Full Transcript

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Greg. Okay, we have one announcement today, and that is just a reminder that Monday, January 15th, the Ribbentown Hall will be closed. In observance of Martin Luther King Day, we will reopen again on Tuesday at 8.30 in the morning for regular business next week. Today we have, for discussion items, we have Noah Levine and Sarah Yackel via Zoom from BFJ to present a final scope reference to comp plan. And along with that, we have our A-team here of Dawn, Matt, Greg, and Heather. And we will discuss what's going on with the final scope. We will have the assessors regarding a change to real property tax law. Laverne, Meredith, and Donna will be here. And we will have a follow-up discussion regarding Chapter 301-3 with agritourism. Anne-Marie Prudente and Ken Rothwell will be presenting. Ray Coyne will be here from the Recreation Department to go over recreation facility rental fees for 2024. And Chief Hagemiller will be here. And we will go over our monthly reports of November and December of 2023. So with that, I would like to start the discussion items up. And do we have BFJ on? Oh, they are. Hello. Good morning, Noah. Can you hear us? Not yet. Not yet.

Noah, can you hear us? Yes. BFJ will be joining us via Zoom to go over the final draft scope for the comprehensive plan. Noah, can you hear us? We're having a little audio glitch. We will be on with this meeting in just a few seconds. Okay. Thank you. Cool. Cool.

Our A team is way much better than that. Absolutely.

Thank you. Comprehensive plan. So bear with us.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there any truth to that, Heather? I don't know. They didn't have a DJ doing karaoke at the party this year.

Well, we know Matt. I mean, Craig can know. We know that. Better rapper than a singer. We'll leave it at that.

I reckon I tried to comfort you yesterday. Two people. Neither one of us could figure it. And we had instructions. Yeah, and it was like, okay, we just had people on the other end. We'll call them and put them on speaker. Yeah.

Again, folks on Channel 22 listening and watching, we are... We are having some technical difficulties. We are working on them. We will be started momentarily.

We will, we will, this phone will eliminate the echo. Okay, well, we may just have to ask you to start us off here. Start with me and then you can get to him. Um, I'm going to show you this screen. I'm going to go to the word. Okay. Okay, Sarah, we have you on phone, correct? That's correct, and I'm just about to share my screen. Okay. Are you seeing the scope? Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay, so I think somehow we are up and working. Um, just for instruction, I'm Sarah Yackel with DFJ Planning, working on the, working with NOLOC on the, um, going together the State Environmental Quality Review document for the comprehensive plan. Um, we were before you, at least back in, um, probably on September, October, the draft scope that then went out for a 30-day comment period. Um, during that time, we met internally with staff and we'd also received a couple letters from the public and so have made some changes to the document. This really is just moving the, uh, speaker process forward. We did, uh, previously about the positive declaration, which stated that we would be doing a generic environmental impact statement on the project. And this document that we have before you is really just laying out what will be studied in the document and the analysis and methodology that will be followed. It essentially forms a table of contents for the EIS and gives us a, a, a fine work. This is unneeded, man. This one's working.

. . . .

Yeah. I think we need to move on to the next item and let them work on this. So the document that you have before you and that you received in your packets has read it. Should we continue to move forward? We keep hearing some voices and also there's a little bit of an echo on your side. I don't think we'll have those speakers. In the Zoom? In the Zoom, yeah. Can you hear us? I don't think they can hear us. No, can you hear us? Okay. We are being recorded. It was working on Teams. I want to call it back. We should set up a call just to troubleshoot. I know. It's been tricky since the new space. Yeah, it's always tough to figure it out. Okay. Bob's calling. Okay. Hi, Bob. Hi, Noah. Hi. What we're going to do is work out the technical difficulties, so we're going to do the next agenda item and then come back to you. Okay. Okay, because you're not hearing us, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we did hear you, but there was an echo. But I guess it was something. Okay. Well, just let me know. Call me or we'll stay tuned. Yeah, definitely will. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Okay, we're going to move on to the next item, why we work out the technical difficulties, and then come back to us. Next item is, we'll be with the assessors, and it's a matter surrounding changes to real property tax logs, chapter 59. Yeah, that's fine for me. I have my phone here, and I guess, maybe they'll call me, or maybe they'll just join in, but I think they're going to try and resolve. Should we hang up the phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think leave it on in the background and hopefully...

Okay, with us we have Laverne Tenenberg, the head assessor for the town of Riverhead, and she's going to go over changes in the law, real property tax law, chapter 59.

So sadly, every taxing jurisdiction can opt into a different definition of income, and that's going to be very difficult to explain to a taxpayer why they might be eligible for one taxing jurisdiction and ineligible for another. Plus, the taxing jurisdictions are all at different income levels. Currently, the town has a $24,000 floor for 50%, sliding scale up to $32,400. Riverhead schools at $26,000 up to $34,400. Matatuck-Kachuk is at $29,000 for 50%, and $37,400 for 5%. Shoreham-Wading River just increased their income limit. Eastport, South Manor, Suffolk County are at the highest, allowable for income. Last year, I was before this board. The income limit was raised, and this board had the option to increase the income limit. I did an analysis, and at that time, it was determined that you would lose, based on what we currently have on the roll, $4 million of assessed value, and I think that for every million dollars of tax-based loss, that's like a 1% increase in tax rate. So again, when you favor a group, you're going to have to make an exception. So there's an exception that the rest of the tax payers pick up that difference. So there's a finite amount of tax payers that contribute to the public risk. So if you would look at this chart, this is the most simple to perhaps understand. And if you look at your, this is a sample of 2020 tax return. for the definition of income is federal adjusted gross income, which appears to be line 11 on the tax return. And then there are adjustments to, it's called FADGI, federal adjusted gross income, F-A-G-I. And there are five adjustments to FADGI. Right now it's federal adjusted gross income minus IRA distributions, which appears to be 4B. You have an option not to deduct IRA distributions and include that as income. Social security benefits. So many people don't file a tax return. And a resident accountant here perhaps could assist. I try to print something out who has to file and when, and when is social security taxable. I'm not an accountant, and I think that's way beyond what the federal government is doing. I'm not an accountant, and I think that's way beyond what the federal government is doing. I'm not an accountant, and I think that's way beyond what we can do. But you have an option not to add in all the social security benefits, which are 6A. If it's taxable, it's on 6B. So if somebody has $28,000 in social security and half of it's taxed, 6A is going to say 28, 6B is going to say 14. So FADGI is going to say 14. If you want to add in all their social security, again, social security is really the basis for many people's, you know, income. But FADGI, if they don't have to pay income tax on their social security, it's going to be zero. So possibly somebody who has a large amount of social security and no other income and they're not required to file, and they file a return that says zero, they may have a zero income.

