Editorials

    The Napeague homeowners who sued the East Hampton Town Trustees and Town Board, claiming they own the beach in front of their houses from the high tide line down to the surf, and that they can, therefore, deny its use by the public, have incited an opinion hurricane, as might have been expected. They also seem to have raised more legal questions than they might have anticipated.

    Eighteen years ago, a few months after my grandmother on my father’s side celebrated a milestone birthday, she and my stepgrandfather, Milt, took the entire family on a weekend getaway to the Catskills.

    There were 16 of us then and our destination was the Concord, the largest resort in the Borscht Belt, and at the time one of the last of its kind. According to Wikipedia, it had some 1,500 rooms and a dining room that seated 3,000. The food was kosher, to cater to what had historically been a Jewish clientele.

    In the early 1980s, the East Hampton Town Board disbanded the Planning Department. While that does not seem to be the goal of today’s Town Hall leaders, a continued push to change the way the department operates should have those who favor environmental protection and solid land-use management concerned.

    Composting household kitchen waste is among the easiest of the so-called green measures that ordinary citizens can undertake, and it requires the least investment of time and cash. For East Hampton residents, there is an added incentive — helping the town save money. Gardeners have long known the advantages of compost as a soil conditioner and source of nutrients for vegetables and flowers, but there is a compelling dollars-and-cents reason why more of us should compost.

    East Hampton Town Planning Board members could make no mistake about where Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, the deputy supervisor, stood when they walked into the meeting room on July 13 and sat down in the audience next to the applicant in a matter before the board. In past practice, there has been a studious separation between the appointed boards and the elected officials who appoint them; this should be maintained.    

    No one would have designed it this way — 100 trucks lined up on the beach at Napeague. But they are there now, and figuring out what to do about it is the difficult question.    

The easternmost hamlet in town has had a half-score years of favorable publicity and, as a result, has gotten what seems to be a little too popular for some longtime residents’ tastes.

According to documents obtained from the Suffolk Water Authority, the top South Fork water user was the Ocean Road, Bridgehampton, vacation house owned by Millard Drexler.

Perhaps it was the high-pressure zone this week or, more likely, that my husband was about to head back to work five days a week in the city after months of recuperation from surgery here, but the sort-it-out, throw-it-away, reorganize-it bug hit me bad this week.

    While others who find themselves with a little time to spare on glorious summer days might head for the beach or hop on the bike, I take pleasure in straightening my nest.

Right now, the much-ballyhooed New York property tax cap appears to be much ado about very little. Under the terms of a bill passed last week, which the governor is expected to sign shortly, tax increases would be held to 2 percent annually or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. But the cap has a significant hole in it, particularly where local government is concerned.

    About a year ago, an outcry greeted a proposal to erect a wind turbine on a tree farm off Long Lane in East Hampton. Now, a second property owner has plans to build one nearby, but this time it is unlikely to spark the same degree of opposition.

    Come summer, access to South Fork beaches becomes a sore point for those without requisite parking permits. As in past years, East Hampton taxpayers and those who spend big bucks for summer rentals cannot obtain the coveted passes if they drive rented vehicles; the town assigns them only to vehicles registered at local addresses. These residents believe they should be able to park at the beaches, just like those of us who own our vehicles. It is difficult to think of a reason they are wrong. The question is how to accommodate them.

    In the grand scheme of things it probably doesn’t matter a fig, but to our ear, a new Z sound in Amagansett is just plain wrong. Sad to say, we hear it increasingly everywhere — a grating “Ama-ganz-it.”

    People don’t want to be told they are mispronouncing a word, so most of us avoid offering corrections. A woman of our acquaintance did just that recently, however, and was met with an indignant response along the lines of, “I’ve been coming here for 10 years, and I’ve always said it that way!”

The East Hampton School Board approved a pitch from its athletic director on Tuesday to allow advertising signs around the perimeter of the football field. Talk followed that the baseball field might also be encircled by ads come spring.

In an eagerness to help shield larger home improvement and landscaping companies from competition from those with less overhead, several members of the East Hampton Town Board have set out to revise the town’s contractor licensing law.

Spending cuts put in place during 2010 have given East Hampton Town an estimated $11 million budget surplus, which will be used to help pay off the internal fund deficits created in the financially disastrous years when Bill McGintee was in charge.

Looking at old photographs of East Hampton Town, you are struck by a nearly complete absence of trees and other...

Now that the August alt-rock festival at East Hampton Airport has received a green light, the promoters and town officials will have to work overtime to...

It is difficult to know what to make of a series of meetings in East Hampton last week between local officials and representatives of the United States Department of Commerce. The participants were ...

By convincing margins, voters from Bridgehampton to Montauk approved school budgets Tuesday and rejected the more anti-tax school...

Springs voters will be asked on Tuesday to choose from among four candidates running for two board of education seats, and you would be hard pressed to find a...

The candidates in the East Hampton Board of Education election Tuesday present a range of perspectives and qualifications. Of these, one, Jackie Lowey, stands out as ...

Okay. I owe Arctic char an apology. It’s a pretty fish, with flesh similar to the salmon’s, that is pink. What I really don’t plan to ever eat again, after reading about it in The New York Times this week, is...

n prepared remarks last month, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said that the “dedication of close to 50 percent of the available land to open space has led to a serious...

The majority of the East Hampton Town Planning Board missed a golden opportunity recently to wipe the slate clean of a bad precedent. The question before the board, at a meeting last month, was whether to

Is it coincidence that two of America’s most prominent liars have called East Hampton home? “Tangled Webs,” a new book by James B. Stewart, includes on its cover

Like coastal and inland waterfront communities across the country, the Town of East Hampton is getting ready to address federal water quality standards that have been imposed recently on small municipalities. The program is intended to...

Is it just us, or does it suddenly seem a whole lot busier on the South Fork? After three difficult off-seasons for the local economy, the spring rush appears to have strength not seen for...

Tax day this year was a reminder, according to State Assembylman Fred W. Thiele Jr., about the annoying and costly Metropolitan Transportation Agency payroll levy, which most businesses in the downstate region have to...