One thing should be clear to anyone in the audience (or watching on LTV). After yet another East Hampton Town Board meeting turned debacle it is more than time for Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley to call it quits. For all intents and purposes, they already have.

    Considering the evident contempt with which they greet those with whom they do not agree, or whom they perceive as adversaries, and that both appear to be itching for their terms to end at the end of this year, resignation would be appropriate and the best thing for the Town of East Hampton.

    We do not make this recommendation lightly. Nor do we expect either will at this late date suddenly heed our advice. Because board meetings are dysfunctional as well as embarrassing when they are in the room, however, little to nothing will get done in Town Hall while they remain in office.

    Yet there is more: Mr. Wilkinson’s leading the way on demoralizing town employees, weakening zoning, allowing code enforcement to slow down, promoting blatant cronyism, encouraging the apparently illegal expansion of erosion-control structures, and abandoning key infrastructure spending have set him up for an arguable legacy as the worst East Hampton Town supervisor of all time. If you take away the much-vaunted Wilkinson “miracle”: restoring town finances after the discovery of a giant internal deficit — which was actually put in place in a state-approved plan well before he took office — there is not much in his record on the positive side of the ledger.

    As to Ms. Quigley, she has been prone to divisive outbursts, threatened to walk off the job, personally managed poorly thought-out projects, and has seemed only interested in serving the interests of those constituents whose political outlooks mirror her own. Note her “yes” vote recently, with Mr. Wilkinson, on an absurd plan that would have allowed a problematic Napeague bar and restaurant in a fragile environmental area to legalize its many illegal additions and make it permanent as a source of perennial litter and traffic problems.

    Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley have so damaged the once-proud Republican Party brand in East Hampton that the only person said to be considering a run for supervisor is a partisan activist who may well be the supervisor’s last remaining public supporter. Just about the only thing Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley could do now to salvage what is left of their reputations, and help their party’s prospects in November, is to step aside.

    At a May 16 town board meeting, Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley made it clear they were counting the days till their terms were up. We think they should go one step further. If nothing else they owe it to the voters who expected, wrongly it turns out, that they could do the jobs they were elected to do without drama, condescension, or anger. If they do not want to be there, East Hampton Town residents and taxpayers should not want them there either.

    Thanks for the effort you’ve put in, folks, voters might say, but now it’s time to go.

   The juxtaposition could not be more stark: East Hampton Town does not take adequate care of the public bathing beaches it already has and yet town officials appear to be thinking seriously about adding more. We say, not so fast. A little housekeeping and assumption-checking needs to occur first.

    A report completed earlier this month by the town’s nature preserve committee identified possible locations for a new full-service bathing beach with lifeguards, parking, and restrooms. The top choices were two sites on Napeague, one a 37-acre preserve near Dolphin Drive and the other a 6.7-acre rectangle about a half-mile to the east.

    Before the town moves forward with plans to develop either of these parcels, it has some thinking to do. For starters, cleanliness is not optional. The town already appears to be in repeated violation of Suffolk health regulations that require “adequate” and “sanitary” means of storing and disposing of garbage at beaches. Overflowing trash barrels and cascading mounds of refuse left in parking lots cannot reasonably be seen as anything other than lack of compliance with the law.

     At the same time, and perhaps more important, it must look dispassionately at the numbers of people using protected beaches and consider ways to do something about crowding at them. To a significant degree, the problem is not space on the sand itself, but lack of adequate parking, bike lanes, and public transportation.

    East Hampton’s strands are not as constrained as they may be in other places; sunbathers can find places to stretch out away from the throngs. The town should find out whether bathers at protected beaches ever exceed the maximum number set by the County Health Department. If the answer is no, as we believe it likely to be, improving access to existing beaches is the logical move.

    Although some members of the town’s lifeguard squad have expressed significant concern that crowding could drive some swimmers to more remote locations, beyond the watchful gaze of guards, the parking lots at most town beaches can be expanded, and then, if warranted, additional lifeguards assigned and restrooms put up. 

