Summary AI
The Riverhead Town Board held a lengthy work session covering the stalled Long Island Science Center project at 111 Main Street, the future of the Alive on 25 street festival, a new code enforcement initiative targeting overcrowded housing and quality-of-life violations, and a large batch of routine resolutions.
Key actions
- The board signaled it intends to move forward with condemnation-related action on 111 East Main Street (the Long Island Science Center building), which has sat vacant for six years with no building permits, site plan approval, or construction activity.
- The Science Center team committed to submitting an amended building permit application for a reduced roughly 4,000-square-foot phase-one footprint by the end of April, and to scheduling stormwater coordination meetings with town engineers and the master developer.
- The board agreed to add two part-time evening code enforcement officers and one part-time clerical position to conduct proactive neighborhood patrols focused on overcrowded housing, property maintenance, illegal parking, and garbage violations.
- Three sewer district change orders (resolutions 11, 12, and 13) related to contract cost increases for the RDSD-2202 project were pulled pending resolution of EFC financing issues.
- A public hearing was called on a proposed local law amending Chapter 273 of town code covering solid waste provisions for all properties.
- A public hearing was called on a proposed local law to amend Chapter 279 providing tax exemptions for volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers.
- The board set a resolution to formally affirm prior authorization for acquisition of 111 East Main Street (tax map 600-129-1-11) for general municipal purposes.
- The board approved setting fees for the 2026 spring/summer recreation brochure, with members flagging that the $10 non-resident surcharge may be too low and requesting data on non-resident participation for future review.
- The Celtic Quest kayak license agreement was advanced at a fee raised to $2,000 for the 2026 season, up from $1,800.
Money
- A capital project for downtown alleyway lighting (project 44038) was closed out and roughly $25,000 in CDBG and state grant funding returned to the county after construction costs doubled before the project could be executed.
- A budget adoption was approved for the River and Roots Playground Rehabilitation project, funded by a Suffolk County downtown revitalization grant with the BIDMA contributing approximately $37,000 in matching funds.
- The Water District updated its one-inch service connection fee to $3,600 for a standard installation and $4,100 for a crossing installation, compared to a neighboring supplier's rate of $4,600.
- The showmobile currently costs the town an estimated $1,500–$2,000 per use but is charged out at $100; staff estimated a net loss of roughly $60,000 last year, prompting discussion of raising fees to full cost recovery or selling the asset.
Discussed
- Board members and invited business owners and event organizers debated the future of the Alive on 25 street festival; all speakers supported continuing the event, and discussion centered on shifting to Thursday dates, reducing police costs by shortening the road closure route, and earlier annual planning.
Auto-generated from an unofficial, machine-made transcript. It may misstate names, figures, or votes. Verify against the agenda and the full transcript below.
Full Transcript
Thank you.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the flag of the United States of America. This is the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Councilwoman. We appreciate it very much. We have announcements right now. I just want to let everybody know again that the beach stickers are in and also that America 250, our next event, will be May 1st at the Suffolk Theater called the Great American Bash. Tickets are on sale. We'd love for each and every one of you to be there and to celebrate it. And what we're inviting people to do is to come to the Great American Bash and celebrate it. We'd love to do dinner in your downtown, so whether that's downtown on Main Street or downtown in Waiting River, downtown in Jamesport or wherever, Polish Town, we would love for everybody to go to their local restaurants, take pictures and share those and celebrate the birth of our country and the celebration of all that Riverhead has to offer. So it's a beautiful place. So, Councilpeople, does anyone have any announcements today? No. No? All right. Well, we are going to jump right into it then. We have our open session. Our first item on the agenda. One of the open sessions is Larry Oxman and members of the Board of Long Island Science Center. Matter surrounding update on the Long Island Science Center with myself, Mary Field, Waskie, Kern, and Rothwell. All every one of us. So I believe there's representatives from the Long Island Science Center here, and I believe we also have a few people on Zoom that will be joining us. So if those of you from the Science Center would come down. I have distributed an email to our council, people that was received yesterday early morning, and then one was. Received again, I guess, late last evening saying that Larry couldn't be here today for the Zoom. But we have kind of given a written update, but we'd love to hear it right now. Good morning. Good to sit. Good morning. Yeah, absolutely. If you could just. I can't hear you. Why don't you sit if you can each introduce yourself. So everybody have a seat with us.
We'll just go my left to right. So if you could start, just introduce yourself and your position. I'm Chris Kempner, and I am a consultant to the Science Center. I'm a consultant to the Science Center. So thank you all for inviting me tonight. with the project. Hi, Alex Lipsky, president and owner of Lipsky Construction Management. I've been retained as the construction manager and owner's rep during the pre-construction phase of the Long Island Science Center project. Hi, I'm Lucy Barnes and I'm a board member of the Long Island Science Center. I'm Sandy O'Callaghan and I'm a board member also. Okay, so last week we invited you and was here and some of our council members brought up kind of the back history that has gone through and so what we're asking for today is if you could let us know where you are and then we'll just kind of have the questions fielded from our group. Great, and we do have some on Zoom. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, oh, I didn't see that they were up there yet. Those of you on Zoom, if you're able to video, that would be better, but if not, if you could at least introduce yourselves, that would be fantastic. Sure, I'm Sando from DXA. I can't get the video to pop up, but I am a principal here at DXA Studio. I'm a member of the architecture firm working on the project. Jordan, the kind of founding partner, is just logging on right now. Okay, I think Larry. How about Jeff? Yep, this is Jeff Zahn. I'm the board member on the Long Island Center as well. Thank you, Jeff. And somebody with DXA? Yeah, hi, this is Mark Timmons. I'm also with DXA and I'm just a member of the team. Are you able to communicate with us? There's Jordan as well. I wonder why they can't do the video because they have a presentation. Okay, does somebody from your team want to just introduce Mr. Oxman and his position? Larry Oxman founded the Science Center in 1995 and has been on the board since and he's the president of the board and has been pushing his project forward. with the sale of the original building that was kind of crossing. And is that Jordan? Is that who's on there? Yes. Hi there, Jordan Rogoff, principal at DXA Studio. Okay. Just to add, Jordan, you guys, if you're going to present, are you having problems with sharing your screen? Right now, there's no camera access, I believe. Yeah. So you can't see our pretty faces, but... Yeah. But share screen and camera options are not coming up on the toolbar. I don't know if it's a permission issue. I think they're working on it in the back. Okay. Well, we'll start the discussion. And, yeah, so I don't know who wants to lead the way for you guys. Jordan, did you want to introduce the project? Yeah, no, I'm happy to. Yeah, so Jordan Rogoff, principal at DXA Studio, thank you so much for the opportunity to check in with you today. Okay.
Apologies for the – here's this – hey, there we go. Can you see me? All right. Apologies for the miscommunication about our attendance last week. We had requested that we move to this week because we had a couple meetings towards the end of last week that could kind of advance the conversation for when we do connect. But, yes, I've been – I've been a part of this project here, I think, for a little over a year. And we have had a, you know, number of challenges. First of all, it's a pretty complex project. I think just given the nature of the series of grants that compose the stack, which right now stands at just under $4 million, there are a number of requirements and hurdles to facilitate. And so we have, like, gone back and forth between trying to get this project done in one shot versus in phases and ultimately landed that it needs to be a phased project in part because of JumpSmart requirements and specific dates and occupancy that are associated with kind of different tranches of the – of the funding for the project. And so I just want to acknowledge the fact that, yes, that while there might not be appreciable, like, visible progress behind the scenes, our team is really juggling with a lot of moving pieces, a lot of variables, and a lot of coordination between different requirements for, you know, different aspects of the lending. So where we are now compared to when we talked previously, with you is that, yes, we need to do this in multi-phases. And phase one would be to just kind of open the doors, turn on the lights, and have a presence within the building. And so our target is still to open that phase one as quickly as possible with a target of this fall. We've been hoping to kind of start all of this a little bit earlier in January, but now it's – it's finally coming to fruition now. But, yeah, the goal is to open what will be about a 4,000-square-foot presence on site, which will be right off of Main Street. The benefit of this is it satisfies a number of the requirements for the funding, but it also allows us a staging area of about 8,000 square feet in the back half of the building for phase two. We're cognizant. We're very, very excited about that. And we're also very, very excited about the development of, like, the desire for there to be little to no disruption of town square should the phase two completion not align with the completion of the town square. So the phase two – and I think I brought this up the last time we presented to you that the phase two is conceived of as a kind of prefabricated second story, which can be done within our footprint and can be done in a matter of a few months rather than a protracted construction campaign. So our team is trying to thread the needle between the grant considerations and then, frankly, construction lending, like bridge loans. I run an architecture project. I would say at least a dozen of our projects have been, like, consistently set back because the construction lenders have a kind of ever-changing sense of, like, quite a��
on our side a full-time commitment to getting this done. Where we stand now, I think we've had kind of periodic check-ins, a number with the master developer, Joe Petruccelli, and with the CDA, just letting, just relaying the fact that we are not going as fast as we wanna go, this is gonna take a little bit longer, this is gonna take a little bit longer. So there hasn't been total silence on our part, it's just we just haven't gotten enough to be able to sit down and have serious coordination meetings. But we do believe right now that we'll be in a position by either the end of this month or early next month to start meetings on some critical path items. And I just wanted to kind of lay out what we've identified as those critical paths. And I just wanted to lay out what we've identified as those critical path items as we see them. And I'm sure there's gonna be lots of questions and there's a lot of work to do to kind of dovetail the Science Center's construction with that of Town Square. One of the issues that we need to figure out immediately is the temporary stormwater situation in 2024. I believe the system that conveyed stormwater from our site, was damaged during demolition. We would like to just coordinate and figure out a temporary remedial strategy for that to handle stormwater in the interim, while we then work on kind of second critical path item, and that's locating our stormwater retention under the Town Square in early conversations. There was an openness to facilitating this, but it does require coordination. And so we have our civil engineer working on that currently. Once we have all the calculations, we can sit down and we're hoping that's within the next couple of weeks here. We can sit down and start to talk about what that looks like, what the timing is, what sort of easement arrangements are necessary. And that would represent then the permanent stormwater handling. So we also really need to talk about, as we, we see the Town Square, the amount of infill for the plaza, there's a tremendous amount of forces that'll be exerted upon both the hotel building and are building. So understanding the soil retention strategies there, how that works between the Science Center and the Town Square. We have some ideas about that, but want that to be a dialogue with the town. So again, that at our next working session, or kind of or like preliminary working session, you know between Between the town and us I think we flagged that as a pretty important thing to figure out Then when it comes to work permits, we have currently I think an approved set But that represented the previous phase one, which is the full footprint of the building Which is both 12,000 square foot footprint being that that's being reduced We intend to file an amendment for 4,000 square foot footprint Again to satisfy jump smart and open the doors as quickly as possible And so we'd like to talk about that if we can do that with The architectural set and do this as kind of a design build Expedited process so selective demolition and preparation of the site can help speed up the clock on that Then the exterior work permits like how we dovetail that with work on the town square the redoing the storefronts I think one element to explain that the 4,000 square foot footprint also satisfies another critical piece Which is emergency egress having two means of egress Because the town square will be under construction and we won't be able to egress through the east side of the building nor the south side since the Grade will be raised. We're really limited to getting two means of egress on the Main Street side So that that 4,000 square feet also works kind of dovetails with that that consideration. So Nonetheless, we need to talk about egress access that sort of thing through through our respective construction campaigns And then there's the interface with LVF. We've our studio DXA has met with LVF multiple times and has kind of a framework as the location and grade Into the museum for the site entry for for phase two. So well, we want to resume that in earnest You know following following this proposed meeting for the for the other topics So so anyway, that's that's kind of a you know breakdown of where we are saying. Oh, I don't know if you have the the more the kind of smaller phase one plans and are able to share that I think that that might be helpful, but But yeah, that's that from my perspective we are We are jamming and I think that we can make I think stronger efforts and and and have more substantive meetings with the town as early as the end of this month beginning of next month and I and I believe the the Long Island Science Center team shared some correspondence with the LVF and the LVF correspondence proposing that That we provide monthly updates to the town board moving forward for for total transparency given the you know the the lack of appreciable of like physical tangible progress Just to convey the amount of the behind the scenes work that that is necessary for such a complex project So here Sandow has up on the screen. Is there everybody able to see that? Well, I just, you know, I mean, yeah, I just was trying to get to the bottom of where we're going here, you know, like time-wise. And I think that we're talking about a lot of details and getting in the weeds, which is great to hear some of these updates. But I think this has been, you know, rinse, wash, repeat. And we're kind of getting at, like, where do we stand for phase one? So everything in which you've said, you basically have shared over a year ago. So what I would like to know is over the past year. What work have you actually performed? And what have you done? Because I don't believe we've seen anything on our planning department, our building department. We've seen no plans, no engineering, no architectural plans. You're chopping off. Now you're telling us you're chopping off the back of a building. And you haven't even consulted with us to determine how that's going to level out and match with our town square that we're making in the children's playground. So I just, you can talk about all the things that you want to do. And the difficult progress that it is. But why don't you tell us something you've accomplished over the last year and some progress that you've made? Because that's what we're interested in seeing. Because everything you just said we heard one year ago. It's actually quite different than a year ago with all due respect. I agree, like, how come we're not further? Why are there not shovels in the ground? Those are absolutely legitimate questions. Okay. Again, a lot of it has to do with the complexity of a of amassing the capital stack, which we have for $4 million. So to each one of the the each one of the the tranches or pieces of that capital stack require bridge loans to facilitate cash because they're reimbursement based. The big, big hang up has been on a number of the the the bridge loan acquisitions. We'll be close to the finish line with one. I will tell you candidly, one of the lenders dropped after the most recent declaration of potential eminent domain last week. So there's a little bit of a back and forth that as we begin to progress and and it doesn't look like a short thing, lenders start to get a little bit scared and and decide that it's not, you know, it's not a worthwhile venture to lend to the bank. So I think that's a big thing. And I think that's a big thing.
