The black dot in the middle of the reddish circle was so tiny you could barely see it, and unless you were a contortionist you couldn’t see the inelegant place where it was lodged either. Just like a tick, to bury itself in a warm spot that’s almost invisible to its unwitting human host —  in the ears, back of the knees, below the belt, in the belly button, top of the head.

    The circle had gotten larger and redder and itchier over three or four days until it seemed the better part of wisdom to have it looked at. Although the good people at the walk-in medical center weren’t even sure the dot was a tick, just to be on the safe side doxycycline was prescribed. Two a day for two weeks, eat yogurt, and stay out of the sun.

    There were a dozen people moping around the medical center, all but one with tick bites, and as many or more in line afterward at the pharmacy, almost everybody waiting for the same antibiotic. The pharmacist said he could hardly keep the stuff in stock. “Right there where you’re standing,” he said, they’d found a tick on the floor, “and we have no grass, as you can see.”

    Although Rocky Mountain spotted fever (transmitted by dog tick) had been around for longer, Lyme disease was first recognized on the Connecticut coast in 1975; eight years later, its cause was discovered, and since then almost every passing year has turned up some new depressing tick-related illness: babesiosis (black-legged tick), erlichiosis (Lone Star tick), and tularemia (dog and Lone Star both). Last year, scientists found a causal link between a bite from a Lone Star tick and a sudden allergy to meat, of all things  — beef, lamb, pork, even prosciutto — that presents as burning, itching hives and sometimes difficulty breathing a few hours after dinner. Cases have been concentrated mostly in the South, but, says the University of Virginia scientist who first made the connection, “allergy clusters have also cropped up in Pennsylvania and the East Hamptons in New York.”

    Unless you live on a houseboat, or maybe at the top of a lighthouse, you’d have to agree that we here in the “East Hamptons” are having the worst tick season in years, and it’s only just begun. Careful with that steak.

   The East Hampton Town Budget and Finance Committee has subtly rebuked Supervisor Bill Wilkinson in a recommendation it made last month that no elected officials or town employees be on a proposed new town audit committee.

    This came after a list of prospective members of such a committee was circulated that consisted of Mr. Wilkinson, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, the town’s budget officer, its in-house auditor, the secretary of the local Republican committee, and a town resident who has made sizable contributions to G.O.P. campaign funds. The budget and finance committee apparently had this obvious imbalance in mind when it offered its advice on how the town should proceed in establishing an audit group — and what its responsibilities might be.

    While not rejecting the local Republican committee’s Carole Campolo, or Stanley Arkin, the big donor who is said to have a background in investment banking and money management, the bud­get and finance group suggested that the town board name at least one independent person who is an auditing expert, with employment experience in finance or accounting. The committee also offered to give the board a list of qualified and willing local residents and said that the supervisor, who serves as the town’s chief financial officer, had no business being in an oversight role of what is, in the end, his own performance.

    The purpose, the budget and finance committee wrote, of the audit committee should be to encourage candid discussion of possible improvements to the town’s financial controls and to give the residents comfort that East Hampton’s management has operated in their best interests. To this end, they said that if the town board insisted on placing its own members on the new audit committee, there should be seats for each political party when the town board itself is split. Moreover, it said, an independent committee could field complaints from whistleblowers, something a group consisting of elected officials, their backers, and staff could not impartially do.

    These are sound recommendations.

   East Hampton Town’s big experiment with an airport control tower began this week as the operators flipped the switches on their communication equipment and radar for the first time. Though the tower is billed as a way to control the routes by which aircraft enter and leave a 4.8-mile radius around the Wainscott runways, and thereby limit noise annoyances for residents, we have our doubts. Bets are that it will not make the noise problem any less, though it may move it around a little bit.

    Helicopters, which prompt many of the complaints to the town’s hotline, are just plain loud, wherever they fly. Jets’ takeoffs and landings are going to rattle windows and nerves no matter what. And, seasonally staffed tower or none, the only way to reduce the aggravation of many residents is to limit the hours that certain kinds of aircraft can use the facility.

    Such restrictions are anathema, of course, to those who make money from transporting high-paying passengers or provide refueling, cleaning, or other services for private jets. Some owners of small aircraft based at East Hampton Airport have been swept up in the opinion vortex, paradoxically siding with the for-profit operators, putting them to some degree at odds with their own best interests as their once-quaint home field becomes ever more commercial.

    By improving safety, the tower, which is being paid for with money from the town budget, may have the unintended consequence of actually increasing use of the airport at night and in bad weather. No one yet knows for sure. This is indeed an experiment worth watching closely.

   The death on Saturday of a 17-year-old high school student who was struck by a passing taxi on Old Stone Highway in Amagansett was made all the more painful in that it appeared to have been avoidable. Sometimes accidents are just that, incidents born of chance, nothing more. Other times, we can’t escape the sense that had things just been a little different, a tragedy could have been averted.

