Editorials

A powerful sense of community was evident on Sunday when more than 100 people gathered in the hope of saving the Springs Historical Society from dissolution. As with many organizations run by volunteers, maintaining forward motion as the heavy-lifters age, move away, or become interested in other things can be an existential challenge.

For whatever reason — maybe just dumb luck — the East Hampton Fire Department has had a relatively quiet couple of years, that is, up to the past few weeks. Most notable was the late September blaze at Ronald Perelman’s Creeks estate on Georgica Pond.

Montaukers and those who love the easternmost point in New York State are highly skeptical about an idea to allow camping and related concessions in Camp Hero. They are right to be ringing the alarm. Camping should not be permitted there.

A New York State grant of $9.7 million for water mains in Wainscott is good news indeed for more than 500 households. After potentially harmful chemicals were found in drinking water in the area, town and state officials, as well as the Suffolk County Water Authority, acted quickly. About eight and a half miles of underground pipe is almost half completed.

The Hamptons International Film Festival opens today with late-afternoon and evening movies running at the East Hampton Regal Cinema and Guild Hall.

A movie theater question of another sort has been in the news lately. After the Sag Harbor Cinema was destroyed in a fire almost two years ago, there were doubts that films would ever be shown there again.

Estonia’s Pakri Lighthouse showed up in a recent re-election campaign video for Representative Lee Zeldin as an inadvertent stand-in for the famous national landmark at Montauk Point. Democrats, including Mr. Zeldin’s opponent, Perry Gershon, quickly made fun of the campaign gaffe. Resistance Facebook and Twitter lit up with derisive posts.

In many ways, the Village of Sag Harbor is worth emulating. It has retained much of its character through a fortuitous real estate market and strict rules about historic buildings. Regulations about what can be put where might vex property owners, but the result has been an enduring charm — one that property owners have been willing to pay dearly for. That message apparently did not penetrate the minds of the village’s fire wardens, a group who oversee the Fire Department, who voted in May to install a garish illuminated sign in front of the firehouse, on Brick Kiln Road.

It should not have come as a surprise this week, and yet it did, when Christine Blasey Ford identified herself publicly as the person making a charge of attempted rape against Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee.

One, two, three: The Village of East Hampton took on paper waste, plastic straws, and smoking in public in a single morning. The proposed measures are ambitious and worthy of support, even if enforcement turns out to be a bit tricky.

The remnants of Hurricane Florence passed over East Hampton on Tuesday. Wind from the southwest, warm and heavy on the skin, whipped the flag above the village green. Leaves and tree limbs heaved and waved. Then came the rain, sudden and tropical, rivers running down the street to pool in low spots.

You can’t directly blame the big Montauk party spots for trouble like a recent car crash turned drug bust or a slashing at the 7-Eleven. However, these dramatic incidents, coming within hours of one another, do have, as they say, a way of focusing the mind. East Hampton Town officials are contemplating an approach to heading off new problems.

A public vote on the East Hampton Library budget, which comes up once a year, should be supported on Saturday. Here’s why:

David Gruber, who is seeking the Democratic Party ballot line for East Hampton Town Board in a Thursday primary, spread a false claim then failed to apologize.

A week after news broke publically about a confrontation that left East Hampton Village’s female lifeguards feeling harassed and subject to a hostile workplace, the village board remains mostly silent.

Democratic voters and members of minor parties across New York State will have a chance to make choices next Thursday in primaries for offices from town hall to the governor’s mansion. In East Hampton, the main event — between Councilman David Lys and David Gruber — is for the right to appear on the Democratic Party line in November’s general election.

Fresh, line-caught tuna, a late-summer delight, has been coming across the Montauk docks lately. Looking through the photos on our Instagram feed lately, we have been thrilled by images from the fish markets of fat yellowfin and bigeyes lined up on ice or cut into sushi-grade slabs on stainless-steel tables.

From the start, East Hampton Village officials have mishandled a growing scandal stemming from women lifeguards’ official bathing suits. The unresolved matter has left several of the village’s seasonal employees feeling bullied and harassed, and left the impression that high-level village officials tried to keep the whole thing under a blanket.

Glenn Hall, the chairman of the East Hampton Town Disabilities Advisory Board, made a powerful point recently in reacting to a proposal from the developer of a Montauk commercial building to place a handicapped access entrance at the rear of the structure instead of the front.

A number of owners of Montauk resort properties have been speaking out recently for the right to tax themselves to pay for placing protective sand on the downtown beach. Their eagerness is understandable; we are entering the height of hurricane season with winter northeasters breathing down our necks not that far behind.

If you have not already done so, make a point of swinging by the East Hampton Village Green, where August is in full bloom. There, above a sinuous man-made dreen, recently planted pink and white marshmallow flowers wink at passers-by.

A decrepit building on Montauk Highway in Wainscott that once thumped to the beat of the Star Room nightclub was reduced to rubble and carted away earlier this month. Last week, several unused structures on the Sag Harbor waterfront were removed and the site graded smooth. Both are to become parks.

With the pending $2.1-million purchase of a parcel of land on Three Mile Harbor, East Hampton Town is moving ahead to consolidate its shellfish hatcheries in a single location. Right now, the Montauk hatchery occupies a site on Fort Pond Bay, where water conditions are less than ideal for breeding clams, oysters, and scallops.

Dialing 911 for police, a fire, or an ambulance is easy to do, but it may not always be the right call when the situation is less than urgent.

Locals here, as in similar places like Cape Cod or Nantucket, often view visitors “from away” with dread or derision, but this year we have been grateful that several South Fork cultural institutions have highlighted the work of artists from very far away indeed.

There are some places that people just shouldn’t go. This notion came to mind as we read about one man’s quest to assert public access on Cartwright Island, a low sliver of sand at the southern extremis of Gardiner’s Island.

Southampton Supervisor Jay Schneiderman had seen enough. According to a press release, he was fed up with the proliferation of signs illegally posted along roads in Bridgehampton and Water Mill and ordered town workers to remove them.

A striking image of Montauk in the year 2100 made the online rounds this week. Produced by Scott Bluedorn, an artist and thinker, it showed the easternmost portion of the South Fork as it might appear after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s worst-case projections for climate change-driven sea level rise. The image is stark and drew a lot of attention.

While not traditionally thought of as a flash point between conservationists and conservatives over threatened and endangered plants and animals, the East End has its own deep connections to the 1973 act of Congress that President Trump and his allies now seek to undermine.

East Hampton Town officials, having pulled a bait-and-switch on unsuspecting buyers of nonresident beach parking permits at Ditch Plain in Montauk now need to do the right thing and waive at least the first offense of anyone ticketed for using the main lot.