Full Transcript

Thank you.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Ms. Merrifield. A couple announcements today. Don't forget Saturday and Sunday is the beginning of Race Track Not Street, Spring Fling at Epcot. We also have on May 1st, we're celebrating there we go, that was a great announcement during that, are celebrating the 250th of America's birthday at the Suffolk Theater at 8pm with the Great American Bash tickets are on sale. And we also have our 2026 Flushing Water Mains that's beginning April 12th through the 25th. In the evenings our water district will be doing that. Does anyone else have any other? Yes, ma'am. I do. Thank you. On Saturday, April 25th from 9 to 11, we're going to have our town-wide cleanup day from Wading River out to Laurel. So bring your family down to Town Hall and we will provide you with gloves and trash bags and pickers and safety vests. It's always a great turnout and I hope that everybody can join us. Thank you very much. Yes, I have one too. The senior committee met yesterday and just to let everyone know that at Peconic Hospital they're having a National Health Care Decisions Day, seminars on advanced care and directives and that's going to be at the Peconic Hospital on next Thursday. That's the 16th at the Caregiver's Room from 12 to 2 p.m. Giving information and seminars on all those things as health proxies and it's very useful as individuals get older, caring for other individuals that are older. It's very useful too. I highly recommend it to attend. Thank you. Anyone else? Councilman? Councilman? Okay. Alright, so we'll move right into our open session and today to start off we have Greg Dorosky who's our Suffolk County Legislature and Julie Wozniowski, Peconic Land Trust, Matters for the Water Surrounding the Possible Land Preservation Opportunity with the Town of Riverhead. If you guys would want to come to the table with us that would be fantastic and we've asked Anne-Marie, one of our town attorneys to join us as well. Did I see you yesterday? Uh-oh. I need to hear the story now. Let's see if we have handouts for everybody. Supervisor, as we get started I'd just like to point out that this was the work of prior legislator Catherine Stark who has been working for several years with Councilwoman Wozniacki and I just ask that it should be Councilwoman Wozniacki's name on this first item for the agenda because of all her hard work we're here today on this project. I just ask that that be noted for the record that it be clear that it was Councilwoman Wozniacki who's come with this project and also former legislator Catherine Stark, please. Sure. Absolutely. Thank you very much Councilwoman Merrifield. I appreciate that. I did work with Catherine Stark on this for about two years as well as other preservation that has been happening for discussion within our town and also as liaison to the farmland preservation committee I'm surprised that they were not included to be here today on this and also somebody from open space since part of this is open space. Open space. That's right. I'm not the liaison to them so I wouldn't know. I am and they didn't even bring it up so I'm not sure. They did ask. They did. They did and I gave them my Okay. Yeah they were talked about it at a prior meeting and then they were also contacted yesterday but yes I will definitely make sure I just want to make sure that Catherine Stark does receive some credit for this because she was kind of Oh yeah no disrespect and this as you pointed out does predate my time on the legislature Julie reached out to me when I did come into office to kind of bring me up to speed on it and one of the new things that we kind of talked about and the reason that we're kind of re-approaching the town to discuss this is I think there's kind of a unique and exciting opportunity for the town to take maybe a more active role in the preservation of this with potentially the acquisition of a specific parcel as open space I'll defer to your town attorney I do think just because this is a property acquisition we may I think it would be useful to have some general discussion in public session but if we talk about any specifics about price or anything that gets too in the weeds we may jump into executive session if only so we're not working against ourselves and potentially developing more outside interest so I don't know if bring that back around if need be I completely agree and any purchase for the preservation would require a public hearing absolutely so just for the general public from a legal standpoint I always think it's helpful because lots of people ask the difference between what is open space what is sterile land what is development rights being sold so specifically as before we begin the conversation exactly what you are you know so under the law it's the resolution that a town board would adopt and that whatever the resolution describes it could be open space kept natural it could be open space improved for public access so could there be structures on open space property correct but they all should be identified in the resolution because the resolution is the project purpose under town law 64e so moving forward after purchase you can undertake those activities that you identified in the original resolution can you amend it in the future for example say let's say we do a county park and years from now we want to put in bathrooms or something and we want to have an open space resolution be amended to allow or do we need a full site plan before proceeding generally it can unless you truly deviate from the original purpose of preservation if you really go afar that's really disingenuous to the public who supported it from the get go got it and although I'm not an attorney I will add that there is an alienation of park land which would require a public referendum if you do in your resolution as your town attorney points out kind of set it up as passive recreation let's say and you wanted to add some active elements to it my understanding is you'd actually need to put that to public referendum because you would be alienating that park land there is litigation surrounding that we actually dealt with some of this in south lincoln in a couple of years and we wanted to put it in a full town on a parcel where it was acquired and we wanted to do some affordable housing so this stuff can get messy just say to open the conversation because sometimes people feel like that's open space nobody can go on it or the flip side is that we're purchasing development rights on farm land and therefore that's public property and farmers shouldn't be allowed to farm and we want to put additional restrictions on it because it's preserved and we want to make sure that the land is strictly take development off of it you're still allowed to do agriculture open space is something different that's kind of the more traditional public access to park land and you do the town does have a park on sound avenue that's kind of right in the middle of this which I think kind of brings us to the idea that we wanted to pitch to you all and request that you would consider getting an appraisal for the purchase of this parcel so I don't know if Julie wants to discuss this can I ask a question? I have a question Henry we do have a parcel here and that's open space these are the two parcels adjacent that we have my question is this could it be used for camping for example well you said it's