Full Transcript

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you.

Okay, I have four announcements today before we get started with our work session. The first one is I want to send some thanks out to the men and women at the Rivet Highway Department and our Building and Grounds crew with the Tropical, not Tropical Storm, with the Winter Storm, Lorraine, that dumped some snow on us. Finally, we had snow this year, but it was a messy, wet, heavy snow, and they did a fantastic job with the roads and all the town properties and everything else, and we really appreciate the work they do working in adverse conditions like that. I'd like to brag and say we have the best highway department and B&G people around, so I don't think anybody's going to argue with me. So we appreciate all your work, fellas and ladies, and thank you so much. Thank you. Number two. You may have noticed that on today's agenda we have discussions regarding monthly reports, Justice Court and Code Enforcement, along with our Police Department report. I thought it would be helpful and informative for the public to have an opportunity to be informed about activity levels and trends in Justice Court and Code. I've asked these three departments to plan on presenting a work session each month at the work session on the third Thursday of the month. So every third Thursday we will have these reports presented to us, along with Chief Hagemal's police reports. It just lets the public know a little bit more about what's going on and the work that our fine staff is doing. So it's another way of letting the public in on what's going on inside this building. I also intend to introduce, and I haven't mentioned it to my board members yet, that on one of these meetings every month, too, we're going to do committee reports. So everybody who's on a committee will have a report from the committee to present at one of our work sessions probably the last Thursday of the month is where we'll fit that in. And I know we're just getting up. We've changed who the liaisons are, and you're just getting acclimated to your committees now. So by the end of March, we should be able to have something that you guys can all report on, myself included, and again, let the public know what's going on with the committees and what's happening. So. That we will be doing also. Note number three, there will be no work session taking place next week, February 22nd, due to the Wednesday evening town board meeting on February 21st. Monday is a holiday, so the town board meeting next week is on Wednesday. Next work session after today will take place on February 29th. So no work session next Thursday. We have a town board meeting on the 21st, which is next Wednesday. And this is, I want everybody to perk up and listen to this one. This one's pretty important. After review with various representatives from the farming community, staff members, and after consultation with my fellow board members, we have unanimously agreed to cancel and reschedule the Agritourism public hearing scheduled for February 21st at 6.05. It is our intention to revisit the subject of Agritourism. We agree to continue to fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist fist

