Even though the high season may be fading into dim, albeit unpleasant, memory, East Hampton Town’s candidates for elected office must force themselves to grapple with the summer of 2013, which, hands-down, was the most crowded, most annoying, noisiest, and most out of control yet.

    Few residents we spoke to, who wrote letters in these pages, or who went in all futility to Town Hall to seek redress, found much good about the crowds, save those whose pockets were filled by the transient hordes. Like Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” East Hampton had a glimpse of the future and did not like it one bit.

    It would be easy as the din dies down in September and October for our political hopefuls to pretend the recent summer of woe did not happen, but to do so would be a disservice to those whom they seek to represent. There will be discussions on all sorts of issues as Election Day nears, but unless Larry Cantwell, Fred Overton, Dominick Stanzione, Job Potter, and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, three of whom will join the town board in January, take on quality-of-life concerns for residents and taxpayers before all else, other issues will barely register.

    The fault lies not in East Hampton Town’s regulations themselves, or lack thereof; indeed more than a generation’s hard work went into crafting a town code that, while imperfect and sprawling, is actually up to the job of maintaining order and promoting neighborliness. Rather, the will and adequate staff has been lacking to enforce the rules, going back several years, but amplified a hundred-fold recently. Town Hall has capitulated to craven interests, allowing even blatant illegalities, such as the conversion of a motel parking lot in downtown Montauk into a full, open-air bar. And this has occurred while police officers have had to be offered overtime deals to keep the peace.

    If one concept can be gleaned from the hellacious summer of 2013, it is that East Hampton is nearing a breaking point, “a red line,” if you will, beyond which residents will decide enough is enough and move on, severing the fabric of this wonderful community. The pattern is clear enough. Seashore resorts up and down the East Coast have had to think hard about how to say no when too much of a good thing really is too much. Putting residents first has to be the priority.

    The current anything-goes attitude in Town Hall has proven a failure and a source of dismay. It is up to the town board hopefuls to chart a different course. Make no mistake: The stakes are as high as it gets. Let’s hear what they have to say.

   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.

   Misplaced skepticism marred a meeting this week about an East Hampton Town effort to draft a wastewater management plan. Critics suggested, wrongly, that it was a clandestine effort to force scores of property owners to undertake expensive, unnecessary improvements to their septic systems, perhaps even one sold by a business with which a town consultant has a professional relationship. They also questioned whether further protecting the health of the aquifers, which we rely on for drinking water, and of surface waters, such as bays, ponds, and harbors, was something the town even should be considering without asking the public ahead of time.

    The first point is hardly worth addressing, except to say that dark, conspiratorial phantoms are simply that, and the conflict of interest issue has been addressed. As to the second, it is unfortunate to have to remind the critics of a little document called the East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan.

    We tend to forget now, but work on the plan took years and involved contributions from many, many residents and outside experts. Following that, it was the subject of extensive public hearings, and a few scattered outbursts of litigation, before becoming both law and a statement about how, collectively, we envisioned the future of our town.

    Unfortunately, even a carefully constructed plan, like this, is only as good as the people who are supposed to enforce it, and it was shunted to the dustbin by the imperious East Hampton Town supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, who said he viewed it as little more than a “snapshot” in time. To invert a famous phrase, “Avant moi, le deluge!” has seemed to be the mantra at the Town Hall executive suite for four long years as far as work of preceding administrations is concerned.

    Reading this week through the comprehensive plan, which was completed in 2005, one notices again and again references to water quality. These include encouraging statements like “The harbors and bays are among the cleanest in the state,” and top recommendations such as “Take forceful measures to protect and restore the environment, particularly groundwater.” There was no mystery then, as now, that this subject was — and is — extremely important.

    Awareness of the inherent value of water quality has been known for decades here. A seminal federal study of the South Fork’s groundwater was completed in 1982. Five years later, New York State created nine groundwater protection areas on Long Island, two of which were within East Hampton Town. And, looking back at the earliest days of zoning here, water concerns were among the basic, and clearly legitimate, reasons for limiting development.

