Full Transcript

Thank you. Thank you. And as we start all our meetings, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, everyone. Okay, we have six matters on for open session. So we're going to start with matter number one, and that is matters surrounding the presentation of the Anti-Litter Committee Certificates of Appreciation. And Councilwoman Waski, I will turn that over to you. Thank you, Supervisor. So this morning we have an exciting thing going on as liaison to the Anti-Litter Committee. We've been working, they have been working very hard in trying, with the efforts of keeping Riverhead, looking beautiful. And we have certain people in town that have gone above and beyond, between residents and businesses, and we would like to acknowledge some of them today. We will be acknowledging others in the future as well. So we appreciate everybody doing their part in cleaning up. If you see something, if you see garbage, pick it up and throw it in the trash. This is our town, we love our town, and we want to see it be as beautiful as it can be. So with that, I'd like to bring up Deborah Wetzel, who is the chair, and Jim and Joanne. And Supervisor, how would you like to, do we want to go up or? Yeah, why don't we come right up to the front and you can hand out the certificate.

Come on, Jim wants to stand next to you. Jim, good job. Okay, so we do have two people that are not able to be here today, and that's George Eldy and Julie O'Neil, but we'd like to thank them very much for all their efforts. And would you like to share the honors? The first one goes to Edgar Goodale, Riverhead Building Supply. Please come up. We have Eric Goodale, representing Riverhead. Thank you. [transcription gap]

The next one, the next certificate of appreciation goes to Brian Hanlon of the Business Improvement District, the BID. Thank you, Brian and the BID.