canceled. Okay, I know a lot of people are interested in coming out to speak on that, and I don't want them to waste their time coming here if that's not going to be on the docket, which it is not going to be. Okay, we have four matters of discussion for work session, and we have two matters for executive session. Discussion item number one is police matters surrounding the monthly report. Chief Hagemiller, if you would please come up. Good morning. Good morning, sir. Okay, everyone should have their January monthly report. And things are good. I think the important numbers are down, which are good. Calls received are down. Domestic incidents went back up last month. Motor vehicles are way up. Motor vehicle accidents are way up. Deer strikes are about the same for motor vehicle accidents. Summons is issued, went down slightly. Arraignments are up. Arrest by number is up. Arrest by subject is up. So just to go over that and clarify it a little. Arrest by number, since we are now reporting it differently to the state, we have to report every charge. So what you see there is charges, actually. So there's 151 charges for January. Arrest by subject is the number of people we brought in for processing. So someone can have multiple charges. Some arrests have only one charge. So that's why the numbers are different. So I think I'm going to change arrest by numbers to charges in the future to maybe clarify that a little better. Okay. Incidents are down. Criminal incidents are down. Along with non-criminal incidents are down. Revenues are up slightly. Okay. And arrest by sector just reflects arrest by number. So that's the same. So we're dead safer. Yes. We're dead safer. Correct. Front of trend. Question about the domestic incidents. How many out of those are repeat offenders? That I don't know off the top of my head. I can try to look at that and see if we can come up with a number. As I've said before, you can have a domestic over in Southampton and be arrested over there. And you can have one over here. And we wouldn't know that the subject is the same. So in the future that might change, which is another thing I was going to talk about. Niche, which is our new records management system that the county is rolling out. So all of us will be on the same records management system, which might enable us to see what's going on in Southampton. You know, live, actually, which is a good thing. Okay. Thank you. Hopefully, I mean, that's been a delayed project. Hopefully, we're thinking maybe April or May we'll be live with that. And then followed by, the whole program will be live. Arrest processing will probably only come in around July on the new records management system. But that is good news because it's been a long time coming. You said niche? N-I-C-H-E? Yeah. Okay. So the county is going to be the hub and we're all going to be spokes off the hub. So we're all going to be sharing data in real time. So that's a good thing. That is a good thing. Yeah. The only ones that are not going on right away are East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village. They don't have crime out there, though. They need to come to Riverhead to be trained for crime. I mean, you know. Chief, can I ask a question? Sure. With regard to the niche system, does that mean like if you have a BOLA, does everybody will be captured? Everyone will be. Excellent. And warrants too. They're going to put warrants in there too. Excellent. That's a long time coming. Yeah, right? That's just for the public. BOLAs be on the lookout for. The police department has someone that they want. You're now tied into the whole county system. Excellent. I've always said that if you knew back then what you know now, you would have definitely developed it differently. Done this a long time ago. Yeah. That's a good thing. Yeah. So, I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. Thank you. Thank you. So, what's your time? Yeah, that's great. Also, good news, we have the tests are out, the test results for the police officer test. Finally. Yes. This was finally established and posted yesterday, and I think it's good news. It is good. So, a lot of our part timers did very well, so. Yes, they did. And I have to say this again, and I've said it before, if you want to become a police officer, the best thing you can do is become a part time police officer, get your feet wet, and the type of work, make sure that's what you do want to do. Yeah. That's what you do want to do, but it also gives our police department, it gives you a great idea, a gauge of how that person is going to be as a full-time police officer should the opportunity come to hire them full-time. So I highly recommend anybody thinking about law enforcement that they do that. You have to go to the academy on your own time, and you don't get paid, but it's well worth it. It is well worth it. We had a lot come through the door doing that. Yes, absolutely. It's a good thing. But another good thing was overtime. I looked at that for the last two years, and actually the good news is it's down, so almost down to where it was in 2020, which is good. It went up very high in COVID year 21. I mean, the year after COVID, 21, it was high, and it's worked its way down, down in 22, and now down again in 23. It was also gold by hiring more police officers. Yes, the deck dropped. There's a direct correlation between staffing and overtime, no doubt about it. And we just got to beef up our dispatches a little bit more. We're still looking for more dispatchers. We're getting there. Hopefully next town board meeting we'll hire two. Good. Hopefully. We've still got some more to go. We're still working on the one PSD hazard stipulation, so we're still working on that, but hopefully that will be in the packet. And then there's another one in the hopper. We're just waiting on her site eval, and hopefully we'll be able to hire her shortly. And then just. Three after that, we'll be in good shape. Right. I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again, and I'm not prejudiced about it because I work there. It's the honest to God truth. I think it's the best department on the East End and maybe even in Suffolk County. So our closure rate on cases is incredible. People I don't think think about that or realize that, but when you read the headlines of this vicious whatever happened, shortly after that, it's followed by a headline that the arrest was made. Closure rate is very, very important in law enforcement, and Riverhead does a spectacular job with that. And the DA is having a press release, I think, at 11 press conference at 11 o'clock this morning about a gang that he's taken down. I have it on my phone. What something gang? Taking down 103 indictments. I think about 30 something people were arrested. Good news is there was three cases in Riverhead that they helped us solve. Great. Perfect. Yeah, no, great work together with them. Absolutely. Good stuff. All right, Chief. All good. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Okay, next up we have Justice Court, matters surrounding the monthly report. And we have Counselor Howard and Counselor Saru.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I see you have my artwork. Yes. Yes. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Okay, so I figured since this is the first of its kind, I would give a little background on the cases that I cover and the work that I do in the court. We're coming off the tails of the chief giving us stats about arrests. So that's kind of why I created that Venn diagram to show that the police chief, those cases are prosecuted by the district attorney's office. All those other bubbles are me. And that's through code officers. There's a little bit of overlap, which is the quality of life. But for the most part, those stats are handled by the DA's office. So just for the board's information, the public's information, we have parking first. Parking is every first and second Monday of the month, depending on the judge, and barring any holidays. So the update for January for parking, I have just a little update is in the ! Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. So for the first couple of weeks of January, the parking passes, there was a lag in getting them. So there was a memo that went out from rec to PD and parking, just to let them know to give a one month grace period, and not to issue any tickets for any parking on each. Now we're in February, so we're back to business as usual. So, next, I'll move on to the town code calendar, which is every Tuesday for each of our schools. of every month so convictions for the month of january so i've moved them into different categories i have neighborhood preservation which is litter on property ceos bps rps building permits rental permits we had 13 convictions on those for the fire marshal we had five convictions on those and for quality of life your open alcohols your public urinations things like that we had 19 on those um so the total amount of convictions we had for the justice court is 59 as the chief had mentioned he's um he was going to do arrest number versus charges i did it by charges anything that an individual says the word guilty to is the number that i'm going to be using um so another thing is that these fines that i'm about to disclose doesn't necessarily mean that the defendant is paying the fine that day um sometimes a payment plan right payment plan sometimes it goes in you know into judgment of the individuals unable to pay it um so this month 8250 dollars was brought in by people who came to court pled guilty and were given a fine um 2500 was a default judgment and 5250 was a major disposition we had on the laura case so it gave us a grand total of 16,000 so that's kind of the stats that I thought were helpful it's the first meeting so if anyone has any ideas any more specific questions they have for me for next month I'm happy to take them down we just get a copy of your chart sure yeah you don't have it in your account I have a few thank you this is great this just just helps people understand how it works what's going on and the number of cases that are coming in because you know so often it's like well nobody ever does anything well that's not quite true right this shows exactly what that is so so I made it for myself and then I figured why not right absolutely might you !

