Editorials

As the summer season and all of its frustrations arrive in earnest, it is worth pausing to reflect that much of what residents might find offensive are the consequences of our own, collective decisions.

Behind all the traffic, aircraft noise, crowded beaches, environmental degradation, and even the offensive new PSEG utility poles, lies an inescapable reality: The South Fork in general and East Hampton in particular has grown beyond its infrastructure, government, and natural systems’ ability to cope with human demands.

Historically, the New York State Department of Transportation has not been a model for managing construction projects in this region. When it comes to traffic and transportation, it has been assumed that South Fork municipalities best understand the unique ebb and flow of traffic that defines the area. In the case of recent roadwork by the Southampton Town, however, that assumption has proven wrong.

A citizens group that advises the Southampton Town Board on matters concerning the hamlet of Bridgehampton has mobilized to fight a new CVS pharmacy at the intersection of Main Street and the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike. Southampton Town Planning Board review may delay what appears inevitable, but from our perspective the property is a perfect candidate for public acquisition using money from the  Community Preservation Fund.

When the numbers are laid out, they are stark: This year, between Thursday, May 22, and Memorial Day, a four-day span, there were 475 complaints about noise coming from aircraft using East Hampton Airport. This was nearly double the number recorded during the same period the previous year and, just as significant, the calls came from more than twice the households as in 2013. East Hampton Town officials clearly have a noise crisis on their hands.

East Hampton Town officials were on the right track last week when they denied a last-minute request for a permit from the operator of an annual for-profit bicycle ride to Montauk. Unfortunately, with as many as 1,500 participants already having paid up to $300 apiece, officials had little choice but to reach a settlement and allow the ride to go on.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee has come up with an idea worth considering about the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund, the 2-percent tax on a portion of most real estate sales that is used by the East End towns to buy farmland, other open space, and historic properties. The committee has suggested adjusting upward the preservation fund thresholds to make it easier for homebuyers shopping at the lower end of the spectrum to close deals.

Make no mistake, a significant change in East Hampton Airport policy appears in the offing. After years of confrontation, pilots groups and anti-noise activists are talking to one another at last, with a sense of purpose and optimism about the future.

Not to sound ungrateful, but we are hardly alone in thinking that there are some 14 long weeks before we get our town back. An Amagansett innkeeper of our acquaintance said that the weekend just past was the strangest he had seen in more than three decades in business. In Montauk by Saturday noon, there were scores of people drinking on the upper deck at one of the more notorious bars. Traffic was terrible — and dangerous.

    A sculptural work evoking the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 is without doubt a powerful and deeply moving memorial. But whether it should be installed on public parkland in Montauk is a difficult question to answer.

    As the United States involvement in Afghanistan winds down, and in the aftermath of the protracted occupation of Iraq, it is as meaningful as ever for Americans to reflect on the contributions of those who wear this country’s uniforms. Monday’s East Hampton parade will stop traffic on Main Street for a brief time, the temporary silence a tribute in a small way to those who never made it home. This year, too, we will think of three men, two who were killed in combat and one who, though not veteran, touched the lives of many who were.

    There was not much the Town of East Hampton could do other than reluctantly say yes when a Showtime television production company recently sought a permit for a week or so of taping for episodes of “The Affair” at the end of the month. This is despite conditions that many residents described as intolerable when the series’ pilot was filmed in Beach Hampton in September. Back for more, the company is to tape scenes in five locations in Montauk and at the Lobster Roll restaurant on Napeague through June 4.

    With annual school votes on Tuesday, the nearly complete lack of public controversy is striking, especially as two districts are seeking 60-percent support for budgets that will increase the amount brought in by taxes by more than a state-mandated cap. Notable as well is the absence of competitive races for school boards.

    The United States made it official this week in a report that linked global warming primarily to human activity. For every American, a heating planet is reason for concern. Here on the South Fork, where a rising sea level linked to the climate heating up is a real and present danger, concern should be heightened.

    The juxtaposition between old East Hampton and new could not have been made more stark than the recent news, first reported in the New York Post, that a hedge fund manager had paid $147 million for a verdant 16-acre ocean-view property off Further Lane in East Hampton Village. While the supposed sum Barry Rosenstein agreed to pay for the three lots in the estate of the former owner was stunning in and of itself and a record for residential property, that two 18th-century Dominy family workshops remain there adds a significant twist.