Thank you. Thank you. The next one goes to the Riverhead Rotary Club. Mary Hughes could not be with us. So in her place is. George Duprey. I'm sorry. George Duprey. George Duprey. Thank you. [transcription gap] The next certificate of appreciation goes to Tim Cody. Tim heads up the East End Hiking Club on Fayetteville. And they brought 50 people to our cleanup last year. Thank you so much, Tim. And the last person is not here. Rick Maeda of Firestone. They couldn't send. They didn't send a representative. So we'll just pass that on to him. But thank you, everyone, for all the work that you do to help keep our town clean. And our next cleanup. Our next cleanup is Saturday, November 2. Thank you, everybody. Great job. Thanks. Thank you very much. So that's your piece. And then. Thanks a lot. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much. And all that you guys do. Thank you. All right. So. [transcription gap] So. [transcription gap] if that's the case. Double check. Okay, next up, item number two. We have the police department matters surrounding the monthly report for July and August, and we would ask Chief Frost to come on up. Good morning, Chief. Good morning. This guy is everywhere. He is everywhere. All right, so obviously you know we went to a new records management system, which is NIBRS compliant. The reports are going to look a little different. Most of it is going to be similar. There is one difference, which is going to be page, in July's report, it's going to be page three and four, just because it's in print. Oh, yeah, okay. Our numbers are all very similar from year to year. Unfortunately, it's going to be a little off. The better picture is probably from July to August. It's the same reporting system going, you know, using the same system. They were, the first, I believe in May, we went to this system, and they were kind of like going in the old system and making it fit to the new system. It really doesn't really work. Didn't match up well. Doesn't match. The titles are all different, and how they classify incidents is different. So just the bigger difference, and if you go to July's report, so you see the numbers, 228. August is 208. You know, our numbers are all pretty close with criminal incidents. That's obviously important. But if you go to page three, where it says offense by month, 2024, so if you look at May, which, and again, that's probably where people realize, you see there's a kidnapping right on the first page, if you go, you know, in July. Yeah. So. It wasn't a kidnapping. It's just how they classify crimes now. So unlawful imprisonment, which is a misdemeanor, gets classified in that group as a kidnapping. Really? An a felony to an a misdemeanor? Well, there's multiple, there's big title groups, and various crimes fit into that title. Okay. That's how they do the system, and that's just the way it's going now, you know, with this new system. When we're electronically reporting, to the state, and this is all generated from, right from our incident reports, no one's calculating, if the officer puts in, you know, whatever crime, it gets sent up to them in that fashion, and these are their titles. I can send you this, so you get a better understanding of what I'm talking about, but it's just the way it is. Right. There's nothing I can do about it. And the second thing, just those are the bigger incidents, if you look at the August report, for the criminal justice and the total, I don't want you to be alarmed, but July had, if you look at July's report, July had 228, so now in August, it went up to 235. So, I had them look into that, because I, you know, obviously that's a jump, and the reports are 100% accurate. What happens is, if a case gets referred to the detective division, or any additional charges, you know, it's a jump. If the charges are generated, that is a jump. So, is it based on a new CC number that's picked up related to a case? It's the same CC number, but... Yeah, so it was classified as a burglary in the end of July, and then say an arrest came in in August, and then there was three additional charges. All the different charges are actually in this report as well. It's not just classified as a burglary. So, if there's a criminal mischief involved, if there was whatever, because that's a stolen property, so that's the additional number. It's a burglary for 235. That's the way the system works. So, don't, you know, I don't want to have anybody saying these are inaccurate, the numbers are not right. That's how the system works. So, usually the follow-up investigations when there's arrests, you know, or the person comes back, the complainant comes back, and we adjust it in August for, oh, I didn't realize this was taken. So, or, you know, that's the bigger difference. Okay. Chief, can I just ask, does that follow up, let's say there's an indictment with de novo charges, does that get added to your list too? Or no? It would if the person ended up getting arrested. Yes. It's the arrest, it probably would. That's all there is? Yes. Okay. Yeah, it would be added in. So, like I said, if you look at July and August together, we're pretty similar. There's no, really no big difference in it. Do you have any, I remember seeing, you know, the deer strikes are down a little bit. Okay. All right. I don't know what, you know, what else you'd like to report on. The one thing I always kind of have an interest in is use of Narcan and Ovidosis. Okay. I'm not going to have that. So July, there was, we used it once, and EMS used it once for a total of two for that same individual. And then we did have a fatality in July. It was a 59-year-old female. Okay. And then we'll do August. August, we had one use, and then civilian had two uses of Narcan for a total of three doses for the same individual. It was a male subject. Three different times or? Three, same person, you can give them multiple dosage. Okay. Okay. If they are not responding, you can give them multiple. Yes. Chief. Go ahead. Go ahead. I have a question. I just heard a report, it wasn't in Riverhead, but somebody who was smoking cannabis, they administered Narcan and it did nothing, which suggests there was something in the cannabis and they died in the ambulance. So the person that died here, were they given Narcan too? Yes. And? No. It was a hotel incident. Oh. Okay. And the person was already deceased way prior to our arrival. Oh. Okay. Yes. Obviously if we get there, we would. Have you come across that though where Narcan didn't work? Yes. We haven't. Well, the more reason not to do a little of it. Do you have the rest of the report? Do you care? Do you care. [transcription gap] the electric bike.

