Editorials

On the eve of the Hamptons International Film Festival, a rumor that the East Hampton movie theater was going to be no more tore through town with notable speed. Facebook was alight with variations on a story that a developer had plans to remove the screens and turn the site over to retail. Calls to the theater, now owned by the Regal Entertainment Group, as well as to the corporate office, were answered by plausible denials.

A well-attended formal dedication of a pollinator garden at the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum on Sunday was a fitting tribute to the late Matthew Lester, the East Hampton High School student and Eagle Scout candidate who conceived it. But the event, which included lunch for 300 people, live music, speeches, and a brief ceremony, demonstrated that a new and important town square is available here.

In the aftermath of the horrifying gun deaths and hundreds of injuries in an attack at a Nevada music festival on Sunday, one question for those of us in New York’s First Congressional District is what to make of the $9,900 Representative Lee Zeldin took from the National Rifle Association last year. In receiving that sum, just short of the $10,000 limit on aggregate contributions, Mr. Zeldin was tied with an upstate Republican as the member of the New York delegation receiving the most from the group.

Two recent high-profile incidents involving Montauk party-fishing boats have drawn attention to a problem on the water in which paying customers take too many or too small fish, while the crews, captains, and vessel owners evade responsibility.

Incredible devastation has been the story of the 2017 hurricane season. With two Category 5 storms making landfall in the Caribbean, the period has been improbable, at least in terms of the historical record. Yet researchers have been saying for some time that years like this were possible, if not likely, as the oceans rapidly warm thanks to climate change.

The East Hampton Village Trustees appear willing to listen to ideas about how to lessen leaf-blower noise. However, as the board considers what primarily is an annoyance, it should also think about a safety problem on village streets — massive landscaping trailers parked in the lanes of travel as workers tend to adjacent properties.

While we were thinking about leaf blowers, we learned that East Hampton Town’s elected officials may be about to reinstitute free leaf pickup service in some form or other. This is an exciting prospect for residents, many of whom sorely missed the old program after it was eliminated in 2011.

“The Affair,” a cable television series mostly set in and around Montauk, has been back in town lately, shooting scenes for its fifth season. For the most part, the filming has drawn little notice.

Called the most important fish in the sea, menhaden, or bunker in local parlance, put in a great show this summer. Bluefish and striped bass feasted on their rich and oily flesh. Several species of sharks took wild swipes at their schools. And whales, dolphins, and osprey got in the act, too, putting on spectacular shows within easy view of the ocean beach.

Conventional wisdom might be that a bitter primary only benefits the opposing political party, but following a surprisingly lively battle between supporters of Zachary Cohen and Jeffrey Bragman for a Democratic slot on the East Hampton Town Board ballot in November, that assumption could use some rethinking.

Tuesday’s primary for two Democratic Party ballot slots in the forthcoming general election for East Hampton Town Board and for nine town trustees on the Independence line is a rather rare event: There have been few primaries for local elected offices here over the years.

And so it has happened again. A major American city is inundated after a hurricane, and officials claim they could not have anticipated how bad it might be. They have then used their lack of foresight as an excuse for inadequate planning, little evacuation preparation, and failure to obtain emergency supplies. This, of course, is complete nonsense.

East Hampton may one day look back and realize this was the summer that the internet changed everything. Just as online advertising took the strength out of many newspapers’ bottom lines and Uber cut a hole in the taxi industry, so too may the web and smartphone apps be changing the way people vacation. If so, it is likely to have long-term implications for East Hampton, where a new, highly transient resort scene appears to have had an underappreciated ripple effect.

Last week’s revelations in a lawsuit brought by a former East Hampton Village police chief and his wife bring to light the distasteful truth that some local officials have long traded their influential positions for lucrative side businesses.

A multiagency exercise conducted in Gardiner’s Bay and several other East End waterways over two weeks this month had a sobering premise, but it had at least one important benefit, too.

Things move fast these days, so fast, in fact, that Americans are getting accustomed to radical change almost overnight. The country’s lightning speed acceptance of same-sex marriage is one recent example of how public opinion can shift in what seems an instant.

