For some years now, climate scientists have been trying, without much success, to get public officials in low-lying coastal areas to begin planning to meet the challenges of rising sea level. Although their warnings are not new, a report from a nonprofit organization — and a nifty associated interactive Web site — may help focus attention on this looming if slow-motion disaster.

    East Hampton and Southampton Towns, surrounded and indented by water as they are, should be at the forefront of planning for what scientists say could be an eight-inch rise in sea level by 2030 and two-foot rise by 2100. But there has been little, if any, preparation. The state asked municipalities to deal with coastal issues by adopting Local Waterfront Revitalization Programs, but these documents were largely drafted before the scale of climate predictions was widely understood.

    The risk, as documented by Climate Central, based in Princeton, N.J., is that by the end of the century, as many as 3.7-million United States residents could see their homes threatened by flooding and erosion. An eight-inch vertical rise in sea level may not sound like much, but studies have demonstrated that the shoreline moves landward at a disproportionate and frightening rate. The results can be seen at sealevel.climatecentral.org.

    Scientists say the only rational policy is an orderly retreat from low-lying portions of the coast. Nowhere in East Hampton Town is this more obvious than in Montauk, where a two-foot rise in sea level — erosion or storm surge — would undermine about 33 houses and erase more than 3 percent of its landmass. Factor in the landward migration of the shore as the water rises and you have a disaster of tremendous scale. With a three-foot rise, as some predict, all of Lazy Point and Gerard Drive in Springs, as well as most of Star Island, Montauk, would be gone.

    Not everyone has ignored the threat. Insurance companies began dropping homeowners’ policies in coastal areas several years ago. New York State has tried to divest itself of responsibility for managing aspects of the shoreline by handing control of erosion-control structures to the localities. But, despite the whole problem’s being dumped in their laps, town and village officials have reacted with a collective shrug. At the very least, they should study reports like this and establish goals for retreating from rather than armoring the shores.

    The time to prepare for the worst is now.

   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.

   By a 3-to-2 vote, the East Hampton Town Board further consolidated power in the town budget office in the name of budget restraint early this month. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, who led the party-line vote, explained that eliminating the town personnel officer would save $170,000. Len Bernard, the budget chief and Mr. Wilkinson’s appointee, will now be the only town official sharing hiring, firing, and, presumably, disciplinary matters with the supervisor. That’s not a good idea.

    East Hampton Town personnel issues have already been highly politicized. Late last year, for example, the Republican-dominated board failed to take action when a town employee was caught on video using a Highway Department truck to run over and remove roadside signs promoting the election of a Democratic candidate. Just last week, the town’s top building inspector apparently was hustled off on an unplanned vacation after a dressing down over having issued a stop-work order the supervisor didn’t like. Town Hall has been described for some time as having an unpleasant atmosphere in which Mr. Wilkinson frequently huffs about “subordinates” and how they should toe the line — as he sees it.

    One would think, therefore, that town officials would be especially sensitive to placing too much unchecked authority in the hands of two closely aligned individuals, especially when one is a political appointee who could be expected to keep an eye on making the boss happy. Lest East Hampton residents need any reminding, former Supervisor Bill McGintee and Mr. Bernard’s immediate predecessor as budget officer, Ted Hults, were responsible for a town deficit of some $27 million, which is still being paid down. It took months of forensic accounting to figure out what, acting exclusively, they had done, and the town’s bond rating, ability to pay for future projects, and credibility paid the price.

    No matter how much confidence Mr. Wilkinson has in Mr. Bernard, and vice versa, and how much money the two may try to save, a system of checks and balances is warranted. Having a career personnel officer, who reports to the town board as a whole, is one way to keep watch on lapses in judgment and untoward influence.

   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?

   Work has been under way this year on the South Fork to clear debris from streams in the hope of increasing the population of alewives, an oceangoing fish that spawns in freshwater. These efforts are extremely important, not just for the species, but for improving the overall health of our treasured ecosystems.