All right, going further. All right. You have the option to deduct. Reimburse medical expenses. Unreimbursed medical expenses. Currently Suffolk County is the only one that allows that option. You can opt in. Tax exempt interest, which appears on line 2A, is mandatory. And then there are loss limitations. So if somebody has a Schedule C or a Schedule F or any of those schedules, the loss is limited to no more than $3,000 per month. Testing. We can do that. So if somebody has an inventory of loss and no more than $50,000 in losses. That worked. Can you hear us? If you read page 2 of this chart, the definition of loss is that if somebody has losses that you can have no more than $3,000 for any category. So if you're self-employed or you're writing off inventory, whatever, it can be no more than $3,000 for any category. And you can have no more than $50,000 in losses. more than $15,000 in losses to offset your income. So this is a very difficult definition of income. It was supposed to be very simple. There's no way for us to predict or tell you what the options that you may or may not choose will affect your tax rate because everybody's tax return is different. And some people don't find the tax return. Do you have a recommendation for us? Well, you have a couple of choices. You can choose to try to hew to as close as what you have now or what the law was in income, which is full Social Security. You have a tax-exempt interest. Whatever else is in the FADGI line, Line 11. And you can exclude IRA distributions. Some people have to take requirement. Some distributions. Some of that could be quite high. And you're at $32,400. So if you leave the income limit where it is and include IRA distributions, that could just push people right out of the bracket and not be eligible for town purposes. There's bracket creep. I'm not sure if you understand that term. But when you move from one bracket to another, because you've got to... You're at an 8% increase in your Social Security in 2023. That could put you out of the bracket and totally out of the exemption altogether. So the only district that has given me a finalized, approved definition of income was the Matatook School District. They're at 37.4. And they decided to just take FADGI. And... And include IRA distributions as income. Because they felt that if FADGI was what they were paying income taxes on, that they should also use that definition for property taxes. So, so far, they're the only ones that have done anything. Legitimately, with a resolution or a local law. Suffolk County flip-flopped, but they still haven't voted or approved it. It hasn't been signed by the county executive. So they flip-flopped. Had one thing. Flip-flopped. Flip-flopped and did another. But until it's signed by the county executive. So, are you computerized in your office in terms of, like, when you enter an address, is it calculated towards which... I mean, obviously, the different five districts, school districts, but can you enter these types of entities? Yes. Help calculate all this stuff? Well, it's only county, town... Because every resident now is dealing with different... Correct. It's only county, town, and school purposes. But they're... In our computer system, there is a box, and it will tell you what is the county income, what's the town income, what's the school income. So, my office and staff are taking a class that our New York State Assessors Association is offering statewide. The first go-around, we were boxed out. So many assessors tried to sign up for this class. And an assessor upstate has created an Excel spreadsheet that you have drop-down menus, so depending on what school district you're in, you can determine what the income is. Again, they're at different income levels, and they may choose different options. And it's going to be a nightmare for us to try to figure this out for 1,000 applications within a two-month period, March and April. So, the state right now hasn't created anything to help the assessment community, and we do use the state software system. So, there's a box that says, what's the county income, what's the town income, and what school district. Now, if you're Brookhaven, I think you have... I don't know, 14 or 20 schools, so try to do that permutation. Is there an interactive way that residents could enter in there? No, no, no, no, no. It's up to us to enter in that information based on what each taxing jurisdiction ups into, based on these include IRA distributions, exclude them, include full Social Security, not just what's taxable. And that has to be for each taxing jurisdiction. Okay. Okay. How often does that do in your office compared to when we file our... Well, we're using the 2022 tax return. Those have already been filed by last year. So, they're already done. We're not using 2023. So, the definition of income and what year was also part of this change. It's on the third page. New law clarifies the rule for fiscally filed, which income tax return is going to be used. So, we're only using a previously filed return. We're not using... Then if somebody just entered into retirement and so forth, at the end of 2022, do they come to your office and can they say that it's not a justifiable... They can provide us with their tax return in 22 if they're retired. It doesn't matter the 22... I mean, if somebody retires in 22, at the end of the year, and so January 1, 23, they're now retired. So, it's a very different income level, but you're basing it on when they're working and not. So, does that individual come in and they... They can't challenge that because the law says... They have to use the 2022 income, regardless that you're now retired in 24. It doesn't matter. It's whatever the income is on your tax return in 22. Because everybody's situation is going to vary day to day. Tomorrow you can be retired. I can't adjust somebody's 22 tax return. That's going to be hard for people. So, people that are into that retirement mode are switching, transitioning from one job to another, or somebody's out of work or changed? That's state law. That defines what income tax year we have to use. And we have to go by state law. You mentioned the $4 million... Tax-based reduction? Yeah. Last year. Can you... What brings that number to $4 million? When we were entertaining going to $58,400, as opposed to staying at $32,400. Really? The law had changed two years ago and it was brought to your attention last year. That we could raise it. You could raise the income limit and have more people qualify, but that comes at a tax-based loss and that's dispersed to the other taxpayers. Okay. Well, it's just like any exemption. Any exemption that's given, the rest of the taxpayers have to make up for it. The dollar amount is always going to be the same at the end of the day. You have to levy X amount of dollars. That's what it is. And who's going to be paid. Right. So this is a tricky one. It was supposed to be very simple, but when they made it local option, I think that becomes very complicated. It's very complicated because it's almost different for everybody that's going to apply. Every person. Correct. It's not like we can say, let's do this and it's going to help all these people. Correct. Because it may help them, it may not help them, and it may hurt them. It varies. My concern is that if somebody files a tax return and none of their sole proprietors, if their Social Security is taxable because they really have nothing else or maybe they have a little bit or they're trying to get maybe a federal rebate or something, if you file, you get something. If their Social Security is zero under taxable, they have zero income. But the same person who doesn't file a tax return and brings in $20,000 and they have $20,000 or $30,000 worth of Social Security and nothing else, well, then that becomes $30,000 on the worksheet. It's not up to us to determine. We're not accountants. So I mentioned this to my association and we're going to present this to the state to say this is a problem because people who don't file a tax return are giving us all their 1099s, most of which or none of it could be taxable. But then we have to take it on its face value that you have a married couple with two Social Securities, maybe $30,000, none of it's taxable, but yet it's going to say $30,000 as your income. But if your tax return says zero, your FADG is zero, the same person, if they file the return, I'm guessing they don't know. I saw a resident accountant here. Well, I don't think she could really, you know, people don't have to file a return for different reasons. And like I said, I try to print out when somebody may or may not have to file a return. But the definition of gross income is like this big. They talk about, oh, one half of Social Security and if you have more than $5,000. It's like. It's convoluted. That's why we all hire accountants. I think. That's why I hire an accountant. So this is going to be a little tricky. I mean, you could, you know, keep the income limit but ignore the IRA distributions that we have in the past and the way STAR is calculated. STAR is federally adjusted gross minus IRA distributions. If you want to, like I said, to your current limits, you take the full Social Security, the tax exempt interest, and you exclude IRA distributions. But if you raise the income limit, you may want to consider including IRA distributions. That's, again, up to you. But some of these IRA distributions are substantial. And if they're taxable for the federal government, New York State real property tax and all that really is very different than IRS rules. Now, this has to be acted on prior to March 1st, correct? Correct. We're taking applications now. We're not filling out anything on income. And that's going to have to wait until every jurisdiction gives us their resolutions of what they want. We can't act on any of them. So a thousand of them will be sitting in our office waiting. And then for the next 50 days, we'll be doing that exclusively. Do you have any, what's your recommendation? Is that, you have a recommendation? I gave you a recommendation. I mean, you're the governing body. You have to decide. A, are we staying at the income limit? B, are we going to include IRA distributions? C, are we going to include all Social Security benefits, not just what's taxable? Do you want to deduct medical expenses? You know, again, all of that is in your hands. It's a leap of faith. There's no way for us to say, oh, well, based on this, this would be the outcome. There's no way for us to do that. So how do we make a decision not knowing what the outcome is going to be? Leap of faith. Leap of faith. You're going to have to decide. You're the governing body. Now, is the opportunity to change this next year? Yes, you can revisit it. You don't have to go to 58.4. You can do anything in between. I mean, you can see that you're not at the full level. The school is not. And there's, you know, the last income limit was 37.4, and then it jumped to 58.4. Yeah.

The people that are taxing jurisdictions thought they had to go. Right. To 58.4. You don't. There's something called M, which is a definition of income, plus that you have to establish what your floor is. Your floor is 24. Your 24 can be any number between that and 50. And there's absolutely no way for us to predict what this is going to do.

Well, you're the expert. If you have no way to predict it, then we're just, you know, grabbing the money. We're grabbing enough. We're taking a stab. Understood. And it has, I don't know what effect that stab has, and you don't know what effect that stab has.

So if you were to stab this, where would you stab it? I told you, I said that if you were to stay at 32.4 and you didn't want to raise that, the best, the closest you could be to what we currently do is to take full Social Security, discard. Disregard IRA distributions. And you don't take medical expenses as a deduction against income. That would get you to kind of where you are right now. Because right now we take full Social Security, pensions, we take tax-exempt interest, taxable interest, other income. A lot of people had unemployment. A lot of people had unemployment. A lot of people had unemployment. A lot of people had unemployment. A lot of people had unemployment during COVID, so that showed up on a particular line on a priority of income. So FADGI is going to give you all the taxable income. And we've never, ever taken IRA distributions as income. The STAR program takes adjusted gross minus IRA distributions. So when the STAR program, which is run by the state, they don't even consider IRA distributions when calculating the benefit for us. But to your point, IRA distributions can be quite substantial. Correct. That's the one that really rings the bell with me. Right. So if you include IRA distributions, you probably box out a lot of people. But then again, we have the other side of the spectrum where we have low-income people that don't file a return, don't have IRA distributions, Social Security is the only source of income. They're very little. So it's, you know, it's a broad spectrum. people and as people age, you know, the bloomer years, that more people are going to qualify. We're going to be doing a 13,000 piece milling at the end of the month required that people may be eligible for this. And when we did that last year, we had a line out the door. How difficult is it to give them the medical deduction? Difficult? Yeah, like, I'm just, you're saying to exclude it right now. Well, we do exclude it. But for the first year, we have now two fire departments that are charging for ambulance ones, and they're ranging from $1,300 to $1,600 for every ambulance. And we have waiting revenue and that's more than that. So you're saying that we're telling residents they're paying for their volunteer ambulance bills to come to the home. You're saying that your recommendation is not to allow the deduction. No, that's not my recommendation. That's your decision. I'm saying that it's an option for you. Right now, you don't allow for unreimbursed medical expenses. Most people are not itemizing anymore because they took away the sole deduction, so you're just taking the standard deduction and you don't file a Schedule A. So then people have to come in with a stack of paid bills and receipts and prescriptions and, you know, paperwork is this big. And right now, they're only saving on the county portion, which is less than 5% of your bills. So they do all this. They do all this paperwork, all this activity to try to find unreimbursed medical expenses and it saves them maybe $20. And they're upset because, but we have to tell them that if you want this benefit, you have to get us the unreimbursed and they're not filing Schedule A's because they're filing the standard deduction. Before, they used to itemize. Now, they don't itemize. So that's, right now, the county is the only one. Mattituck Hutt Yard does not allow it. None of the schools allow it. Really? This isn't going to be an easy one. All right. Well, my recommendation to the board is let's mow this over. We don't have to make a decision right at the moment, but we have to make one soon. You have to have a public hearing. You have to post it in the newspaper. You have to have a public hearing. Before March 1st. Before March 1st. Right.

