Editorials

    By announcing this week that Len Bernard, the East Hampton Town budget officer, will stay on in what has traditionally been a political post, Supervisor-Elect Larry Cantwell has signaled that he will stress pragmatism over party. While the news is not a big surprise — Mr. Cantwell had hinted about this earlier — the hope is that the appointment indicates a new professionalism in how the town does business.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees’ new lawsuit over a stone sea wall being put in at Georgica Beach is among the most important developing stories to have come along in some time. In it, we may be seeing a glimpse of what is ahead here as sea level rise and erosion pit private interests against the public’s three and a half centuries’ of assurances that the beaches are theirs to use.

    With Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell sitting in the audience last Thursday, the Republican majority on the East Hampton Town Board put on one of its most regrettable performances to date, thumbing a collective nose at all who came before it and leaving yet another stink in the punch bowl for the next administration.

    In a last-minute attempt to tarnish a Democratic-leaning organization, East Hampton Republicans recently sent a formal protest to the New York State Board of Elections about the East Hampton Conservators, a self-described political action committee founded by the actor Alec Baldwin, among others. While the timing of the complaint may have been part of October’s political warfare, the issue is serious and merits attention.

    After she had loaded up her car and headed to the Montauk waste transfer station, a woman of our acquaintance was surprised Tuesday morning to discover that it was closed. She was not alone.

    New York is among some eight states that have declared the date a holiday for its employees; many other municipalities followed suit. Any number of people have been flummoxed by the Election Day shutdown of nearly all East Hampton and Southampton Town services, Town Hall, and most public schools, ostensibly to give staff an opportunity to get to their polling places.

    East Hampton voters on Tuesday had an easy task in choosing among the leading candidates for the town board. With more than 1,000 absentee ballots still to be counted, we expect that the margins between Fred Overton and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez will shift, but that the winners’ column will not. Much as we are sorry not to see Job Potter take a victory lap as the board’s elder statesman, the leadership equation of the group that will be sworn in come January is solid. And necessarily so — the way ahead will be full of challenges, some immediate, some long-term.

    One of the puzzles about the job of town assessor is why the post is an elected one. It is highly specialized and requires considerable breadth of knowledge and extensive training. It would, on review, seem logical to shift it to Civil Service status, with career professionals taking over. In fact, according to the Department of State, only about 12 percent of municipalities in the state continue to have three-member boards of assessors, as in the Town of East Hampton.

    For East Hampton Town Board only one thing is certain: Councilman Dominick Stanzione should not win re-election — and, given his record, it would surprise close observers of the Town Hall scene that he is likely to. Voters are lucky that the three other candidates for the seats open after Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley decided not to run again are among the strongest in years. The tough thing will be deciding among them.

    Issues involving the beaches, harbors, and shoreline have gotten more contentious and difficult to navigate, and the sitting East Hampton Town Trustees have risen to meet the new and increasing challenges. With a fresh outlook on the town board beginning in January, there is hope that the trustees will find eager partners.

    A mixed bag of seven statewide ballot propositions will greet voters on Nov. 5. We urge a yes vote on four, no votes on two.        

    Proposal 1 is the most controversial. It would authorize as many as seven new casinos. Reasons most heard in support of the measure are that it would bring much needed tax money to hard-bitten upstate regions, which would get preference in licensing, and that residents are gambling in other states anyway. We reject the latter as insufficient cause.

    With a pending vacancy on the East Hampton Town Justice Court and no incumbent seeking re-election, two candidates who would be new to the bench hope to don the robe. Town justices preside over everything from routine traffic ticket to violent crime cases, switching gears to handle zoning and quality-of-life matters, in addition to serving as court administrators. For this multifaceted role, justices are paid a salary and benefits in the proposed budget for next year of almost $119,000.

   The lines appear to be becoming clear with the East Hampton Town Trustees standing for access to the beach and Town Hall and some village officials standing with private property owners in the battle for the shoreline. This is a fight worth having, and the trustees have the correct view, the one most consistent with the public interest.

    Springs has become the focus of a debate about commercial vehicles parked on house lots, but the issue, which the East Hampton Town Board will take up in passing tonight, is far more wide-ranging than how large a dump truck (or two) can be left under one’s bedroom windows overnight.

    The Army Corps of Engineers’ options for downtown Montauk and its beaches are just not good enough and will only pass the problem on to future leaders and generations. Moreover, the prospect of a multimillion-dollar undertaking using money approved by Congress for Hurricane Sandy relief gives rise to questions about the ethical, perhaps even legal, basis on which the plans are based.

