Full Transcript

Thank you. Good morning everybody. Today is Thursday, September 24th, 2026. We're here for a work session. But before we begin, why don't we stand and say the pledge. Mr. Richie Downs, would you please lead us in the pledge? 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, Mr. Downs. So does anyone have any announcements this morning before we? I would like to take a moment to congratulate our CDA department, Dawn Thomas and her staff on an incredible yet being awarded another grant for 2.4 million dollars to meet our playground adjacent to our town square so it's super exciting news and I'm grateful for all that great work in that department absolutely yeah awesome awesome stuff I have something it's that time of year again it's fall so we have our fall cleanup coming up on Saturday November 7th from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. right here at Town Hall and we're adding something new this year it's called plogging which is big it started in Sweden and it's kind of like been sweeping across the world of people doing this plogging and plogging is picking up litter while jogging so it encourages exercise helping the environment so we thought why not have it here in Riverhead they could have it in Sweden we can have it here in Riverhead so you know we'll offer there the gloves the bags the pickers you get a t-shirt so remember Saturday November 7th it's the first Saturday after Halloween so you're asking us all to take up jogging yes okay yes help with your heart i have one sure so um registration begins september 23rd with the rec department for trunk or treat and so that's a big event that happens at stotsky park so it uh contact the recreation department you bring your car you fill your trunk with trunk with treats okay so thank you that will be October 16th at 630 so thanks Bob also I was gonna just say an announcement that the which should be waiting River Fall Festival is cancelled this Sunday it was going to be this Sunday but do the inclement weather that we know we're about to receive we that's been changed and that is now going to be on October 18th Sunday October 18th the waiting river fall festival over in the shops at east wind that's the new date for that event thank you thank you councilwoman so uh to piggyback off of bob's trunk retreat the our rec department's also doing a halloween costume swap uh right here at town hall 9 30 to 4 each day september 22nd through the 24th of october and if anyone doesn't have any more community announcements i will piggyback off of what councilwoman merrifield said and i just want want to make an announcement. Um, are basically emergency management service. Our police chief asked to make an announcement regarding weekend or Easter strong winds, heavy rain, possible close coastal flooding are expected to begin friday. Our highway department has been cleaning the drains, getting their chainsaws and trucks ready. Highway crews will be brought in if needed. And please, please, please check the town website to stay up on on any information that you need. And you can always call us if you have questions so with that we'll move into our open sessions and the first matters matter surrounding our 2027 tentative budget with myself and our financial administrator Jeanette I believe you're gonna have a presentation yep so we Brittany and I are here to present the 2027 tentative budget alongside the supervisor so to start off and reiterate some of the highlights as the supervisor has already mentioned all taxing districts are budgeted within the tax cap limit this year of 2.79 percent including the general fund just so you know the 2.79 everybody thinks sometimes that 2% is the tax levy limit that's not the case it starts at 2% and then towns are allocated a growth a growth tax factor that comes out and is issued by the Commissioner of Tax and Finance and And so with that this year the tax cap is 2.79%. Do you have the pronounce of these for us? Um, yeah. Sure. Nick? Yes, I do. Thank you. Do you want me to go with the pens? Thank you. Sure. Okay. So the tax cap is 2.79%. So tax cap is 2.79%. The 2027 general fund tentative budget exceeds the 2026 adopted budget in the general fund by 2.9 million. The tax-wide tax increase for property valued at $800,000 is approximately 28 cents per day. Residential waste costs will increase less than 22 cents per month or less than a penny per day. total appropriations for the town operating fund in 2027 are 116.9 million roughly an increase of 4.1 million over last year a breakdown of the 2.9 million dollar increase in appropriations or expenditures from the 2026 general fund adopted budget is mostly salaries and related payroll taxes. That is salaries and related payroll taxes and then New York State retirement, health insurance, IT software, licensing and equipment. Those increases are offset by some decreases, a reduction in debt service, and the retirement incentive savings. We'll go into a little bit more detail in a minute. The breakdown of the $2.9 million increase in revenues over the 2026 General Fund adopted budget obviously is the tax levy still within the tax cap limit. Interest and earnings we've raised this year. So we've historically been conservative on interest and earnings, but since we've started to invest in municipal pooled cash with a bunch of other municipalities our interest rate has been very very good for the past three or four years that we've been doing that so it definitely seems as if it's safe to budget and increase that obviously not as much as what the rates are today because you know the rates can go down but I believe with this budget were safe for a while and even if they got cut in half basically we would still be fine with what we're budgeting so I think that's safe to raise the interest in earnings at this point so it doesn't fall all on the taxpayers with the tax levy pilots increased slightly adult use cannabis tax we raised just