For evidence that the East Hampton School Board has made a serious commitment to reversing years in which the public and press were excluded from the decision-making process, one need look no further than the meetings scheduled to prepare the 2013-14 budget. Work sessions are to continue more or less every other week until the May 21 vote. Inviting the public, and especially parents, to look on as the details are worked out began last year.

    The long slog began last night in the district office on Long Lane with the presentation of the first draft of the coming year’s spending plan. A regular school board meeting will take place on Jan. 22, and the next budget work session on Jan. 29. Anyone can attend these meetings, although public comment will be permitted only during the regular meetings. Nominating petitions for school board candidates are due on April 22.

    The new openness stands in sharp contrast to the way East Hampton school budgets were written in earlier years — and to the norm in other districts. Time was not so long ago that the budgets would be dumped, fully formed, on the public only a week or so before the required May vote. Historically, the unwarranted — and under the State Freedom of Information Law illegal — secrecy left parents and taxpayers without an opportunity to understand what they were being asked to approve.

    School costs are the largest items on local tax bills for most property owners. Whether or not board members, administrators, and staff enjoy working in front of an audience, the law requires it. There is still some distance to go in assuring that the East Hampton School Board fully meets its obligations as outlined in the Freedom of Information Law. That said, its commitment to opening up the budget process is worth acknowledging.

   Privatize the Long Island Power Authority? That was the take-away message from the Moreland Commission, which had been asked by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to assess the utility’s preparation for and response to Hurricane Sandy. Not so fast, Long Islanders should be saying.

    Governor Cuomo appears to favor scrapping the public-private LIPA and replacing it with a wholly independent utility company answerable to state regulators, according to news reports. Kathleen Rice, the Nassau County district attorney who was a member of the Moreland Commission, said the leading alternative, reconfiguring the utility, would not gain ratepayers’ favor. The third course mapped by the commission — and perhaps the least-popular among officials — would be to to allow the New York Power Authority to take over.

    There is no question that LIPA was unprepared for Hurricane Sandy and, as a consequence, was unable to speedily restore electricity to many customers. A 2006 study commissioned by the utility itself identified striking deficiencies in its storm plans. LIPA had a trial run after 2010’s Hurricane Irene, but failed afterward to take adequate corrective steps.

    Part of the blame must rest with the governor. Despite two years in Albany, Mr. Cuomo has left open four of the nine seats on the LIPA board of trustees, although he can appoint members. If, as many observers agree, oversight was lacking, there can be no excuse for not filling these positions regardless of whether he believes the utility is fatally flawed.

    If privatization were to work, as the commission said, it would have to be within a highly structured regulatory framework developed with consumers’ best interests in mind. But even then control would be at a remove and filtered through a corporation that answered first to shareholders and Wall Street. Considering this, the third option, putting Long Island’s electric service under the New York Power Authority, might be the best choice for all of us who ultimately pay the bills.

   The East Hampton Town Board is to hear from the public this evening about a proposed revision to existing taxi regulations. Under a law passed in 2011, the town requires a license to operate a taxi within its borders. The beefed-up provisions of the new law would require proof of insurance, fingerprinting and background checks of all drivers, and applications to be vetted by the Police Department. The law would also create a taxi review board.

    These additions to the town’s taxi law may be for the best, but where the proposal begins to raise questions is in a provision that would limit taxi licenses to companies and individuals with a physical address within the town. It would be difficult to come up with a parallel example in which the town similarly restricts commercial activity to residents alone. Building contractors, for example, must be licensed to work in the town, but they can hail from elsewhere.

    Furthermore, none of the proposed changes really addresses the taxi problem from the rider’s perspective. Out-of-town drivers are drawn here in the summer season by the prospect of making hundreds of dollars in a single night, shuttling revelers around on the party, share-house, and bar scenes. Even were taxi owners and individual drivers to obtain local business addresses, exorbitant prices would be likely to remain. This preys on those who have no other way home and creates a counterproductive incentive for those who might drive drunk instead.

    And there is another hitch: The new regulations would not cover taxis that pick up or discharge passengers across the town line. Under those circumstances, taxis are regulated by Suffolk County, which just last year gained the right to do so by an act of the State Legislature. It is not clear how East Hampton Town’s effort would dovetail with the county’s, or if, technically, it would even be legal.

    As proposed, the law would, in effect, create an improper monopoly for locally based livery companies while doing nothing to curb the sometimes outrageously high fares charged, especially for late-night rides. Although additional regulation appears warranted, East Hampton Town’s changes must be undertaken in concert with Suffolk’s authority and, foremost, with the right of passengers to a clean, safe, and affordable ride in mind.