That's got to be done in a secret. Okay. And the only other town that's acted on this is Mattatuck so far? School District, yes. School District, right. Sure, I'm increasing the income limit, but I said, what about the material I sent you? And they claimed they never got it, so I sent them an email, and I'm still leaving. Riverhead School, you know, there's a little bit of turnover there, so I've been in contact with her. She was advised or asked by the town of Brookhaven to be in lockstep with the town of Brookhaven, what they did, so that it would be easy for their assessor to administer this. So, my recommendation was you do what's right for the district. It's going to be hard for every assessing unit in the state of New York to administer this, but you have to do what's right for your district.

So, it's too bad that this was local options stuff, because the definition of income has been like this for decades. This is the first year they thought they'd make it easy. Yeah. Well, it doesn't sound easy to me. No, it's not. No. So, that is it. So, that is, any questions, or did I? I'll be sitting with you like in the next day or two. Yeah, I think that's what's going to happen. I think we're going to have to come in individually and talk and try to figure out what we want to do with this soon. You can mull it over, but the first thing is that has to go in the paper. That is the absolute, we've got to get this in the newspaper. So, are we able to start that process that we get it into? Yeah, you have to. Because we're still in discussion mode. Sure, sure. You have to. Because you're going to have a public hearing, and it's going to have to be explained to the public hearing, and then you'll listen to testimony, and then depending on when that public hearing is held, you may have to vote that day. So, from your standpoint, right, and everything that has to be done, we really should get, everybody should get to you next week. So, we get this. We'll mull it over. Yeah. We'll mull it over. Again, your income limit. That's one thing. You can change that any time. And then the definition, do we want to. When you say we can change it every time, though, every time we change it, we have to have a public hearing? Yes. If you're going to change the income limit, that's one thing. If you could put that in your public hearing and not opt to do that. I'm perplexed by the fact that we're going to have to put in, you know, a determination. The board's got to put something in for the first public hearing. We've got to make a decision on some number. Because if you have that public hearing, you're having a public hearing on a specific set of rates. And if people come forward during that public hearing, and then we decide that we're going to adjust the rates or change the figures, then you must have another public hearing. You can't just, like, when they come forward, we can't go, ah, I understand the effects. Let's change it again. And we're going to be out of time. So, we really kind of need great advice, I think. Accountants, attorneys, yourself, everybody to figure out. What will be the established rates for the public hearing? Because if the residents are not happy with those rates, you've got to go to an entirely new public hearing. And then that's probably going to bring us past the March deadline. The problem is, is this is going to affect everybody differently. So, when we, if we say, keep it as it is, no changes. It's going to affect some people. They're not going to be happy about it. It's going to hurt some people. Then if you go the other way, and I'm not saying going all the way up to the 50-year mark. I'm not saying going all the way up to the 50-year mark. I'm not saying going all the way up to the 50-year mark. Because if you're in a fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist it changes whatever we make our decisions based on the average income or do we but then that's gonna drastically hurt

and then what all and then all the people that may qualify if you now people that not even in our system what I'm saying even if you did it if you could determine an average income you still then that hurt seniors

you're going to hurt everybody else again the tax shift is going to shift to other tax payers to support whatever you do here you're not going to hurt seniors you're not going to hurt seniors you're going to be shifted to everybody else and that's any exception I know it's a lot to digest I mean our entire assessment the community around the state of new york is is um worked up about this because it's there's no easy answer and if you have a large jurisdiction you have a lot of permutations you're counting your town on one thing but then all the school districts especially downstate you have large towns with lots of districts that will opt into different income limits and different definitions of income so it's not knowing how it's going to affect everybody how do we do our 2024 budget it has nothing to do with your budget your budget is your levy your levy is paid by all the taxable value courses but how do we know how much it's going to change you don't we don't our budget is based on what we what we bring in you're always going to collect your money you're always going to collect your levy if the tax the tax rate has to go up to make up the levy because of our debt so that's value times rate equals levy okay if the assessed value goes up down the rate goes up a times b equals c so if a goes down b has to go up if c is even to stay the same if c is to stay the same the rate has to go up regardless we collect the same amount but some some people are going to change whether they're paying more or not the rate the rate will go up for everybody that is how it works so somebody's subsidizing somebody somewhere because either the tax rate goes up right or it you can say that about every group that's getting a benefit no question every exemption that's given out that's what happens

it's a balloon i always say there's a finite amount of air in the balloon you squeeze it here blows up here you squeeze it here blows up there you squeeze it here blows up there how long did it take you to do this

i didn't do a study no i mean i'm just curious i mean because this is a lot to digest and you know well just taking a stab at something and i understand it's a lot of work but i'm just curious you know because from from the s-can point the state's not even helping you in anything so we're on our own and we'll we'll get through it we will not approve it but if you actually saw the statute you saw it right yeah you sent it you saw that that's that's the changes in the statute that's an insomnia so somebody who somebody um in a taxing jurisdiction said he had a master's in finance and he thought he was a good guy and he thought that that was was gobbledygook to him he didn't understand it and he has a master's in finance laverne i have one question did they give any legislative intent like why they wanted to do this um i didn't read that because the budget bill is enormous right part k what they claimed they were trying to do with this they were trying to simplify it to make it easy that's that was the that was the goal that was the goal part k amended the standard with the following respect it redefined replaces income tax shares to replace his gender the measure made similar changes to new york city it was all based on new york city yeah i saw that okay um the new income definition simplifies the application and administration of the exemptions that's under the definition of income to simplify the application administration of the exemption so there you go failed miserably yes what a surprise all right we're going to have to uh reconvene and okay i'd be happy to talk to you visit your offices

welcome to the board ladies all right and it's for two exemptions as persons with disabilities and for senior citizens so the two specific groups but the same definition now in this in the um persons with disabilities you do uh allow the deduction from medical expenses you did opt into that as we should have yeah those are pregnant yeah yeah we should agree are there any plans for the assessors from the different towns for all of you to get together and maybe have a meeting of the minds oh we did we've done that we've done that last year um we had um i went to the state conference and they had their attorneys up there they've given a little dog and pony show with slides and basically what they put in that you know little synopsis is you know what they're putting out there for the assessment community but somebody in our organization generated a an excel file and i reached out to our accounting department for people much smarter than me about creating a drop down menu so that when you go to definition for county definition for school when it comes to the school district you have a drop down menu well what which school and what did they opt in and you plug in perhaps you know the tax return figures and then it will calculate the tax return figures and then you plug in perhaps you know the tax return figures and then it will calculate the tax return figures and then it will calculate what's definition of income under that school rule so we're working on that but we're all taking a class on the 19th it's a three hour class and this woman developed this um excel file with drop down menus but it's locked and it's not but we have smart people in this town so hopefully somebody can help us with this because we're gonna be out all right all right thank you very much thank you

