Editorials

   The portrait of East Hampton Town painted in a new lawsuit is sharply unflattering — and may ring familiar among those who have been close observers over the last few years. A 2009 decision by the East Hampton Town Board to shut down an auto repair business in a Montauk residential neighborhood is at the center of the case. The suit alleges that the way in which a plan was approved to seize vehicles and tools belonging to the business owner, Tom Ferreira, deprived him of due process in the courts and demonstrated a willful ignorance of state law.

   Taken at face value, a statement that East Hampton Town needs help enforcing the laws on its books is disturbing. Patrick Gunn, a town attorney who heads the Division of Public Safety, told the town board last week that the Ordinance Enforcement Department was understaffed and could not meet the “level of service” of previous years.

    This comes at a time when the town’s budget director has been touting the healthy condition of the municipal coffers and considerable surpluses. Something doesn’t add up.

   For visitors to East Hampton Town — and especially for the part-time residents who almost single-handedly keep the local economy afloat — the sight of overflowing garbage cans on public streets and beaches must be puzzling. How could a community with such wealth, one that supposedly prides itself on its aesthetic qualities, allow such unsightly heaps? How could the town’s work force and its elected officials look the other way? Is somebody on strike? Does no one care what the place looks like anymore?

   New Yorkers can be proud that their state helped pave the way for the ground-shifting announcement by President Obama on May 9 that gay and lesbian couples should be able to get married if they want to.

    The Empire State legalized gender-blind marriage last summer, after years of struggle. Albany’s accomplishment was remarkable in that although it took precipitous machinations to make it law, New Yorkers supported it by a comfortable margin. Only about a third of the state’s residents expressed outright opposition.

   After months of work, a deer-management program is emerging from East Hampton Town Hall. Its preliminary recommendations set a goal of reducing the townwide deer herd by half within five years in order to reach what it calls an “ecologically and culturally sustainable level.”

   Voters go the polls Tuesday in their respective school districts for the first time since a state law mandating a 2-percent cap on year-to-year tax levy increases has been in effect. As a result of tough cuts by school budget committees, this is a very different year as far as spending is concerned from those in recent memory.

   That the East Hampton Town Trustees should have to contemplate new, stricter limits on the commercial use of the town’s beaches is a sign that our values have changed. Their review is overdue.

   Buried within a proposed revision of the rules governing entertainment at bars and restaurants in the Town of East Hampton is a disaster waiting to happen. At a hearing at 7 tonight in Town Hall, the board is to consider “outdoor occupancy” limits, in places where there is live music, a D.J., or other events, without regard to the location or zoning of each establishment.

   On Route 24 in Flanders not long ago, grumpily contemplating a long wait ahead at the Department of Motor Vehicles, we passed a bright flash of purple that had no business being there.

    Lilacs? Surely not, not in mid-April. Lilacs say May just as surely as roses say June or holly December.

    If nothing else, the two forums that have been held recently about East Hampton Town’s scavenger waste plant on Springs-Fireplace Road are putting the matter of the long-term quality of our groundwater back into the public dialogue. This is important for several reasons, not the least of which is that thousands of residents depend on shallow, private wells for potable water, and many of them are highly vulnerable to contamination.

    The New York State project to install light-up crosswalks in two locations on East Hampton Main Street is a welcome experiment. But experiment it is — and pedestrians will still need to keep their wits about them.

    No one can know until the work is done how drivers, especially those unfamiliar with the village, will react. Nor will the new crosswalks address the bigger problem of walkers darting across the street near the movie theater or making the Starbucks sprint in the morning while traffic is at its highest.

   By executive order last Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew P. Cuomo set into motion a state health care exchange, something mandated under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. The exchange, and similar ones in a growing number of states, is intended to bring much-needed competition to the insurance market and help millions of uninsured Americans get coverage. Had New York failed to act, the federal government would have stepped in to impose its own version of an exchange, provided, of course, that the law survives the Supreme Court.