    Underlying Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s demand this week that the federal government investigate potential health effects and the environmental impact of the sale of Plum Island is a sense that the remarkable and history-filled isle should be preserved. This helps put necessary pressure on Washington to save the island as open space and help protect Long Island Sound.

    Plans for downtown Montauk’s ocean shoreline are to be presented at East Hampton Town Hall today, and all concerned, particularly owners of properties to the west, should pay close attention.

    Ian Calder-Piedmonte called it like it is at a recent meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board, of which he is a member, when it considered yet again a massive Amagansett housing complex. In response to an apparent, and repeated, threat by the project’s Connecticut-based developer to put up affordable workforce housing there, Mr. Calder Piedmonte said, “I’m not so sure that we should be afraid of affordable housing.”

   Two of the biggest dance parties of the summer of 2013 used the names of legitimate charities improperly in order to help secure East Hampton Town permits. In July, the Shark Attack Sounds gathering claimed to be a benefit for the Montauk Playhouse Foundation, and in August, a for-profit bash at Albert’s Landing in Amagansett, billed as Electronic Beach, salted its town application with references to a New York organization. Neither charity was asked whether its name could be used.

   One of the unfortunate aspects of a very strange time for the East Hampton Town Board is that the public — as well as the two minority party members — rarely know in advance what subjects will be discussed at meetings.

   Even though the high season may be fading into dim, albeit unpleasant, memory, East Hampton Town’s candidates for elected office must force themselves to grapple with the summer of 2013, which, hands-down, was the most crowded, most annoying, noisiest, and most out of control yet.

   Southampton Town officials are confronting a riddle about how to protect 14 Bridgehampton farm acres owned by the Peconic Land Trust. Ronald Lauder gave the property to a precursor of the land trust years ago. Unfortunately, the deal did not include restrictions on what the trust eventually could do with the property, and it even can be sold for house lots.

   Having spent nearly $1 million to design, install, and maintain a culvert linking Gardiner’s Bay and Accabonac Harbor, East Hampton Town has allowed it to fill with sand, essentially rendering a giant investment of public money useless. The Gerard Drive project was long envisioned as a way to improve water quality in the harbor by providing it with a second tidal opening. To remain functional, however, the culvert needed the sand, which otherwise would accumulate and shut it off, regularly removed.

   By asking Congress for its approval for a military response to the nerve-gas attack in Syria last month, President Obama may be setting a lasting precedent. Since the end of World War II, United States presidents have charged into conflicts by ignoring Constitutionally required prior approval from lawmakers or by expanding a narrow agreement beyond reasonable interpretations.

   Elected officials at almost all involved levels have been calling for expedited action along the threatened Montauk oceanfront in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. “We must act now,” Representative Tim Bishop and Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand said last month in a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers. Not so fast, we say.

   In terms of economic impact and value to residents, the proposed conversion of a 35,000-square-foot building in the East Hampton Town Industrial Park from a film and television studio to long-term storage should rank at the bottom of the list. Few jobs would be created, and they are likely to be low-paying. In community and cultural terms, storage is pretty much a black hole. We believe that the town could do a whole lot better.

   Sagaponack Village wants a police department of its own, or at least its village board and a number of residents do, though debate is ongoing. The arguments in favor of a force of the village’s own are compelling.

   Misplaced skepticism marred a meeting this week about an East Hampton Town effort to draft a wastewater management plan. Critics suggested, wrongly, that it was a clandestine effort to force scores of property owners to undertake expensive, unnecessary improvements to their septic systems, perhaps even one sold by a business with which a town consultant has a professional relationship.

   South Fork gas station operators are at it again. In his latest survey of the region’s at-the-pump prices, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. found that residents and visitors in the Hamptons pay 15 cents a gallon more than the Long Island average, and a stunning 20 cents more than the rest of the state. Making things worse, station owners have kept their prices artificially inflated this summer, even though on the rest of Long Island the average fell by 9 cents since the previous survey.

   East Hampton Town officials find themselves in a bit of a self-created puzzle insofar as the increasing practice of construction and landscaping contractors storing work trucks and heavy equipment on residential lots. The law limits what can be done in some cases, but in others it is maddenly ineffective.

   As summer hits its August high notes, many readers have no doubt noticed the wild and recent proliferation of signs along roadsides in East Hampton Town. From Wainscott to Montauk, shoulders are littered with all sorts of commercial come-ons as well as businesses tarted up like a Nevada cathouse with sandwich-board festoonery, flags, and outdoor merchandise in the right of way. If you were thinking so far that this was yet another example of Town Hall ignoring its own regulations, you would be right.