We're still able to move forward. But I do think that we need to get this first part done to allay any fears that the town has, but also to allay fears that any potential investors. There are a number of investors that have said, we're on board, we're willing to invest for beyond the capital stack that's been prepared. But we need to see progress. We need to see this open. So what have we done? We have been... Let me just stop you real quick. I'm sorry. So what I'm hearing right now is that you do not have the funding for it. You do not have any bridge loans secured. You're in no better of a financial spot today as you were a year ago. I think that's a misinterpretation. One of the fundings did remove themselves, but that does not hinder the Phase 1 project. We have the capital deck ready. So why haven't you built a Phase 1 project? Why have you not started? That's a fair question. I think the response is simply that we've been building the capital deck. We've been securing. Obviously, we've secured some of the grants previously, but getting the bridge loan, which has been Chris's main task, has... And now I'm going to just take a step back. And with the understanding that I represent many nonprofits and getting these bridge loans has been a very difficult task. Getting donor dollars has been a very difficult task since COVID, not just since COVID, but since the tariff issues. And now the war that we're currently encountering, people are very close to the pockets. However, Chris has done a fantastic job in securing those loans, which is exactly what we've been doing for the past year. So what you represent in terms of the nonprofits, we represent the taxpayers. This building has been off the tax rolls for numbers of years, amounting in well over $300,000. Yes, it's $339,000. So that's what the... Close to $340,000 that if it's not... $340,000 that if it had been a regular commercial building on Main Street would have paid in taxes to help our taxpayers for these last six years. Instead, it paid pennies on the dollar. I think that for 2026, it would have been $47,000 and change. And instead, these not-for-profit so-called science center paid $1,300. So we were excited that you initially were going to come downtown because you were supposed to be an activation point for all of the rest of the community. The restaurants, the storefronts, retail, they were all relying on you to be an activation point down there and to balance out our project. We're spending a large sum of taxpayer dollars along with grants to design a new town square. And for years, what you've done is you've taken the building off the tax rolls. You've done no work on it. It is a health hazard. It's full of mold. The facades are breaking apart. It's dangerous. So we want to fill the town square up with children. And our fire marshals and our building inspectors have been on site and said this building is not good. And at some point, we have to take action. We have to be responsible. So as much as I like to say I'd love to have the science here, the plans that were put forth five years ago were amazing. And then they got scaled back and they got scaled back. But for five years, nothing has been done. You've been no better off not even a year ago, but from where your initial plans were five years ago. And so there's no activation. It does not happen. You moved. You sold the building where you were. You went up to Tangram Mall. You're not even open at Tangram Mall. You only do bus tours. So if I try to take a family or somebody wants to go up there and visit, so I have to ask, you know, what's going to be your module when you arrive downtown? I mean, are you going to be open every day or is it just going to be like bus tours? But without even getting into all that right now, it's for – so really it's not one year. It's five years. Nothing has happened. It's off the tax rolls. And there's no activation. There's no activation points. So the benefits are not – you know, the taxpayers are not being seen in any way, shape, or form. And so at a certain point, we have to decide, like, how long do we as elected officials allow a dilapidated health hazard building to remain down there with nothing taking place and us not taking action? I feel like we've been put on notice by our own fire marshals and our own building department, and they're saying it's time. So – I'll leave you with this. Are you simply a real estate holdings company where you're just buying a building and we're going to build it down square and everything, and then you're going to turn around and market and sell it for twice what you bought it? Is that the intention? And that's why you've decided not to put any money or work into it? So what exactly entity are you downtown? So you've asked about, you know, 20 questions. Is there a specific one that you would like – would you like me to answer the real estate portion? Sure. The health portion? You can take your time and go through it. Okay. You've got this. In regards to the health of the facility, I've toured no less than – I've toured no less than – I've toured no less than 20 buildings on this downtown main street. I've toured probably 100 buildings in Riverhead, over 1,000 buildings in Suffolk County. This is a Long Island structure. There is no difference between this building and the thousands that I've toured on Long Island. Actually, I think this is structurally better than the majority I've seen on Long Island. Is it full of mold? I inspected the building after an extreme rainstorm no less than two weeks ago. It was something that we wanted to make sure that if we were coming to the town, we were going to have a severe rain event prior to. And the building was bone dry. There's no moisture in the building that we could find. In regards to any environmental hazards, if there's anything that needs to be addressed during the construction phase, it's going to come up during the demolition inspection. But there's nothing that I could see in the building that causes a hazardous condition to – It's not full of mold, you're saying? I did not see any. I did not see any mold in my inspection. We have, it seems – did you remediate it? Did you have a – Can you share those photos? I do not have those photos. They're full of mold. If I may, may I jump in? Fabric has been given to there, and it was part of the inspection process. I work with a lot of environmental companies. It's something that I can look into. Have you done anything with the sludge that comes out of the back of the building? So you say that's – May I – I don't know – can you hear me? Hello? Yep. Am I – Yes, we can hear you. Very good. Thank you. The fact that we've done – that you're saying that we've done nothing is really not true at all. We put a new roof on the building. We were in the process of taking out the old sheetrock, and the town gave us a stop work order. Because you didn't have permits to do that, sir. We didn't – okay. I don't want to argue about permits, whatever. Well, it's not an argument. It's a fact. Larry, let me address the sludge question. I'm going to jump right in. Okay. So the sludge coming out of the building, from my understanding – and I've been working with the board for about five, six months now – but I'm hearing about this internally. The – my understanding of this is this building has remained vacant. It's been there since the 70s. The building's from the 70s. The building's been vacant for 17 years, purchased by the Long Island Science Center as a nonprofit. And it – in all that time, it had no issues in regards to the stormwater coming out of the back of the building until the building was demolished next door in 2024, which is when this started. Now, we did scope the drainage line, and it is a stormwater item. It's not a sewage item. It's not waste. It is rainwater. So we did scope it. And it's my understanding that it cannot be determined. The final path, it does show it going east towards the new town square project. And this is one of the items that Jordan brought up previously, is that we do want to make sure we have a temporary stormwater in place to make sure that this is not a continuous issue. But it's not sewage sludge coming out of the back of the building. It is rainwater, from what I have been told as well. I'd like to speak, if I can. Oh, of course. Okay. You're here today. You're here today to address the failures of the so-called Science Center to move forward. Ms. Kempner, you were here a year ago and told us, assured us, not just told us, assured us, and so did Justin, that this would be ready, ready in the summer of 2025. And it's not. Not only is it not ready, but the plan that Mr. Rosgrove, how do you say his name? I'm sorry? Jordan. I said Justin. I apologize. Jordan, that he presented, is an actually completely different presentation of what you brought us last April. Last April, it was the interior, phase one, activating the building for occupancy. Phase one was going to be completed and open in the summer. And that was the interior build out of the upper level. This is the relocation vision that they presented to us. And I'm not at this meeting. You were, Ms. Kempner. That this was going to include phase one, interior build out of the upper level, mechanical systems upgrade, new facade. Okay. What's really significant about that is that's not what you're talking about here at all. You're not talking about doing the facade at all now. And that was necessary. Why that's really significant to the taxpayers of this town right now is because you were going to need building permits to do that. To change the exterior was going to not only require building permits, but site plan approval. And I'd like to cite this section. That was town code section 301-304B2A and B. For any repair of an existing structure which requires a building permit and which affects the change of the exterior. I'm sorry. Will and B. Will affect and change the exterior of the affected structure. You needed site plan approval. That's what you told us you were going to do in phase one back in April of last year. You needed site plan approval for that. You never went to the planning department for site plan approval at all. All year long, nothing. In fact, now you've changed it. You're not going to change the exterior of the building. No, we are. We are. Sorry. Sorry for the interruption. What you've done is you've now changed your phase one. Now also, what you would need to affect change, if you are affecting change to an area of the site, including but not limited to drainage. You have serious drainage problems with this development. And that you also need site plan approval for under the sections I just cited. You don't have that. You have never gone the entire year to the planning department to obtain site plan approval. A whole year. Nothing. So none of this. Nothing has happened. In fact, you submitted the plans for this phase one back in May of 2025, and that was it. Nobody ever heard from anybody again as to seeking building permits, seeking site plan meetings. The planning department is always available for everyone to go to. None of that was done for an entire year. And now you have the new, new phase one, which isn't going to even give the facility the opportunity to behead ahead of the budget [transcription gap]
10th of 2025 that this would be open. And we sit here today and I hear it's a quite different, it's a quite different phase today. We have talks, we have substantial meetings, meetings, but we don't have anything accomplished. What I'm talking about is a 1938 building. The building is 111 Main Street. Let's stop calling it the Science Center. It is not a Science Center. It has never been the Science Center. When it was purchased, it was never open as a Science Center. It remained vacant and blighted for six years now with nothing. In fact, even as Mr. Rothwell pointed out, the Tanger outlet, that particular premises that is the current not-for-profit Science Center is not open to the public. It's only by appointment. In fact, it was said, it said closed a couple of months ago on Google and that somehow got erased. That's it. Back in 2022, do we have the, I had a PowerPoint that I was preparing. Is that ready, Justin? Yes. I'd like to go to that so that the public, the taxpayers of this town understand. This is the rendition that the so-called Science Center put forth in 2022. That was the building, 111 Main Street. That was, it was going to look like with your renderings and your architectural renderings with regard to this premises. Could we go to the next one, please? 2022. That's again, what, how amazing this was going to look, which we would have loved. Keep going, please. 2023, it morphed and changed again. In 2023, this was the rendering that you put forth what the Science Center was going to look like on Main Street. 111 Main Street. Could we continue, please? 2023, look at this, another version of that, of that Science Center. Could we continue? 2023, again, the front. Please continue. 20, continue. Now 2025, April of 2020. This is the new version that the town board and the taxpayers of Riverhead saw. This two phase when you came in, Ms. Kempner last year, we talked about phase one, the lower level phase two the planetarium. Can we continue please? And phase one was going to look like that phase one with the sheathing all in the front of the building. And you spoke about phase one A, where on the side we would have the windows cut out and the door so that it could be
access onto the town square plaza. Please continue. But that, this is the building. 111 Main Street has always looked like that. So I would suggest we stop calling it the Science Center and call it what it really is, the Science Fiction Science Center. Because all of this, including the latest renderings, are fiction. And even depictions of it in news articles keep showing these beautiful renderings. Of things that do not exist and have not existed. That building right here. This dilapidated, blighted, vacant building is all that has existed at 111 Main Street from 2019 when it was purchased by the not-for-profit until today. That is a disgrace. All these different versions put forth to the public, making the public believe this was going to be an amazing venture for our town square. Our town square. Our town square project, which we have invested millions and millions of dollars in, that grants we've received. It was supposed to be an activation for the town. It's nothing. It's a vacant, blighted building. And a year ago, all these assurances were made to us. Not to me. Not to just to the town board. But to all the taxpayers in Riverhead that this was going to be, I'm sorry, I have a very bad cold. I'm losing my voice. But this was going to be a real activation. And it's still going to be. It's still nothing. And in fact, what I'm hearing right now is you're having substantial financial problems. We know for a fact that your Jump Smart grant is ending in June. That's a million dollar grant. You will not be able to utilize, because that's a reimbursement grant. And the fact that you don't even have site plan approvals, building permits, you'll never be able to utilize that money by June of this year. So that's gone. So to say you have four million, that's not accurate. In addition, I'd just like to point out that You're also talking about finances. You have a mechanic lien against your property. Yes, that's right. That says that you're in an inability to pay. No, a mechanic lien is a civil issue. It has nothing to do with the town or getting building permits. No, it has to do with the fact that you don't have the financial capacity to even pay an individual who did work on the project. No, we do. It's a civil matter. It's on the books. It's something that we are tracking. It is a private dispute. It has nothing to do with the town. Well, the fact that it's already on the premises doesn't bode well to your other lenders when you're seeking fundraising. They're aware of it. We've made them aware of it. I'm just letting the public know this. The public is who's involved. The public should know that it is known. It's with our lenders. It's something that we are tracking. And the entity that filed it, which is a public recourse, it's something that they're aware of. They just wanted to hold their rights. It does not engage anything except for the real estate transaction. It has nothing to do with permitting. It does bode very badly to the public. It's a very bad public perception with regard to mechanic liens on property that you own. There's mechanic liens filed every single day in this county, in this town. This downtown project was supposed to be a revitalization. All of our grants... I agree. It was supposed to be. And some of those renderings were part of the DRI presentation where a community stakeholder group recommended that the Science Center be awarded a million dollars. Which you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, activated. That's what you did not do. It was submitted to New York State for a million dollars that the town started the condemnation process and denied that million dollars. So that was a different rendition. No, I'm talking about the fact that you presented, through the years, multiple versions. Similar to like the YMCA and the Armory. It takes a long time. Two years ago, saying they're going to open in six months. To do these projects. And I think that's a great reminder. Because it's not similar to the YMCA. The very huge distinction about this piece of property is the fact that it is supposed to be coordinated with the other activation that is occurring. It was supposed to be going on with the hotel, with the East End Arts. It was supposed to be going on with the playground. It was supposed to be coordinating with all the drainage. And that is not happening because you have delayed it all through these years. And that has been a disadvantage to our town square. That's the distinction between this location and the other locations. So if your biggest concern is schedule. Schedule? Six years. If your biggest concern is schedule, the schedule that we've put forth aligns with the town square project. We've been in touch with the town civil engineer in regards to the allocation of stormwater. I'm glad you mentioned him. I'm sorry? I'm glad you mentioned him. Am I allowed to answer? Oh, no. Go ahead. Please do. In terms of schedule, we are aligned in our schedule with the hotel project and the town square project. In regards to the allocation of stormwater, which has been previously allocated to both the hotel project and 111. I disagree, sir, because you don't have easements. You don't have anything. You don't have site plan approval. You don't have easements. And I'd like to quote Mr. Jeffrey Seaman, who contacted me and said he wanted it noted that, please note that our SECRA review, the cornerstone used in support of the town square downtown revitalization and SECRA finding security, was a SECRA finding statement to the public. It was scientific, I'm sorry, socioeconomic benefits to the downtown area, flood mitigation. This whole thing is about flood mitigation. He's also been waiting to review the science center's plans so that they're integrated, their grading and engineering of the infrastructure can be integrated into the ongoing development of the hotel, the town square park, the relocation of the East End Art Buildings. Without this information, the so-called science center lacks verifiable flood control. He agrees with me that it is imperative that this action is necessary to meet the SECRA requirements to achieve flood control, which is now at a critical juncture due to the master developer's ongoing site plan development along the riverfront. My position, sir, and the taxpayer's position is time's up. You had all these years to do this. You're not following anything, even what Mr. Seaman said. What Mr. Seaman is saying that you should have been doing. None of this has happened. And frankly, to say to us, it's rather insulting to the taxpayers to say to us that you'll come back month after month to give us progress reports. We are not middle school teachers. We're not here to grade homework assignments and see how you're advancing. This was a responsibility on the developers of this project to make it happen. And for six years, we've been doing this. And it's still 1-11, a vacant, blighted building that doesn't have site plan, doesn't have building, doesn't have a flood mitigation plan, hasn't contacted Mr. Seaman to coordinate any of this. Yet we sit here today with now, I'm counting, I think, the fifth version of this program. Phase one, not even a new facade now. I've been part of dozens, hundreds of development projects. This is no different. It's very different because this is our only town square. It's very different. And it's our opportunity to have a downtown revitalization. And this 1-11 Main Street is not helping that happen. I think Bob had something to say. Yeah, Bob. I'm sorry. And I agree. I mean, I agree with Denise on the white building. That was a beautiful building. But I also know, and I think Dawn can speak to this, because when it came up, they wanted a side entrance and it has to be 120 feet between the hotel and the science center. And that's why that couldn't be done. So that I understand. I like the second rendition. I also, you know, we've been through this, well, like the Jazz Loft two years ago, they promised they'd be operating in three months, four months. That's true. Excuse me a second. I'm going to finish now. So, and I, it was very, very clear to me that you guys are working with LBF. It's very, very clear. You guys are also communication, the architect, you're working on the drainage. Yes. My only question is, and it's very, very clear about the funding. Chris, you said, Chris, you brought up that there was a million dollars allocated out of the DRI funds towards the science center. I'd like to know where that money is. I don't know. I, I, we just recommended. And then somewhere in the process, during Supervisor Aguiar, she told, told the state that she did not want the funding going to the project. And then that was the beginning of the Comden nation. I would like, I'd like to have Ms. Thompson. Oh, I'm sorry. Listen to Bob. I did, when I looked through the, I looked through the DRI fund, I saw Suffolk theater got allocation, science center got allocation. I was just curious, curious where that was. My next, my next question is, I know you're, where are you in, in terms of filing for a building permit? I didn't answer that. We want to come back again. I also just want to clarify the, the envelope of phase one, nothing changed from, from the previous. What we, what I was speaking to specifically was, was the,
[transcription gap] into your renovation. I'd like to ask Ms. Thomas to come up and address some of these issues. Jordan, do you mind continuing? I thought you had a question. Yeah, no. Our goal would be to get the architectural set in, again, by the end of this month, and then we'd love to have a meeting regarding the stormwater issues, both the temporary and permanent, and as I said, the bearing capacity of the significant amount of fill that's being proposed for the town square. So I know that there's sincere frustration and a pretty significant lack of progress on everybody's mind over the past year, but the ducks are in a row. We're in a good place to be having much more substantive coordination meetings. And, again, it hasn't been silence. We have communicated with the CDA, the master developer. You know, we've spoken with Joe, I don't know, dozens of times over the past few months. We had a site visit walkthrough just last month. But as far as filing, all of these things need to be figured out, designed, and ready to go before they go into building department. Anything that, if we were to file little bits and pieces, it's not going to be a lot of work. It's going to be a lot of work. And there's no, like, appreciable benefit for that. So we are in a position to get that filing within a matter of weeks. I just wanted to ask Ms. Thomas if you can address some of the things that have come up. I'm sorry? Specifically about the money. I'm the community development director. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. So I guess the one was DRI. So there was no million-dollar award. There was a request, I think. The stakeholder committee recommended it. And that was through a year-and-a-half process. The DRI, the way it works, just so the public understands, is the town is awarded $10 million based on an application. We were awarded the $10 million. And then the projects actually apply for themselves. So the town applied for its projects. The science center applied for its projects. The Suffolk Theater applied for it. The library, the Boathouse project. And so then those projects were vetted by a local planning committee. The local planning committee was comprised of some people from New York State, some people from the town, local people. Those individuals vetted the projects, made recommendations to the state. And then ultimately, the governor awarded some projects and identified some projects, although without funding. So that was a big step forward. And then the state. Okay. Thank you. The awards were made, the Science Center was identified as a project in our strategic investment plan per the original plan that was existing at the time, but was not awarded any funding in that round of funding. The good news for the Science Center was that the naming of the project in the strategic investment plan was a good leverage step up for you to get other funding. I don't think we've gotten any funding after that. Well, that would be up to you to use that in your applications, right? You already have funding that we're trying to use. All I'm saying is even though you didn't get funding, the upside of that identifying of the project was important, was useful to you. I think the Science Center leveraged the DRI. It was part of the activation. I just want to be clear that this is not a real estate development. It is a nonprofit that serves children that has been doing so for 30 years. It's a good thing. In a difficult situation right now because it's carrying a building downtown and open in another location, nonprofits aren't really meant to be carrying properties that they're redeveloping. We've tried our best. You should have spent that money on that building. It's reimbursable. We need the cash. The property was an entire project. Excuse me? Because now you spent the money to purchase that building. That's not something you have to answer. The way it looks is that you took maybe any funding that you had. you purchased the building and now you've completely limited the science. The science center. They're not operating up. I'm not on the board and I don't make those decisions. And I just really was the grant writer. And then I just stepped in to try to help the project get over the finish line. So, and everybody's volunteering their time because it's a good cause. And I think the taxpayers have supported the science center because a lot of people have experienced the science center. And I think the supervisor was there when the kids were in the building. And it's a good non-profit. It does good work. I think that I would love the children's science center to open somewhere, someday in the town of Riverhead, but not at this location. I understand, but it just is, it is a science center. It's not a so-called science center. It's an actual non-profit. That building is, that building is not anything. It's a vacant, blighted building. The only place that is currently a science center is Overton. It's a secret mall, which is not open to the public. It is open to the public by appointment. And the children are being educated by the educators. We can only host 50 kids there. So there's a demand for, you know, four classes that at the same time, and that's why we needed the larger space. If the town isn't going to work with the non-profit to get this done, it's not going to get done. So I hear what you're saying, and I understand the concerns. Yes, that's a very unfair statement. We've been sitting here anxious, waiting for a year. For a year, but we're in condemnation. We started condemnation because it is a health hazard. It is a risk. It has faults in that building. It is a dangerous building that needs to be addressed. We took initial steps, and you responded to them and said, we're going to get right on it. We're going to fix the facades. We're going to fix the suit, all the other things, and you're going to address them all. And we stepped back, which was the right thing. We're going to do everything to do. But during the interim, over the course of one year, you've done nothing. We've done a lot. I mean, I, but it may be, I understand what you're saying, but we're, we are really trying to make, you know, the Science Center. You haven't done anything. Nobody got a building plan submitted. We've done quite a bit, but I understand what you're trying to do and where you're going with it, and we can't convince you, we can't convince you, but we're, you know, we're hoping to continue. You don't need to convince us. You need to go ahead and build a building. And spend the money and do that. It's not profit. What? The lady at the end doesn't want it there. She just said. But no, but it's. No, you're not, six years, it hasn't been anything. And it needed to be an activation, which it is not. And the, honestly, the idea that the Science Center, that building should hold the taxpayers hostage is wrong. So if this was a for-profit agency and it was paying taxes and it was a blighted building with no occupancy, it would be okay? I don't know.
