Full Transcript

Thank you. Good morning everybody. Today is Thursday, October 22nd. We're here for a work session. Before we go any further, why don't we stand and say the pledge together. 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. Does anyone have any announcements this morning? I do. So on Saturday, November 7th? Thank you. The Anti-Litter Committee is hosting their fall cleanup, and they will be doing plogging, which is picking up litter while jogging, if you're interested in doing something like that. Or you can just come out and grab some gloves and a bag and safety vest and pickers that will all be provided to you, and come and keep Riverhead clean. Thank you. I was going to ask Denise for this. So I'm going to say this again. If you're getting in the mail a request for a water test, it's very, very important. This is done by a private company who takes advantage of any town that has any issue with their water. And if you look closely at that, it's not sanctioned by the health department. It's not sanctioned by the EPA. What they're looking to do is sell you a filtration system whether you need it or not. So be cognizant of that out there. Just to clarify, Councilman, that there are no issues. Water that is provided is clean. It's just that there was some rust. There was sediment that was in some of the lines, and they are flushing that out. But everything is safe and portable. Yeah, and I just want to add to that point. You know, our water is monitored by the DEC. It has a tremendous amount of regulations on it. And if our water wasn't safe, believe me, the DEC, the EPA would shut us down. And that's not the case. Somebody trying to promote their business. Capitalize. Yeah, promote their business. Did you have any announcements? I have one other thing since Councilwoman Merrifield is not with us right now. after the litter cleanup they will be having a pumpkin smash over on Young's Avenue and they're going to be smashing pumpkins they're gonna have what did she say like mallets they're gonna have all kinds of different things and ways to help with our food you know waste and bring those jack-o'-lanterns as she says in each time and so thank you um the only thing they can't be painted on um they just you know take your jack-o'-lanterns that are just simply carved or uncarved whatever they are but come on down um and do your part thank you you're always one more now yep and that's it so there go ahead ma'am all right so unless you're going to do it so the rec department is doing their annual trunk or treat which was scheduled for October 16th and moved to October 23rd and that will be at Scott Stotsky Park there's plenty of candy for the little people as long as they get there before Bob Saturday October 24th our repair cafe the Georgia Community Center and then the 24th we also have to 5 p.m. There's a kids night out and craft movie at the Georgia Community Center and on the 30th Our rec department's doing drive-in movie with the minions and monsters at Stotsky. You can check all that out at Riverhead rec It's a great way to stay involved in our town and all those wonderful things So at the end of our announcements will start and we'll get right to our work session with our open items and we'll get through These we'll have our monthly reports with Chief Frost if you'd like to come up All right. We're pretty similar to 2025, actually. The call volume, total incidents are very similar. We're off by approximately 20. I don't think we have your report. I don't think anybody has it. We didn't get a copy of your report. That's okay. Oh, okay. The criminal incidents dropped, which is what I kind of take a look at, dropped to 166. Last month, obviously, in July and August, it's busy. You know, obviously, it's summertime now. We're in September. August was 205. It's down to 166. represents a almost a 19% drop which is good to see we had the normal you know pedal lost these are up a little bit in the stores you know that jumped by like that's nine nine jump in that category alone other than that they all are seem to be in the same area chief I just have to say this all right because I'm gonna to be the broken record every time you make your report. Pay larceny is up, which is basically a catch and release. And I think what people need to understand, even if there was no gas crisis right now, it's called shrinkage. Stores get robbed. They know exactly how much has been robbed. And what they do is they add cost to their existing products in order to make that up because most of them are public companies. And people have to realize that bail reform is hugely responsible for the cost of goods that will continue to go up as long as we continue to allow people to steal without any consequences. There's no question about it. Any retail customers that I have had, I can tell you the shrinkage is amortized into the other products to make up for it. Good point. Thanks, Chief. I mean, I don't have the report, so I can't really ask any questions. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty similar to 2025. There's really nothing out of the ordinary in this report that I see. Like I said, I did like the, obviously, we're in September now, well, October, and the number of criminal incidents dropped, which is good. And, you know, total incident numbers are the same from this period last year. Okay. Thanks, Chief. Great job. We'll have our town clerk next, Mr. Wooten. I don't have much new that the report is as it stands is nothing really standing about it. Bob really wants to know about the dogs. How many dog lives? 70. The only good thing is that I had buildings and grounds because I've had an issue with the public board that I have outside that the state law requires that a clerk have a public board for notices. They brought the one over from the old town hall. If you notice outside this one is, am I able to to control it. It's closed in and locked up so that things aren't moved. Things have been removed and taken down and replaced. So I wanted to secure that better. So that was done by BNG a couple weeks ago. They did it in a matter of a couple days. It was beautiful. So I'm glad they did that. Other than that, no, we're just preparing for the year end. It's been into November already. The clocks are going to shift back this weekend, right? So we're next weekend. So there's nothing new to report. Unless you have any questions. Any questions? No, thanks, Jim. Thank you so much. That's it? All right. All right, thank you. Will our code enforcement officer, Richie Downs, come down?