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thank you thank you thank you

I'm just, I'm really glad to see that quality of life issues are being addressed. Our police department is doing an excellent job and that was the whole goal, so we're on track. I agree. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate it. You do have the warrant arrest number on that last page of the report. Okay. So we have 27 warrant arrests in January. Perfect. Oh, thank you. So, if you don't show up in court, we come knocking on your door. Excellent. Or your car. Or wherever you are. Chief, what sector is 601? Downtown. Please. Roanoke Avenue 258. 205, 105. That's the sector you want to work when you're a young cop. That's the action sector. That and 605. The warrant, 25 warrant arrests. Yeah. In that sector. Yeah. And you're not going to be able to work in the other sector. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. up and council counselor Howard good morning good morning good morning sir how's everybody doing good yeah we do we haven't formally met hi nice to meet you I know you I know you I know you hi how are you good okay code enforcement all right last year we received investigated over 750 complaints we project we are projecting even more than that in 2024 year-to-date starting January 1st we have received and are investigating approximately 79 complaints I've taken the liberty to categorize these and the complaint types in your handouts so you can see and you can see the broad array of complaints that we handle so it's everything from animals and dogs commercial litter and no building permits drop off bins high grass high weeds unlawful apartments illegal signs illicit discharges mobile homes overcrowded housing which is a hot topic the property maintenance code we do all the violations with respect to the property maintenance code in New York State site plan violations transient rentals unregistered vehicles unsafe buildings vehicles in and parks parks parks and parks and parks parks and ! there thank you thank you! rental verifications. There's a lot that we do. Out of the above investigations we have collectively written and issued about approximately 38 tickets for this month. Keep in mind this is not always our first course of action. We always strive to educate the residents about the codes in which they may be violating and do offer amicable remedies to those individuals prior to writing them a ticket. These are a lot of this is people who have been spoken to previously, haven't complied for whatever reason and now you're revisiting. So it's almost twice the numbers because you're listing like an incident as one but you may have been there twice already or three times to handle the case. So it really adds up over time and people don't realize that. Yep. All right. All right. We also will issue an appearance ticket depending upon the severity of the violation also. So in those cases a lot of times we'll just issue the ticket. Okay. We continue to prioritize the life safety complaints including the unsafe buildings, the overcrowded housing complaints, and houses without rental permits over the general less serious types of complaints. And one thing I talked about, Rich, is when the idea of adding another code enforcement officer would allow us to have somebody on the evening shift. So we need to work on that and set that up so we can arrange that and have a code enforcement officer. The evening shift, just so people understand, is probably the busiest shift for the police department and then more apt to be in houses and in buildings. So I think that's going to be an important part of the performance of the code enforcement officers. and units where there were violations and in the past not having somebody on code working those hours the police go in they write it up they forward it to you and then you go back to the house and nobody let you in the house or they've cleared up so they knew you were coming so this idea is if we have somebody on during those hours PD can contact them they come right down they have entry to the house and that can be dealt with immediately that's gonna help and then eventually we'd like to get into a scenario where we have somebody on call for the overnight for the same thing should something come up because you're gonna get a lot more convictions and cases obviously if you're there firsthand rather than trying to get back in at a later date and they decide they don't want you to come in so correct yeah absolutely so with brought to the life safety type of complaints we regularly meet with the town attorney and the deputy town attorney to discuss various plans and tactics to tackle these more serious cases. types of complaints we've developed the overcrowded housing task force initiative where we've outlined roles and responsibilities with respect to handling these types of complaints we also further open lines of communication with the police department as Timmy just said implementing direct contact persons for on-call emergency situations so you know a couple of people that were designated for now just for on-call situations when there's a problem at night. until we can you know effectively hire somebody for that position. which is forthcoming. yes yes we also continue to take code referrals and statements from a patrol officers who observe obvious code violations during their tours we transfer those statements in the form of affidavits to directly issue summonses so if a police officer observed something while they're out and there's no code officer available. we'll take affidavits from those police officers and take the necessary steps to ensure compliance with the code. we continue to communicate serious infractions with the town attorney and deputy town attorney discussing those properties with any further actions outside of justice court these would be supreme court actions. some of these infractions include places where we may find occupancy of addicts unfinished bases. occupancy of accessories structures believe it or not found people in sheds. dangerous situations that includes overcrowded housing and repeat offenders that have been already through the Justice Court. I think it's important to educate the public on what it takes to couldn't get a conviction or get into court for an overcrowded house. people think because they're in a public housing situation that they're not allowed to go to court. make because is 12 garbage cans out on garbage can day. oh, that's an overcrowded house why isn't the town doing something about that? well you walk into court and say hey judge, yeah, we wrote the ticket because they got 12 garbage cans out in front of the house on garbage pickup day. judge is going to send you packing. there's a whole investigation that has to go into this. not because there's three cable antennas on the roof or not because there's eight cars in the yard. that does nothing to get you into court or get you to where you can write a ticket and deal with this. whole investigation and you have to document this over time that there are numerous cars in New York, same cars over and over, overcrowded housing, same people, not just somebody up visiting for two weeks on vacation. There's a whole gamut of things that go into these investigations and people just don't realize that. They think, well, you know, I called and nothing was done. That's not true. It takes a long time for these to come to fruition and people just need to be patient and understand that. We wish it was faster. I know you certainly do. I do. But they have to realize what goes into this. Yeah, a lot goes into it. Absolutely, it does. It does. And we also have to get inside, which is something problematic sometimes if you can't get inside. So then we're looking to get a search warrant for that in those cases. Yeah. So in the past, we've had instances where we've done early morning investigations and done surveillance to see people coming and going and establishing the situation. And we've had people come in and go in and establish the situation. We've had people come in and go in and establish that over a series of weeks and then maybe also mix in some nighttime surveillance and done it that way. Obviously, the best and most effective way is we get someone there who will talk and say, you know, I'm the house manager for this property and I take X amount of dollars from this person for this room and X amount of dollars from these two people for this room. And then, you know, you have to sort of collate all that information and put it into a complaint. And so it does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. Really !

