A coffee shop in Sag Harbor may be closing at the end of the month after its landlord handed the lease to someone else. It is an old story: A property owner decides to go in a new direction, or raise the rent, or renovate. Happens all the time.

    But this go-round is different. Java Nation has been in its location up a set of stairs off Sag Harbor’s Main Street for 17 years and become an anchor for the village, a draw for those who drive from as far as Montauk, a place for regulars to talk over the news of the world, to put up notices about lost cats and jobs wanted. The story has a bitter taste, too, in that the landlord has arranged for a new, more “upscale” coffee shop to take the old one’s place. It was this more than anything else that seemed to heat the blood of the regulars.

    The last vestiges of the village’s manufacturing heyday could be sniffed, some said, in the aroma of roasting beans rising nearly every morning from Java Nation. The shop, run by Cheryl and Andres Bedini, was an antidote to the hermetic and characterless feeling of, say, East Hampton Main Street. Worst of all, the end of Java Nation could mean Sag Harbor is finally succumbing, becoming one of the “Hamptons,” full of high-end chain stores in summer, groaningly empty in winter.

    A boycott has been discussed, as have acts of protest that could land you in the village lockup. For many, the end of the month, when Java Nation is supposed to be gone, is an existential turning point for the community. For personal interest (many of us at The Star survive on its coffee) and in the interest of the real Sag Harbor, we hope the Bedinis find a new home nearby.

   As the Springs School Board continues its struggle to find ways to pay for educating students while not asking taxpayers for more and more, a cost-savings idea is gaining ground. The notion of eliminating the district superintendent’s position and handing those duties to the school principal was discussed at a forum on Dec. 22. Meanwhile, in the East Hampton School District, the board is grappling with the prospect of overcrowding in the elementary and middle schools even as the last details of its recent $79 million expansion are finalized.

    In Springs, money problems are acute. Taxes in the hamlet are already among the highest in East Hampton Town. The school’s enrollment has surged in the last decade, with an increasing proportion of new students classified as English-language learners, which adds to staffing requirements. To be sure, the recent discussion of combining the superintendent’s and principal’s roles (plus an assistant or two) was inconclusive. But from an outside perspective it seems dicey for a district facing many challenges to have so much riding on a single person.

    Springs has somewhere just under 1,000 students to provide for and keep tabs on, whether at the Springs School itself or at East Hampton High School. It also provides bus transportation for Ross School students and those who attend the classes of the Board of Educational Services. Along with financial oversight and matters concerning the physical plant, that seems enough for one person to keep tabs on without also adding the many academic challenges and day-to-day difficulties arising at the elementary school itself. One person might be able to do the job, but whether it would be done well is another matter. The decision-makers in Springs should find out exactly how its superintendent and principal have divvied up their responsibilities before taking what may turn out to be a counterproductive step.

    On Tuesday, East Hampton’s board was expected to discuss the size of classes at the John M. Marshall Elementary School. Though this district has deeper financial resources than Springs, the willingness of taxpayers to come up with money again for new construction is probably limited at this point.

    Both districts’ problems are pressing and will make for a difficult year ahead for their elected boards and administrators.

Welcome Opposition

It is early yet, with only one East Hampton Town Board meeting so far this year, but already it appears that the three-people-in-a-room way local government has been run may be coming to an abrupt end.

    With two newly elected members of what might be considered the opposition party if this were the British Parliament, the town board is likely to cease being a panel where rushed and mysterious pieces of public policy are voted on with nary a peep from its minority members. This is a good thing; many of the embarrassments of the past two years have come from measures that were hatched without open discussion, such as an ill-fated rock festival apparently illegally approved for a residential site in Amagansett.

    Of course, it would be a surprise if the Republican majority on the board — Bill Wilkinson, Theresa Quigley, and Dominick Stanzione — whose record took a drubbing in November, adopted a more inclusive approach in Town Hall. If nothing else, however, Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, the Democratic board members who were sworn in on Tuesday, will play the role of question-askers, slowing down decisions so residents can learn more about what is being done in their name.

    Two recent matters before the board make a strong case in point. For reasons unknown and at the behest of an unnamed buyer, the town board was in a race against the clock at the end of the year to get bids for the sale of seven office condominiums in which it houses a number of key departments. Then, in the last meeting before the Christmas holiday, the board quickly and without explanation decided to move toward selling a “drainage easement” off Hand Lane in Amagansett. Why and for whose benefit? Well, Mr. Stanzione and Mr. Wilkinson apparently know, but they weren’t saying. The way this was handled would be comical if we weren’t talking about the people’s business.

    We expect that the new town board members will use their positions to insist on the clarity of purpose that residents expect — and deserve — from their town government.

Like Ernest Hemingway’s character who married the “first girl who was nice to him,” the Town of East Hampton is on the verge of a rushed deal to sell the office condominiums that house various departments with no plan on the horizon for where they would ultimately go.