okay are we ready uh to go back to bfj okay okay you're gonna hear them through here okay hey guys can you all see the screen yes you guys all good yes they can hear us i can hear you okay good okay about all this this morning um again my name is sarah yackel with bfa planning i'm working with noah taking the lead on the comprehensive plan and i am leading the uh effort through the project with the state farm and water review act we were back before you when you called where you adopted a positive declaration for the project which stated comparing a generic environmental impact and analyzing the potential impacts of the comprehensive plan and the first step in that secret process once you've adopted the pos deck is to conduct scoping on which you are in the process of hopefully finalizing uh and then your future here so back in the fall we submitted a draft scoping document can we turn that mic up that's on the computer oh yeah maybe the volume on the uh on the laptop i can try i can try to talk louder as well

can you hear me yeah we we have you now okay great so the document that you have before you uh you received as a draft back in the fall you accepted it for public review it went out for a 30-day comment period we did um during that time get some additional comments from town staff as you know there was also a public workshop on december 13th where we received some comments on the content of the comprehensive plan and we also received two comment letters which which are addressed um some of the comments are addressed here in the project description so the document you have before you now is in redline so that you can quickly identify the changes that were made and i think it's important to note that the vast majority of changes that were made were not made by the county council so we're not going to be able to make any changes to the project that we're making so we're going to be able to make some changes to the project and i think that's important to note that the other things that were made in the document are actually through the project description which is the comprehensive plan and the comprehensive plan recommendations and that's in part because when we did the draft scope that the you know the comprehensive plan is still evolving through the steering committee process the town review town staff review public review and also the public workshop so noaa has been working with the steering committee and town staff and has made some revisions to the document which you can see on the page i see my page

starting on about page eight um and it this first note here i think is important because it sort of is a summary of what i just said that it's important to note that the comprehensive plan is not yet finished it's still in draft form and evolving and so the project description that's described in the scope will continue to evolve and ultimately what's analyzed in the generic eis will be that final draft comprehensive plan and so everything that follows on about the next 10 pages which is a description of the comprehensive plan recommendations is still subject to change pending finalized chapters uh you know the final steering committee comments the mentown board review and public review as well and so you can see that that noah and noah made most of these changes um has started to make some of the revisions to the land use and zoning approach none of this really pertains directly to the scope of work that will be studied in the is it's just a description of the potential comprehensive plan amendment so i'm going to go quickly through this just because you should look at these but this isn't the crux of what the document before you is we want to get the scope

which starts on page 27 you have here the scope of the draft generic environmental impact statement and the main changes that were made to the scope since the previous version was just clarifying and expanding on some of the methodology and so we've had previously talked about there being a build out in the eis and that we would use that build out to analyze potential impact and so we now have provided the methodology for how we're going to conduct that build out you know that we'll be looking at parts of our permanent that we preserve trying to identify parcels that our bucket wants is really trying to find those parcels that have potential for development whether it be development for your existing zoning so standard subdivisions and then looking at potential zoning changes what types of new development may occur and times projected curves that we've also heard in the next 10 years and so yeah you have on page 27 and 28 really is just a description of that methodology and then the rest of the scope largely stays the same it was just some key clarifications about looking at the build out and making sure that it was clear that the analysis would be looking at that build out because most of the changes here here's just a change talking about making sure that were any proposed changes in downtown and analyzing how they might impact identified resources

what is ! 33 just kind of walking through the changes to the to the actual scope of the EIS which are fairly minor looking at you know added a little bit more detail about how we were going to look at potential impacts community facilities clarified for infrastructure utilities that we would be coordinating with the groundwater department sewer district annotations and engineering also coordinating with the management management management management management management management management management management management management management management management management management management adding a little bit more about how we were going to look at level rise in the Suffolk county 13k's risk zone map 19 19 19 19 19 19 letter addressed the scope directly. They were both contained fairly extensive comments on the project description, which in this case is the comprehensive plan. So there were comments on the comprehensive plan recommendations, which NOAA and town staff are considering and may, you know, as part of the public review process. But that is separate from the scope. And so we didn't actually make any changes to the contents of the scope itself based on either of those letters. Because again, the scope of work here is really just a table of contents of what we are going to study in the environmental impulse statement. It's setting up what we're studying and how we're studying it. So really that methodology piece is key. And all of the sort of project description, description of the comprehensive plan amendments are really in, remain in draft form until there is a final draft plan presented to you all for consideration. And so the EIS will ultimately be analyzing. And then the comprehensive plan is in that final draft plan. With that, the next steps really are for you all to adopt a final scope. It's just really a formality, a next step in the process once that stuff gets posted to the website. And then we begin the complex task of analyzing all of the potential recommendations in the comprehensive plan through the lens of the environmental review process. With that, if you have questions, Noah is on if you have questions related to the project description element. Hopefully we can keep the discussion a little bit more focused on the environmental. But if you have questions on either, we're happy to talk. So this is a draft plan. So we still have an opportunity to look at the TDR calculation. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool.

basically states that the project description in the document is evolving through the public process and could change

does anybody have any prepared a resolution for your consideration for the meeting on tuesday as well board members anybody have any questions no planning everybody's good okay sarah thank you very much you're very welcome i'm glad that we were able to to present in the end i'm glad we finally got you on here and we're able to uh hear you and you could hear us so thank you very much and we'll be in contact soon perfect thank you so much thank you thank you noah see you guys

okay next up on the agenda today is uh the code revision matters surrounding change to chapter 301-3 agritourism with ken rothwell and ann marie presente matt could join us and matthew get a bike thank you thank you