that seem like they could be overcrowded because there's excessive vehicles they'll refer that to code enforcement and we'll open it up as a potential investigation and the code officers will you know throughout their day take a look and see if they can establish or get anybody on site who will talk and let us know what's going on in the house yeah with that being said we also have a couple of active confidential investigations ongoing which which I believe may result in a Supreme Court action we know rental inspections we continue to perform rental inspections on property that are registered as rental properties to date we have over 1,500 rental properties in the town of Riverhead which have to be inspected annually this month in addition to our complaint investigations we have also inspected over 160 dwelling units just for this month rental permit fees are fees for the month of January we have taken in twenty thousand five hundred seventy five dollars do you compare those rentals to something like the RBO online where yes so we do that um um ! a lot of the VRBO listings actually have rental permits the problem with that is since our code doesn't allow for VRBOs under 29 days which is a VRBO we have to prove that so we've had a little bit of some obstacles in court proving that so it's a difficult task I'd be happy to talk about it afterwards if it requires a lot of work you know I'm just a manpower you know in a general sense the VRBO listing or they're being be listing alone isn't enough typically you're gonna you know obviously the best evidence is to get someone who's there and will sign a sworn statement saying I rented this on Airbnb for X amount of days for X amount of dollars you know the problem with that is you know a lot of times they're from out of state getting that person to come back and testify in the Justice Court setting is next to impossible so that almost compels Supreme Court action and once you're asking someone from Pennsylvania or New Jersey or whatever to sign an affidavit that might require them to come back and testify in Riverhead in six months you know it's gonna be difficult to get someone to do that I would suggest you why don't we have undercover steward here well and we've done and we've done that in the past yeah the hang up that we've had there is in order to do that you have to complete a transaction and so it's a matter of having you know a credit card to fund and a lot of money and it's you know typically you're talking about maybe we could get a fund for that established and from the fees we'll get the fines we'll get from these homes but it could take a lengthy time to get your money back to as well right you could be you could be spending a lot of money on rentals to establish something and it could time goes through court system before you get money back correct maybe the fines will pay for it though it could I mean that's sort of an analysis that we've I'm just suggesting I'm just suggesting sure sure good suggestions the the properties that we're talking about both generally go for anywhere from 500 a night to a thousand to twelve hundred a night what are our fines currently rentals first offense 500 to 1500 I think 1500 to 2500 2500 to 5000 they were a lot lower and that's and that's a justice court fine if we go to Supreme Court you can seek civil penalties so the the cost of the cost of completing the transaction to establish the violation could be figured into the civil penalties that you seek but again to get to that point is yeah I mean it requires a layout on the part of the town just thought that maybe if a couple people got snagged and caught maybe everybody else would be a little more reluctant to do it yeah and we were successful in shutting one down on an overlooked drive with the assistance of PD in an undercover an undercover transaction but it was a they did we use cash and we have been successful in justice court on an array of them just some of the ones as of late we have not been able to get an convictions but we can certainly talk about that well I think all of us realize your caseload and how busy you people are just in comparison roughly how many code enforcement officers does Southampton have we they have about 12 that's what I was told yeah 12 to 13 officers yeah Harrison you guys are carrying a heavy load here right yeah I mean fairness to investigated downs that you know we implemented legislation last year you know to require his office to inspect all apartments in our town annually which is essentially that task of double went from two year we doubled your workload we made a commitment to double your workload and we made a commitment to double your workload that we were going to hire more personnel and we're in the process of doing that I think it's you know we're gonna grow your staff because that's it's necessary to keep our commitment when we wrote that legislation absolutely we have I think we're scheduling interviews for the new code enforcement officers not next week but the following week I'm glad that we're having this conversation because I think that it's very important that the residents understand the process of what has to happen you know everybody gets kind of the perception is oh nobody's doing anything because it's not done overnight and to have the knowledge of what it takes to go from point A to closing it out that's really good conversation so yeah great a lot of a lot of the residents they don't understand that sometimes when we go to a house we'll issue it we'll issue tickets they don't always know that you know so sometimes we'll get the call foil they can foil the information but I don't know who I'm talking to a new rental sometimes they can't give out that information but certainly if somebody came down and I knew who they were and they were the complaining I can advise them that we issue tickets and sometimes that has to run its course through justice court and they don't know that so it takes time but eventually you know the problem gets remediated how many employees are able to speak Spanish fluently we have currently three Spanish speaking code enforcement officers who are fluent yeah and we were in the process of beefing up your office too and clerical help yes because it's been we have very difficult for the past few months yes so yeah we had a full-time clerical person resign in October so we've got a lot of work to do and we're going to have to get back to the office as soon as we can so we're going to have to get back to the office as soon as we can so we're going to have to get back to the office as soon as we can we've been short so everybody all the officers have been picking up the slack the foils the violation searches the phone calls the rental applications the rental renewals so everybody's taken out a little bit trying to pitch in and help but we're looking to try to get that position filled yes that's something we have to do quickly yeah so we got the title approved through civil service for a senior office assistant we looked at the town list and we didn't have any responses on that so we are canvassing the county list perfect and we should be able to schedule those interviews also within the next couple weeks more about the importance for the general public to take civil service tests there are jobs available there are good jobs available take the test take the test we will finally be going up coming online with the new interactive rental property public portal called open gutter some of you are familiar with it we probably aren't this is a an online platform for the general public to be able to apply for rental permits they can pay their fees online they could submit their documents online it goes electronically to us we can review them real time we can send out correspondences real time they can schedule their inspections online this is a time in the work and councilman Kern has been diligently working with us to get this done I'm hoping to be live in March March 1st is my date so hopefully starting March the public will be on open gov will be submitting applications online that will be a huge difference long time coming great job Bob yes well it's not bringing us into the 21st century we're going to be doing a lot of work on the !

