservators’ response raise the question of whether other groups, for example the East Hampton Aviation Association, which bought ad space here and elsewhere thanking Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who was running for re-election to the East Hampton Town Board, might also have had to meet the more stringent campaign finance requirements of political committees. Under the election law, it would appear that these groups, too, would have to do so if they cross the line.

    Without explicit direction from the state, however, it is difficult to say if the aviation association’s thank-you to Mr. Stanzione in the newspapers immediately preceding the election should have triggered these filing requirements. A lack of clarity in the rules makes it tricky to say just which groups should be submitting exactly what. Further guidance from state lawmakers may well be needed.

    East Hampton voters on Tuesday had an easy task in choosing among the leading candidates for the town board. With more than 1,000 absentee ballots still to be counted, we expect that the margins between Fred Overton and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez will shift, but that the winners’ column will not. Much as we are sorry not to see Job Potter take a victory lap as the board’s elder statesman, the leadership equation of the group that will be sworn in come January is solid. And necessarily so — the way ahead will be full of challenges, some immediate, some long-term.

    Larry Cantwell, who ran unopposed for supervisor, Mr. Overton, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez, and the incumbents, Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, have much work to do. Dealing with quality-of-life issues and managing growth come first, then must come dealing with sea level rise, helping to provide new affordable housing, improving human services, and protecting the environment — all within a budget limited, at least in theory, by a 2-percent tax-increase cap. The list is long, but these five are up to the task.

    Tuesday’s most dramatic loss, that of Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who placed last among the four town board candidates, is significant. In the campaign’s final days, Mr. Stanzione took to effusively praising Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, after having bucked him in recent months in what was perhaps a last-ditch effort to motivate turnout among the Republican base. This presumed strategy was bound to fail, as even before the election it was apparent voters from all parties strongly supported Mr. Overton’s more traditional brand of East Hampton Republicanism.

    In the two months before the new board takes over, Mr. Stanzione, Mr. Wilkinson, and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley may well be tempted to squeeze out the last drops of their majority on the board to press their agenda and reward supporters and friends. The best thing they could do instead is make a dignified exit, stop their petty squabbling, and mind the helm calmly until January.

    The voters have made it clear which direction they want East Hampton to go.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.