recommendations in addition since we first presented members of the public and residents have commented during prior board meetings I also received emails from residents expressing concerns or reservations so taking all of the comments from public forums in writing and the AG advisory Councilman Rothwell Matt myself with the assistance of Greg and Heather revisited and made some modifications and we want to highlight those and I'll just compared to our last work session when we had the correct so I think that um you know something that we can do to address that and I think that's what we're going to do this is a we've said along this is a tool for preservation I think we've added a little bit more restrictions in terms on the development side of things we're trying to also take into account the AG advisory concerns and there's a there's a pendulum that swings either way and so if we grant all of the requests to the to the AG advisory committee we may be going too far into the development side of things and further away from the present preservation side of things so there's this pendulum that we want to try to find our way somewhere in the middle but also being restrictive to the development side but the goal of this as a preservation tool was that for every hundred acres out there that that partake in these um these six you know potential locations we want the ability to preserve 70 of it so at 100 acres 70 is preserved the goal is also not to just simply preserve the land as as a utilized land it is it is to help along the Sound Avenue corridor is our historic corridor and we want to see actual you know hands-on farming and so not just preserve land but we want to keep that agricultural heritage so we literally want to see the tractor plow in the fields out there and so and that's so in this code it's kind of written that it's not just you know it's not a mundane unused preserved land it's going to be active farm growth and that's that's one of the objectives so there's this pendulum that kind of swings either way so the first change in amendment we did recommended by agriculture advisory we amended the definition of agritourism to make it more broad and sweeping and not simply related to preservation but include everything from farming practices structures etc the next change we did is number four in the agritourism and resort we limited it to 100 guest units 100 acres no more than 100 guest units to the extent that an applicant is willing to preserve more property more acreage they will be granted one additional guest unit per acre so in the prior when you say per acre you mean per credit per acre or per credit bob i think i think yeah um also in provision six this was in response to oh the hundred acres was in response to residents concerned regarding the size and the amount of traffic that could be generated right so we thought it may made sense to actually put a limit on it that's where that came from so the next change is in provision six uh we added in note all principal and accessory uses described herein shall be located in permanent structures and use of temporary or non-permanent structures are strictly prohibited and this relates to the development on the 30 portion of the property and if i go on it'll make it crystal clear why we put that in then we went out then we added uh notwithstanding the above the total number of restaurants seating shall not exceed two and one half times the number of guest units the prior version had three times we reduced it to two and a half then we also added the restaurant shall not be advertised or used as a catering facility period the hosting of private parties or events shall only be made available to guests during the time of stay at the inn and resort period so when you put that all together those three sentence changes what it's really designed to do is to reduce the number of guests in an in-person locality and reduce the number of guest units in an in-person locality do is designed to address the comments and concerns that this is going to turn in to a wedding venue so by number one reducing the restaurant seating by a significant amount by not allowing temporary structures hence you reduce it but we do even better to address that point in section 9 in section 9 we added in addition to the above and regardless of the number of attendees or spectators with or without admission fee private or held open to the public the use of land in agricultural production to host festivals and events such as the festivals shows exhibitions bazaars must be related to the agricultural production on site or regional Long Island agricultural production and shall require a permit pursuant to chapter 255 and limited to six per year really what it's doing is it's preventing wedding venues but at the same point if the agricultural connection to the 70% lot decides for example that they want to do grow grapes and they want to have a wine festival to advertise the product in which they're growing there or fresh fruits and they want to have different chefs come out from different areas and understand some of the new new concepts of cooking and other things like we want to provide a space for them to utilize you know together to have conferences on new farming techniques and things like that so we want to give them the gathering space but it is very very specific towards what the you know what's going to be held there meaning that it has to be related to the actual and how often sign importantly and the final sentence in that provision that we added the use of land preserved for agricultural production shall not include catering events ie weddings birthday celebrations and instead same or strictly prohibited in other words we close the loophole because we're not allowing temporary structures on the 30% and we're not allowing them to advertise as a catering venue so we're closing the loophole on the ability to put up temporary structures on the agricultural portion and utilize that for private events so there will not be a tent in the middle of a farm field that's holding a wedding it's not going to happen also paragraph 8 was amended one of the comments of the AG Advisory Committee was that AG worker housing should be permitted next to and adjacent to the inn and resort and located on that 30% of the property however that is really too restrictive and they said that because AG worker housing should be located proximate to the farm so we as a committee I think in our revisions did even better by the AG committee because what they weren't realizing I believe is AG worker housing under New York State AG and markets law and on all the guidance documents and opinions those are considered on farm structures so we wrote in and made clear that agricultural innate we added a ! ! ! ! ! ! agricultural structures used for AG worker housing supportive of the on farm agricultural production shall require application and compliance with town code chapter 301 239 the significance of adding that is making it clear to everyone that farm buildings farm structures include AG worker housing and space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space included so we didn't put it on the 30% away from the farm we put it back on the 70% on the farm and because of the percentage it also makes sure that that that agricultural housing is really going to be geared towards that project and that site so like because it's a balance of the larger the housing side is the less of the building side of the structure side is on the farming side so you don't want something too big because it limits you other places so you want to design your your housing portion is going to be what's necessary for that particular parcel of land so that AG housing that would be only for the purpose of a family that is working on that property language in intentionally because I will tell the town board and I think I've shared this before Dawn Thomas and I have received throughout the years numerous phone calls of farms in West Hampton or South Hampton that want to locate their AG worker housing in Riverhead because they don't want to locate it there so under the guidelines from New York State AG and markets they even acknowledge it should be quote to address the existing farm you know and that's why it's considered an on farm building because it's supporting the farm in which it's on not some other farm right is that why they were looking to do the non contiguous properties maybe well I'm not sure but the we took a hard look at all the comments and they did recommend that we not restrict it to a hundred acres contiguous and part of one block and instead we allow non contiguous parcels throughout the town number one that fails to address the concerns of many residents who came up and spoke about the impacts and traffic in this instance when Greg did the math and Greg did the mapping the potential here is not to be inundated it really opens five or six which gives the town board an ability to actually weigh in on the impacts if one two three are developed and again it keeps 70% of that site right there that's more controlling of that is the preserve and the other thing is that it's a preserved area around this particular project as opposed to going out and buying a parcel of land someplace else for example in Calverton and then creating a larger footprint alongside every artist which we don't want to do so we want to make sure that it keeps a good balance of 70% preservation has to be farming for agriculture has to be right there on site right and keep in mind this is one preservation tool one of many that the town has and anticipates and locates rolling out under the comp plan this is one so this one it might not meet the desire of everybody in the agricultural field but when you take the several there's a lot of opportunity it's also small things we I'm sorry Bob no no please go right ahead some of the other things we did too we just increased the setback distances from sound avenue we want to make sure that sound avenue the historical corridor and the gives that agricultural heritage look and appearance so that you have may have farming up close but structures and things like that are going to set much further back so the idea is that when we're traveling down sound avenue we are not seeing hotel complexes and larger buildings and things like that we're seeing the agricultural side of things and the preservation side so the further distances pushes the actual development portion further back into the parcel and if i can add to that so we did push it from 100 to 250 feet but if you look at number five so 301-240-B-5 so it's on the second page wait matt we can't hear you at all how's that better okay so 301-240-B-5 on the second page this really helps will give the board some control if a special permit was to be received for this so the use of the land shall be configured in such a way to protect the sound avenue historic corridor and to provide open open space views of agriculture from all external roadways. So it'll drive the development away from Sound Avenue and bring the farming to the front. So that's what you'll see in this port will have control where the cycle, the actual development. Yes. If you could correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that it's very important that we reiterate that this is a very good thing because this has the potential of being major subdivisions, which would have a major impact on our school district and traffic and there's a big negative side to not doing this. Exactly. Some of these parcels of lands could have 60 houses in it. 60 houses, three cars per house, 150 cars going in and out. It's a lot more traffic impact to have a residential development as opposed to where somebody is gonna park a car and potentially stay at a particular location for three to five days as an in. And I'll add from a conversation with Greg, we did look into secret and potential environmental impacts. Generally with hotels, the number is 250 units. So that's what helped get us down to 100 to reduce any environmental impacts related to traffic from a hotel. We've got 7,000 acres left to preserve in this town. So this is another tool that we've added to try to create where these larger sized parcels, we're gonna preserve 70% of them. So I have a question on eight.

And I'll use the graph. So if you're gonna have a grape scenario, somebody grows grapes on that 70%, right? But you're allowing them to have a tasting room that can't exceed 1,500 square feet. I can tell you now, if someone was to grow grapes on 70% of 100 acres, that 15, I don't know where you're coming up with the 1,500 square feet. And I don't think that, I think if you wanna attract farmers to this, if you wanna fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist ! Really, if you're gonna farm in a farm space, be a fixed mobile or without foundation not to exceed 1500 square feet it's a farm stamp bob we're not talking about a tasting room this is a farm stand okay so let's go and with every when we did the amendments with every additional right that's in addition to 300 uh thousand square feet of our buildings and with each additional acre preserved we not only provided for the one additional guest unit we addressed it again thank you thank you um where did you come up just out of curiosity with the six um limited to six events a year i'm just curious where does that number come from well because this is our would be our first rollout and we're trying to assess the impacts uh traffic well it's not no no it's not arbitrary it's one every other month and if it's successful bob and there are no impacts and the community is not impacted and there the those residents who are not in favor of this or who have concerns might be pleasantly pleased and perhaps we could amend and extend it and i would say we want every entity to be successful i would say bob it's not also atypical to limit it on preserve land other municipalities do the same thing on preserve farmland yeah you know you know i mean i am so in favor of this but i'm also in favor that whatever has to be done to attract a farmer to this there's no mention here about greenhouses or or vertical farming on here

