The current friction on the Sag Harbor Village Board may provide one small benefit: It’s going to put any idea through a wringer to see if it can hold up... more
The house fire in August 2022 that killed two young women in Noyac is a terrible tragedy for everyone involved — there’s no ignoring that, along with the lives lost, so many lives were forever changed that awful night. If there is anything to take away from the tragedy, it is the lesson that while code enforcement is often derided as “Big Government” overreaching, and mandatory inspections and permits are considered mere bureaucratic harassment, those rules and that oversight save lives. Every single year. Uncounted lives, because they were protected by safe environments. Absolutely nobody would ever want to be ...
4 Sep 2024 by Editorial Board
It was just over four months ago when a segment of the Sag Harbor community — mostly longtime locals — gathered upstairs at Baron’s Cove, with the goal of ultimately rescuing and restoring the historic whaleboats used for HarborFest. The fundraiser came on the heels of last year’s festival, when competitors stepped into the 60-year-old vessels and into a few inches of water covering creaky old floorboards. Not exactly a confidence-boosting experience. The boats were purchased in the early 1960s by the original festival committee, which included the novelist John Steinbeck and a band of friends who wanted to honor ...
by Editorial Board
DUNCE CAP: To the National Weather Service, for giving the East End short shrift at a time when accurate weather forecasting is becoming more and more essential. In a Viewpoint published this week at 27east.com, veteran meteorologist Bill Evans of Sag Harbor noted that the NWS has a particularly spotty network of weather stations and reporting stations — with none currently on Long Island’s East End. The best we get is a recap of weather events, but, as Evans noted, a better weather predicting infrastructure would provide “timely, accurate forecasts for an East End that only continues to increase in ...
28 Aug 2024 by Editorial Board
So, was 1975 the turning point? Did the South Fork really walk away from a potential solution to the traffic that’s choking the profitable summer season, taking an economic toll on businesses, charities and family budgets by enmeshing residents and visitors alike in the mind-melting drudgery of a bumper-to-bumper quagmire? It’s long been a narrative that exists, and Bill Hillman, Suffolk County’s chief engineer — arguably the most knowledgeable person to have an opinion on the region’s traffic — repeated it in a conversation with members of a Southampton Town task force that has taken up the conversation about the ...
21 Aug 2024 by Editorial Board
Republican Southampton Town Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara apparently had the rug pulled out from under her last week when her colleagues on the board refused to entertain a motion to schedule a public hearing on legislation she had drawn up to put limits on the use of campaign yard signs on both public and private property. It was a surprise to McNamara after the four other council members — all Democrats — had seemed to be on board with the legislation only days earlier. It’s disappointing that the board members, who all claimed a change of heart, wouldn’t even entertain letting ...
by Editorial Board
Every summer on the South Fork is busy, simply loaded with benefits, parties, concerts, get-togethers with family and friends, and the ever-beckoning ocean beaches. But some events are a little more special than others. Residents and visitors of all ages should take note of Amistad Week in Montauk, which will be held for seven days starting Thursday, August 22. The Montauk Historical Society, Southampton African American Museum and Eastville Community Historical Society have teamed up with Discovering Amistad, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that hosts educational programming hoping to “connect people of all ages with the Amistad story, motivating them to act ...
14 Aug 2024 by Editorial Board
It’s “silly season,” and that includes visits to the region by political candidates of all stripes to tap the rich vein of campaign cash that can be mined in gatherings at private estates, with canapes and liquid refreshments for which a king’s ransom is paid. Charitable benefits are held throughout the season, and any inconvenience they create — particularly for neighbors and people driving nearby — is tolerated, because it’s all “for a good cause.” These fundraisers? It’s a little harder to be charitable about them, regardless of your political slant, or theirs. One thing is clear: The catastrophe that ...
by Editorial Board
“Is the Death of Movie Theaters Upon Us?” was a headline in Forbes magazine online in mid-June. To be fair, the answer, very quickly, was “probably not,” but it’s notable that the question has been lingering since the pandemic nudged the industry a little closer to the cliff. The time of summer blockbusters is waning: Forbes noted that every single film released in May 2024, combined, made less than “Avengers: Endgame” made in its first eight days of release in 2019. But the South Fork is bucking this trend, and it’s doing it by creating experiences around moviegoing again, rather ...
7 Aug 2024 by Editorial Board
Swimming pools are synonymous with summertime fun — but this summer has shown the doubled-edged sword that pools present, with numerous drownings involving both adults and children in Suffolk County. People think of pools as the safe alternative to swimming in the ocean, but there are many risks that must be managed. Suffolk County actually offers a wealth of information to help pool owners, and the county and local governments require a great many safety measures around home swimming pools. What’s important is that homeowners recognize that these are not examples of “government overreach” or needless regulation — they save ...
by Editorial Board
Last Sunday, July 21, the Earth reached a new record for the hottest day since such records began to be kept, when the global temperature reached 17.09 degrees Celsius, or 62.76 degrees Fahrenheit. That record stood for exactly one day: Monday, July 22, the average global temperature reached 17.16 degrees Celsius, or about 62.89 degrees Fahrenheit. The science magazine Wired provides some context: The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service uses a computer model to fold together observed temperatures and satellite information to simulate average temperatures at 2 meters above the land surface on the entire Earth. The reading came ...
31 Jul 2024 by Editorial Board