! in closing we continue to welcome any new complaints and we'll continue to investigate each and every one regardless of the severity my door is always open I continue to work closely with councilman Rothwell our code enforcement liaison and welcome any of the town board members who may have questions suggestions and other needs and so the public knows also they can file a complaint online anonymously correct they can't okay yes currently yes sir I'm going to go through the schedule and see if there are any other questions that you have in the Well, this was great. Rich, thank you so much. You put a lot of information together here, and I hate taking time from your day to have you do this, but I think the benefit of the public having a better idea of what our code enforcement officers are doing is beneficial for everybody. So I appreciate it. Any updates? I mean, we'd love to hear them and see them too. Yeah, it was a great day. Absolutely. Thank you for the time. Thank you so much. Get back to your interviews. Bye, Rich. Bye-bye. Okay, discussion number four, and it's our last discussion item for the open session. It's matters surrounding possible replacement of a town-wide telephone system. Counselor Howard, Mr. Rothar, and Mr. Kremborg, come on up.

Can we, before we start, publicly commend the entire IT department over the snowstorm? You notice they were putting up on live TV all the current warnings and updated notices of town hall closures and stuff like that, so he advanced in a whole new avenue for notifications to the public, which is really great. The red strip across the top. Nice, nice. Just waiting for stock quotes to be on there soon. Yes. Did a great job. Bill, are we publicly trading the town of Riverhead stock? No, we're not. Okay, gentlemen, if you want to lead off with this. Okay. So I have done some research to modernize our phone system. I've done some preliminary analysis about some options to go to a cloud-based VoIP phone solution. The reason I am looking into that. Oh, I should talk. I should know that. Aren't these your signs? Right. Aren't these your signs? Don't touch it? Yes. That's what you said. We've been waiting to do this. So the current phone system is a little over four years old. There's nothing wrong with four years old in normal circumstances, but what I've found with our phone system is that we have, essentially, a single point of failure, which I'm a little concerned about. And with our IT infrastructure, I strive to have redundancy all the time. That being said, our phone system can impact our computer system occasionally. So... Can and does. Okay. So being gentle there. So to that end, I'd like to investigate cloud VoIP solutions to essentially remove our phone system from our... network, put it on the internet. And that would alleviate any impact to the computers. The phone systems would essentially never fail, assuming the internet's still alive, which generally speaking it is. If we move the phone systems to the cloud, we could have lights out here in the town of Riverhead. And for those employees, department heads and such, and a number of other people, we could have a cloud system that would be able to move the phone systems to the cloud. And essentially, essential employees could still have their office extension on a mobile device, or a laptop, or anything that can access the internet. So it would be a huge benefit for operations in emergencies. It would be a... To say the least, during emergencies. But even during normal operations, I think it could be a big benefit. So I've done some preliminary research, and I think we could do this for little to no impact. Even if there was some financial impact, the benefits would greatly, you know... And from what I understand, even with the financial impact, a couple of years from now, that would be recouped. Absolutely. And we'd probably be ahead of the game. I think we would. So that's very nice to hear. Yes. And the features, I'll let Chip explain some of them. The features allow so much more than we have now, from getting phone calls on your... on a cell phone that's coming into your... into your office, and vice versa. Being able to call out from the cell phone. It's an app on the phone, so it wouldn't be, you know, another phone that we need, another cell phone that we have to pay for, for employees. So there's... And then there's other major features that... Chip can go over some of them that would, you know, the board would probably be interested in. It's a long, boring list, maybe, of technology features that you could realize. It's... It's... It's... It's... Everything, of course, is cloud-based. And you can imagine how... how exhaustive this list would be. But this web conferencing is all built in. Phone calls from your laptop. Just extreme portability, scalability, and reliability. And reliability is very important. The fact that it's not tied into the computers is huge. Because it does happen where the phones go down, and then the computers are down because the phones are down. And you're kind of dead in the water at that point in time when you're trying to do town business. So it makes it difficult. Going to cloud-based, I think, makes the most sense. It really does. Chip, when you're talking about our phones here in town halls, that is a presumption that also includes Justice Court and the Police Department as well. Are they different? Justice Court is the same. So all the municipal phones. Police Department does have part of their own phone system. This would not impact that whatsoever. There's a portion of that that I've already spoken with Motorola about, and they're totally on the same page. Okay. So are you on board with any conversion and assisting us so there'd be no impact to police? And when, just because I have experience with my personal business, we do, you know, optimum does go down. Does go down quite often on the west end of town. But you're able, I presume, from any other location, presumably from your home on a laptop, can you redirect phones and so forth. So if we had an emergency storm, emergency situation, a hurricane hits or something like that, can you sit at any location where there is Wi-Fi and access it online? Yes. And redirect the phones to where they can be answered at an emergency call center? Like if Town Hall was shut down and we were solely operating out of the senior center in Aqueba, can we forward the phone so that like the supervisor can be answering his phone, highway department can be answering in a central location? Precisely. And you're not actually forwarding them. There's no proactive, you know, thing you have to do to forward them. They're already on. So you could have your desk phone in your office. You could have an app on your iPhone, whatever. And wherever you go, it's already on. If an emergency happens and you didn't have the app yet or you had never signed in, it's super quick and easy to put the app on the laptop and, as you said, redirect it. So even with anybody's personal cell phone, even, you know, I could go through AT&T and access my account. Yes. You could use your personal phone. Good. Excellent. And the good thing about even with the personal phone, you know, you can go to your phone and you can just go to your phone. Yeah. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. It's an app that's on your personal phone. All the data from that phone usage is just in the cloud. Yeah. So the moment you remove the app from your personal phone there's nothing left on your personal phone. You've never used your own phone system on your personal device. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. I like it. Does that work with our current phones, like this phone? Yeah. Those physical desk phones would be replaced. They would? Yes.

