As dramatic as Tuesday night’s presidential debate at Hofstra University was, holding it on Long Island in a state virtually certain to go for President Obama was to some degree out of place. In a meeting that may be relatively more meaningful in connection with how people vote, the incumbent State Senator for the First District, Kenneth P. LaValle, will take on the issues and his Democratic opponent, Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming, on Monday evening at the East Hampton Village Emergency Services Building at 7 p.m. They are also expected to appear at a Concerned Citizens of Montauk forum on Oct. 28.

    In Ms. Fleming, Mr. LaValle has a credible challenger with a chance of ending his 36-year presence in Albany. On Monday evening, and again on the 28th, voters here will have a chance to evaluate them side-by-side. They should take advantage of the opportunity.

    At the urging of residents of Soundview Drive and Captain Kidd’s Path in Montauk, the Town of East Hampton has agreed to a Montauk Inlet dredging project that is expected to provide some relief to the chronic erosion there. But in backing the Army Corps of Engineers’ $26 million plan, the town and affected homeowners may, in the long run, be leaving the waterfront neighborhood in harm’s way.

    The Army Corps proposes excavating the inlet to a depth of 17 feet and pumping the dredged sand in front of the properties along Block Island Sound to the west of the inlet. This is the less costly of two options. In a more ambitious proposal, the corps would have installed jetties, or groins, at existing bulkheads in front of the properties at a cost of $41 million. There is virtually no beach in the area, and the catch for homeowners would be that any beach created with taxpayer money must be accessible to the public.

    For the town, opting for an $800,000 share of the modest approach, rather than $1.5 million for the more complicated plan, makes fiscal sense. But it may not prove the best choice for the property owners. With predictions of sea level’s continuing rise, the less expensive plan may not provide the protection they would wish.

    With the support of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, the Montauk Highway in Wainscott is fast on its way to being further commercialized. Already, this “gateway” to our beautiful town is a visual hodgepodge of ill-thought buildings — and an increasing four-season traffic nightmare.

    In the last year the board approved a major expansion of the use of the former Plitt Ford property, without taking time for a clear-eyed and honest review of its implications. Now, the board is sounding satisfied with the conversion of the onetime Star Room nightclub to a car wash.

    Just ask anyone who has had to contend with the tie-ups — going both east and west — in Wainscott if more commercial development is a good idea. We suspect the number who would say yes would be close to zero. The plan includes adding an exit from the car wash onto East Gate Road, a residential street. By strictly constraining what can happen on the Star Room site, the town could reduce the damage done in its flawed and hasty analysis of the Plitt Ford plan.

    Traffic is one reason why the initial, reflexive support given the preliminary car wash proposal by Diana Weir, the board’s vice chairwoman, is disappointing. At a September planning board meeting, Ms. Weir said the car wash would be a “good use” of the site. Mind you, this was before any study of the proposal or even a formal application had been made. That she would offer so prejudicial an opinion in the absence of any supporting material or opportunity for rebuttal sharply calls into question her fitness for the post.

    Car washes are hardly the kind of economic opportunity East Hampton officials should be backing anyway. The industry depends on unskilled, usually immigrant workers who receive rock-bottom wages and sometimes work in deplorable and unsafe conditions. According to a 2008 investigation done by New York State, underpayment of workers is endemic. An advocacy group trying to help car-wash workers has said that, statewide, at least two-thirds were not paid minimum wage, most never received required overtime pay, and almost none got employer-provided health insurance. Individual carwasheros, as they are sometimes called, have spoken out about the noxious chemicals used and say they are often required to provide their own gloves and other safety gear.

    As to environmental concerns, though in their early pitch, the developers of the car wash said their facility would be built to the most modern standards and would not harm groundwater or the Georgica Pond watershed. That claim, and others painting this plan as completely benign, remain to be evaluated.

    As this review is going on, the East Hampton Town Board should step in and take an in-depth look at the Montauk Highway in Wainscott and ask itself what the future may have in store. A starting point would be the 2005 comprehensive plan, which said new vehicular accesses, commercial sprawl, and development along the highway should be limited. Not much time remains.