    The notion of selling the seven condos has been around for some time. They house the planning, zoning, building, and natural resources offices, along with the assessors, tax receiver, and ordinance enforcement staff — a good portion of the workers who keep town government humming along. The town’s maintenance costs for the office suites add up to $145,000 a year. The board set a minimum bid of $3 million, following an appraisal which set their value much higher — more than $4.4 million for all seven.

    The motivation for selling the condos apparently comes from a specific, unidentified would-be buyer who has the town hustling to ink the deal. A request for bids, ostensibly to allow others to get a crack at the purchase, was announced on Dec. 8, with a due date of 1 p.m. yesterday and a closing within 60 days. That was hardly enough time for anyone other than a buyer with an inside track to make an offer. Beyond a legal notice and a piece of paper or two posted in Town Hall, there was minimal fanfare for the sale. Nor was it listed with real estate agents, so far as anyone can tell. According to the bid specifications, the town would occupy the offices rent-free for a year, if sold at the bulk discount of $3 million, then pay rent at a rate to be determined by the new owner if it wanted to stay on.

    Whether or not selling the office space is sound long-term financial planning (which we doubt), one disturbing fact is clear: Before long, the town will either have to pay market-level rent to remain in the suites or begin a major building project likely to cost taxpayers more over time than remaining in the condos it already owns, despite the $3 million windfall.

    These departments handle critically important town functions. A solid plan for where they are to be housed — and at a known cost — must be in place before any sale is contemplated.

The East Hampton Town Board’s new interest in how Cablevision franchise fees are apportioned is a good idea, with the possibility that the hefty sum might be spread more equitably.

    By longstanding practice, nearly all the money the town gets annually from Cablevision goes to LTV, which provides public-access and educational television and broadcasts many town meetings and work sessions. The town board held a hearing last Thursday on Cablevision’s use of the town’s right of way for transmission lines, but much of the real action has taken place in private discussions between the town and the cable company. The town board has been looking to get more money for allowing Cablevision’s Optimum division to have a near-monopoly on television service and a dominant share of Internet use.

    The 2012 town budget anticipates $850,000 as the franchise fee, a more-than-40-percent jump over the amount paid to the town in 2011. The figure is based on 5 percent of Cablevision’s reported revenue in East Hampton Town, up from 3 percent.

    Whatever the actual sum turns out to be for 2012, the thinking around Town Hall lately is that the pass-through to LTV could be reduced. Until a review of LTV’s finances was conducted earlier this year, the town board (and the public) had just about no idea how the money was spent. The board asked for several clarifications of the data LTV submitted.

    With the town’s having cut other social-welfare, education, and cultural services, it seems only reasonable that the size of LTV’s share should also be on the table. Though its supporters are sure to disagree, the outsize payments to LTV that come with few strings attached and minimal oversight appear questionable.

    East Hampton Town may be getting into the fuel-regulation business in a small way, but not without  concern about possible spills and unfair competition.

    The town board is headed toward approving an addition to the code that would make it legal to pump diesel from trucks at the Commercial Dock in Three Mile Harbor; gasoline sales from trucks are prohibited. The practice, which prompted a lively debate at a town board hearing in 2009, has in fact been going on for decades, but without significant controls. If the board approves the law, direct diesel fueling of boats from trucks would end at Lake Montauk and at town-owned docks used by recreational boaters.

    The Gann Road site was singled out because the largest vessels cannot get to the few private marinas with fuel docks at Three Mile Harbor and because it is in easy reach of the deep navigation channel. In Lake Montauk, there are several relatively accessible private fuel facilities with adequate spill containment and other protections.

    The proposed town law contains a troubling contradiction, however. It explicitly acknowledges the environmental risk and potential liability of truck-boat fueling, but would allow it nevertheless where no other source was immediately available. This is not the right solution.

    The community’s interest in clean waterways would be far better served if the town sought a company to set up a diesel facility at the Commercial Dock, meeting the same high safety standards as the private marinas. What East Hampton should not do is allow fuel truck operators to undercut established marine businesses — all of which have had to invest large sums of money to be able to sell fuel — and at the same time increase the risk of ecological damage.

    The pending one-month suspension of Larry Penny, the East Hampton Town director of natural resources, on what may be exaggerated charges, does not bode well for the environment here. Though Mr. Penny has the right to a hearing to contest the claims, the outcome appears preordained, and the town board’s move against Mr. Penny seems a precursor to his firing.

    Having presented voters with tax cuts cobbled together by tapping money from surpluses, the town board knows it will have to balance the books sooner or later by trimming expenses. This makes Mr. Penny’s income, roughly $100,000 a year plus benefits, a tempting target. That the board’s majority has in the last two years essentially declared themselves at war with environmentalists provides ample reason for concern that motivations beyond Mr. Penny may be at play.

    If the board acts quickly to solidify the Natural Resources Department in his anticipated absence, however, most fears would be allayed. The town board needs to name a temporary, qualified replacement to take Mr. Penny’s position should the suspension come to pass. If the board does not do so, it will become evident that the majority views the Natural Resources Department as an afterthought or impediment. And, if Mr. Penny is gone for good, the stakes become much higher.

