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.

   In terms of economic impact and value to residents, the proposed conversion of a 35,000-square-foot building in the East Hampton Town Industrial Park from a film and television studio to long-term storage should rank at the bottom of the list. Few jobs would be created, and they are likely to be low-paying. In community and cultural terms, storage is pretty much a black hole. We believe that the town could do a whole lot better.

     East Hampton Studios and its sound stage was constructed as a media center more than a decade ago. Conceding that the $5 million investment did not turn out to be the boon its founder, Frazer Dougherty, had hoped, a storage facility would be a step backward, even considering the mixed record of success. Since 2007, the facility has been run by Michael Wudyka, who told the town board last month that an unnamed storage company was ready to take over the space. The problem for him — and any new tenant — is that the town owns and leases the land at a low, subsized cost and that it is part of the East Hampton Airport property, over which the Federal Aviation Administration may have a say.

    As the town board considers whether to allow Mr. Wudyka’s longstanding deal to go to the storage firm, many options and competing needs should be examined. Among obvious alternatives would be the building’s use as workshops or garages for contractors, pool companies, and landscapers. Town officials have been puzzling in recent months about what to do about commercial vehicles parked on small residential parcels in Springs and elsewhere; providing a suitable site for them at East Hampton Studios might be viable.

    Thinking somewhat more broadly, the building might be converted for use by food producers and vendors — kind of like East Hampton’s own Hunt’s Point, the giant wholesale complex in the Bronx. East Hampton has a burgeoning local food sector in which residents are making everything from table salt to beer. As a story in this newspaper noted last week, a number of bakers and other local entrepreneurs have had to make do during off-hours in restaurant and church kitchens. Providing a centrally located semi-public alternative might make sense — and help support dozens of jobs.

    Since revenues are less of a concern now that the Town of East Hampton is in better financial shape, another option would be to divide the huge space into artists’ studios. The region was once among the most important on the American modern art scene, but that exalted position has dimmed, thanks in part to the impossible cost of real estate here. Nurturing creativity by providing artists with work space might well be in the community’s best interest.

    Now is the time for town leaders to think big and to ask themselves and the taxpayers — perhaps at a dedicated town meeting — to envision the best possible future for a building that should, and could, be a community asset.

   Sagaponack Village wants a police department of its own, or at least its village board and a number of residents do, though debate is ongoing. The arguments in favor of a force of the village’s own are compelling.

    Money is the first consideration. The amount paid for police services this year to the Town of Southampton, of which the hamlet is a part, was a substantial $2.3 million. For that sum, Sagaponack should be getting much more in the way of year-round patrols and enforcement of traffic laws. Supporting this view, the Village of Sag Harbor actually budgeted less for its own 10-member department in the 2013-14 fiscal year than Sagaponack. This comparison makes it seem that Sagaponack residents are being ripped off — or at least helping to subsidize police activities in other parts of town.

    Beyond the cost, the most persuasive reason for a Sagaponack department is the police’s important public-safety role. Police are first responders, even before emergency medical technicians are mobilized. In the vast majority of the 911 calls that result in an ambulance being dispatched, an officer is the first on the scene, which is why most patrol cars are outfitted with oxygen and automatic emergency defibrillators. When every second counts, as in a heart attack or extreme injury, getting well-trained personnel to where they are needed as soon as possible can make the difference between life and death. An aging population makes rapid medical aid frequently required, and police are an important part of that equation.

    Crime and road-type mayhem, it must be said, is minimal in Sagaponack. This is due, we suspect, to the prevalence of security alarms in the area’s often-palatial houses and to the village’s small resident population. Vandals and burglars are not likely to live here. Nor are weekend hedge-funders likely to take to a life of prosaic transgression. Drunken drivers may be fewer than in other places, aside from on Route 27. However, getting village residents their money’s worth in terms of a police presence — as well as assuring the fastest possible emergency responses — are goals well worth pursuing.

   By asking Congress for its approval for a military response to the nerve-gas attack in Syria last month, President Obama may be setting a lasting precedent. Since the end of World War II, United States presidents have charged into conflicts by ignoring Constitutionally required prior approval from lawmakers or by expanding a narrow agreement beyond reasonable interpretations.

    In seeking authority from the House and Senate for what the Obama administration has said will be limited missile bombardments, the White House may set a standard that other administrations would stray from with difficulty. This could be the most lasting and important outcome of the Syrian conflict for this country.

    The underlying question is why the administration waited this long to push for punitive strikes on Syrian government assets. The U.S. has held its fire while not only combatants but more than 100,000 civilians died in the conflict before the Aug. 21 gassing. Those killed by Bashar al-Assad’s conventional bombs and artillery are no less dead than those killed by nerve agents. Regardless of the result in Congress, however, the difference now is both moral and political.

