Full Transcript
Thank you. [transcription gap] Thank you, Ken. Thank you. Okay. We are going to have a motion and a second to close open session, and we're going to go into executive session to discuss matters surrounding the sale and lease of real property, and that will be with Tom. Tom is, Pradente, and Hurley. If I could have a motion to close open session and go into executive. So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay. We are closed. We're going to executive session. I'm not sure how long this is going to last, people, but we will be back and go open again as soon as we finish with this matter. So we're assuming somewhere around 10 o'clock, but don't hold me to that. It could be after that or it could be before that. Okay. All for now. We'll head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head Good morning, everybody. We are back from one stint of executive session. We're now going to go into open session. And the first matter up today will be Matters Surrounding Monthly Police Report with Chief Frost. And sitting in for Chief Frost today is Captain Wilsey. Good morning. [transcription gap] Good. How are you? Good. So for the January 2025 report, our total incidents in 2025 January compared to last year was almost very identical. We have 2994 for this January compared to 2962 of last year. For summonses this year, we have 1042 compared to 1136 last year. Criminal incidents almost identical, 164 this year compared to 165. Non-criminal very close, 2830 this year to 2797 last year. Just to go through some of our highest number of non-criminal incidents, we have 80 cases, commercial alarms, motor vehicle stops, and school crossings. We had a total of 139 motor vehicle accidents, 1 fatality. 72 subjects arrested with a total of 100 charges. Town summonses, 155. Summonses broken down, we have 43 town summonses, 789 T-sleds, and 210 parking summonses. For reportable incidents, our highest number is for shoplifting, which we usually do see that highest number month over month. It did decrease coming from December to January by 5. We had 57 in December, 52 this January. Simple assaults also decreased from 22 to 15. We had a total of 14 driving under the influence arrests. We had a total of 15 police officers arrested. We had a total of 15 police officers arrested. So as far as we have crime control now in the police department, they have cleared 43 investigations by arrest. That's great. Yes. They did complete two details with several stores on Route 58 with their security guards. They all came in on the weekends. The security guards came in. Some of the stores had 8 to 10 extra security guards in looking for shoplifters, any pet larceny. We did have arrests out of two stores. We did have arrests out of two stores. They're looking to do more of those. Shoplifting, pet larceny, grand larceny is usually some of our highest offenses. And the stores are gathering that we're working with them. And they're having more employees come in, more security guards. So it's definitely beneficial for the public, for them, for everybody. Officer Murphy is now our Highway Patrol officer. As of February 2nd, since that date, he has 154 traffic summonses, 3 arrests with 7 total DUIs so far this year. We have several subjects over the course of the past year. I have a packet here who have several arrests, varying charges. We have about 9 pages of people who have 10, 15 separate arrest charges. And you can see we're working with the DA's office. We have one subject here has a total of about 10 to 12 pet larcenies. Eventually he's charged with burglary after having a trespass affidavit signed. So they're willing to increase their charges as things go. And we're working with them. And we had one non-fatal overdose and zero fatal overdoses for the month of January. So bail reform is working. Catch and release is working well on the side of the criminal. It takes a little bit of time, but, you know. I'm just saying that sarcastically. I agree with you. Yes. Yeah, it took some time, but they did increase the charge for this one subject. So hopefully going forward. But it takes 10 arrests, right? It takes a lot. It definitely takes a lot. And how many people are the same people that, that are re-arrested and re-arrested? Over and over and over. I love the pages of them. You can see there's a, we have a lot. This is, this is. Top 10 list. And what's that do, you know, what that is doing, more security guards, right? That's more money, that's more costs to the retailer. Sure. More employees, more costs to the retailer. Who's going to pay for it? The public that are going in there, the honest people. And they're going to pay for all this extra support. Right. Good job, Governor Hochul. Any questions regarding the bill? I think that's great about the crime control unit. Yeah, that's good. They're doing a great job. They're really great. Thank you. Good job, Danielle. I really appreciate what you guys are doing. All right. We're good, Captain. All right. Thank you much. All right, next up we have matters surrounding the monthly justice court report with, I don't see her. Counselor Saru. She stood us up. Get her. We have Victoria for who's doing the judicial justice court. Do code enforcement. Okay. Matters surrounding the monthly code enforcement report. Richard Downs. Are you off duty today? No, I have to get off duty. You're poking when you sit down? So you better. I'm not. [transcription gap] clarifications, residential building, no permits. We had 10. And zoning violations, we had three. We have approximately 139 cases still under investigation from last year. We've issued 54 summits and violations for the month of January. Violations include no rental permits, no building permits, no COs. Litter on commercial properties, importation, exportation of materials, unlawful signs, rubbish, weeds, violations of an approved site plan, unsafe building structures, various summits for the New York State Property Maintenance Code, and zoning infractions. Potential Supreme Court actions forward to the town attorney. We have presented two cases of ours. And forwarded these cases to the town attorney for potential Supreme Court actions. Rental properties, we continue to inspect the rental properties in the town of Riverhead. Inspections, we have inspected approximately 90 residential type houses and 60 apartment units. Okay, fees. Is that 90 in the month or since January? It's just the month of January. Okay. Yeah. And 60 apartments. Fees, we've collected approximately $49,575 in rental fees for the month of January. And that's our total revenue obviously because this is one month.
So if the board requires anything further, I have detailed reports also. Can you even? I have one question, Rich. Sure. So how, has OpenGov helped you? Sure. Has OpenGov helped you streamline the application process? And it's, oh absolutely. We're, we're hit the ground running now. So we're in the first month with the OpenGov. Oh good. And the public seems to, to like it. So, yes. Saving you a lot of time. Saving a lot of time. Okay, good. Yeah. Thank you. That's what we wanted to hear. Good. Rich, I had a question. Since changing the code now with the number of cars people are allowed to have, have you been, been able to go after individuals who are still continuing to park too many cars at the residence? Yeah, we're, the ability's there since the code's been codified. So we're looking at that now. Keep in mind that those, that, that code was only codified for rental properties. Right. So those are the ones that we're looking at. Okay. Yeah. Are you, are you being able to find violations of that? Absolutely. Okay, great. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Everybody good? Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Investigator Down. Have a good day. All right. We're going to go on, I guess, to number four since I don't see. Oh, wow. No wonder I don't see her. Okay. Matters surrounding Justice Court Report. Victoria Saru, come on up. You're hiding back there, aren't you? Sorry. Good morning. [transcription gap] Okay. So everyone has a copy? I have extra copies. Yes. In case. Okay. So pretty standard month. We did get a good bit in blight mitigation. Okay. So we're going to go on. So I have a copy of the application and also I've been working on the yearly report that Councilman Rothwell had mentioned on the last date. So I have all of these in a spreadsheet and we were made aware of collecting these surcharges back in mid-March of last year. So I have all of them up until the end of February this month. So I just want to get one more full month of March and then we'll have that full year. I don't know if you want to start in January. Not. But we'll have March. I think maybe we'll do March. Okay. Because we'll have a year. Yeah. But then going forward we'll do January 1 to December 31st. Got it. So I have all of them here and I, you know, these are just the surcharges. Then we have the grand total. So after the 12 months I'll have the total for all of them by the end of March. And then we'll have a clear view of what has gone on in the last year and how many we've potentially collected. Thank you. Not much else to say. I did have a couple of parking troughs. Okay. Thank you. We have a few town code trials. We have a few town code trials coming up. But nothing out of the ordinary. If there's any questions. Excellent job. Thank you. Thanks. There we go. Doing great over there. So thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. Short and sweet. Yep. Great. Thanks. Okay. We're up to number four. Mattis. Around a monthly town clerk. Town clerk report with Jim Wooten. Number four is number 44. Number four you are today. Thank you. January was a, typically, for my learning, is probably a slower month than most months. Only because it's the turn of the new year. FOIA requests were up 242. We are looking at that new next request from Civic Plus, which is a great program, by the way. So we should be interested in that probably within four or five weeks. It's an excellent program. So I think it's going to help out a lot as far as curtailing the amount of work that my girls have to do. Otherwise, it's pretty self-explanatory. I know one of the concerns that you were bringing up, or that I have, is with public speakers at public hearings or town board meetings. So I know we're looking. Sometimes I misspeak. I misspeak. I miss a name. And I don't want to interrupt a meeting and say, could you please tell me your name. So I asked, I ordered three by five cards, which I'm going to get printed up with name and Hamlet. And I might want to set a table up in the back for people to put their name and Hamlet if they're going to speak. And I'll put a box up here they can drop the card in there when they come to speak. Just so I have a list. I want to be accurate in the minute keeping of who spoke and where they're from. Right. So even if it's just to have them listen. They should get credit for coming and taking the time to speak. And I feel bad when I miss the name. So I'm going to implement that. The cards are in order now. So I'll have them printed up. And if they're going to start doing that at the town board meeting, that would help me out a lot. Good. We are interviewing tomorrow for a bilingual clerk. We had a list of like ten. I think I got two coming in tomorrow. And the one from yesterday didn't show. Right. So I certainly want to work with you, Ken. And work with the new Spanish committee. Absolutely. I spoke with the head of it the