Editorials

As panic grips some segments of America over the idea of allowing Syrian or other Middle Eastern refugees to settle in the United States, a few simple observations should be kept in mind. The statistics show, notably, that the risk of a terrorist being among those who pass through the rigorous vetting already in place is extremely low.

As world leaders meet in Paris this week to try to agree on a meaningful strategy to combat global warming, those of us who live on the East End should pay close attention. Eastern Long Island is especially vulnerable to sea level rise, one of the byproducts of a hotter planet. Current and future officials will face budget-busting challenges in the years ahead, as well as painful choices about whether to protect private property at the expense of common assets such as the region’s beaches and public waterfronts.

Now that the absentee votes for East Hampton Town Trustee have been counted, the stunning reversal of fortune for the board’s longstanding Republican majority has become clear.

Among the pleasures of the East End are its clear skies and the notable absence of man-made lighting to spoil the view. East Hampton Village has taken this to heart — though some of its own municipal lighting could be better — and is working on new regulations, which, apparently, will conform to Dark Skies Association standards.

With the naming of A.J. McGuire to lead the Sag Harbor Police Department, the village’s board of trustees has effectively put to an end to any question about the force’s future.

As attention continues to be focused on the Army Corps project on the Montauk beach, it is vital that the far more encompassing problem of sea level rise gets attention.

“It’s almost Thanksgiving. Donate something.” That’s what a Star editorial staff member suggested as an idea for this page this week. So we took a short walk around the office, asking, “If you had $100 right now to give to charity, where would you send it?” Answers were easy to come by and showed a surprising range.

Now that the East Hampton Town Board has a problem on its hands of a long queue of people willing to be arrested in protest of the Army Corps of Engineers’ project in Montauk as well as some 250 others who pressed the matter at a meeting on Tuesday, the question is where the town can go from here.

Sag Harbor Village officials and their counterparts on the Southampton Town Board appear in agreement on a wish to see a portion of the Sag Harbor waterfront revert to public ownership. A developer has been working on a plan for townhouse-style units there and has filed application paperwork with the village. In effect, the structures would wall off that side of Sag Harbor from the water.

It’s about the money, and it’s about the desire of some, if not many, East Hampton Town landlords not to see the party end.

News last month that two more sections of Accabonac Harbor had been permanently closed to shellfishing was met with little more than a collective shrug. We were surprised by the lack of outcry, and hope that other announcements of this depressing sort are not ahead.

New York State has released a first-draft plan for considering sea level rise. But for all the effort, and a self-congratulatory public relations flurry, there is little promise of improving coastal policy. This is a regrettable failure.

Some time ago East Hampton Village passed an ordinance prohibiting anything other than street and directional signs on public property. And it has worked; passers-by are able to enjoy this fall’s unusually vivid foliage unencumbered. This is something the East Hampton Town Board should look into in light of the unsightly proliferation of political come-ons stuck along on nearly every roadside.

When the voting results come in on Tuesday, East Hampton residents might want to take note of the town trustee results. With all nine seats on the trustee board in play, only the most well informed among us would have been able to make a well-reasoned choice.

You have to hand it to Amos Goodman for running a credible campaign for Suffolk legislator. As a newcomer to politics, he has offered plenty of ideas and put in a huge effort to get elected. Among Mr. Goodman’s strongest arguments is that he would make tackling Suffolk’s ongoing budget deficits a central focus.

County Executive Steve Bellone has, by our count, made two significant forays into East Hampton Town in the past year and a half. This is far too few, but it is more than have been made by James O’Connor, his opponent in the Nov. 3 election. Both should have made the South Fork a bigger part of their campaigns.

Among a field of 18 candidates for East Hampton Town trustee, the average voter could be forgiven for voting a straight party line or on name recognition alone. Given all the issues facing the town’s shorelines and waterways, however, the trustee board should be the best that it can be — and this means doing a little homework before making choices.

Support for outside commercial interests over home rule and the promise of meaningful noise control is a red line that candidates for East Hampton Town elected office should not cross.

The Springs School is crowded. There is no doubt about that. A committee charged with finding solutions, however, stopped short of calling for a major construction project.

During a Tuesday debate among East Hampton Town Board candidates sponsored by the League of Women Voters, there was much talk about how to solve a range of problems, such as water degradation, traffic, noise, and crowding, and yet the discussion consistently sidestepped the core issue: population.

Farmers and their advocates have for some time lamented a trend here in which publicly preserved land is lost from crop production.

At this point it is unlikely that anything would influence in a positive way the work about to begin on the downtown Montauk beach.

Yet another wastewater plan arrives, and again we find ourselves scratching our heads. This time a Massachusetts consultant has produced a set of recommendations for East Hampton Village intended to improve Hook and Town Ponds. These include sewage treatment projects for 87 watershed properties around Egypt Lane and North Main Street, an in-ground filter near the Nature Trail, and perhaps most visually notable, the creation of a million-dollar wetland on the grassy triangle near where Main Street, Woods Lane, and Ocean Avenue come together.

The East Hampton Town Trustees were approached recently about allowing a small pilot oyster-growing program in waters that they control. We believe it would be a good project and should be allowed.

With an important East Hampton Town Board election ahead, any groundbreaking initiatives on affordable housing are somewhat delayed, lest anything upset the status quo. But even if work already were under way on, for example, a modest plan for such housing in the Wainscott School District, it would hardly be enough to meet the demand.

The courtesy left — when a driver suddenly stops to let a driver in an oncoming lane cross over to make a turn — is either a last vestige of public decency on the roads or a risk to others.

As the South Fork clears out after what was, by almost all accounts, an unpleasant summer, work continues in East Hampton Town Hall on a proposal for a rental registry. Modeled on those in other towns, notably Southampton, the draft-in-process is expected to set up a procedure by which landlords would have to sign up with the town before offering anyplace for rent.

Water quality has been in the news this summer, thanks in part to Suffolk Executive Steve Bellone’s seizing on it in his re-election bid. Locally, there have been closures of Georgica and Hook Ponds after potentially harmful bacteria were found. At the state level, there is a bid to allow up to a fifth of future income to be skimmed off the community preservation fund for water improvement projects.

Long Island Sound is a federally designated no-discharge zone, but apparently no one told the right people at the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers.

It is surprising that the big story of the summer of 2015 was not a celebrity drunken-driving arrest or a devastating fire but instead the summer itself. East Hampton Town — and Montauk in particular — hit some kind of tipping point by the Fourth of July, and residents had had enough.