Times have changed for the East Hampton Town Trustees, with ever-greater pressures on our shorelines from businesses and homeowners at the same time global warming is causing ecological changes. By the middle of the 21st century, sea level is predicted to rise by as much as 12 inches, inundating more low-lying areas and sorely testing local governments, which will have to cope with a slow-moving but potentially overwhelming disaster.

    The challenges mean that the trustees, who manage the town’s beaches, bays, and harbors outside of Montauk, will be required to deal with problems of ever-increasing complexity and potential cost to taxpayers. At the same time, the trustees will have to balance increasingly intense desires of waterfront property owners and residents’ traditional pursuits, such as commercial fishing, shellfishing, and recreation.

    Fulfilling the role of trustee is difficult now, and it is only going to get tougher. Successful trustees not only have to know their stuff, they have to be tenacious. No longer can their election be decided simply by who’s the most Bonac. By a quirk of the law, all nine of the trustee seats are in play at one time. In making our picks we looked for capability and dedication.

    Of the incumbents, we enthusiastically endorse Stephanie Talmage-Forsberg, Diane McNally, Joe Bloecker, and Lynn Mendelman. Among the challengers, we endorse Deborah Klughers, Ray Hartjen, Stephen Lester, Sima Freierman, and Nathaniel Miller.

    Among this excellent group can be found more graduate degrees than in any other town race this year, and even a doctorate, as well as plenty of relevant life experience. Our choices would make for a strong, balanced panel, one best able to meet what lies ahead.

    With Suffolk Executive Steve Levy’s exit from county government under circumstances that have not been entirely explained, two candidates relatively new to South Fork voters are poised to take his job. They are Steve Bellone, Bablyon Town supervisor, and Angie Carpenter, county treasurer.

    Neither has spent much time campaigning here, but Mr. Bellone seems more attuned to local issues. He supports an  East End alternative to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is a full-fledged fan of open space preservation. He touts a record of tax cuts, although Ms. Carpenter disputes the claim. Mr. Bellone is thinking big at a time when the region needs new ideas. The Star endorses Steve Bellone.

    As for the County Legislature, there is a refreshing quality to Cornelius Kelly’s run to unseat the incumbent, Jay Schneiderman. Mr. Kelly is tough and well informed and has gotten Mr. Schneiderman on the defensive about several issues key to the South Fork, notably Sunday bus service and land preservation.

    Since becoming East Hampton Town supervisor in 2000, Mr. Schneiderman, who hails from Montauk, appears on his way to becoming a career politician. This may disturb some voters, but in and of itself is not a reason to turn him out of office. He has amassed a string of achievements despite a bitter relationship with the county executive, while Mr. Kelly has no record at all. We endorse Mr. Schneiderman.

    Whatever happens next in Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street, after a 1 a.m. eviction by police Tuesday, it is remarkable that the encampment was allowed to remain in Zuccotti Park for so long. This would have been unimaginable in the past. Although the mayor’s responses have been erratic, few were confident at the movement’s outset that he would exercise any restraint.

    The city had successfully limited dissent with Orwellian “free speech zones” during economic summits and political conventions for years. The police were out in force and with video cameras during the National Republican convention a few years ago. Back in September, when all this started, few thought the city would allow the protesters to stay in the park one night, let alone until November.

    Detractors say they don’t understand what the Occupy Wall Street protesters want, but in one important aspect, the movement has been a success. If you ask just about anyone these days if they know what is meant by the 1 percent, they will have at least an inkling. The New York encampment and the others around the country have put the vast prosperity gap in the United States into the public consciousness.

    Whether it will lead to reforms that the poor and working class can take to the bank remains to be seen, but Americans are talking about it, and that’s a start.

    We wish Stephen Lynch well in his new post as East Hampton Town’s next superintendent of highways, but there is a certain sweet irony in his election. Among the responsibilities he is soon to have is keeping the roadsides clear of anything that does not conform to the town code, notably signs larger than six square feet. This is paradoxical because Mr. Lynch’s campaign billboards and parked, truck and trailer-mounted messages were among the most expansive of this year’s political season and, as such, were obvious violations of the law.  