   Verizon gets its bills to its customers on time. So do the Long Island Power Authority, your credit card company, and the people who supply home heating oil. So why did an unknown number of Town of East Hampton property taxpayers fail to get their bills at the end of the year? Answers have not been forthcoming. Nor does there appear to be much interest among town officials in figuring out what happened and how to prevent a similar mistake in the future.

    Here is how the system is supposed to work: Once the 2013 budget is approved in November, tax bills are prepared, and then sent out. As it has in the past, the town hired an outside company to take care of the mailings. First-half payments were due without penalty by Jan. 10. The bills went out of the town offices between Dec. 14 and 19, according to Len Bernard, the town’s budget officer. However, somewhere along the line, either at the mailing company, Town Hall, or the post offices, something went amiss. A number of bills arrived late or never showed up at all, even at addresses to which bills had been posted successfully in prior years.

    The official reaction, that there had been no “noticeable” drop in tax payments, misses the point. If first-half taxes went unpaid until mid-May, for example, when the rest of the bill comes due, the taxpayer would incur a 5-percent penalty, real money for most people. Most property owners probably know that payments are due twice annually, but for those accustomed to receiving tax bills, reminders in the mail are all but essential.

    Town officials should take this lapse seriously, learn what went wrong, and change the way mailings are handled in the future, if necessary.

   A new package of laws written in response to the Sandy Hook school shootings was making its way rapidly to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s desk this week. The hastily prepared rules would tighten New York State’s already-tough gun laws, putting further restrictions on so-called assault weapons and providing law enforcement with procedures to take firearms away from some people deemed mentally ill.

    An expanded state ban on rapid-fire weapons and large-capacity ammunition clips might reduce the death toll in extremely unlikely mass shootings, but it would do nothing about the almost run-of-the-mill shootings that take place in the state’s cities and rural areas. Moreover, New York already is among the states with the lowest number of firearm deaths per capita. According to the Violence Policy Center, which advocates for gun control, only New Jersey, Hawaii, and Massachusetts had fewer. The states with higher rates of gun ownership had higher rates of gun-related deaths.

    While dramatic and headline-grabbing, Albany’s effort will probably do little to reduce gun violence. What would do so is a long-term approach to reducing the number of firearms in the state over a period of 10, 20, even 30 years. Unfortunately, any state effort will be at best only a half-measure without national action.

    New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has emerged as a leader of the gun-control movement, presented a plan at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland recently to reduce firearm violence. His ideas include thorough background checks, making illegal gun trafficking a federal offense, and limiting assault weapons and clips.

    These steps, while sensible, fail to make a priority of reducing the sheer number of guns — both legal and illegal — in this country. The statistics are unarguable: The more armed a state’s populace, the greater the chances its residents will die from firearm injuries. Measures that do not over time draw down the innumerable private arsenals tucked away in closets, gun safes, and under beds through buy-backs and other measures will only prolong the killing.

   The great scramble to spend will begin in earnest now, following Monday’s passage in the United States Senate of a $50.5 billion aid package for areas hit by late October’s Hurricane Sandy. The challenge is to make sure the money will be used in a sensible manner and with the long term in mind. In East Hampton and elsewhere along the coast, with pledges to rebuild houses, businesses, and infrastructure, the outlook is not good.  

    What would be key as local, county, and state leaders look at the path ahead is to consider how to mitigate potential dangers based on the best available science and technical advice. The impulse to rebuild and defend after a natural disaster is understandable, but this defiant approach may not be the right one. To endure for generations, coastal communities must prepare for more and stronger storms, as well as rising sea levels, which means we all need to rethink how we live along the shore. So far, the necessary mental adjustment has not taken place. In fact, the promise of piles of federal dollars may put the inevitable day of reckoning further off.

    It is critical to remember that Hurricane Sandy was only a Category 1 storm, and that Irene, which passed through the region in 2011, was a tropical storm by the time it made landfall here. By contrast, the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 was estimated to be of Category 3 strength, and it carried a tsunami-like surge of water far in excess of any seen here during Sandy. We also must not forget winter northeasters, which, because they can stick around for 24 hours or more, can produce hurricane-style erosion. 

    Unfortunately, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has been preaching what amounts to a false dichotomy between an environmental perspective and the needs of commercial property owners, particularly in Montauk. This shows that like many other elected officials he simply doesn’t get it.

    Our economic vitality is inextricably linked to the area’s environment. To consider them at odds is more than misguided; it is irresponsible. The landward movement of the shoreline is inevitable. Retreat from the brink would not damage business interests. On the contrary, it is the only long-term way to be certain that the economy will thrive for decades to come. Lest one think that short-sightedness is limited to just one political party, Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, declared, “We are now just a presidential pen stroke away from beginning the rebuilding process in earnest.”

