Editorials

State officials were right to close some parks as thousands of visitors swarmed over Montauk on Sunday. The drastic step came after the previous weekend, when thousands came to enjoy the sunshine.

Something about students’ laptops that came up at a phone-in school board meeting this week struck us as important and worth a closer look.

Writing in the first person, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc issued a rare press release this week listing some of the things he has been up to since the Covid-19 crisis began.

Social distancing has appeared to slow the transmission of Covid-19, but the number of new cases remains alarmingly high.   

Covid-19 orders to close schools, businesses, and houses of worship have revealed surprising aspects of contemporary life in our region, aspects worthy of a deeper look at how readily eastern Long Islanders have taken to the outdoors.

This is a stressful time. Giving when one can or lending a hand in other ways can remind us that we are all in this together.

It cannot be stressed often enough that maintaining quarantine conditions is critical now that Suffolk's COVID-19 cases have grown to nearly three times the available hospital beds in the county.     

On the South Fork, almost all storefronts are dark and workplaces closed as part of a statewide effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But landscapers appear to be a large and visible exception. This puts workers, among them some of the area’s more vulnerable members of the labor force, at increased risk of exposure.     

In a region dependent on the service economy, when demand drops to near zero, so too does the income many East End residents need to get by.

The problem evident now is that the towns failed to calculate the cost of ever-increasing residential development. It has long been clear that in the critical areas of water supply, pollution, and emergency medical services the ultimate effects of growth have not been adequately anticipated.

Many people who work in the trades on the East End -- painters, carpenters, and other hardworking folks who frequently cope with fumes and dust on job sites -- might have a box or two of spare N95 masks in their storerooms or the back of their work vans.

The Star would like to issue a call directly to tradespeople, asking them to please look into the back of those trucks, the bottom of the closets, or their tool boxes to see if they have any unused N95 masks still in their box or plastic packaging.

Local food production was not always a sure thing. There was a time when development threatened to gobble up the remaining farmland on the two Forks.