Full Transcript

Thank you. Thank you. 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, Councilwoman. Appreciate it. So, just running through some announcements quickly. The George Young Community Center, just want to let everyone know that that is currently closed as we had a frozen pipe break. And our amazing buildings and grounds team was there cleaning. Cleaning it up and making sure and, because of that, in the future, one of these work sessions, we'll be talking about fixing that heat system, which has been kind of band-aid together and making sure that we're going forward. So, be prepared for that. And we're so thankful that no one was hurt, nothing happened, and it was just property damage, which, again, our great team is doing. Town Hall will be closed Monday because it is President's Day. So, we ask that you make sure you mark your calendars. And, Councilmembers, do we have any announcements today? I have one. Yes, ma'am. The Riverhead Rotary is selling chocolate-covered strawberries for Valentine's Day. You can go on their website and get more information. I like to give back to Rotary and support them because they are so helpful within our community. So, if you need that last-minute gift for someone special, go on the Rotary website and purchase their chocolate-covered strawberries. I do. I have some. I just like to announce that the Disability Advisory Committee has a website on our town board website. They're up and running. Everybody come take a look at it. We invite anybody in the community to come and attend. The next meeting is May 5th at 5 p.m. Everyone is welcome, and we'd love to have people in the community know we're there. And if you need any help or assistance, please come to attend and let us help. Also, just reminding everyone, there are sponsorship opportunities. We have a lot of great sponsors to help with the town of Riverhead. The Long Island 250 celebration. And you can look again on our website to take a look at those sponsorship packages to help with funding all the beautiful decorations we'd love to do with the town this year. Thank you very much. Absolutely. I'm good. I'm good right now. Thank you. So, I believe Ashley has an announcement from our rec department. You can come on down to the table if you'd like. We have work sessions. A bunch of more. Just for the community center, so that if anyone's watching, that due to the closing of the community center for this week, the youth cheerleading and the morning yoga classes are canceled for the week. Outside groups such as homeschooling, mineral rock group, AA meetings, bridge club, and the homemakers are also canceled. There's a slime time program for the youth that was scheduled tonight. It's now been moved to town hall here. So, they'll meet in the community center. The entranceway here. And they'll bring them down to the classroom. And the kids night out scheduled for tomorrow, February 13th, is also moved to town hall. Our February break camp was scheduled at the GYCC for next week as well. And we're lucky enough that the school has let us use Pulaski Street Elementary. And for anyone participating to enter through the south entrance by the gym. And all of the participants have been contacted via phone and Zoom. for tomorrow, February 13th, is also moved to Town Hall. Our February break camp was scheduled at the GYCC for next week as well, and we're lucky enough that the school has let us use Pulaski Street Elementary and for anyone participating to enter through the south entrance by the gym. And all of the participants have been contacted via phone and email, so they're all aware, but just in case anyone misses a message. So give them just the number 727-3200, but the extension to you guys? It can cost extension 737 or 205 to reach us. Can I just say, can all this information, is this on our website, all these changes? Yeah, well, we've emailed all the people who have registered for it and given phone calls and spoken to all of them, so just making extra care in case people want to sign up for anything last minute. This as well will be changed. So the community center will be closed and all permits are canceled for this week. And we'll reach out next week to see what's happening. Well, thank you for pivoting and taking something that was, I guess, a mishap or whatever. Frozen pipe. No problem. Thank you. That's good. All right, well, I believe that ends our announcements, and we will move into open session, matters surrounding fire prevention, maintenance of equipment, and fire safety review and change. So with, I believe, Liam and our counselor is coming up.