other day. And I'd like to be on their agenda maybe to speak to them. Absolutely. I want to throw the net out wider to make it more appealing for people to come. It's a great job. And it's convenient in the middle of the day like that. I know there's somebody out there that's looking. And I just want to make sure I capture them. So we're looking at that. And today we have a meeting with Lazer. Which is a collective of online searching. Today is just an introductory type meeting. So I don't know how fast we're going to do on that. But it's a program where it might cut down a lot on your FOIL requests. Because what it is is it allows people to do their own research. They can research tax properties and planning documents. I know a lot of it's probably eighteen months just to get it uploaded as far as all the old stuff. as all the old stuff but it's something we're looking at I know South hold has it is very it probably put that a lot on your on your floor because good people can do their own research at that point they don't have to so that'll free up a lot of manpower what time is that meeting 3 o'clock okay yeah 3 o'clock that's 242 foil requests it's just it's multiple departments it's just an it is with more money I would say a good 80% of our old building they're all talking about CEOs and stuff like that and I and believe me I think they've won full-time staff up there does nothing good for you and I know there's always backlog not 140 but that's that's just the flow I mean you get some done but it's just it just keeps piling and you really simplify it yeah yeah I mean yeah I yeah I don't know how yeah I'm thinking the laser fish would do that I mean that's probably a year or so now because of course it's a price point we have to find out what's going on and then we'll see what happens but I think that's the way it is but I think that's the way it is but I think that's the way it is well CDA is I think is filing for seventy five thousand dollar grant right do that scanning and then we'll prioritize well I know they have staff to do that company which is good because I can't imagine the undertaking of trying to upload documents in that but anyway we're looking at it's all in an effort to try to create more transparency for public to do there you know there's nothing to hide so I think we're moving along that way too and then I know with the new and then next month in March we're going to start with the agenda management portion of the civic plus which is the real big thing that's what we're talking about you know new minutes maybe some AI with transcriptions all those things that we that we cut out because of the price points and necessities so we're looking to forward that we're forward-thinking on all of that and I appreciate the board for doing that and that's it for us been impressive Jim thank you very much
okay next up we have matter surrounding the Business Advisory Committee presentation with Rothwell and Bergman yes unless the last councilman current if I take on this so the Business Advisory Committee has worked on this and and we just kind of changed over liaisons in beginning of January so something I know this that if you were 90 95 percent there to the finish line so I wanted to give them the opportunity to kind of clear some of the slate some of the things that they've been working on over the last year so morning let's come here today to kind of explain some of their concerns we have we had one item that we've been working on during the past year I'm here I tweaked what I previously sent so this is and I have this dated today because they have the other head so I have a data same thing but it's just tweaked a little bit and basically I'm I'm here not individually I'm representing the Advisory Committee who at our last meeting we had reviewed this we've been reviewing it before and pulled the committee and they all wanted to bring this before the board Basically, what sort of sparked this was the change in the code with regard to the pervious pavers being now impervious. That was done at the August 6th resolution. So what it says is that you can no longer use pervious pavers for increases in certain site development. And I believe it was intended toward parking because a lot of developers were using pervious pavers to increase their parking spaces. And I get it. That's really not the intent of what the pavers are for. So the code change was made. And then that created some restrictions and some concerns with certain property owners who had projects pending. So what we looked at was the code is the code. It was adopted. Is what was causing owners to use more expensive pervious pavers to gain parking instead of pavement because it's much more expensive? And why would they do that? And what we found after asking that question is that it was really the result of what we feel is a glitch in the zoning code as the dimensional table. So the dimensional table has... building footprint lot coverage and then it has total impervious surface. So when we were thinking about it, why did that happen? We put together a sketch which I have as a previous sketch. And on the left side of the sketch, we drew up a 50 car parking lot. Basic 50 cars. Very efficient. There isn't an inch of parking here that's not required for 50 cars. The total parking lot is 50 cars. 24 foot aisles, 10 by 20 parking spaces, a little dumpster corral, and a run of sidewalk that would lead to a building and a street. And this is bare minimum 50 cars. It's 22,950 square feet is what a 50 car parking lot minimum requirement is for area. Now when you relate that to the parking requirements in the code, for example, we use... the zones we were looking at. We use some of the more common uses like office, medical office, retail. When you look at the calculation here, the 50 cars at 150 for medical gets you a 7,500 square foot building, which is the smaller rectangle. It gets you 10,000 square feet of office, which is the middle rectangle. And it would get you 12,500 square foot of retail, which is the larger rectangle. So when you... When you look at the... What those 50 cars get you in terms of building footprint, okay? And you do a calculation, what happens is in order to park, if you have 50 cars and you have the building that results in 50 cars, the parking area is on average two times bigger than the building footprint. So without being two times bigger, you can't provide... You can't provide enough parking to develop the site. So when you look at the next page, there were a number of zones. Many of them are right on the nose, especially the bigger retail ones. But there were a number of zones where you look at, for example... You know, a good example would be starting at the bottom of the PRC code. Right now you're allowed 20% building area, but you're only allowed 40% total area. So... So you can never achieve under the code at 40% the full building footprint area. It just doesn't work. Now there, if you did it two to one with the average, it would go up to 60 instead of the current 40. However, that particular zone happens to have a maximum of 50% because it's the entrance to Riverhead. That's all along, like, West Main Street. And more landscaping is wanted there. So the max that could be or should be would be 50, not 60. But the other... The other ones, for example, the... I know the industrial all changed, but, you know, big ones were the rural corridor is... Right now you had 10%. That really should go to 30% on the impervious. The residential campus right now it's 20%, and it goes up to 25% with sewer. But it would only go to 60% on the impervious surface. And if you went with the sewer, it should really go. It's 75%. And the Hamlet Center is 35% lot coverage. It really, if you computed that two to one, it ends up being over 100%. So probably the maximum you would want would be something around 80%. So just in looking at this, we just saw that there was a disparity in some of these zones on the code. And then the other question that we had, which... Was that the way that it was written... I believe, because, Greg, this was put in the portion of the code for parking. I believe that this is only intended to capture parking, not impervious surface... Impervious papers elsewhere on the site. But the way it's written, it says, and shall contribute to the impervious surface calculation for the purposes of zoning. If that were the case, then not only, you know, do you need more room for the parking, but you couldn't even... The minimum you do is the parking, a sidewalk, and a building. So if you wanted to do any other development on a site, like... This is just another sketch, a copy of this sketch that I did a quick overlay on. For example, if you wanted to split the building in half, you know, do two smaller footprints, and put, like, let's say, a drainable paver like Will Terrace. You know, my son had LASIK surgery, so I drove him, and I had to wait an hour. And instead of sitting in a... They had a very nice appointed, you know, waiting room, but I wanted to make some calls. I went outside, and they had a really nice area with some seats, and, you know, I sat down, made some calls. It was a beautiful day. You couldn't do something like that if the impervious pavers also count toward other than parking. So the two things that the committee looked at was those couple of zones that the impervious is low, it should be increased, and that it should be clarified that the impervious pavers can still be used for other than parking. So that was what we came up with. And I'm glad Greg's here, because I know we had a discussion with him. So I'll start off by saying I don't disagree. There's some of the dimensional regulations for some of the zoning districts are a little bit incongruous with the dimensional regulations in terms of pervious, impervious. At a basic level, just the use of impervious surface coverage as one of the limiting dimensional regulations, I don't know it necessarily achieves what we're looking to. At a basic level, we're looking at developed area or undeveloped area. You know, when you drive past a site, whether it's a gravel parking lot or an asphalt parking lot, it's still developed area. So, you know, I do think we can work on the code. I'm trying to look at some other towns and how they impose their dimensional regulations. For example, Smithtown doesn't have any zoning dimensional regulations. They have building lot coverage, floor area ratio, and then they just have minimum landscaped areas, which may be a simpler route. You know, again, I think this is something we'll bring up at Code Revision, but there may be a simpler way to sort of guide development of properties, because, again, at a basic level, it's either a developed surface or an undeveloped surface. You know, the way the code was originally written, you have the use of pervious pavers was supposed to be an alternative to, you know, traditional drainage systems. It was not supposed to be a workaround for, you know, an application that's potentially looking for, you know, to exceed the allowable FAR building lot coverage. It was never intended to intensify the levels of development that were intended for a piece of property. You know, for the boards, the medical office that was proposed at the corner of 374 Main Road and Union, for example, met the maximum floor area ratio. They were allowed in that RLC zoning district. They were using their parking supply, essentially all pervious pavers, where in order to facilitate that development, it probably would have