With sandwich-making competitions a la Dagwood Bumstead, the English village of Sandwich is celebrating the 250th anniversary this year of the moment Sir Edward Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, ordered his beef served between slices of bread so he would not have to interrupt his game of cribbage. According to village lore, the others around the gaming table began to order “the same as Sandwich,” and a multibillion-dollar industry was spawned.

    Sandwich is near the sea in County Kent, about an hour’s drive east of the county seat of Maidstone and two hours from the town of Portsmouth (almost exactly the same distance, oddly, as between Sandwich, Mass., and Portsmouth, N.H.). Legend has it that when the first Montagu was offered a peerage he could have decided to become Earl of Portsmouth — in which case we’d all be eating Portsmouths for lunch — but picked Sandwich instead because it was the premier seaport in England at the time. Over the centuries, however, nature has done what it will, and the village now lies a mile and a half inland from the coast.

    A hundred years after the first earl made his historic choice, his descendant, that same card-playing Edward Montagu, as First Lord of the Admiralty, sponsored the South Seas voyages of Captain Cook, who named the Sandwich Islands after him. We call them Hawaii now.

    Speaking of sandwiches, there was a lawsuit in Boston in 2006 in which a court ended a food fight between the Panera Bread Company and Qdoba Mexican Grill by ruling that a “sandwich” includes at least two slices of bread, not just one, as in tacos, burritos, or quesadillas. Panera, which has a popular branch on the South Fork, had a no-compete clause in its lease saying that no other sandwich shop could open in its shopping mall.

    This is probably why you cannot find a Mexican food shop any place in the Bridgehampton Commons.

   New Yorkers can be proud that their state helped pave the way for the ground-shifting announcement by President Obama on May 9 that gay and lesbian couples should be able to get married if they want to.

    The Empire State legalized gender-blind marriage last summer, after years of struggle. Albany’s accomplishment was remarkable in that although it took precipitous machinations to make it law, New Yorkers supported it by a comfortable margin. Only about a third of the state’s residents expressed outright opposition.

    Americans are now being bombarded by a blizzard of polling and political analyses about how Mr. Obama’s revolutionary message will or will not play in the November election. This speculative frenzy is not a surprise, but it obscures the key measure of this important moment — even if the president’s decision to announce his change of thinking now was motivated by politics.

    Mr. Obama’s belated admission of this basic right follows the leadership of New York and other progressive states. As many have said before, no government should have a place in telling its citizens whom they should or should not marry.

   The near-drowning of a Brooklyn man Sunday afternoon in the ocean on Napeague points to a glaring public safety failure. Each weekend in the summer season, many of the thousands of residents and visitors who take bracing plunges do not understand either the danger of the tumbling waters or that the nearest lifeguards are stationed several miles away.

    It was just luck that two bystanders were able to pull Nicholas DeVito, 42, from almost-certain death on Sunday and that someone on the beach knew how to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation before ambulance personnel, town police, and members of the volunteer ocean rescue squad were able to get there. This story has a happy ending; Mr. DeVito is said to have recovered and to be doing well. For others, like a mother who drowned off Beach Hampton in 2010, the outcome has been tragic. In our recollection, by contrast, there never has been a drowning in East Hampton Town at a beach where lifeguards were on duty.

    Each year, thousands of people flock to the South Fork. Many stay at the resorts on Napeague and in downtown Montauk, where they are drawn by the pull of the sea. For what appear to be complex — but unfortunate — reasons, the owners of many of these hostelries provide beach towels, lounge chairs, and other amenities, but fail to fully provide for their guests’ safety. The moment may have come for lawmakers to force most, if not all, oceanfront resort and residential property associations to post lifeguards of their own. Alternatively, the town could establish mechanisms such as dedicated taxing districts so that the town itself can do so.