Thank you both. All right. Liam, you look like it's summertime. I love it. I wish it was warm out. I don't know. I'm warm. I'm warm on the inside. So we have two related fire safety items. Does everyone have copies? I have extras. Like the packet. Okay. So they're both intended to strengthen life safety compliance, improve accountability, and give the fire marshals the tools needed to ensure that before there's occupancy or continued use of the same or different occupancy. So we're going to start off with Chapter 231-13. That's your maintenance of equipment. This is technically an amendment, as we are proposing to strike out Section C. And replace it with a more robust explanation of the requirements. So this is going to include inspections and maintenance by state and FPA required intervals, administrative processing fee, which I'll lean on Liam to explain that, and town verification of maintenance. So from a justice court perspective, one of the challenges we currently have been facing is that proving noncompliance, proving noncompliance becomes difficult. So when there's more specific documentation, it can show that whether the applications are inconsistent, incomplete, or not submitted at all. So is everything on C, is this all new or is this preexisting? Because usually the new is underlined. I will bold and underline those. Yes, those are meant to be. This is all new, right? So all of these sections are for record keeping standards. Okay. So we're going to start off with the first section, which is the compliance of the fire protection system. It's a defense enforcement framework, so it takes care of it on the front end when applications are made, and the back end if there are tickets issued. Yeah, I can explain a little bit more about the practicality within our office. So fire protection systems require different intervals of inspections, basically sometimes annually, sometimes every five years, sometimes quarterly, if it's for fire extinguishers, sometimes twice a year. So what happens then is we can be able to, to check those inspections while we do our periodic inspections. But a lot of the times the sprinkler and fire alarm contractors have to send us in those documents that proves that they're doing the NFPA required testing. And if they don't do that, we need to track them down to figure that out, which ends up being a lot of cost of time labor for our staff, the office staff. And then we get there and that hasn't been done. So what we're proposing, what a lot of other jurisdictions have done across the country, is they're proposing an LFPA. So that's one of the things that we're working on. So one of the things that we're working on is that we're working on a new electronic maintenance system where there's a platform, there's a third party company that we would utilize that would help us both to manage the data as it comes in, and then they would do a lot of legwork of that reaching out to different companies and ensuring that compliance. And in the event that they don't, they would then contact us so that we can get involved from an enforcement standpoint after a certain period of time that hasn't been completed. Fantastic efficiency. So that's what we're really trying to look for. The other positive to it would be that there is a fee associated with it. The company collects a fee for their part of it. But the town would also collect a fee as well for that so that when we do have to go to justice court, it's also offsetting that piece of it. There is a legal document that we can go on the platform now and print out all the legal documents in the event that they just are not compliant. And this company will go so far as to give us a representative to which this was the most amazing part of it. The representative, when they're not doing all this other stuff, will then take a Google Maps version, and they will actually look at all the buildings that they can see, like an FTC, on the outside with a fire department connection, so they know that building has a sprinkler. They'll go so far as to message that. We may never have known that that building has a suppression system. They'll go so far as to email them and say, hey, we don't have any documentation on that system, and you need to submit something for it. So they'll go so far as to do their own research in our town for places that we may never have been to. There's just so many businesses and so much. So there's a lot of benefit to it. Right. And you don't have to hire another employee to track this down. Yeah, just to manage that part of it too. And the fee covers all of that. And then some. Yes. So it's going to actually benefit the town, and the town will not have to expend any extra money. Any more. And it's going to save the taxpayers because, I mean, you're not chasing that. Yeah, we're not chasing that. We can focus our efforts on a lot of other important things to do. That's wonderful. Good job. Thank you. And I just want to point out subsection C3 in this section. Right now I had it as just the building owner. Upon further review and discussion, a very important point was, given that sometimes the building owners are out of state, they're hard to reach. So the only change that I was proposing, other than bolding and underlining everything, would be to add end or