How much is this price package worth? Well, let's go to bid. You have to go out to bid and see. But from early prices that we've received, it looks like there can potentially be a savings, which is nice. Excellent. And for better service. Yes. Which you usually don't get. That's the key. Yeah. Absolutely. And there will be a savings in the first three or five years, even if the first year there isn't. And typically because those have to be replaced. Once they're replaced, you're saving money from years two to five. And depending on how the bids come in, when we go out and do a bid on these, you could have savings in the first year. Wherever the financial administrator travels, he's available all the time. Yes. Yes.

Excellent. We are really moving forward today. Another step into the 21st century. Yeah. Yeah. Very true. Getting out of the 1980s. Great. Well, thank you, gentlemen, so much. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want my pager back? Give a clear one so you can see who's going up. Has it gone off at all? Okay. Okay. That concludes our open discussion. Thank you. a motion that we go into executive session. I just wanted to momentarily take a moment out to recognize the staff in the supervisor's office. The work that they do for me is incredible. The transition from councilman to supervisor is a huge step and it was seamless with the staff that I have. I'm not as good as I may look sometimes up here. They make me look this good. I appreciate everything they do. They put a lot of stuff together. Their minds are always thinking and we have a great working relationship with the rest of the board and the department heads and everything else. I have to say things are going really well here in Town Hall and a lot of that is because of my staff in my office. Thank you so much. I appreciate it and keep up the good work. Before we go to executive session, we do have resolutions to do. We'll have a quick chat about some resolutions I think. Yes. Thank you for the kind words. It certainly is a team effort and you're leading the charge so we thank you for that. Thank you. The board is ready? We are ready. Okay. Resolution number one, appoints a PSD1 in the police department. This is a PSD that used to work for us, retired. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Really? He left and then decided to come back, and we are in dire need of dispatchers, so that'll be great to have him. He'll hit the ground running, no training necessary, and that's a big plus for us. Resolution number two, authorization for the town board to support Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney's public campaign and efforts to change New York State laws relating to fentanyl. This is something through the supervisors meeting of all the Suffolk County supervisors. District Attorney Tierney asked all of us to come out and support this bill that he's looking to put forward regarding fentanyl. Fentanyl, as we know, is an extremely deadly drug, and the current status of it on the schedule of drugs and in terms of getting convictions require you to have a fairly, an amount to kill one person. You still get released. You would walk right out. If you were. In possession of that much, that little amount. So they're looking to change this on the state level and make it that that smaller amount now, you're going to have to, bail's going to be required. So this is just something that we are signing. We're going to pass the resolution hopefully Wednesday at the meeting, and it's in conjunction with what the district attorney's doing, and we're going to support that all the way up to New York State to get that changed. Same with the next one when you read it. Same thing, but it's on a different topic. It's deadly driving bills, and it has to do with drug involvement while driving a vehicle. So this, again, needs to be changed and brought up to date, and that's what that doing. But that's what this is doing. And we're going to work with the county, the attorney for the county and make this happen. And the other townships in Suffolk County are all the other townships are doing the same thing. They're signing on board and doing their own resolutions of support. OK, so we'll jump then to resolution four. And just to point out, we we probably should have just changed the sequence a little bit. This is sort of happening in tandem with resolution number thirty nine in the packet. So I think it might be helpful if we just pause and talk about number four later when we get to number thirty nine. OK, just make a little more sense for everybody at home. Resolution number five adopts a local law to amend procurement policy pursuant to general municipal law. We talked about this last week. Resolution number six, Recreation Project eight to three. Two. Two. Horton Avenue basketball court closure. We have several of these closures coming up here in the next resolutions. Resolution number seven, Recreation Project number seven, two, three, two, four. Stotsky Park walkway closure. Closures basically mean that the project is done and if there's money left over in the account, if it was done for under the amount that was anticipated, the money gets put back into the accounts it came from. That's basically what closures essentially what we're doing. Right. Resolution number eight, Recreation Project seven, two, three, zero, seven parking lot at Veterans Memorial Park closure. Number nine, Recreation Project seven, two, two, one, six. Stotsky Park tennis courts closure. Number ten, Recreation Project seven, two, one, one, nine. Sound Avenue preserve closure. Number eleven, Water Capital Project number eight, two, zero, five, five. Plant ten storage tank rehab. Closure. Number twelve, Water Capital Project number eight, one, nine, five, three. Plant four rehab closure. Number thirteen, Public Parking District Capital Project number five, two, one, zero, four closure.

