Pay Attention

Starting this week, East Hampton Town officials will begin one of the most important conversations in the town’s recent history: the future of East Hampton Airport.

It’s an opportunity — in fact, the opportunity — for all sides to be heard, and just as importantly to listen, so that a path forward will be chosen, one guaranteed to have significant impacts on the region, its residents and its economy. After this, there will be no excuses: Pay attention, because the next few weeks is the time for action.

In America these days, it seems, we’ve lost the ability to debate, which is essential to good governance. We seem unable to disagree without becoming disagreeable. Perhaps with a monumental question in front of us — is the airport, even with all its liabilities, valuable enough to keep open? — it’s time to dust off those debating skills and do it properly: with facts, with analysis, with hard-and-fast examples, with creativity, with emotions in check. And, most of all, with respect.

The town will provide ample chances to offer input, via Zoom, with four sessions, starting with an on Thursday, September 9, at 7 p.m. Another will follow on Friday at 7 p.m., and two more sessions will follow this month. Town officials say they hope to decide the airport’s fate before next summer.

Which means that the next few weeks are going to be challenging, as widely divergent points of view from all over the region — throughout both East Hampton and Southampton towns, but also on the North Fork — will come together, and the East Hampton Town Board has to sort it all out and chart a path forward, with or without the airport. Whatever the decision, it will have wide-ranging implications.

If you want to be heard, this is your opportunity — don’t miss it.