    A degree of urgency arises when one considers that several East Hampton waterways are seasonally closed to shellfishing or have been declared “impaired” by state authorities. This underscores the worrisome fact that we simply do not know if protection measures in the town code now are sufficient and will be adequate to cope with increased growth.

    It is the same story with drinking water, especially from private wells. What data planners can use to gauge present and future needs is outdated and should be re-evaluated. The experts now working on the town’s new plan are taking all this into consideration and have excellent credentials to produce a meaningful report.

     Opposition to the new town effort to identify and manage impacts to groundwater is largely political and should be viewed that way. Residents are fortunate that there is a majority on the East Hampton Town Board willing to duck the barbs and baseless fears to move forward with this detailed review.

   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.

   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.

   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.

    Underlying Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s demand this week that the federal government investigate potential health effects and the environmental impact of the sale of Plum Island is a sense that the remarkable and history-filled isle should be preserved. This helps put necessary pressure on Washington to save the island as open space and help protect Long Island Sound.

    Congress decided about four years ago that the national animal disease laboratory there should be shuttered and a facility to expand its work built in Kansas. The General Services Administration said at the time that the island should be sold to help pay for the new lab. However, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, a number of private groups, and officials in Connecticut said that concerns about groundwater contamination and residual toxic waste should be resolved before the island was put up for bid. Southold Town, of which the 840-acre island is a part, recently outlawed residential development there. And for his part, Representative Tim Bishop said he is working in Congress to block the sale.

    Though those opposed to private development of Plum Island hailed the Southold Town Board’s unanimous decision to change its zoning, much risk remains. The main concern is that a future board could reverse the decision and pave the way for perhaps hundreds of houses and intensive ferry traffic, with harmful effects on migratory wildlife and surrounding waters.

    The precedents for public preservation of federal properties once used for military or research purposes are many and include Camp Hero State Park in Montauk. The transfer of Plum Island to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, an environmentally responsible entity, or even the State of New York would be the right choice.

    The Army Corps of Engineers’ options for downtown Montauk and its beaches are just not good enough and will only pass the problem on to future leaders and generations. Moreover, the prospect of a multimillion-dollar undertaking using money approved by Congress for Hurricane Sandy relief gives rise to questions about the ethical, perhaps even legal, basis on which the plans are based.

    Even though the Army Corps is under the impression that East Hampton has reached agreement on how to proceed, it is critical to understand that there is no consensus here about what to do. The town board has not voted, nor has there been much official discussion. If there is to be public participation in decision-making, residents must demand loudly to be heard. And be heard they must. Simply hoping elected officials will come to their senses is not enough. The only sensible path is to slow down and call in the most qualified independent planning and coastal-process experts. There is no indication that town officials are considering this, which makes public pressure downtown Montauk’s only hope.

    The fault is not necessarily with the Army Corps; it does what it was set up to do, that is, build walls — and sometimes not all that well. Rather it is a long-term failure of vision and guts. This is made worse by local officials’ being sold on a wrong-headed direction by those who stand to benefit economically. What is needed is not advice from those who know how to move sand around, but top-level community planners able to re-envision the area so that it will be both commercially viable and resilient to the sea for a generation or more.

    Downtown Montauk’s problems have their origin in the ur-developer Carl Fisher’s ill-fated decision to site the commercial center of the hamlet where it should not have been. The hotels and shops are on a low, narrow isthmus between the ocean and Fort Pond. Indeed, a motorist on the Montauk Highway today can look toward the Atlantic and see breaking waves at tire level. It was a dumb place to put a commercial center in the first place and the choice seems all the more foolish now, knowing what we do about the shore.

    Montauk’s predicament is also not really the result of Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Irene, or any of the recent years’ northeasters. In fact, the landward migration of the shoreline has gone on more or less unimpeded for decades. Nonetheless, Montauk restoration would share in the money Congress appropriated for hurricane relief. It is troubling to reflect on this at a time when other areas suffered far more serious losses during Sandy, leaving many people broke, still without homes, or inadequately compensated by flood insurance.