    Historically, alewives were thought to have spawned in nearly every pond here they could reach, rushing up rivers and streams in early spring. Now their runs are limited to a few places, and poor water quality, physical obstructions, and overfishing have hurt their numbers. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation considers the alewife a species “of concern.” Fishing for them is prohibited in several states.

    Like menhaden, alewives are a key prey species for  larger and more commercially and recreationally sought fish, such as striped bass. They are also food for herons and other birds that lurk along the migratory streams. The fish that don’t survive and don’t get picked off by predators sink to the bottom of their spawning ponds and, as they decompose, release carbon and nutrients to replace those lost as waters flow to the sea.

    Public officials and citizens whose properties border ponds and streams should find out what they can do to help. Restoring the alewife should be a goal all of us can get behind.

   What is unfortunate about the Montauk Ronjo (now the Beach House) controversy is that it has happened at all. The fact that it has points less to politics, as Supervisor Bill Wilkinson calls it, and more to a judgment gap in Town Hall in which flawed decisions can be made casually.

    Back in February, a company headed by Chris Jones, of last year’s aborted Music to Know concert, and Lawrence Siedlick, a big-check donor to local and national Republican campaigns, paid $4.2 million for the Ronjo motel and an adjacent lot. The properties were clearly bisected on official maps by an alley owned by the Town of East Hampton. At least on paper, the alley starts on South Edison  Street and doglegs around to South Elmwood Avenue.

    Over the years, however, the Ronjo was expanded onto the town alley. Recent aerial photos show a couple of outbuildings or sheds in the middle of it, as well as a corner of the motel’s pool deck and a part of a parking lot. How this was allowed to happen and over what time span no one, or at least no one who wants to speak out, seems to know. But for all intents the one-time alley was appropriated as part of the motel grounds; a tree was even planted on one end of it. Nearby Montauk businesses use another part of the alley for back-door access, deliveries, and to get to off-street parking, but what was mapped as access from the east is blocked.

    Mr. Jones and Mr. Siedlick apparently knew they were buying two separate parcels of land; transfer documents filed with Suffolk County indicate this fact. Nonetheless, a few weeks after the closing, they, or a representative, apparently got Mr. Wilkinson to agree to sell them a portion of the alley for $35,000.

    Much has been made of a statement by Mr. Wilkinson that he arbitrarily came up with the $35,000 figure. East Hampton Democrats have seized on it, saying there was no way to know for sure if the price was right. Given the expansion of the Ronjo onto the alley, it is hard to know its fair-market value.

    The deal was approved 3 to 2 on March 6, along party lines. East Hampton Democrats have mounted a petition drive, demanding that the resolution authorizing the sale be overturned or put to public vote. An appraisal paid for by the opponents of the deal by a respected local expert put the alley’s value at $184,000; another one, paid for by Mr. Jones and Mr. Siedlick, came in far lower, at $22,500.

    In comments at a recent town board meeting, Mr. Wilkinson said the town attorney had told him that an appraisal of the roughly 3,700-square-foot portion of the alley the new owners want title to was not necessary. This could be true if you don’t look all that closely, but local governments are obligated to get the best prices they can when they sell assets and to avoid the appearance of favoritism. Clarified state law on how local governments divest assets may be in order here. Already, the Town of East Hampton is embroiled in a lawsuit challenging its effort to sell Fort Pond House, again in Montauk, which some have said may be an improperly shuttered and dumped public park.

    The Ronjo dispute is surely political, but that does not mean appropriate procedures were followed. That many of the petition’s 644 signers do not live in Montauk, as the supervisor has protested, is a red herring. All town residents have an interest in how Town Hall is managed and especially when it comes to selling public property.