recreation can it be used for camping so I think you could preserve it and describe camping as passive recreation use do very limited improvements I think you could that's important and who would run can our rec department run that? of course good to know I think Julie is going to explain what section that we would look at and do you want to go ahead and describe all this to them? I'll just give you a very brief background so the first map is just sort of to put the property in context as a target for preservation you can see right the blue the sound avenue preserve that the town owns on the west side is the land trust McQuaid preserve and county holds an open space easement on that there's some additional protected farm land on the east side across the street is the Cornell research farm and additional protected farm land and if you look at this from the sound south it's a block of almost a thousand acres of preserved land with this big piece sitting in the middle of it still not preserved it has a lot of ecological preservation values excuse me working farm lands down along sound avenue and it's got endangered species and forest and sound frontage and what not so that's just a brief glance of the so it's really a unique opportunity for the town if you go to the last page I think it's the areas in pink that are recommended that the town consider for preservation it's really unique because if you go up to the existing sound avenue preserve this will complement the existing walking trails and it goes from grasslands to meadow tons of birds are in here and you would provide the public a potential unique opportunity also to have the access to the sound front and essentially what you would be doing is preserving adding to your additional parcel that you have preserved and working all the way to the sound you know I see this as a really almost a once in a lifetime opportunity for the town of Riverhead to acquire a sound front parcel with access to the beach there is a usable building on the bluff there I can think of south old town we have Downs preserve with the buildings there that are used for programming and there is public access to them south old town is in contract with group for the east end to run programming there so you could either partner with a non profit or have your rec department run it but this really is a unique opportunity and what it would be is kind of partnering with the county to have this development rights for agricultural parcels up front the Peconic Land Trust would hold you know so the way this is playing out is Nassau County is going to sell this parcel no matter what they are tired of dealing with it it's too confusing they are going to sell it it's in Suffolk exactly so they have given the Land Trust first crack at trying to come up with some way to purchase the parcel and then they are going to sell the property from them and our goal here being to preserve as much of it as possible and keep the existing camp there you know to be able to continue running if it doesn't work out they will sell the property so we are hopefully on the road to going into contract with Nassau County to purchase the property and the way that we are being able to fund that acquisition is we are going to have to do private fundraising but bringing in our partners Suffolk County as Greg said they made an offer to purchase the development rights on the farmland we have had lots of discussions with New York State Parks New York State DEC talked about a lot of options at the end of the day they directed us to the bond act and the open space grant so the green is what Suffolk County is working on the uncolored area is what we are dealing with the state on and then the pink would be potentially the town of Riverhead being able to come to the table with us so it would not only be preserving that specific portion of the property but it would enable us to preserve any of it if we can't you know come up with enough money from our public partners and fundraising will lose this it's literally a once in a lifetime opportunity and you know as you all rightly point out we are going to have to you know my predecessor legislator Stark and councilwoman Woski have been working on this for two years it's now the balls in our court to bring this across the finish line not to kind of mix metaphors there and time is running out you know there is as Julie points out some urgency for Nassau County to sell it we do have a willing partner in Suffolk County to take the development rights the Connick Land Trust is kind of the running point on the overall acquisition it's going to deal with the other parcel but to make this happen we really need to bring in Riverhead Town so this could be a mutually beneficial relationship both for the people of Riverhead Town to get public access to the sound here and really have this as kind of a centerpiece of open space for Riverhead Town but it does facilitate the overall preservation If Riverhead Town does not come in here, it's going to become really difficult to preserve this overall 140 acres. I don't know if we want to potentially quickly go into executive session to talk about price tags that have been discussed and what that would do, but it would be my request that the town board could authorize an appraisal of this purple section ASAP. I don't know if you can do that in your work sessions or you'd need to schedule a special meeting, but there is urgency here. Who's going to pay for the appraisal? Riverhead Town. Because you would be the person who's acquiring this, and it would be a simple appraisal. We're not talking about a survey. I just want to be very clear for me. I said this earlier. First of all, this is worth a lot in tax revenue to the town, this particular parcel. Having said that, if there's a way that we can utilize this, like with our rec department, as a campground or something like that to derive revenue, that's tipping the scale a little bit for me. Because this is an extremely valuable piece of land. Yep. And I want to make sure that Riverhead can benefit from any moves that we make financially. Yeah. So, you know, not to impose my own view here, but I will. There is the building that exists on the bluff, which I think you're absolutely right. You do need to figure out sources of revenue and also use. You know, stewardship of open space is expensive. My fear, though, is that if you look at trying to turn this into an active campground or some sort of revenue generator for the town, you're adding complexity that is going to kill this opportunity. And I think there are other parcels that may be more appropriate for this sort of activity in Riverhead Town. Yeah. And the risk of development of this overall parcel is really paramount to me. And even though there is potential tax revenue here, the cost of that development, both in a sensitive sound front bluff area, but also in a historic agricultural corridor, really outweighs that. Okay. And this is really one of these. This is really one of these things where the community preservation fund, which it's my understanding that Riverhead Town does have some funds there, was set up explicitly to facilitate these sort of purchases. And ultimately, the town board is going to need to decide, is foregoing this tax revenue worth the preservation? In my eyes, it is, but it's ultimately up to you. I'm not saying it's not. I know that's probably. And I think that's what has been