your building whatsoever you have no site plans no designs coordinating for a few years with don to wait and we were specifically told that you're putting together the town square we had to yeah but we're ready to build it and we're coming i know we don't know elevations access points tear out trees and how's the best way to spend taxpayer money to match up to your building without it's a teaching non-profit so it's not like a real estate development company it's so it's it has you know gotten a lot of public support outside of the town board but not really it hasn't really been a collaboration so it would be nice to be gifted property like the east end arts council or you know to be gifted a building you have no money to build it you still need funding construction design yes engineering all those things absolutely gifting you all that absolutely working through means of grants and your grants are expiring you have mechanic liens on the property and it seems like you're slowly going into a you know slowly approaching a financial disaster you know um it's not for us to determine how the science center moves forward but without any funding the reality is this project is not going to happen you know and would the science center be off better off selling that business to any entity that's going to repair it restore it for whatever use it may be and then then maybe you start to revamp and revitalize its services and provide full support for the community and then you know you're going to have to do a lot of services up at the thing we'll buy another building downtown and create a second building something lisa space you know have you given any thought to how because what i'm seeing more is a financial kind of disaster that's just not coming out and i don't know how you get out of that just um you know a vulnerable non-profit that's been in existence for 30 years that's served a lot of a lot of children 250 000 children or serving anybody down there my kids went there years ago and it was wonderful yeah the organization is still serving children not there at that location yeah you're absolutely correct but the the organization is a good organization that's not the so-called science center larry axman doesn't own the building it's not a real estate development it was it was a very good idea that was supported by a lot of people to open a science center downtown and the town square was a a vision that lucy had when she she she wrote she she drew the first it's a very good the town square for the town for the science center good idea but it's never come to fruition it's a heavy lift and and it's something we need help lifting because one of our councilmen have tried to he was trying to finish his thought just like can i just finish my my questions and i look i completely understand everybody's frustration but at the same time and i know we explored i was gonna this is wasn't on my agenda but you know somebody purchasing the building you know building what the science center wanted and then leasing back to the science center so that was explored however having said that i'm very familiar with um what jordan is saying in terms of you guys are working with lbf you working with joe prececelli yes you're on the verge of getting your funding you're addressing the drainage in the back you know you're going to and you're not you're going to continue uh jordan correct me if i'm wrong uh you are going to put the facade going and adding more technology to the building but the more technology the more and do the cutout for the doorway on the east, the southeast portion of the building? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. No, it was me. It was me. So it will have that look. It just will not have the second story with the planetarium, which would be in phase two. And that allows for ADA access as well. It's part of the facade project. It's all in phase one. Everything that you guys have asked for and said is not part of phase one is part of phase one. And I need site plan. Sorry, Bob. So with that, having said that, and I understand the frustration of myself included. I mean, I was hoping this would be dumb, but I've also had conversations with Joe Precioselli and the viability of all this. And I understand I've seen the technical drawings for the drainage, so I understand how it works. And if you're near the, you know, my question was, how far are you about? Jordan said you're a week, a weeks away from the building permit. Yeah, well, not the drainage, but filing. We need another two to three weeks. And the goal would be by the end of this month, having a set into the building department. As for the site plan, that's really kind of tied to some of the stormwater issues, at least our understanding. If there's a way to break that off, then we can file a site plan faster. But the coordination needs to happen, both with LVS, with the VHB, with our civil team, would take a little bit longer. But nonetheless, we can get drawings in within the next two to three weeks. And we'd like, again, in earnest to have those meetings of coordination between all parties. It would be the hotel, the town square. Yeah, but it addresses this question. In terms of the stormwater schedule, we've had a conversation with the hotel's civil engineer, and we're at the same schedule. So we are both starting those calculations at the same time. They have not started yet. They're not waiting for us. We're at the same exact schedule as that project. Yeah, that I understood that had to be based on. It's all based on the town's coordination. Correct. And I understand that. That's correct. But I have one question. Yes. This will basically tell me everything that I need to know. Back in April of 2025, the major concern by the then town board was the safety of the building. The chance that. Part of the facade could fall down and injure someone. The mold that that is coming out of there, the sewage that's that's coming out of the back. What has been done since that meeting to mitigate any safety concern? It's my understanding that we did have a I'm just getting into this portion. I did hear this last week that we did have a structural come to the site, structural engineer come to the site and he found no faults in the building. If you would like me to put together a formal report on that, I could do that. Yes. Okay. I just like to add, I just like to add one point. A year ago, he came in here and told us, promised us, assured us 10 times this would be ready, be ready by the summer of 2025. And I'm sorry, but I understand you're trying to make a case, but I'm not trying to make a case. I'm a nonprofit trying to make something happen. And there is, you know, if, if I misrepresented anything, it wasn't because I, I knew what we were doing and we were making a real estate. Deal. It was me. It's not me that you're making misrepresentations to. It was the entire community. The entire community came out to support us and they do support us. The entire community does not support you, ma'am. There are a lot of taxpayers that are in financial straits, and this is a lot of money that the town is invested in this town square. And it's a lot of money about the science center being speaking. I just like to just state that one, a vulnerable science center, a vulnerable not for profit organization. If you don't have the funds, you shouldn't be developing this. Property. That's the bottom line. And there's an expression for me. One shame on me for me twice. Shame on all of us for listening to this any longer. I'm sorry, but time's up. You had a whole year and nothing, nothing was done after promises after promises after promises. And I don't feel you have any credibility left. And I, I'm representing taxpayers that feel that very same way about this not for profit. It's a 30 year organization. Yes, they have. But here's the, here's the issue. Yes. When we publicly spoke about condemnation of the project, there were many residents that did come out. People do support the idea. I support the idea of your project, but, but did any of those residents, you know, honestly reach out and fund you and say, here's the money, go ahead and build it without funding. That's ultimately what we're talking about. We're in, you, you seem to be in, in financial difficulty that without funding, it's not going to happen. So the entire community can say it is a great project and we love it. It fits down there. It's wonderful. Is it ever going to happen if there's no funding involved for it? And so a lot of this conversation, I understand what you're saying. A lot of this conversation seemed to vilify the science center as like a real estate development deal. And in the science center is a good nonprofit that serves children. And I just want to make that clear because it's not the so-called science center. It's a 30 year old nonprofit that does very good work and, and has established itself in, in that field. Uh, so, you've also in the past five years, you have posted it online for sale. And so you, you, I haven't, I, you know, I, there, I, all I'm trying to do is help the project. I, I'm trying to help the project. So, so I'm sorry if you feel like you were lied to, it definitely wasn't, you know, uh, you know, uh, a planned delay and, you know, we're doing the best we can. And, and that's the only thing we could say is we're trying to build a vision for children. And, and deliver it on the town square. Just again, we're in the base. We are building our town square and you have not come forth to discuss it. And he's been in touch with Don for six years surveyed on this. That shows any inclination, our contractor who would be essentially the same contractor looks at your agreement is concerned that these projects are not going to align. They're not going to meet up and there's nothing done. And so now we are in jeopardy of, we are spending taxpayer dollars to revitalize downtown so that we can meet matching grants. And we're responsible for that just as though you're responsible for your project. But for us to say, well, we're going to spend a lot of money and try to work around a building that is not safe, that is, has health issues. It's is full of mold. Go in and walk in the building and you see it is, it's, it's there, it's here. It's not, you know, it's not fabricated. It's, it's no different than the rest of downtown. I've, I've been in many buildings down here. You've, you haven't addressed any of it over the course of the year and you were going to be open last spring and last summer. And, and we just sit and we just wait and spin our wheels. You're losing more funding. So, um, I think it was by June 30th, you have to either expend funds or you're going to lose all the other grants. And then you're back down at square zero. So once again, you have a building with no funding to build. It's not a building with no funding. There's funding in place. You're talking about the June 30th expiration. We're working on ways to get that done. And, but this, this whole, you know, attack on the nonprofit doesn't help move that forward. And the subtracting nonprofit, I'm attacking one. I'm absolutely. And I listen, let me clarify. I have always loved the science center. We took my kids when they were little. It is amazing to take my kids there. Okay. I'm very excited about that. Yeah. The one up on, yeah, I'm tanker after opening to make an appointment for that. Yes. So, but the idea of it, that's struggling. It doesn't seem, we're not, but, but you're, we're talking about not the business plan that you have. Not that I'm not attacking the science. I'm attacking the dilapidated building downtown and saying, when, what are you going to do with it? And how soon? We were hoping to work with you to make it happen, but it doesn't seem like it's going to, there's like $45 million in grants. It's supporting a lot of different projects downtown. None of that's going towards us. Anything we raise, we raised on our own. In some towns they have an economic development fund. So we don't have to go to private financing. It took us, so long to just find a faith based lender. That's a CFDI that can look at this project. And the president of the bank spoke to me about the projects that they want to say happened. They wanted us to bring on a construction manager. They said, you know, it's great that you're using the, the, the master developer, but who's representing, you know, you, because we're lenders and we need this requirement. So all of that has been a lot of work. It's, you know, I could use the time back. I'd be happy to get the time back. I have not seen, have you done a fundraising event over the past year? I don't have the time to do a fundraising event. We were expanding. Last year that makes you in a better position than we were a year ago. We're expanding the board to, to try to have more capacity to do fundraisers, but it's limited. After the phase one project. Yeah. I mean, during the phase one project. So we have the capital, we have the ability to go forward with the phase one project. It cures all the concerns that you had about the facade change, about the front entrance, about ADA access, about, about the water issues that you have mitigating any environmental issues that you have. It mitigates every single thing that you brought up as a concern. It aligns with the schedule of the town project, the hotel project next to it. It aligns with everything. It resolves the condition of the, the back storm water issue that every single concern that you've brought up. We have responded. With this is all in the plans for phase one that we are looking to address. And you're just continuously fighting us. progress on our a year ago is the way that community did. So I was not part of it. So thank you. But I was told that we got signatures from the from the community to make sure that it didn't happen. If this is someone in the community. We decided as the board, which is all the supervisor was here at the time, but we love that's incredible. Give you a chance to move forward. Yes. And because I don't know how to say, I love the project, the designs that were put forth five years ago were amazing. Yeah. And the designs that are current because we've addressed every concern that you have. Alright, so I think we have a I think we have, I think our CDA director, something adds to this. If it's just the back and forth, I don't want to continue. Because earlier was mentioned that the condemnation impacted the DRI funding. And that is absolutely not correct. Because the DRI funding was 2022. The condemnation didn't even start until 20 late 2024. So there's no connection between DRI funding and a condemnation action by the time. Yeah, I don't think that he said, I just want to make sure it's clear, there was a change in support for the Science Center. So in we when we first announced the purchase of the building, there was a very big press conference with all levels of government, it was before the DRI. And there was a lot of collaboration. When the DRI was submitted. That's when the hostility in the public realm started coming out towards the Science Center. And I don't know if it was directed at someone individually, but it would that that did a lot of damage to the nonprofit being sort of there's a lot of documentation of these allegations against the I don't like the word hostility. I think that there's a very big difference between hostility and frustration. And I think that what this board is trying to say is that we are frustrated with the lack of moving this forward. It's too long, as Councilwoman Merrifield said, times up, we cannot continue to go in this direction. Our downtown deserves more, the residents of the town deserve more. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm finished kicking the can down the road. So we've announced to you and we've responded to every single concern, I believe we have alleviated every concern, but you just this is a witch hunt. So in my opinion, I think this is a project that should have a red carpet brought out for it. And it's putting up red tape. We do not want to come adversarial at this. We just one second last year. This is nothing no intent. Are we trying to be adversarial? We're just trying to build this which Jordan has announced that we are able to provide submission into the building department. We've announced that we're he came here a year ago. You were not in this project at that point. That's fine. I am listening to Jordan today. He said it today. I know. And honestly, having asking the group to come in and holding you to account for the misrepresentations is not an attack. The Long Island Science Center, this incredible nonprofit, I will take that all day. Well, you know, calling things names like attacks and witch hunts doesn't change the fact that nothing has happened. Nothing. The building has that vacant and blighted for six years. It has never opened as a children's science center. vacant and blighted for about 30 years, I think since you've purchased it. It was vacant and blighted long before that. When it was deemed a not-for-profit that has not had to pay taxes for six years, nothing has happened. Same with all nonprofits. I think we've been down this. We've made this point very clear, which I understand. I was trying to take temperature. Jordan, if you have something to add of value to this, if not, and it's just going to go back and forth, I'm going to cut you off. Yeah, no, no. No, it's not back and forth. I just wanted to push back on misrepresentation. I understand that there's a lot of people who are not interested in this. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.