You guys have anything else? Anybody have anything? I'm good. Thank you, Chief. If you guys want this, I'll email it to you. So you get it. Yeah, maybe. It's pretty thick. Yeah, maybe if you get a chance, send it to us this way. We can do a comparison ourselves and have a better idea. All right. Thank you much. Thank you. Yep. Thanks, Chief. Okay, item number three, we have code enforcement and it's matters surrounding the monthly report with Senior Investigator Richie Downs. I've seen a lot of you lately. Popular guy. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Everybody has the report in front of them? So we've opened up 72, 77 new complaint investigations for the month of August. I'm not going to go down the whole list, but you can read it. We had dangerous conditions. I'll just go through the most that we had. Dangerous conditions, we had eight. Overcrowded housing, we had six. Property maintenance, we had nine. Residential building, no permits, we had eight. And unsafe building and structures, we had two. We've issued, we have 110 cases still under investigation. That's starting from January 1st and continuing. Do you know what I just noticed on this? That you've almost doubled in the month of August the number of open cases you've had since January. Yeah. That's amazing. It just continues to rise. Yeah. Yeah. So what is, explain the process, like why so many cases still open since January? Is it just like... Well, part of it is that they went to Justice Court and we're still pending litigation. We're still looking for litigation in some of these matters. In some cases, we're still looking to serve the owners of the property. But we have concluded the investigation. So we don't normally close it out until it makes its rounds through Justice Court. Right. And there's either, you know, a plea of guilty or not guilty. Or they pay a fine. Yep. So... But that's a huge jump. Just 77 one-month-along new cases. Yeah. And like, we really try to close them out as fast as possible. Yeah. [transcription gap] But there's a lot of things that are impossible. But in some cases, we just can't because of reasons beyond our control. Mm-hmm. So tickets, summonses, we've issued 85 summonses for the month of August. And some of the ticketable infractions are anywhere from no rental permits, parking on the non-driveway areas, litter, both commercial and residential. weeds, rubbish on properties, overcrowding houses, many New York State property maintenance code violations, and open excavations of piles of material on properties, and zoning and use violations. Moving on to rentals. So the residential building, no permit, what's the fine on that? I believe it's $500 for first offense, and then it's $1,000, up to $1,000 for the second offense. And then it goes on from there. Yeah, we need to address that. Can I just ask you one question, please? Sure. On areas such as like Route 58, where people put signs up, you know, yard sales, don't take them down, just any kind of signs that just keep popping up all over. How do we go about cleaning that up? Well, yeah. It's a county road. Yeah, it is a county road. And we used to have a provision in our sign ordinance which would allow us to impound or remove those signs. However, the sign ordinance has changed over the years. And for some reason or not, that provision is no longer there. So we used to be able to just, you know, go up there and impound them. Code enforcement would go up and, in some cases, go up on a ladder and take them down ourselves. When we had a sign person, that's what they did. They went up and just confiscated all the signs that were illegally put up without sign permits. Yeah. And in many cases, it's hard to, like, we see a lot of the signs up on 58 for the power washing and everything. Right. And you see them on the telephone poles. And it's just a phone number. And you call the phone number. And, you know, they don't tell you who they are. They don't have an address. You really can't write a summons to them. And we try. But in most cases, they're not going to tell you, you know, who they are. And the signs are all over the place, you know. So having the ability to impound the signs without the permits is a good idea. And I do think it should probably be put down into the code. Yeah. Why don't we look into that with code revision and get that back in again? Yeah. That would be a real good idea. Yeah. When people are driving through our town. Because they leave them. They just leave them. Yeah. They leave them. Even the yard sale signs, they stay there. And the address is on the yard sale sign. Yeah. In those cases, yeah, we can probably go after the people. First and foremost, you have to have a permit to operate to have a yard sale. Right. So you can get that right from the clerk's office. Yeah. From the clerk's office. And, you know, the requirements in the yard sale ordinance is that you're supposed to remove the sign within three days of the yard sale. Yeah. Which is pretty good. But most people don't. Some people do it. And then they don't. And then they don't. So, yeah. All right. I'd like to move forward with trying to do something to be able to clean that up. Yeah. Absolutely. I agree. Yeah. Thank you. No problem. All right. Rentals. We have inspected approximately 101 residential-type structures. And 100 residential-type structures. And so, you have to clear up those. Because you have to clear up those. [transcription gap] 101 residential type structures and 160 apartment units. Fees, we've collected approximately $38,875 in rental fees for the month of August. And our totaling revenue from January to date is, there's a typo there, I'm sorry, $227,700 in rental fees. So January to August, right? Yeah. Apologize for that. Okay. How are you doing, Mike, towards the goal to complete all inspections by the end of the year? Yeah, that's our goal. But as you know, many people don't pass their first inspection, so we do have to go back continually. Usually when we get to the third inspection, if we do get through the third inspection, we're going to have to go back to the third inspection. It's usually going to be some sort of Justice Court ticket. Is there, when you go back for the second and third time, is there an additional fee? No, there's not an additional fee. There's an additional fee if we go to an inspection and there's nobody there on the scheduled date. Well, maybe we'll review that, because maybe if you go back a second time and it's still not complete, there should be a fee for that. Yeah, it's not a bad idea. Okay. Not a bad idea. Cover the cost of the time of the employee going to do it. Yep. And what is the fee if no one's home? $50. We're going to fix that. Yeah. Well, it could be somewhere else. Exactly. Because we do take the time to schedule these inspections, and we do speak to the owners in most cases. Yeah, they should be. Yeah, they should be. They should be there for their inspection. Correct. Good. Yep. All right. Any other questions? No? All right. Thank you, Rick. All right. Thank you. Can I see your nightguys? That's great, because when I'm here late. You see Kyle and Connor, too. Both of them. Yeah. Both of them. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Good. They're out. Excellent. All right. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, next up, we have Justice Court matters surrounding the monthly report with Deputy Town Attorney Saru. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Good. Okay. So, I've streamlined the chart a little bit more again. So, now you can see individually wherever there's an addition symbol, that means that obviously the surcharge is added. And then within the grand totals, you can see, you know, of the $29,593 we collected in August. $2,550, those were those mandatory surcharges. And then we can see, you know, in each category, you know, in a perfect world, if everybody paid, that would be what we would get. So, that's what I have for this month. Pretty busy. A lot of pleas. We did have a couple of rental permit trials. So, just moving forward with kind of clearing out the older cases where they're just, they're not getting these rental permits, they're not doing the right things. So, we're kind of just tracking them for trial and getting it all out in front of the judges so they can see what's been going on. And we're going to adjust that. For the building permits? No rental. And the rental, yeah. Okay. Yes. All right.