Number fourteen, Water Capital Project number eight, one, eight, five, one. USGS test wells budget adjustment. Number fifteen, 912 West Main Street Sewer District Capital Project. Number sixteen, authorizes the supervisor to execute an extension of license agreement and addendum with Island Exterior Fabricators. This is a license agreement we have with Island Exterior Fabricators up at the EPCAL property where they are storing some of their product on our property. And Councilman Kern brought this to our attention a while back. And we contacted the F-Cal. And we contacted the F-Cal. And we contacted the F-Cal. And we contacted the F-Cal. And we contacted the F-Cal. And we contacted them and were able to get revenue from them using our property. So this is just an extension of that license agreement. Number seventeen, ratifies authorization for the supervisor to execute a stipulation with an employee.

Number eighteen, adopts a local law to amend Chapter 289 of the Riverhead Town Code entitled Vehicles, Traffic, and Parking Regulations. This is regarding the parking of private cars and publicly. This is regarding the parking of private cars and publicly. lots. We discussed about how tow trucks were coming and towing and signage wasn't up properly and that and this will bring all that and make it a much clearer code to have and easier for people to realize they should or shouldn't be parking long term in those parking areas. And it will trigger a report that they'll have to file with PD so that folks can obtain that if they need to. Number 19, accepts the resignation of an automotive equipment operator. Number 20, appoints a call in recreation aid to the recreation department. Number 21, authorizes the supervisor to execute an agreement with the Nassau County Police Activity League lacrosse unit for referee and umpire services and team fees for Town of Riverhead Police Athletic League boys lacrosse program rates K through 8 for 2024 calendar year. This allows payment to the referees that are used in our PAL program for boys lacrosse. Number 22, appoints a part-time court officer to the police department. Number 23, reappoints an automotive equipment operator. We had an employee that left the highway department and went to work for greener pastures to find out that they were browner pastures and the greener pastures are actually here in Riverhead. So he's coming back to work for us. That's about right. And just a quick typographical. We just need to add an N to the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whereas, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whereas, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whereas, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whereas, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whereas, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Whereas, the We'll take care of that as well. Town of Bremen, yes. Number 24, approves a salary increase for a call-in food service worker.

Number 25, ratifies the termination of an interpreter. Number 26, authorization for town employees to attend training. So two of our fire marshals are heading out to New Mexico for training, and what's nice about it is FEMA pays 100% of this training, including airfare and hotel, so it's not costing the town anything, but we're going to get two of our fire marshals, and I believe it's prevention and response to suicide bombing incidents, and it's important to have nowadays. So the fact that it's free is even better, and I know our guys will pick up a lot of information out there. We'll be glad to have them attend that. Number 27, ratifies the appointment of a water treatment plant operator, 2B. See, this is nice because this is somebody who starts out as a trainee, and the whole idea is when you start out as a trainee to move up the ladder, and that's exactly what's happening here. He's put his time in, he's done the appropriate testing, and now he's eligible to move up, and that's what you hope to promote through your workforce at any level, so we'd love to see that. And we want him to keep climbing, which is great. Absolutely. Number 28. Ratifies a salary increase for a code enforcement officer.