next okay no get away get away even more bob there is yeah 70. in addition to that the language is intentional it says you shall utilize the agricultural land uh and it for its soils but there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future there are a number of other things that can be done about that in the future from the sound avenue car still leaving the front small portion for for no um aesthetic no question i love it the in number seven i'm just curious why we just don't follow you know just all you need is one statement to follow 301 agricultural code why do you name everything in here this is all in 301 i think the the free the that's about so the one the one concern i think that we have is that it's it's the sound avenue car the historic corridor we're looking for the the the agricultural heritage so keep thinking of the heritage side of farming and what we don't want to do is build a mulch plant and mulch mulching falls under agriculture and ag and markets and that it would be a very different aesthetic view of somebody driving in and seeing great so why not just why not instead of writing out 301 why don't you just put what's not allowed like mulch that's in 301 that we don't want to see here so that is spelled out is there something you're looking for that's not in this is this is the ag market's loss yeah if you look at what we list it it pretty much mirrors correct but what the legislation makes clear is that 70 percent of the 70 acres shall utilize the soils it's intentional it's intentional so that the town board and the public knows what they're going to be looking at is crop production it is intentional and more historical it's not going to be vertical farming in containers on 70 acres instead like i stated before there is a flexibility for some vertical farming or other unique farming i mean because it's ever evolving so we left that in there and that would that would fall in the 300 square feet 300 000 square feet that's correct correct okay i i understand why i did this i would have done a little bit differently but we we're at the same i think it's important that the board retains some control over such a large development it's negotiating easements things like that yeah i mean i i look i think it's good do i think i do i think the hundred i mean i would have you know i said this prior i would go down a 70 what we're doing here is done all over upstate okay they have there's farming with inns so this it's maybe new to us but it's not new to me and i and i love this i'm like you know and we we picked out a hundred acres it's another tool in the toolbox yeah you know and i just want you to know uh when we embarked on this right we thought it was a great idea but great ideas require a lot of research this is just some of the reports documents and studies that matt and i dove into this is really not even 25 of what we looked at before we started pen to paper and um our consultants on the master plan have participated in some of the work that we're doing in the past and we're going to keep doing that and we're going to keep doing that and we're with us as well they've been excellent so I feel like we did really good homework and the town board should also be aware that this specific concept wasn't thought about really back then but agritourism was and town of Riverhead's advocacy for it is all documented going back to 2014 strong pushes by Riverhead in support of agritourism we just never really took the leap right so this is this is a way to preserve the historical corridor on Sound Avenue the initial reaction to a certain residents be like oh my god are they allowing an in to be built or a structure to be built and and the answer is if we take no action in the long term fast-forward 20 years from now it's all houses it's all going to be house and it's going to be a massive impact on the school district and everything else so this is a tool where you're going to be able to keep that aesthetics I said this during the last work session I love getting on my Harley going down sound Avenue and I want to see farming and I want to see that world character and this is it this is another effort to keep that and we were allowing the farmers a smaller portion of development, 30% portion on their property, to allow them to survive, to keep out. And that's what we need to do. We need to give them opportunities to survive. Otherwise, we're not writing legislation to create development projects. This is specifically to preserve the historical character, to give that agricultural look. When you travel down Sound Avenue, you're seeing that farming, and maybe way off in the distance, which you won't see from Sound Avenue, will be a smaller development that gives the opportunity for that farmer to survive. I absolutely agree. Growing up here in Riverhead, I remember when we didn't have any of the subdivisions on Sound Avenue, and I wish that there were steps taken sooner to try to do more preservation. So I'm so happy that you guys have done the work that you've done here. You can tell that you've done an amazing amount of effort here. So thank you, because I want to see the farmland. I want to see farmers out there being able to produce their crops and sell them. And I don't want to see any big subdivisions coming into this area. Agreed. And I'll say this. Back in 2004, when I was running the vineyard, one of the things that we absolutely looked at, because we knew what was going on upstate, and we did not only an agritourism study, and I'll give it to you guys, because it would have saved you a lot of time if you would have asked me, in the United States. I was not going to... I would not rely on a 2004 document, Councilman. Oh, no. This was nationwide. But we looked into doing... We wanted to do an inn, and at that time, we approached the town, and they were like, ooh, what? But this is great. Thank you. I think it's going to be a positive. I agree. I think you're approaching it very conservatively, because you're still going to have people that... Are concerned about potential negative impacts. I understand that. But approaching it this way... It's similar to some of our wineries, like Bob, exactly, that you have in place, where you have a building, you have that tasting room, you have a commercialized structure, but it's surrounded by rows of grapes. I mean, that's what makes it more aesthetically. That's the whole balance of it. And to your point, there are a couple of wineries that have actually had... B&Bs attached to them for that reason. So this... Look, to me, this is old as the hills, and we should have been doing this a long time ago. We're a top 50 destination for a reason. Well, you know what? Top 50 is not good enough. So now maybe we'll become top 20. Let's not forget the good that comes out of this also. We're talking about increased tax base. We're talking about putting Riverhead on the map and having places that people want to come to. Instead of... All the traffic driving through us to get to South Holder, Touchwood, they have reason to stop and spend money on that. And to me, that's a very good bottom line. And they'll stop in our downtown. Yeah. They'll go there as well. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent work. Thank you. Thank you. Are you the B team? No. I saw the A team earlier. The A team. Where did I go? Where's the A team? Okay. Okay. Next up, we have recreation matters surrounding proposed changes to... ...for 2024. We have Ray Quain, our recreation department director, coming up. Good morning, Ray. How's it going?

I talk loud. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I don't know. It is. Yeah, I know. Come on. We got to go to Kansas City this weekend. I don't know if that's going to be the best. We'll see. Well, I assure you, it was one and done for us. You think? Oh, absolutely. The weather's going to be . I know. All right. You never know. You never know. Okay. Just going to take that one. What you're looking at is the resolution that's... Do you have this online? Yes. This is the resolution that's coming in this next town work session, town board meeting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, this is for the town board meeting. Just go to the next page, and this is where we got this resolution from. So, this is the facility rentals. This is, we rent the ball field for Stotsky Veterans Park, Bayberry. So, generally, this is, we make this money, this year, we made $73,000, $105,000. You can see how it's broken down from league practice games, 30,000, tournaments, 1,565, which is $26,000. we do work with the schools and PAL and Little League those are the hours the amount of hours they get for free multi-purpose fields PAL school 120 25 hours hockey ring PAL 56.25 it's just a breakdown for us to see how much we we've made per year facility rentals and the next few pages is just a complete breakdown in detail of who rents our facilities all right we do this every year we analyze it and we always look for ways to increase the revenue a bunch of this is non-residents coming in so we like to charge them as much as we can to bring in the money to fix the field so the only changes we made from 23 to 24 highlighted on the first page so we increased our rental fee from 30 to 35 an hour again we don't think that was much it's still in competition with other municipalities and we thought we can make a little bit more money based on the statistics we have on the second and third pages the next two items that are highlighted this is what we just added so ball field prep we have always prepared the ball fields for the people coming in the groups coming in so we'll line the ball fields the baseball fields will line the soccer fields for them it's a courtesy that we're we've always done but we realize we're spending a lot of money on that so we broke it down to how much it would cost to with supplies and supplies and man-hours and we broke it down to about twenty dollars per field so if you choose you want the ball field prep then that's how much it cost you per field so if you're renting all four field it can cost you $80 for us to prep the field for you just the one time the multi-purpose field doesn't take as long you don't have to do it we can only do it once a week and it's fine so we're charging groups 25 per week so if you're a league playing you know 10 20 weeks it's gonna cost you um and if you choose not to you're just not gonna have to field prep and we don't have to use our supplies and or um demand hours to do it so those that's it every that's the only changes we've made everything else like i said we we've continued to build that revenue up it started at 30 000 we're up to 73 000 um per year and our goal is to get to 100 000 by the end of uh 2024 and again that goes right back in our field our programs uh it's a it's a revenue that um doesn't cost anybody anything so that's it just reiterate literally again no change in any charges or anything i'm always afraid to charge little league um we we do they do have a separate season that they tried to get away with this is a a traveling um little league we do charge them um because we discovered upon our spot visits there were some out-of-town teams playing at our field so we put an end to that and we charge them so we make money off that little league has to provide us with their rosters using about 500 kids they're all from riverhead so we thought it best not to charge them again we we've talked about in the past um it comes a really hot issue so we kind of just leave but that's why i'm specifically asking you i'm directing this comment to mark stark there's no fee politically no need to call we love you mark yeah where travel teams are involved and outside teams are coming in and that's that's where the situation is in the past they kind of had gotten away with it and now they you know and they charge for these events i mean they do so you know to play in the league and whatnot so you've got to build those fees into their way to help companies in the space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space space that's worked in the last six months our sponsorship program where we will still be selling banners and spots in our brochure we're gonna increase the rates on that so we're looking to make a lot of money off of that. Just while I'm here one other thing another resolutions coming in we do this every single year I just want to bring it to your attention fire department veterans we do not charge for beach stickers want to make sure the town board is good with that. That's coming in as well. Yes and the stickers are available already for 2024 so people can come down and get their stickers or do it online? Do it online that's where we're seeing a big response online our system now sends all the people that have purchased the sticker last year a renewal they just have to press a button if all their their IDs and stuff are up or still have not expired we could send them a sticker within a day. So it works out pretty good. And you're gonna see different colored stickers? Yes yes they are different. Each type has its own color. Yeah yeah nice cool colors. Okay thank you guys. Thanks man.