been closer to about 40%. So there can be some workaround. In terms of, you know, we'll bring this to Code Revision, but in terms of exempting sidewalks, terraces, I mean, again, not that someone would, but someone could build a very large terrace, which, again, equates to just a developed area on the property. That's not necessarily landscaped or otherwise. So I would recommend, I mean, I understand you're bringing it to Code, but to work with, you know, also work with the business advisory committee who are builders and stuff like that. Because I remember when we went over this with you and Dawn and Marty, and you acknowledged at that time this needs to be, you know, fixed, which I think is great. I do think there has to be a landscape component in it as opposed to just where, you know, paving everything right out. I do like where some of the new construction that's been taking place that we're doing kind of, you know, where the lighting is and so forth, some kind of internal plantings and designs, and it just, it makes a parking lot a little bit more appealing and aesthetically looking nice. But then I understand their battle of not wanting to give up the overall development space, you know, and it shouldn't be counted against it. So to me, incorporating landscape really, you know, shouldn't negate the size of their building, you know, because they want to make their parking lots more appealing like that. Yeah, and I also think that that issue would be, I think that's a great idea, having a landscape component. Because then it allows them to put in like an area like a terrace where you could go and sit outside, or if they had like a little small ice cream shop, people could stop and then sit out and eat their ice cream instead of having to sit in a car. Because developers are going to look at it and say, well, if I'm limited to my building area based on this, then I'm not going to have that little terrace. That's nice for people to sit. I'm just going to do building and parking and that's it. You know, and make the development less attractive. And I don't want developers cutting out sidewalks and other passageways, like meaning that where curbs are just coming right up to the front of buildings because, well, we don't have the space. We don't want to give up a 36-foot wide, you know, sidewalk passageway. Rather than be able to do that, to develop around it, it makes it more safety, just especially winter, shoveling snow and everything else. Where do you go and stuff, you know? Safety, but aesthetically. Aesthetically, it looks so much better that way. So does this also give you the opportunity of looking at each one of these zone use districts differently? Yeah, I mean, I think basically what I'm trying to get at is that's what we really need to do. There should just be, using impervious surface coverage, I don't want to say it's arbitrary, but again, it should be, we should have requirements and there should just be minimum landscaped area. So, for example, if there was a zoning district where we said, all right, minimum landscaped area, 25%. Okay. And then a remainder of that property could then be a developed surface. Obviously, when an engineer or an architect designs a site plan, they have to use sound engineering principles. They have to provide the adequate drainage. You know, if it's a SWIFT, they have to provide a certain storage capacity. So, I mean, that stuff is sort of assumed. You know, that's built into the site plan process and the development process. But just from a basic level, you know, I think we can come up with something that's a little more streamlined, a little bit easier for a developer, and frankly, for more in. Yeah. And we're sitting here, well, impervious. Yeah. It's perfect. [transcription gap] It's almost a minutia. When you look at the big picture, it's either a developed surface or a landscape surface. And I think that would sort of lead to a better understanding, both on the part of the developers as well as the planning department when we get an application, rather than have to go through everything with a comb and try to, you know, pick stuff out and identify it. So, I think that could work, you know, for all parties. A real good example of that is that PRC where the town, it's a legislative intent that you had when you adopted that. And I think that's where the
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But there's quite complicated stuff. But I'm just, I want to commend you for simplifying this. By just doing your diagrams. It took a really, honestly, like when you read Yerga's stuff on the permissive papers and permissive papers, like, hold on a second, wait. You simplified it. And so, thank you. Because it's very clear cut. I had all those ratios before and I was getting confused. I didn't know there was a lot of work for you to put together. So, thank you. All of the committee were glad that we were doing well. Yeah. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you gentlemen. Thank you. [transcription gap] Okay, we're going to skip over item six right for now, and we're going to go to matter seven, matters surrounding Landmarks Preservation Committee presentation. Joanne and Richard Wines. Come on up. How are you? How are you today? Good, Joanne. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Keep you well entertained. All right. Good morning, Richard. How are you? Good morning. So today I have invited people from the Landmark Preservation. I'm the liaison to this wonderful group, and they're going to present a PowerPoint today so that the residents are able to see what our committee does. Of course, it's Landmark Preservation, obviously, but a lot of people don't realize all that your committee does, and I think that it's important that they see what you've done, what we're doing now, what the future might look like, and I know you have a lot of slides, so we're going to try to go through them as quickly as Richard can. So take it away. Well, thank you, and I have to say it's great for Jim and I to be here with you. I think it's been five or six years since we did a presentation for the town board, and the last one. It was before the pandemic, and it's important to show our support for all the things that you've done for historic preservation over the years. Anyway, just very quickly, our commission, of course, in addition to our wonderful town board advisor here, Thank you. Joanne, Stephanie Bale, Alta Edelman, Peter Lucas, Joe Pretorcelli, Kelly Schauger, and Jim.
And I thought... I should give just a quick review of some of the things that we're responsible for. Over the years, the town board has created four different historic districts. There's one very large one that covers basically all of downtown. There's another one that covers the... most of the Hamlet area and Jamesport, and stretching down as far as the Jedediah-Hawkins Inn. And of course, South Jamesport is another significant historic area in the town. And the fourth one is the Jamesport-Hawkins Inn. And the fourth one is out in Waiting River. In addition to that... I do want to thank Mike Zaleski, by the way. We've been trying to get signage in all of these districts. And we just did the Waiting River one in the last few months. And he was great in getting all of these signs up. There's also a number of individual designated town landmarks. Of course, all designated by the town board. Altogether... All together... In... Between the historic district... And... And the landmarks... There's about 400 historic structures in the town that have some level of protection that's been designated by the town board. We have a very historic town. And I have to say, I was always pleased when I started seeing... Coming along Route 58 and the signs of historic downtown. Because it's one of the things that sets Riverhead apart and makes it special. Why people want to come. We also have a couple of National Register districts. And National Register districts... The National Register is a little different because it's done by the state and the federal government. It brings a lot of prestige and recognition. And it also brings some tax credits for when homeowners do restoration work on their homes. And it can also bring a 40% tax credit when income producing properties do major renovation projects. So there are some nice benefits there. So Main Street is basically one of these National Register districts. The area north of Main Street, we call it the second and Ostrander district, is also under the National Register. So things like the firehouse could take advantage of those credits. And there's a number of other buildings there that... You know, the goal is to provide some incentive for people to do the right thing and preserve what makes this town special. We qualified all of Main Road to be on the National Register. But it got complicated because parts of the district went into the San Francisco area. And we were the south old. And so we ended up withdrawing that nomination. Which would be nice to get the Riverhead part in at least. But we haven't gone back to that. And then there's a bunch of individual sites that are on the National Register too. The Jedediah Hawkins is one of them. My Brother's Farm is another. And then the last historic designation was done 50 years ago. And Sound Avenue, the town board and the state legislature designated Sound Avenue as a scenic and historic park. And it's a great place to be. And it's a great place to be. And it's a great place to be. And it's a great place to be. And so we head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head list on the corner of South Jamesport Avenue and I think it's 3rd Street and pleased to say there it is today that was one of the stars on the South James historic South Jamesport house tour this summer for instance so good things often can happen in fact most of the ones that were on our watch list then are off it and they're restored another one that was on our watch list then was this one right on the corner of 105 and route 25 yeah and here's what's happening to it today so again I give the developer there cigarro credit for that another one that was on our watch list was the old hot Kaiser house on on second Street and this is actually a benefit of the historic district is that developers built the historic district and they built the historic district and they built the historic district and they built the historic district and they tend to do the right thing and we didn't have to do anything here having they've done a beautiful restoration we approved the addition on the back to replace one of the basically fallen off but so again and this will help that area of 2nd Street which is really looking in good shape now take the lead in that whole area another landmark we have a small it's not an official town landmark but everyone sees it as a landmark is this part of the historic district and it's a landmark that's been built this part of the historic district and it's a landmark that's been built I'm pleased to say that the Ross Wheeler family has come through and done this marvelous restoration. They don't know what they're going to do with it, but they're pleased to have this building back in shape. The way it's a photography club, that's probably the most photographed structure. It's artist subject number one in the town, right? So having it look like that again is really great. It snows, they run there. In the springtime, they run there. Exactly. Coming over the top of it. Right. Exactly. No, it's a great landmark.