    Had Jeffrey Ahn and his friends been walking on the grass instead of the pavement when the Lindy’s van passed, he would likely be alive today. Would it have mattered if the taxi that struck him had been moving more slowly or its driver paying greater attention? We can’t know. Once the group made the decision to walk to Jeffrey’s house instead of call for a ride, perhaps the die was cast, perhaps not.

    South Fork roads this time of the year hum with more motorists than they can handle. Add to that poor sightlines and no shoulders along many stretches and bicyclists, pedestrians, and other motorists are put at risk. Things get much worse with the addition of alcohol and cellphones, both of which sharply decrease reaction times and the ability of those at the wheel, and both of which seem part and parcel of the South Fork summer.

    In the aftermath of this terrible event drivers must slow down. There is not much more that we, as individuals, can do, but it just might make the difference.

    As to the responsibility of public officials, there is no excuse for not widening important thoroughfares like Old Stone Highway to allow for bike lanes, which also could be used as safe zones for those on foot. East Hampton is no longer the quiet out-of-the-way spot it once was, and government must respond to assure the safety of all those who use its roads.

   Channeling the ghost of Martin Luther, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson figuratively tacked 14 agenda items to the Town Hall door last week, in a grand gesture intended to draw attention to important decisions left hanging, and actions not taken, by a board that is increasingly deadlocked.

    But the list was more theater than anything. Let’s break it down.

    Several of the agenda items could fairly be called important, yes — but none is a Code Red emergency. Some, indeed, are already on the way to resolution. Others are much ado about nothing.

    Work on a number of the more complex among them is already ongoing (if slowly). Of these, the fate of the Springs-Fireplace Road sewage treatment plant and deer management are certainly priorities — but life in East Hampton won’t come grinding to a halt in the meanwhile. Others on the list are duplicative; for example, entertainment permits for bars and restaurants and outdoor gatherings, for which potential solutions can be found in the existing town code and in penal law (if only the will were there to enforce them).

    Mr. Wilkinson, himself, has drawn into the conversation the reorganization of the Natural Resources Department and other town functions. There has been no public call to rearrange these particular deck chairs. Likewise, only lukewarm interest has met his latest pet effort: to outsource the town’s Information Technology Department. It’s not clear who but him considers that one a do-or-die matter.

    Septic waste at the Three Mile Harbor trailer park has been a longstanding problem that may or may not be solved by throwing $600,000 at it as the supervisor would like to do, in lieu of a comprehensive study of what to do about waste townwide. The lighting code was never actually broken; in fact, it is a well-considered plan — that just became an annoyance for a handful of business owners who did not want to spend the money to comply after they had been given three years to do so. And the hold-up over a new audit committee could be ended in a jiffy, with the removal of a caustic Wilkinson ally from the list of potential members.

    This latest drama points to an interesting question about East Hampton Town government, which is: Does the town board meet too much?

    Though we jest — to a degree — we honestly have begun to wonder. Time and again, board meetings have devolved into acrimony among members, which has been met with mounting public disgust. A little less of this and a bit more letting the town’s competent and professional staffers just do their jobs might go a long way toward increasing efficiency.

    No doubt it is maddening sometimes for those leading it, but good government works at a deliberative pace. Puffed-up lists and put-on petulance while the cameras are rolling will not make the wheels turn faster, and they certainly won’t improve outcomes.

   A partially built barn on protected Wainscott farmland is at the center of a legal squabble involving neighbors who say the structure diminshes the attractive view from their house. They have our sympathy, but the question of how such land is managed has greater implications.

    Some years ago, the Town of East Hampton and Peconic Land Trust bought the development rights to a portion of the Babinski family farm for a total of $7 million. This was in keeping with a section of the town code that authorizes such purchases with the intention of keeping commercial agriculture viable, and saving the “rural ambience of the town . . . an essential part of the unique character which makes East Hampton aesthetically attractive.” In the case of the Babinski land, the neighbors suing to have the barn moved elsewhere on the property contributed $20,000 to the cause.

    Earlier, the Town Building Department did not remember what was in the relevant section of the town code or bother to look it up before issuing the construction permit. Had it done so, it would have realized that the work should not proceed without the town board’s okay following a public hearing. It took an attorney for the neighbors to point this out, but by the time the board took up the matter, construction of the barn was almost finished.

    The farmers have said the site is the best location for the barn, and there appears to be reason to take them at their word. A decision is expected shortly, and it will probably go in the Babinskis’ favor. We have no objection to that. However, while they were considering the barn, several members of the town board expressed their opinion that the requirement for town board approval be dropped from the code. We disagree. When taxpayer money is involved in land preservation — as it is when development rights are purchased on agricultural acreage — what happens on such properties is of public interest. Maintaining the requirement for town board approval of new-construction permits is one way to assure the public is protected. As elected representatives, rather than as political appointees on the planning board, for example, town board members are the proper officials for the task. Moreover, the visibility of a full Town Hall hearing is warranted. 