Next up we have Chief Hagemiller police department matters surrounding November and December monthly report. Good morning Chief. How you doing? Good. Okay so hopefully everyone got their December report at least. November and December. Right you guys have November too? Yeah. Okay great. Basically we're finishing on a strong note September, October, November and December's numbers were all good or positive as I would say. And we actually finished the year with lower criminal charges. With lower criminal incidents than in 22. So that's a very good thing. Lower criminal incidents but more overall cases. More overall calls. Calls for service correct. Calls for service are up. Which is good if that's up where crime has gone down. Correct for sure. And I think that's just a reflection of the population increase so. Yeah without a doubt. Right. That's gonna continue. Deer strikes. I'm looking for deer strikes Bob. They're here and they're big. November and December they've gotta be at their highest. They going up. No deer strikes were down by one. We went from 19 to 18 so. One. Oh because there's one less from last year. Yeah right there you go. To have babies so. I just do want to comment on the incidents overall incidents. So the trend has been increasing. I've been tracking since 09. The only time it really took a dip was for COVID so. People weren't trying. I think we're right on track of where we should be. And that's that so. So if we're looking to hire how many more police officers? I'm sorry one moment supervisor can I ask a question about the numbers the statistics? May I? Oh yeah absolutely. Go ahead I'm sorry. Chief I just hello hi. How you doing? I wanted to just first ask you I'm noticing a decline in domestic incidents in November and December from last year. And I want to ask you sir if you think that's related to the bail reform laws because being in child abuse and domestic violence for 11 years and I'm seeing the number from 2000 from 2022 in December and now in 2023 it went down. Right. And I'm just wondering if you're aware of the fact that the number of cases that were reported in November were actually in the early days of the year. Unfortunately for domestic violence incidents is at time of year. Right. And I'm just alarmed by the fact that it's decreasing from year to year and I'm just I'm just curious if that may be due to victims not wanting to come forward for the fear that their perpetrator is going to get out. Right. Going to get out. Right. I'm just curious if you hear anything at. Well I think December is only down by four so it's pretty small percentage in November it was down much more than that it was down by 23. But it's not. It's not. Really. But it's going down. it's going down and unfortunately it it's not something um that goes down especially in the month of december the reported cases are going down yes that's what i'm getting at are you thank you i'm just curious that's that's from 09 that might help out a little bit to me it looks like it's going up and down and really no rhyme or reason to that so it just strikes me as i'm i'm just concerned you know getting any it it definitely information but i'm not too sure about that so okay i haven't heard anything on my end from that so okay as i see with the from 09 it's really uh up and down all along so well it was up higher last year in 23. the total number it was 76 right right and then and then it went down to 53. this year in november and then 69 and 22 down to 63. so it just seems a little alarming that it's trending down on on the typical time of year when unfortunately families get together and um not always the best situations definitely i'll keep my eye on it okay thank you everybody was being good yeah we thought right i'm such a pessimist i'm sorry getting along chief we're looking to uh hire about how many this year uh five a budget for five new ones um detective carey did announce his retirement so he'll be leaving in may so that'll give us six new hires the list was supposed to be out yesterday and it didn't happen the feds have to review it and sign off on it before they can release it so review the test and then sign off on that before they can release it so they figure at least maybe two or three weeks before they get the list four kids waiting yeah right i know i know the our guy out on the desk there is like yeah checking every moment so um but they'll time they say hopefully they'll expedite it and we'll get it in like two weeks or so okay so on the psd front on this dispatcher front um not so good news so we have another dispatcher that's just started that she's going to be leaving she's going back to her old job i guess they gave her more money or something like that but that brings us down to 10 we're supposed to be at 16. getting these dispatches is like almost impossible we've been working on that since last year to up it and we have one in the hopper in an applicant investigation and i just sent three more so that's only four which doesn't give us our six where are we paying yeah i think that's something we're going to have to look at because the disturbing part of this was i got an email from an employee who said i don't know if i can get an application through from the county today applicant investigation and so the three that i sent two are being background for the county north port and south so i mean it's like whoever's going to pay the highest is going to get them so how much do we pay in overtime for the uh dispatchers since we don't have enough it would appear that we're bringing them in i mean i don't have the number off the top of my head but we do pay yeah i mean that might be something to consider when we're looking at a salary as you know to have a better salary so that we're not paying overtime overtime is definitely direct correlation with with staffing so um hopefully we can get there as i say we've been working on this since last year and it's it's a tough thing to do getting people into an interview is the problem right but we did six and we found three acceptable so we went up to applicant investigation so chief do you you have the numbers from surrounding towns what they're paying no i have to get that can we get that so you know maybe we won't have to go through this as much right to joanne's point about overtime you know we're kind of not helping ourselves no for sure and i mean dispatchers don't last they come and as you know they they write a job i mean it's people think it is not an easy job bill fist just left us last year and he was aces so it's hard to keep him oh we got to figure out a way to make them want to stay for sure Thank you, sir. All set. We appreciate it. Okay. You made the announcement about Reeves Beach being closed. I did not publicly know. Yes, for the people watching, we have closed Reeves Beach down after the storm from Tuesday night into Wednesday. There was some erosion down there that made the gazebo unsafe and the walkway down to the beach unsafe and possibly the boat ramp. So we have closed it off until further notice. And our town engineering department is working on it and trying to get it shored back up. As soon as it's ready, we will open the beach back up. One other thing I wanted to mention, we are documenting the damages and everything because I spoke with Senator Schumer's office yesterday, and they're going to want to report on what the county has already reached out for a damage assessment. Perfect. I sent the email out this morning. I sent the email out this morning to the necessary departments. Excellent. Very good. Very good. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thank you. Have a good day. All right. Okay. Next up, we are down to resolutions. And we have the deputy. Oh, I'm not here for that. I thought you could handle that. I'm just swapping out your packet. I'll tell you. Nice to see you, though. Hey. It's been a while. Bye. Bye. Bye. Okay.

Devin, are you going to read the resolutions? No, I'll gladly let you read the resolution. Sure. I thought Eric was coming up. Let's see. Do you want to go to the podium? Wherever you're more comfortable. I'll hang here for now. Okay. The board's ready? Resolution number one ratifies the salaries of current police academy officers for the year 2024. That was just an inadvertent note. The commission left off at the organizational meeting when we approved the salaries for the entire police department. So we're just correcting that. Yes. Resolution number two. Authorize town clerk to publish and post notice to consider a local law to amend chapter 289 of the Riverhead Town Code entitled vehicles, traffic, and parking regulations. This was something that code revision worked on. And it has to do with privately owned, publicly accessed parking. So we wanted to make sure that it was governed because there were reports of tow truck companies going out there and charging exorbitant fees for removing cars that were illegally parked or parked without permission. So it's just something we brought to the table from code revision. Also addressing the signage so that it's more obvious for folks who park there where the car will be towed in the event it gets towed. And it also, didn't it also include notifying the police? Correct. So the police don't have to run around trying to find it. Yeah. Yeah. of the car calls police, calls PD and says where's the car? Right, waste their time. Right, exactly. So that public hearing is going to take place on February 6th at 2 o' 5. Right. Resolution number three, ratifies the provisional appointment of a wastewater treatment plant operator trainee. These are employees that are moving up? No, this is a new employee. Yeah, this is a new employee. It's a provisional. Yep, exactly. So it's the same conversation we had about dispatchers to some degree. The salaries that we pay are lower than other surrounding agencies and we get somebody and then they leave after we train them and it gets expensive for us. So in the long run, like Joanne said, we've got to take a look at our salaries and figure out what we need to do to keep them here. And of course it's disruptive for the respective department. Absolutely. Because it's turnover that's of course affecting everybody else in the department. Okay. Resolution number four, authorizes free beach stickers to veterans and volunteer fire and ambulance departments. The recreation superintendent just touched on this. This is of course a no-brainer. Absolutely. Resolution number five, sets the fees for usage of recreation and other town facilities. Of course also the subject of Ray's prior discussion. Mm-hmm. Resolution number six, authorizes the town supervisor to execute a professional services agreement with Jason Hodge. Just to remind the board to do that. Just to remind the board, Jason Hodge is the gentleman who helped oversee the installation of the new booth here in the new boardroom. And this is going to allow us to sort of have him almost on a retainer basis to call him in the event we have a problem here that we can't troubleshoot internally. Correct. And in light of what happened earlier today, here's one maybe reaching out to him. I was thinking the same thing. Fairly short order. So this is appropriately timed. Okay. Resolutions number seven, eight, and nine are correct in terms of the substance of the agreement. But incorrect in terms of the sequence of them. So we're going to read them in the sequence that you guys have in front of you. But just know that next Wednesday when you are voting on them, the sequence will be slightly different. And that will be obvious to you in a moment. So number seven, setting terms and conditions of employment for town board coordinator Diane Tucci. Resolution number eight, accepts the retirement of a legislative secretary. So of course we need the resolution. Accepting the retirement of the position first. And then. Hire somebody to fill it. Correct. Correct. With that, I just want to touch base. This is regarding Carol Scalfani's retirement. Carol has been with the town for a number of years. And she's been so instrumental in so many different things. When I first came on as a council person over eight years ago, she was assigned to the supervisor. And she was the one who was in the supervisor's office at that time. And she would just, she helped me with everything I needed. And coming in new as Joanne and Denise, you don't know a lot. You know, you come in, you think you know a lot, but you don't. And as soon as the people, as soon as you run into brick walls with something, you go to people who have been there. And Carol's been acing. I mean, she just guided me through so many different levels of things that it would have, I mean, I struggled to find out even who to contact for some of these things. So she's been a godsend. And then, of course, she's been our town board coordinator for years. And I know Ken and Bob feel the same way. She's just done a terrific job. We're seriously going to miss her. And we wish her nothing but the best in her retirement with her and her husband Charlie. Hopefully they do some traveling and enjoy life and enjoy the grandkids. So nothing but the best to Carol. Absolutely. Yes. Okay. Thank you. And resolution number nine appoints a town board coordinator. Resolution number 10 authorizes the town supervisor to execute a professional services agreement with Lawrence M. Levy, DBA On-Site Productions, regarding calendar year 2024, nunc pro tunc. Just to clarify for the board, it actually isn't calendar year 2024. It's just January of 2024. There's going to be an agreement forthcoming that we'll cover beyond January 31st. So as you'll see in the content of this resolution, it's actually January of 2024. So if you're in January, January 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th 19th adopt in anticipation of course of the board's public hearing that we're going to have coming up next Wednesday on this subject and what we're proposing to do is a simultaneous public hearing and adopt on the same day so that the folks can get out there and start utilizing the window of opportunity to to do the shellfishing and related activities the permit that's free of charge to Riverhead residents they can get that permit at the town courts office right yep and just a note in the copy that you guys have we I'm told we have to just remove one additional reference to finfish and we'll let the town attorney just chat about that real quick so we inadvertently attached a prior draft that we brought to the work session rather than the draft that was published with the public notice for the public hearing so I have copies of the correct version that I'll pass out now and give to Tim here and if anybody else is looking for it they can either email me or the front the front office will get it up on the website and it and yeah the only the only change relates to the fin fishing