These are buildings that are still on our watch list, and I know this is for sale, but it's not a town landmark. But actually, the back part of this building is one of the oldest houses in Riverhead, dates to the late 1700s. And so I've talked to the realtor, and so we're certainly hoping we get a buyer here that will be sympathetic. The town board over the years... The town board over the years has passed some incentives to help preservation on Route 58. There are extra building areas allowed, and there are some tax incentives. So if they increase the value of the property, there's a 10-year reduction there. So those are nice things that you guys have done over the years. We always hope for this one down in South Jamesport. This is up on Sound Avenue. The Hulse House State Parks has a plan for its restoration now, so that looks like it's moving forward, which is great. This is a sad story. One of our most wonderful landmarks had a terrible fire, but I think they're putting together a plan. I didn't think it was going to be possible, but I think they're putting together a plan to bring that back. So let's hope that happens. This is another one on our watch list. It's in Laurel, basically. I put two old pictures up there. The one on the bottom has one of my great-great-uncles, by the way. You can see what the house once looked like and could look like, but we're very concerned with the way it looks right now, and hoping that something good happens there. Another one. I was going to ask about this. I did a presentation about a year ago here. I have to say, LIPA and PSEG have been wonderful about this. They're working with us. They're offering to contribute to restoration and maybe supporting something there. We've got some funding lined up, but we're still... Bob, you're actively involved in this. Do you want to say anything more? I'm not really, except that we are moving forward with this. We're waiting for the architect's rendering, and then we'll continue on with this. You did a great job saving this, Joanne, and the committee saved it. They were going to knock it down. Right, exactly. And it dates back to the 1850s. And they now recognize that it's a significant historic resource. We are hoping that we can get a not-for-profit in there. We're still working on a couple. But at the very least, there needs to be some signage saying that this is very significant, a significant historic property, a very important part of the town of Riverhead, but also has these technology history connections back to the first generating plant here and the woolen mill that was there on the property. So we're working on it. We don't have a final solution yet. These things take time. It was within 30 days of the wrecking ball. Oh, I know. I remember that. That took months to save this place. That was months to save it. Right. I thank you for your support, because that's what got the attention of... LIPA and PSEG, basically. I can see it as a beautiful little boutique art studio over there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Beautiful for that. Yeah. Well, we're trying to interest East End Arts in it. That would be great. It's one of the possibilities. It's a great location right there in the river. There's actually already a boat launch site on the property. And the building is structurally very sound. And they built that building to withstand vibrations of steam engines. Right, right. So. So, it's basically in good shape. The last one on our watch list, of course, you guys own. And it's part of this wonderful row of three Italianates right across from the courthouse. And I know you're working on an RFP. And I think that's really the way to go to put out an RFP, bring in someone who's willing to preserve the structure. I did an inspection with... With... CanTesta. Andres and CanTesta. And the building's basically very sound. It obviously needs some TLC on the outside. And the inside is ready for whatever anyone wants to do with it. And also comes... The building next door is on the market. So, somebody could buy those two, put them together in the back. And have, you know, wonderful complex law offices or something. So, it has a lot of potential. So, I hope the town board gets that out there. The town shouldn't have to take care of things like this. But people... And it's because it's in the National Register District. It's eligible for 40% tax credits for anyone that's doing it for something like that. It's very good advertising. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. We actually did a video last week of the house next door. That will be aired in a few weeks. Oh, great. So, you'll get to see the inside of the house and the history of it. I'm looking forward to that. So am I. This is another... This is another... This is another problem we faced. This is one of the oldest houses in Waiting River. Probably dated back to the 1760s. Where is it? I didn't even recognize this. It's just north of the little commercial center there. It's just north of the old... Oh, it's behind the duck pond? Yeah. It's just north. It's right on the road. And without any permits, let alone getting landmarks approval, they didn't even get building permits. It got changed into this. It's the kind of thing that you've been fighting, Tim, in other places. They did it during COVID. They're just flouting the town code, basically. But I'm pleased to say we're working with the current owner. And you can see on the bottom, he's agreed to make it look like that. And the windows will look kind of like the one you see up on the top. So, this appears to be moving in the right direction. It will be an asset to the historic district rather than an eyesore in the historic district. So, I'm... I do want to thank the owners there for being willing to do the right thing. They had no choice. They shouldn't have done the wrong thing. It's their previous owner that did the wrong thing. But, yeah, they're absolutely great. Now I recognize it. I know what it is. Yeah, yeah. It's a little hard to see, but the side of it is right against the road. Yeah, I do know that. It's a prominent spot. I want to show you this one. This was the house up above. It's right on the corner of South Jamesport Avenue. And this is one of the benefits of having this town designated historic district. Is a property owner and an architect came in and proposed what you see on the bottom. With a kind of blank wall facing South Jamesport Avenue, which is the main thoroughfare in South Jamesport. And without much effort, just reminding them that it was in an historic district. And they should be looking around them a little bit and trying to make it fit in. Um... They changed it so it's going to look like that on the front. And that on the side. And I don't think that's a significant additional expense for the... But just rearranging the windows a little bit and changing the siding a little bit. Um... They've turned it so it's... And this just happens to be the site of James Tuttle's original hotel in Jamesport. So it's a very historic site and one of the most prominent ones. But now we're going to get something that's going to be an asset to the area. It's almost just by asking. Saying, you know... This is a historic district. See that sign? Uh... A couple other things we've done. You may have noticed the... Um... Little landmark historic trail signs all around downtown. There's a lot of fun. Yeah. And you can do it, of course, you can go on the West Town website or the Business Improvement District website. And you can do it from the comfort of your couch. If you want to walk it that way. I was talking... A few months ago to a lawyer from Toomey and Blatham, Shay. He says, oh, we went out our front door and we saw the sign up there. I said, well, that's interesting. So they started doing all the other ones around downtown. So it seems to be working. But it's another way... It's so informative. Yeah, right. It's another way of promoting, you know, historic downtown. Um... And then, of course, the town board designated Belltown as a heritage area, which I think was a great move. And to... To... To recognize the contribution of all of those people that came up in the Great Migration from Virginia and that area. And it's become an important part of our town's fabric. I want to just mention in closing a few current things we're working on. One of them is we want to do some... A couple of historic markers that we can apply to the Pomeroy Foundation. Um... For grants. They'll do these. And both of them are connected to the history of slavery here in the North Fork. As some of you know, I'm also involved with the North Fork Project and researching that. And we'd like to put a Pomeroy sign up on Sound Avenue near the end of West Lane to celebrate the story of Sarah Robbins. This is a remarkable story. She was actually... Her mother was Indian. She was enslaved by the British. She was a slave. [transcription gap] She got to Madeira and all this time she's protesting, says, I'm Indian, I'm not supposed to be enslaved. The states just passed a law about this. So and she talked to the British Council there, because this is of course, this is, we're talking 1700, so it's still part of England. And he said, well, you have two choices. You can either stay here and become Catholic, or you can go back to New York and petition for your freedom. So she went back to New York and petitioned for her freedom. We don't know what happened, unfortunately, but we have the petition. So we think there should be a plaque to Sarah, because it's such a great story. And then the second one, Brister Young was enslaved by actually the minister in Old Steeple Church. And he's buried there in that gravestone, a graveyard. And along with Thomas Austin, who escaped from slavery in the South, two remarkable individuals. So we'd like to put a plaque there for them. Something else we'd like to do, the comp plan update calls for pattern books for Sound Avenue and Main Road. And we think this is really important. And I know Don Thomas is already looking for grants for this. The pattern book downtown has worked out really well, even without codifying it. And just having something that