    The federal bill is lopsided in favor of the status-quo. Some $16 billion will go to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $11 billion for shelter and utility costs from Sandy and other storms, and $10 billion for New York and New Jersey transit systems. Projects with an eye beyond immediate rebuilding are the stepchildren and will have to compete for a share of a mere $1 billion set aside for the Army Corps of Engineers.

    Given the distribution of funding in the Sandy bill, as well as the ongoing federal budget debacle, counting on an unending stream of federal dollars for sand replenishment at Montauk is a sucker’s bet. Far more sensible, if nearly impossible politically, would be to seek funding to reduce the number and density of shorefront structures through relocation and/or condemnation while creating a dune line to protect the remaining properties.

    A plan for the South Fork that does not include retreat as an option cannot be considered complete. Likewise, officials across the region must resist the temptation to spend first, plan later.

   One thing is clear about the East Hampton Town Trustees: They are the proprietors of a gold mine in the form of sand, which can be dug and sold to oceanfront property owners whose houses are threatened by erosion. How officials have been going about divvying up this increasingly valuable commodity, however, leaves room for improvement.

    In recent years, the trustees have begun selling sand scooped from the seaward bottom of Georgica Pond to contractors, who then resell it by the yard to homeowners. Unfortunately, the process has been fraught with controversy, with allegations about lax bookkeeping, some contractors taking more than their agreed-upon number of cubic yards, and apparently arbitrary choices about who the trustees give contracts to. Like town and village boards, the trustees are obligated to advertise for bids from the companies that do the digging and selling, yet they appear to have drifted away from this procedure, deciding against one applicant for sand because they did not like the cut of his jib.

    New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which has environmental authority over tidal areas, insists that only clean and “beach-compatible” mined sand can be placed along the shore. This means that sources are extremely limited. The D.E.C. has set a 12,000-cubic-yard annual limit on the amount of sand that can be dug from Georgica Pond; a similar amount has been taken each year at Mecox, which is within Southampton Town Trustee jurisdiction.

    This year, the East Hampton Trustees decided to grant sole access to the Georgica sand to a single contracting company. Another contractor, Billy Mack of First Coastal Corporation, has complained, saying he had believed the trustees would divide the 12,000-cubic-yard allotment among several firms and that the late-hour change left him and his clients with few options. One property owner needs about 10,000 cubic yards alone, Mr. Mack told the trustees at one of their recent meetings.

    If an increase in the amount of sand that can be taken from Georgica Pond is deemed environmentally sound, the Department of Environmental Conservation should agree to allow the East Hampton trustees to sell more to meet emergency needs.

    From where we sit, it appears that the trustees have to come up with a new system of awarding sand contracts that is open to scrutiny, and fair. The money involved is sizable. The demand is not likely to diminish in the foreseeable future. Seat-of-the-pants procedures are no longer good enough.

   The Sag Harbor Zoning Board of Appeals has been asked to give approval to a controversial project at the Harbor Heights service station on Hampton Street, on the East Hampton side of the village. In a plan put forward by the property’s owner, John Leonard, the existing service station would be razed and a new, larger one — with a convenience store, roughly the functional size of the village’s 7-Eleven — would rise on the site.

    But the question for the Sag Harbor Z.B.A. is of a more existential nature than how high the canopy at the station should be or just how many square feet might be acceptable for the convenience store. Instead, board members ought to be asking why Harbor Heights should be allowed to expand at all, especially since it would be in clear contradiction of local regulations that bar the gas station’s growth because it is on land with residential zoning.

    The basic issue is how Sag Harbor officials deal with this and other projects proposed for businesses that are on property zoned for houses alone. Such businesses are termed pre-existing, nonconforming uses, and they can be updated, restored, or repaired — up to a point. That mark, and this is key, is that the “degree of nonconformity shall not be increased,” according to Sag Harbor law.

    Another section of the village code supports the belief that any discussion of how much to allow Harbor Heights to grow is misplaced. It states that “every effort shall be exercised to contain those nonconforming buildings and uses that now exist.” Doubling the number of gas pumps from two to four, adding a food market, providing more space for mechanics, and putting up a high, lighted canopy cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered containing or restraining the use. Officials appear to have fallen for the old lawyer’s trick of debating the details while looking past the fundamental problems with an application.

    By a back-of-the-napkin calculation based on traffic projections provided by the applicant, the new station and convenience store could increase the number of patrons there by 40 percent. Others looking at the developer’s numbers have said traffic could triple. And this, even at the lower figure, is not expansion? Hello, Sag Harbor, is anyone home?

    Repair shops and filling stations are flat-out prohibited in the village’s residential zones. However, a convenience store as part of a filling station is allowed by special permit under a provision of village law suspiciously relevant to this application. If the property owner is to be believed that there is no money in selling gasoline, the main business on the site might be the store — which should have raised a question about change of use earlier in the process.