and we had every confidence that the funding would line up, that all of these things would come in a row. That was not any sort of intentional misrepresentation. It is just unfortunate that the mechanisms behind each one of those lending devices did not pan out in the way. We were not able to onboard team members until several months later. As an architect that at any given point is running about 30 projects, I would say about half projects end up having... I understand. I hear what you're saying. I'm going to cut you off because I think we're just going out of order, and I get it. As far as I'm concerned, I hear where you are. I know that there's something on the docket later for this. I will put you on the work session for next week again. I do not agree that it needs to be a monthly thing. The board has a motion that you'll see later. I'm not here to move forward with the decisions that we make. You need to make the decisions that you're going to make, which I understand. I'm giving you an opportunity to come back to that table next week, and I think that that's something that you need to be doing every week. But every month, to me, it needs to be every week that you need to be here and be accountable if this board chooses to allow you to continue that. I agree. We have our motion later, and we'll be moving forward with those things. But as far as right now today, I will have you on the work session. We'll see you later. And for the record, I understand the hurdles completely, because I've been speaking with Mr. Petrucelli quite often, and with Jordan. And I'm glad you've gotten this far, and hopefully you'll get a building permit in the next three or four weeks, and you can begin. I was just, you know, and that's, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. I have tremendous respect for Mr. Petrucelli. He's done great things for the world. I just like to say, I'm not a big fan of the board. I just like to say that nothing is a witch hunt when we've actually given you an entire year. That what we were about to go forward with condemnation last year, and we gave the board an opportunity for an entire year, and nothing happened. No site plan, no building permits, no nothing. So I really, I find it very offensive that you call it a witch hunt when we gave the Science Center all of this extra time, and nothing was done. And now we just keep hearing more. And I think that's a very, very important thing. I think that's a very, very important thing. Different changes in the phases. It's still the same. Old talk. I'm okay with pulling back my words on that, and I apologize if I said the wrong thing there, but I will say I'm very excited to be working with the town on this project, and we're looking forward to opening this facility soon. I wouldn't take anything from this table as a guarantee, and I understand what's coming forth and where this train looks like it's going, but every warning sign is there and needs to be attentive. Thank you very much. I'm going to just clarify if I hadn't. Okay.
think science centers wonderful but if you don't have the funding and it's going to remain in the same condition for extended periods of time I would ask the Science Center to look at you know their their outgoing future and perhaps change their business plan to say that maybe this you know to surrender in this financial burden and can continue it consider a different business mode because this is not working this is not fair for the taxpayers to have this building sit I believe we've previously addressed so thank you very much so I'm just Jordan I don't mean to put you on the spot but is it your understanding that we would not be able to be open period until the storm water the new pools are installed in the town square even if we wanted to open tomorrow we would not be able to what yeah yeah no after after the work no the goal would be to perform remedial action to the the stormwater system that was damaged during the demolition next door that's that's where the sludge comes from and again it's not sewage it's it's quite ahead of the city than hearing children going into science centers. We're not going to argue the viability of children and stuff. I get it, Jordan. I really do. I understand it. So thank you. And thank you, Larry, for making that point. Sorry I didn't hear you. Legitimately didn't hear you talking. My bad. Our next matter at hand is Matters Surrounding Alive on 25 for 2026 with Councilwoman Waski. Thank you. Come on up. Yeah. I got a posse.
Posse. So this is a continuation of our discussion last week about Alive on 25. I was looking for feedback throughout the town, which I did get from several business members. And if we can go around the table and just let everybody know who you are. I'm Mariana. I'm with the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce. I'm stepping in for Liz. Good morning. I'm Steven Siliato. I'm a town Riverhead resident and the owner of Ben and Jerry's. Hello. That's right. Good morning, Supervisor and Town Council. I am Diane Tucci. I am a lifelong resident, business owner on Main Street, former Executive Director of the BIDMA and Riverhead Chamber of Commerce, and as many people know, own Main Street Agency, which provides a lot of community events. And I'm Amy Fideli, and I work for Main Street Agency and have helped with the events that we have put on. Thank you. So during our discussion last week, we were discussing the fact that possibly the BID and the Chamber and other committees had discussed at a meeting last week that maybe Alive on 25 is not beneficial to the businesses downtown. And I immediately received an email from Steve, from Ben and Jerry's, and I was so excited. I was so happy that you sent that. And that was followed by many more phone calls, texts, and emails from various businesses downtown that spoke about the positive impact that they have. And I have invited Steve to be here today so that he would be able to tell us a little bit about what Alive on 25 does for your business and why it's something that you're supportive as opposed to non-supportive of it. Yeah, of course. And I appreciate everyone taking some time. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So I think it's important that you understand I'm here in a few different roles today, okay? The most proud role I'm here in is a town of Riverhead resident and the father of three little kids, nine, seven, and four. However, I'm also here in the role as a business owner and I'm also, in full disclosure, a lawyer, so everyone is aware. I grew up in Miller Place. My wife grew up in Sound Beach. High school sweetheart. We've been together forever. We were always West people. Okay. And when we moved to Wayheaden River and opened the Ben and Jerry's, we became East people. And now we come to Riverhead for everything. Our life is Riverhead. We shop here. Our business here. So on and so forth. To take it back into the Alive in 25, when I give you that color and context is because I don't want you to also take my words as the business owner. I want you to take the words as a town of Riverhead resident to three little kids. That's very important to me. Alive in 25, in any event, that gets the residents down in our community is amazing. whether it's for the businesses, whether it's for families, whether it's for activation of our amazing downtown concept and getting people to know what's going on here. We want everyone down there, right? After a long winter as a father, I want to bring my kids down to street fairs and festivals and spend the spring and summer doing those things, face painting and wrestling, all the amazing activities that Alive in 25 and these events offer. Now I know we need to work with our community partners, police, fire, et cetera, and our other business owners, right? So maybe a sit-down restaurant isn't going to be as beneficial as a street fair, but it gives them visibility and exposure. Then let's do some events where it's our Riverhead Restaurant Week and we focus on the restaurants. I, as a lawyer, sometimes deal with a lot of unpleasant things, but when I go to the ice cream shop and scoop, because I actually do work there, it's so different. And everyone comes in happy. And it's amazing what I've found that the people of our own town, our own residents, don't even know what's happening on Main Street. That the excavators are digging holes and people come and say what's happening there? Our own residents don't even know. So forget about our residents. Let's get everyone from Long Island down there. This is our time. This is Riverhead's time. This is our community. I mean, we should be doing events every day down there, getting people, filling those seats. It's great for the families, the kids. The parks we're going to be in. It's going to be great. It's just, to me, these work sessions should be more productive around how do we work together then, you know, we don't need to do this event, right? How do we make it maybe on a Thursday to fix some needs? Or how do we help with the police and the fire, right? We have an active construction zone. I don't know. To me, I'm more of a come together, right? And I think as a community resident, the idea of getting rid of any events, especially in this time, it's our time. We have a great project. That needs to be done. It needs to be all over social media, taglines, visibility, interviews, news. This is our time to shine. We don't take away now. We add. And that's my two cents. I will reiterate what Councilwoman Waskie said after our work session. You know, I've been downtown for a few dinners and stopped a few places. Everybody's like, who is saying not to do this? It's great with us. So I have to pose the question to you, Supervisor. Last week, you said the business owners don't want it. So who doesn't want it? Well, what I said was. The representation from the council that we sat with, they didn't say they didn't want it. What they said was, is there a better way to have and spend the resources that we have? The expense for our cops, the expense for everything that we do. It was just a question. I think these are the difficult conversations that we have to have. Out of pressure comes diamonds. And I think this is a great conversation to have. I've been at all the Live on 25s. I was at the ones last year. I think they're great and supportive. But to sit here and say, no one said that. Yeah.
Hey, are we utilizing? And I think this is a conversation we have to have every year. I think the issue is it gets spun into someone's against it if they question the viability of, like, even saying, Bob and I talked about it yesterday, where the chief wants to cut from Roanoke, like, to save the tax dollars on the police end. Because there's four, it would be four different spots that if we went straight down Roanoke instead of left. But I pose the question, well, is that hurting diggers and the people just a block right there? And so I think those are just good questions to have. I think that's the viability of this. It's not saying, like, we can't do it or people don't want it. But there were businesses, we went and sat and talked to talk to people all the way down on East Main and said, what's the viability? And they were like, Alive on 25 is great. In fact, what they asked was, they were like, instead of doing the fourth before the fourth, which was kind of been spitballed right here behind our building because of construction, they said what you said. They were like, please don't do that. They were like, can you actually bring the fourth before the fourth? Back downtown. And I was like, oh, well, the Christmas. And they were like, well, the Christmas thing was okay. But then they said we were, after everybody left, we were kind of left vacant. So it was a thing where they were like, please leave it down here. So I immediately went back, talked to my office and said, hey, we need to go back to that committee and rethink the fourth before the fourth. And if we need to bring that downtown to make sure that happens. I'm all for conversation and I'm all for teamwork, right? We all have different needs. My needs might be different than a restaurant's needs, than the subway theater's needs, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Again, I'll keep that in mind. I'll keep it as my most important role as a father. That when I come down for those events, I'm not looking to take my wife and my three kids in a sit-down restaurant. I want street food and sausage and peppers and grease on their face and make memories. So why can't we also make a cool restaurant week event, right, for the businesses that maybe didn't benefit as much as they could have in a live 25 where we focused on them? Because the reality is if all the businesses are doing better, we're all going to do better. That's what the restauranteur that I met with yesterday said. He said, on top. On top of this, can we also promote? And I was like, these are great ideas. I encourage them to get connected with the chamber. It would help them to fulfill those ideas because I think that's a great place for that. And there's so many things that we can do to continue. And not just on our main street downtown Riverhead, but our, you know, like Jamesport and what they bring to the office. You know, we're doing Polish Town. I think that every downtown area, Wading River has a downtown. We want to highlight all those areas and making sure that we're utilizing it to the best of our ability. So I understand that. One of the key components that you said earlier is exactly what I said. Last week is that even if a particular restaurant is not full or something at that time, it is a much different experience. And it's an advertisement to residents, people, non-residents, the surrounding communities that come to walk that street as opposed to in your daily life, simply driving down Main Street and you're right through Riverhead. So when you walk in, you go, I didn't realize the store was here. I didn't notice this. And then it gives you a to-do list of you come back. So Alignment 25 is just not a. Let's measure the count, you know, in the restaurant that night. Let's measure, you know, the afterward effects. So maybe the following week, let's go back there. I really want to check out that restaurant. I agree with you. There's the tangibles of that night. And then there's the intangibles of where, oh, I'm with my kids tonight, but restaurant X looks amazing. Let's have a date night next week. Any discussion that takes away from bringing people downtown, I'm not saying that's what the discussion is doing. But any discussion where we're. Taking people away from the downtown to me is we should not be having that discussion. I think what this has really done is it's highlighted the need for extra events that we can do on paper that don't, you know, maybe cost the police that we don't incur those costs of B and G. And then adding onto it, you know, the, the, the fourth before the fourth is making sure that if that's where that needs to be, that we're putting things where they need to be to, to help the proponent. So I think these conversations, I think tough conversations are good. I think they're easy to ask. I think Mr. Current wanted to say something. Yeah. I've worked from the first one and probably 12 of them. We created it together. Yeah. And I can tell you, I mean, everything you're saying is definitely true. The Friday night thing I was totally against and, and totally against doing it on second street for two reasons on second street. One is very, very narrow. You're not going to get a lot of vendors. You know that I don't know how, what kind of business is going to drive downtown. I actually am going to speak, but I want to correct that because I did not want to have a live in 25 on. Second. So I'm not saying, oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. I heard it on work session. So I was like, no, it's not what I'm going to do. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. So it's a difficult area, you know, and I've been speaking with the chief in general, like about town square and about events. And you know, when the town square is finished and you know, and you know, and I wanted to ask you because I did speak to the supervisor yesterday, like the more choke. points there are the more police the more expensive right so you know because I always like the cars of Peconic Avenue he's talking now about McDermott to just before Roanoke so Peconic Avenue stays open and Roanoke stays open so the question becomes that we don't have to solve that right here right now but he that could reduce the number of police it's like you're in my head I'm with you 100% you know that's all I'm saying because I saw a comment that all three board members are for it and I thought to myself well that was interesting because I don't know any board members on the last work session that would not for it you know but aside from that I if I can interject quick I you know I understand from your position with logistics funding all that you know it's it's not everything you want to do you can do right because there's there's handcuffs here but you're right let's find those ways to work and I think that's what I'm saying I think that's what I'm saying I think that's what I'm saying I think that's what I'm saying I think that's what I'm saying when you charge for a vendor tent a portion goes to the clerk which goes to the police to help on the police but I'll speak to you about that separately if it's a good model you know I'm going to explore it I'll say this to this I'll put the Ben and Jerry's hat back on just from a business logistical standpoint Ben and Jerry's are signed up to do events across the island all summer all into fall and I mean I'm learning about events I had no idea existed I grew up on Long Island so you know think about not necessarily outside vendors coming in but just people in general are gonna know about all these events we should be the model we should be it's our time it's time to just seize it we found that Riverhead has the best events the best events and you know again I won't dive too much into it but obviously I'm a franchise I've gotten calls from other franchises inquiring about Riverhead because of what's happening here you know people see it and I've had nothing which is all true nothing but great things to say so far because the community's been the community's been very great to us the community's been amazing but the business leaders look you know everyone's been awesome and and it's just I just can't say enough it's our time it's just it's our time well I think we're in every town zoo this thing but you know maritime and Greenport think we're have to continually to look at all the programs every year have these tough conversations and that's what it's about is making sure that we're doing it and out of this obviously brought a lot of other great stuff that we see you know moving the fourth before the fourth making sure we're doing stuff in the winter in the fall when our season's slow and doing that so I'm really excited about it join I think great job bringing this together and making this conversation I would like to and we were presenting something else about no I have so much to say but I'm gonna be really great about it because I'm so excited about your energy and from the minute I you came to help support last year with like what three months of planning for 1125 and Halloween you were absolutely amazing it's that kind of energy and actually this conversation kind of reignited my passion for what I do because I was feeling a little like one you really can't put together an event like this in three months really I respect to revisit I think that's great I think I should be at the table if I'm the one who's even consulting are weighing in way before April 1st cuz a a couple problems going to give you immediately our vendors start booking for their events and fourth of july if that's a conversation you might not be able to get the great vendors cut in from a vendor perspective i'm fully booked through october already not fully booked i mean i have available dates but you know i understand i mean that when they when an event ends it should be booked for next year so this year i'm always we'll book it for next year so the minute and i tell everybody every event that i run the minute that i set foot at that very first minute of the event i'm already thinking about how i can make it better for the next event and for the next year so i would implore that you know whatever decision you come to that you recognize how important these events are and not just alive in 25 but all of them um but really the most successful is being able to plan it properly and you know there are things we couldn't pull together for halloween fest because we just didn't have the time to activate it and halloween fest is another really great event with the parade but if we can plan it ahead of time and get the community to know what's coming and build floats and get really excited about it and that's what i especially bring to the table you know i'm a fourth generation resident here my kids are fifth generation you know it's i come from a farm family it's i get it and i know the people and i can work with people in a different way um but i want castleman rodwell to lead the halloween parade i told him with the headless horseman what a great idea and see when we talk about that that's always what gets me so excited about it and you know i think that's what i'm really excited about and you know when the conversations started coming up and even to the point of the police i mean it said you were in my head literally when i first heard that the police charge you know what the costs for the police were and the other uh problem with town being under construction to your point i saw you know you shouldn't be taking away the events this is a great time to bring people down here and for the town and other people to tell the story about what is coming not to stop them but i'm one of the most creative people there is when there comes to challenges and solutions that are quite�� We've talked about hot air balloons over the past. We've had some crazy stuff, but that was a fun one. But downtown is always going to be evolving, right? So we're under construction now for the next couple of years. So I think something very important would be to figure out how to have these events, compromise with everybody, bring me to the table, let me talk to everybody, because I know these things. I've been working on it since 2016. Before we get to these conversations of what could or couldn't be, let me give you some really great options. Let me have the opportunity to talk to people and see what would really work well for everybody. People are going to come down here for all these events, see the excavators now, come back next summer, see framing and roofs, et cetera, come back next summer and, wow, it's here. And they're just going to think about Riverhead the next three years and coming back and seeing it. Let's go have dinner down there and see the progress. So I'm a little confused at some point. What was done last year was absolutely wonderful. Thank you. And it was absolutely successful. And every spoke to it. And sometimes on social media people are rough with us. But I've got to tell you, we got nothing but praise after