     East Hampton Town, by allowing the motels, condominimum complexes, and resorts to be built in the first place, and then greenlighting their expansion and improvement, has an implicit responsibility to assure the safety of those who occupy them. The ocean rescue squad, which provides a tremendous service at nearly no cost to the community, has begun to quietly ask that stations be established to close the gaps between protected bathing areas. This request is one that should be acted on without delay. There is no substitute for a rapid and well-trained response when a swimmer is in distress.

   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.

   Once again, East Hampton Town officials are hearing a plea to use the community preservation fund, which has swelled to $23 million, to save a historic property. This time, the request is to save a homestead at the north end of North Main Street in East Hampton, which has been in the Sherrill family since 1792.

    The town bought the development rights to 16 acres around the Greek Revival farmhouse some time ago. Now, the family, as well as an informal group of supporters, would like to see the house and the acre it stands on preserved. There will be an open house there tomorrow at 3 p.m. to show the property to anyone interested. Members of the town board have been invited, though they have not expressed support for a deal. Supporters envision a museum that would celebrate East Hampton’s agrarian past — and present. This is an attractive idea, but it presents challenges.

    To a certain extent, one difficulty for those who hope the town will buy the farm is that it already has taken on a number of historic properties and not done much with them. Duck Creek Farm at Three Mile Harbor, the Lester farmstead at the corner of Cedar Street and North Main, and perhaps, even more notable, the Amagansett Life-Saving Station. To date, these properties have, to put it mildly, not been used to their full potential, though the signals are good concerning the Life-Saving Station.

    Setting any or all of the above up as museums or visitors centers would cost the town real money, but there may be an alternative. In the wake of the McGintee financial scandals, the town has assumed self-imposed parsimony where the preservation fund is concerned. In the current climate, no one appears ready to ask taxpayers to take on a new expense for something nice but not necessary. However, the town might look favorably on acquiring the Sherrill Farm if money to operate it were to come from somewhere else.

     There appears to be a ready-made constituency for doing something meaningful with the house — the growing number of farming enthusiasts and those in the slow-food movement here. If a public-private partnership could be worked out, all concerned could ride the wave of locavore zeal. A distinct possibility would be for one of the new community-supported agriculture groups to use the house as its home base, giving staff or interns a place to live upstairs and having meetings and demonstrations on the first floor. Perhaps even the farmers market now held on Fridays in the parking lot at Nick and Toni’s restaurant could move there. The property would be an astonishing opportunity for the right group, perhaps with agricultural use of some of the accompanying 16 acres added to the mix.

    As close as one can come to a sense of how town residents would feel about the town’s purchasing the Sherrill Farm comes from voters’ repeated and overwhelming approval of the community preservation fund itself. The economy may have changed since the fund won at the polls, but support could be realistically gauged by putting the proposal before the public at a Town Hall hearing. 

    Preservation would be only the first step, but we are confident that an end result could be found so that the property remains a community asset rather than being lost to the open real estate market. It may take some doing, creativity, and open minds, but East Hampton should be up to the challenge.

   Suffolk County is facing a budget deficit that could reach $530 million or more by next year. From the perspective of many who live on the far eastern end of Long Island this doesn’t seem to matter a fig. That is not really true, of course. The county will find new ways to pass its problems along to taxpayers no matter where they live or what services they receive. That the massive money crisis does not appear to register with more people here can be read as an indication of just how distant many feel from the county centers of power. The feeling is apparently mutual; Steve Bellone, during his successful run for county executive, never officially made it east of Sag Harbor, as far as we know.

    To be fair, although Suffolk government is no great presence in most people’s lives here, it is often behind the scenes. Local criminals are housed in the county lockup, and the district attorney weighs in on occasion. Now and again a county dredge clears harbor inlets. The Suffolk Health Department is said to keep an eye on places where the public gets food. There is a county health clinic in East Hampton. The county also does mosquito spraying, keeps property records, and oversees new septic systems. And, of course, there are the county parks at Cedar Point and Montauk. It’s something, but not as much as is provided in the western Suffolk towns, which do not have their own police forces and are covered by the county department.