Too quick. Good morning, sir. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Good. Does everybody have the report? No. They do not? No. I guess they're good. Rich, before you get started, I just want to say one thing. I was at a debate last night, and something came up about blighted properties. And I think it's really, really important that the public understand, when you guys go out and you write a ticket for blighted property, it then goes to court. And so it's hard to distinguish which ones have been ticketed or not, and I'm not asking you to single it out. I just want the public to know that there's a good chance that code has already ticketed those blighted properties. It's going to go to court, and it's going to be remedied. Right. Thank you. You got it. Yeah, so just because you're not seeing something immediately improving doesn't mean that something isn't in the process of being done on that property. So please don't get discouraged. Please know that code enforcement is out there. They're doing their job, which I think that you'll be able to touch upon during your presentation. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, and then we have those two officers that are patrolling, so that helps out a little bit. No, it helps out a lot. Yeah. Because we're being proactive, not reactive to. I've seen a lot of improvements as a result. Yeah. They're actually looking for things now. Yeah, exactly. All right, so getting into the report. I know some of you don't have the report in front of you. I'm sorry about that. But we opened up 62 complaints for the month of September. Just some of those highlighted areas are illegal apartments. We had two property maintenance, general property maintenance code violations. We had nine. Residential building without permits, we had ten. Litter garbage, we had five. Transient rentals, we had one. Zoning use violations, we had four. Our high grass, high weeds complaint are down. That's due to the cold weather. So, you know, the grass is not growing anymore. So that's down a little bit. So the total complaint is 62. Moving on to tickets and violations issued during the month of September. We issued 36 violations. that includes appearance tickets and notice of violations. And some of those were for building without permits, transient rental violations, site plan violations, a couple in the beach and structural hazard area restrictions. Those are wetlands down on the bluffs, sidewalk and driveway maintenance, and some shopping cart violations. So, Rich, you mentioned, you know, in addition to general maintenance, you've added nine to that. And people building without permits is 10. And the last meeting we had with you, it was 13. The one prior to that, it was 19. So I think it's important for people to realize that code is on top of people that are building without permits. and this is what they do all day long and I think it's very important for people to realize this this is not an uncommon thing and then thank you a lot of those people they're waiting for permits to you know they kind of jump the gun so that's another you know you have to hurry of course and I understand that's why we're beefing up the building department making those making them electronic yep rental properties will move into that applications received for the month of September were 48 our revenue collected was 17,000 270 the inspections that we completed was 72 rental permits that we issued were 115 year to date rental revenue is 311 875 thousand the year-to-date rental applications that we received were 586 inspections that we completed year to date 689 and the rental permit issues were 1,008 stuff. Okay, additional notes. We just, we still, as Councilman Kern said, we still are handling the unpermitted construction complaints, property maintenance, 14 maintenance and garbage violations were investigated. We're still handling unsafe structures, dangerous conditions, issuing stop work orders and some certificate of occupancy violations. That's about it. Thanks, Rich. Here's our questions. Thank you.

Counsel, would you like to come up? Our next report will be with our Justice Court with Ms. P. Good morning, everyone. I heard nobody has copies, so I have. Oh, yeah. All right. Thank you.

