Editorials

With Suffolk Executive Steve Levy’s exit from county government under circumstances that have not been entirely explained, two candidates relatively new to South Fork voters are poised to take his job.

East Hampton Town has two town justices who serve four-year terms and alternate on the ballot. Each appears on the bench for two weeks then uses two weeks for desk work. Each position pays $75,000 despite the job appearing to be less than full time.

One thing East Hampton needs as many of its residents struggle to get along in a sluggish economy is a unifying force at the top.

Voting for East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday is crucially important as much for who is not running as for who is.

Times have changed for the East Hampton Town Trustees, with ever-greater pressures on our shorelines from businesses and homeowners at the same time global warming is causing ecological changes.

    Political candidates are fortunate that voters tend to regard specific claims made in campaign advertising dimly, and with good reason: Standards for verification are somewhere between low and nonexistent. This may offer a degree of reassurance to Zachary Cohen, the Democratic and Working Families Parties’ candidate for East Hampton Town supervisor, who was faulted recently for overstating his work on town finances.

    With the members of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee having decided to send their own letter to the town justices, complaining about the pace of action on alleged violations at the Surf Lodge restaurant, the path to strictly curtailing of its activities may have been greased.

    During the eight months so far of 2011, real estate sales in East Hampton Town suffered a decline in terms of dollars of more than 26 percent from the same period last year. This is bad news for many people who make a living here, even if they aren’t licensed brokers.

     The suggestion that the East End towns break away from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is not new, but it resurfaced this week in a campaign appearance in Southampton with Steve Bellone, who is running for Suffolk County executive. Mr. Bellone was joined by State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who also supports a new Peconic Regional Transportation Authority, which might provide more frequent service among the villages and hamlets of the North and South Forks — and help businesses escape the M.T.A.’s usurious payroll tax.

    Tropical Storm Irene may have struck with no more than a glancing blow, but it took a toll on the street trees in East Hampton Village. Word is that the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society estimates some 50 will have to be replaced to fill in the gaps left as the downed trunks and limbs were cut up and carted away.

    Amagansett residents gave themselves a tax increase last week. On Oct. 3, 140 people who live in that hamlet’s fire district trooped to the firehouse to support a bond deal that will add something on the order of $50 to $100 a year, depending on assessments, to their property tax bills. Similarly, higher school and library levies have also passed in recent rounds of voting. Considered together, these votes suggest, at the very least, that no widespread well of anti-tax sentiment exists here.

    By declining to review a challenge to East Hampton Town’s strict limit on the types of ferries that can dock here, the United States Supreme Court last week put an apparent end to a long-fought struggle. This is an important victory for East Hampton residents.

    Tuesday’s East Hampton Town Board work session marked a welcome shift in the way discussions with the public at such meetings have been going.

    If someone took the time to make a list of the businesses East Hampton Town residents complain about all the time, one thing would become clear: The bulk of the trouble spots are in locations with residential zoning.

    Those who follow local government, or who live near one of these places, can point fingers if they like. Our intention is not to name names; rather, it is to point out that it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, and this may surprise some people, the town’s own laws were written to gradually make development consistent with good planning.

    Occupy Wall Street may seem an odd name for a protest movement, yet the mass assembly of angry and frustrated people in downtown Manhattan — and increasingly in other cites around the country — appears to be this month’s big story and is drawing more support with every passing day. As the protest neared the conclusion of its third week, large labor unions were stepping up and offering support. Today, thousands of activists are expected in Washington’s Freedom Square. Where this all will lead is unknown, but it surely is significant.

    The question for Amagansett voters in Tuesday’s balloting is whether to authorize the fire district to buy the two-acre Pacific East property adjacent to the firehouse for the future construction of a separate ambulance facility. The commissioners have said there is no way the expansion they envision could be accommodated on the land the district owns now — 4.7 acres.

    Commercial fishermen should be able to sell their catches directly to consumers, so say advocates of what is called community supported fisheries. Community supported agriculture has become familiar during the past decade. Members buy shares in a farm and are rewarded periodically with boxes of produce — and a sense of ownership. In the newer fishing model, subscribers prepay for the day’s catch, accepting whatever comes over the gunwales.

    Next Thursday, the East Hampton Town Board will convene a hearing on a set of changes to how the town handles applications for structures on farmland and nurseries. The proposed new rules bear close scrutiny.

    The East Hampton Town Board’s decision on Thursday to buy the four-acre Northwest Kennels property off Swamp Road in Northwest Woods was the right call and something many residents would like to see a lot more of.

    The commissioners of the Amagansett Fire District apparently believe they are in a race against time in seeking voter approval on Oct. 4 for buying a former restaurant property next door to the firehouse. Unfortunately, with a public meeting on the subject Tuesday and the balloting to follow only a week later, the district’s taxpayers will hardly have enough time to weigh the pros and cons of the plan. The process should be slowed down.

    Irene, the hurricane that became a tropical storm as it reached Long Island, did more than knock out power for days and topple rot-weakened trees. For many in the hospitality and retail trades here, its impact was a tough hit in an already tough year. Ask most any shopkeeper on the South Fork how their summer 2011 went and more times than not they will say it was okay until the storm warnings came. Then, as one in Montauk told us this week, things just dropped off a cliff. Customers left as the forecast worsened, he said, and just didn’t come back.

Meaningful recommendations in an outside consultant’s report have been overshadowed by implications of wrongdoing

The United States Census Bureau this week confirmed what many indicators have already shown

    It comes as no surprise that the Long Island Power Authority can be criticized for what appeared to be a slow and noncoummunicative response to Hurricane, or, Tropical Storm Irene. In the aftermath of what was a relatively mild blow, few LIPA crews were seen on the South Fork, and for many, electricity was not restored for up to a week. A reasonable worry is how LIPA and its partner, National Grid, would perform in a real catastrophe.

    Erosion is an issue on the bay beaches as well as on the ocean, for example, where Mulford Lane meets Gardiner’s Bay in Amagansett. Three houses there are either in the water or about to be. One, on stilts, is not habitable. The owners of another want to replace it with a somewhat larger house and to protect it with a stone revetment.

    To the unfamiliar eye, metal pipes driven into the sand and tied together with rope in a rough rectangle at Georgica Beach in East Hampton might not look like much, but they represent a new and aggressive front in the war over control of the ocean shoreline, creating another big headache for town and village officials who are supposed to be looking out for the interests of the community as a whole.

    For Long Islanders, Irene was the hurricane that wasn’t, thanks to a last-moment change of course, faster-than-expected weakening, and a downgrade to tropical-storm status. Still, in its wake, the storm left some 40 people dead across the Eastern Seaboard, with horrendous inland flooding, property damage that is still being tallied, and as many as 750,000 utility customers without electricity in New York alone as of press time.

    Late Sunday afternoon, amid all the talk about the flooding, downed trees, eroded beaches, and the loss of electricity by thousands in East Hampton Town, someone nailed it: “This was a miss,” he said.

    East Hampton Town may well be on its way to revisiting a lengthy discussion about the outdoor lighting code, but just why is the first question the members of the town board — and the public — should be asking.