slightly fines and forfeited bail administrative chargebacks those basically go up every year because salaries and benefits go up every year for all the employees and the general fund who we charge out to all the other funds like sewer water for the services for the general fund employees and all of those revenues are offset by we actually reduced the fund balance contribution three hundred thousand dollars question short how much did we raise the adult use cannabis tax it was 400,000 last year we raised it to 600,000 so just 200,000 and the reason for that is that Brookhaven is now um getting a piece of the pie so to say so they're taking a portion of the allocation from everybody so that's what's kind of going on with that do you have to break down how this is offset by the losses how much we're spending on the cannabis losses um that doesn't hit that hits legal fees so i don't really know that would be a town attorney question probably more so than myself and to follow up with that it would be good to know in terms of our lawsuits what we budgeted last year and where we currently are you know like we within the budget are we over the budget I mean we're probably over the budget because of all of the assessment issues and those types of lawsuits regular lawsuits not so much most of it is because of the valuation of you know the properties that's where the majority of the legal fees so hopefully as those go down the legal fees will continue to go down as well I mean I'm not really sure how much more we have to pay out for that again that would be a town attorney question when we're short we usually try to find some way to make up for it so if we get more interest earned than what we budgeted you know maybe it will be some of that it just depends on where we have some excess thank you that's the revenues so and although we're staying in the tax cap for 2027 super is was able to still give all salary increases which are contractual but he also gave merit increases and six additional new full-time positions which includes one maintenance mechanic two and buildings and grounds one automotive equipment operator and refuse one building inspector one clerk in the purchasing department one office assistant in the town clerk's office and one new fire marshal question on the one office assistant in the town clerk is that bringing a net full-time so it's basically not hiring a new person to that office it's somebody coming from a part-time position to full-time we're adding the two part-times which are on there they're in different departments one's in seniors and one is in personnel. And the fire marshal position, is that the one replacing? No, there's an additional. You're going up to five fire marshals? Yeah. I don't know if that's true. Okay. Okay, the other piece that came into play very heavily with the budget this year was the retirement incentive that we just went through in 2026. So the timing of the 2026 retirement incentive was strategically planned so that the anticipated future savings could be incorporated into the 2027 tentative budget. The town had seven PBA members and three CSEA members who took the retirement incentive. The net savings of the 2027 budget totaled $819,000, all within the general fund, and again, broken out as follows. It was able to reduce salaries and related payroll taxes for 27 by $746,000, a reduction in New York State retirement of $341,000. And those two savings were partially offset by an increase in health insurance for retirees of $260,000. Because we still have to add retiree insurance because we're still paying the insurance to replace the position that we're filling for those employees. so but overall it was a net savings of 819,000 what is one point in taxes 540 or 560 somewhere in that range for the general fund for the general fund I want the highest one. Or the aggregate, actually. Yeah, I don't know the aggregate. I'd have to get back to you on that. Okay. I have it somewhere. I just don't know. You'd have to take in the street lighting, all of that. So it's a good question, though. I do have it in here. But I'll look for it. I'll let you know what it is after. I have a question. And I think that we went over this when we were going over the retirement incentive. But what happens down the road with future budgets? Because we have the savings from having seven PBA members retire, but we're going to have to now rehire new officers. We budgeted for that. That's in the budget. Okay. Yeah, all the replacement positions are budgeted in there. So we're not really losing any positions. they're all budgeted for and those savings are you know net of all those replacements so lastly supervisor was able to give promotions and merit increases across various funds while remaining under the tax cap of 2.79% supervisor is offering nine promotional raises and 76 merit raises the reason the merit raises are so high is that that number also includes 64 employees who will benefit from a salary schedule increase of two additional steps in 27. So they'll get their normal contractual raises, but they'll also get two additional steps on the salary schedule within the following departments. And that's to increase retention and try to attract new employees. So the vacancies will also go up by those two steps as well. And it's the lower end of those departments. Right. It's not. Not everybody in the department. It's certain employees. So if you've stepped out, you won't receive it. But. And we felt that way. I felt that strongly about that because I've heard each of you talk about being in the different departments as liaison. Our department head's talking about people either leaving an interview because the pay's not high enough or coming on the job and quickly going somewhere else, like, immediately after seeing their check. So we know that we need to continue and a continuation of what's been happening. So those departments are seniors, buildings and grounds, and highway.