That's all I have. Also, whatever has an asterisk or... DJ next to it just means it's default judgment. So, it wasn't... Right. You didn't collect it. Right. So, if they win LATO someday, we'll get it. Yes. Sure. I'm sure we're right on the top of your list to come in and do that. Okay. So, yeah. We have a couple of trials coming up in September, a couple of parking trials on Monday. So, just kind of moving stuff along, getting it, you know, getting the facts in front of the judges so they can see what's... Going on instead of just having, you know, just playing people out.

That's all. That's all. All right. We have the town clerk coming up. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you. [transcription gap] We're up to the town clerk. Matt is surrounding the monthly report. Good morning. Good morning, Jim. How are you? Sorry. Carol is away, and Vanessa has been sick, so I've been alone in the office all week. Oh, so it's... Carol came in today. I voted, so you have the copy of the report? Yes. Yep. Nothing spectacular. I mean, it's... Basically, foils are always an issue. It seems everything comes through us and gets re-routed everywhere else, so we have to stay on top of those all the time. And then we had a big hunting season. Hunting opened up on August 1st, so that was a... 670 licenses went out. Wow. Yeah. That's a lot. I mean, you have the bow and arrow lottery tonight. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just amazing. You know, you sell $200 worth of tickets, and the town share is like $3.75. I mean, the percentages are so weird. The state... The state... [transcription gap] We want the clerks of the state to do all the work, and they get really pennies, pennies, pennies on the dollars. I don't think that's fair, but... So she says they don't do tags anymore. We have to print everything out on our own paper. And that's about it. I was looking, just as a side note, I met with Bob Kern, and we're working up a sheet, as your director did, and I agree with you wholeheartedly that each department has to look at the ways that they can best serve the public without breaking the balance. Right. [transcription gap] Right.