    Although it may seem coincidental that May is Mental Health Month and also the time when New York voters are asked to approve school budgets for the coming academic year, the link between mental illness and school safety is becoming increasingly clear. Unfortunately, school administrators and boards have been slow to catch up, opting for big-ticket expenditures on hardening buildings against the extremely rare chance of an armed attacker and failing to also expand counseling, on-campus therapy, and other programs.

    In terms of the long haul, the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ meager offer of a temporary fix for Montauk’s threatened downtown oceanfront could be a blessing in disguise.

    Suffolk Executive Steve Bellone was to have visited the East End yesterday and you would have thought the president was coming from the advance fanfare. Advisories to the press from his Hauppauge office arrived on Monday afternoon, then the phone calls started, then we had Tuesday follow-ups.

    Gazing from our office windows onto Main Street this week, we watched with a mild degree of curiosity as two men in a white, official-looking pickup truck pulled up and began unloading things. It soon became apparent that they were installing a tall sign right smack in front of the East Hampton Library’s main entrance. On closer examination, we saw that the sign announced Home, Sweet Home Museum was ahead and to the left, helpful perhaps, but. . . . And it turned out that the sign was joined by two more breaking the same press-stopping news nearby.

    East Hampton Town Hall was crowded last Thursday for a hearing on a proposed law that would strictly limit how and where so-called formula stores can be opened. In general, blocking the homogenization of the town’s commercial strips will be important to maintaining the area’s desirability among second-home owners and tourists. However, several aspects of the proposal should be looked at closely before going further.

    East Hampton Town officials have been working during the past few months on revising the way large assemblies are regulated. It is an important undertaking, and the time is now to get a handle on these before the summer’s high season.

    East Hampton Town’s effort to avoid commercial homogenization is to take a step forward this evening at a Town Hall hearing to gauge public opinion on strict new rules governing so-called formula stores. It is a worthy cause.

    An Amagansett development scheme that was met with vehement and nearly unanimous opposition appears headed toward a more than satisfactory solution. A hearing is to be held in Town Hall this evening about whether to use just over $10 million from the community preservation fund to buy the so-called 555 property on Montauk Highway, where a luxury village of some 79 apartments and houses had been planned for those 55 and older. Though specific ideas about how the land will be used are in the formative stage, its preservation for open space and, with any luck, farming, deserve support.

    An effort to respond to coastal erosion and flooding in low-lying areas here took a step forward recently when East Hampton Town made exploratory buyout offers to property owners. This is an important development that responds to the increasing threat to the waterfront and the concomitant certainty of losing public beaches if seawalls and other permanent structures are allowed.

    One of the sacrosanct principles of East Hampton Town zoning is that no one gets more than one house per property. That is unless one happens to have a large parcel of land and an even larger bank account.

    The East Hampton School Board announced last week that it is likely to seek voter approval to exceed the state cap on tax increases for 2014-15. The move is not entirely unexpected, and appears justified, at least for the coming year. But this should not be the end of the discussion about taxpayer support of public education.

    That East Hampton is divided into two camps these days — those who want to live here and those who simply want to make a buck — is worthy of particular concern as summer approaches. Finding a balance between them is what makes the job of those in Town Hall and the village’s Beecher House so tough. It is up to them to make decisions about the direction of the community and to keep in check those of a more, shall we say, extractive mind-set.

    With a wink and a nod, East Hampton Town officials went out of their way to lavish praise and give quick approval for a project that radically altered a portion of the Montauk oceanfront landscape. Now, the suspiciously anonymous owner of the former East Deck Motel at Ditch Plain is dangling an expensive thank-you in the form of tons of fill that would be used at his or her cost to build a protective berm at a public parking lot nearby. Officials should think twice.

    Perhaps the single most important story in any recent Star was the one that appeared on the front page of last Thursday’s edition about the desperate need for adequate mental health services for school-age children.

    Think about what that means for a moment. What pediatricians, teachers, school nurses, administrators, and others are saying is that there are more kids at risk here than there are practitioners able to help them. This must change — and fast.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees’ concern about a possible alcohol ban at some ocean beaches should not be allowed to derail it. They own most of the beaches and should have been included in the discussions so far, but there is still time to join the conversation.

    High-season weekend crowds at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett have reached a point of beer-drenched popularity that makes many residents uncomfortable and members of the lifeguard corps worried. The time has come do something about it, regrettably perhaps for those who remember how things used to be.

    New York’s swans may have been unaware that their goose was nearly cooked when the state announced a plan to eliminate them in a decade. But abandoning the swan population’s reduction raises a basic question about public pressure and legislative interference in science-based policy.