done with the property taxes. Do we know that? To be clear, you're not going to lose tax revenue with this transaction or not very much. It gets a nonprofit exemption, I don't know, $1,500 a year. Can I circle back to what you said about? I'm sorry, go ahead. No, so just because I know exactly what Bob's concerned about. We're proud of our land preservation, but every time we take something off the tax rolls, it means the other resident has got to pick it up. Yep. We just want to be clear from the front. they already have a nonprofit so it's an estimated $1,500 a year so we're talking about a very minimal number okay it's not the residents aren't making up a $30,000 tax base so now with that I I need to understand when you used to work complexities to camping if some people are glamping there I mean there's no structures they're bringing their tent or whatever it is where's the complexity there so I get an understanding that's the decision of the five members of this board so your decision decision one is whether or not you would authorize an appraisal decision to most significant It's only for the five members of this board, and that's what is the purpose of preservation and what is the intended use of the property. It's only for you five. That's it. You decide that. I would like to recommend that we move forward with an appraisal immediately. I think that this is excellent for the town of Riverhead. Any preservation that we can do, I am fully supportive of. You hit the nail on the head with everything that you just said about this property and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That's exactly what this is, and we are foolish if we do not pay direct attention to this. I agree 1,000 percent, and I think we can move forward with the appraisal next weekend. I'll have you back in. If it's all right with the town board, I can prepare a resolution as a ratify, obtain your signatures beforehand, and order the appraisal. Based on that. I'm amenable to that? Yes, sir. I absolutely agree. Thank you, Councilman Lorin-Moskey, for pushing this forward. Thank you. You may have just created a great, great campground for us. Where's the campground? Thank you all for coming in. I really appreciate you guys. We'll play you on for executive talk numbers next week. Thank you. And I thank you very much. Thank you. No, absolutely. Please don't forget about Riverhead. You held to your word on that, and I thank you. Well, it was Christmas time. I couldn't. We had to get off on the right foot. But no, thank you for doing all the work over the years on this. This opportunity wouldn't be here but for your and former legislator Stark's work. Absolutely. So, thank you. Yep. Thank you. Our next one. Yeah, good job, Jillian. This is awesome. Batters surrounding change of business zone F, zoning use district with Mr. Bergman. Oh, thank you.

We're going to bring them up.

Are those what's been posted on the website? Is there anything different?

Oh, Julie was supposed to give her a copy. She didn't. I think it's on the website. That's what I'm asking. Yeah, I have the... This is what's on the website. Is it? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I have it. Can you need it? It's online. I downloaded it. Yeah. I really cherish all of this. Yeah. Oh, this is good. I fixed it. That's a wonderful reference. Yes. All right. I got it. Good. It's classic. All right. See you, Greg. Everybody. Have a wonderful day.

You want to introduce? I'm very excited that this is on for today. Yes. Yeah, this is... If we could, before we get started, Jordan, Brad, if you guys could just unmute and just introduce yourselves to the board, and then I'll lead into the conversation. Good morning. Thank you for having us. My name is Jordan Horn. I'm the vice president of development with Tanger. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having us. Brett Brophy, director of development with Tanger. And we also have Denitra on as well, who can introduce herself. Hi, I'm Denitra Herzog-Mitchell, and I am a vice president, associate counsel at Tanger, so part of the legal department. All right. Thank you. So I'll introduce this topic and give you a little backstory on how we got started. I'm a legal counsel at Tanger.

So part of the legal department. All right. Thank you. So I'll introduce this topic and give you a little backstory on the discussions we've had with Tanger. So what we've got before the board today is pretty much a wholesale revisit of the Business F zoning use district, the Manufacturers Outlet Center Overlay Zone. As the board's aware, the Business F zoning district was adopted in 1992. It was a new one. So Tanger came into town. At that time, the town worked with Tanger to develop the Business F zoning code, which was the Manufacturers Outlet Center. There's been several changes and minor amendments to the zoning code since then. In 2001, the town board added a permitted use for indoor theater. Then in 2024, we did some, I'll say, like moderate changes to the zoning district, which were done in connection, in conjunction with Tanger. That opened up a couple of more changes. We added a new zoning code that was a little bit more specific, more permitting uses, really, really specific types of uses, like specialty food stores, like if you read the existing code. It's very, very detailed and very specific, almost to the point where it restricts potential tenants and users from coming into the site. So Dawn and I have had several meetings back and forth with Tanger. I do have a slide deck that they've provided us that will support some of these changes. This model for Tanger has changed. This was something that was recommended and discussed in the comp plan on pages 197 and 198. It generally speaks about the change in the retail market, the need to adapt and provide more flexibility in the zoning. It did recommend working with the developers and working with the landowners to sort of effectuate these changes. So through the discussions that Dawn and I have had with Tanger, they provided us, Justin, with a slide deck that was a little bit more specific. So I'll ask Jordan and Brett if they can just discuss this a little more. So the long and short of it is in 2019, Tanger provided an analysis. I guess these are sales per square foot for their properties. Their properties are divided into different tiers based on sales performance. In 2019, you can see that on the left side of that chart, Deer Park and Riverhead were both considered tier one, which are their top performing stores. And now as we fast forward to 2025, Riverhead has dropped off to a tier four store. So the sales per square foot have dropped. And Jordan, I don't know if you want to jump in and sort of explain this a little more and just sort of the impacts that you guys are feeling in just your general business model. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I mean, I think from the business standpoint of the outlet type users, they're not necessarily the top performing stores. They're not necessarily the top performing stores. So that has shrunk over the years. And you can definitely see that impact across our portfolio. There are less retailers that are in the strictly outlet business. And comparing Deer Park that most of you are hopefully familiar with to Riverhead, what we've seen with that difference of zoning is that our tenant mix has evolved there between 2019 and 24, specifically on these charts, and has continued to bring in new tenants and met the demands of the consumer. And with Riverhead, we're seeing a lot of growth. And with Riverhead, with some of the restrictions that we do have, we've unfortunately not been able to do that. And we've lost some of our existing outlet tenants and have seen a vacancy rate continue to creep up, which has then translated to a difference of our sales per square foot and shifting Riverhead from that tier one market down to a tier three. So what we've worked with, and Greg and Don have been wonderful to work with, is looking at Deer Park and some of our other similar properties and how those have continued to succeed and grow and thrive. And thrived in the environment that we're in and how we can bring Riverhead to those type of results and grow that business back and bringing it back towards that tier one property. Yeah. So keeping that in mind, we did look at some of the conversations where basically, is Deer Park working for your Tanger? They said yes. And I said, I'm like, all right, so let's kind of take the town of Babylon's code that they have for their Tanger. And they said, yes. And I said, yeah, we're going to take the Tanger property and sort of adapt that and model a code after that. So instead of creating these really specific, picky-oon types of uses where you've got like two paragraphs worth of, you can have this much square footage for this product, this type of square footage for this product, I wanted to sort of make it a little more generic and let these types of tenants, as long as they fit in with these types of uses, let Tanger attract the types of tenants that they need to make their property succeed. So that's what we're doing. So that's quite a that met the height requirements for the zoning district, I don't necessarily see the need to restrict it to one story. It still needs to be designed in a cohesive campus fashion, so you'll have aesthetics and architectural elements that will really sort of make a cohesive campus rather than just sort of spot development, buildings of a different style. Again, removing manufacturer's outlet, retest center, interior design and showroom center, the specialty grocery, food store, market centers. I'm going to replace them with a lot more generic uses, shops and stores for the sale of retail and consumer merchandise and services. At its nature, retail is retail. If a national supermarket tenant wanted to go in there, I don't want to get into how many square feet they can devote to hot food, et cetera. If any other type of retailer, large scale, wants to go in there, they shouldn't be really bound by some of these other restrictions. I keep hoping for Uncle Giuseppe's. I'm an Emmy fan. Hope you hear that, Tanger. Personal services such as shop, barbershops, beauty parlors, similar services, again, personal services are defined in our code. Banks, movie theaters, indoor recreation, which shall not include motorcycle or ATV courses, raceways or gun firing ranges. I know Tanger in their Deer Park outlet, I believe they recently brought a tenant called Main Event there, which George, if I'm not mistaken, Main Event is similar to like a Dave & Buster's type concept. Yes, actually under the same ownership. They merged not too long ago, so very similar. Just pause for one second. If something such as Bass Outlet wants to come in, right, then they can sell firearms, fishing equipment, all the things that they usually do. You're just saying not a firing range. Not a firing range. So just to kind of, you know, just because. Yeah, I mean, if they're selling retail, you know, retail is retail, but yeah, Okay. no firing range, no shooting range, it's not necessarily appropriate for the, you know, a retail outlet center. Restaurants with or without drive-through windows. Right now the code essentially allows one restaurant per campus, which, you know, I mean, when you look at, you know, Tanger 1, which I believe is in the neighborhood of like 225,000 square feet, to limit them to one restaurant or food court seems a little bit arbitrary. So I mean, again, if they get a type of use in there, you know, the main event that we've had discussions with them with other tenants that are fortunately, because of the way the code was written, they couldn't materialize. So allow restaurants with or without drive-through windows, not putting a limit on the number of them just because, again, I think that's counterproductive. Commercial video game centers, again, that was put in there just to sort of cover the bases for a Dave & Buster's type use or in the event that arcades come back. Great. And then Tanger had indicated that there was demand for professional office as well. I see my Atari. Yeah. All right. I'm removing then further in some of the accessory uses. We removed some of, we removed indoor recreation areas because that will now be a principal permitted use, food courts because, again, that's addressed by the restaurants, transportation centers and theater indoor. That referenced it in end caps. I mean, if they wanted to come in and develop a standalone movie theater in this day and age, they would have to do that. So I think that's a good point. I mean, if they wanted to come in and develop a standalone movie theater in this day and age, again, they shouldn't be dictated to being on the end of a building. I have one, just with that, I don't, you know, I mean, if I was doing a movie theater, if I was having them go up two stories and there was a cafe over here in the middle, right, and there was something over here, I may want to put my movie theater right there, not on an end cap, but I don't want to restrict them in any way possible because you're doing an amazing job here with this code for Tanger, which puts them into the future. You know, in terms of. The way the proposed code is written does not limit them. Okay, great. Thank you. It removed that restriction from the end cap development. I wanted to date myself here a little bit, but I do remember 35 years ago when Tanger was being built, and there was actually a method behind the madness of all the restrictions, and it was so that this did not have a negative impact on Main Street. Something like the theater, there was hopes that the Suffolk Theater was going to be re-built. It was going to be restored and made back into a movie theater at the time, so they didn't want that competition there. The restaurants, Sweezy's, this was all done so that Tanger could just bring in their outlet stores, and the demise of Main Street ended up being 58, not Tanger at all. So I think it's so important that we are removing these restrictions and, you know, giving them the go ahead that they have out in Deer Park and other places throughout the country to, you know, help them thrive in a time where everybody's not going to the stores like they used to. So you're doing a great job on this. I appreciate that. As people might say, just to lead off of what Councilor Wawrowski is saying, is that people say why is the town, you know, suddenly changing restrictions, reducing things over? Tanger presumably is one of the highest paid property tax entities in the town of Riverhead, and it's important for every resident to understand the need for them to prosper and survive so they continue to make those yearly tax payments. And a loss of revenue like that would be devastating to the town as a whole. If Tanger didn't