Full Transcript

Thank you. Thank you. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, invisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may have noticed that our flags are a little bit different today. We want to thank our fire marshal's office for taking initiative and asking and doing that and kind of bringing that to a different light. And so we're proud to present especially our American flag today with American 250, which our next event will be May 1st. We'll have impending details on our town website. And social media and throughout our meetings. Does anyone else have any announcements this morning? I actually do. We can get that. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Next Saturday, March 28th, is the East End Emerald Society James Port St. Patrick's Day Parade. It kicks off at 1 o'clock on Washington Avenue. And we'll head east on Main Street through the hamlet of James. It's an exciting day. Afterwards, we will have a celebration at the James Port Community Center, the George Young Community Center. And everybody is welcome to come. There's no charge to come. There will be vendors there. And it's going to be a great day. So I hope that everybody is able to come. And we're hoping that the weather is going to be as nice as it looks like it's going to be as I saw the forecast this morning. So it should be good. Thank you very much. Sounds great. I can't wait. Does anyone else have anything? Yes, I do. I'd like to, again, remind everybody it's America 250 Years celebration this year. And Riverhead is joining in with all the celebrations all throughout the county. In particular, we are asking everyone in Riverhead if you'd like to purchase the $20 star. We love to put these all up on the town hall all over the place to show our patriotism. These are the silver, R20. And the red and blue are $10 each. We have an order form for those. And you can go to America 250 at townofriverheadnewyork.gov for an order form for those. And we also, in the front of our lobby, we have beautifully decorated the front, well, it's the back of the building. But that's our main entrance. And we have all the flags that you can buy, the yard flags. And you can just look up a little bit towards the second floor. And you can go and see them. They're just beautiful. And that's another way to show your patriotism and your support for Riverhead. And again, we have an order form for that, America 250 order form for the yard signs on the lawn. So, and don't forget, we have the parade coming up on the 4th of July. And we also have the, we're not quite sure the name yet. Debbie's come up with, I think, a really good name. I like that. But it's the, I think the latest version may be roaring into 250. So, we're going to have to wait. We're going to have to wait for the 250. For the, we're looking to do a party at the Suffolk Theater for Roaring Twenties. We thought that would be another great era or way to celebrate our nation's heritage and celebrate our anniversary. So, those are some great things coming up. And that's for May 1st. Thank you. Thanks, Denise. I have to say, I love the garden flags. They look beautiful. And each flag represents the hamlet or where you are throughout the town. So, there's Riverhead. There's South Carolina. There's South Carolina. There's South James Park. There's Wading River. Everyone is represented. So, I think that there should almost be like a battle of the parts of, different parts of town to see which part of the town gets decorated red, white, and blue the most. So, get your order forms in and be a part of something wonderful. Awesome. Awesome. Gentlemen, anything? I'm good. Thank you. Just one last thing. Beach stickers are in. Everybody's been waiting. So, get that into the record department and get your beach sticker. We would love for that. So, that ends our announcements. We'll move right into our open session. And our first item will be matters surrounding bond refunding opportunity with Jeanette and with the company Munistat, with our representatives. So, if you guys want to come on down. Mike and Mike. Good morning. Two mics. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. How are you? This is Michael Lagracio from Munistat. He's our financial advisor. Good morning. And everybody knows Michael. Montella, our deputy financial administrator. Hi. So, again, I'm Michael Garcia from Munistat Services. We help the town borrow money for your capital projects. Which we've been doing a lot less of lately. Yes. Yes. We're going to debate on our grants, but go ahead. You were doing well on your, you have a low debt service, so that's very good for the town, right? You have an excellent bond rating, too, a double A2. So, everything is looking pretty good with the town finances. Jeanette here does a fantastic job. Yes. So, she keeps everything in order. Every time I have a question or something, she's got it. She's amazing. Yes. Thank you. So, so. Thank you. So, part of our job is to evaluate the old debt. And similar to your mortgage, right, the rates go down to a certain amount. You say, okay, now it's time to refinance. So, two of the bonds that we were looking at were the 2018 and 2018 bonds. And we're looking at the 2018 bonds. And we're looking at the 2018 bonds. So, one of them is the 2018A and 2018B bonds. To take advantage of the lower rates, we wanted to see if we could refinance those. So, our analysis, basically what our analysis came up with is that we have a whole thing, the analysis, we didn't want to confuse anybody. It's very. Very detailed. Very detailed. Could you go through that, please? But do you want to give the total amount of approximate savings as of today? Yes. It can change by the time we go through this. Yes. So, approximate amount of savings is about 390,000. Okay. The 2018A is about 208. And the 2018B is like 183,000 that we could save. So, again, it's all, those are budgetary savings. So, those are, the bonds go out about seven, eight years. So, as you go, the average is around, starts out around, 65, something like that, 60, 70,000. And then the last two years, because the bonds have fallen off, you get down to 20, basically 20,000 the last three years that you'd be saving each year. So, it is, again, our analysis is conservative at this point in time. We did our last bond, we used our last bond sale that we had, and then we added about 15 basis points throughout the whole scale of that. Okay. So, that's a good point. 