If you have not yet seen the new Parrish Art Museum from the inside, it should be high on your to-do list. The venerable institution has been reborn in a striking new home in Water Mill designed by a renowned Swiss firm. Long and deceptively low-slung in its farm field-like setting, the museum has been called “an unexpected monument” in New York magazine and “a triumph” in Architectural Record.

    These are not mere esoteric or academic accolades; from the new Parrish’s early weeks, the public has responded positively, with thousands thronging the opening events and visitors continuing to arrive in solid numbers, according to Terrie Sultan, its director. The soaring interior galleries give the collection’s old favorites a new, welcome, and much-needed airing. There is room, too, for traveling exhibitions and short-term shows.

    The Parrish also seems revitalized in terms of programs. This began before the doors formally opened on the 600-foot-long Herzog and de Meuron building. In recent months, talks by members of a broadly defined creative community and the compelling Parrish Road Show of site-specific installations and events this summer were well-attended and created welcome buzz.

    In some ways, the remarkable new structure is just a beginning, however. Its ample space and gleaming walls present opportunities for an institution that sees itself at the hub of the region’s visual arts. Where the Parrish has traditionally been strong on the South Fork painters of a century ago, its involvement in the contemporary scene has been less acclaimed. There are scores of painters, sculptors, photographers, ceramicists, and video artists living and working here now; acquiring representative examples of their best work — and making sense of it all — is the Parrish’s challenge now.

   Reports of a die-off elsewhere notwithstanding, this season’s East Hampton scallop harvest has been another for the record books. Not only are these succulent shellfish abundant here, some of the individuals are huge, with shucked meats exceeding an inch and a half in length. This is good news for local harvesters and gourmands, and a significant turnaround from the situation only a few years ago when scallops were so few and far between that the commercial harvest was essentially halted. From about 1985, a series of so-called “brown tide” algae blooms devastated the scallop population, forcing some baymen off the water for good.

    A simple explanation for the scallops’ resurgence is difficult to come by. One important factor has been the combined efforts of several shellfish hatcheries, including one run by the Town of East Hampton and another by Cornell Cooperative Extension in Southold Town, which restocked many bays and harbors.

    All is not well, however. Ominous news in the form of widespread mortality in some parts of the Peconic Estuary came in the fall. A different algae bloom had been cited, though a firm cause remains unknown. And state officials recently added to the list of South Fork water bodies considered impaired by nitrogen pollution, which can contribute to algal blooms. Failing septic systems are a huge problem here, and as sea level rise slowly inundates low-lying areas, maintaining and/or improving water quality will be a challenge.

    Some years ago, we wrote in a spirit of hope that scallops might someday be restored — a canary in our coal mine, if you pardon the stretched metaphor. Now that recent local harvests bode well, we must press elected officials for a commitment to keeping scallops — and all other indigenous marine life — a top priority.

   Reading between the lines after taking a long, hard look, the East Hampton Town Budget and Finance Committee, an unpaid group of citizens with tons of business and accounting credibility, has concluded that the work of setting Town Hall to rights remains half done.

    Building on steps taken after the McGintee administration’s mismanagement, the town board and Len Bernard, its budget officer, are on a real path toward paying back internal debts and have kept a tight rein on spending. This is to the good, as the state comptroller’s office has indicated. On the other side of the coin, however, what might be termed the town’s parsimony is leaving a ticking time bomb for residents in the form of long-term needs and delayed work on infrastructure.

    On the list of work unfunded and consequently not done, are the probable modernization of the town’s sewage treatment plant, storm-water run-off control, certain ecological protection measures, and deteriorating roads. Town Hall’s technological side is said to be outmoded, and that will also cost money down the line. As we learned from Hurricane Sandy, many town offices were left without power — there were no backup generators — and in some cases, key staff members just sat in the dark and tried to keep busy. As the town’s near-total silence before and after the storm demonstrated, better preparation and information systems will have to be put in place, and the cost is unknown.

    The budget and finance committee has recommended that the town quickly develop a capital budget to address these and other long-term concerns. Not doing so now will leave the difficult job of selling a complex program of restoring town infrastructure to a future town board. It is time the town board got serious about East Hampton’s future needs and leveled with taxpayers about what it will cost to bring the town’s infrastructure to where it needs to be.

   The war on evidence-based policy-making being waged by some in the House of Representatives continued this week, with three members in the running to become chairman of the important Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. Each is deeply skeptical of the widely held belief that human activities are a cause of global warming. Barring an unexpected reversal, either Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, or Lamar Smith of Texas will head the committee, which, among other things, shares control of federal spending on almost all nondefense research and development.

    Even if you happen to think that climate change is a hoax, the nomination of three people whose scientific credentials are shaky at best to head this committee should be alarming. The committee has influence over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among many others.