    As for Indian Wells in Amagansett, huge gatherings of young, beer-swilling singles on weekend afternoons have become a problem in part because of the town’s anything-goes policy on public alcohol consumption. It remains to be seen whether the town’s attempt to limit transient vehicular access there is effective.  

    Before the public gets behind a plan to open new ocean or bay bathing beaches, the town must demonstrate that it can adequately pick up trash and maintain order at the ones it already has. Before significant resources are spent on new beaches, the town should try to solve the obvious parking crunch and ban drinking alcohol at beaches with lifeguards. These would be less costly and much more expedient first steps.

   Sag Harbor voters will choose a mayor and two board members on Tuesday at a pivotal time for the village. 

   Four candidates are vying for mayor: the two-term incumbent, Brian Gilbride, Pierce Hance, who held the post in the 1990s, Sandra Schroeder, who was the village clerk for many years, and Bruce Tait, the chairman of the village’s harbor committee. For us, the choice comes down to Mr. Hance or Mr. Tait; Mr. Gilbride has been too divisive a figure to stay on.

      The core issue is the police force and whether to keep it, eliminate it, or cut it back to a few officers backed by patrols from a neighboring town or county force. Shutting down the force has been among Mayor Gilbride’s top concerns, ostensibly over its cost to taxpayers and stalled contract deal. Mr. Hance has said his experience with a prior police negotiation over money would have avoided the present bitter stalemate. Mr. Tait has expressed support for the department, saying essentially it needs enough officers to do the job.

      Another matter on which Mr. Hance has spoken out is open government. Under Mayor Gilbride’s watch (with the mute and puzzling acquiescence of State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who moonlights, inappropriately in our view, as the village attorney), meetings have repeatedly been held that violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the New York Open Meetings Law. This disdain for public process is unwelcome.

    Four men are running for two places on the Village Board, including two who previously held village elected positions, Ed Deyermond and Bruce Stafford, and an incumbent, Ed Gregory. For their role in allowing the police matter to get out of hand and in excluding village residents from observing key decisions, Mr. Gregory and Mr. Stafford should not be returned. This leaves Mr. Deyermond, who has considerable government experience as a South­ampton Town assessor and Sag Harbor mayor, among other roles, and Ken O’Donnell, a business owner, as better candidates.

    The mayoral choice, between Mr. Hance and Mr. Tait, is a difficult one, but the edge goes to the latter for his nonconfrontational demeanor and longstanding interest in the environment, community, and waterfront.

   New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has the right idea about sea-level rise, global warming, and the threat of catastrophic storms. East Hampton Town, and to a similar degree other local governments, have so far pretended these problems do not exist, although they may simply be paralyzed by their enormity. The discrepancy, however, is startling.

    Last week, Mr. Bloomberg announced an expensive and ambitious plan to protect the city, drafted in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Long Island’s South Fork towns and villages should also be leading the way on preparations and planning for what appears inevitable for coastal communities, but they are not.

    To get an idea of what our officials should be doing, it is illustrative to look at what the City of New York has been up to. As soon as 2020, city planners said in a recent report, annual average temperatures could increase by three degrees, with a 10-percent jump in rainfall. Sea level around the city could rise more than two feet by the middle of the century, and as many as 800,000 people could soon be living in 100-year flood plains, the report said.

    Vital in the city’s response — and that of the East End towns and villages — will be protecting houses and infrastructure, such as electricity, fuel supplies, and transportation routes. The city’s report contains 250 specific recommendations, including flood walls, levees, and new dune and wetland systems. Early estimates are that the full project would cost at least $20 billion. Money would be made available for the owners of private properties to improve foundations, reinforce walls, and move mechanical equipment out of surge plains. Also included are suggestions about how to assure food supplies, functioning utilities, and health care.

    As Hurricane Sandy showed, the difficulties largely came in the storm’s aftermath — even here, more than 100 miles from where its eye made landfall. For towns like East Hampton, where beaches are key to the dominant second-home economy, saving houses must be balanced with preserving beaches. So far the scales have been tipped too far toward waterfront property owners at the expense of public access, and ad-hoc solutions have been discussed in the absence of an overall plan. East Hampton Town officials have gone one step further, essentially agreeing to toss out the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, which was the result of years of careful study.