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. 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. But again, exactly as Jeanette pointed out, is that going forward, we have to, because of federal regulations, we can't do advanced refundings, right? So this, we have to actually wait to close after September 1st, okay? So we probably won't be pricing these bonds until like the middle of August, okay? Now, exactly what Jeanette said again, right? Things can change. Rates can change, right? Right now, the rates are pretty much staying pretty firm where they are. They get up and down a little bit each day, but they've been pretty good. So if we went to, we would have no problem getting the $390,000 in savings if we went out today, right? But again, what we suggest is that you pass. In order to do this, part of the process is the board would have to adopt a refunding resolution, okay? So we would suggest that you do. We would suggest that you do that as soon as possible, just pass the resolution. It doesn't mean we have to go through with the transaction, right? So if we get to August and rates are up, we don't have to proceed with the transaction. We could, excuse me, we would just hold it off and that would be it, all right? Sorry. And Jeanette said that it also doesn't extend our time at all. That's correct. So there's no extension, no repayment. The structuring is staying the same. Again, it's just the rates went down and that's basically what we're doing. It'd be just like your mortgage, whatever you had left, you'd be refinancing your mortgage. It's just a lower rate. And that's basically what we're doing. We're just taking advantage of the lower rates. What's the cost of refinancing compared to the savings? So the cost would probably, again, we were a little conservative. We put $100,000 in for the cost. It's probably going to be closer to $80,000. So those are the costs. Okay. Those are probably going to be the costs at that point in time. $300,000 with savings? Yes. So that includes that. No, that includes everything. So that $390,000 includes all fees. Yes, includes all fees, everything like that. Everything is included in that. And they're also, just to let you know too, the people that are involved will have to get a Moody's rating. Okay. So some of this stuff increases the cost. You have to get a rating. We have bond counsel. We have us. We have to get an escrow agent. So what happens is the time of the sale, all the money goes into an escrow account. And then 30 days, you have to give the bondholders 30 days notice before you can call the bonds, the old bonds. So they'll be paid off and then we'll start with the new payment structure. So can you lock in the rate before spending $80,000 on all the necessary things? Or are we spending $80,000 and we're still during that, the rate may fluctuate? No, no. We only, you will lock in the rate at the time of the bid. Okay. We can't do early. Right. We can't lock in the rate earlier. It's all on a competitive basis also. So there's no negotiating with the bank or underwriter or anything like that. What happens is we do an official statement. It's probably a document of about 50 pages. It has all the demographics, audits in there. Everything about the town of Riverhead is in there. We send it out to the financial community. Then on a certain day, we have a bid. And then on that bid, whoever has the lowest rate will win. Now, if the savings are not, you know, if we don't achieve the amount of savings that the town, you know, would like, then we could just cancel the sale and there'd be no cost. So at least we want to lock in those savings for what we're laying out in terms of the expenses. Well, we won't have a cost unless we close. Right. You won't have a cost until you close. Yeah. So there'll be no cost until we actually go through with the transaction. Everybody gets paid after the transaction is complete. So. And just so you know, these bonds unfortunately are not in the general fund, but that's because we don't have a lot of debt in the general fund, which is a good thing right now. Say that louder. Right now. So most of this refunding will impact CPF. So there'll be approximately $247,000 worth of savings for CPF and about $142,000 for the general fund. Okay. So that's about $142,000 for the Water District. So it's mostly the two funds combined. Very little for the general fund. It's about $3,000 in savings for the general fund. So the two bonds, 2018A, one is for the Water District and the other one is for the CPF fund? Primarily. It's CPF and general fund combined, but the general fund portion is so small that's left at this point that it's mostly CPF. So if it goes down at, let's just say the interest rates go down a quarter percent and it looks like that's going to hold until the end of the year. Okay. You can just lock it in there? No, we can't lock anything in until we actually go to sale. No, no. I know what I'm saying. Okay. So explain the process. If the rates go down further. Yes. Oh, yeah. We'll get the benefit of that. Yes. That's what I'm saying. Correct. You can lock that in. Yes. Correct. That's my question. Yes, yes, yes. These are all fixed rates. Once we go to sale, it's all fixed rates. There's no variable rate here. Thank you, Michael. You're welcome. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Any other questions? Are we good? Good. Thank you. Thank you all for coming in. Good job, Mike. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Great work. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Can you move the water? I'm just kidding. He's in our room. I didn't even tell him about that. I see the superintendent is smiling back there ear to ear. He was supposed to be sitting up high up when we said water. Our next open session item will be with Rich Miller and the Councilwoman Waskie. Matters surrounding Polish civic suffering. 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. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. important to Polish town and the integrity of our Polish community and the town so take it away first of all I want to say thank you for having us here the board of directors are sorry they couldn't make it but when I called Joanne and said hey we want to do something she said hold the phone and within a week I'm sitting in front of you guys so they scheduling issues they couldn't be here but they would love all to meet with you at some point in the future what we plan on doing we reorganized in 2024 is it okay people see that I was like you guys see it if you want but um and then people can see what we're about so in 2024 we reorganized and we set up in a new mission statement and we're we're a bunch of young immigrants from Poland they're young families that want to keep Polish town Polish town it's it's something I'm passionate about because you know I'm a Polish I'm a Polish I'm a Polish I'm a Polish I'm a Polish I'm a Polish I'm a Polish man I'll be involved in polish town so one of the things that we thought about doing it was putting up flags we have 21 light poles on Pulaski Street and we were thinking we can put some kind of polish flags up banners up we want to incorporate it with the Veterans like we do on main Street with the soldiers if we can somehow have the polish residents of Riverhead as Veterans on during Memorial Day stuff like that and the polish culture community have a lot of different dates and events that we can celebrate. So recently, Polaski Day, General Polaski was his birthday, so we could have flags or banners. We would like, during the fair, to have red and white flags going down the street. We would like to have Polish towns have their own crest and their banners, so we can do something to incorporate that. And there's other things that we want to do, but this is like the first step. And first of all, we want to know if we're allowed to do it. We would purchase the flags. We would maintain them. We just need to know what the town requires from us, like insurance per things, if we can take them off or take them down, or what's the procedure of that. But the reason we have the Polish Town Fair is to help the Polish community downtown, to help not only Polish Town, but Riverhead. Part of our mission statement is to promote, support, and patronize local-owned Polish American businesses and business owners. So that means in Polish Town. We want to help people start businesses. We want to help them look for stuff in Polish Town, but also in Riverhead, if there's nothing available. We support our schools. We give scholarships to the Riverhead High School. The Polish School at St. John Paul's, they have a Polish school. We do a scholarship for them. And then we also support the ROTC, because a lot of our members, kids, are ROTC cadets. There's a lot of things that we do. And like I said, we're new. We're strong. We're not the old group. We're the new group. And we just want to give back to our community and support our Polish culture and heritage. I love the idea. And it's funny. You've got flags everywhere. And that's what I was going to say. It's just a way to express what Polish Town was. I'm part of the history district that we're looking into. You know, Riverhead is mostly started with immigrants in the 1800s, the Polish people, the state of the country. And the St. Elizabeth's Church, the Polish Hall, was the first stepping stone of developing. Like I said, my mother's side of the family immigrated and came to Riverhead and started the Polish store of grocery. We own a corner of Polish Town. So we just want to continue that for our kids and my grandkids. Now I'm older now. You know, my kids are old. Not old, old, but they're, you know. But... Your daughter's watching this. I know. She's like, oh my God. We're great. You know, Brittany. Well, I can tell you as someone who's been here for a long time, I've been here for a long time. I can tell you as someone who has been different places, I'm sure everyone up here, when you go places, people often refer to Riverhead. And they'll say, someone will inevitably say, isn't that Polish Town, USA? And it is just a great thing. And so as we hold on to the past, lean into the future, I'm excited about this. So it's a great project. We can work with the Veterans Advisory Committee, just so you know, has ordered brackets for those polls to be put up in the springtime. We are. Our Hometown Hero Banner Program keeps expanding. And so we are taking some of our Polish Veterans. So we