    From where we sit at 153 Main Street in the Village of East Hampton, the editorial desks have a good view of the Buell Lane intersection, which was recently the subject of consideration in Village Hall. The problem is this: When East Hampton is crowded, all manner of motorized foolishness is occasioned there. Vehicles try to make an injudicious left turn from Buell Lane, Main Street drivers try to plow along in whatever direction they are headed, and others, from Dunemere, dart onto James Lane or try to cross the intersection to head west on Main Street. Many is the time we have looked up from our work at the sound of screeching tires and metal crashing into metal.

    A consultant hired by the village looked into the options and came up with three possibilities: traffic lights, a roundabout, or permanently eliminating access from Dunemere Lane. None of these found much favor among the village board’s trustees.

    Speaking wisely, Barbara Borsack, one of them, said she favored a seasonal solution, not something that “we would have to live with for 12 months.” During the busy time of year, the village has put up warning cones to force vehicles from Dunemere Lane north onto Main Street, merging near Pondview Lane, or south onto James Lane. This seemed to work. As we gaze out our windows at the trickle of traffic going past on a sunny fall weekday, this course — of restraint before drastic solutions — seems best.

   A well-intentioned but irredeemably flawed law recently signed by Suffolk Executive Steve Bellone would require nearly all residents to earn a certificate by taking a safety course and passing an exam in order to operate a power boat. Those who head out on the water without a certificate would be fined $250 for a first offense.

    The requirement is, as East Hampton’s head harbormaster recently put it, long overdue. But how the tens of thousands of recreational boaters in the county would be accommodated and how the law’s built-in conflict with state regulatory authority could be resolved remains to be seen. The prospects are not reassuring.

    There is a need, to be sure. For example, a badly overloaded boat led to the deaths of three children in Huntington in July. In 2009, three died and four were seriously injured when a boat ran aground at high speed near Jones Beach. For the past several years small-boat fishermen have thrown caution to the wind (and waves) while angling around Montauk Point, with several near collisions and capsized boats the result. East End marine patrols respond not infrequently to reports of boats aground or on the jetties. Time and again, too many recreational boaters show over-reliance on horsepower, high-tech electronics, and an “it-can’t-happen-to-me” attitude, as Coast Guard records attest. Simply put, common sense is not always common at sea.

    Some critics of the measure say the county has overstepped by trying to get around state law, which requires certificates only for those under 18 who run power boats and everyone who uses a personal watercraft, like the Jet Ski brand. The Suffolk law also tries to extend the county’s authority over state and town trustee waters, a power-grab that could well be challenged in court.

    Under state law, young people who operate motorboats must obtain certificates by attending a $60 eight-hour course and passing an exam. It, too, requires certificates of all who operate personal watercraft. Compare this to the five-hour class required for a license to drive a car. Multiply this by the thousands of boaters who will need a certificate by a year from now — when the law is to go into effect — and you’ve got an ocean-size logistical challenge.

    The immediate difficulty would be for organizations like the United States Power Squadron, Coast Guard Auxiliary, and New York Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation to come up with enough programs that are reasonably accessible even out at the far end of the twin forks fast enough to serve the county’s estimated 75,000 to 100,000 recreational boaters. The law does not provide for establishing classes or dealing with those many residents who passed a safety course as children but long ago lost their certificates.

    The county is to be commended for trying to take a first step toward safer boating, but the difficulty in implementing the law and resolving its inherent conflict with the state is formidable. Unfortunately, the Legislature provided neither guidance nor funding to help make this possible. The best that can be hoped is for Albany to reconsider the issue and to put into place a statewide boater-education program accessible to all.

   The Wilkinson administration in East Hampton Town Hall is proud of having set the town’s financial condition to rights on the heels of former Supervisor Bill McGintee’s irregular manipulation of funds, which left the town with a huge internal deficit. But there is a flaw in the proceedings of the town budget office that warrants attention.

    If Len Bernard, the budget office director, is good at one thing, it is fiddling with the books to leave the next, presumably opposing-party, town board majority with the prospect of a tax hike two or four years hence.