tells people, this is what you can do to make it look like it fits in. You know, books. Builders want to do the right thing. So Don's working at grants for that. So that's one of our goals, is to implement that part of the comp plan update. Another recommendation in the comp plan is to give us a 30-day notice whenever they get a demolition permit. Something like this doesn't disappear without anything. It wouldn't give us any powers, but just a chance to talk to the owner. And Victoria Cerro is working on this code. And the last thing I want to bring up. And this is also a recommendation from the comp plan update. And that is to designate Polish Town on the National Register of Historic Places. I think you're all very familiar with it. And certainly know it definitely deserves recognition. I would just like to point out that this was actually started by Diane Tucci came to me and was talking about Polish Town. And just through conversation, we ended up on the phone with you. And realized that Polish Town is just Polish Town by the locals. There's no actual designation for it. So thank you for helping us with that. And getting a designation really adds to the prestige and of course it brings the tax credits too. So there are some nice benefits there. I'm sure you all know the story that all these Polish immigrants started arriving here in the 1880s and 1890s. And they almost all came as farm workers. And. And they ended up buying farms on both Forks. South Fork and North Fork. But they didn't like having to go to mass in English. Because the only Catholic church was St. John's. And they were Irish of course and they worshipped in English. So they wanted it Polish. So the farmers got together and organized a society basically. And they named it after the patron saint of farmers. Which of course is St. Isidore. And. [transcription gap] And. And. [transcription gap] And. what was called Cemetery Street then, but River had to build a new high school, so the academy went out of business. So they bought this building, and they petitioned the bishop, who was, of course, Irish, in Brooklyn, that could have a church. And it took them about a week to say yes. And so they converted this into a church. And then they raised the money, the equivalent of a million and a half dollars, within four years, to build this building, which is really an amazing building. It's modeled after, of all things, this church in Rome. It's right at the head of the Spanish Steps there, if any of you have ever been there. Designed by a German architect, who is the favorite architect of the Irish bishop in Brooklyn. And you can see some of the other buildings he built in Queens, and you can see the similarity there, all coming from that same church in Brooklyn. But when it was built, this was the Brooklyn Eagles headline. Finest Roman Catholic Edifice on Long Island. The Brooklyn Eagle always asked outside of Brooklyn. They were the local paper there, after all. But it was really an amazing undertaking for these immigrant farmers. Most of them were still farm laborers at that point, to raise all that money and build that building. And then very quickly, Polish Holstein, which is the first Polish church that was built in 1907, was built in 1907. And it was built in 1907. And before that, this was just empty area around there. But with the church and the social center, before you knew it, sorry, this is the newer Polish Hall. It was replaced the old one in 1929. But before you knew it, merchants started building along that area. And so all these immigrants from all the outlying areas could come to Riverhead, because there were no other Polish churches in them. Neither for them. And of course, you could buy anything you needed without having to speak a word of English. So this is really the beginning of Polish Town. It started with the Riverhead Academy, started with the church, the St. Isidore Society, Polish Hall, and then the merchants, and then of course, they started building houses around it. So this is the history that we want to develop and celebrate and put a bigger spotlight on. The area happens to include some other literal, or almost literal landmarks, the 10th and 11th, and the Indian Man certainly has enough of a, it's not a designated town landmark, but being in the National Historic District could even have some benefits there. Of course, the high school was a WPA project. The greenhouses on the bottom, that's the Bartnick Greenhouses. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that may be the oldest greenhouse complex on Long Island, George thinks. And the building at the top left, I'm sure none of you recognize, but I think that was the Riverhead Academy, the River Cultural Works, which was Samuel Terry Hudson. And he invented a famous writing cultivator that was patented all around the country. So, and that's still there too. So anyway, we've already talked about benefits being on the National Register. Don't need to do that again. We are, I want to say that not just Diane, but Joanne has been very active in making this happen. We've got a little steering committee. Our first step is we need to- I just want to stop for a moment and go back to that list. Georgette, Lizard, she was honored at the Black History Month event last Friday at the high school. Very good. [transcription gap] Yeah, she's great. And also, I just received a couple names from the Polish Civic that they would like to also be involved. It's important. There's a lot of research involved here. We have to document every building and figure out what qualifies to be in the register and that kind of thing. So it's going to be a lot of work. It could be a year or two to get it all done. But I think celebrating that heritage, given how important it is, the River Hedge is really important. So anyway, our first step is we need to get a report out of your GIS person. I know Andreas is working on that right now. We have to document after that report that documents every building and when it was built and that kind of thing. So we're working on that. And that's all we wanted to share with you today. Not to look for questions. You know, I have one question. You know the house on Main Road that's for sale? How many acres is that? I think there's like 27 acres down there. That's what I thought. Okay. What house? The one that has a little barn behind it, I think. Right, right. It's right off the end of Tuttle's Pass. And it has about 27 acres. It is not preserved farmland, as far as I know. But there's a lot of potential there. I mean, restoring that building. There's a couple of nice buildings. There's a Quonset hut barn behind it. So I know the Animal Rescue Center talked about going there, but that never worked out. But it would be really nice to make it. It's such a prominent spot. It would be really nice to make something good happen there. Who's the original family that had that? It was the Young's family. Young's. It was part of the Young's. They owned all the way from the Bay to the Sound. And there's a house that's... Just to the east and way back from the road. It belongs to Anderson's now. That was where the original Young house was. In the 1700s. Back when they didn't put houses on the road. Wonderful. Well, thank you. I know that this was a little lengthy, but... The history of Riverhatch is so important. We don't want to make you do that, Tim. Come on. The information is... I love hearing about the history of the town. And for you to be able to just rattle off stuff is incredible. The institutional knowledge here is... I have a book coming out. It's actually out, but only in the library edition. It costs $100. But it's about the family that lived at the Hallock Homestead and their community. And it will be out in paperback in May. Awesome. Do any of the homes do a Christmas decoration walk or anything like that? You know, have some homes in different communities, historic homes, band together? We actually sponsored one for the James Fort Museum. We did a wedding house a few years ago. Yeah, we could do that again. That's a fun thing to do. So, anyway. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you for your support. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Thank you. And thank you for the moral support, Jim. How many kids? Five. Yeah. Everyone's doing great. Excellent. Well, grandkids, too. Nice. Nice. Dwayne, are you putting in a resolution to travel to Rome so that you can study how St. Isidore's church began? With architecture? It's so interesting. I just love being a part of that committee. Okay, we're going to go to matter number eight, matter surrounding annual increase of fire marshal fees.
Good morning. Good morning, sir. Good morning, fire marshal Smith. How are you? All right. All right. So, last year we took our fees out of the code so that we can make them changeable. So, we're going to be doing that by town board resolution. And the idea is so that we can increase them with the cost of living and stuff like that. We sat down, thought about it, talked to other townships. A fair way of doing that is to incorporate the consumer price index for inflation every year. So, the plan going forward, we're looking to pass it for this year. I know it's a little late, but going forward, we may be doing it like the organizational meeting every year. And whatever the CPI percentage is, we'll just incorporate it to our fees so we can keep up. So, we're not in a position where 20 years down the line or something where... Well, we were. Yeah. Exactly. Great. I think we were thinking about other departments having everybody submit their fees by like December 1st for being at the meeting January 1st. And fines. And legal fines as well. Right. All of it. So... That's great. Correct. But you've done... You've been the leader on this and I appreciate that. Thank you. [transcription gap] I agree. And the amount of money you've brought in by updating them has been fantastic for the department, for the town also. And now it's not on the backs of other taxpayers not using this service, which is fantastic. Yep. I agree. So... Great job. All right. Yes. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Appreciate it.