that. Even from the naysayers. So I'm a little concerned about how suddenly in the last two weeks or whatever we're saying we're having, as you mentioned, difficult conversations and so forth. This was an excellent event. When something is a success, you continue to be a success. It's dollars and cents. And you guys, this could have been planned. We're investing. We're investing in downtown businesses. We need it more now than ever. Well, we're going to invest either way. I think it was where they came. We were at that meeting and they said this is something we want to look at. We want to think about is this the best. And, again, this is something that I agree with you. I mean, I've done a bunch of events myself. This could have been planned in the fall of last year and set up. And it could have been under the package. And that's what I would like to see, number one, come from this. Whatever happens this year, whatever we can or can't pull together well, is to set a precedent for us to talk about this a lot sooner. Regardless of who's sitting at this table. Put that together for all things. There's still plenty early to talk about it. And the best investment is to invest in yourself. But I also want to say before Marianna speaks, I am in the bid district. My business has a sign hanging on Main Street. And I am a Chamber of Commerce member. And never once did I have a conversation was I asked how I felt about it as a business owner within it. And I pay, you know, so it's. Their leadership was sitting at the table. And that's the leadership of those organizations. So that was my limited scope. So that's why we brought it. And that's why that's why it would have been a difficult conversation, because when it was brought up last week and there was pushback, that makes it difficult. And I think that's good. So for the record, as a big member, I can actually real quick. I'm a quick record as a big member of the Chamber. I was not asked either. But anyway, so when this discussion started happening a few months ago, I did go to the last bid meeting and spoke with bid. And. I did ask them if they had any interest in, you know, pulling off if they could be alive on 25. And I came back to the supervisor and said they didn't say no, but they were not, you know, ecstatic about it like they, you know. But it was only fair to have that conversation with them. And then that's when you had the conversation. And I met with we met with the there was the Eastern Arts and the Chamber. I was there and they all just said, hey, this is something that they were like, they said this could happen and it's not. It was just something they were like, but could we rethink it? And I said, I'll bring it up. And we brought it up and it got a little bit bigger. You know, everybody's like, oh, and I'm like, no, no, no one said that just was asking questions. You were there, correct? Yes. So let me just so I'm with the Chamber of Commerce. I stepped in on the 19th of this month. Okay. So I'm an interim director. The collaboration meeting was one of my first meetings. And I was there with the bid, East End Arts and Liz was also present. And the idea was brought to the table about how we can do this event. Right. So, you know, there were some things thrown around about the days, maybe as opposed to a Friday, put it on a Thursday. So with very little time in this role, okay, I've done the best that I could. I know I stepped into the work session last week and I was like, okay, let me go out and ask the businesses. Right. So I walked the streets of Riverhead and whatever businesses you guys were not open at the time. But I did, you know, inventory what they thought about because that's the best that I could do is bring you what they want. Right. I got no, you know, we don't take a stance as far as like, oh, we want that. You know, we think any event that's going to bring business to Riverhead, no matter where it is, we want to help. Right. That's what we want. We want to bring Riverhead. I love Riverhead. I live in Riverhead. And I spoke to the businesses, overall positive experience. The thing that was brought up the most was the day, Thursday as opposed to Friday. Totally agree. Yep. So that, which was said, great, right? There was a hard no. I'm not going to say, you know, names, but there was a hard no. I don't want this here. You know, I pay taxes. They don't, you know, I don't want it. Okay. That's one person. Who is they? It's one person. No, but I mean, this event is for the taxpayers and the community. Okay. I just. So that's what was said, right? And then the other thing that I heard from a couple of businesses is food trucks. We don't want food trucks. So I'm just bringing that back to you. You know, I don't have an opinion either way. Obviously, I understand. We go to these events. There's food trucks. But, you know, this is what, you know, Main Street, Riverhead, the. Can I just weigh in real quick on the food truck? Right. The food trucks, I think. Are. They need to be there because there are families that are bringing, you know, there are three kids and, you know, two of their little friends. They cannot afford to go into the businesses and actually sit down and have a full meal. If a family wants to go up to a hot dog truck and be able to get, you know, six hot dogs for $15, that helps them. It also is part of the experience. People like to go. Like, you know, Steve said. You know, he wants his kids to come home greasy after a hot dog. It's part of the experience. There's also families that want to go and have the sit-down experience in the restaurant. It's a little something for everybody. And I really don't think that the food trucks are taking away that much from the restaurants. I need to jump in on this because this has been a conversation for so many years since the inception. Don't worry about disagreeing with me. I'm fine. No, you're fine. You know, we're fine. Last year, very specifically, when I came to the town board and we had conversations, I was like, I'm going to go to the restaurant. I'm going to go to the restaurant. And we had conversations about this. With it moving away from the bid was the ability to make it more Riverhead-centric and making it like a taste of Riverhead, which we so successfully executed. Predominantly, the food trucks were Heinz Catering, Riverhead Business, Leroy Heinz, right? Emily's Apple Puffs, Joe Peters, Riverhead Business. Predominantly, we had Seaside Grill out on the street. We had Miles O'Meanor Pressing House on the street. We had Diggers out on the street. It was predominantly Riverhead-based businesses. And that is how we put out the event applications, with the exception of a few food vendors who had participated in the event since day one. And I kind of considered grandfathered in, because there's only so many things you can change in three months. And you need it for people to have availability. But you do. And there's food truck people. And we are very, very careful about where we put our food trucks at any event that I've done. And anybody who's worked with me knows that. I'm very careful. And in fact, I even... Curated to make sure that this food truck didn't sell what this restaurant did and space them out. And if we are to execute a shorter footprint, I would do so again. So it was... And it was predominantly Riverhead-based craftspeople and farmer's market people. We had really great vendors, because I went to the farmer's market and the crafters and the artisans and people that I've worked with on other events. So that's why people enjoyed it. And a lot of Riverhead musicians. ESA and Arts Band. Reeb. School of Rock. You know? Or musicians that are a part of it. We so focus on making this about Riverhead. And that's what I want to continue to do. Obviously, Riverhead doesn't have everything. But that's where we can sprinkle in a little bit of the extra on top. The wrestling has to do with Lucharitos. Mark LaManna. Right? Okay. So he had Lucharitos down there. Well, he's not in that building anymore. But like, if you sat and talked to me, I could sit and connect everybody, because that's how we put our events together. And the pub crawl was great. So after the festival let's go, you had... And that's the other part of it, too. Correct. So that's all the local bars and restaurants in the area getting those people that wanted to still hang around and have a good time. And we put that on all the marketing. And the last point on that with concern of, like, not doing something is all the momentum that we've gained, that we don't have to put tons and tons of money into advertising. We had to put a lot of money into advertising in 2016 to get the event off the ground. Now people are looking for it. I just have one request. And I know from the CAP, I'm the liaison for CAP, they don't want to see any count of this booth's advertising at the end. Well, if we get to a conversation where we're being hired, and I respect that, I would love to have those conversations as a recap to see, it's your, you know, it's the town of Riverhead's event, so. My final two cents, because I know time's precious, and ultimately the conversation really boils down to money, right? It is what it is. Last year was my first year, so I have nothing to measure it against except other events in other towns. Last year was a smash and success. We should not lose the momentum. Thank you guys. Thanks, each of you, for coming in. I think it's really good information. And on the money that it costs to produce an event, I just have to say there is economic data on every event like that. There is an outgoing trickle effect, not just on downtown, but events like that do pour several hundred thousand dollars into the entire community, besides creating that love of Riverhead, which we are all here for. Absolutely. So, I look forward to hearing what may or may not be next, so. I'm trying to figure out how to pay for this, is what it boils down to. Let's have a meet. I think the best thing to do is us for a sit and have a meeting. I'd like to do that. I have budgets, numbers. Thank you all, and thank you for your work. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Our next matter, thank you each and every one for your passion, and I love that. Matter surrounding our update on our code enforcement with Waskie Roswell, Downs, and Smith. Come on up. Can't change that. It has to be come on down. You're the next contestant. Justin at the table. Whatever it takes to get them down here. Little jingle bell rock. Oh, look, Justin. Fix. I love it. Justin. Making the adjustments. Get it? Justin. Good morning. Hey, good morning. Oh, you favor that end? What's the problem? I know. Okay. I appreciate you guys coming out. I do have a statement that I'd like to start with. I have kind of started a campaign on social media. Something that I campaigned for during my campaign. One of the number one complaints that I heard when I was going door to door is about overcrowded housing, what it looks like in neighborhoods. Um, myself and Councilman Rothwell have been discussing this. We did have a meeting, um, with, um, the fire Marshall with rich Downs, um, Eric Howard, Victoria from the town attorney's office, Meredith Lipinski from the assessor's office. Um, and I learned a lot from the meeting that we had and I really appreciate it. But, um, let me, let me read what my purpose is of this. And the number one thing that I want to make sure is that everybody realizes that this is about safety. That's what it all boils down to. So, um, I wanted to say that over overcrowded housing in the town of Riverhead is more than a quality quality of life issue. It is, it is a serious public safety concern. That affects. The entire community. When too many people live in unsafe, overcrowded conditions, it puts families, especially children at risk and places added strain on neighborhoods and local resources. It is unfair to our residents who work hard to maintain their homes and communities and undermines the safety and stability of all, um, who are well deserving of it. Property owners must be held accountable for maintaining. Maintain. Safe, legal condition of the sorry, legal living conditions. No child should have to grow up in an environment that is overcrowded, hazardous and potentially life threatening. These situations increase the risk of fire hazards, health issues and emergency response challenges. There is a problem. This is a problem we can no longer ignore. I am committed to addressing overcrowded housing head on through. Stronger. Enforcement smarter policies and meaningful community input so we can protect our residents, support our neighborhoods and ensure Riverhead remains a safe place for all that call at home. Let me be clear. I will not tolerate the conditions that we have had take hold in our neighborhoods from waiting river to Laurel. We are not just talking about overcrowded housing. We are talking about a pattern of neglect and disregard for our community. We are not just talking about overcrowded housing. We are talking about a pattern of neglect and disregard for our community. our community. Cars parked across lawns, trash piling up, multiple overflowing garbage containers and cans that are left staying out for days after pickup. This is not acceptable. These are not minor inconveniences. These are violations that compromise safety, diminish quality of life, and contribute to the blight of our neighborhoods. Our residents deserve better. Our families deserve to feel safe and proud of where they live. I am committed to making sure that this happens. We will enforce our codes, we will hold property owners accountable, and we will restore the standards that our community expects and deserves. With that being said, I believe that we have a plan of action moving forward and I would like to turn this over to Councilman Rothwell because he actually came up with some very good ideas of how we will be able to work together within our community to address this issue. Councilman Rothwell So thank you very, very, very much, Councilman Roski. So it's been great to sit down and work with you and other board members as well. That when we talk about overcrowded housing, it's really more of an umbrella. It's not just about counting the number of individuals in a particular home. It's about what happens through the quality of life of neighbors, you know, the way rental properties may be maintained or lack of not being properly maintained. We always look at fire, police safety matters and life conditions. But one of the things in which we talked about was how to address it overall because it's an umbrella. It's not just about counting individuals in a home because that could be debatable often with the state of New York building codes about what's permissible in a home. But one of the things that we looked at is that our code enforcement department does its absolute best and I always commend Rich Downs and the work that the entire department does. But the reality is that you are understaffed. Okay? And so that's one of the things that we talked about at length. And so if we could agree as a board, and I think we have come to that agreement, is that often the work in which you do is reactive. You're receiving complaints and responding to those complaints. And there's not necessarily available time or enough hours in a day for your code enforcement officers to head out on the street and let's start from the east side of the town and work over every street over to the west and vice versa to every street in the middle. We were literally highlighting in that we've attended and we've marked off, we've taken a drive through every street in the town because that's really what we need to do in the long run. There always seems to be a fear of, well, that means putting more money in the budget, hiring more individuals to do that. So how do we do that? Rich and I worked together, I hope you don't mind date, ourselves here, but over about 30 years ago, 35 years ago, we worked together. We were both code enforcement officers for the town of Brookhaven. And sometimes it's about just going to the simplicity of taking some of the tactics that were used back then and still applying them today. With the simple means of that, we were part-time, at least I was part-time employees. We worked 19 and three quarter hours a week. We weren't given health benefits and so forth. So there wasn't a large expense taken forth by the town. Rich and I worked together. We worked part-time. We worked more than the age of the town. We worked more than the age of the town. We worked more than the age of the town. We worked more than the age of the town. We worked more than the age of the town. But we were sent on a test to visit every town park. We had different regions of where we worked. The daytime shift communicated with the nighttime shift. They said, I went to these parks and you follow up with these ones. We had to comb each neighborhood. We were looking for those unregistered vehicles, the pools without fencing around it, the cars on the lawn. Even back then 30 years ago was a problem throughout. We used to come back and we would sit down and say, how many tickets did you write today what did you do and well this i wrote this one and back then this one was 125 and this was a 200 ticket and so forth and now they're significantly more thanks to councilman kern where we keep raising our fines which is great so the income is there so the reason we say all this is that our positions back then they were um self-sustaining in terms of like it didn't cost the taxpayers any money what we were writing in fines and what we were bringing in um through through uh taxes and even on the slow times we took a ride through the fire zones and we went to home people we wrote you know just like the t rtco's do we wrote tickets to occupy wherever we were we were we were scanning the town is what we were doing and i think we need to get back to that and so if we as a board agreed okay we're going to put forth more part-time code enforcement officers to actually go out on patrol the town to start going out there and being now for the first time proactive not waiting for one resident to complain against another resident because there's always a fear of that and how it go back is it retribution are they going to know that it's me instead of us being out there if people can call us and point out the problems to us often i you know i think all of us as members of the town board go out there people tap us you got to get to that house so you need to go over there and then we call you and go here's another complete rich and then but if we can be proactive and we get out there so i i i firmly support that we invest we hire additional part-time employees immediately we send them out on the town and we can watch i would guarantee that they will be self-sustaining they will cover their own costs out there through means of fines and summonses that that are put out there and i think the residents i know will embrace it because the the there becomes a quality of life issue in terms of well when we're attacking the visible obvious things such as such as litter and and and um you know parking all throughout the ones we've put out there and we've put some great lords andrew you've written some great stuff from the fire thing about about fire safety on a lot of things and now but it's just about having one more person out there to respond and be proactive and start looking for those things that we're seeing and then we get to address it that way so i think that i think we came up with a great hours that they would be working are actually the hours that you have the cars at at home not during the day where you know everybody's out at work uh where they're they're home at night where they're probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite a lot of the time are probably quite quite a lot of the time are probably [transcription gap]