See, here it is. Blight mitigation on the left side. Oh, yes. Okay. Month of September, a new high of 51,350 in fines and surcharges. Largest categories were blight mitigation, $20,625 is the highest we've had so far. Fire marshal violations are around the same. And those two, between fire marshal and blight mitigation, which are our safety and our highest priorities, those are bringing in the most in court, which means that more tickets are issued for those and more people are remediating them and pleading to them. That doesn't mean they've actually paid that. Yes. So my overall disclaimer that I say on all these is that's what the fines were given to them in court, and it's up to the court to determine whether or not they've paid them. So again, it is important to have fines set and have people pay fines, but I just want to remind everyone our overall goal is remediation. So that's all I have for September. Had a trial on Tuesday again another compliment to Riverhead PD. They are fantastic witnesses. They have great they write Great tickets and the body-worn camera has time and time again been extremely helpful to proving our cases We're avoiding having to go to trial because it's on video. Oh, yeah, sometimes they'll review it with me and Remember that's the events more clearly So yeah, that's what I have for September. Thank you. Any questions? Mr. Supervisor, I had asked Greg if he would come down prior to our number five because we're waiting until 1030. Thank you, Victoria. So I'll be back up for the landmark preservation momentarily. So we're going to do, we have an addition of matters surrounding amendments to shared parking provisions with Senior Planner Mr. Bergman. Good morning. All right, so here to discuss a proposed amendment to some of our parking regulations in town Prepared a little report to kind of give the board a brief summary. So in short right now we have four zoning districts the business center zoning district Hamlet Center village Center and business see our zoning use districts Which currently allow for a 20% reduction in required off-street parking when the peak demand of two or more uses occurs at different times. So like a shopping center where you've got a mix of retail, restaurant, medical office, stuff like that. Right now, that 20% reduction is allowed only in those four zoning use districts. It's kind of odd to me that it's not allowed right now. So business center, Hamlet Center, Village Center, business CR, it is not permitted in other large-scale shopping center zones. So, for example, the shopping center zoning use district, which has the commercial centers that contain Target, Harbor Freight, Staples, BJ's. It is not permitted in the destination retail center, which is Costco and Home Depot, those zoning districts. So we discussed it at code revision to take the language that allows for that 20% reduction out of those specific zoning use districts and implement it into section 301-231A, which is supplementary use guidelines for off-street parking. So I would allow whether the planning board or the town board is reviewing a site plan anytime where there is a mix or a multitude of uses upon submission of credible evidence, you know, either by a traffic engineer or some other licensed design professional to allow the board responsible for review to apply up to a 20% parking reduction. So I did in the packet at the end of it. The reason why it was so long is I included an excerpt from an application I'm currently reviewing with the planning board. Right now, the planning board is reviewing a site plan application for Riverhead Plaza, which is the old Walmart. Right now, Restaurant Depot, Ali's, Bargain Outlet, Fifth Street Furniture, among others. They've got a site plan to construct two new restaurant pad sites up near Old Country Road. but based on the total amount of uses, the different types of uses in that parking lot, based on our code, it would require a total of 954 parking stalls. With their amended site plan and the reconfiguration of some of the lots with the new development, they're able to provide a total of 890 parking stalls. Now, the applicant hired VHB Engineering. They went out and did parking utilization counts, So they actually went out on Wednesday, January 14th, and Saturday, January 17th. Both of those days, they went between the hours of 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. and basically counted cars in the parking lot. They found that on Wednesday, January 14th, the peak parking demand was 211 spaces being utilized, and on Saturday, the peak parking was 245 spaces being utilized. Basically, a maximum of 26% of that parking lot was used, so 75% of that parking lot was just sitting vacant. You know, I did acknowledge even for the planning board that, you know, going and doing a count in the middle of January is probably not reflective of true peak demand. But being that there was an excess of 645 parking stalls not being used at that site, I'm hard-pressed to think that even during a peak summer shopping weekend that you're going to fill those 645 parking stalls. So that's just provided for the board's example as a type of credible evidence that we would accept either for the planning board or for the town board room reviewing an application to allow for up to a 20% reduction. Because right now, certain examples like that, the Riverhead Plaza, right now they would have to go to the Zoning Board of Appeals. There's a fee that's paid for a parking variance, which in a case like along 58 where it's not really going towards a fund to pay for structured or parking improvements, Doesn't really feel like that's appropriate. So I have proposed amendments, again, that would take that language out of each of the specific zoning use districts where it's currently allowed, send it into 301-231, which is just our supplementary use regulations, and would allow any board responsible for review to consider up to a 20% reduction. I have to