    At a national level, Congress and the White House must increase funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help improve its flood maps and provide incentives and aid to those municipalities and homeowners unable to afford adequate preparation. Equally important, Washington must do more to address greenhouse gas emissions, a primary cause of sea-level rise and climate change. Without a two-pronged approach — smart anticipatory steps and cutting carbon dioxide and other pollutants — coastal areas such as our own will be among the first to suffer.

   The take-away from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s proposal to toughen the state’s public-official corruption law, announced yesterday, is that things must be really bad in the Albany halls of power these days.

    If the legislation outlined this week eventually passes the Legislature as the governor envisions, it would expand the definition of bribery to make the “intent” to influence an official or, conversely, an official’s willingness to be influenced, a felony, provided the value of the bribe was in excess of $5,000. Under

present law, prosecutors must prove that the parties had come to an agreement.

    The legislation would also address the misuse of public money, including theft and even the personal use of an official vehicle. It would make it a misdemeanor for an official to fail to report bribery and it would impose a lifetime ban from government for those convicted under the statute.

    The announcement comes on the heels of a scandal revealed last week involving a Democratic state senator from the Bronx trying to buy his way onto the Republican New York City mayoral ticket. Mr. Cuomo, in remarks Tuesday, said that such a revelation would be a “terrible thing to waste.” If the goal is cleaning up government, we agree.

   During a meeting of the East Hampton Village Board last week, two members of the public spoke of the dangers that the continuing increase in automobile and truck traffic poses to pedestrians and bicyclists. Among other things, they suggested that bike lanes were needed. Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. told them to take their ideas to Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen. This is something that should be explored, but it will take more than a knowledgeable law enforcement officer to figure out how to solve Main Street’s problems.

    The State of New York owns the road, and it is therefore incumbent on the village to get the state involved. The danger posed by the close proximity of moving traffic to parked cars in the business district is serious. In recent years there have been a number of incidents in which motorists struck open car doors when drivers failed to check if the road was clear. It is harrowing for all involved. The sudden appearance of a person getting out of a car can bring traffic to a dangerous stop. Fortunately, no one has been killed — yet.

     Traffic laws are designed to protect drivers from themselves. So are safety rules, such as staying one car length behind the car in front of you for every 10 miles per hour of speed. State law makes it the parked-car driver’s responsibility to look before opening the door, which sounds like common sense, except that drivers are not conditioned to such narrow lanes. The Main Streets of Sag Harbor and Southampton, and essentially all the other main drags from Water Mill to Montauk, are single-lane roads that, perhaps paradoxically, allow for more space between parked and moving cars. Only the Village of East Hampton has two lanes each way, which sets the stage for too many close shaves.

    Given how wide East Hampton’s Main Street is, traffic engineers ought to be able to come up with a better scheme than wide center turning lanes, which may, in fact, exacerbate the problem. Would eliminating them provide space for bike lanes? Would narrowing sidewalk aprons be feasible? It’s undoubtedly too late for many changes to take place this season. Let’s hope for improvements by summer 2014 and, in the meantime, keep our fingers crossed that no one is hurt.

   The united call from a number of South Fork environmental groups that the Town of East Hampton proceed no further on coastal policy until at least one top expert has signed on as an adviser is welcome. Post-Hurricane Sandy, East Hampton has been among many shoreline communities rushing to rebuild and reinforce damaged property, in many cases without taking the time to be sure the work will not do more harm than good over the long term. East Hampton Town has fast-tracked scores of permits, and more are headed to the zoning board of appeals for review. Even if the Planning Department were fully staffed, it would be hard-pressed to keep up and not make mistakes, which makes us wonder about how the depleted and brow-beaten staff in its Pantigo Place offices have been able to fulfill their role.

    Town board’s attention has been centered on downtown Montauk, where several hotels and residential complexes are increasingly threatened by erosion. Property owners there, backed by Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, favor using rocks to build a seawall of some kind close to their foundations. Such work is banned in the area by the town’s own Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, and they want it amended.