    We do not mean to single out Mr. Lynch. Plenty of other oversize signs and illegal off-premises come-ons kept his company. Nevertheless, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, Scott King, the outgoing highway superintendent, other elected officials, and Town Hall personnel drove to work each day past other examples without doing anything about it. (Yes, we know we bring this up frequently, but we are going to keep at it until someone in authority starts paying attention.)

    Normally, these rules are within the purview of the Ordinance Enforcement Department, but it was as if its staff had never read the town code. You have to wonder what other less-obvious violations of the town code go without remedy.

    As of the January organization meeting at which he is to be sworn in, Mr. Lynch will be in a unique position in town government: He answers only to voters and does not have to operate in the highly politicized environment of the town board. The code, which he will promise to uphold, gives him the right — shared with the town police — to remove signs, illegal obstructions, and other objects of concern within the town’s right-of-ways. Mr. Lynch should study the code, seeking independent, outside advice, if need be, so that he can direct his crews to remove whatever is necessary to put a stop to this ever-expanding visual affront to public property, good taste, and the law.

    In news of the violence that has broken out in Cairo in recent days, a report has circulated that may indicate that the Egyptian authorities are paying attention to how some police in the United States have responded to the Occupy Wall Street protests.

According to the accounts, an Egyptian state television anchor cited the “firm stance” taken by United States law enforcement to “secure the state” as a justification for the Egyptian crackdown. This report came from Twitter, posted by Sultan Al Qassemi, a journalist and important voice in the Arab Spring uprisings. Whether or not this can be independently confirmed, it points to a troubling double standard between the United States’s internal actions and foreign policy.

    Occupy Wall Street first gained widespread attention in September, when a supervising officer in the New York Police Department used pepper spray on an unarmed and nonthreatening group of four women who had been standing together. Before that, the protests had been a curiosity; after it came out that N.Y.P.D.’s “white shirts” from higher ranks were leading an aggressive response to keep “sidewalks clear and crowds moving along,” the protest rapidly grew into a movement. Protesters greeted the news that the officer who had used pepper spray was “punished” by having 10 vacation days docked with anger.

    On Friday, campus police at the University of California Davis used pepper spray on nine seated protesters who had defied orders to move. Photographs of this unprovoked attack have become a new rallying cry of the movement. In one particularly resonant image, some wit digitally placed the campus officer into John Trumbull’s famous painting of the signing of Declaration of Independence, blasting America’s founding document with an orange-colored haze.

    It must be conceded that a few angry cops and misguided public officials do not add up to an overturning of democracy. Nor should  the police’s removal of the library Occupy Wall Street put together at Zuccotti Park be  considered on a par with book-burning in Hitler’s Germany. However, violent responses to the peaceful encampments reinforce the movement’s messages about inequality and the use of official force to resist meaningful change.

    If the report out of Egypt is accurate, the world is indeed watching.

    If East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson ever thought he had a mandate to do more than complete the work of correcting the financial chaos of the Bill McGintee-era, he can no longer make that assumption following his apparent narrow election victory over Zach Cohen on Tuesday.

    As the poll results came in, it was clear that Mr. Wilkinson’s support had shrunk from the election of 2009. That a relative unknown like Mr. Cohen could come so close to defeating him attests to the dissatisfaction of many voters with the supervisor’s record over the last two years.

    If any message for Mr. Wilkinson can be discerned from the outcome, it is that East Hampton residents want town government to change direction. The specifics may be subject to conjecture, but the consistent theme that has emerged during his term is that the supervisor and his Republican majority must do a better job of listening to constituents rather than dictating to them.

    At its best, elected office is an honor conferred by the voters on those whom they consider best represent their interests. This cannot be ignored by whoever is confirmed as the victor once the absentee ballots are counted.