Number 29, ratifies the appointment of a call-in food service worker. Number 30, authorizes the town clerk to publish and post notice to bidders for police department marine unit boat and outboard motor maintenance and repair. Number 31, awards bid for propane fuel and equipment maintenance. Number 32. Adopts special event chapter 255 application for our future generation, for us, by us, for all of us. This is something that's done every year up at Stotsky Park, and we've always supported this in the past and will continue to do it in the future. Yep, it's a great event. Number 33, amends policy for transfer of funds. We're changing a little bit. It's going to allow department heads to transfer funds up to $15,000 with financial administration. We're going to be able to transfer funds up to $15,000 with financial administration approval, and without a res help. We find that as inflation goes up, as cost of products go up, these numbers also have to go up with time in order to make business a little more easier to conduct. So that's all this is doing. It's just raising the limit a little bit, so it makes it less of a paperwork debacle to get something accomplished. It's more efficient, and just to dovetail on that, in addition to up to $15,000, we're also adding a provision here that allows for a $15,000 discount. Yeah. So it allows for transfer of funds from $15,000 to $30,000 together with the supervisor's signature. Correct. Correct. So it's just eliminating some bureaucracy for department heads there. Bill might want to have something here he wants to add to this. Oh, okay. Hi, Bill.

Just so everybody knows, also in the policy as it's been, every board meeting when you get your reports, it is a report of any transfer that was made that the board didn't approve that was either approved by the supervisor or myself. So you get those in your board packet, and you're aware. Right. Thank you, Bill. Okay. Resolution 34 authorizes the sale of banners and brochure ads by the Recreation Department. It sets the fees for 2024. This piggybacks off our last work session where Councilman Wimowoski and Councilman Rothwell both decided they would take out ads in the recreation brochure. Yes. But more importantly, they're working to sell the ads. Yes. They're working to sell the ads based to raise revenue and that they are charging the right amount. They were pretty, the charges, the rates were pretty low, and it was nice to hear that there's interest in people still doing this at a higher rate ad. It increases revenue for the rec department. And I think the board had some good feedback that the rec folks took into account and made the appropriate adjustments as far as. Correct. Okay. Resolution 35 authorizes supervisor to execute an agreement with Goodman Marks Associates, Inc. to conduct an appraisal of a leasehold. Okay. Number 36 appoints member to the Board of Assessment Review, Hogan. This was a vacancy on the Board of Assessment Review that we are filling. Actually, there's a typo in here. Oh, is there? It's my name. Oh, dear. Oh, you're right. Okay. We'll take care of that. Sorry about that. Resolution 37 authorizes execution of incentives. Okay. Resolution 37 authorizes the execution of incentives. Okay. Resolution 37 authorizes the execution of incentives. Okay. Resolution 37 authorizes execution of incentive proposal for empire state development grant, recreational complex feasibility study at Calverton Enterprise Park. This was a grant that we got to do a study up at Ep Cal, at the park, to help us decide how it can be best used in the future. Okay. And number 38 amends resolution 8015, authorizing application for funding for the U.S. Department of Transportation RAISE 2025 for the University of California. Okay. transportation raise 2024 grant funding and we're increasing the amount that we're proposing to match up to eight and a half million dollars so that we as the town of riverhead hopefully are a little more competitive with uh other municipalities that are competing for the same pot of money absolutely we need to be as competitive as we can be for this grant and i fingers crossed we have good feelings and john thomas is in the back of the room and the cda and the work that they put into this this is this is huge so we're trying to get it while we're here in work session that evidently uh county exec romaine has pledged his support uh for the town's application and the race grant so that's that's great we're pleased to have that we thank the county exec for that 8.5 million to receive 25 million is a good turn on yeah i would say so okay 39 and this is the sort of the first piece of the resolution that we spoke about earlier uh with regard to number four so ratifies the rescinding of resolution 2024-160 and cancels the public hearing regarding a capital improvement for the proposed extension number 99 of the riverhead water district for the marist farm subdivision and other properties the board had approved this resolution to go to publish and post and thereafter that was discovered there were some errors i believe in the in the tax map number throughout the body of the resolution triggered us to have to cancel it and rescind it so the resolution number four in your packet is doing just that that's the cancellation and the rescind and then this number 39 is the new public hearing if i understand that correctly counselor right okay so that's what we have going on there if anybody has any questions we can direct those to the town attorney and we'll move on to number 40 authorizes purchase of one 2024 kenworth model t480 dump truck it should be noted that the cost of a new dump truck is 278 827 dollars and 96 cents and importantly that's last year's pricing that didn't go up pricing and the vehicle is available right uh which is another problem we have so the highway department is in need of this and uh just pointing out how expensive it is to do business in a municipality and we have just one additional resolution that we're adding to the packet we have copies for the press and this ratifies rescission of resolution 2024-109 and cancels public hearing regarding agritourism uh the board is aware of that because of course we all uh signed because of course we all signed and initialed the decision so i'm going to copy that to the board

and that's it

okay this concludes our open session um of today's work session can i have a motion to close the open session and go into executive session so motion second motion and second all in favor aye all opposed okay we will go into executive session everybody have a great week great weekend maybe a little bit of snow on saturday a little bit of a mix we'll see but nothing like we had the other day so