I drive down the road and I see two or three vans that have the same logo on them, that they're all from a plumbing supply company that is not part of the household. And there's also businesses throughout the town that are operating that are really hurting our small mom-and-pop shops that are around that shouldn't be there. And I really think that, like Councilman Rothwell said, that this will be self-sustaining and will actually help to create revenue that we will be able to have code enforcement bring on more code enforcement officers down the road. We have to start somewhere. And I think that this is the time to do it. I think that this is a great plan to put it together. And I'd like to hear if you have anything to say about it, either one of you. Sure, yeah, certainly. And I appreciate everything you said, because I've actually lived it. I've been in lots of overcrowded houses, and we've dealt with them, you know, accordingly. We get a lot of complaints relating to overcrowded houses, but we get a lot of complaints of property maintenance. Property maintenance is a big problem. And to Councilman Rothwell's point, a lot of times people assume something's an overcrowded house, but we're bound by the New York state laws. So we have to adhere to the New York state laws when it comes to occupancy. In some cases, they are overcrowded. In some cases, they're not. So that just depends on the situation. But usually, we find an overcrowded house spins off into other violations, such as property maintenance, unregistered vehicles, parking on front lawns, garbage litter. All of those things spin off into that. So we try to keep on top of that. And certainly, we appreciate having more people. I don't want to say, you know, we don't need more people, but we do. But, you know, I caution just against that because, you know, I want more people. But every action that we do in staffing has an equal opposite reaction. So with having more people, we do need an extra clerical person also to accommodate the tickets and the things that happen on the backside of writing tickets clerically. So we need that, too. So we did address that in your conversation, that we would be monitoring towards what the cost is of these individual enforcement officers to go out. Mm-hmm. And we're not going to sit back and let you drown in work. But we watch it and we say, okay, there's additional revenue coming in. Time to expand on the clerical side of things. And we also spoke that large volumes of summonses, cleaning up the town may increase a substantial amount of work in the legal department. Absolutely. And so, you know, Victoria does an amazing job. And so she has been great in court. But maybe she'll need some help. And she's going to need some help down the road. And we're not going to sit back and let anybody drown. But we can't be afraid to start taking the time. Because the residents deserve it. They deserve for a second eyes and ears to be out there that they don't need to report everything. We can be proactive and say we are cleaning up the town, going through it. And we're doing right. We're not out there to penalize any good part of resident. But when you say about, oh, overcrowded housing leads to the cars in the driveway, that's not fair to the neighbor across. The street, the neighbor on either side, the neighbor behind. And that is our job to create quality of life. And so we can't be afraid to invest in it. It might bring a lot more work. But there will be more people. We'll keep adjusting it. And it will work. I totally agree with what you're saying. And I see it. I know from just my standpoint, when I first started working for the town 28, 29 years ago, we only had two code enforcement officers. But, you know, now we have seven. So, you know, we have. We've built it up, you know, to the best we can right now, budgetary constraints and everything. But, you know, adding extra officers is always a good thing. And I appreciate that. You know, it just needs to happen. I think this is. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. Oh, no. Go ahead. I was going to say, we need to show the public that we're not just about writing code. Absolutely. And writing laws. If you don't have people to enforce them, what's the point? So it's really necessary to add the staff. And this is obviously a great idea. We've had this conversation. We've had this conversation recently. And I'm glad you guys have as well. And this is continuation. And we need to look at adding an office staff person for you part-time, as well as these part-time people, whether it starts out seasonal or whether we jump right into a completely part-time. We need to find office space for them in this building. We need to look at, you know, we're going to. The list pendants was removed yesterday. EPCAL is going to be this thing. And one of the things we need to do is we need to look at making sure that we're creating an environment at EPCAL that's, you know, up to code. And letting those people know that, hey, we don't, like you said, we don't want to hurt anybody. We want to bring quality of life. So I'm excited about this. Thank you both for, you know, doing this and making sure it's coming around. And I look forward to the quality of life that we bring through this. And I don't want to do it, like, part-time bits and pieces. I think we need to dive right in. And I think that Councilman Waski and I talking about, you know, let's get right into it. Let's, you know, we were thinking about perhaps two full-time, excuse me, two part-time employees. You know, we were thinking about the evening shifts, like something like, you know, whether it be, you know, 6 to 10, 6 to 12, something in that matter. And that we'll work with the legal department with Council Howard in terms of putting in the resolutions to establish and to put out to hire these individuals. And I think that because I think it's. We don't want to just do it bits and pieces. We want to be able to comb the whole town as a whole and start addressing quality of life issues throughout it. And I think we'll be very successful. And we will monitor it, you know, as we go along. But I think let's get right to it. Right? Two part-time people. Will you need that additional staff, like the desk person with those two people? Or are you going to be able to sufficiently do that? Because we want to, you know. No, I would definitely need probably a part-time secretarial position. And, you know, possibly. We were in discussions a little bit about maybe having, you know, we're out of space in there. Yeah. Having maybe some sort of situation where we have a satellite office or something. You know, we can make it work. So we need, we really need three part-time positions. We have the two code. Yes. All right. So we know we're going to. Even to start out, if we could immediately hire two part-time. And by part-time, we're talking about a few hours, as Councilman Rothwell said, you know, on certain time periods. And just to be able to get them to be able to log into IPS, to be able to put the complaints in there. So that there's a record of, you know, I did see this. Here's some pictures. You know, if somebody does call and say, I have a complaint about X, Y, Z, you know. We're able to look at that, you know, your office and say, oh, you know, we do have documentation that there is something going on there. So now it's time to, you know, bring out the full-time. Code enforcement. They would work in counter hours of, like, so we have other code enforcers that start very early in the morning and kind of end in the afternoon. And this will be so they could utilize the same car materials so that they got means to get out there and get on the road. And so the, you know, evening of whether it be, I'll let you confirm whether it be 6 to 9, 6 to 12, whatever it may be, you know, to set those hours up. Yeah. But it can work. So now it's good. We've got enforcement taking care of the morning. Our late night crew might see something. And then the message is passed on to our officers in the morning, a little more experience, and they begin to tackle things. So it's better. Yeah. And I certainly appreciate the comparison that you did with respect to complaint-driven and just being more proactive. You know, yes, we have been a little more complaint-driven only because we're, you know, spread thin. And we get a lot of complaints. So we try to deal with each one individually. And sometimes it's hard to hit every single house that you see on your way to a complaint. But, I mean, with hiring more people, I think we can accomplish that. And I think it would be a great thing for us. Do you find that your complaints are coming in verbally into your office through phone calls, e-mails, or are they going online? It's kind of two-fold. We get them through the online complaint system, and then we also get the phone calls. Because my thought was to establish a residential community advisory committee, that some of those complaints, we can come into that committee and be collected and then brought on to you. I know that when I put out on my social media with my town e-mail address to please contact me, I received phone calls, e-mails, running into people in the grocery stores. There are people that want to come forward and they're, you know, they're reluctant to call the town. It's a little bit intimidating. So I would really like to find a way to include the community within.
important to that point there is a quality of life committee when I was liaison people did play with it would send photographs addresses and stuff so you might want to utilize them is that still yeah we do have that today yeah yeah okay can I the only thing I want to just have to speak to Eric about it a little bit maybe you can pop in here it just worries me about having outside people come in with respect to complaints because it's sort of a confidentiality with the complaint complainants or addresses that's why we're here to discuss it that's what this is all about that's my only concern one thing to this that's why it's very important to me now just with your department but every department takes it serious you know that you've got to increase the fines every single year you can't be having fines from ten years ago or fifteen years ago or fifteen years ago or fifteen years ago or fifteen years ago and expect that it's going to help your budget or help the taxpayers right do you utilize it all I've talked to and I would say this to you know to the public that if you see somebody that has like six garbage cans every garbage day outside of the house report the address to you you speak to sanitation let the garbage truck take a photograph so now you have you know I'm saying there are other ways that currently we get the complaints directly from the carter they come in and they do take pictures of us yeah okay yes I'll let you um that I've got no no no because you're here to speak was there a specific question I mean I think rich pretty much covered with confidentiality thing right now right now when a complaint comes in it's treated as confidential so you know the person who has complaint filed against them can't we don't release the name of the complaint complainant that's something that they would eventually get if tickets were written and they would get it in mandatory discovery if it's over in Justice Court yeah but it's a matter of policy we don't want to do that because we feel like that could have sort of a chilling effect on reporting the complaints or the issues that they're saying I get him and I get him and I just text him the address I don't say where I got it from for the quality of life you are I'm sorry I don't know if you're here for the quality of life I am you are I'm sorry I don't know if you're here for the quality of life I am you are so alternatively we we've done this before in the past we used to have something called it was a separate line that we had in our office and it used to be called hit line housing investigative task force it just sounded good good acronym but that line was separate and those that line was only for overcrowded complaints so it was more a priority line so you know our secretary of staff gets overwhelmed with all sorts of different complaints it's hard for them to get to the point where they're like oh I don't know what's going on with this everything but I guess if there's a designated line in the office that's you know something like that a hit line that they would check that first and then we would get right out on it you know red phone Bob says good stuff good stuff no I just say that we've come a long way with code enforcement although in the last two years we added the standby pay for them to be on call so when we're out at these fires where there's overcrowded houses or fire stuff I can get them into the house without a warrant or anything like that and I think that's a good thing to do is to get them into the house without a warrant or anything like that that helps the investigative process because sometimes it's hard to gain access to really build a case on these houses so that's one of the things that we do with the fire service I know the local departments are happy about that yeah and quite often Andrew just calls us out you know when he sees those conditions especially in the basements yeah unfortunately it's when I'm there it's usually too late we want to try to get ahead of this before something bad happens but I'm CPS being called like when you go to some of these houses and I you know children they don't necessarily have any voice besides their parent and a lot of times those voices are being silenced and you know I as I said in my statement no child should grow up in some of the environments that they that they are being forced to grow up and because they don't have any other alternative and I do understand that that housing is it's expensive and it's hard to find housing and we do have a housing crisis and that also needs to be addressed but I want to know who the voice for the kids are that that are subjected to this environment reporters we make referrals not just to cps but also adult protective services i i find that i call them pretty frequently too elderly um but we you know we can make those referrals the police department will make those referrals yeah and as of uh two weeks ago we had us we had a house had had an issue with that we did notify cps excellent so yeah i just want to make sure that somebody is advocating for those children yes absolutely i'm glad you're even talking about it so that the public understands the work in which you're doing on a day-to-day basis yeah and we've made some great strides with our uh in 2022 with our rental code for with respect to overcrowded housing so you know we also have that tool on our tool belt so and i just want to make sure that the property owner is the one that is responsible for this i i don't i want to make sure that they're getting the maximum fines possible for allowing the garbage the parking you know if there is overcrowded housing the conditions of the property should the onus should be on the property owner well we always usually write the property owner but in overcrowded situations i've seen the opposite effect i've also seen the tenants causing the overcrowding so right but we have we have written should still be responsible so we've written both actually because in those situations he's right both be aware of what's happening and his ability yep they always get written first but we also write the tenants if if the tenants have created the situation we have a lot of sub renting going on so very easy to turn a blind eye to a property that you're not showing up at every day yeah yep i've seen complete labyrinths and basements that were just generated by the tenants along you know with no knowledge to the to the owner you know that's not to say he's not going to get written but uh you know it was caused by the tenants so they will get written also so yeah i think that's a really good idea right right the whoever owns the property yeah it's really who's ever responsible you know we figured that out should be responsible that's your property you're the one that's renting that property out to somebody else yes i'm not saying we're not writing the problem i know writing the property owner i'm adamant about this i'm angry i've been saying everybody pays everybody pays
is the tenant that may not have the money to actually pay the fines but the property owner will so that is very important yes very good point let's look at the files okay making sure it gets prosecuted all the way through yeah yeah well i mean i'll just say one of one of the issues is uh sometimes the property owner is an llc so you can write them tickets and get served on the secretary of state first court date comes nobody shows up second court date comes nobody shows up third court date comes we can make an application for a default judgment we're not getting a person in in the courtroom to you know saying you need to fix this this or this so in those situations we have in the past you know we'll write the tenant especially if it's a property maintenance type issue where you're allowing excessive garbage to accumulate on the porch or inside of the house or something like that and sometimes that'll finally make its way back to a person that's a sometimes that'll finally make its way back to a person that is responsible for that LLC so just I mean it's a lot of times not quite as clear-cut you know if there is an individual that we can write the tickets to as the landlord we will do that just bring up the LLC issue because we see a lot of that particularly so I know they're trying to do a crackdown on the LLC is because too many people are hiding behind the LLC and that hopefully is coming very soon to a change I see that in other aspects of other businesses that that's an issue do you win on these default judgments we can't lose on a default judge okay so facetious and I'm gonna tell you why because I'm gonna tell you why because that I want to know what that fine is to that LLC maybe we need to triple it will be typically it's money in the bank typically when we move for a default judgment it's for the maximum fine the problem after that is just collection you know it'll come up on a property search that the LLC is attached to the property but sometimes you'll see you know they do deeds between LLC to a brand new LLC that doesn't require title search right so sometimes it's a little bit of a shell game we've had a couple of those in the past and the LLCs all come back to one office in Hop Hog or something so I think Victoria is still trying to we need to find to be high enough to do all that work with respect to just what Eric said and when we come across the really terrible overcrowded housing we normally just don't go through Justice Court right we go to Supreme Court and yeah yes so 1944. Thank you I just asked for counselor also like I said I'm a little bit of a I'm a little bit of a
liens on the property then if with the LLC yes so that ultimately if they're trying to transfer this at some point we'll have all of these liens from the judgments yeah the problem the problem there is if the LLC declares bankruptcy or something and then it just becomes it becomes a matter of chasing and how much how much office you know attorney time we wanted to vote to chasing it so just sounds like state legislation legislation may be needed for this kind of set scam basically yeah I mean there's just there's a lot of ways to evade payment well thank you councilwoman Boski put this like into the spotlight or recently especially through social media and everything but we're not just talking about it I think we've come with a definitive plan of action to take part and we're gonna watch its progress and I think it's gonna be great progress and I think together we're gonna make a difference in quality of life and revenge thank you thank you thank you thank you and again your offices are doing a great job we're just getting them help for our for our next work session item we will be discussing matters running related to the town of River at showmobile with councilman Kern Rothwell and Kim that there is our engineering whistler test Devin do you have the printouts on this oh you have them yeah oh attached to the packet are they no no I said they weren't sent to you all I have is the one piece I don't know what you were sending the handout print something I'm sorry Devin I'm sorry about that my favorite subject the showmobile Ohhead
hour event well yeah oh that that helps oh do you have one for everybody oh i wouldn't have told them well i don't know what you were planning on handing out but shannon okay shannon handed me this okay that that's going to stop devin yeah i don't need to see that i saw that the other day that one is the one you asked shannon to update we we made a presentation and i guess it was november of 2024 to the town board back then if you recall and um we had made a recommendation on what we thought made sense to raise the rates on the show more you know based on say that again i'm sorry i missed did you say you made this presentation yeah were you back in um november of 2024 um we we had presented to the board uh a discussion about the fees you know the fact that what we joined the town board for was to raise the rates on the show more based on the fees and the charges doesn't really cover the actual expenses of the showmobile so we looked at what you're looking at now we looked at shannon did some research and looked at what the other towns are doing you know as far as what brookhaven charges southern county charges and southampton charges and if you look at what we charge at the top it's a low amount now the number that you have at the bottom highlighted in yellow is an actual cost to the town based on we took an average because it really depends on the employees that go out and they're going to be able to pay you know the employees to go out everybody's salary is a little different so we took a we took an average um and that includes the municipal garage to tow the showmobile to the location the guys to set it up the guys to attend it because we leave them there for safety purposes and then of course to break it down and bring it back to the garage so the typical expense for a 10-hour event is the number you're looking at for a six-hour event um shannon had worked it out it's about 1400 you know but even a six-hour event by the time they get there and set it up you know if it's a six-hour event it's 10 hours because it takes time for the garage to get it there to get it set up so you know you're somewhere between 1500 and two thousand dollars every time the show bill goes out um yeah what southampton is charging is what we were looking at recommending back in um back in november of 2024 um is five hundred dollars for the first four hours and they charge fifty dollars every additional hour but they also have other like the staffing fees and such you know all kinds of additional charges so we took that number and tried to work it into uh to simplify it a little because they have different things available for it sound systems and a generator and you know things we don't offer so we had recommended 550 for the first four hours 125 each additional hour and a hundred dollars for the sound system that we have that usually goes out with the showmobile so you know if you look at those numbers and you look at them for a 10-hour event it works out pretty close to what shannon has on the form you know it basically covers our expenses for the most part so the showmobile was really was initially purchased for town public events and what's happened is it's gone to a ton of private events and i'll be i think i'm being conservative when uh it was calculated out that we lost we spent about sixty thousand dollars on you know a lot of private events last year which is something that you know then you look at the year before a year before that et cetera et cetera and we need to put we we either need to charge everyone the fee you know the flat fee or just you know do it public events or sell the showmobile and that's why a lot of towns don't have showmobiles you look how many towns in suffolk county have a showmobile i i agree with you bob i like your idea of selling it because frankly after we just had the discussion about the part-time code enforcement officers the money that we're spending with lending lending this out and the grounds crew having to maintain it because we can't just hand just so the public understands we can't just hand the showmobile over to tell and tell people call us when you're ready to have us pick it up they have to stay with it and not to be a grinch because if you this the snowmobile the snowmobile that you get when it's snowing the showmobile right is really just a stage in our case it has a background we also have the ability for lighting so when you look at the cost for someone to rent um risers because that's what the showmobile is it's just run it's a stage with rise and fall and then you have to pay for it is there a stage and you rent risers and steps thank you so you know when you yeah when you look at this per day an eight foot by four foot stage is 110 dollars that's nothing so if you need it if you need it twice that size you're paying 220 dollars um so it's really very inexpensive for non-profits etc etc and i will add that since the town square is not going to be available for two years i would highly recommend any any non-profit organizations start to book granite park granite park has a stage and it has electricity and that's a good place to do your non-profit event you know and it can handle 500 people down there um so again how many we're well of all the non-profit events you know and i think that's quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget quite ahead of the budget
It goes out to firematic, not-for-profit, civic, homeowners associations, federal organizations, a lot of use at the Cowlitz National Cemetery, you know, events there, public educational institutions and religious organizations. We've stopped letting it go out to the private sector. It didn't seem to make sense. What's the date of that? That is 2004. Yeah. It's old. Yeah, I know. It's gone around and around and around, you know, as far as do you charge not-for-profit. There was a time when we weren't charging not-for-profits, but then it became arguments, well, you didn't charge that civic. It's always been a battle all the way through. I am fully supportive of not-for-profits, but I do think that there are sponsorships available that people that believe in their cause that would be willing to sponsor the cost of having the showmobile. Or partially, you know, you can get a few sponsors. Oh, yeah.