tenant. Because fire protection systems are structural, it's logical to obviously put the owner of that structure on the hook. But to add end or tenant would give us the ability in case those, you know, if a lease agreement is not in place, we can't add the tenant. So if the lease agreement involves the tenant to be responsible for the structure, then the ticket would go to both. And it would kind of eliminate the finger pointing in court where if the landlord, you know, blames the tenant, the tenant blames the landlord, then we can really, you know, figure out who's actually responsible and get to that person so that they can remediate the issue. And it makes your job easier. Somewhat, yes. Which is good. There's also 40 jurisdictions within New York State that are currently using a third party program. And then 1,420 throughout the country. So it's a lot more, you know, it's become the standard. We're one of the first, it looks like, on Long Island. Nassau County is looking at a similar program to do that. But we'd be the first, one of the first fire marshals to utilize it. So it's going to be 1,421 across the country. Exactly. So I love that you guys keep taking us to the forefront. Trying to get there. Next one. Any other questions about the first? Okay. So we'll move on to change in tenancy. So this is a new program. This is a new program. This is a new section that we would have to put into 217, which is not the fire marshal code. That's the building code. But because change of tenancy is primarily looked at by the building department. This also, we would add a new section under 231. And they kind of refer to each other. We did have long discussions about this also with Bob Mueller of building. He's aware of this. And he's also on board. He just couldn't be here for the meeting today. So this would add, I mean, the highlights of this is that we would add a requirement that if the space is left vacant for 30 days or more, regardless of if it's going from a barbershop to a barbershop, because of that space of, you know, of vacancy, yes. Word escaped me. It's in front of my face. That would require, you know, the fire marshals make sure that everything is in working order. And it makes it more straightforward and enforceable in Justice Court to have that hard line of the 30 days. Great. Thanks. So the new tenant doesn't go, oh, no, it's the other tenant. That, you know, they didn't do it. No. We had the fire marshal come in and know what was existing at the time when the place was vacant. Great. We ran into some issues over the years with use versus tenancy, the definition of it in court. When somebody writes a use permit violation, goes to court, and they say, well, I have the same use. I don't understand. And there's been a lot of work that has to get done on the town attorney's part to explain, well, it's the tenancy part that's the issue. So working with the building department, trying to kind of even out the workload, for years we've been utilizing their permit, their use permit, and doing a fire safety inspection on the building department's permit. So it's kind of creating some sort of redundancy there where we're kind of looking at the same things, but we also need to utilize that time to spend with the tenant to update emergency contacts, to get permitting, operational permits from different businesses. So the building department is working with us to, they're going to keep the use inspections part. But a lot of the tenancy inspections will come to our office since we have to have follow-up with them every year. Great. So it allows us to interface a lot more often. It takes some of that workload away from them, and they can focus on the use inspection part when they have to go into a zoning issue or something like that. So, yeah. Thank you both. And it helps with court. Exactly. It's black and white. It's straightforward and easier to explain to, you know, a defendant trying to come into compliance and the judges in the court. Knowing what you go through in court, the more you can protect the other side from saying, no, no, no, no, no. You can say, oh, no. It's here. Yes. Okay. And, you know, and they can look at 231, which you go there, and it refers you right to 217 and vice versa. So it's really, you know, right there. I like how it gets rid of the gray areas. Yeah, it makes it a little cleaner. It's cool. Thank you both. Good. Thank you both. Okay. So do I have permission to put these in for publishing posts? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all. Have a great day. Absolutely. So that will move us right into our resolutions with the Deputy Supervisor Higgins. Okay. We're on your board. Okay. Everybody's ready? We'll get right into resolutions. Everybody good? Okay. Okay. Resolution number one. Water District Capital Project number 82518. Sandy Pond Links Water Service. Budget Adjustment. Everybody there. Everybody ready? Yeah. Wow. A lot of paper. A lot of paper. Resolution number two. Accepts donation of trailers for the Riverhead Fire Marshals Office. Thank you to Suffolk County, Department of Fire Rescue and Emergency Services. Big help to our fire marshals. Resolution number three. Authorizes removal of fixed assets. Number four. Authorizes attendance at seminar by Assistant Chief Fire Marshal. Number