    The nations of the world, remembering perhaps World War I and the millions sent to Nazi ovens in World War II, are united in moral condemnation of the use of poison gas in wartime. Politically, Washington has its eyes on Iran, the Assad government’s chief foreign backer and a United States adversary for decades. Informed speculation is that Washington has grown nervous as Syrian government forces appeared to gain the upper hand; a victory for the Assad regime would be a win for Iran.

    The United States has been faulted internationally for going it alone far too many times. Even with Congressional approval, an American strike in Syria would be outside the mutually agreed-upon rules of the United Nations, where a Security Council vote on a response to the conflict should be the final word. Mr. Obama’s decision to seek Congressional approval should be followed by a diligent effort to work within the U.N. framework before any eventual action.

   One of the unfortunate aspects of a very strange time for the East Hampton Town Board is that the public — as well as the two minority party members — rarely know in advance what subjects will be discussed at meetings.

    Going back several years now, agendas for town board meetings, which are supposed to come from the office of the supervisor, have not been available until a scant few hours before their starting times. Oddly, however, annotated versions of upcoming meeting agendas have been circulated by Councilwoman Theresa Quigley from her private e-mail account rather than an official one.

    The agenda gap extends to other town entities, but not all; some manage to alert the public to what they are up to well in advance. The zoning board of appeals, whose procedures are set in detail by town and state law, does so, providing detailed explanations of meetings and hearings. In fact, the Z.B.A. is an example of how it could and should be done. On the other hand, the architectural review board and, surprising perhaps, the planning board make it difficult for laypersons to figure out what is coming up.

    East Hampton Town Clerk Fred Overton, who is running for a seat on the town board, knows about the agenda problem first-hand. His office is responsible for posting notices, notably on townclerk.com, an online portal designed for this purpose. This week, for example, the agenda of Tuesday’s town board work session appeared only at the last minute and one for tonight’s meeting was not available at press time yesterday morning. It would be good to hear how Mr. Overton and the other candidates for town office think these procedures can be improved.

    Public participation in government is based on knowledge. East Hampton can only benefit from making access to the process open — and easy.

   Having spent nearly $1 million to design, install, and maintain a culvert linking Gardiner’s Bay and Accabonac Harbor, East Hampton Town has allowed it to fill with sand, essentially rendering a giant investment of public money useless. The Gerard Drive project was long envisioned as a way to improve water quality in the harbor by providing it with a second tidal opening. To remain functional, however, the culvert needed the sand, which otherwise would accumulate and shut it off, regularly removed.

    For the first time this year, the town did not have the culvert cleared. The explanation was that there had been a conflict over testing with the State Department of Environmental Conservation and that the town’s director of natural resources sought water-quality samples from the harbor without the culvert’s presumed flushing effect. This would give the town a baseline from which to compare whether maintaining the culvert, at a cost of roughly $15,000 a year, was worthwhile.

    The decision to skip sand removal this year may have been defensible from a scientific point of view, but it was poor policy. Having sunk so much public money into the project over the years, from taxes and state grants, residents were entitled to a working culvert — or at least an open discussion of its merits and eventual fate.

    Accabonac Harbor remains one of East Hampton’s marine ecosystem jewels. Consensus appears to hold that the culvert will help keep it that way. It should be restored to full performance as soon as practical.

   Elected officials at almost all involved levels have been calling for expedited action along the threatened Montauk oceanfront in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. “We must act now,” Representative Tim Bishop and Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand said last month in a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers. Not so fast, we say.

    Considering that ill-thought-out erosion control projects of years past have caused their own share of problems, and the Army Corps’ mixed record in this regard, the right thing to do would be to slow down. Independent experts who study coastal processes say the only viable long-term strategy, even for Montauk’s downtown, is a managed retreat of threatened structures coupled with restoration of naturally defensive dunes and wetlands.

    Rushing into armoring the Montauk shore would lead almost certainly to disastrous results in the years to come.

    Plans for downtown Montauk’s ocean shoreline are to be presented at East Hampton Town Hall today, and all concerned, particularly owners of properties to the west, should pay close attention.

    The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to present at least three options. In order of least to most disruptive, they are a sand-only beach replenishment proposal, an 11-foot-high stone seawall to be buried initially with sand, and a series of groins, also known as jetties, spanning more than a half mile. Money for the project would come from federal millions earmarked for Long Island in Hurricane Sandy relief. Work could begin as soon as next fall.

    Nowhere in the material that we have seen does the Army Corps offer the option that nearly all coastal experts recommend — a managed retreat from the shore. And this is a shame. Time and again, Army Corps projects have failed to adequately protect the broad public interest. Now its armor-first mentality threatens long-term destruction of the ocean beaches.

    The risk is real that federal funding will dwindle away over time, leaving local taxpayers responsible for the full cost of maintaining the expensive sand replenishment required under any of the Corps’ Montauk options. Consider that funding for work in the nearly 50-year-long Fire Island to Montauk Reformulation Study only came as an add-on to Congress’s post-Sandy handouts. One expects such largess to be available only once every couple of decades, leaving someone else on the hook for repetitive annual costs, in all likelihood. Backers of a special taxation district for Montauk sand replenishment know this, which is why, in one early iteration of their effort, they sought to impose a new tax on every property in the hamlet.