    South Fork politicians, and East Hampton Town officials in particular, have long complained that we have never gotten back in services what our residents give the county in property and sales taxes and fees. Once upon a time, many people here dreamed of a breakaway Peconic County. And last fall, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and Senator Kenneth P. LaValle introduced bills in Albany that, in part, called for a study of the feasibility of the five East End towns going it alone.

    As Suffolk grapples with a budget nightmare that the East End had very little part in creating, could the time for Peconic County be now?

   By executive order last Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew P. Cuomo set into motion a state health care exchange, something mandated under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. The exchange, and similar ones in a growing number of states, is intended to bring much-needed competition to the insurance market and help millions of uninsured Americans get coverage. Had New York failed to act, the federal government would have stepped in to impose its own version of an exchange, provided, of course, that the law survives the Supreme Court.

    Starting on Jan. 1, 2014, New Yorkers and others will be eligible for federal tax credits and incentives for participation. The exchanges have been compared, at least hypothetically, to online travel sites where consumers can shop for the best deals. The owners of small businesses will be able to customize plans to suit their employees’ needs rather than continue to struggle with a system in which terms and higher and higher premiums are dictated by insurance companies.

    The reason Mr. Cuomo went the route of issuing an executive order is that New York Senate Republicans, who tend to oppose what they call Obamacare, made any hope for action on an exchange in the Legislature unlikely.

    From a political point of view, it may not be a winning strategy for Mr. Cuomo’s opposition to spend its energy putting “Obama” and “care” in front of multiple audiences. While no doubt arousing a portion of the Republican voting base, it may not really help the party when the governor is up for re-election. His opponent will be at risk of a moderate or swing voter having the perception reinforced that the state Democrats and the president are the candidates who care about health and the uninsured.

    At any rate, any reasonable program will have to be better than the usury that defines private and workplace health insurance in the State of New York now. We welcome the exchange. Good going, governor.

   You know it is going to be a crazy summer when the New York news media start up with their East Hampton stories in April. Scratch that — March, when coverage of the final 2012 sales of the village’s $325 beach-parking permits went big.

    Curbed Hamptons, a Web-only venture, was first out of the gate with news of a record early sellout. The New York Post upped the ante on April 9 by obtaining village records naming the lucky 2,900 who scored the strictly limited nonresident stickers, a few movie stars and famous rock ’n’ rollers among them. Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, told The Post that he had taken hundreds of calls from people about the then no-longer-available permits. “They tell me they’ll pay whatever we want for them,” he said.

    Reading these accounts, it seems the village is leaving chips on the table, so to speak. Next year, East Hampton officials could set aside a few permits and conduct an auction once those remaining are gone, with the proceeds earmarked for public works and preservation.

    If celebrities, congressmen, and federal judges, as Mr. Cantwell told The Post, think the sky’s the limit when it comes to parking at Georgica, Main, Wiborg’s, Egypt, and Two Mile Hollow, why not help separate them from their money if there is good to be done with it?

    The New York State project to install light-up crosswalks in two locations on East Hampton Main Street is a welcome experiment. But experiment it is — and pedestrians will still need to keep their wits about them.

    No one can know until the work is done how drivers, especially those unfamiliar with the village, will react. Nor will the new crosswalks address the bigger problem of walkers darting across the street near the movie theater or making the Starbucks sprint in the morning while traffic is at its highest.

    East Hampton Main Street is more a slow-speed, four-lane highway than a rural road. Drivers who obey the law and stop for crossing pedestrians block the view for other motorists, as well as the people on foot, and near-accidents are the rule. The light-up crosswalks may help, but then again, they may not. The Federal Highway Administration has reported that the rate of injury is actually higher in crosswalks on multi-lane roads.

    One significant risk is that pedestrians will gain false confidence from the new lights and start their passage without being certain they are being seen by oncoming drivers. Caution is key, no matter how fancy the technology.