East Hampton Town is taking on restaurants that turn into nightclubs in a newly invigorated push. Focused on Montauk, this is an important effort to tamp down a party scene that has grown out of control. It is the end of the season, but the effort is nonetheless worthwhile since it sends a message for next year.

As East Hampton Town prepares to go all-in on water quality, there is one place it is decidedly ignoring: Fresh Pond in Amagansett. According to tests done for Concerned Citizens of Montauk, Fresh Pond creek has as often as not been contaminated with fecal enterococcus bacteria. And this is not simply at mildly elevated levels: In a water sample last month, the bacteria count was almost 60 times higher than the federal standard for safe recreational contact.

If your garden is anything like that of a friend of ours, your status with the neighbors, who often receive its ever-increasing overage, must be skyrocketing. This summer has produced one of the most bountiful home vegetable harvests in years, and the wonder is that it’s happening after an unusually cold spring, with temperatures in the 50s halfway into June.

East Hampton Town will start accepting applications on Sept. 1 from homeowners who want to replace their septic systems or cesspools with state-of-the-art low-nitrogen alternatives. However, lacking even the most rudimentary test data and without a science-based plan for rolling out the new program, the effort could end up with a lot of money being spent with few results to show for it.

There is painful irony to the message that President Trump delivered Friday in Brentwood. Speaking to a group of police that included members of all of the East End departments, Mr. Trump ostensibly addressed the violent MS-13 gang. But he also told the officers and assembled police brass that they should feel free to rough up suspects. A White House spokeswoman has said that he intended the off-script comment as a joke. If it were a joke, it showed unfathomable insensitivity; if Ms. Trump was being serious, it showed what seems like criminal depravity.

A minor accident in which a Bridgehampton fire truck responding to a call struck a passenger car near the intersection of Montauk Highway and Sagg Road on Monday should be a reminder to all motorists here to yield to emergency vehicles.

A recent analysis by a private group has found that human and animal wastes were reaching the South Fork’s bays, beaches, and harbors at an alarming rate. The eastern Long Island chapter of the Surfrider Foundation took data taken from its Blue Water Task Force project and from the Concerned Citizens of Montauk and looked for trends. What it found should be alarming to anyone who cares about clean water and a productive environment.

Fasten your seatbelts, here comes our annual editorial about beach bonfires. If you are among those who think it is still the 1970s, when the population was 9,000 and the number of summertime visitors maybe twice that, read no further. However, if you are among the majority, who understand that times have changed and that the pressures on public spaces have increased exponentially, and that the old rules no longer work as intended, we ask that you pay attention to what we have to say.

Breitbart News, the arch-right website, helped set the tone some years ago when it posted a story headlined “Ten Reasons Why People Who Support Wind Farms Are Deluded, Criminal or Insane.” Brietbart is not alone; opposition to wind power is common among many on the right, who cite turbines’ wildlife-killing blades as a top concern, though at the same time they back gutting the Endangered Species Act and dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency.

With for all the world what looked like an eye on 2018 and a bid for higher office, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone went for a bicycle ride recently in Southampton Village. The camera-ready event (Mr. Bellone eschewed his usual jacket and tie for a T-shirt) was to promote a countywide bike-sharing program, like the ubiquitous blue bicycles in parts of New York City.

East Hampton is in a crisis in which young adults, year-round workers, and ordinary residents struggle to find adequate housing they can afford. But the most recent town board discussion about housing involved temporary, portable units intended for Montauk’s seasonal, resort work force. Taking the proposal seriously is an unfortunate case of skewed priorities.

About a year and a half ago, Jay Schneiderman was able to convince East Hampton Town officials that a mothballed restaurant at his family’s Breakers Motel in Montauk was, in fact, operational and that in any event the clock had run out on a neighbor’s attempt to prevent its reopening.

A stunning juncture occurred Tuesday afternoon when Representative Lee Zeldin broke with the Trump administration over links between the president’s family and individuals with ties to the Russian government who were thought to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

The East Hampton School Board will want to carefully consider a residents’ group apparent offer of $2 million to help the district buy a parcel on Springs-Fireplace Road for a school bus parking and service facility. It should also try to be more flexible about the bus depot question in general; so far the board has been somewhat inexplicably attached to a plan for a site it already owns at Cedar Street.