Okay. Number nine, I need Anne Marie. Okay. It will be a matter surrounding the Citizens' Cooperation. Okay. The Citizens' Cooperative Development Team, or CCBT, which is an ad hoc committee that I have that I meet with. And guys, if I put this here, can you zoom in on that? We'll get that up. This is basically the... I guess the mission statement for... CCBT that we put together. And we were talking the other day with Anne Marie about it and how it tends to coincide with what the actual plans have always kind of been for the EPCAL properties. So... Do you want me to turn it up? That's it? Turn it. Yeah, that's it. Okay. We had a... At our last meeting, just to do a quick summary of that, we had a... We had a... [transcription gap] A quick summary of that. On January 29th, we discussed the existing habitat map. Yes. Which has been done for quite some time for the EPCAL property. And talking about is there an update necessary to satisfy the DEC. Probably not. Because that should still be okay. But they may ask for an update. We don't know yet. Correct. Yes. Status of the Riverhead Water District. Suffolk County Water Authority. and EPCAL dispute, possible leverage that can be used by our town for the DEC and Suffolk County Water Authority over that dispute and obstacle resolution regarding the argument that Suffolk County Water Authority feels they have the right to provide the water at EPCAL, and we, of course, feel very differently about that. So we may have some conversations with the Suffolk County Water Authority in the near future regarding that because that's important for the use of EPCAL also. And we also talked about the recreation feasible study at EPCAL, how this study can be used in the redevelopment of EPCAL. That's the sports feasibility study that was done up at EPCAL and in conjunction with using the properties up there for various recreational purposes, whether it's public or private, or a public-private partnership, whatever the case may be. So that was the basis of our last meeting. And just so everybody knows, it's a committee of people with both town workers and people from the public, and the public people are Mark Hobner, Mike Foley, Barbara Blass, and Takwee Church. And then they meet with myself and Anne-Marie and Dawn and Frank Mancini and Ken Testa and Greg Bergman from Plain. And we're just trying to get kind of all the ducks in order for the EPCAL property when and if we get it back. And I say that when and if, when we get it back. Yes. So, you know, that's what we've been doing. And I just wanted to give the public and the board an update on what we've been talking about. So that's pretty much it. Does anybody have any questions? When's your next meeting? When is your next meeting? I want to say it's March. It's in March. I've got to come up with the date. I think it's the 19th, but I'm not sure. Any board member is welcome to come to this meeting. It would have to be one of you at a time because no more than two of us could be there together. So I think if you read the revisioning of EPCAL for the town of Riverhead that came out of the committee, both the volunteers that are acting advisory, and the committee that is acting advisory, we town employees, I think you'd be hard pressed to disagree with anything in this statement. But I can tell you, and Dawn can tell you, the volumes starting back to the Navy in 1998, the FEIS, the VHB studies, which are two huge volumes, probably six, eight inches wide each, together with the three or four updated consistency analysis. I mean, we've read through those. Probably I've read them all 10, 20 times each. This is consistent with that. Just to give you a framework. And what's really beneficial about the Supervisors Advisory Committee, that probably doesn't really, it's not a thought in the forefront, but it's a really important thing to note, is while we're engaged in litigation over EPCAL, the committee and their ideas require staff to keep EPCAL very fresh, and requires us to go into all those documents, extract things, make notes, and educate people where we are, what we've done. There are even documents, and I'm sure the supervisor is aware of this, there are even updates that have not been public because the process stopped and got stymied. But there are updated records that are sitting there, ready to launch. So these meetings really stimulate us to keep educated and keep working on EPCAL. As it states in this revisioning statement, it is the largest asset that Riverhead has. So it's critical that we keep on top of it and in front of it. And this group has been a great way to keep staff really projecting, moving forward. You want to be ready to go when the day comes that you have the opportunity to think about what you're going to do next with it, rather than a dual. So we've done a few different things, and you are aware we worked with NYSERDA on the real estate study, and we have some interest from Stony Brook University. And so those things, the more we talk to people about EPCAL, the more we talk, whether it's a smaller group or a larger group, or people outside of town, the state of New York is now really kind of keyed into it versus the way it was in the past. We were sort of, I would say, like an isolationist kind of approach to the property, rather than a long-term economic partnership with other, whether it's PNL or Stony Brook or Cold Spring Harbor or anybody. But the state is sort of now keyed in, and we looked at that wind energy manufacturing and things like that. So when the time comes and other, we had a call, I think, maybe it was about a month ago, three weeks ago, about a month ago, with somebody from Empire State Department, so she's head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head any misconceptions that this group or the supervisor individually or staff are making any moves or could or would make any moves it's all before the town board but the benefit you have is that the supervisors advisory group is keeping staff fresh and on top of it and I agree yeah don't count I'm gonna say I think the group you know it's great that's great right I'm finding this with the Navy exactly right yeah so but I'm also concerned about the land the industrial land we that's outside of the fence that's you know if someone that's for sale and ready to go I don't want to wait for a lawsuit to be over to get industrial and that's yeah and those and if there are properties if there's properties that meet the criteria outside and we did in fact the most recent time we've had a lot of land that's outside the fence and we've had to send them something that was outside the fence so you know that's great we like data centers of perfect well and actually I just connected with Stony Brook on that yesterday to see if there's some interest in maybe pursuing that with the congressional directed spending something like that so you know we're always kind of churning it right you know we've only been at it for 20 plus years so but really you know during the pendency of the lawsuit normally you work on assignments that need work on this could be put on the back burner but this group and the supervisor is making sure it's not put on the back burner even though there isn't an immediate immediate assignment right on any questions all right thank you ladies so much and thank you to the members of the CC DT team next up we have matters surrounding changes to the town board rules and procedures with councilor Howard I just before we start April 16th is the next CCDT a meeting April 16th 10 o'clock in the upstairs conference room okay go ahead all right so following our last meeting on this in work session I got some feedback from all of you and I've incorporated that into this revision I think we have a chance to take a look at it no I mean I might have this has been a couple of iterations of this I don't know what you want this is all right all right so I'll go through each of the each of the changes and I'll be back with you on the next session so I'll go through each of the changes I made on page four rule six subparagraph B it relates to signs and flyers not permitted at the meetings of the town board it says flyers in that first sentence but I just wanted to clarify in their distribution of flyers in the meeting room also not being permitted then moving down to see under rule six I sort of supplemented the language in there regarding the types of comments that would be considered inappropriate at the town board meeting so expanded on that threatening profane slanderous impertinent ethnic slurs sexual slurs that sort of thing and then in within the same paragraph also supplemented the language relating to the supervisors authority to have someone removed basically says that you know the individual ordered to remove themselves fails to comply with the directive law enforcement personnel may be utilized to enforce the order of removal I think that I think that just sort of clarifies what the process is going to be like over the prior draft it's really unfortunate that it's come to this point that we're going to have to go back and look at the ! I agree the only thing I wonder about like is that if people have signs and they're in the way back you know you know doesn't really bother me but no but it becomes a policing matter again for the board if they come in and they sit up here then we gotta have a move and change and it's to me if you want to be in the lobby with the signs or out front that's fine but in here we've seen it at meetings where they're holding their sign up and the people behind them are like I can't see I can't see so to me it's it's just a distraction not necessary there's a microphone right there you can come up to the microphone and say whatever it is your sign says so to me it's just a distraction for the meeting so I can't see the people behind the sign either you know so we don't get a good read of the audience. The other change was we talked about we were gonna not allow on Zoom public comment on resolutions and we're only going to have it for public hearings i spoke to each of the board members about it and uh we agreed that we will allow public comments on zoom on the resolutions just like they had been going on the only difference being is they're limited to three minutes instead of five minutes right yeah so yeah so the the clarifications i put into rule nine uh under comments on resolutions and comments on uh any matters are that there's going to be one opportunity per person to speak that zoom is going to be made available uh and then just uh some language encouraging concise comments and to refrain from repeating yourself it's not necessarily expanded to repeating what others have said yeah you ! it's just repeating yourself right uh on the comments during public hearings i put in some language relating to the discussion we had at the last work session where the chair depending on the attendance volume at the meeting would have the ability to impose a time limit on the comments but typically that the chair's discretion in that area should be reserved for those heavily attended meetings so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so So we've lifted the time limit on them? No, no, no. If we get, like, say, a Scott's Point night, where we're packed with a lot of speakers, we're going to limit them to three minutes, even though it's a public hearing. After everybody has spoke, if somebody else didn't feel that they got their information out in three minutes, they can come back up to the microphone. But that's after everybody else has gone. This would be designed just to make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to come up within a reasonable amount of time. Thank you.