okay so resolution number 12 authorize a supervisor to execute the review 2023-2024 conditional shellfish harvesting program agreement with New York State Department of Environmental Conservation so again just a quick little amendment to the title here it's actually not to cover 23 through 24. it's to cover 24. so that's just a quick little Scribner's error that we'll clean up but this is of course this presupposes that the town board will adopt the code change that we just spoke about

number 13 accepts letter of credit from Villas at Roanoke Seacrest Estates this is a performance bond 750 000. just for Joanne and Denise these are performance bonds are put up on projects that are done around town it kind of guarantees that the developer is going to complete the job and it gives us a little claw back if in case they don't we have money held in a in lieu of them finishing the job so we can dangle that over their head and make sure the job gets completed yep okay resolution number 14 ratifies a stipend for networks and system specialists too uh this is for John West and the dollar amount I'm told was inadvertently omitted from this resolution but it has since been corrected it's a three thousand dollar stip that we uh we've done this before this is just uh for his services related to our VoIP which is our telephone system resolution number 15 2023 budget transfers for end of year and these are basically lines that have been overspent this is a routine accounting resolution that occurs every year and it's to to accomplish transfers that are needed to cover these these line items that were overspent from the previous year if the board wants any further information we have a deputy financial administrator net the Paula with us today in bills absence and she can certainly answer any questions the board may have seeing none we'll move on to resolution number 16 ratifies the reclassification of a maintenance mechanic 3 resolution number 17 adopts final scope for the town of Riverhead comprehensive plan update of course that's following the discussion we just had with the folks from BFG BFJ resolution number 18 ratifies authorization for the supervisor to execute a license agreement with racetrack not Street LLC to utilize runway at EPCA councilman Rockwell are we satisfied with the monthly fee that we're going to be charging for the storage services good $600 a month that they'll pay for the ability to store things over on the Western runway at up count number 19 authorizes the town clerk to publish and post notice to bidders for the use of the property in the area of the EPCA and the !

this is really just a function of economics I think and also service that we do we do and don't need and the liaison to the IT department councilman current maybe you want to expand upon that for everybody we're not yep no I mean this is our we've gone through two consultants and neither one of them were any good we need to get a third so that's what we're looking at here right now we're looking at the !

fist fist fist fist fist fist Number 24, set salaries of various recreation employees for the year 2024.

Resolution 25 authorizes town clerk to publish and post a public notice to consider a local law to amend procurement policy pursuant to general municipal law. The board will recall we discussed this at an executive session, I think it was, recently. And this will go to public hearing on February 6th at 2.15 p.m. Number 26 extends bid contract for water meters and accessory equipment for use in the Riverhead Water District.

Number 27 authorizes the supervisor to execute a professional services agreement with Charlie Lays, I believe is the way you pronounce that. And this is for consultant services for the Water District. We don't anticipate utilizing this all that often for the Water District. We don't expect this to be a part of the Water District superintendent, but it is in place in the event we need it. Number 28 authorizes the supervisor to execute a license agreement with Stein Seafoods LLC to allow the operation of floating upweller systems Flopsy in East Creek. This is formerly Flopsy. They put these systems in East Creek that, yeah, apparently facilitates the growth of oysters. There's nothing about that, but apparently that's what it does. Number 29. This is for Water District Capital Project number 82401, 901-923 Berman Boulevard.

Number 30 approves a salary increase for a paralegal. This apparently was an oversight. It was intended to be included in the packet for the last town board meeting, so we're correcting that by including it in the upcoming meeting. And this is a ratification for the promotion of an assessment clerk in our assessment department. Okay, and that's it. Chief, I'm glad you're still here. I'm going to need your car. I'm going to have to get some speeders. No, I have a question for you, Chief. And this goes back to what Joanne brought up earlier. I've noticed that we, Larry, will you turn me off? All right, I'll blame you. So I see regular offices as crossing guards around the schools. And I know we brought this up quite a while ago, the board. Is it we can't get crossing guards because of what we're paying? All right. I think we need to take a serious look at that because what we're paying a police officer as opposed to getting an hourly salary for a crossing guard, which allows the police to do actual police work. I see TCOs sometimes, but I also see officers at other times. Part of the problem with the school crossing guards is the hours that they work. Because you have to pay for them. You have to find somebody that can come there in the morning, then leave and go home for a few hours. And then they come back in the afternoon, sometimes at lunchtime if it's a kindergarten school, and then come back later on. So it's rare to find somebody that's available or wants to break their day up like that. Okay.

So if you could just look into other – and I totally agree with you because that came up. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to do. There's more titles that we have to look at that are not on the table. I think it's for – Our TCOs also. Charter school contributing to the cost of school crossing guards? Chief. He's gone. You want to see the paper? That would be a no on a charter school. I tried to remove that post back under Laura Jen Smith, and they opposed it. There's no reason we should be there. There's no children that cross the street. There's no children that cross the street at the charter school. Basically, they let the buses in and out. Correct. Direct traffic, right? I'm working with the state on it, too. I tried to reduce the speed there. They're not doing that, but they did post the no parking on the school side, which was a benefit for us.

I see you're going to look into it, right? Okay, thanks. I'm working on it already, so. All right, thanks. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That ends our work session today. We will be moving on to executive session where

matters of discussion will be personnel, matters surrounding disciplinary action of an employee, that's with Chief Hegemiller. We will discuss matters surrounding a possible change in status of an employee, that's with Lupinski, Brown, Tenenberg, and DiPola. Under contractual, we'll have matters surrounding contractual agreement between the Town of Riverhead and National Development Corporation. That will be with Dawn Thomas, Ann Marie Prudente, Jeanette DiPola, and Miss Hurley from our Town Attorney's Office. We have matters surrounding possible contractual agreement between the Town of Riverhead and LFV Landscape Architects. We have matters surrounding contractual agreement between the Town of Riverhead and Barry Long, UGA. That's with Thomas Prudente, DiPola, and Hurley. Matters surrounding contractual agreement for transcription services. That will involve Wooten, Howard, Prudente, Thomas, Trojanowski, and DiPola. We amended and removed an item, matters agreeing to contractual agreement between Town of Riverhead and the Adventure Group, LLC. That's been removed. And under litigation, we have matters surrounding litigation between the Town of Riverhead and 555CAT. It will be with Howard and Prudente. And we have matters surrounding litigation between the Town of Riverhead and Gershaw Recycling. And that will be with Town Attorney Howard. Board, anything else? No. Everybody's good? Yes. Okay. We wish everybody a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the holiday weekend. Remember, Monday Town Hall is closed. As many people go away skiing this weekend, do not break a leg. I understand there's a lot of snow up north. Have fun. Enjoy the weekend. Everybody be safe and good day. I need a motion to close the meeting. So moved. Second. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? The motion is accepted and the meeting is closed. Thank you. Have a nice day.