   You know it is going to be a crazy summer when the New York news media start up with their East Hampton stories in April. Scratch that — March, when coverage of the final 2012 sales of the village’s $325 beach-parking permits went big.

   By a 3-to-2 vote, the East Hampton Town Board further consolidated power in the town budget office in the name of budget restraint early this month. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, who led the party-line vote, explained that eliminating the town personnel officer would save $170,000. Len Bernard, the budget chief and Mr. Wilkinson’s appointee, will now be the only town official sharing hiring, firing, and, presumably, disciplinary matters with the supervisor. That’s not a good idea.

   What is unfortunate about the Montauk Ronjo (now the Beach House) controversy is that it has happened at all. The fact that it has points less to politics, as Supervisor Bill Wilkinson calls it, and more to a judgment gap in Town Hall in which flawed decisions can be made casually.

   There were congratulations to go around at an April 3 East Hampton School Board meeting at which it was announced that the district would be able to put its 2012-13 budget to voters while staying within a state-mandated 2-percent cap on the increase in the tax levy. Numerous cuts, especially to personnel, have resulted in a $62.8 million spending plan that stays within the cap. Voters are expected to look favorably on these results when they go to the poll on May 17.

   Work has been under way this year on the South Fork to clear debris from streams in the hope of increasing the population of alewives, an oceangoing fish that spawns in freshwater. These efforts are extremely important, not just for the species, but for improving the overall health of our treasured ecosystems.

   Once again, East Hampton Town officials are hearing a plea to use the community preservation fund, which has swelled to $23 million, to save a historic property. This time, the request is to save a homestead at the north end of North Main Street in East Hampton, which has been in the Sherrill family since 1792.

   In making a point about what he sees as the inadequacies of the East Hampton Town Ordinance Enforcement Department at a town board work session on March 20, a Springs illegal-housing activist raised a question that needs an answer: Is the department working to its full potential?

   Summer swimming season is a couple of months away, but something crossed our minds the other day that might be worth considering — in-season ocean safety courses for adults tailored for those from away.

    East Hampton’s public beaches are well served by outstanding lifeguards. A crack ocean-rescue squad can rapidly reach others in distress when called. A junior lifeguard program each year trains scores of kids in being safe around the water. And yet, despite all this, there remain blank spots on the miles of beaches where there are no lifeguards.

   For some years now, climate scientists have been trying, without much success, to get public officials in low-lying coastal areas to begin planning to meet the challenges of rising sea level. Although their warnings are not new, a report from a nonprofit organization — and a nifty associated interactive Web site — may help focus attention on this looming if slow-motion disaster.

   A move by the East Hampton Town Board to take on the seasonal problem of huge outdoor crowds at some bars and restaurants is welcome, but support should come with several caveats.

    As things stand, the town code is vague about how outdoor patrons of places such as at Cyril’s on Napeague and the Surf Lodge and Sloppy Tuna in Montauk should be counted — if at all. Regulations govern how much parking must be provided based on interior space, but give little guidance when the masses assemble for drinks under the open sky.

   State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s interest in taking up the question of whether local governments can regulate chain or “formula” stores is welcome, and East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley should drop the huffiness and be willing to consider the possibility. East Hampton should not some day look and feel like anywhere else in strip-malled America, and it is up to town officials to see that it does not.

   For the first time, the veil has been pulled back on what the Federal Aviation Administration would and would not do in the matter of noise control at and around East Hampton Airport. In a detailed response to a request for clarity from Representative Tim Bishop, the agency said it would not pursue legal action once certain “grant assurances” expire if the town decided to impose what it calls “reasonable” restrictions there.

    The announcement Monday that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had given final approval to the designation of the Montauk Lighthouse as a national historic landmark was more than welcome news: It gives the Light, which stands on an eroding Montauk bluff, priority status in seeking federal grants and aid should it be damaged in a hurricane or other storms.