    Local support for anything the Corps promotes must be contingent on a full understanding of the costs involved, not in year 1, but for 10, 20, 30, or more years. Equally important will be for the Town of East Hampton to hire a team of independent experts to review all of the options before reaching a conclusion.

    In the rush for a solution, irreparable harm could be done to our most cherished public asset, the beaches. And, equally bad, future generations could be left paying for today’s mistakes. If ever there was a time to slow down and get it right, it is now.

    Today’s meeting is at 11 a.m. in Town Hall. All concerned about East Hampton’s future should be there.

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An earlier version of this editorial said that the work could begin in December. An Army Corps public information spokesman said Thursday that the most-likely start date would be no earlier than the fall.

   Southampton Town officials are confronting a riddle about how to protect 14 Bridgehampton farm acres owned by the Peconic Land Trust. Ronald Lauder gave the property to a precursor of the land trust years ago. Unfortunately, the deal did not include restrictions on what the trust eventually could do with the property, and it even can be sold for house lots. Now the trust has asked Southampton to buy the development rights on the land, using money from the community preservation fund transfer tax, and it has threatened to put the farmland on the market if the town doesn’t come through.

    The public-relations problem for both parties comes from a misperception that the land is already preserved. Technically, it has not been, but the sense still is that the preservation fund should not be tapped unnecessarily. The trust says it would use the money to save more land, perhaps as much as 100 acres of additional farmland. Opponents say not so fast: The fund was not created to help underwrite the activities of private organizations. To them, the proposal looks a lot like extortion.

    Southampton officials should call the Peconic Land Trust’s bluff. We hate to say it, given the land trust’s positive record, but if the group wants to go ahead and put itself out of business as a preservation organization, town officials should respond, “Be our guest.” Public reaction to the trust’s selling off farmland for development would be swift and severe — and diminish the confidence of future donors. We hope that the trust would not take that almost-certainly fatal step.

    With the Town of Southampton as a partner, the land trust can continue to help broker deals to conserve farmland it believes needs saving. Engaging in risky and adversarial brinkmanship is the wrong approach.

   Two of the biggest dance parties of the summer of 2013 used the names of legitimate charities improperly in order to help secure East Hampton Town permits. In July, the Shark Attack Sounds gathering claimed to be a benefit for the Montauk Playhouse Foundation, and in August, a for-profit bash at Albert’s Landing in Amagansett, billed as Electronic Beach, salted its town application with references to a New York organization. Neither charity was asked whether its name could be used. Moreover, when the Albert’s Landing party violated the terms of its improperly granted approval, there was no official mechanism to shut it down or hold its organizers responsible.

    These two parties are examples of an event-permit review process in East Hampton Town Hall that is badly in need of an overhaul. Applications are rushed through without adequate staff review or time to make sure they are on the up and up. And so many large assemblies are being held in the summer that it has become almost impossible for police and ordinance enforcers to keep up.

    After the fact, the promoters of Shark Attack Sounds gave $8,000 to the Montauk Playhouse. This sounds like a nice sum until you learn that tickets to the sold-out event netted about $175,000.

    It is not clear how much, if anything, the charity named in the Albert’s Landing event’s permit application received. And, while the Montauk event took place on private property in the evening, the Amagansett bash got going in early afternoon and by nightfall made even swimming in the bay there unbearable for residents.

    Looking into the latter incident recently, Dan Rattiner, the publisher of Dan’s Papers, was able to get in touch with the founder of Harlem Leadership and Lacrosse, who said he had not been asked by the Electronic Beach organizers for permission to use his organization’s name. In a letter he sent to Mr. Rattiner, Simon Cataldo explained that he was able to learn that someone who volunteers for the group had been invited to set up a table to seek donations while the party was going on. Mr. Cataldo said he did not condone any disruption that the party may have created, and “. . . should we ever receive a check from the organizers of the party, it will not be deposited.” It would not have been all that difficult for someone in Town Hall to have made a similar inquiry.

    Officials may protest that they have neither the time nor the authority to check the claims made on mass-gathering applications. While that may or may not be true, additional steps must be taken to assure that permits for large-scale events are no longer handed out based on fraudulent assertions — and that community concerns are taken into consideration.

    A start would be for the town to ask for statements on letterhead from the beneficiary organizations of for-profit parties and those on public property, including parks and beaches. Next, officials need to improve how application paperwork is routed among relevant departments, including getting a draft to the town board, which votes on such applications, earlier in the process. Also key will be at least doubling the minimum lead time between when a permit is submitted and when it is taken to the board.

    Mass-gathering permits have been handled in far too easy-going a manner heretofore, but the disruptions they can create for those who expect to be able to use and enjoy public property or their own backyards are anything but casual. Reform must begin now.