    The town attorney’s office, which allowed the town board under Mr. Wilkinson to blunder into Mr. Jones’s failed Music to Know concert, appears to have done it again. It is a serious disappointment that its lawyers didn’t speak out about an arrangement that was so primed to blow up in Mr. Wilkinson’s lap. Impulsive in his eagerness to do what he can for what he perceives is beneficial for taxpayers and local businesses, the supervisor is going to do what he is going to do. It is up to the town’s legal team and land-use professionals to make sure he does it in a way that is squeaky clean, not a jumbled-up mess in which numbers are pulled out of the air. No one in Town Hall, it seems, has had the nerve to object when obvious trouble looms. Agree with his policies or not, the supervisor deserves better, and it is not fair for him to take all the blame.

    What is regrettable is that the solution appears simple: The town could throw out the resolution to sell the property to Mr. Jones and Mr. Siedlick and seek an appraisal of its own. Another route, one that has not been discussed as far as we know, would be for the town to grant the motel owners an easement over the disputed property — in which no money changes hands. Though perhaps not the bloodbath the Democrats might be hankering for, it could be a satisfactory alternative.

    Resolving the Ronjo tangle will be the easy part. Providing the structure and openness that will make competent decision-making in Town Hall the rule will be a long-term project.

   There were congratulations to go around at an April 3 East Hampton School Board meeting at which it was announced that the district would be able to put its 2012-13 budget to voters while staying within a state-mandated 2-percent cap on the increase in the tax levy. Numerous cuts, especially to personnel, have resulted in a $62.8 million spending plan that stays within the cap. Voters are expected to look favorably on these results when they go to the poll on May 17.

    In Springs, however, there was less celebration at last week’s meeting. Popular programs, including some sports, staff, and funding for Project MOST, an after-school program, are on the chopping block as that district’s board struggles to keep the tax increase low. Staying within the 2-percent cap means that the board can ask voters to approve no more than a $24.6 million budget for 2012-13.

    For any of the districts, going above the 2-percent ceiling would require winning more than three-fifths of the vote on May 17, an apparently impossible task. Difficult decisions are being made to get to the point where approval is merited. The members of both districts’ boards are to be commended for the difficult work they are doing.

   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.

    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.

    Wind with gusts into the mid-40s from the south-southeast the past few days have taken away what little sand had accumulated at Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village after the last devastating winter storm. Exposed rubble from portions of the parking lot there now lies where bathers might have spread their towels come Memorial Day. To the east and west, short stone jetties block passage to all but the most intrepid. A single steel pipe, hung with a plaintive no-trespassing sign, is all that remains of a fence with which a homeowner, in a quixotic effort, staked a claim to the sand.

    Those who watch the shore know that it is difficult to look at conditions in any one location and single moment in time and draw conclusions. Over the years, however, certain trends become obvious. As the summer approaches, the stark erosion at Georgica commands attention and leaves us wondering whether we are being given a picture of what is to come.

    People ask what it is about this part of the village oceanfront that makes it so susceptible to beach loss. That might be missing the obvious. The houses that line the sand starting at Main Beach and running west to Georgica Pond were the first to appear on the dunes here, starting in the 1890s. A map made in 1902 shows the Main Beach bathing pavilion set a considerable distance back from the water; it now sits on the beach. More were to come. The economic growth that touched off a boom here in the first decades of the 20th century produced dozens of houses nestled behind then-tall dunes, a hundred or more feet back from shore. Little did their owners know, or they didn’t bother to ask the locals, who knew where not to build.

    The dunes that in another era sheltered the summer cottages of the New York well-to-do are, of course, now gone, as are the wide beaches that were in their views. A century’s erosion has seen the sea creep ever closer to their porches. Stone walls, revetments, as they are called in the trade, are all that stand between these early houses and oblivion in one bad storm.

    Elsewhere along the East Hampton oceanfront, houses that were built farther back or on higher ground, for example, near the Maidstone Club, are still years away from this fate. Farther east, at Beach Hampton, in some places in Montauk, and on many bay beaches, officials naively allowed construction in low spots and far too close to the water — and continue to do so. The owners of these houses, seeing the conditions at Georgica this week, may well have a glimpse of the days to come.