    Tomorrow is Veterans Day and, like last year and the year before that, it is a day on which the United States is engaged in military conflicts on several fronts, including Afghanistan, which is said to be the nation’s longest war.

    According to the census, there are 22 million United States military veterans. About 1.7 million American men and women have served in Afghanistan or Iraq, some in both countries, and some on multiple tours of duty. Each has a personal understanding of what Veterans Day means. In a recent poll, only a third of these veterans said they believed those wars were worth fighting. And the number who reported having emotional difficulty returning to civilian life is now almost twice what it was among those who went to war before Sept. 11, 2011.

    Small gestures can help. One event, for example, will take place on Saturday at the Stephen Talkhouse, the Amagansett music venue. A group of musicians calling themselves Music for Morale will entertain to raise money to buy much-wanted supplies for a Marine unit deployed in Afghanistan, as well as to provide musical instruments for wounded veterans and those suffering from other war-related problems.

    This year, it is important not to overlook this country’s most recent servicemen and women, to thank them for the jobs they did or continue to do, to welcome home those who have returned, and to think with sadness of those who did not.

    Tomorrow on East Hampton Main Street — as in cities, towns, and villages across this country — veterans will march. It will be an opportunity for all of us, those who served and those who did not, to remember.

    One thing East Hampton needs as many of its residents struggle to get along in a sluggish economy is a unifying force at the top. Instead, in the less than two years Bill Wilkinson has been supervisor, he has helped create distance between people and their government and divide them from one another.

    Zachary Cohen, who is running as a first-time candidate, would return civil discourse and consensus to Town Hall. This is something East Hampton requires now more than ever because the challenges ahead are many and difficult.

    Had Mr. Wilkinson spent his time in office focused solely on what voters put him in the job to do — correct the ill financial legacy of the previous administration — his record would be wholly admirable. However, he veered far from that mandate, putting himself at odds with many full-time residents, part-timers, and weekend visitors.

    He alienated Montauk over noise and crowds, Amagansett over a rock festival, Springs over illegal housing, and Wainscott over the airport. Townwide, residents were put off by his failing, until pushed, to take beach-access lawsuits seriously, ending leaf pickup, attempting to undermine sensible land-use restrictions, threatening to sell the town’s commercial fishing docks in Montauk, and allowing community preservation fund purchases to drop to their lowest-ever rate, despite making sure the money taken improperly from it by the former administration would be returned. He also has fostered a deep fear of reprisal among town employees. The list goes on.

    Autocratic to a fault and quick to anger, Mr. Wilkinson has taken actions in direct contradiction of public sentiment, as with the hasty decision to sell the town’s interest in the Poxabogue Golf Center at a loss. He stood by as one of his appointees to the zoning board savaged the professionalism of the Planning Department. He put a friend, who shared a record Lake Montauk environmental penalty, on a committee to study pollution of the lake and recommend improvements.

    Many would have preferred Mr. Cohen to have come up through the path of a seat on the planning board or town board, where voters would have gotten to know him better. However, it should be noted that the current supervisor came to his first run for town office with far fewer government and finance credentials than Mr. Cohen.

    A policy nerd nearly to a fault, Mr. Cohen may prove overly deliberate in narrowing in on decisions. Yet his preference for compromise and an informed constituency is a better fit for a leadership role here than the simplistic “run East Hampton like a business” mantra from Mr. Wilkinson. Mr. Cohen sees residents as the C.E.O.; Mr. Wilkinson says he is the boss.

    Mr. Cohen would allow the town’s ordinance enforcers to seek out problems and issue violations as they see fit, protecting neighborhoods and the environment, and upholding local laws. With no obvious political ideology, he is someone who will lay out options and genuinely consider differing views. At the same time, he will continue the careful work of making sure town finances are in good shape — with corrections he helped initiate in the first place.

    Rationality and respect for others is the overriding issue in this year’s race for supervisor. In this regard, Mr. Cohen is the better choice.