    The problem is that Mr. Rohrabacher and the others apparently find it easy to side with the relative handful of climate change deniers, rather than accept the mountain of evidence that scientists the world over say points to humankind’s role in warming the planet. If their pick-and-choose approach to scientific research extends to areas of inquiry other than climate, any of the three would seem to be a poor choice to help run the government’s civilian research and development efforts. They are not alone among Congressional Republicans with a dim view of science; Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, for example, recently sidestepped a question about the Earth’s age — pegged at 4.5 billion years based on rigorous, verifiable data — and mused that it was one of the “great mysteries.”

    Critics have said the United States is falling behind other countries in preparing young people for careers in math and science and, as a result, it may soon see its global dominance fade. Putting forward candidates like these to head this vital committee does not bode well for the country’s future — or the world’s.

   Paul Sapienza, the father of soccer here, whose Springs School teams went undefeated in 13 of the 15 years he was here, used to wonder whatever happened to all the talent he was sending East Hampton High School’s way. One answer was that the kids, while they possessed fine individual skills, had not yet figured out how to play as a team, nor had they, in some cases, learned that being a team player meant you also had to keep your grades up.

    They call soccer the beautiful game, but at the high school level it often is not. Frequently it is the tougher team, the one with the players who fight for every 50-50 ball, and who then, through sheer force of will sometimes, put it into the opponent’s goal, that wins. Hold on too long to the ball, however nifty your footwork may be, and it will prove unavailing.

    These days, Mr. Sapienza, one of whose men’s traveling teams once rode a 77-game winning streak in Islandwide competition, would no longer be wondering whatever happened to his kids at the high school level. Rich King, the head coach for the past five years, and his assistant, Don McGovern, who formerly coached Pierson High, have got their charges playing as a team — as a championship team in fact. They play with toughness and with finesse, they’re determined, not cocky, and they’ve been wonderful to watch.

    King and McGovern’s teams have played in three county championship games and have won three league championships in the past four years. They won the county championship last year and this and, while they lost 2-0 to Jericho in the Long Island title game this past week, they gave it everything they had and were unbowed in defeat.

    “It’s been a fulfilling season,” King said. “These kids always found a way to win, they have 10 one-goal victories. As a coach you can’t ask for anything more. . . . They always want to win a state title. It’s not a coach-driven goal, it’s the goal of our kids. And it’s going to happen one of these days.”  

    Meanwhile, there’s plenty for the players, their coaches, and East Hampton to be proud about.

   An increasingly popular idea among the owners of oceanfront properties on Long Island has been to organize into tax districts to fund erosion-protection measures, such as pumping millions of tons of sand onto narrowed beaches. For these property owners, the districts may seem attractive, but they may well delay the day of reckoning along the coasts at a time when a more flexible response to rising sea level is needed — one that would not almost guarantee that United States taxpayers would be asked to pony up to protect coastal vacation properties.

    Some eastern Southampton Town property owners are eager to establish a district like that in place in the Village of West Hampton Dunes; they are pushing the Town of Southampton to get a move on and schedule a hearing. However, at a post-Sandy meeting recently, one of the Bridgehampton organizers of the proposed tax district said cost estimates were rising sharply and that the district might have to ask for state or federal financial help.

    Governments with the power to levy and collect taxes on behalf of property owners are eligible, at least hypothetically, for funding from Albany and Washington. And there you have both the attraction and the problem with tax districts. It’s great for property owners, but not so hot for a country struggling to get out of recession and bring deficits under control.

    Pumping sand onto beaches is expensive. A first run at bolstering beaches in Sagaponack and Bridgehampton was priced in the neighborhood of $24 million. The huge cost — and the likely need for federal dollars — is something to consider with regard to eastern Southampton. It is also a consideration for a now-proposed downtown Montauk beach-nourishment district. In asking to establish a tax district in Montauk, proponents will tell you just how important Montauk’s motels and residential properties are for the local economy. This may be so, but as a famous actor once said, “Show me the money.”

    In the long run, it would probably be far less expensive for properties in at-risk zones to be purchased and returned to a natural state than for taxpayers at large to be asked to help pay to keep seasonally inhabited buildings where they should never have been built in the first place.

   In a crucially important cover story on Friday about the Long Island Power Authority’s performance before and after Hurricane Sandy plowed into the region on Oct. 29, Newsday reported that the utility failed to prepare for a big storm despite having made repeated commitments to the state that it would do just that.

    The story confirms what had been a widespread suspicion: Many of the tens of thousands of customers without electricity on Long Island for up to two weeks by now might not have lost power — or might have seen it restored far more quickly — had LIPA taken certain steps to get ready. Newsday’s story describes a pattern of poor preparation, including under-funded tree-trimming, outdated computer systems, and the failure to make key improvements to equipment.

    The depth of LIPA’s problems were known as far back as 2006, when a consulting firm hired by the utility pointed out deficiencies and made a range of recommendations. Notably, these included redesigning substations to reduce the risk of flood damage. As it turned out, nearly a third of LIPA’s 185 substations were forced offline during Sandy. After the 2006 report, LIPA announced $100 million over five years in so-called storm-hardening measures. It ended up spending only $62.5 million, according to Newsday.