Thank you, Jeanette. I think we have a lot of time to digest this for you guys. And then we'll have other meetings about it. And obviously we'll be scheduling our public hearing and all of those types of things. But we will not have to schedule a public hearing at this time to appear to the tax catch. I did want to just ask one question. Of the 76 merit raises including 64 employees that increased the salary, is that just from those three departments? No. Because it says it breaks out, seniors, building, and grounds, and highway. So I just wanted to know. For the 64 two steps, yes. For those three departments, 76 total, the 12 additional were throughout the departments. Okay.

Great question. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Brittany. Thank you. All right, our next matter today is matters surrounding proposed private special legislation with... Mr. Downs, you're coming down for that one? Is Councillor Howard coming as well, or are you phoning a friend? All right. You can close that. I'm just going to mention that we submitted this to the business advisory committee. They began discussions on it. They asked to have time to kind of read it and circle navigate around with each other. They haven't had a chance to weigh in yet? They have not. They want more time to look at it. So I just don't want to keep putting it round and round again in case they have any suggested changes. So they have not taken a vote amongst themselves towards possible changes of support or not support. So we're just letting you know. Well, thank you for stopping by. Yeah. I guess we'll see you when they're ready. You guys want coffee or donuts? Okay. All right, I think we're out of here. You want a Bob's jokes? Yeah. All right, our next one is about our surrounding environmental initiative, food scraps, pumpkin smashing, with Councilman Merrifield and Mr. Rutt. I believe that went a little faster than expected. So Joe's in the building. Do you want Bob to entertain us with a joke, or do you want to start us off? I'll just text him, too. Thanks. I'll go back. I just want to say that Mr. Rudd's been doing a phenomenal job in the department and coming up with great ideas all the time for different ways to help with climate smart points and help with our environmental incentives. and he's done the textile bin over at the Young's Avenue facility he's doing a great job all the time and this is just the one of the next things he's come up with a great idea pumpkin smash to it's a food scraps program that will help us again with climate smart points and at the same time cleaning up the neighborhood which I think is great councilwoman was key the day the tentative day he's setting to do this with the kids is the same day as the litter so they can you can get rid of your food litter and you can get rid of litter litter all on the same day I just think it's a fantastic idea to help the kids get in the spirit of things

I was just talking you up Joe okay you all have to print out great all right so like to propose a pumpkin smash event at the yard waste facility to facilitate the composting and education of our food scrap program and have a fun activity for the kids and residents to come and recycle their old jack-o'-lanterns so the first page I have is just some examples of other municipalities that have done this in the past this is a made mallet so I have extra I have here I didn't realize have it up so people at home can see oh you have oh I see okay on that. Oh perfect. Great. So we would make these mallets for the kids to use. Another important part that is missing in this picture that they pointed out during the DEC meeting that I attended, the kids are not wearing any protective equipment so they should be wearing maybe safety glasses, gloves, high visibility vests just to ensure safety for all the children yeah the volunteers wearing the high-vis vest but it's that's important thing to know and some of the money that I will be requesting to have this event the next page are just some other examples of some like events or stations that we could have like a pumpkin cornhole so you could toss your pumpkin into the hole there and smash it slingshot it at a target or possibly even like a guillotine where it would come down and smash the pumpkin it's not a blade it's just a heavy weight there so these are just all ideas and then maybe in future events we could build a trebuchet I know our building and grounds guys were really excited about trying to help build something like this. But that would be a future event. So then I have the layout of our event for the yard waste facility. And this can all change. It doesn't have to stay like this, but this is preliminary. Let's see here. There we go. So this blue area here would be parking for the attendees. They would sign in here at the kiosk. We could have our pumpkin smashing for the youth and adult here and then maybe any other activities along the fence. And the great part about this is that our food scrap program is located at the yard waste facility so cleanup would be very easy. Just push it right into with all the yard waste and grind it up like we do. I just have the next one is an optional budget. Thank you, Denise. Perfect. So I just the things I do want to get are the safety equipment for both adults and kids and these are just some items I found that would suit. There's also the mallets that we would make so we would need some handles and glue nails that sort of thing and then these would be for materials for some of the other events and then advertising, decorations, staging we might need. I know Parks and Rec said they have some like tents and stuff we can use but I was thinking we might need some straw bales or you know some festive decorations to stage the event. I spoke with CDA Director Dawn Thomas this morning, and she said there's $1,500 in the CDA funds that are available for this. Great. For events. So $1,500 would cover this