    Beyond all this is an unmentioned section of the law that allows the Sag Harbor Village Board to terminate a nonconforming use, like Harbor Heights, “when it is found detrimental to the conservation of the value of the surrounding land and improvements or to future development of surrounding lands and therefore is tending to deteriorate or blight the neighborhood.” As neighborhood opposition to the proposal coalesces around fears of falling property values and a loss of community character, the Harbor Heights property owner should keep in mind that the village, in the end, has this as its ultimate option.

   In years past, it was the Town of East Hampton that led the way among local governments in providing affordable, or so-called work-force, housing for its residents. Now East Hampton Village is finding a way to inch into this role. The first step, though it appears minor, could actually be significant over time and make a meaningful addition to the stock of reasonably priced rental apartments in the village.

    On Jan. 18, the village board approved a change to the zoning code that will eliminate an onerous fee that otherwise has been sought from those who would develop or convert buildings to apartments in the centralized business districts. Applicants were asked to pay the village $10,000 for every parking space deemed necessary that they couldn’t provide. The cost was an obvious disincentive for property owners to create apartments; although second-floor residential rentals were permitted, few were built. The revision allows the fee to be waived on a case-by-case basis, giving the zoning board of appeals the responsibility.

    One of the possible, if unspoken, upsides of the change is that it could help steer new affordable housing toward the central commercial centers, where essential services, food, entertainment, and public transportation are available. By contrast, most of the Town of East Hampton’s affordable residential projects have been dispersed, adding to the number of cars on the roads rather than diminishing it.

    The irony is that East Hampton Village erred long ago by allowing the conversion of second-story apartments to offices, retail spaces, and the like. This measure would reverse this mistake, if one small project at a time.

   Pretty much everyone who follows such things has noticed by now the starkly uneven way East Hampton Town’s building and zoning laws are applied, particularly when it comes to Montauk. How you are treated apparently depends on who you know — and how deep your pockets are. And right now there is probably no sharper contrast than that involving the Beach House hotel-slash-club and the Montauk Brewing Company.

    The beer-makers, three local men who have been friends since their years at East Hampton High School, have asked the town for permission to convert an existing barn behind their tasting room into a proper brewery; up to now, they have made the beer elsewhere. Going through the review process the right way, they have run up against the town’s off-street parking requirement, by which it has been calculated they would have to pay the town a substantial fee, instead of providing spaces for three or so vehicles on their modest lot. With no room for parking, the cost would be a substantial burden on the start-up business. The year-round brewers are considering their options and may ask the town board to allow them to make the payment over time or to change the parking rules.

    On the other side of Montauk’s main drag, the very seasonal Beach House was expanded last winter and spring without the obviously required prerequisite of full planning board review. As a result, the one-time basic motel became something else altogether and now includes a daytime membership pool club, full bar, nightclub with live acts (but not the required music permit), an on-premise space lately occupied by a fashion boutique, and a gift shop — all without a code-mandated planning decision.

    And how many parking spaces did the owners of the high-end hotel and party spot have to ante up for? None. That’s right, not one. Because the Beach House was able to skirt nearly all review, the parking requirements never came up.

    The difference between the way that the Beach House, a well-funded operation, and the brewery, a do-it-yourself undertaking, have been treated demonstrates just how prone to outside influence town government has become. At least two of the town’s Republican leaders — Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilman Dominick Stanzione — attended the Beach House’s grand opening, making it clear that the project had their backing even though questions were already swirling about its legality. This was also well after the supervisor pushed for a deal in which the town sold the Beach House a strip of public land that, in effect, made the whole thing possible — and at a price, according to records we have seen, named by the Beach House rather than picked out of the air, as Mr. Wilkinson had claimed. Later, it was only when pressured into doing something about the renovations by some outside government that the town building inspector sent a letter to the hotel’s owners politely asking what their intentions were.

    The Beach House’s representatives appeared in front of the town zoning board of appeals this week on the narrow issues of whether the bar and retail conversion could remain without permits. This is an obvious smokescreen that obscures the key question of how the expensive renovation and plain-as-day change of use from what was a modest, pre-existing, nonconforming motel could have been allowed to happen in the first place without a stringent examination of plans — and their impact on parking in downtown Montauk —  before it broke ground.

    Meanwhile, the Montauk Brewing Company partners continue to pursue their goals by the book, as they have for more than two years, seeking proper approvals for their expansion. Unfortunately they may end up paying dearly for their willingness to follow the letter of the law.

    The least the Beach House owners could do to make amends is offer to carry the brewery’s excellent ales and porters on its illegal bar’s taps. Of course, no dummies, they probably already have.

    The rest of us should demand that Town Hall get its act together and at the very least apply the law in a fair manner.