    In June of this year, the state took a look at LIPA’s storm readiness and declared it insufficient. It cited a lack of procedures for prioritizing repairs near hospitals and schools, for identifying and prioritizing downed wires, for communicating with customers, and for trimming trees. Newsday said LIPA does not meet the common industry standard of cutting back vegetation within 10 feet of power lines, opting for a cost-saving 6 feet. Worse, such work is done on a seven-or-eight-year cycle, not the recommended four years.

    During Sandy, many of the outages reported on the Island were the result of limbs coming into contact with wires. What’s more, LIPA had killed a program of inspecting for weak and rotting poles five years ago and slashed its pole-replacement budget by more than two-thirds during that period, Newsday reported.

    The prospects for a rapid turnaround at LIPA are not good. According to Newsday, the utility’s board tends to rubberstamp management without dissent, and the state’s efforts to provide more control of LIPA by the Public Service Commission have come to naught. This, as Long Island residents know all too well, comes at a high price: LIPA’s rates are among the highest in the United States. It is a pity that the hefty utility bills do not come with an equally sizable commitment to a robust infrastructure that can better bounce back from hurricanes and other natural disasters.

    The solution must include better oversight by elected officials. By ignoring its own 2006 report and failing to live up to promises, LIPA has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to go it alone any longer.

   A debate about how to respond to storm damage like that seen in Hurricane Sandy’s glancing blow on the South Fork is sure to go on for some time. A more immediate concern for East Hampton is whether Town Hall officials follow the rule of law when properties are left at risk by the inevitable natural onslaughts. The record in the last few years is not good.

    In the most recent example, the top town building inspector apparently gave a verbal go-ahead to a Montauk hotel’s owners to place sand in front of its exposed foundation. Right off the bat, this was misguided — town law does not allow for verbal approvals of this sort for reasons that should be obvious. Without a building permit or any oversight from the town, the Royal Atlantic’s owners, the well-regarded Kalminios family of Montauk, authorized a contractor to place a row of concrete drainage rings on the ocean beach in front of their property. Despite the emergency, this was in apparent contravention of a town law that bans “hard” erosion-control structures in most places.

    Next, a functionary of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, probably in ignorance, violated state law by saying the concrete rings could remain in place for the time being. Under the terms of the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, state agencies are supposed to follow East Hampton Town’s rules in these cases, not the other way around.

     That the concrete rings are supposed to be removed after repairs are made to the hotel’s underpinnings is beside the point. The issue is that “permits” given orally, as these apparently were, are not worth the paper they are written on and make a further mockery of the system of regulation, reason, and even-handedness on which East Hampton Town government must be based — especially in times of crisis.

   Sunday is Veteran’s Day, traditionally a time when organizations that aid those who have served in the United States armed forces are beneficiaries of increased charitable giving. This year, as the region’s attention is centered on communities reeling from Hurricane Sandy’s flood waters and prolonged power outages, there is a fear that veterans groups might see a dip in what they receive.

    For the East End, the Wounded Warrior Project is prominent, notably because of its close partnership with Soldier Ride, which was founded here in 2004 by Chris Carney and which shows support and raises money for returning veterans with a cross-country bike trek. Now annual rides are held around the country.

    There are myriad organizations that help look out for and provide care, job training, and other support for America’s veterans. As we dig into our pockets to help those left shaken by the passing storm, we must also remember those veterans who served and for whom, in many cases, the injuries will last a lifetime.

   Pity the poor New York voter confronted with Tuesday’s ballot and a top of the ticket that really was not in play here. New York has been a reliably “blue” state, going for the Democratic presidential candidate most of the time since the Great Depression, and in an unbroken streak since 1988.

    This means that those who voted for the Republican or one of the minor-party presidential choices were to an arguable degree disenfranchised. Doing away with the Electoral College, in which all of a state’s votes are apportioned in a winner-take-all format, could correct this inequality. Consider that only nine so-called swing states actually decided the 2012 presidential election — not one of them our own New York.

    One line of thinking about abolishing the Electoral College goes like this: It would end the potential injustice inherent in a candidate’s winning the popular vote but losing the election. It would give the country’s more populous urban areas more clout and would probably increase voter turnout by energizing voters in the largest states. And it would for the first time embody the democratic ideal of one person, one vote, in the most important single contest in the land.

    For New Yorkers, doing away with the archaic system with its roots in a post-Colonial era in which only landed white men could vote, would be a step forward. It would also give the candidates incentives to do more than swing through seeking donations, as both the Obama and Romney campaigns did this summer, while not bothering to slow down long enough to hear what the people of this great state — particularly those in counties that had gone “red” in recent elections — had to say.

    California’s Legislature has passed a law that would award its Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote — provided enough other states followed suit. New York should throw its muscle — and its 16.7-million residents of voting age — behind this movement.