    History can be a guide: As the budget officer for Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, Mr. Bernard left several anticipated expenses unfunded, notably pensions and police contracts. This forced Supervisor McGintee to raise taxes in the first year he was responsible for the budget, and even more the following year.

    This time, the budget office calculation involves as much as a $5.7 million surplus, which was created by the town’s borrowing more than it turned out to need to repay the McGintee debt due to the depletion of various funds during the McGintee years. The question now is what to do with the extra money.

    Applying the surplus to operating expenses, or to purposes for which it was not borrowed to begin with, would provide taxpayers with a “reward” of lower rates now at the expense of higher rates in the future. This is a serious risk and a matter that deserves scrutiny by the state comptroller, whose office is overseeing East Hampton Town’s books as a condition of the deficit-financing deal, as well as public discussion.

    There is a big question of how the deficit-financing money can be used and the appropriateness of applying it to anything other than its state-authorized purpose — to pay back the money improperly burned through during Mr. McGintee’s time. Correspondence from the state comptroller’s office appears to say that local government cannot borrow to build a slush fund, even by accident.

     What Mr. Bernard apparently would like to do is apply the surplus to town employee benefits or retirement funds. Depending on how you look at this, as a good idea or a trick, the fact is that once the money is gone, it will have to come from taxes in subsequent years.

    At this point, the only reasonable course for the over-borrowing, and one that would benefit taxpayers in the long run, appears to be to set it aside to repay what is owed, not to stave off tax increases for political advantage.

   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.

   Representative Tim Bishop’s victory over Randy Altschuler Tuesday despite the astounding amount of super PAC money — $3.4 million — that fell upon the First Congressional District, gives testimony to the voters’ ability to think for themselves. Everywhere you turned in the last few weeks, you saw or heard the attack ads paid for by a seemingly bottomless pool of dollars — radio, television, the Internet.

    These days, with advertisments able to reach into places where Web visitors live, you were likely to see  false and trumped-up allegations of corruption against Mr. Bishop by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Then other baseless claims would pop up while you were watching a how-to video on YouTube, for example. Mr. Bishop was even targeted by gun-sight imagery. Voters weren’t buying it.

    The millions didn’t suffice to oust Mr. Bishop, but they did demean a race between two viable, if very different, candidates. Mr. Altschuler has impressed us as a nice guy and a political moderate, who may have been, if elected, as hands-on as the effective Mr. Bishop. If given the opportunity, even he might have vetoed the most vicious assaults made on his behalf. In the weird world of unregulated spending, there is only one rule: the candidate has no control.

    Attack ads also debased the contest for the White House. A group supporting the president claimed that Mitt Romney, in effect, was responsible for killing a woman who had cancer because her husband lost his health insurance when Mr. Romney’s investment firm closed the man’s plant. On the other side of the coin, an ad on behalf of Mr. Romney howled that Mr. Obama was a racist, prejudiced against whites.

    It would be nice to read Mr. Bishop’s win as a local rejection of unregulated campaign spending. That, of course, is a difficult call to make. What is certain is that the democratic process would be improved if the influence of money was reduced.

    The line of the night, however, came from Representative Bishop, who, savoring his win, declared, “My opponent had the guys with the biggest checks, but I had the guys with the biggest hearts.” 

   What difference a hundred miles makes. Hurricane Sandy made its landfall on the New Jersey shore, wiping away whole beachside communities. Damage was massive in the New York Bight, on Staten Island, in Manhattan, the Rockaways, Long Beach, and Fire Island, lessening to the east and north, farther from the storm’s highest winds.

    Our sympathies first are for those who lost family or friends. Locally, we mourn Edith Wright, a Montauk woman whose body was found at Georgica Beach.

    As bad as the damage was along the East End’s waterfronts, and as difficult the loss of power was for many residents and businesses, it could have been far, far worse had Sandy taken only a slightly more northerly path. Everyone, from homeowners to public officials, must keep this fully in mind.

    There will be a time for rebuilding, reconsidering policy, and evaluating official preparations, but for now, it is all about getting through the next few days, neighbor helping neighbor, and just doing what it takes to get life back to normal.

   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.