five. Authorizes one police department employee to attend a training. Number six. Appoints automotive equipment operators. Number seven. Amends Resolution 2026-113. This is with respect to a date that was included in a prior resolution. We just have to change it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. approves an unpaid leave of absence 10 reappoints Monique Parsons to the town of Riverhead business advisory committee so just in the interest of time maybe I'll just read the names the next half a dozen or so resolutions relate to reappointments to the business advisory committee so as I said we have Monique Parsons Connie Lisandro Steve Schauger Dean Delprett Ray Castronova Ike Israel and Lee Mendelson to the town of Riverhead business advisory committee oh I'm sorry and Scott Middleton to the business advisory committee reappointments for those folks the board's good we'll move on to resolution number eight 18 adopts a local law to amend chapter 279 of the Riverhead Town Code title taxation article 8 exemption for volunteer firefighters and volunteer ambulance workers resolution number 19 this is an adopt the board recalls we have the public hearing coming up next week on this subject and this is in case the board is inclined to adopt that night the resolution is in the queue for the board's consideration adopt a local law to amend chapter 279 of the Riverhead Town Code title taxation enacting article 11 11 or 9 you guys know I'm weak with my Roman numerals 11 X exemption for surviving spouses of police officers killed in the line of duty number 20 authorizes town clerk to publish a post notice to consider an amendment to 289 entitled no parking certain hours number 21 authorizes town clerk to publish and post notice to bidders for generator maintenance and emergency service number 22 rejects bids for PFAS treatment at well number 5-2 a SRF project number 1959 one Riverhead Water District and authorizes town clerk to publish and post notice to bidders for rebid PFAS treatment at well number 5 to a SRF project number nine 1959 one Riverhead Water District the purchasing director is in the room if the board has any questions on this this becomes a function of WIC's reaching a certain threshold with the total project cost which then triggers WIC's law the nuances of WIC's law I'm not an expert in so we have our resident expert to speak on that thanks for being here Teresa we trust in you okay resolution number 23 authorizes the town attorney to execute an agreement with Municipal Evaluation Services I do have a question on this maybe for Eric because we do have an attorney that on this one Eric okay yeah because we have an attorney that right if I'm not mistaken that handles the grievances is is it he's part of this consulting or is this in addition to so we have we have outside counsel to the assessor's office that handles the large-scale larger tax certiorari certiorari matters right these are the small claims assessment reviews so these are these are different these are the groups that come in after grievance day and go over to supreme to be determined by a court referee or a Supreme Court judge okay thank you well I I I kind of would like to know their success rate you know what their percentage you know based you know get some idea of what their what their success rate is yeah I mean they're fighting for us right well with the small claims matters pretty much almost everyone gets settled that's good that's better than yeah and we pay sort of a flat fee for each one that the person goes over I forget if it's like 75 or 85 dollars per case it's because I know on the larger ones if we lose them you know we're paying you know for outside counsel or we're not going out settling enough of those but okay I don't wanna outside counsel in these or we have Judson Siebert with Keenan being and those are you know your larger or larger commercial cases that go back typically several years and require a lot more argument over valuation methods and and you know typically the applicant comes in with one version or understanding of value we our outside counsels job is to defend you know the value that the assessors came up with we typically have to get professional valuation in on that too so those those are just the more complex cases that those those outside attorneys handle the golf courses the rehab facility yes and golf courses well bridge your tea yeah okay question that's really good thanks any other questions room okay resolution number 24 authorized supervisor to execute an agreement with Nassau County Police Activity League lacrosse unit for referee umpire services and team fees for town of Riverhead Police Athletic League boys lacrosse programs K through 8 for 2026 calendar year I just had one question on this if I may why is it not the Suffolk County Police is there is there an equivalent Suffolk County I don't know the answer that question councilwoman but we can certainly find out and clarify for the board I thought he was gonna be here the chief would be here we'll find out number 25 authorized supervisor to execute professional services agreement with PW grocer consulting engineering and hydrogeologist DPC for the meeting house Creek stormwater wetland and habitat restoration project this go out to bid on this resolution