survive for any reason, we ought to pick up the tab. So it's important for the residents to understand when we make adjustments like this, it is, yes, it's for the success of them, but in the end, as a large tax payer, their success takes the tax burden off of each and every one of us. So we'll just need to understand more. And that's why we do things like this to make sure that they're successful. Yeah. And, you know, just to kind of tag onto a couple of these concepts, I mean, anyone who's visited Tanger 1, you know, when you drive through Tanger 1, I mean, no disrespect to Jordan or Brett, Tanger 1 right now is just not happening. You've got a lot of vacancies. You know, there's just a lot of empty storefronts. You know, it's not what it was 20 years ago. Obviously, the retail market's changed, and we acknowledge that. And to Councilor Wawrowski's point, you know, even when I started here, 10 years ago, the vacancy problem on 58, I would say, was much more legitimate. There were a lot of larger scale vacancies. When we fast forward now to 2026, a lot of those empty stores have been refilled. You know, there are still a couple of vacancies here and there, but by and large, 58 is doing pretty well, so I don't necessarily see it as, you know, now, you know, 35 years ago when it was adopted, the thought was, you know, Tanger versus Main Street. Now, if the idea was Tanger versus 58, I mean, again, 58 seems to be doing very well. So just to kind of go through a few of the more changes, you know, the changes. So we are not amending any of the dimensional regulations. You know, we're not allowing for increased floor area. We're not allowing, you know, any real, we're really talking about change of uses. We're not talking about wholesale change to the zoning district or the dimensional regulation. So, you know, in the event Tanger wanted to redevelop Tanger 1, they're still allowed, you know, whatever floor area they're allowed under the current code, they're still permitted to develop that amount of square footage. So there's not really a significant, you know, environmental review. Again, we're not, we're talking about potential redevelopment of an existing large-scale commercial shopping center. We're not talking about, you know, development of a wooded parcel of, you know, 40 or 50 or 60 acres. So there's just some language in there. Right now, the zoning code requires parking at a rate of 1 per 200 square feet. We're amending that to 1 per 250 square feet, which is commensurate with our requirement for the current retail parking rate. Again, we constantly talk about seeds of asphalt and really underutilized parking areas. So reducing that parking need, again, allow for a little more flexibility in the development. You're speaking with landscaping, too. Correct, yeah. So I made an amendment that requires a substantially contiguous landscaped area, a minimum of 20, 25 percent of the total site area. And then I am just making some modifications to the prohibited uses. Now, I will note for the board's knowledge, the way our code is currently written, having a section in a zoning district calling out prohibited uses, I think, is just done to the intent to really bring that to the forefront. Right now, the way our code is written, if something is not a permitted use in our code, it's considered a prohibited use. So the section on prohibited uses is a little bit redundant, but it's, it's there just to sort of make sure and bring it to the forefront for any potential developer when they read through our zoning code that is, you know, kind of explicitly clear. So I'm just taking out a couple of those items, drive-through service, because we now are considering restaurants with drive-through medical and professional offices, because those, again, are a permitted use, and then personal care services, because, again, we're bringing those into the permitted uses. So that is the proposed, those are the proposed amendments to the business F zoning district in a nutshell. Again, we've worked in close concert with Tanger. They've reviewed this. They're happy with the proposed changes. So if the board's amenable, I can get this out to the planning commission. I can schedule, you know, produce any resolutions needed to schedule public hearings. We can get going on this. Yes, for me. It's really smart zoning. Consistent with the planning department's push to make the zoning more simple and understandable. We had zoning categories in the past, like antique store. Well, antique store is retail. What's the difference between an antique store and a candy store? Really not a difference. Drive retail to drive retail. So this is consistent with that and similar to what planning recommended for the Calverton industrial and the light industrial zoning districts. I mean, I'm glad you brought that up because the other day you said to me, you know, you talked about zoning and there was a, you use a specific phrase you use like wet and dry. Like we get permitted, prohibited. And, and this is antiquated habitual stuff that's been passed out for a very, very long time. And this, what we're doing here is really opening the door for people so that they can attract a lot more uses. Bring on the best pro outlets in the M and M stores. The councilman turned to your point. If a cobbler wanted to go into Tanger, that would be permitted under personal service. We need more cobblers. Yes, we had, we had a healthy discussion about cobblers. So hopefully, hopefully that will come back. Yeah. Thank you both for coming up and this is great. Look forward to it. So our next, uh, our next item will not take long. It is just an update on the members of the board of Long Island science center who were just here the other day. We'd like to have you come up to the, that's just to give us a very brief update of, of if you've had any movement since Tuesday. So before you begin supervisor, I just have to make a statement that we, uh, as a town board took an action at the last town board meeting and we went to hire outside council and so we are currently represented by outside council. I imagine the Long Island science center at this point should also be represented by outside council. So to engage in a conversation, I would ask our town attorney to come forward in terms of recommendations, but I, I don't believe that it's appropriate for us to be engaging now without council president. Has our council, did you notify our council about this today? Oh, they've known that they're going to be on the work session and our, we've not actually hired outside council. We made a motion to hire outside council, but you're being disingenuous against the board. It's a whole, I'd like to correct that. We actually do have outside. Yeah. Okay. So we reengage them. Well, we, we previously hired them back in 2025 and there was a public hearing scheduled on the, on the condemnation and on the day of the public hearing, the town board elected to, uh, cancel it and defer it or suspend further action on the, on the, uh, on the condemnation pending, uh, further work to be done by Long Island science center. So the resolution that we adopted on Tuesday, it's really just designed to lift the suspension on that process and clarify and affirm going, uh, that we are permitted to my office permitted to move forward with the condemnation. And we have now outside council and they have representation. So I don't think it's, Oh, let me, let me