    One property has already been fortified by a long line of concrete septic rings, which were supposed to be temporary, although a precise time span was not specified. Even with State Department of Environmental Conservation approval, these rings were of questionable legality — and what was worse, they were not studied for their impact on the beach, neighboring properties, or the environment. As experience shows, where shore-hardening structures, such as rocks, bulkheads, or septic rings, are placed, the public beach quickly narrows, or, in some cases, actually disappears.

    Downtown Montauk is not alone by a long shot in being in harm’s way. Nor is it the most threatened portion of the town’s coastline. Beaches were sharply eroded by Sandy and the subsequent winter storms in many locations. These include most north and east-facing stretches, such as along Soundview Drive and Captain Kidd’s Path in Montauk, Mulford Lane at Lazy Point, Gardiner’s Bay in Amagansett, and Gerard Drive in Springs. You can expect property owners in these places and others to pay very careful attention to just how far things are allowed to progress in Montauk.

    Town board Republicans have made it clear that they would like to allow the affected Montauk owners to do whatever it takes to fortify their properties, the public right to the beach be damned. Mr. Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley favor letting the Army Corps of Engineers lead the way without the town’s seeking another opinion. And Councilman Dominick Stanzione has expressed doubt about hiring an expert whose views might differ from that of the Corps — the same organization that has taken nearly 50 years to complete the much-heralded Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation Study and brought you the Hurricane Katrina disaster. If that is the kind of expertise the town is being offered, we say no thank you.

    Coastal policy is the big enchilada for East Hampton Town, the 600-pound gorilla, the whole kit and caboodle. It is not something residents can trust to an anonymous federal bureaucracy or accept in the lack of the best-qualified experts and deliberate study. Mr. Wilkinson, Ms. Quigley, and Mr. Stanzione’s apparent abdication of this complex responsibility may be perhaps the most damaging legacy they will leave unless they change course immediately, call in the best available professionals, and embrace policies based on science and the entire community’s interests.

   As spring on the South Fork really gets under way, a jarring discrepancy between how we think about this area and how run down it looks in many places is becoming apparent. For a resort and second-home community of such renown, East Hampton Town is looking a little down in the dumps these days. Litter is everywhere. An increasing welter of utility lines mar the overhead view. Roadsides, at least those outside the incorporated villages, are left without mowing or maintenance. Trees downed by Hurricane Sandy, now more than six months on, are still in evidence.

    Our streetscapes, though they are likely to be visitors’ first impressions, are becoming a blight across the town. This is sharply at odds with how the area is perceived by outsiders and portrayed in the national media — and something that must be included in the conversation as the campaigns for elected office proceed this year.

    Compare, for example, the roadsides in Bridgehampton and Wainscott. Both are bisected by the state’s Route 27, both are part of their respective towns, yet Bridgehampton is tidy and pleasing to the eye while Wainscott, well, looks like hell. So, too, does much of Springs-Fireplace Road and some places in Montauk. It is a shame and an embarrassment.

    Current town officials should be held accountable for not doing more. But, if they respond at all, they are likely to engage in a reflexive spasm of buck-passing, protesting that many of the eyesores are on county or state roads and, in any event, the financial crisis touched off in Supervisor Bill McGintee’s era cut too deeply into the budget to do much about it. To this we say, nonsense. It costs nothing for town officials to badger and browbeat the state and county, as well as the utility companies, in the hope of action, and as far as we know, they have not done so. Moreover, the visual hodgepodge of illegal signs that tart up many roadsides are entirely within local authority.

    Southampton Town and the Villages of East Hampton and Sag Harbor manage to keep things looking good. So what’s their secret? Why can’t East Hampton Town Hall follow suit? Is the solution a sort of townwide Ladies Village Improvement Society? An increased mandate for the citizens litter committee? These are questions the November hopefuls need to address. Voters should ask for answers.

   A proposal unveiled last week for an 89-unit housing complex in Amagansett for the well-off 55-and-older set is — there’s no other word for it — audacious. And, once you get past the shock factor, it has to rank among the just plain most-unwelcome and ill-conceived notions to come down the pike in a long time.