for the meeting house Creek stormwater wetland and habitat restoration project oh so it didn't go out to bid okay those watching Theresa our purchasing Senate has already been out for bid oh what'll it go that's okay so make sure they do who's talking 26 authorizes the supervisor to execute a professional services agreement with the Reiner group PE and LSP LLC and I think the attorney just gonna clarify something in this agreement yeah there's a on page one 158, some of the whereases. Okay. Yeah, so last year in 2025, we adopted the basic substance of this agreement. This agreement is basically just updated for 2026 of last year's agreement. However, it looks like it has some extraneous paragraphs that carried over. Those paragraphs refer to work that Vinnie Guardiello and the Rainer Group did for the town going back, you know, 20 years and various consulting agreements on projects and everything. The intention going into 2025 was to cancel all those agreements, make everything consolidated under one agreement. It would be on sort of an as-needed basis because over the years, the work that the Rainer Group was doing was reduced. Over time, because the engineering department started doing more review and contribution to site plan reviews for the planning department and the planning board. That had previously been done by the Rainer Group. So he wanted to move away from that and just sort of focus on this agreement addressing subdivision applications and work for the highway department and for the planning board. So we'll fix this before? Yes. So it looks like there's one, two, three whereas. The last three whereases on the first page of the agreement should probably come out. Yeah. So I apologize for that oversight. Appreciate the clarification. All right. Resolution 27. Authorize the supervisor to execute a license agreement with DMX, sorry, DMS, Apex Holdings, LLC, Skip Barber Racing School to utilize runway at Epcot. Resolution 28. I have a question on this one. This license agreement is, it's a license agreement, right? So we can move it if we need to. It even says that their hours are 9 to 5, but only such dates that shall be approved by the town attorney's office. Right. I'm concerned about, you know, also the location. Is this the one that's for a year? Yes. This goes back to the last one. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

because we're looking at something. Maybe a better question is, it's a license agreement. The town can license agreements. We can stop at any time, is that correct? Yes. So there is a termination is at paragraph L on page 5 of the agreement. The agreement states that this agreement shall be subject to termination with or without fault by the town upon 20 days written notice. Okay. That makes it a lease. Right. Good. I'm sorry. I'm glad to do the license agreements. Yeah. Good. Thanks, Harry. No problem. Okay. Resolution 28 authorizes the supervisor to execute an addendum to an agreement with LVF Landscape Architects PLLC for the playground. And I think after speaking with a couple department heads this morning, the recommendation is that if the supervisor is... Is it amenable that we amend the work session agenda to include further discussion of this item under contractual. It's contractual between the town of Riverhead and LVF. For the executive session. For executive session. Correct. Yes. So we're going to move that. Number 29 ratifies the authorization for the town attorney to execute retainer agreement with Sir Tillman, Balin, Adler, and Hyman LLP. Okay. So this is the one where we're joining other municipalities for the office. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. Unlikely. issue a letter to the Suffolk County Department of Health Services allowing the use of Pine Barrens credits originated from property located in Riverhead Brentwood Legion Ambulance Services Inc number 31 approved special event chapter 255 application for Riverhead Home Depot plant event 32 approved special event chapter 255 application for New York Marine Rescue Center run for the Ridley 5k number 33 approved special event chapter 255 application for slow food fest slow food East and Earth Day 34 approved special event chapter 255 application for st. John the Baptist Ukrainian Church blessing of the cars show number 35 ratifies the amendment of resolution 2026-148 authorizing submission of an application to the Office of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation Environmental Bond Act municipal parks and recreation grant program you you project and number 36 pays the bills you Devin well in our work session in just a second I'll ask for a first and a second we're moving into executive session and we'll be doing matters personnel matter surrounding disciplinary action for an employee with Howard and then a stripling to and then the negation matters matter running the updated litigation on Liura and the town of overhead with Councillor Howard matter surrounding litigation between the town of overhead and the former employee with Councillor Howard and an amendment our contractual agreement between matter surrounding contractual between the town of red and LVF landscape architects with both Thomas and Howard so have a motion to close our open session go to executive And we are dismissed.