Now in its second season, the Montauk Beach House, a hotel, bar, and music venue, remains in the news for good reason: How the modest former Ronjo Motel turned into a far larger business complex with only the barest of planning review is a key question for East Hampton Town officials — and the electorate.

    The Beach House is hardly the only example of a land-use and zoning process run off the rails in town. Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague, where patrons and taxis use the state right of way as if it were private property, has been allowed to operate a restaurant and bar despite numerous citations. The Inn at Windmill Lane in Amagansett has been allowed to expand twice, including into a historic district building, without the required site plan review. The Panoramic View in Montauk was converted and expanded without authorization from the town planning board. And it was only under pressure that town officials reversed their position on the Dunes, a high-priced alcohol and drug rehabilitation facility in Northwest Woods, which apparently was operating illegally on a parcel zoned for residences. Don’t try any of this at home, however; in each case the operators were well-connected, extremely well-funded, or both.

    Town officials, notably the top building inspector, Tom Preiato, are beginning to take a tougher, if overdue, line on the Beach House. When the property was the threadbare Ronjo, it boasted 33 rooms and few other amenities. Now, after a multimillion-dollar renovation, the Beach House has only 32 rooms, but it has an outdoor bar, a cafe, clothing boutique, membership pool club, and live music acts and D.J.s, which pull in, by even the owners’ cautious statements, as many as 300 to 400 people a day.

    The conundrum at the Beach House is that it occupies a site where these uses are prohibited under present zoning. It doesn’t even have a town music permit. The Ronjo was allowed to persist as a nonconforming use because it pre-existed zoning. Under the town code, however, any expansion whatsoever is supposed to be subject to strict review. Nor has the Beach House’s vastly expanded operation triggered the town’s parking calculation, by which it would either have had to provide ample spaces for its patrons or pay into a fund earmarked for that purpose.

    This all appears to have been made possible by a compliant Town Hall, which has looked past these issues and the fact that the place doesn’t even have a valid certificate of occupancy, without which it should not have opened its doors. There has even been an allegation of what might be called witness-tampering, in which someone with knowledge of the entertainment at the Beach House was dissuaded from speaking at a town planning board hearing.

    You can be sure that other East Hampton Town motel or resort business owners are watching closely to see how far the Beach House owners can push things. It would be a lucrative precedent if its expansion were allowed to stand. Conversely, those concerned with how the town enforces its zoning laws, quality of life issues, parking, traffic, and noise should be demanding a stronger hand. This gets at a fundamental question about who town government is for: residents or those who just want to make a buck. No one, no matter how well they are able to play the system to their advantage, should be above the law.

   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.

   By a strict party-line vote, the East Hampton Town Board approved a giant party called Shark Attack Sounds for the Fourth of July weekend in Montauk despite obvious concerns that the event had grown too large to be held either at its original location on East Lake Drive or at the Montauk Yacht Club.     

    Several thousand people attended this party last year, and this time around, Ben Watts, the promoter, asked the town for permission to host as many as 3,900 paying guests in an application that became public only at the last possible minute. What is astonishing is that Town Hall received the permit application on June 3, although you can be sure the event was planned long before that, and that it came to light only a little more than a week ago when it was mumbled onto the town board’s agenda by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson.

    Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who is seeking re-election in November, cast the decisive vote in favor of the application. He and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley joined the supervisor, Republicans, in supporting the party. The board’s two Democrats voted against it.

    In 2012, when town officials shut down Shark Attack Sounds for exceeding its 800-person permit, chaos ensued. Hundreds of vehicles took off bumper-to-bumper as revelers looked to continue the party elsewhere. This year, in a compromise, the promoters will turn off the music at 11 p.m., although the mass exodus will essentially be duplicated as thousands of guests queue up to take buses back to remotely parked vehicles — or climb into the likely horde of mostly non-local taxis drawn by the opportunity to charge exorbitant fares.