I think that was it on the changes. Oh, no, there was. The public comments relating to any matters, I clarified that they should be any matters relevant to the town of Riverhead. So, you know, we don't need to come up and, you know, talk about things that are happening in Brookhaven necessarily or New York City. The comments should be directed to matters that are relevant to the town of Riverhead. I think that the five of you have, you know, discretion or authority to do something about. So, a bail reform is okay because it's an Albany thing, but it affects us. Yeah. Yeah. That would be fine. You know, some sort of nexus with the town of Riverhead is what we're looking for. But building a power plant in New Jersey is not.
And then the only other change, and I'm not sure if this was in the prior draft, but I'll just, or if we touched on it, just calling a resolution from the floor. Previously, it required attendance at the meeting of all five members of the town board. And then all five members of the town board voting unanimously to take the resolution off the floor. That's been amended to require the attendance of at least four members of the town board with an affirmative vote of three members of the town board to bring the resolution up for consideration. So, it sort of, that sort of laxes the requirement to bring something off the floor, which would allow the board to respond to something that is, you know, something that's more urgent without having to ensure full attendance. So, if Joanne's not here, we can do that? Correct. Yes. I'm not going to be here that day. Okay. We'll do a test. Test one. And that, I believe, is the balance of the changes made to the prior draft. I'm sure that you have it. Any further questions, recommendations, comments? I do not. We, you know, we listened to what the people had to say. And, you know, we made the rule changes we wanted to make, but we also didn't just shut everybody out with the opportunity to comment. We just cut it down a little bit time-wise, but everything's still basically going to be the same. So. So, can I have permission to put in a resolution to adopt these at our next meeting? Yes. [transcription gap] Yeah. I'm just going to say I got a great sign from one of the people that brought signs one time. You did. It was a hallway. That's it. Let's tap it on the wall. Got a little collection of them. All right. Well, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Can I just bring up one? I know that you've got one. Go ahead. I have one item left, but go ahead. Oh, no, no. Do it. Go ahead. Please. Go ahead. Do it, because I want to wait until you finish with the items. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. Last item we have on open session is a Riverhead in Action video. I'm going to apologize before you watch it and just forewarn you that this may not be for all audiences. If you are scared of a big guy dancing on a dance floor, I warn you, you're going to see images of that. Okay? So maybe hide the kids and go ahead and roll it. That's going to launch, Bob. Yeah. Tim, you want popcorn? This is Tim Hubbard, supervisor of the great town of Riverhead, and you're watching Riverhead in Action. Okay. 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. Councilwoman Denise Merrifield and I are down at the Riverhead Senior Center, and today they will be celebrating Valentine's Day. And we're about to go in and see what's going on in here. Denise? Oh, it should be very enjoyable. I hear it's a packed house, live music, great food. It's a terrific way for everybody to spend the day together. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. Absolutely. We love our seniors. All the seniors that come here are here dressed up in red and ready to do some dancing. Denise, we're going to go in and mingle and meet with some of them, but this is just one of the things we have for the town, especially for our seniors that have paid their taxes, for year after year after year. This is a little give back that the town has and supports for the seniors. They can come down here, they can get a lunch at a very, very nominal fee. And a great lunch. The menu is amazing. The food is amazing. It is. Activities, they plan trips, they do dancing lessons, they have musicians come in. It's just a great place for our senior community to come in, gather, socialize, get out of the house a little bit. I've been here many times before, and we have a lot of widows and widowers here. And they've had marriages come out of meetings from coming here to the senior center. So it's such a good story. There's music, there's dancing, and great food, like you said. It really is. I can't wait. Absolutely. Well, let's go in and see what awaits us here.
Wow, look at the crowd. Everybody's enjoying a terrific lunch. I think it's short rib today. Short rib today is on the menu. Very nice menu. It smells delicious. Yeah. This is so good. You know, during COVID. The numbers of people that would come here really dwindled down and understandably so. Yeah. But now that we're kind of post COVID, the number of people that come here daily for a lunch and for activities has grown tremendously. Here we have with us Kelly Tuchy, who is in charge of the senior center. Kelly runs all the programs, develops all the programs down here with her fantastic staff. Some of the things you do here, Kelly, I know you do trips, you do classes, dance lessons. Yeah. Elaborations. Elaborations. Classes. Classes. People come in in the morning, they play cards, they play bingo, they have a computer room, they do puzzles, come in and socialize. And you mentioned line dancing, right? They practice line dancing. Yes. On Mondays, there's a group that was up here dancing. They come down to the activity room and they practice their dances on Mondays. That's great. That's awesome. We've been trying to add more and more activities that we're getting more people in. And you have? And you have a terrific menu. The lunch menu here is amazing. Yes, it is. It's restaurant quality and the variety, too. It's not just the same meal every day of the week. It's great. And we're constantly looking to improve on it. Yes. We take suggestions from the seniors that come in as far as activities and menu items they would like to see. Can you tell us about the Meals on Wheels program? The Meals on Wheels is especially for homebound seniors who can't really get out. Sometimes it's temporary. If someone had surgery and they're not able to get up and around and cook for themselves, we deliver a hot meal before lunch. So they can have it at lunchtime or they can reheat it later, Monday through Friday. We deliver about 150 meals a day. That's great. That's awesome. In addition to what we serve here. And you also provide transportation for people to come here as well? Yes. Yes. Like today, we had four buses that went out. We transported about 36 people. And this morning to come to the party. And on a daily basis, we usually have three routes. So we offer transportation to come in daily. And we have a lot of people that take advantage of it. They can't drive and they still want to come out and be active and socialize. You provide bus transportation to go shopping? Yes. Sometimes to doctor's appointments if people need it? Yes. As long as it's a doctor within the town, we can offer transportation for that. That's a great service. It's a great program. Nothing but accolades we get about your program. So keep up the good work. And we appreciate you joining us for another segment of Riverhead in Action. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you for coming. You too. You too, Denise. Thank you. Thank you, Denise. This is the backbone of the Senior Citizen Center here on Shade Tree Lane. These ladies every day prepare meals for dozens and dozens of our seniors. And just like today with the St. Valentine's Day luncheon, they are busy. There's probably close to 100 people out there. They're serving lunches for. And this goes on not only for the people that are here, but they also prepare meals for the people that are homebound. They can't get out of their house. About 130 meals they prepare for the Meals on Wheels also. Ladies, we appreciate it. Good job. Thank you. We're going to make TV stars out of all of you. Keep up the good work and we appreciate everything you do down here. Thank you. And it's always delicious. And it's everybody who compliments us. There are compliments galore out there about the food. Yes, that's delicious. Good to see. Thank you very much. Thank you all so much. Happy Valentine's Day. Those of you who don't know me, my name is Tim Hubbard. I'm your town supervisor. And I'm honored to be here today. And I'm honored to be here today with Councilwoman Denise Merrifield. My Deputy Supervisor, Devin Higgins. And this handsome gentleman over here with the black bow tie on. Our town clerk. And he offers. Bachelor. Available. To head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head head Glad to see everybody out. I will dance if anybody wants to dance. Reverend Bell, I owe my first dance to her because she comes to all of our board meetings and she does the invocations, she says the prayers. She's such a sweet lady, and I went to school with some of her children. Enjoy your dessert. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. They told me I was very light on my feet until I stepped on theirs. Then they said I wasn't so light anymore.