tell you, Greg, this is a long time coming. You know, these regulations probably were set back when retail was the only, you know, there was no Amazon. And I look at every single parking lot, and I'm familiar with all the ones you're talking about, and I look at all these paved spaces that nobody's using. Setting and doing nothing, exactly. Doing nothing, so I hope 20% is enough reduction. I mean, so the 20% reduction, I mean, it does allow you, there is some, you know, like there may be a busier business than some others. So, you know, again, allowing for a 20% reduction is not just a complete elimination of the parking standards, but it allows flexibility to, again, allow for a potential redevelopment of some of the underutilized portions like we're seeing at the Riverhead Plaza. And just don't need to create seas of parking lots that just sit there. Yeah, Costco has to have about 400 spaces they don't use plus. You know, on Target, it has at least that many that's unused. So you know that's the reason, you know, some of the, one of the recommendations in the comp plan did speak about, you know, ways to address these areas with surplus parking and allow, you know, consider reductions. So that's exactly what we're doing. I think that's fantastic. We'll have the boards amenable. I can put in a resolution to schedule a public hearing, send it to the Planning Commission to get their feedback on it. Okay. We'll get that done at the next meeting. Yeah. Thank you. Greg, how do you separate, hold on. Like when you compare like Walmart shopping center, now that's a parking lot that's quite filled extensively, you know, and you walk quite a distance. Comparable to Home Depot where you can, you know, you have to be 15 spaces out or something, but still relatively close and there's a, you know, a large, vast parking area. So how do you address it when you have one entity such as Walmart, which is an abundance of shoppers that are going in and out on a regular daily basis, to say, well, this particular retail space is far more utilized than potentially another retail space? Because I wouldn't want to do something that says, like another Walmart essentially coming in and going, no, you don't need to provide that parking. We've cut it down by 20 spread. So I just want, how do you separate that? So, yeah, that would be based on evidence. You know, someone, if Walmart, so Walmart does currently have an application to expand right now. Even with their expansion, that site is able to provide all the required parking. They initially wanted to create actually more parking in their parking lot. If the board's familiar with the Walmart's, the current Walmart site, the parking lot has a significant amount of landscaped islands within it. You know, on each bank of parking lot, in each bank of parking spaces, there's three landscaped islands. Walmart, in their revised plans, initially wanted to eliminate almost all of those landscaped islands. When we brought it to the planning board, I brought up the fact that our comp plan speaks about not creating these seas of asphalt. Walmart's argument was that basically people want to be able to, if they could park inside the store, they would. It's like if you've got to walk more than like 100 feet, they're concerned about customers potentially being dissuaded from it. But to your point, Councilman, any sort of reduction or any consideration for a reduction would have to be accompanied by credible evidence. So in a case where a Walmart shopping center would come in and if they wanted to avail themselves of a reduction, they'd have to go and do a similar parking count to see the real numbers. Okay, Walmart site has, I think they've got like 850 parking stalls, something along those lines, to see how many of those stalls are actually utilized. I just see the design layout causes a lot of havoc in the parking lot where a lot of the handicapped spaces are perpendicular to the parking lot. And when someone's trying to leave a handicapped space on the opposite side of the parking lot, it's a lot of havoc in there. I don't disagree that those perpendicular parking spots, the handicapped spaces that you're referencing, I actually brought that up to Walmart, and that's their model. You know, they have the feeling that if they have, like, larger vehicles or, like, a bus that's coming in or, you know, a van, for an accessible van, they prefer those perpendicular spots. And one is going down the row and somebody on the opposite side of the direction is going the opposite way. Yeah, I don't disagree. I tried to sort of get them off of those spaces. But, you know, again, our job is to try to balance. You know, we're not trying to just come in and tell people you have to do it. We want to try to strike a balance between the needs of a business. I mean, Walmart's obviously a national company. They know what they need. They know what their national plan is. It seems like they're laying out their design. And you also have in 301-231, you have it where it says where credible evidence is provided by traffic counts or data by a licensed traffic engineer. So I think that helps answer that question a little bit of like that they have to provide some sort of evidence. Yeah, it's not just someone coming in and saying, well, I think you need this. Again, we would require some type of count saying, you know, we went out on these days, even if the board, whether it was the town board or the planning board said, like, all right, go and capture these, get like a range of dates, like get a couple of weekends, do it maybe in the middle of summer so we can get an accurate count. But still, that's for a pre-existing business. You know, it's easy for Home Depot or Lowe's to go out there and count up their vacant spots or Restaurant Depot and so forth. But, you know, you take one of those, you know, shopping centers and, you know, and you put a Bass Pro in it. All of a sudden, you know, your parking lot's full, you know. And