    You can expect Rushmeyer’s, the Surf Lodge, Beach House, and Montauk’s other nightspots to enjoy a healthy boost of business — while neighbors cope with noise and litter — as the party moves onward and outward. This could be one reason why the Republicans, who seem eager to help Montauk’s burgeoning nightlife venues at every turn, voted yes. Meanwhile, in a separate, but related, matter, the board seems ready to approve new regulations that would make enforcement of noise complaints nearly impossible.

    You couldn’t pick a worse place or time for an event of this size. Star Island, where the Montauk Yacht Club is located, is accessed over a narrow causeway that feeds into what is at best a secondary road. On the Fourth of July weekend, police and emergency responders have more than enough to deal with without a bacchanal that will draw additional thousands to the area. And for what? So a horde of young adults can get together to drink and have fun while an out-of-town, part-time promoter makes a few bucks for himself and the yacht club’s corporate ownership? There are several other marinas on the island, and a private residence, and to top things off, the United States Coast Guard Station, which is just up the road, would almost certainly see its access disrupted during the event. 

    The town board would have been well within its rights to deny the permit because the application contained what appears to be “materially false information.” It stated that the party was to be in part a benefit for the Montauk Playhouse, but it now appears that the community center’s representatives were never approached about it. The application had been made in time, at least 30 days before the party, but due to the town’s routing system, in which the paperwork is first viewed by the Police Department and others, the town board did not learn about it until the last minute. Even then, Mr. Wilkinson appeared to obfuscate the request, failing to describe exactly who was seeking the permit and for what when scheduling a public hearing.

    All of this gets, once again, right to the heart of East Hampton’s identity: Is our town government of and for its residents or not? Are we — and the powers that be — just in it for the money or do we care about where we live and want to keep it a certain way? It is unfair that anyone’s peaceful enjoyment of their house, yard, or summer rental is impinged on? Yes, we live in what is largely a resort area, but that does not give commercial interests, or, dare we mention, the pilots of helicopters and jets the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want? Protecting neighborhoods from unwarranted assaults is, in fact, enshrined in the East Hampton Town Code.

    We suspect we are not alone in thinking that the balance has tipped too far in favor of those who want to extract what cash they can here without regard for anything or anyone else. It is a pity that they have found such willing and consistent supporters among those on the town board.

   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.

   An article in these pages this week about local enforcement of regulations governing access to businesses and public accommodations for people with disabilities points to a looming problem: East Hampton Town departments have been left unable to provide needed services as a result of three years of budget-cutting. Seeking compliance with disabilities laws, both local and federal, would take a considerable investment of time and staff, something the departments involved lack. For candidates hoping to run for town supervisor and town board, leveling with the voters about the long-term need for tax increases will be essential.

    In a number of editions this year, we have been writing about some of the key issues that the political parties and voters should grapple with as they make their choices. Among these have been returning civility and respect to town meetings, restoring the rule of law, and coping with climate change and sea-level rise in an informed manner. Dollars and cents issues are next on the list, and there is significant reason for concern that the Wilkinson years have so gutted both infrastructure and employee numbers that meeting needs in the years ahead will be expensive.

    Whether because of politics or ideology, the day of reckoning about the town’s forced poverty is coming soon. This could well be one reason why there has been no one of note stepping forward to run for town supervisor on the Republican line. Perhaps they are in on the little secret that the next person in the office will necessarily be responsible for tax increases. This would not be the first time in relatively recent memory that the town’s budget-writers left a financial time bomb waiting for an incoming administration. The McGintee administration did it by inappropriate juggling of town accounts; the Wilkinson team has done it by decimating town departments.

     The difficulties are not limited to disability laws or overworked ordinance enforcers. The Building Department reports having a hard time keeping up with routine paperwork, for example. Nor do departmental problems take into consideration some big-ticket items, such as necessary roadwork, that would in most cases have to be paid for by the town’s issuing bonds, whose cost would show up in tax bills for years to come.