   Among the implications of East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson’s apparent failure to summarily reorganize the Planning and Natural Resources Departments is that he might now reconsider how to move the business of government forward and avoid looming stalemates.

    The ill-starred initiative would have created a new town division to handle most environmental permitting, land purchases, and even to run the town’s shellfish hatchery. It was never discussed in public, though closed-door conversations were apparently held in violation of state open-meetings law. The measure appeared at the 11th hour on the June 7 town board agenda with no prior notice or informed consideration by stakeholders. Efforts to talk about it were huffily dismissed. This is unfortunately one of a fistful of examples of what is increasingly becoming a nonfunctional legislative process that excludes residents as well as other town board members.

    Following the January swearing-in of two invigorated Dem­ocrats, town board meetings have devolved into grudge matches. Mr. Wilkinson and his key ally, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, both Republicans, repeatedly react in anger to what they perceive as obstructions to anything they propose. The pattern is as pervasive as it is dismaying.

    Because of this climate of intransigence, the town board is nearing deadlock on a host of important issues. These include deer management, revisions to expiring outdoor-lighting rules, and wastewater management. A case in point: After being thwarted in their decision to sell off the town’s septic treatment plant, Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley simply refused to talk about the plant anymore, taking themselves out of the process and boycotting a public forum on the matter. This brings to mind the classic “Peanuts” situation in which Lucy, irritated for one reason or another by Charlie Brown, grabs her football and stalks off.

    On reorganizing the town’s planning and natural resource protections, questions from the board’s three more measured members about what impact the changes would have were deflected. Yet last week, Ms. Quigley brought it up again as if to say, “Are we going to do this, or what?” The answer was still no, at least until the matter could be more fully understood. Thinking back to the Ronjo motel alley debacle earlier this year, had the sale of the town’s right of  way there been publicly discussed before it sprang fully formed from the supervisor’s office suite, much of the subsequent ill will — and litigation — might have been avoided.

    Then this week, anger roiled Town Hall after a questionnaire was circulated apparently at Mr. Wilkinson’s behest but without board discussion that sought anonymous opinions about the town Information Technology Department. The missive followed a failed effort to outsource the department’s functions to a private bidder. The motive, according to Town Hall insiders, is political payback because the I.T. Department staff happens to be active in the local municipal union. This, like other matters, should have been the subject of involvement of the full board.

    What emerges from the smoke from all these smoldering fires is a sense that reasonable, deliberative, and open government is being sacrificed to Mr. Wilkinson and Ms. Quigley’s preference for keeping anything that might prove problematic under their sole control. The three other board members, Dominick Stanzione, Peter Van Scoyoc, and Sylvia Overby, must stick to their principles and insist on comprehensive review of proposals and public involvement. For any initiative to be successful, town leaders must work together.

   Round about this time of year, if you look among the tide lines on the beaches here, you begin to notice the balloons. Mylar or latex, they wash up with such regularity that in early summer they, and the colored ribbons with which they once were held down, are the dominant non-natural trash.

    School graduations bring with them outdoor parties from which these helium-filled trifles escape. They rise until they burst in the atmosphere, then drift back to earth, many landing in the bay or ocean. There, they are sometimes eaten by sea creatures such as marine turtles, causing death in some circumstances. Equally significant but less well known, the Guardian newspaper reported earlier this year, some research facilities may soon have to reduce operations or close entirely because we are frittering away the world’s limited supplies of helium on party balloons.

    Suffolk bans the intentional release of large quantities of helium balloons. A similar bill has been, ahem, floating around Albany. While it is pending, readers may want to think twice before buying helium balloons for their celebrations or, at the very least, make sure these balloons remain indoors to minimize the chance of their getting away.

   Rushed to a vote without advance notice, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson tried to ram through a massive reorganization of the Planning Department and other land-use departments last week, including management of the community preservation fund and aquaculture, among others. The effort failed, but the implications, both of the means by which the coup was plotted and what effects it would have had, are huge and deserve close scrutiny.

    What came up for a losing vote at a board meeting on Thursday night had not surfaced in any public form until the day before, when a resolution appeared on the town Web site calling for the reorganization of the Natural Resources Department. In reality, the proposal went much further: It would have reduced the Planning Department to a few senior staffers and shifted permits for building and land development to a new Environmental Protection Department, headed by a recent political appointee.