So there's a good chance that with what we trimmed back with transcription services and what we're looking to implement for next year, that we're going to get that probably a 20% increase in income, which is good because it's needed. Last year we made about $117,000 last year and we're on a marker about that this year, which is just about barely covers the personnel and the paper and the mailings. There's a lot of expenses in the tax office that goes, especially with publishing posts and paper and ink and all those things. So. I'll put that whole tally sheet together for you for the next meeting and show you where we'd like to go with it. And that would be a good thing. Yeah. I think for everybody. Any questions on the services or what we've done so far? Oh, I'm working with Chip. I met with him this morning and I'm going to be working with Teresa with the agenda software program. Civic Plus, we'd like to move forward. I'd like to try to get it done by the end of this month. Okay. We're putting together our whole timetable of all the due diligence that we did with the Zoom meetings and the site visits, not only to Brookhaven, but the Zoom meeting we had with other tech people and other townships that we did for almost six months to satisfy Teresa with the RFP sign of that. We did our due diligence with the three companies that really are entertaining me. South Hold is going to be going with Civic Plus as well. South Hampton, I think, just signed on with eScribe. They have a different need or a different want out there that we don't need. And that's it. So I want to move forward with that, too. So I'll have that for next week. People can't hear you. Huh? You've got to speak up a little bit. You've got to speak up a little bit. Hi. How are you doing? So we're looking to go ahead and get that agenda software done. We'd like to implement that. It's going to be about three or four month turnout with the first year. And then we're going to turn it around and by the first year we'd like to really get that off and running and get the AI going so that the minutes can be a little more in tune to what a few people want to see. I've been doing good with the minutes as far as putting roughly who spoke and a little bit of substance to what they had to say. It's not verbatim, but it does give them recognition for standing up at the mic and making their concerns known. And of course there's always a digital framework. I think that's a great point. Yeah. And I think that's the footprint of everything we do. So anything can be researched and transcribed if it's needed for anything. So we're not losing anything or hiding anything. I'm sorry I'm talking soft. You sound like me. I don't have the radio voice that Rothwell has. You actually do. Yeah. I went to school for it. But I haven't done anything with it. Well, you do good out there on the beds. Well, there's alcohol involved. So. [transcription gap] Hi, this is Tim Hubbard, supervisor of the great town of Riverhead, and you're watching Riverhead in Action, a media campaign designed to highlight the incredible work of the 350 plus employees that comprise Riverhead's 26 departments and sub-departments, town events, projects, job openings, local businesses, and other town happenings. I hope you find this informative and enjoyable, and thank you for watching Riverhead in Action. It's been a fun-filled and busy summer here at the town of Riverhead. We kicked off the summer with the annual 4th of July flag-raising ceremony in Jamesport at the George Young Community Center, followed shortly thereafter by the Jamesport Fire Department Parade and Carnival, and the first of two live-on-25 events, including a fireworks display at the Riverfront. The Anti-Litter Committee. The Big Fish at Iron Pier Beach. And the Street Lighting Division undertook the upgrading of all town hall lights to LED. Town historian Georgette Case and Justice Lori Hulse took receipt of records from the Suffolk County Historical Society on former town supervisor William J. Leonard, which are a welcomed addition to our history. We were honored to host Senator Chuck Schumer for a press conference in the town square in which the town officially received the 25th anniversary of the Riverhead Fire Department. The ! 24. was another success. National Night Out Awards were awarded to local poster winners ranging from age 16 to The

24. Cardboard. Race. 12. I had a visit with Riverhead's oldest hardware store, Griffin Hardware. The Riverhead Polish Festival made its return and Racetrack Not Street enjoyed another successful season of racing and family fun. We swore in two new police officers, recognized four others for their bravery, and promoted a lieutenant. The Ukrainian flag was raised for Ukrainian Independence Day, and the last alive on 25 was celebrated with a laser light show on the town square. The last alive on 25 was celebrated with a laser light show on the town square. The last alive on 25 was celebrated with a laser light show on the town square. We hope you and your family had a great summer season in the town of River head. We hope you and your family had a great summer season in the town of River head. We hope you and your family had a great summer season in the town of Riverhead.

Thank you, ladies. Very nice job. I was wondering who was going to clap.

Okay. I will ask for a motion to close the open session and go into executive session. I just want to remind everybody that Sunday is the first day of fall, so happy fall. Enjoy your weekend and stay safe. Can I have a motion to close open session and go into executive session? So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay. Open session is closed. We will retire to executive session. Thank you, everybody.

Second.