Editorials

It is painfully ironic that that the federal agency created to keep the United States safe after the Sept. 11 attacks now targets Americans.

Southampton Town officials had stars in their eyes when they granted permission for a giant pop concert held in Bridgehampton on Saturday, attended by an estimated 3,000 guests.

The death of Jeffrey Gantt by apparent drowning in Montauk’s Fort Pond on Sunday is a tragedy for his friends, families, and business acquaintances, and is a reminder how quickly things can go wrong on the water, even in the most seemingly benign places.

Wainscott might be headed toward incorporation for all the wrong reasons. But if in doing so it can avoid the worst of what has happened elsewhere in East Hampton, forming its own village might just be the best thing that could happen to it.

If there was ever a moment for the myriad school districts on Long Island to cooperate, this is it. By working together across district lines, schools can help reduce the risk of a renewed Covid-19 outbreak.

For a long time, this newspaper has called for bike lanes on county, town, and village roads in a general sense. Instead of just keeping to that, we now suggest that several specific roads should be considered for widening to accommodate bicycles.

From early in the pandemic, it was clear that resort communities were different. Ski areas, which attract visitors and seasonal workers from across the United States and other countries, became hot spots for virus outbreaks. In Colorado, while the rest of the country was just becoming aware of the danger in March, numbers were already beginning to appear in places like Vail and Aspen.

As summer began, Covid-19 prevention on the East End looked dangerously inadequate.

With mounting evidence about a Russian plot to pay bounties to fighters in Afghanistan to target United States and coalition troops, one might have thought an Army veteran like Lee Zeldin would sympathize with the American military personnel who may have come under attack, but that would be wrong.

The question is if — not when — schools will welcome back students. And the question also is how teachers and administrators are preparing.

There is a sense on South Fork streets and on the beaches that we may somehow have defeated the virus. There is no evidence this is true.

Reactions have been negative to a $60,000, six-month contract between the Town of East Hampton and a New York City-based communications firm hired to help get the word out about Covid-19 issues and to redesign the town website.