The village, if formed, will have absolute legal control over access to the beach. It could at the outset, or whenever it needs the revenue and doesn’t want to increase taxes, impose beach user fees on those who are not village residents and even on village residents who cannot easily get to the beach without driving. Reference to the recent kerfuffle over parking fees in the East Hampton Village should make that clear enough.

It is pretty obvious that C.P.W. has now figured out that its exclusion of at least 80 homeowners from the free use of the beach closest to their homes is deeply offensive to many people not only outside the proposed village boundary but, more important, inside.

How will Wainscott truly benefit from incorporation? Their answer? “We’ll get back to you.”

Some who live in the hamlet will be able to vote, while their neighbors who pay local Wainscott taxes and have lived here for years, right across the street, will be denied their democratic rights to decide their fate.