Editorials

    A recent East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals decision to allow the former East Deck Motel in Montauk to be buffered from the Atlantic by a 20-foot-high man-made dune appeared to sidestep several key questions — notably whether the project had adequate scrutiny and whether it might jeopardize the public use of the beach. The work was pitched as a restoration, but on closer look, it is far more than that and points to inadequacies in the law, which would affect how the town deals with such requests in the future.

    East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell has begun working with a number of other officials on revising the town’s gatherings law, with an eye toward controlling the burgeoning nightlife scene in Montauk. Meanwhile, a committee asked to study taxicab operations, including rabid price-gouging, has been revitalized. The work is long overdue, and but part of what it will take to make the easternmost hamlet a little less of a no-holds-barred party destination for summer 2014.

    Forget about the ice, the snow, the wind, and all that this winter. No: The real problem with winter 2014 is the potholes.

    Montauk Highway, which bears the bulk of this area’s traffic, is the worst of it. Deep pits lie in wait for tires and rims. Many offer a telltale clue: striped lines a layer down suggesting that the last time the road was paved something wasn’t done quite right.

    There is some good news on the environment for eastern Long Island and some that’s not so good. Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said recently that water quality was now his administration’s top priority. In East Hampton, Democrats listed groundwater and the areas’s bays and harbors among their key platform planks last year. Yet the State of New York, despite a projected budget surplus in the coming fiscal year, appears poised to cut environmental funding.

    The nice old house and outbuildings at 208 Montauk Highway in Amagansett had been for sale for quite a while with no buyer emerging when the owner approached East Hampton Town Hall for help. The result is a hearing at East Hampton Town Hall tonight on a zone change that just might hasten a closing. But the request, to go from a residential designation with a limited-business overlay within the Amagansett Historic District to full-on commercial, should be rejected.

    The apparent collapse here of planned participation in a deer reduction plan backed by the Long Island Farm Bureau should not go unremarked.

    As we have noted, the failure of the Department of Environmental Conservation to provide leadership in this matter should raise significant questions among state lawmakers about the agency’s function and capabilities. The local glitch, to which East Hampton Village and Town’s pulling out of the cull was attributed, that an environmental impact study was required before signing on, is an embarrassment to all involved.

    If there is one piece of advice that is more routinely ignored than any other, it is this: When public officials say residents should stay off the roads because of snow and ice, far too many figure that applies to someone else and head out anyway.

    So far, this winter bears out this observation. Accidents involving not-snow-ready vehicles and inexperienced or even unlicensed drivers have been plenty since the beginning of the year. Risky, too, is maintaining dry-road speeds just because you are behind the wheel of a hulking pickup truck.

    For those concerned about sustainable energy, the news recently out of East Hampton Town Hall is a nice surprise. Officials and three private companies are racing to put together a proposal to be presented to the state Public Service Electric and Gas Company, PSEG Long Island, for large-scale solar installations at town-owned sites. Taken together, the project could produce on the order of 40 megawatts of electricity, enough to power as many as 8,000 houses.

    Two numbers that may not seem related but have everything to do with each other are worth thinking about: $33 million and 2 percent. These are the sum now on hand in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s re-election campaign war chest and the limit on tax-levy increases by local governments and school districts, which he steered into law. Both speak to his ambitions and likely attempt to be the Democratic presidential nominee at some point in the future.

    It may be difficult for the powers-that-be in East Hampton Town Hall to recall in the depths of freezing winter the taxi mayhem of the past several high seasons. But time is a-wasting if something is to be done to bring the situation under control by summer. Complicating matters is the fact that meaningful regulation will require inter-government cooperation, including that of Suffolk County.

    What appear to be alarmingly optimistic projections and unfunded expenses are buried in the 2014 East Hampton Town budget. How the town deals with these stumbling blocks, which were left for the new town board by the previous administration, will be an early test. What is emerging is a picture of a budget that was fudged to make it appear balanced — hardly one that ex-Supervisor Bill Wilkinson would have left for himself had he expected to remain in office.

    As opponents of a planned reduction in the local deer population rallied at Hook Mill in East Hampton Village on Saturday, a basic question hovered unasked: Just how their numbers were allowed to grow unchecked and why the government entity most responsible by law and tradition for wildlife management in New York State has been all but absent.

    The good news in a recent New York Times Science section story about sea level rise is that Montauk’s tide records lag behind those in places along the eastern United States coastline that are becoming inundated the fastest. The bad news is that the advantage is not by much. According to the numbers, the waters have come up about a foot every 100 years and are coming faster, with the greatest increases in the mid-Atlantic states. This means that the landward migration of the shoreline will continue unabated here, and even get faster.