so I understand the process of when you have a preexisting business. But how do you remember that, you know, or if a shopping center has that ability to reduce it by 20% and all of a sudden, you know, big lots is, you know, Bass Pro comes in there. and it changes the whole game of everything. So then you can't rescind that back, can you? With another structure in the middle of the parking lot. So in a case where, like, if a Bass Pro shop went in, I mean, again, like take the old Walmart site, for example, right? Let's say Restaurant Depot and Fifth Street Furniture went out of business and a Bass Pro shop, for example, went in there. We've got evidence demonstrating that on their peak demand, there's an excess of 645 parking stalls, which, I mean, I don't know. two types of businesses but now you build you put two restaurants in park I'm don't get me wrong I'm just trying to understand it and now you put restaurants in there you remove those spaces then a Bass Pro comes in you can tell Bass Pro you don't have enough parking to enter this particular shopping center how do you how do you adjust it when you have a new entity coming in to potentially a vacant building or that's what that 20% reduction would would run with the land right I mean so if a vacant store came in you know if a store went out of business and came in and there was a busier business i mean again i also feel like there's a generally large companies will have like certain parking requirements like that i've heard you know there's been developers who have been speaking with a trader joe's for example trader joe's even though they're a small footprint store they require x amount of parking stalls so any site that is developed within town that for example a bass pro shop went in i would think when they're doing their due diligence they're going to ensure that their shopping center has enough parking to meet their needs if it doesn't i mean if it's not a suitable location for another type of business they look elsewhere i just want to follow up a little bit uh on that so let's just say okay uh lowe's wasn't here but lowe's filed an application I hope we would not allow them to have as much parking as they have now because I've never seen that parking lot more than, not even close to half full. And what's happened as a result, and same with Home Depot, Home Depot has taken, I think I counted, 30 spaces that they use commercially for rental equipment that I don't think we even assess. Lowe's does the same thing. They'll put sheds outside. They put everything outside in parking spaces. So they're using that commercially, and we're not assessing that. So back to my question. Let's say something like Lowe's came in or Costco. Under the old 40 years ago regulations where there was no Amazon and everybody was shopping, are we looking at new operations and reducing the parking? Lowe's isn't a case where there's shared parking, right? I mean, Lowe's is the only operator on that site. Right. So they wouldn't really be applicable. I mean, we can look at, in general, looking at the parking requirements. Right now, retail is one per 250, which, look, I used to work at Lowe's. I've worked at Lowe's for a number of years. I'm familiar with what their actual parking demands are. I mean, when I first started almost 20 years ago, maybe on a Black Friday, those parking lots would be full, but that has definitely changed. So, I mean, we could look at just in general amending some of the parking requirements. You know, there's some guidance. We can look at the ITE manual. You know, there's parking generation counts and, like, recommended parking ratios and that. So we can look at individual uses. What I will say, I've looked at other towns and how they assess shopping centers. Like, right now, we don't have a parking requirement for a shopping center. It's just, you know, we have a parking requirement for retail, we have a parking requirement for restaurant, office, et cetera. Other towns have, like, for example, Smithtown has three different categories of shopping center. There's, like, a local shopping center, a sub-regional shopping center, and a regional shopping center. It's based on total square footage, and there's parking requirements at a commencement. I will say that some of those requirements are a lot more intense. some of their parking requirements go down to up to like 1 per 160 square feet of floor area which is a tremendous amount of parking how old are they when they did this what year did they do it in it would be my question and I love the fact that you're going to look at this because we don't know when they did that maybe they did that 20 years ago and they never fixed it you know what I mean I will say there have been my parents still live in Smithtown so I go there often And there was a shopping center near Main Street in Smithtown. It was the old Waldown Shopping Center. For years, it was underutilized, right? Waldowns went out of business. Fast forward to today, 2026, when I go there, there's Uncle Giuseppe's. There's a ton of new businesses in there. When I go in there, that parking lot is full. So there are sort of renaissance periods that certain shopping centers will go through. So I don't know that we necessarily want to just reduce everything. I think that I don't want to kind of want to go too far in the direction of reducing parking where we create situation, like to Councilman Rothman's point. Like we want to ensure that there is an adequate supply without overbuilding. So what I think is, like, in a case like this, allowing for the 20% reduction addresses some of those concerns, allows us to sort of realize some development potential in other, you know, in underutilized portions of the parking lot, but doesn't go sort of too far and create potential issues down the road where we don't have enough parking. Right, but to your point, so we're one space for every 250 square feet? For retail, that's what the current... For