    This is also why you may not see a resolution to East Hampton Town’s contract negotiations with its police union until after the budget is due in November. That way, any likely increases will not be included in the annual police appropriation, forcing the next town administration, probably a Democratic one, to scramble to come up with the money. By one calculus, resulting taxpayer anger could vault the Republicans back into power in the following election.

    Writing the town’s 2014 budget is a responsibility that falls to Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, whose sniffy distaste for funding much of anything without tapping surpluses or selling assets has been made clear. The budget itself is not made final until after the November election, but it should loom large as the parties narrow down their choices, the campaigns unfold, and the candidates talk to voters about the tough choices ahead.

   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.

   It is ironic that in a place that boasts New York State’s biggest-dollar commercial fishing port and is surrounded by a natural abundance of fish in inshore waters it can be oddly difficult for consumers and restaurants to buy local, fresh-caught fish and shellfish. Most of what is landed here is taken by trucks to the Hunts Point reincarnation of the Fulton Fish Market, where it can be put back on trucks and brought back to the South Fork. This is a bizarre arrangement, one that contributes an unnecessary amount of particulate and global-warming pollutants to the atmosphere while adding to the price local consumers pay for fish.

    Now comes a way to provide an alternative route from fishing vessel to plate. The idea is to have consumers buy shares of a harvester’s catch, receiving a sampling of what is coming over the gunnels as the year moves along. Also likely to be interested in such a scheme is the region’s small but growing aquaculture industry. This might be good for our perennially hard-strapped baymen, who should be getting a premium for their catch but often do not, despite eye-popping prices by the pound once the fillets are in the shops. The initial plan comes from something called Dock to Dish, which is based in Montauk and has had early support from New York Sea Grant and the Concerned Citizens of Montauk.

    The logistics are complicated, however, as are the hurdles necessary to satisfy regulatory authorities that the highly perishable product is safe and harvested legally. By comparison, few such regulations limit how community-supported farms provide boxes filled with kale, squash, or carrots to their subscribers. Supporters of the fish-share concept believe the challenges can be overcome.

    We see the beginning of steps toward something that would be good for consumers and harvesters alike. As one fish-shop owner said last week, the more people who eat fish the better.

   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.

   After an unnecessarily messy period in which the East Hampton School District denied tenure to a well-regarded elementary school principal, stumbled into a likely lawsuit by bus personnel, and repeatedly defied state law on sharing documents under discussion at open meetings, it is little surprise that as many as five newcomers will seek places on the school board next month. Such moments come and go with school boards, and East Hampton is joined by Wainscott in illegally withholding documents and by Montauk in generating parents’ ire, in the latter case over class sizes.

    By their very nature, school bureaucracies are unwieldy and their operations are difficult for board members to fathom, let alone manage. In Sag Harbor, the school board has been torn apart by disagreement and resignations. Nevertheless, East Hampton’s board strikes us as particularly malleable and not prone to learn from its mistakes, especially on personnel and business matters. For example, some have said that a multimillion-dollar lawsuit with a former construction manager could have been averted had the board followed the state Open Meetings Law when it decided some years ago to fire him. The demotion of Gina Kraus from John Marshall Elementary School principal to teacher blindsided her and parents — and touched off a furor that might have been avoided had basic procedures been followed.

    It may appear a trifling observation, but it is our opinion that in allowing the district’s superintendent and business manager to sit during board meetings at the dais with the elected members is both a practical and symbolic mistake. Boards are supposed to act as the community’s representatives, seeking information from administrators and balancing their proposals with taxpayers’ and students’ needs. Giving administrators equal standing creates subtle pressure on board members to side with them in disputes and to vote the way the administrators would like. We would like to hear prospective board members’ views on this issue.

    The watchdog role of a school board should not be abandoned. Having the superintendent and business manager  sit to the side would make it clear that they are there to assist the board, or perhaps better yet, asking them to sit in the audience, shoulder to shoulder with other staff members, parents, and the press, may help remind everyone who is supposed to be in charge.