    Even after they are gone from office, the previous administration in East Hampton Town Hall continues to cause problems and in at least one case — an expected jump in fees for waste disposal — it appears to be by design. But former Supervisor Bill Wilkinson et al. do not deserve all the blame for the new board’s haste to increase fees. Before doing so, it must take a close look at what appears to be a bloated Sanitation Department.

    New York Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Tim Bishop are among a bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers pushing for a second round of reform of the recently reformed National Flood Insurance Program. Their call for action comes as an increasing number of property owners here and around the country have become aware of steep increases in their premiums, the result of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, which sought to answer the program’s longstanding deficit.

    A practice that East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell described at the first meeting of his tenure would be a simple fix to a fundamental problem of the previous administration, which frequently added resolutions on both routine and controversial matters to meeting agendas at the last minute and without public notice.

    Forget the polar vortex, there’s a word for the weather we have been having this week and it’s — drumroll, please — winter.

    Although the so-called 555 luxury housing project aimed at over-50 buyers in Amagansett is said to be dead, town board hearings on the creation of a new zoning classification for senior citizens, and on applying that zone to the roughly 25-acre 555 site, may well continue in the new year. The developers have not gone away and could be expected to consider alternate plans.

    A Springs Fire Department ambulance rushing a patient to Southampton hit a deer on Sunday. Other than the animal, presumably, no one was reported injured, but it added a punctuation mark to a week in which six deer were listed as struck by vehicles in East Hampton Town, with two incidents for which police reports were filed. In East Hampton Village, two deer-versus-car accidents were logged, with one resulting in a report.

    Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell announced the names of the new East Hampton Town attorney’s office staff this week. While judgment must be reserved until the public gets to know Elizabeth Vail and the members of her team, their résumés appear to be strong. Next comes the task of sorting out the town’s appointed boards, in particular deciding who should lead them.

    Online petitions and a well-funded legal challenge aside, South Fork local officials who are moving toward large-scale killing of deer, politely called culling, have a difficult time ahead. Leadership is never easy when policy gets mixed up in emotion, and wildlife management is one of the most emotional aspects of government. Few other issues draw as much attention and heat from the public, making the job of deciding how to proceed fraught with tension from the start. But rational, dispassionate policy-making must be foremost in such instances.

    As if traveling along the scorched shoreline of the River Styx, we were dismayed recently by what we saw among the wrack at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett. The season’s first meaningful storm had dredged up a summer’s worth of bonfire remains. Blackened logs and chunks of burned wood littered a full third of a mile to the west — in December.  

    While this area’s needy food pantries draw a large measure of the public’s attention and contributions, there are also any number of other outreach efforts that are worth acknowledging. And there are those that could stand a lot more notice — and charity.

    It is unfortunate that the final days of the East Hampton Town Board’s Republican majority have come down to this: a poorly considered proposal to amend the town’s zoning code in a way that would violate the comprehensive plan and, perhaps, state law.

    Where to start? That question has to be swirling around as a new East Hampton Town Board majority prepares to take over in the new year. Unfortunately, because many protections were ignored during the Wilkinson years, there will be a lot of work to do just to bring the town back to a regulatory baseline.

    Members of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee were proud last week as they unveiled large new signs at the eastern and western ends of the hamlet. For the life of us, we cannot figure out why adding to the already jumbled roadside clutter along Montauk Highway is desirable, but, if that’s what they want to do, so be it.

   The Star suggested last week that an ombudsman (or woman) — independent, forthright, and tough — might well be worth considering for an East Hampton Town government that has suffered from inappropriate or incompetent leadership for nearly a decade. That observation was made before county officials delivered a stunning repudiation last week of a Town Hall plan to create a new high-density housing zone for wealthy, over-50 residents and to apply it to a site in Amagansett.

      In the waning days of the Wilkinson administration in East Hampton Town Hall we have found ourselves wondering if anything could be done to prevent future town leaders from amassing similarly flawed records. The answer may lie in something other local governments have had for years — an ombudsman whose responsibility is vetting residents’ complaints and weighing in on whether proper procedures are being followed.

      In a town that is largely affluent, where sterile and perfect lawns and grounds are a powerful aspirational symbol, a small group of ban-the-blower advocates has sprung up, but it is fighting a Quixotic battle.

      A Dec. 31 deadline for renewing enrollment for school tax relief, or STAR, is approaching fast. Those who do not register with the state by that date could lose their share of the 2014 break. Even those who have previously been in the STAR program have to sign up; state tax officials hope the process will check for income levels and help weed out cheats, such as those with double exemptions. Eligibility requirements are that a house be a primary residence and owner-occupied, and that household income be less than $500,000.