speak. I don't think it's proper for, for you to be engaging in conversation without the presence of council on both sides. Yeah. I mean, I would, I would just counsel the board, um, not to, I mean, you, you can certainly listen. Um, if the science center is, uh, desirous of making representations as to progress or things that they're doing in order to move forward or whatever, town board is certainly, uh, has the ability to listen to that. Um, you know, the level of engagement may, uh, require us to, uh, stop at a certain point. Absolutely. Um, but I can, I can make that assessment. Well, I'd like to just add that I feel that the majority has spoken on this point. The town board is consisted of five people with equal voting rights and three out of five out of five, a majority voted to end discussions with the science center and move forward with condemnation proceedings. And honestly, supervisor by bringing them forward here creates a false impression to the public. One that our vote either didn't happen or it doesn't count or that you as supervisor could disregard that vote or three that you have some sort of special veto power over our vote, which none of those three conditions exist. And frankly, um, it creates an impression to the public that a false impression that this still has a path forward, which it does not. And frankly, it's, uh, the, what the legal term for this is moot. It's pointless for them to be here, discussing this at this point considering we have already made it to a vote to go forward in a different direction. And it's honestly a waste of time and may even be improper legally for any further discussion to happen between the two parties. Well, with that in mind, I guess we want to thank you both for being representative of being here and we will, I will discuss with our council and make sure our outside councils here and ask you to have yours. Appreciate you being willing to come forward and at least step forward for that. And, uh, and so we'll move forward. Yeah. Thanks for coming. And I have one question to your, so you're, so you're saying that they should not even attempt to continue to move forward. So the town, the town board has taken an action, uh, by town board majority that has set a course that, uh, will the next step in that course will be scheduling a public hearing, uh, for, uh, as to whether the property should be acquired by eminent domain for a municipal purpose. Um, the science center is still in possession of the property. They are entirely, uh, they are entirely at Liberty to do what they want with the property. Answer my question. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much for having us. I just want to put further on the record as well that we have it set for April 21st for then a resolution for a public and post the public hearing was going forward on the condemnation proceeding. Yes, my office did prepare that or is in the process of preparing. Just want to make a clarity there. So April 21st is the public hearing. Is that correct? Yeah. What's the resolution for the public? There's been a request, uh, that a resolution be submitted for the next town board meeting, which would schedule a public hearing, uh, as to whether the town should proceed with eminent domain for a, uh, municipal purpose. So it's being expedited. That's good. So, all right, well, appreciate you both and, uh, have a great day. Thank you very much. Um, I, uh, I want to start off by saying, and I'm a let's speak or am I, no, I think you guys should probably, uh, just excuse yourselves. I appreciate you guys being here today. So, so without that, well, I would ask, I'd like to ask the attorney, are they allowed to speak? Um, I mean, that's subject to the town board's discretion. It's a, you know, it's a town board work session. Believe they should under the situation as Mr. Rothwell, and maybe I'll speak under, under contests and you could disregard, but I will speak on behalf of the, uh, Long Island science center. Um, it's very clear and I've been very impressed with this board. Thank you all very much for your attention to this project. It's very clear that you care about this town and the local businesses and the local residents. And I've received tremendous feedback from this town and the local businesses and local local, uh, residents from the attention this project has been getting. Um, we've been reached out to by multiple local business owners and just to cure a few of the items that you guys have raised as concerns. One of the local business owners and Riverhead town resident is donating any rip mold remediation. If it does exist, exist in the building, they're donating their entire labor and materials. And I just heard from another business owner and he's going to donate all of the, uh, dumpsters that could be required if there is mold present in the building. So your residents are listening, your business owners are listening and they do want this project to go forward and they want to help the Long Island science center. I was prepared today to discuss the phasing of this project and then I see your hand, but in an activation phase of showing how we are aligned in this project and the schedule and how we can, we can work with the town. But this does require town feedback. If you would not like to meet with me, then my next meeting will be with your building department and your fire marshal to continue the positive progress of this project. And that is essential because we need positive progress. I think this project is accomplishable. Again, I've said many times we do have the financial capacity. We do have the financial deck in place. We do have the team in place. We need the towns buying and the town support, which is the only thing in our way at this time. And we are grateful for the town. Support on this project. I'm going to ask you again to go ahead and excuse yourself. Okay. Thank you. The answer. This is putting our employees in a very hard situation because if you're going forward to go and speak with the building department or the planning department, they know that there are three votes on this, on this board that this has already gone through. They should not be, be working. Your town council has already responded that we're well within our right to do so. So, all right. Thank you very much. And honestly, I, I value what you're saying. So thank you. Right. Cause I value my time. I value your time. I apologize to both of you and, and to miss Kepner that came in today, because I think that you were given a little bit of, of a sliver of, of hope that our decision was going to be reversed. And that's not the case. I think that we were very clear the other day and explained our reasoning, why we are not supportive of the science center being at one 11 East main street. We support the science center, find another place, go open up your place in, in tanker that that's closed today. It's just, it's not happening at one 11. The sliver of hope that we have is from the residents in the town, uh, business owners who are donating their services to this project. And I'm very grateful for them and very excited for this project to go forward. Thank you very much for your time. Our next matter is matters surrounding a code change regarding impervious surface with councilman Kern and councilman Rothwell. And great, great Bergman, please. Ready to go. It's such a good job on the technical. He took the rest of the day off.