have like Ziggy and Tom Nijan and Paul Zinski, things like that. Your dad. Yeah. We'll be putting, moving some of those over to Polish Town, specifically those that, you know. But we just have to keep in mind before you order like the flags and so forth, they need to run on Polish Town. Those light poles, the gauge, which is the thickness of those poles are thinner than the ones that we have in the area. So it's a great thing. And I think one of the things that we're working on is that we're working on a new program. We're working on a new program. We're working on a new program. We're working on a new program. We're working on a new program. We're working on a new program. We're running it like a running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running running poles the gauge which is the thickness of those poles are thinner than the ones that we have like on main street okay so they break easily so we just got to have like all of the flags and so on like parallel to the street and not out to the street because the box trucks get them okay but um and they have to be the flag stem of the flagpole depending on how you mount it if you're putting like he's like to be a very soft breakaway wood you have something for us with specs and stuff with the get your stuff and stuff like that and not looking to push you guys but we do have a business owner who is getting a shipment from poland and he's offering to donate flags and stuff for us so if you can possibly get me any information as soon as possible because i think a container container is coming in soon and so it's exciting we'll we'll we're very excited now that we we can do that and then like i said we will help the business owners down there with and stuff you know so we went to put flags on main street at one point on those poles but um it's just because of the delivery trucks right it's been it was dangerous then we we went around and we talked to business owners and said well would you mount them you know to the actual buildings to kind of go over the sidewalks at a higher level and so forth and some said yes some said no because they didn't own the building or they're renting or leasing and things like that so we we did at that one point um try to write up like a release form to give to business owners so even if they couldn't be on like the actual pole itself they can mount it to the building and have people sign on for them to do it so we kind of do a similar approach and then also we would need because there's many different days there's like right after easter it's dingus day so it's a big celebration of bringing in spring and celebrating that stuff there's flags you know different colors and stuff to enjoy we just want to make it vibrant and thing and also another thing you should also know that many of the polish town residents are members of the civic association we have a two two ! not a ton but a lot more people from outside towns that don't have a polish area in their town so we have many residents from southampton um cultural all over the up west people come out just to come to us and to celebrate polish traditions stuff at the church to school and then civic buy a flag in honor of somebody a polish flag to display or how do you think you'll cover the costs do our fair and fundraising stuff we just want to give back to the community so um we could that could be an option too we haven't really looked into that we were just looking that we wanted to give back to the town and that's that's how we looked at it so that's wonderful and you mentioned something about the memorial day well i was looking for the veterans but you already said that you were looking into that already about putting the banners on the polls in polish town and we just hope that we can try to keep it to the polish residents you know what we usually do is is with the hometown of your banners it was a program that started you know out small on main street and it just kept growing right we ran out of we ran out of polls on main street so we we expanded to james port and we we put out a you know calling list and we put out mailers and say hey if you're from james port and you'd rather have your banner in james port you know that freed up some polls and now we're slowly filling up the polls in james port but we do have more banners that have been ordered this year so we del sign makes them for us to do phenomenal job it's a program that just keeps growing and growing every year so now you know this memorial day you'll see we're we're on roanoke we're on all heidi bear way where we've gone on all you know you know all the side streets and so forth it just keeps expanding so that's one of the things that we talked to contest about was but we had to get special brackets which if you've ordered uh four polish down for those light poles because they're a different size and they're different but we'll get them on there okay and then when we get the streetscape grant for waiting river yeah put the polls up there we are putting something down by waiting river the duck ponds as well yeah so we did get agreement from pscg to put some on the on the telephone poles down there because we don't have light poles yet but we're getting light yes we are this is fantastic anytime we re-energize an area and bring pride back to it it helps everything in the community helps everyone and you know we could use that right now after a long winter right yeah bring some spirits up so yeah so thank you all right thanks joanna for bringing this just to update everybody on the um i've spoken in the past with richard wine about having polish town beyond the recognized on the historic