    On the surface, the move came out of Mr. Wilkinson’s and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley’s often-stated goal to see greater efficiency in the way approvals under the town code are granted. They voted “yes” on the measure Thursday. In concept, such a goal may have merit, but, in practice, there would be much more than efficiency involved.

    Setting aside for a moment whether the proposal has merit, the way in which it was considered prior to being submitted for a town board vote stands in violation of the New York Open Meetings Law, which every municipality must follow. Basically, the law says that nearly everything elected or appointed officials and voting members of any board do or deliberate must be accessible to the public.

    There are several, very strictly limited — if optional — exceptions, notably to protect litigation strategy, the privacy of public employees, and contract negotiations. In those cases, so-called executive sessions are allowed, excluding the public and the press, though even these are subject to carefully described procedures. Perhaps the most important, and frequently overlooked, requirement in the law is that executive sessions must be called during an open meeting and the subject of the closed-door session disclosed in advance. Everything else government boards do must occur at meetings that one and all can attend.

    There can be no winning argument that a massive restructuring of town departments and how applications for various permits are handled are legally a matter for executive session. Such considerations are to be conducted in full view of voters for reasons of common sense as well as the law. Mr. Wilkinson has overreached on both by claiming that the realignment was properly planned in executive session because it involved individual town employees. This is a ploy. Information about the personal qualifications of those who might lead a new agency could be discussed in private, for example, but how the departments would be aligned could not.

    It is deeply concerning that the town’s top attorney, John Jilnicki, who wrote the failed resolution, could go along with this apparent violation of the law. Unfortunately, the state Open Meetings Law is a toothless tiger; no penalties are ascribed for those who knowingly thwart it. Short of getting an injunction after the fact, there really are no effective means to get officials to comply when executive sessions are abused.

    Though remarkably light on details, the proposal, which Mr. Wilkinson introduced for a vote, would have been a dramatic setback for environmental protection in the Town of East Hampton. By cordoning off key members of the Planning Department on these matters, the reorganization would have been likely to speed approvals of questionable building projects by emasculating their review.

    Moreover, by vesting new powers in some of the town’s less-senior staffers, those most at risk of punitive action from elected officials, the plan would have created a system in which political influence could run rampant. There already have been allegations of arm-twisting coming from the top on certain projects; the restructuring would have set that in stone. Mr. Wilkinson, who has boasted, Yoda-like, that he is the most transparent of elected officials, is transparent indeed. But the transparency shines a light on his motives, not on how he chooses to go about them. This measure appears to have come from an intention to help his political sympathizers, never mind that by doing so he would allow East Hampton to be turned into a place most of its residents would detest.

    If the town’s planning and environmental review is to be redesigned, the discussion must take place in public. Many people have expressed frustration with the way in which all but routine applications are handled. Their views — those of builders, architects, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and the community at large — must all be invited and carefully considered. Solving the problems that arise would take far more than a handful of people in a room operating under an inappropriate and illegal cloak of privacy.

   Seventy years ago Wednesday, four German saboteurs — armed and trained for a mission of destruction — slipped ashore in Amagansett. Though a minor footnote in the annals of World War II, it was one of the very few known incidents in which enemy operatives set foot on United States soil. Moreover, in recent times, the military tribunals in which the would-be attackers were tried and sentenced have been cited as the legal antecedents of how  cases are handled of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

    On that long-ago night, the Germans had with them some $80,000 in cash, crates of explosives, and a few odd items of spycraft. Within moments of their arrival in a hamlet far removed from the battles in Europe and the Pacific, however, a coast guardsman on patrol from the Atlantic Avenue Life-Saving Station discovered them. The Germans said they were fishermen whose boat had run aground. They then contradicted orders by giving him a bribe instead of shooting him and telling him to get lost. John Cullen, a seaman second class, played along, but he quickly returned to the station and sent out the alert. Four days later, a second team of saboteurs landed near Jacksonville, Fla., on a similar mission.

    The manhunt that might have been expected did not exactly follow the discovery of the Germans and their dangerous cache. It was not until one of them managed to convince a skeptical Federal Bureau of Investigation agent that he was really part of a plot against the United States. Still, it was wartime, and J. Edgar Hoover was happy to spread the fiction that the F.B.I. had been on to the Germans from the beginning.

    Today the station from which the unarmed Seaman Cullen walked that night stands in a precarious state. Through the generosity of several private citizens, the Town of East Hampton took over its ownership in 2006 and moved it back to the dunes near its original site. There it is has stood since, more or less buttoned up from the elements.

    A dramatic re-enactment of sorts is planned for Wednesday evening, in which those who are working to restore the station and open it as a museum and perhaps an alternative meeting place will recall the events of summer 1942. It is hoped that the event will draw attention to the station’s important place in our history.

    Money is needed to finish stabilizing and restoring the building. It is a worthy undertaking, one that deserves both official and community support.