I kind of feel like my vote didn't count the other day. I don't know why I used to vote. Just to clarify, you know, under, under the existing temple rules, uh, the town supervisor sets the agenda for the meetings. Um, this means that the town supervisor can add items to the agenda. Uh, the town board has the ability to buy, uh, by request of more by three or more town board members can add items to the agenda that the supervisor hasn't added. Uh, the way our rules are currently drafted, it is silent as to what, as to the mechanism by which something is removed from the agenda. So, uh, our, our council should have been present. We're not quite inactive litigation yet. There's several steps that the town board has to take, uh, prior to the time that we would file an application with the court for a vesting order, which is what I said earlier. We're not actively in litigation. Just yet. So we, we are, we've hired, we're, we're certainly, we're certainly their advice and their advice should be in that posture. Yes, we are in the posture. So Mr. appropriate, we did. Uh, but I didn't want to, sir. How are you? How's everybody? Very good. It was not inappropriate. If I could stop you for a second, because it was on the agenda and I did speak to Eric about it. And, and so he was aware that this was happening. Everyone here was aware. And so to call it inappropriate, it was, may not be something that you liked, but they were on. And the fact that the last board meeting, I said that they had invited them back to work session and they would be here. And so legally we were allowed to do it. And that's where that's at. So understand that. Okay. Honestly, we don't have the ability to take it off the agenda. It's the supervisor that sets the agenda. So we did not want it on the agenda. Understand. So hello there. Hello again. Hi Greg. So long matters, impervious service areas. Correct. So this has been going on for quite some time and back and forth with business advisory committee. Both of you have gone to the committee and met with them. So we appreciate you taking your time. I'm not to meet them to address any of their concerns. So I think that just looking at the overall surface area, I think we keep narrowing the scope down to a few things and we made sure that we were staying away from more, you know, agricultural deemed areas. But I'll let you kind of explain a little bit where we're headed today and what the potential changes may be. What that process is. All right. So just for the, a little back history for the board. Um, this is in furtherance of a recommendation. The recommendation that came out of the business advisory committee, I believe it was last year. Um, the business advisory committee put together a analysis of zoning, the zoning codes, looking at a pervious surface coverage. Uh, they put forth a set of proposed amendments to the impervious surface code for several zoning use districts. Um, there was follow up with the old supervisor that, you know, the business advisory several times was sort of wondering what's happening with this code. Uh, they made inaccurate representations at the town was somehow missing out on revenue or fees because this code had not been adopted. Um, that's just not accurate. Uh, this proposed, you know, the proposed amendments to the impervious surface coverage dimensional regulations has changed several times. So the reason I, uh, you know, signed the document was just to sort of make sure that if this comes to work session, this is the document that I had looked at and discussed with councilman Kern and Rothwell. Um, look, it's been changed because it has been changed several times. So I didn't, I didn't want to come to, yeah, I didn't want to come to a work session and discuss discussing something that I haven't seen before. So, um, look, the long and short of it is there are recommended revisions to the impervious surface coverage permissible in DC three, bringing it from 80% to 90% the commercial residential campus, bringing it from 60% to 75 business PB, bringing it from 80 to 90 and then Peconic river, community bringing it from 40 to 50. Um, I will say this code revision did not come from the planning department. This was from the business advisory. I don't really have a, you know, I'm not going to champion for it. I'm not going to thwart it. It's the board's decision. If you wish to go forward with this code, however, I would just caution the board that, you know, when you have a zoning district that permits 80% impervious lot coverage, if an applicant comes forward with a site plan application to develop that property, and they need a variance. So let's say they're proposing 85% impervious surface coverage. The administrative relief that's available to that applicant is to go to the zoning board of appeals. They make an application to the zoning board. They consider factors relevant to the area of variance. And then there's only border appeals makes a determination as to whether or not they've met the criteria to either grant or deny that variance. When you start getting up to sites, getting up to, you know, 90% lot coverage. Now, I mean, business PB is the Roanoke Avenue business corridor. To my knowledge, I could probably do an analysis of a lot of the commercial sites along that corridor. When you start getting up to 90%, you now run the possibility of someone coming in and saying, well, I have an application that proposes 95% impervious coverage. So, you know, you're sort of creeping up towards that level. These very high lot coverages. Again, the only thing that's going to change is your aesthetics will sort of be reduced. You'll have less landscaped areas, and you know, I look to the 58 corridor where for many years, the aesthetics of the corridor sort of went by the wayside. That's why we're left with a lot of sites that just have really poor landscaping buffers. Some of them have virtually no landscaping buffers. So if the board wants to move forward with adopting this code, I can prepare any necessary resolutions to enact that legislation. I just want the