registry so we've had several members of the community reach out um rich miller is one of them uh we met last week just as our first like very small kickoff meeting uh we'll be having another meeting in the next couple weeks with the rest of the community that has expressed expressed interest in being a part of of putting this all together. It's a lot of legwork. It's taking photos of every single house in Polish town and writing a brief historical note about it. So I appreciate that you're a part of that and for the other members of the community that have reached out. We already started. I got my family members writing stuff. I have a great great grandson who helped build the church in the Polish Hall. He's gonna meet, find pictures and history that he knows from generations of talk. So yeah, we got things going on with that. We're very excited. The civic association, our members are all in. They'll help whatever way they can, especially they all live down in that area so they can do a lot of the legwork. That's pretty much it, I'd say. Something I'm very proud of because my family, my husband's family is Polish town and they're all from Poland. That's his grandchildren. And the civic would like to invite you guys. We have our meetings every second Wednesday. Come down and see what we're about. And anybody who's listening can come down and join. We're always looking for people to join our group and learn about our Polish culture. What time do you have meetings? They start at seven o'clock. So as you said, anybody can come. So why don't you announce that again so people watching can know where they can get. If they wanna learn about the Polish Town Civic Association and the things that we wanna do, we're in Polish Town. We have our monthly meeting on every second Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. Come on down. If you come in, see what we're about. And if you want, you can join. Give me the address. 300 Lincoln Street in Riverhead. Thank you very much. Absolutely awesome. Rich, thank you so much. Thank you for doing this. I'll be in contact with that for the information on the flags and stuff. All right, thank you very much. So we actually had a last minute amendment to our open session this morning. We felt like this needed to come about. So I just learned about it early this morning. Matters surrounding a code enforcement investigation with our deputy town attorney Victoria Pilow. If you would be so kind as to help us out and come on down here. Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. Okay, so early this morning the town executed a court authorized search warrant at a residential property. It was a police investigation. It was part of an ongoing enforcement investigation. This kind of came to a head during a CBA meeting, to which our office identified some irregularities during that meeting. So we coordinated with code enforcement and PD. I put together an application that included some affidavits from various members of the town to establish a probable cause. That search warrant was signed by the judge, and it was executed this morning. It's very new, so I have very limited information. I have yet to look over the photos and all of the evidence that was brought in this morning, but what I can tell you is that what we thought was going on there and what we established with probable cause to enter the residence with the search warrant, they ended up finding five illegal apartments and a severely overcrowded house. So from there, this property was in justice court. They were supposed to live up to a conditional discharge, which included using that house as a single family and not to rent the house out without getting a rental permit. That conditional discharge is not special in any way. It literally just asked them to follow the law, and they clearly didn't. So we're going to explore some further litigation and enforcement on this based on what we found this morning. Fantastic. That's great. Thank you very much. Excellent. If I get any more information, I'll bring it forward. Thank you. I appreciate letting the public know and letting us know, and great work by all the departments that were involved, and thanks for coming to us right away. I actually would like to sit down with you. I have been speaking with the building department. I spoke with the assessors the other day. We have to find a way to stop this overcrowded housing. I'm up to here with it. Cars parked on the lawn. I don't know exactly how to further enforce what's been going on, but we have to find a way to solve it because it's out of control, and I do not want this in our town any longer. So thank you to everybody involved this morning with moving forward and taking care of this particular situation, but there's so many others out there, and we have to do something. I agree. Thank you. Thanks. People stay safe. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Victoria. Great job, as always. Everyone involved, thank you for our entire legal team and everyone. So we're going to move into our executive session. Our executive session matters this morning are personnel matters, matters surrounding possible change in the status of employees with Mancini, Prudenti, and Striplettio. We have litigation matters surrounding ongoing litigation between the town of Riverhead and Tink with Councilor Howard. And matters surrounding litigation between the town of Riverhead and SCWA with our town attorney Howard again. And so at this time I'd like to ask for an adjournment if I may have a motion. So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Sure.

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