    New York State may come up short of cash as 2011 comes to an end, and the outlook for the 2012 budget has dimmed, according to latest projections. The anticipated shortfalls are renewing attention on Albany’s version of a “millionaire’s tax,” which is set to expire next month.

    The state appears to be facing a deficit of $350 million this year between what flows in and what must be spent to keep government running. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Budget Division said this week that a drop in tax revenue linked to volatility in financial markets was largely to blame. An expected weak bonus season on Wall Street adds to the grim picture. The budget gap for the next fiscal year, which begins April 1, is estimated to be as much as $3.5 billion.

    The so-called millionaire’s tax is actually a surcharge on New Yorkers making $200,000 a year or more. Although the extra tax has brought in about $4 billion a year, many Albany lawmakers and Governor Cuomo oppose its extension. Mr. Cuomo has said the issue is one of fairness and that continuing to tax high-income residents would result in more of them leaving the state. He says there is more room for more spending cuts.

    State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who represents the South Fork, has a different idea. He has sponsored a bill that would extend the higher rate on millionaires and use the money to fund rebates to offset property taxes on households earning $250,000 or less. State income tax credits worth about $2.3 billion would be given to taxpayers based on a percentage of their income. The rest of the money raised by the surcharge would go for aid to schools. The idea is attractive in a Robin Hood kind of way, but, given the looming state budget crisis, it would seem to have little chance of passing. Mr. Thiele has said none of the millionaires who live in his district have complained to him about the current surcharge, though.

    With deficits likely this year and in 2012-13, Albany should look again at extending the extra tax on the state’s richest residents. Fair or not, it seems necessary. 

    Now that the election is over, the town boards of East Hampton and Southampton should move quickly to enact strict laws banning political signs on public property.

    It is a chicken-or-egg puzzle to ask which came first, the signs or the foolishness, but this much we know: Such placards consistently bring out a little too much bad behavior among misguided partisans. Like responsible adults who are forced to remove the toys with which the children are bashing each other in the head, the town boards, having allowed the privilege, now should take it away.

    In the East Hampton incidents we know of this year, there have been theft and defacement. One candidate is even reported to have cut up another’s signs to use as material for his own. Other signs were illegible, larger, or left up longer than the town code permits, posted illegally in the villages that ban them, and, by proliferating, became an all-around affront to the eye.

    Bigger apparently was better, though even the largest signs here were but trifles compared to those in the neighboring towns. In Southampton, room-size billboards went up for candidates for town trustee — yes, trustee, the clam people. Get ready to see more of the same  on the roadsides in East Hampton the next time around unless action is taken quickly to head off an arms race.

    By contrast, East Hampton Village is considering further limits in its already-restrictive sign law. Under existing law, none can be placed on public property at all; even yard-sale signs on tree trunks are prohibited. Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. wants to go further. He has suggested a stricter size limit on signs on private property to cut down on the clutter of real estate placards, though the law now allows only one that is no larger than seven square feet.

    In some parts of East Hampton Town the illegal come-ons are everywhere you look, but officials seem blind to them. Driving around Springs these days, for example, you can see prohibited off-premises signs actually nailed to utility poles. Enforcers look the other way, as they do with certain new lighted signs that are banned. Perhaps no one in town government cares about roadside aesthetics anymore, but, in that case, the law should be amended.

    Back to political signs: Other than attesting to the industriousness of certain candidates and their supporters, and helping voters identify which properties belong to party loyalists, these signs serve little purpose. The fall landscape would be better off without them, especially when they help bring out the failings of human nature.

    According to the State Department of State, a municipality can place rules on signs so long as they are “content neutral,” that is, they don’t favor one kind of message over another. In this regard, East Hampton Town’s law appears to be unconstitutional in that it allows real estate and construction signs to remain on public property for up to a year, while limiting all others to seven days. Government can regulate signs, but it cannot judge among the messages; all must be equal in the eyes of the law. While East Hampton is correcting this inconsistency, it should double down by ordering all such messages off public property. Both towns should put a stop to the silliness now.