Let's give all the couples in this here, ladies and gentlemen, say it's hello. Happy Valentine's Day. Senior Center runs such a great program down there, and I'm so glad to see that after COVID, the numbers are coming back because understandably during COVID, people weren't going out, but they do so many good things down here. The seniors really have a good time, and it gets them out of the house for the day. The kitchen staff is incredible. They make delicious meals all the time. If you're out there watching and you're a senior in town, go down there. There's so much good stuff. We have what we call silver seniors now who are seniors that are coming up that are more the younger end of seniors, but they're more like computer acclimated, where some of our oldest seniors may not have gotten that training, or worked with computers so much in their life. The younger seniors coming up are, so they have activities and things for them also. So just keep that in mind. It's a great program, and Kelly Tucci does a fantastic job and her whole staff. Everybody was so happy there. Everyone we spoke to. And it was a frigid day. It was cold. It was really cold, and so many people came out, even in the cold weather. It was so nice. I think we have a proud town clerk who's a proud father watching his daughter there. Yes, absolutely. Good job, Olivia. Absolutely. Good deal. Okay, Bob, you had a matter? Yeah, I just want to bring up, I think I told you this, I had a call yesterday morning about what was going on with the parking garage, and I said, I don't know. We haven't seen any plans, and the person said to me, well, it's on your website. I couldn't find it. They then sent me a link. All I'm going to say is that in the future, before something goes on our website, it really should come to the town, and it should be on the town board, you know, for a work session, or be discussed with the town board. That's, you know. Agreed. I have to find out where that came from and who put it up there, because... I felt like, you know, you're a town board member. How could you not know it's on your website? Yeah. I didn't know it was there, so... Yeah. You're right. Agreed. Okay. Thank you. Resolutions. Deputy Supervisor Higgins. Morning, everyone. Good morning. Everybody ready to go? Oh. We are ready to go. Oh. Hit it, Devin. Okay, let's hit it. Resolution number one, budget adoption for the removal of all litter, garbage, refuse, rubbish upon the premises known as 12 Longview Drive, Riverhead, Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk County tax map number 600-14-2-12. Number two, EpCal Emergency Access Road capital project for number 52311, budget adoption. This was for the emergency access road. Going back to Scotts Point. Resolution number three, Water District Capital Project number 82050, budget adoption.
Number four, accepts donation of roses for the Senior Center. George Gabrielson donated 125 roses, I think. Right. To each senior that left got a rose on Valentine's Day, plus he got bouquets, supplied bouquets for all the staff down there, which, and we know George donates the poinsettias at Christmas time. He donates money to our recreation fund. I just, the Gabrielson family is, they've done great by the town, and we appreciate that, and it made a lot of smiles on a lot of faces down there. So, thank you so much, George. We appreciate that. You and your daughters put that together, and we appreciate all that. The whole Gabrielson family. Yes. Resolution number five, accepts donation from Tuttle Mangano Funeral Home for the Senior Center. Also a very generous donation. They were walking in with that. It was a big lottery tree with all kinds of lottery tickets hanging on it that Sal Mangano put together and donated down to the seniors down there. Again, this town, the people in this town are great. Good stuff. Thank you, Sal. Resolution number six, authorize a sewer district employee to attend seminars. Resolution number seven, reappoints members and appoints one member to the Small Business Advisory Committee. All the names are listed in the now therefore be it resolved, the bottom of the resolution. Can I just go back for a moment? I just want to ask on 1.6. It's talking about Michael Reichel going in May? It's not Michael going. It's a different employee. That GFC number that's listed there, it's just Michael Reichel as the current sewer district superintendent is requesting that that particular employee go. Michael will actually be retired by then. Right. That's why I was asking. Okay. Okay. So I think we'll go to resolution number eight. Appoints Ken Zelnicki, a member of the Riverhead Farmland Preservation Committee. Great choice. Resolution number nine, appoints a wastewater treatment plant operator trainee.
This is actually one of three. We'll take a look at it. Okay. We'll talk about the other two and a couple of resolutions from now. Resolution number 10, appoints an automotive mechanic too.
Resolution number 11, ratifies the transfer of an employee into a provisional appointment of a community development program analyst. It'll be effective March 3rd, but by the time you guys pass this resolution, it will have already happened. So it'll be a ratify.
Resolution number 12, it ratifies the appointment of a wastewater treatment plant operator. I'm sorry, of wastewater treatment plant operator trainees, plural two. So that's, this is two existing folks that we have that are provisional status now. So we're going to remove the provisional status, and then the other gentleman that we appointed is the third, referring to the three trainees. Right. These two have been working there, but they were pending the results of the civil service exam. Number 13, appoints a wastewater treatment plant operator. That's the first one. Number 14, ratifies the appointment of an automotive equipment operator. Number 14, ratifies the promotion of an employee to assistant recreation superintendent one.
Resolution number 15, ratifies the promotion of a public safety dispatcher one to a public safety dispatcher two. Number 16, approve salary adjustments for municipal garage mechanics. Number 17, terminates an inactive employee from the Riverhead Police Department. Number 18, authorizes the supervisor to execute a license agreement with Broadcast Music Inc. BMI. Number 19, authorizes the supervisor to execute a lease renewal agreement authorizing the town to lease a vehicle from Suffolk County Office for the Aging for Transportation Services for elderly residents Nunc Pro Tunc. All right. [transcription gap] All right. [transcription gap] Resolution number 20, ratifies authorization to purchase CalRes 2109 for the water district. That's, I'm told, some sort of treatment medium. It's a filter media used for the treatment of impurities in the water. And number 21, amends adopted rules and procedures for town board of the Riverhead. I don't know what's happening with me today. For town board of the town of Riverhead. That's what we talked about before. Number 22, approve special event chapter 255 application for St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Church, blessings of the car show.
Number 23, approve special event chapter 255 application for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, CF, Cycle for Life. Number 24, awards required. For qualifications for engineering services during construction for Class A biosolids upgrade project for Riverhead Sewer District. And we have a gentleman from H2M with us today. And we also have Tim Allen. If anybody has any specific questions on that, the gentlemen are here and they can field those. You guys want to just give a real quick synopsis of what this is?
Okay. We had to go out to end. We had to go out for engineering services for the construction of it. This is Tim Allen, by the way? Deputy superintendent. Deputy superintendent for the time being. So we had to go for EFC funding. So we had to go out for this. It's a new thing they changed in their funding practice. So we had to go out for this. And there was only one person that came to put the papers in, and that was H2M. Okay. And Chris, you're from H2M? Yes. Correct? Yes. Chris Weiss from H2M. Yeah. EFC added this to their requirements for funding beginning of 2024. And all services being paid for funding had to be done where you have to procure for an open RFQ process for engineering services. So that's what everything is for. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for waiting all that time. That's no problem. Okay. Resolution 25. Assumes lead agency. Issues conditional negative declaration for the site plan application of Island Water Park. DBA Scotts Point. 5835 Middle Country Road. Calverton, New York. Suffolk County tax map number 600-135-1-7.34. And we have planning staff in the room. If anybody has any questions on that. Otherwise, we'll go to resolution number 26. Adopts a local law. Adopts a local law. And approves. [transcription gap] Adopts a local law. [transcription gap] yard sales, attic sales, garage sales, and auction sales. These last three were all about updating the fees for the registrations or the permits that are needed. Okay. That have been long overdue. Resolution 29 ratifies authorization for the supervisor to execute an agreement with the Riverhead Town Police Benevolent Association. This is finally the PBA contract that has been signed by both the town and the PBA president, and the lawyer has finished up all the dotting the I's and crossing the T's, and he's ready to go. So it is now finally completed. Okay. That ends our open session for our work session agenda today. In a moment, I'm going to ask to close the open session and go into executive session to speak about legal matters, matters. Matters surrounding the sale and lease of real property with Thomas Hurley and Prudente. Matters surrounding the status of an employee with Howard and Striplin Teo. And matters surrounding contractual agreement between the town of Riverhead and the BIDMA with Hubbard and Waski. Do I have a motion to close the open work session? Make a motion. Second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Okay. Open session is closed. We will now retire to executive session. Thank you, everybody, and have a fantastic weekend. Thank you. Thank you.