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.

   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.

   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.

    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.

-

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.

   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.

    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.

   Many New Yorkers, whose state was among those in recent years that turned a long-overdue gender-blind eye on marriage, rightly celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision last week on the Defense of Marriage Act. Locally, we were pleased to learn that the plaintiff in this landmark case was a part-time Southampton resident, Edith Windsor.

    On a smaller scale, but also of major significance, at least for the South Fork, is the opening this month in Sag Harbor of the area’s first support and social center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people.

    As society as a whole moves toward greater acceptance of its gay members, concern about students in the middle and high school years has lagged behind, according to many accounts. This has been true here.

    David Hernandez’s tragic decision to commit suicide last year was prompted, at least in part, by bullying by his peers about his sexual orientation. And on an even smaller scale, harassment and lack of empathy for those who are perceived as different is routine, according to many parents. The new G.L.B.T. center, to be housed at the Old Whalers Church, will give young people like David a place to turn, to find encouraging people who say it is okay to be who you are.

    Until the center opens in mid-July, the nearest similar refuge is in Bay Shore — an impossible distance for many of the kids who might need it. Those involved in getting the South Fork facility going are to be heartily congratulated, as is the church for hosting it.

    All of our children, no matter what path they travel toward adulthood, must be assisted and nurtured along the way.