    What should have been an important basis for the proposed work — an economic assessment prepared at Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson’s behest — is an amateurish, overstated hodgepodge without meaningful citations to back up its claims. And, worse, the supervisor has refused to make it available to those who have asked. From a copy we have seen, it appears the report was written by the First Coastal Corporation, which specializes in beach engineering projects and, as such, is hardly a disinterested party.

    Other attempts at backroom dealing have poisoned much support for the process. As it turned out, Mr. Wilkinson agreed only begrudgingly to allow residents to attend a recent presentation by the Army Corps, preferring, by his own admission, to be briefed privately.

    East Hampton Town cannot evade the question of whether it is appropriate for United States taxpayers’ money granted for Sandy relief to be used on what is essentially a false premise. At the very least, East Hampton owes it both to Congress and the American people to make sure that the millions in aid is spent responsibly. It would be deeply embarrassing, even immoral, if, 10 or 20 years from now, the town again had its hand out, essentially conceding that it failed the first time around.

    To be clear: Unless the public is ready to pay for expensive and unending sand-pumping from offshore sources, seawalls will inevitably result in the loss of the beach. By definition, seawalls are only installed in areas subject to beach loss; no one would bother otherwise. And without sand replenishment, there will be no beach. Take a look, for example, at the illegally expanded rock edifice defending the Montauk Shores Condominium just east of Ditch Plain. The result has been the loss of free passage along the shore — something that is supposed to be assured by the state’s public trust doctrine.

    If there ever was a moment to think big, this is it. Montauk’s long-term solution could well include a combination of approaches, including one that has not been mentioned so far. This would be for the town to creatively use the power of eminent domain to remove the first row of downtown Montauk’s residences and outdated hotels, and to give their owners the right to rebuild inland, in particular on the second block in from the beach.

    Consider that much of this area contains vacant or underutilized lots; one even has been given over to a municipal rest room. But wait, you say, what about the businesses already there? There is an answer for that, too. The owners of these retail properties could return to their original locations in new, modern spaces on the ground floors of the rebuilt hotel and residential complexes, all of which would be built to the highest hurricane-proofing standards and environmentally sustainable design.

    In the place of the former first row of developed properties, the Army Corps could build a high, protective dune, to be crossed at reasonable distances by walkways from an elevated boardwalk linking the new commercial downtown to a wide, gorgeous beach. It would be, in fact, somewhat like what Fisher had envisioned in his 1920s master plan, only this time taking the ocean’s ongoing threat into account.

    Conceding that this is a back-of-the-napkin concept, we nonetheless believe that such a radical project would buy not just 10 or 20 years’ protection at an ongoing and unknowable cost, but perhaps 50 or 75 years or more at an initially high, but limited cost. It would, frankly, be better for all parties concerned, not the least of whom would be tomorrow’s taxpayers, who would not have to pay to forever dump sand on top of today’s mistakes.

    It could happen this way or it might take another direction, but it is up to residents to make sure that everyone understands the stakes. What needs to happen is a very focused and guided public identification of costs, impact on property owners and the environment, and long-term maintenance expenses followed by a clear, systematic articulation of the community’s agreed-upon goals — and only then a decision. Thinking small will produce no answers.

   Doesn’t anyone in East Hampton Town Hall do his or her homework? That is a fair question given the disregard for protected farmland that has become apparent recently.

    The latest incident arose when someone belatedly realized that the town had, almost a decade ago, bought the development rights to the acreage on which parking was planned for as many as 3,900 guests at the Shark Attack Sounds dance party tomorrow night at the Montauk Yacht Club. The 2004 purchase blocked the land’s use for anything other than agriculture, including parking. This is very much like the debacle last summer in which the town decided to convert several acres of county-protected farm fields in East Hampton to a road drainage sump. The project remains unfinished, and the resulting dispute with Suffolk officials unresolved. As with the earlier example, there is evidence that certain town officials were made aware of the restrictions on the site but chose to ignore them.

    With only a day to go until the Montauk event is to begin, it is irresponsible that a majority of the town board appeared poised to okay an alternative parking arrangement — one that police and emergency responders would not have had adequate time to review. If there ever was a time to call the party off, that time is now.