    If the town board is being straight with the community about what it sees as flaws in Mr. Penny’s job performance and fires him, it must quickly hire someone whom it believes will do a more effective job of protecting our natural resources. And, if it’s even just for 30 days, someone must always be watching out for the town’s environment.

    Once again, a landowner is trying to expand a commercial use of a residential property, and once again, it appears that some East Hampton Town officials are eager to help him do it.

    In this most recent example, the applicant wants to move a business structure closer to Montauk Highway at the intersection of Sayre’s Path in Wainscott, rebuild it, and add a stand-alone house at its rear. Michael Davis, who is well-known for developing houses, mostly in Sagaponack and Wainscott, has undertaken the project, calling it Wainscott Wombles.

    At a recent East Hampton Town Planning Board meeting, Mr. Davis’s representatives said the existing building, once a diner and most recently a high-fashion retail space, would be moved and converted into a two-story office building. The gravel parking lot would be replaced and beautified, and the redevelopment would echo the attractive residences Mr. Davis builds, bringing a welcome upgrade to the entrance to Wainscott, they said.    

    The problem facing the town is that what Mr. Davis is proposing is prohibited under East Hampton law. The law bans the expansion of uses that do not conform to zoning, that is, for example, a restaurant in a residential zone. The rule is meant to discourage commercial sprawl and protect the interests of residential neighbors.

    At the meeting, Mr. Davis’s lawyer argued in a way that would make George Orwell proud: Because a business exists on the property its commercial use trumps the underlying zoning of it as residential.

    Mr. Davis should have been directed to the zoning board of appeals to seek variances from the law to allow the expansion as well as the house, a banned second use. Instead, based on a determination by the East Hampton Town Building Department that two uses — the business and a house — would be okay on the lot, he was able to go directly to the planning board. We have to wonder how Tom Prieato, the town’s top building inspector, was prevailed upon to make this flawed and controversial call.

    At least one neighbor, a lawyer, has vowed to sue if the project goes ahead as proposed; his would appear to be a strong case. It remains to be seen how the application fares with the planning board, whose members heard about it officially for the first time on Dec. 7. The legal issues appear to be clear-cut, but in the current environment, in which officials have looked the other way on other questionable projects, anything could happen.

    Many people were pleased to see the excellent turnout Sunday afternoon at a gathering at the Town Marine Museum to talk about the Amagansett Life-Saving Station on Atlantic Avenue. This is a hopeful signal that the town-owned building may soon be restored, and the Life-Saving Service and its successor, the United States Coast Guard, at last be awarded the local recognition they deserve.

    The Amagansett station is unusual among historical sites here in that it is one of a very few that figure in the national narrative. Part of a string of similar posts along the shoreline, the station’s crews patrolled in relative anonymity until June, 1942, when a Coast Guardsman met a group of German would-be saboteurs who had been rowed ashore from a U-boat on a mission of destruction. Though one of the plotters turned himself in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the plan fell apart, the investigation had been touched off by a report from Amagansett. In recent times, the military tribunals used to deal with suspected Al Qaeda agents at Guantanemo Bay had their legal antecedents in the trial of the German saboteurs.

    A lot of money must be raised to restore the Atlantic Avenue building to its original appearance. The community preservation fund could help and might be considered a supplemental source, but the town board has been parsimonious about it, and there is a legal hitch to be overcome. Donations, should any readers be so moved, will be welcomed and can be made out to the East Hampton Historical Society and mailed to Box 51, Amagansett 11930.

    You have to wonder why the owners of small private planes want so badly for East Hampton Town to seek Federal Aviation Administration money for a deer fence. At a hearing last Thursday, pilot after pilot came to the Town Hall microphone to support the Republican board majority’s plan to pursue funding from the F.A.A. But why? Really, why?

    The possible answer may lie not in a concern for the town’s finances — there is plenty of money for the fence in a dedicated airport surplus fund. It may instead be because many pilots genuinely believe that without F.A.A. oversight, there is a risk that the airport would be shut down. Indeed, the head of a pilots association has pointed out that the leaders of several anti-airport noise groups have not said they would not seek the closing of the facility altogether. Taking money from the F.A.A. helps head off that possibility even though there is no credible movement apparent to see the airport boarded up.

    As David Frum, a former George H.W. Bush speechwriter, wrote recently in New York magazine, there are wealthy and influential figures on the right who actually, and in all honesty, think Barack Obama’s presidency represents some sort of an apocalypse. Similarly, reasonable pilots from East Hampton and Southampton really do think that airport-noise opponents could some day force the whole place to be turned into condos, or lord knows what. Both views are powerful, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

    So if there is no chance that East Hampton Airport will be closed, who then would be affected if the town succeeds in gaining some degree of local control? The current sweetheart deal of low airport fees could persist or be changed regardless of F.A.A. funding. Limiting helicopters in some way would not appear to harm the private pilots who filled Town Hall last week. Nor would a ban on late-night or pre-dawn takeoffs and landings by loud jets put a damper on the owners of recreational aircraft. No, something else is afoot here, though exactly what that may be is not immediately clear.