it goes out you know it could be a different amount but the numbers that Lisa was recommending are based on based on an average so in a typical year we may make a few dollars and on another year we may lose a few I was just gonna say did you say $60,000 that we put out last year yes for that's gonna cover those part-time no cross everything the cost of I just want to bring up one more point that was brought up the other point is that we were letting it out so much for free for nothing no charge that now you have town employees a lot of them who have second jobs it's been incredibly difficult to get staff to even stamp the showmobile there was even a discussion about getting creating a little team but Dave's about ski is concerned with that with the the fact that is hydraulics involved and you just can't have anybody it's a little day it's game you got a potential there so they're trained to train on how to operate it and the sales system is shot so the organizations that you mentioned it is so inexpensive to rent risers for the day and it comes with a staircase I mean it's so inexpensive it's just been people are used to the show mobile I love the show mobile don't get me wrong I'm not a big fan of the show mobile don't get me wrong but I don't think it's fair the taxpayers that we're we waving the fees year after year and they don't little do they know they are participating in the event financially so if the expense of the use for town employees are saying was sixty thousand last year what a quite a�� what amount did you woodhead Ra��head g gheadhead gheadhead gheadhead gheadhead If you take the $2,000, the number that Shannon has on the bottom of your sheet, it goes out about 15 times a year. Yes, Dave, it's more than that. That's what she told me. She books it, so I don't know. We'd have to confirm that. But that number times, if it was 20, that's $40,000? Yeah. I thought on her memo it said $12,500. We don't know how much it's bringing in. So what is the net loss of this on a yearly basis, I guess? Well, you charge, I think it's $100, right, to go out. So it's, yeah. That's laughable. Yeah, it's not, you know. And often we waive the fees. I think the intent of that was there was a time when it's used became very restricted over the years. We've had this thing since, I believe we bought it like in the 90s. It all started with, I came here in 1990, and the county of Suffolk had given their old one in like the 70s to the town of Riverhead. And in the mid-90s. It just fell apart. And the board at that time decided to buy a new one. So we've had it since, you know, since the mid-90s. But during that whole period of time, there was a time when the decision by previous boards was that it would not be used by anything other than a town of Riverhead function. You know, parades, you know, things that we do in-house. Not the non-for-profits, not for the civics. I think it's also about holding firm to the cost. So I had a dilemma last year where our shelter. One was already booked to one association. And then another one wanted it at the same time. And so I was reaching around to the surrounding towns going through it just like everybody else to find out what was available. And I spoke to a legislator for Caracapa. And then he got one available from the county. But he said, right, Ken, we've got to pay for it, you know. And so it is. And in the end, blessings to him. But him and myself split the cost for the non-profit just to assist them. And it was a great event. But regardless. The county was like, this is the amount due. And it's not, you know, it's not up for even he as legislators or other members to say, we're going to loan it out for free. We're going to waive this. Really stand by it. Yeah. Because we've got the overall cost about me. But I mean, if you charge the actual cost or as close as we can get to it. And you find that its usage drops off greatly because people aren't willing to pay that. We can do it. Sell it. Yeah. We could look at that. Because we're booked pretty much already through to. Almost the end of this year. I mean, come January 2nd because of what you were just saying, Ken. You know, there's always a competition sometimes for certain events on the same weekend. So we'll find that on January 2nd, January 3rd. People are out of the door, you know, to book it. So we're booked pretty much. I will say though that. That sounds like more than 15 times. I will say if we've made a commitment. Check with Janet. If we have made a commitment to organizations already, it's not proper ethical to go back. Right. It's not proper ethical to go back. Right. It's not proper ethical to go back. It's not proper ethical to go back and say timeout, stop. You got to, you know. But I think certainly this is a code that should be enacted essentially that would be effective such as January 1st or something when the off season is. And so that everybody is aware going forward this is going to be the cost. But I don't believe that we're going to start calling people and going. Remember you booked that one three months ago? Yeah. We now want $2,000 for it, you know. Would it be beneficial for us to sell the showmobile and with the proceeds from that purchase, the smaller stage area, a used one from somewhere, just for the town of Riverhead to have it? Just for our town events because it is beneficial when we do have our town events. And we have a lot of them. You know, to have something in-house so that, you know, we're not scrambling. I don't know what you'd get for it. I think we paid 80-something for it in 1990. It's probably double that now. So, you know, if you could, I'm just going to guess we might be able to get $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. If we sold it somewhere in that range. So, you know, one option is you just keep it for town events because it is nice for the parades and things. To the councilwoman's point, though, right, if we did sell it, we could, I mean, what people are using the showmobile for a stage. So we would still provide staging, right? And it would be, you don't need, you know, you set it up. It's got a staircase. It doesn't have a sound system. So they have to bring their own sound system anyway. No, but I'm talking about strictly using it for in-house Town of Riverhead events. Just the, you know, to bring the staging up so that we're just a little bit higher for whatever we're doing. Whether we, you know. And still, some of them are going to ask who's going to pick it up. How's it going to get there? Who's going to set it up? Who's going to take it down? Bring it back. And it's still going to be a cost. No, there's no question it would be a cost. But it would be a lot less because the equipment. Well, actually, I shouldn't say that. Because we're paying the overtime. But you wouldn't need people to stay there with it. There's a difference. Yeah. No, no. I get it. Again, by the time you get a guy on a Saturday to come out and leave and to come back again. Yeah. I think this is a really good conversation. I think you bring up a good thing. Not going back. Not recharging people. Setting a fee schedule going forward. Yep. Whenever we enact that. I think that's really good stuff. This is great. Looking at the probability of whether we sell this, keep this, use it for Town events. Definitely has to be on the radar. This is really good stuff. Thank you. If they raise the fee and they don't use it, then it works for me. All right. Ken, thank you so much for stopping in. I will continue this conversation. Oh, sorry. Bob's got one more thing. Can you send to us the total number of events booked and also give us the last date that is booked? Because that could give us some idea of when we might start the new fee. Sure. I can do that. Yeah. I'll get you the total. Thanks, Ken. All right. That will end our opening. All right. That part of our open session, we'll move into resolutions today with our Deputy Supervisor Higgins.
Just a few resolutions. Good afternoon to the board. Everybody's ready to go? We'll get started? Yes. Okay. Resolution number one, Water District Capital Project number 82605, National Grid Hydrant Relocation Mill Road Budget Adoption. Resolution number two, Water District Capital Project 82303, Budget Adjustment. Number three, Capital Project number 44038, Downtown Alleyway Lighting Enhancements Closure.
Number four, ADAPTS Budget Adjustment for Town Hall Capital Project number 62204. Can you just explain this a little bit? Yeah. Let's just have some details on this one. Yeah. So we can ask the... I don't want the CDA director to come forward, but my understanding is that we had used CDBG funds as well as some other funds for this.
Hello. So we wound up using Community Development Block Grant funding and EECGB funding, which is from New York State. Okay. When we got the grant from the county... It was right around COVID, and shortly thereafter, the pricing of the lighting doubled. So we weren't able to use this funding in time. We had to back into a different funding source, which we did, and so we're closing this one out. Oh, so this is for lighting? It's the riverfront lighting, yeah. The Heidi Bear Way. So just is there... Is the $25,000 available even on a smaller scale project? Is it grant money? Is it being returned? Essentially, is that... It's getting returned, yes. Okay. So... Nothing even on a smaller scale like we do? We can reapply. This funding is available annually, and we generally use it. This is the first time this has ever happened, but when we talked to Ken, the lighting price literally doubled, and we couldn't... We didn't have the money to then execute the project in time. We were able to get additional funding and other funding to do the project, so this money wasn't able to... So there's a timeframe on these things, and this one we could not meet. I wasn't there, and I'm sorry. Okay. No, I was just saying, so is it something in which... And forgive me for asking. Can it be applied to other things like lighting alongside Suffolk Theatre? That alleyway is still relatively dark. Like, can it... Or was this a specific location, a specific project? It would be location specific. We can and have applied for additional funding for that project. We did the South Alleyway lighting project, which is almost complete. Okay. Thank you. And we're still completed now with the same funding, and we have plans for this round. We've gotten this funding annually. This project just got waylaid by the price increases. I'm going to see if we could use it for lights at the Duck Ponds in Weenie River. Well, we have another resource for that, too, so we're good with that, and we try not to ever let this happen, but this one was an unavoidable situation with the funding. I just want to ask, did this have something to do with the fact that the poles had to be replaced or something? There was an issue with the 11 poles. It literally was, and Ken could really address this better, it literally was almost a doubling of the cost from the time of the application to the time when the project was ready to execute, and there was just no other funding to get it done. And so we tried to figure out how to patch it together, which we wound up doing, but in the process of patching it together, the timeframe for this funding expired. Okay. Thanks, Ken. Thanks, Dylan. Before you run away, I'm going to ask you about the next resolution, too. Okay, I'll wait right here. What is that? Yeah, you can just read it. Just flip the... Oh, did adoption for capital project 72606, River and Roots Playground Rehabilitation? Yes, this is the same funding, downtown revitalization funding, through Suffolk County. We partnered with the BIDMA on this project. It took a little bit of time to get a contract. We finally have the contract. The BIDMA's partnered with us for 36 months. Okay. We have the BIDMA's partnered with us for 37,000. The rest of it is grant. It's the playground right behind the comfort station in Grangeville, the one right next to the community garden. So it's where the BIDMA is. Tell us a little bit what they're doing, like just for the public? The project, they have a very large tree in there, and there's a lot of the equipment is older, and the surface was not in good condition. So this will give us a new playground surface, a spongy... You see the... You see them in the other playgrounds, a spongy surface. It's a rubberized map. And some new equipment, so a total refresh on that playground. I think it'll be a good project. So this came up at the rec committee. They were real concerned because this park is listed with the rec committee, and they didn't know anything about that. Yeah. And they questioned why the bid is... This should come out of the rec... This funding should go into the rec department funding. Actually... So the way these DTR grants work is we have to partner with a not-for-profit. So the town is not a not-for-profit. We cannot do the application on our own. So every single one of these, we partner with the bid, we partner with the chamber, we partner with civic associations to do them. And most of the time, we match them with community development block grant funding because in the downtown area in particular, it's a low to moderate income area, so that's a readily available resource. It's a readily available resource that we have kind of on hand, so it works out well. Rec department, that's been a thing. We haven't had the opportunity really to communicate as well as we would like to. I think we're doing that now. Liz is now in our department, and so we're working hand in hand with rec to make sure we're not having crossovers or doing things in duplicate. But this was something that the BIDMA had asked for. Okay. Maybe Liz could just write... I think we had something to Ashley to distribute to the committee because they... Of course. All right. Thank you. In fairness, the committee... You're talking about the recreation committee? Yeah. But they're only supposed to advocate for funds that are obtained through parks and rec fees. They're not running the recreation department. No, no. But they do... When they have funds, they allocate it to a park. That's all. So all they want to do... And the issue is, they want to do it. They want to do it.
They just want to be aware of this. That's how it all happened. They're not saying, don't do it. And you're not wrong. The communication needs to be strong between us and them, and it is becoming stronger. And I think we're in good condition that way. We are doing the same scenario for Whitting River at the duckponds. That is correct. Yes. We'll officially inform the recreation committee that we're working for funding for the Whitting River duckponds. I don't think that BIDMA needs to do further on that. I think it's a good thing.
No, they send us a check, and we will then bid the playground equipment, get it installed, and then once we get that done, we send to the county for reimbursement, and they will send us a check. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. So resolution number six, budget adjustment for new sign purchase for East End Arts Council. Number seven, budget adjustment for Justice Court 2025-2026 J-CAP grant funds. Number eight, ratifies budget adjustment for 2025 audit of CDA-EPCAL by PKAF O'Connor Davies LLP. Number nine, approve sewer district request for new sign purchase for East End Arts Council. Number 10, approve sewer district request for change order number one related to the contract S-203-213, East Main Street sewer improvements. Number 10, approve sewer district request for change order number two related to contract S-203-213, East Main Street sewer improvements. Both of those resolutions are related to, as I understand it, the superintendent is here, but to the spill that had occurred, I guess it's a month and a half ago. I guess it's a month and a half, two months ago now. So this is related, change order is related to that incident. The next couple of resolutions, so it's going to be 11, 12, and 13, I understand this morning, from the superintendent of the sewers and the town attorney's office that suggested that these be pulled. And maybe Tim can come up and explain further why that is, but we'll just read them so the public's aware of the three that, as I understand it, are not going to be in the queue. So number 11, approve sewer district request for change order number two related to the contract E, electrical construction, RDSD-2202 project. Number 12, change order number two related to contract P, plumbing construction, RDSD-2202 project. And then number 13, change order number three related to contract G, general construction. And Tim Allen can maybe just further expand upon that. We have some. The change orders were because of the cost increases because it was bid out over two years ago. But we're having a little bit of issue with EFC funding for it. But we're going to have to raise the total cost now of that project. We talked about it last week in the session. You did? What's that? Yeah, you did. Yeah, so that's what it's really for. But we don't have commitment through EFC yet for the change. So that's why we pulled. So we have to work by the contract. Okay, so resolution 14 accepts donation of ice cream cakes for senior center 2026. I would like to be there when the ice cream cakes are delivered. Number 15 accepts donation from Riverhead Building Supply for PAL. Good Dale. Yes. Entire Good Dale family always. Number 16 accepts donation from William G. Pomeroy Foundation for purchase of a historic marker. Okay. Number 17 amends resolution 2026-69. Number 18 authorizes the police department to apply for funding. There is no match for that grant, so the board's aware. Number 19 sets the fees for the 2026 spring summer brochure. Can we just have a little discussion? So I talked a little bit to Councilman Kern. But so these are the fees. Okay. So these are the fees that 2026 fee that a resident pays. So for an example, to have an archery class, a resident pays $160. And then when it says a non-resident fee of $10, I'm guessing it's $160 plus $10. Yes. So do we all agree that $10 is a significant for a non-resident? It seems like a low number for somebody not in the town to participate in some of the events. So I'm just, when we're looking for a non-resident, I'm just going to say that $10 is a significant for a non-resident. Okay. Number 20 accepts donation from Riverhead Building Supply for PAL. Good Dale. Number 19 accepts donation from Riverhead Building Supply for purchase of a historic marker. There is no match for that grant, so the board's aware. Okay. So I'm just, when we're looking for a non-resident, I'm guessing it's $160 plus $10. Yes. That's my understanding. So do we all agree that $10 is a significant for a non-resident? It seems like a low number for somebody not in the town to participate in some of the events. So I'm just, when we're looking for means of income, what is my fellow board member's thoughts about providing services for residents outside of the town for, you know, simply $10? I mean. I agree. Okay. So I'm just going to say that $10 is a significant for a non-resident. I'm guessing that $10 is a significant for a non-resident. Okay. Number 20 accepts donation from Riverhead Building Supply for purchase of a historic marker. Okay. So that's my fellow board member's thoughts about providing services for residents outside of the town for, you know, simply $10. I mean. I agree. Yeah. I think we did. I think more like $25. Well, we upped, I know they upped at number one. Number two, what happens is some of these. I'll take number one.