    Though a formal proposal is a good way off, a representative of the Connecticut firm that bought the 24-acre parcel last year crossed Long Island Sound to make a pitch for it at the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee and the hamlet’s school board. The maybe $100 million project would require that the town create a new zoning classification — senior citizens housing — because the limit under its current three-acre, single-family zoning would be something on the order of just seven houses.

    Beyond the carrot of maybe $2 million in new taxes, it is hard to see who would benefit from a new residential village other than the developers and a few real estate agents. At $850,000 to $1.8 million per unit, there are likely to be few who consider themselves local able to afford the buy-in cost. Promises of adjacent affordable housing or payments to some sort of unspecified do-good fund are far too speculative to be taken seriously.

     The East Hampton Town Comprehensive Plan, which was adopted in 2005, should be a significant impediment to the out-of-town developer’s plans. In its section on the Montauk Highway corridor in Amagansett, the plan says that the town should “restrict the amount of commercial and residential development which could impair the functionality of the town’s main roadway and change the intimate, small scale character of the area to a congested retail strip mall.” Further, and regardless of the village-like layout the developers have brought forward, the comprehensive plan advises the town to “reduce the residential build-out in order to protect the natural and cultural features of Amagansett.”

    The three-acre zoning on the parcel was the result of a specific recommendation in the comprehensive plan, which said that rezoning the area would “help limit the number of new curb cuts, turning movements, and development potential along the town’s main roadway.” There is no way that a development that would add perhaps as many as two vehicles per unit to the mix is consistent with the town’s master planning document.

    And it gets worse for the Connecticut firm in the comprehensive plan: “In addition, this land is ranked as prime farmland, rated by the United States Department of Agriculture as the best land for raising crops in New York State, and is part of Suffolk County’s agricultural industry, ranked first in New York State. The farming landscape and industry help to maintain Amagansett’s rural quality, scenic vistas, and unique sense of place.”

    Regarding the affordable-housing-suitable designation that once was applied to this property, the comprehensive plan says its three-acre zoning will help reduce the “fragmentation, alteration, and elimination of this valuable farmland resource and industry while helping to protect scenic views.” And, by the way, it also says that the natural characteristics of the property make it “unsuitable for development of affordable housing,” or, one can presume, a crowded cluster of cottages and town house apartments for deep-pocketed aging baby boomers.

    Considering what common sense and the comprehensive plan dictate, the developer’s proposal would appear to be well over the horizon of what is in the best interests of the community or the tens of thousands of visitors who pass by on their way to and from Montauk every summer and well into the fall. It is an idea totally out of character and scale, and we think it’s safe to say that it sharply contradicts what most residents would want. The zone change on which this scheme is predicated should be dead on arrival.

   It was an otherwise quiet spring day, and a resident dog owner and lover, morning cup of java from Mary’s Marvelous in hand, was standing near the water’s edge at the ocean at Georgica enjoying the quiet and taking in the view. Then, out of nowhere, a small purebred dragging a leash appeared at his side, barking angrily as if the dark shadow itself were at hand. After what seemed like and an inordinate length of time, a woman called the dog over, and without so much as a wave of apology, they walked away. So much for serenity.

    East Hampton Village officials, considering incidents along the lines of the foregoing and the piles of droppings some irresponsible handlers allow their dogs to leave behind, have been mulling tighter restrictions, among them a rule that would require the animals to be kept on leashes until they were at least 500 feet from a road end or parking lot. Unfortunately, a 500-foot rule, or even a 200-foot variation thereof, is essentially unworkable in one obvious aspect: Many dogs when let off their leashes immediately begin joyful sprints up and down the beach. Without a doubt, some will race back into the restricted area in their exuberance.

    Self-policing, while nice to fantasize about, does not work in the end; dogs — and some of their masters — do not always follow the rules. Though there would be yowls and howls of protest, we can envision the day that seasonal, 24-hour bans on dogs at the most-popular bathing beaches, defined as beaches with lifeguards, are implemented. It seems inevitable, and not too far away.

    As with so many other things, if potential public nuisances such as dogs and bonfires are allowed on the beach, it falls to local government to make sure some beachgoers’ fun does not impinge on the rights of others — including, if need be, sending village or town employees on the taxpayers’ dime out to pick up the messes themselves.