already. Perfect. Okay. And then so, you know, every year we could start building more and more events and kind of grow this and have it annually. The next part I have is the Climate Smart. So this could play into waste reduction education campaign. It's just a small aspect of this action for the Climate Smart, but it would access two points. It's a pretty simple education campaign. And the Climate Smart allows us, the more points we get, the more opportunity we have for grants. And then I just have some examples of other pumpkin smash events, like at the Hudson River Park. They have a pretty big one. Some of these places are actually now selling tickets to these because they've become pretty popular. There's one, and then there's one at the Science Museum of Long Island out in Manhasset. They sell tickets, they have food trucks, they have live bands, they really make it into a large event. And then they have, Babylon has theirs. So it's a really fun event for the residents and I think it's a great opportunity to educate about our food scrap program and composting and how to dispose of your old jack-o-lantern. considering our town with all of our farms and everybody comes out here specifically to go pick pumpkins exactly it would be great to have everybody smash their pumpkin here as well so some of the requirements would be no candles or paint because we don't want to contaminate our food scraps so no plastic either and it would bring your own pumpkin obviously we're not going to have any pumpkins there for residents to smash so it's byop no painted pumpkins no painted pumpkins please would it be possible to um have some of the farms they feed their livestock pumpkins would they be able to come that day and pick some of um yeah i can yeah i can contact some farms if you'd like and that would be great help yeah actually um because i i hope that we have a lot of activity there if we we do this and i think that would be great if we have we'll get generate a lot of compost and if the farmers want to take some of the pumpkins that'd be great piggyback you know what joanne said the buffalo love pumpkins oh really so some maybe denise you want to contact at tuchino and uh because they love pumpkins great yeah that'd be awesome i was thinking what if we advertise too like at the farms when you're you know this is the season right now when you're buying your pumpkin come on back on the date that you have um and come smash your pumpkin here yeah absolutely um i can print out a bunch of these flyers and hand them out to the farms and the pumpkin picking places and because the farmers that grow them will diss them you know whatever is left on the field they need that for the nutrients in their soil do they get any climate credits for that sorry do the farmers get climate credits for that i don't think so and i think it's important for the public to know that you should not be throwing your pumpkins away in the trash because of the gas that that forms from the pumpkins that it's not a good thing for the environment. And if you have one of your home composters that we did at our event, you could compost it even, so at home. That's a good idea. Definitely worth an opportunity to see how it goes. So if the board is happy with this, you had a date proposed that you wanted to do this. Yeah, Saturday, November 7th. It's after Halloween and gives everybody a chance to enjoy their jack-o'-lanterns, but enough time that they're not rotting. Cool. It sounds like it's budgeted, like there's money budgeted for it, so I'm good with it. I would definitely connect with our rec department and make sure they know to let people know and hang flyers around. We're going to be posting it on social media. Great. Awesome. I'm good with it. And the time, because it's different than Councilwoman Waski's litter. It's not the exact same time, which is good. It's the same day? It's the same day. Mine is 9 to 11. Okay. But I'll share this with the anti-litter committee as well and promote this. time so if you want to do it 11 to 3 or 4 we can always maybe that's a good idea because people can leave the next one yeah so all right do you want to do 11 to 3 or 11 to 4 yeah yeah is that you guys have a preference 11 to 3 sounds good to me yeah it's four hours that's good yeah so in the anti litter committee we also have some vest oh great so maybe that we'll be able to work with you on that we have any vest available that we can even bring great thank you very much yeah also we have a new textile bin it's the clothes bin it's big and green you can recycle and donate well it's a recycling program and And anything, any kind of textiles you want, sneakers, old, used, worn out, holes, rags, the only stipulation, it can't be wet or moldy. So if it's not suitable to donate to the Salvation Army, they accept it. And it all gets recycled and reused as insulation, or if it's good enough, it can be sold to donation centers and things like that. More climate smart points. And remind everybody, when you bring your pumpkin, bring your old sneakers too. Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's all at the Young's Avenue facility. I'm so glad that you chose the town of Riverhead. Thanks. You've been an asset to the town, so thank you for everything that you've been doing. Great job. Thank you, Joe. Have a good day, guys. Absolutely. So we'll ask for a motion just to go into executive session, where we'll discuss personnel matters, matters surrounding change of status of two employees with Chief Frost, contractual matters surrounding possible extension of license agreement with Resideo, with Hurley, matters surrounding two possible license agreements related to the use of the runway at EPCOW with Councillor Hurley and a legal matter surrounding a disposition of real property with Ms. Thomas. May I have a motion to adjourn and go to an executive? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you everyone.

Thank you.