board to be aware of what you're looking at and you're, you're really, we'll just see reduced aesthetics, reduced landscaping buffers along these commercial courses. They are not necessarily, I mean the potential. There's always the potential for more FAA. Again, I'm not necessarily sure that that's going to explain the difference the way why. Yeah. So you will allow for maybe a slight increase in FAA. I don't know that that's necessarily going to solve all the woes. But again, If the board wants to move forward, if the aesthetics of the site, if you're willing to sacrifice aesthetics of the site for the potential for perhaps a modest increase in floor area, that's the board's prerogative. My concern over this is that this all, where this comes from, and this all stems from Union Avenue. When the code, the impervious service code was changed there, and I know I sat with you, Dawn, and Marty Zanowski way back, and you agreed that some of these were not, they needed to be adjusted. But we changed code in one spot, and it's a small umbrella, but when you put that umbrella across the entire town, that's an absolute concern. So that's not necessarily an accurate representation. The applications that Brooks, so, the town code previously in our supplementary use guidelines for off-street parking regulations allowed the use of alternative paving techniques to, the purpose of that code, if you go back to see when it was adopted, the purpose of that code was to allow for alternative drainage techniques. So as opposed to having to create a drainage structure where you're creating, you know, doing concrete leaching pools, leaching rings, to allow for pervious pavers. What ended up happening was applicants were, essentially using that as a loophole to overdevelop properties that they could not otherwise meet the dimensional regulations. So instead of saying, I'm going to use this as an alternative to drainage, applications were coming in where the entire supply of parking was being provided by pervious pavers, which would allow a much larger structure than would otherwise be permitted. Now, you know, there are certain zoning use districts, and again, to your point, the Union Avenue Professional Office, there's a lot of It was fixed the loophole. Just to clarify, this amendment, potential amendment, does not affect the development of properties? It does not affect, like, the Union area or the Ackerbach. And so those are not the zones that we are looking at. So just to clarify, you know, we are not changing anything in those very sensitive, let's call it, the rural zones. I mean, you know, so you're just the things that, you know, it's. Anyway, you. So DC3, you know, is generally located in the downtown Riverhead area, which is a more dense area. Again. Business PB, the Roanoke Avenue corridor. I can generate, if the board wishes to move forward, I can generate the resolutions. We can put it to a public hearing and see what the public says. I just, you know, that. Has Code Revision seen this? No. Well, I mean, Code Revision, some of the people are here, but we're all part of Code Revision at the end of the day. Great. Ewan made a really good suggestion. Excuse me. Connick. River community. You said, you know, you had suggested giving more. Well, so the PRC zoning use district currently has a minute, because the PRC zoning use district is located within the DC's Wild Scenic recreational rivers corridor area. That code has a dimensional, a design standard that requires a minimum 50% landscaped area. So yes, I don't have an objection when the code specifically calls out. E. 50% landscaped area. Logic would sort of dictate that if 50% is landscaped, 50% would be developed. So yeah, that doesn't give me much, you know. Is there anyone on this list that you have general concerns about? I have a question, because you. Can you answer that question? Again, not. The business PB corridor. Again, I could provide an analysis for the board of those existing sites to see if anyone is approaching anywhere near 90% use area. I mean, I've reviewed a couple of applications along that corridor that to my knowledge, and I don't don't quote me on it because it's been probably seven or eight years since I reviewed those, but I don't think they were anywhere near 90% impervious coverage. Okay. Well, my question is the one we have in front of us is dated March 31st, 2025. And at the you asked me to stick around for a business advisory meeting committee meeting, and you had Mr. Martin, give me an example. And there's a lot more changes on that one. So is this the one that we're this is the one that is signed is that we've updated because I think Greg was very thorough and explain some of the implications of some of the ones. And I think myself and certainly Councilman current, I think agrees that we had similar concerns. And so we simplified the list to make sure that we respect being out of any. So if the board wants to go forward without, you know, these are handwritten, obviously, if the board wants to go forward with scheduling, public hearings, I would take this and I would amend it, I would, you know, put a revision date for the public hearing, I would write these in, obviously, you know, on a computer and, you know, provide you a clean copy showing cross outs and amendments to it. So it's fine with me. And thanks for spending the time. Right.

Write this up clean. Want to schedule a public hearing on it? To three. Yes. Right. Thanks, Greg. You're welcome. Great. Is that the last one? I have it. Is that the last thing on the agenda? I believe so. I got to get something. I got to get a case. So we're going to end our, have a motion and a second to end our work session and move into executive session where we have matters litigation, matters surrounding the update on litigation regarding odd even year election case with Councilor Howard, matters surrounding litigation with Councilor Howard. Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

motion to go into executive session. So moved. Second. All in favor? So moved. All right.

Thank you.