Oh, thank you.
she's out of the office this week but I did ask her the process that she goes through and her team goes through to make sure that we are making money on the recreation programs so I looked at the spreadsheet they compiled and she's hesitant to go up more I thought perhaps maybe we could go up a little more but not just on the non-resident but overall just to try to pay back the general fund some from their recreation fund because the due to the general fund is significant over the years so she doesn't she does there's a fine line I guess for the recreation department because they don't want to push too high on the fees because then they might not get the members to come in in general so I know they did go up in general compared to last year overall if you want to fight for the non-resident fee perhaps that's something we could I know she was hoping to get an answer sooner because they are actually going to print on the brochure so in lieu of spending more money on the brochure is there any analysis of how much money is brought in through non-resident fees specifically about that per se certainly going to analyze the actuals when they come through and if all the fees need to be upped at that point I mean forward we can unfortunately going back I don't know that we have access to the records to do that's right I think that we should really the fees went up but recreation should be supplying us but that there was 250 non-resident participation in these projects and an X number of dollars was brought in because of that I understand like this councilman Kern said if there's a need like if we want to have a program and we're short and and it's a meat of canceling something because there's not enough participation and you open up to non-residents and then you know and then you fill the class in it and it helps keep it going that potentially could be one reason why but if these are typical classes that are ongoing that are filling up then you know I don't think $10 is enough for a non-town residents be paying like so you're huge drawn something that the residents of River had really enjoy and I would think that maybe it would be beneficial to the residents of Riverhead to have the cost of the $67 but make it higher for a non-resident so that the class doesn't fill up for out-of-town residents and then something like beach yoga does that include a beach sticker how are they how are they parking down there you wouldn't know in residence all right that's not a question I can definitely reach out to Ashley and Senator and even let me ask her the questions on the non-resident fees she may have statistics on this data I'm fine with putting this through for this year but I think that for next year it should be looked at as a need be basis it shouldn't just be across the board ten dollars and I and just so you know the other thing that they do is they look at surrounding towns or at departments of what they charge and when the class fills up there is no room for non-residents yeah private swimming lessons are all are yeah so private swimming lessons is a good example like so ten dollars extra if it's private it's one-on-one that's the way I'm sinuating so why is a non-resident not paying you know so there's something you know I think we should really get a better I don't know how I think it's a good idea I don't know how time is of the essence to get this out I think it's a good idea that's why it was sent out early to everybody by email so councilman Kern can you tell me about what incredible flicks full day is for $480 I imagine it's something you go to regularly you want to tell us exactly what that is Incrediflix it's $488 for a non-resident so I'm just curious you're on the rec community should they tell you I'm being sarcastic okay no I don't know what that is it's a new thing Oh thank ghead thank ghead
on like senior programs and in different communities and stuff like that as opposed to print we're working on less stuff I want to get into all right let's go we got 80 more to go through resolution number 20 authorizes purchase of Kenworth tandem axle dump truck number 21 authorizes purchase of up fit of 2025 Kenworth dump truck number 22 authorizes purchase of Freightliner chassis with mounted sander for highway department number 23 authorizes employees to in it attend an IAAI conference number 24 ratifies the salary adjustment of a senior assessment clerk 25 ratifies the reclassification of an automotive equipment operator to heavy equipment operator 26 points a callhead Parker park attendant to the recreation department 27 a quite a callhead park attendant to the recreation department �� twenty-eight a quite a callhead assistant recreation leader to the recreation department�� twenty-nine a quite a callhead recreation leader to the recreation department recreation leader to the recreation department�� twenty-head a quite a callhead Number 30, appoints Charles Thomas to the Suffolk County Working Waterfront Committee. Number 31, reappoints Marjorie Acevedo to the Anti-Bias Task Force. Number 32, reappoints Roberto Ramos to the Anti-Bias Task Force. Number 3, reappoints Patrice Stokely to the Anti-Bias Task Force. Number 34, reappoints Harley Abrams to the Anti-Bias Task Force. Number 35, reappoints Salim Massoud to the Anti-Bias Task Force. Number 36, reappoints Tom Nijon to the Anti-Bias Task Force. Number 37, reappoints Connie Lisandro to the Anti-Bias Task Force. If I may, Supervisor, I'd like to make a statement with regard to this committee, if I may so at this time. I'd like to address recent news articles. These are articles by the former chair of the Anti-Bias Task Force and also emails that he has sent out. And it comes down to a very simple issue. It's not about bias. It's not about prejudice. It's not about silencing. It's about power. Mr. Mark LaGlocklin wants the Anti-Bias Task Force Committee to be something that it is not. He has stated in his emails that he wants the task force to be empowered to listen, respond, and lead without limitation. That is not the role of town committees. The committees have limitations. The town committees are organizations created by the town made up of unelected volunteers who are approved by the town board. They are advisory in nature, making recommendations to the town board when or if the committee agrees to make a recommendation to the town board. It does so through the committee's liaison. The town board, will approve or disapprove of any recommendations. All town committees, including the Anti-Bias Task Force, have no independent authority to act under the color of the town. All committees need town board approval for activities they seek on behalf of the town. The former chairman resigned from the Anti-Bias Task Force Committee after not being able to promote his political agenda under the banner of the town of Riverhead. He sought the following. He wanted a countywide call to arms for all anti-task forces throughout Suffolk County to join together to oppose recently elected President Trump because he was ending diversity, equity, and inclusion through legislation. After informing him that this was clearly promoting a political platform, he dropped it. He asked the committee to support LGBTQ community at the Mosaic Art Festival by allowing an LGBTQ community to participate. To promote the festival
issued by then-supervisor Hubbard, indicating that the town would not interfere with federal immigration enforcement. The committee was split on what to do. The request was political in nature in light of his support of OLA legislation, which seeks to limit local law enforcement cooperation with ICE. During all of my professional career as an assistant district attorney and a town councilwoman, I have strived to help and support the residents of Suffolk County, in particular, specifically here in the town of Riverhead. I've sought to protect victims regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Any statement or allegation that I would disparage an individual or silence an individual is untrue. In a nutshell, the former chairman did not want to teach and educate. He wanted to advocate without limitation, and that is not the mission of the Anti-Bias Task Force. It was not created to be a political action committee. Thank you, Mr. Supervisor.
Okay, resolution number 38 appoints William Zalekar to the Business Advisory Committee. Number 39 reappoints Martin Sandusky to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 40 appoints Joe Oliver to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 41 reappoints Ike Israel to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 42 appoints Georgia Malone to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 43 appoints Peggy Kaneski to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 44 appoints Steve Armarille to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 45 appoints Shawn Kennett to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 46 appoints Connie Lisandro to the Parking District Advisory Committee. Number 47 appoints [transcription gap] points Connie Lissandra to the parking district advisory committee 47 points Steve silly a toe to the parking district advisory committee and just to just to inform everybody he is the individual that spoke that owns the bandit Jerry's shop who is here earlier today 49 ratifies the resignation of an automotive equipment up 48 ratifies the resignation of an automotive equipment operator number 49 ratifies the resignation of a part-time bilingual office assistant 50 ratifies the resignation of a water district maintenance crew leader 51 ratifies the termination of an employee number 52 terminates leave of absence and ratifies the reappointment of part-time police officers number 53 ratifies authorization for the community development to apply for a grant 54 authorizes the release of performance bond for Birch wood major subdivision section 35 canceled letter of credit posted by Kevin Rape plumbing and heating corehead [transcription gap]
separate apart from the resolution the board approved at the last board meeting with the same title rates and charges but Frank will explain the difference here. Hi thanks for having me I'm Frank the Water District Superintendent this is actually something we do every year and it is very specific to only the payment what it costs to have us do a one-inch service for you so every year we go out to bid for material and water meters and we get those new prices and we readjust what it costs for us to do that water meter for you we don't make any money of it but we can't take a loss doing it we're still the water cheapest water service in the business we did add one thing this year in that we have had this in our contracted rate for a long time because we also have the ability to contract the service out but we're going to distinguish the difference between what we call a long and a short a short is when the water mean is on the same size as the meter pit and what happened and along is when you have to cross the road and bring the water service across the road so there's a big difference in the restoration cost there so we did change some of the pricing to align with that our new water meter fee you come to the water district say you know hook me up i want a one inch water meter it'll be thirty six hundred dollars it was thirty hundred thirty one hundred dollars and now if it's a long it's going to be forty one hundred dollars because there's extra restoration costs and and a lot more staff to manage the traffic and to put that in perspective we've always had a long and a short on our contracted services that are bid every year so for a contractor to do a short it's eighty eight hundred dollars eighty eight hundred twenty dollars and for a contractor to do a long it's nine thousand four hundred eighty one dollars and for our neighboring water supplier they charge a one inch service is forty six hundred dollars so we are five hundred dollars even for a long we're five hundred dollars cheaper than the surround anybody else can do a one-inch service for and that's it questions thank you guys thank you thank you thank you sir as always number 57 amends resolution 2025-209 building division fees 58 awards bid for propane fuel and equipment maintenance number 59 rejects bid for charter buses number 60 amends resolution 2026-185 adopted on february 18 2026 brentwood legion ambulance service inc use of pine baron's credits number 61 affirms prior authorization for acquisition of property for general municipal municipal purposes located at 111 east main street riverhead new york south county tax map number 600-129-1-11 number 62 resolution of classifying action pursuant to secret assume lead agency issue negative declaration and approve funding for waiting river highway garage subject to permissive referendum and bond authorization number 63 chapter 229 application for excavation and exportation of material for kathy lane llc subdivision 84-2-2.1
number 64 resolution calling public hearing regarding capital and improvement for the extension of facilities of the riverhead water district for summer wind farm subdivision for water main extension in the property known as subject county tax map number 600 dash 86 dash 8.2 dash 8.2 in aqra bug new york 65 authorizes town clerk to publish and post notice to consider local law demand chapter 273 the riverhead town code titled solid waste article 5 general provisions applicable to solid waste for all properties and uses number 66 authorizes town clerk to publish and post notice to consider local law to amend chapter 279 of the riverhead town code titled taxation article 8 exemption for volunteer firefighters and volunteer ambulance workers number 67 adopts a local law to amend chapter 217 of the riverhead town code titled buildings building construction and improvements and housing standards article 1 administration and enforcement number 68 adopts a local law to amend chapter 289 of the riverhead town code titled vehicles traffic and parking regulations article 4 parking standing and stopping number 69 adopts local law to amend chapter 231 of the riverhead town code titled fire prevention article 3 administration number 70 adopts local law to amend chapter 231 of the riverhead town code titled fire prevention article 27. number 71 authorizes the supervisor to execute a license agreement with celtic quest inc 2026. i'd just like to have a discussion about this uh i believe the last year's fee was 1500 or 1800 our counselors in office um if you look at what it would it cost a private person to dock there i know it's it's not quite memorial day but i just don't think at every time i go to the riverhead town i've received emails about this calls about this questions about this it wasn't something that was uh we're at 71. yeah 71 sorry uh from our from the community and you know feeling like the you know it being equitable for for what they pay throughout the year where it is you know we've kind of squelched some of their questions about where they park with the pump out station not being used but i do think we should elevate the fee for this i think it's something that um i want them to i it's fine if you're there i just think it's something that we should raise up but my personal opinion is i think it should be a minimum of a four thousand dollars um you know amicable to discuss it come to some other agreement but where is it now i'm sorry it's it's at the uh it wasn't one thousand now it's no it was a 18 18 18 18 yeah 1800 was their fee but then they did pay for garbage of 150 and then a garbage of 250 and processing fee of $150,000. So it came out overall they're paying me about... Go up a percentage every year. Yeah, it hasn't been raised in a couple of years. So our counselor, he just wanted to raise it to $2,000, and I just said we'd have more discussion about it if you want to ask him. He's here, but I don't know how you guys feel. I just wanted to have this discussion. Yeah, so basically I looked back at the past couple of years of the agreement. It had been static at $1,800 for maybe two, three seasons. So I increased it to $2,000 for this season. I do understand that it's still below the standard fee for feet and dockage that would be charged to a private marina or something. There's not really any kind of clear rules or guidance on this. It's what someone's willing to pay for the space. So if you want me to... If the agreement had an increased fee, I can do that. I mean, otherwise it's just what we're licensing use of town property for. All right. I'd like to weigh on this, if I may. I had a meeting last night as liaison to the East Creek Marina Committee, and this was brought up during the meeting by me, and I asked them if there was any objection, any concerns to have the kelp depressed there. And there were... There was not. They are totally in favor of having them there. That really isn't part of the boating season per se. And there's really only one person in the area that tends to have a problem with this. I do think that this is something that generates people to drive to South Jamesport to be able to come and see the restaurants that are in Jamesport. You know, it's kind of advertising for the area, but they might leave the kelp depressed, go to one of the restaurants to have dinner after or before. So I don't think that raising this to $4,000 would be beneficial at all. I'd like to see the experience of the kelp depressed remain in Jamesport. So I think the $2,000 is fine. I would just say with something like this, you know, what we need to look at is like every year there'll be, certain percentage tacked on just because everybody we're paying to go through all this makes more money that's all okay okay so I'm amicable to keep it where you've listed as a 2000 and I think that's fine plus somebody else
number 71 I'm sorry just did that number 72 authorize the supervisor execute agreement with seed claim administrator mrs. Davis our break number 73 authorizes supervisor to execute early voting polling police agreement with Suffolk County Board of Elections for a riverhead Town Hall number 74 authorizes the supervisor to execute professional services agreement with H2M for sanitary improvements at town square splash pad 75 authorizes supervisor to execute an agreement with the county board of elections for a riverhead town with the county of Suffolk office for the aging triple-a transportation program 2026 number 76 authorize the supervisor to execute short-term runway use agreement for racetrack not Street 2026 spring fling at Epco number 77 authorize the supervisor to sign a professional services agreement with Smalley engineering PC 78 ratifies authorization for the town attorney to execute a retainer agreement with the county of Suffolk County Board of Appeals to obtain your agreement with Siegel and Sittler PLLC just with the spring fling of the derrick Eric is with the spring fling their application for racetrack not Street like they in finalizing clear that it does not allow for go-karts so I just want to make sure that we're not it's like not repetitive from the year before that was clearly expressed put it into the license agreement license or lease license agreement I just I went to them with Eric it's yeah I just know they know sometimes it's on page two at the top in bold go-kart use is prohibited at any time during this event make sure I mean it's a little bit they've done an incredible job up there operating a great job but since then there's been another business established that's open up and I just don't want to be in this ongoing competition we have to be fair to the year-round taxpayers as well the operators been notice in writing and he has been verbally informed by email as well thank you
hey ratifies authorization for supervisors sign an addendum to consultant professional services agreement with Joan modern 80 ratifies the authorization for supervisor to execute an agreement with the county of Suffolk Department of Probation stop D we program 2026 number 81 ratifies the approval of special event 255 application for the Clifton Park rental tractor supply season sale 82 proof special event chapter 255 application for Hallockville Museum farm fleece and fiber festival number three approved special event chapter 255 application for waiting River Shore Chamber of Commerce Fall Festival number 84 approved special event chapter 255 application for the duck blind Society duck pond day you number 85 approved special event chapter 255 application for Long Island antique power Association tractor pulls and shows 86 approved special event chapter 255 application for race awesome James Port triathlon 87 approved special event chapter 255 application for the American Cancer Society making strides against cancer of Eastern Long Island walk 88 approved special event chapter 255 application for the New York Marine Rescue Center paddle battle number 89 approved special event chapter 255 application for foodie Fest Productions LLC foodie Fest one 2026 number 90 pays the bills um the next one I guess would be number 91 is a tabled resolution the board previously tabled so it's back in the queue for the next meeting rehires and sets allies for various colon recreation personnel for 2026. um I'd like to go through them all again please Devin could you explain um all right so we are uh we will end our work session if I can have a first and a second to go into executive session to discuss the following uh personnel matters surrounding possible changes status of an employee with triple and Tio and Howard uh matters surrounding disciplinary action of an employee with triple and Tio and Howard and litigation matters surrounding update on litigation regarding old and new even or odd even here election case with counselor Howard so move all in favor moved and uh happy Passover oh you already turned us off never mind oh happy Passover and happy Easter to everyone we will see you next Thursday and for our board meeting on Tuesday
we will be back with more of the you