retail, that's, and how long has that been in our code? I'm just curious. I know it used to be one per 200. I'd have to double check. It was probably amended sometime in the mid-2000s. It used to be one per 200, which is more intense. So it was reduced at some point. Okay. I think to the councilman's point, I think he touched on, but let's take Home Depot for example. They go ahead and they design their building, they lay it out, and they have their outdoor garden center, which is so many square feet, and they're being taxed on that. also being taxed on the parking lot, but maybe it's a different calculation of how they're taxed. They go out and they spend $300 on a special events permit, and they add a full acre of outdoor plants for sale, all their nursery items and everything that's going out there. And so how does that compare to the footprint of what they're actually being taxed on? Because when we allow them to go into the parking lots for these special permits, You know, does that say to the next developer that comes in, well, I can keep my building smaller and just through special events during the spring sales and other things, utilize the special events permit and not have to pay for the overall footprint of the actual building and what I actually need to resale, you know, my items and how you calculate that in. Because I think if that's what you're touching on, you're changing the format of your tax formula, you know, when they're going out. So I think at a certain point, if we're talking about parking and doing this, I think it's great that you're bringing it forward, but then maybe some of these larger retail locations like Home Depot need to kind of be reassessed for outdoor parking area usage, you know, in terms of, like, they remove those parkings. They remove all those parking spaces, and it's massive what they're doing outside and all the different plans that are in line, because clearly they can't fit everything inside the store. So I'd be very curious to get a better understanding and maybe some involvement, you know, our town assessors on how the parking lot is taxed and the rate compared to the actual building structure and square footage of the building when really half their business in the springtime and summer months are set up shop outside the parking lot, you know, and you're only paying for a special events permit, which is minimal. Are you referring also to Tanger when they do the Mother's Day sale, the plant sale out there? Those are charitable fundraisers and stuff like that. But that idea. Yeah, but a charitable fundraiser is completely different. I love what Rotary does. I'm talking about Home Depot. The bug sale that Home Depot does where for like a month at a time they'll have all the rugs. They sell rugs inside already. Why do they need a tent outside for a month with a bunch of rugs in it? Yeah, and Denise, they're very consistent on the west side of their parking lot to park all their rental equipment. and it almost goes the entire length. And I actually did bring it up to the assessors a while ago. I think we need to revisit that because, you know, and I know this has something to do with you. Yeah, I mean, I'm not an assessor. Parking lots are parking lots, right? Parking lots are parking lots, whether you're parking cars on it or, you know, plant cars. I mean, there's a little more consideration to look at in terms of if for some of the operations that they're doing, I'm not looking to hamper any of it, but everybody's got to pay their fair share in terms of the taxes and how it's allocated and how it's calculated. If you are saying that throughout the year I'm going to use consistently 100 parking spaces outside, and that's going to be essentially always a part of what would normally be located inside my building, how is the tax? Is it an equal rate of what you're paying per square foot in a parking lot compared to what you're paying inside the building? I mean, I would – again, taxing is not my thing. I've mentioned taxes, and Laverne comes in and smacks my hand, so I'm not going to do that. I mean, a parking lot's a parking lot. I'm not asking you to answer the question, but I would like them perhaps to contribute because I think it's some – when we're changing allocation of spaces and so forth, because then maybe there's – Maybe something like Home Depot can file a site plan amendment to allow additional exterior retail space, and maybe that space would be taxed differently. You're talking about the plant sale, the one out there? Yeah, it's about that. And then when the plants go away, the rugs come in, and then so forth. And the rental equipment is consistent almost year-round. And then with all the truck retails and so forth, it's a consistent step outside the footprint of their building. But for this shared parking... Yeah, so what do you guys want to do with this? I think it's great. To a public hearing? Is everybody okay with that? Absolutely. That's great. At the next meeting. And Joanne asked for it to be the next meeting, so we'll do that. All right. Thank you. So Joanne, are we waiting on Mr. Wines? Mr. Wines is unable to attend today, but we have Kelly Schager is here from the Landmark Preservation Committee. So come on down, Kelly. Victoria, if you want to join us. Joanne, if you want to. Yeah, so it's been a long time. Victoria will be able to explain better. Since the preservation code has been updated, and we've had some recent events that have kind of called for this to come to our attention. So, Victoria? Yes, so I think we can all agree that $1,000 for demolishing or altering a landmark is not enough it has not been refreshed since 2006. i don't know if everyone has okay thank you and um councilwoman mosky is liaison to landmark preservation i don't really know what my title is for landmark preservation but um here i am uh so we've been meeting for a couple years now about all different things that you know there's a lot of overlap between landmark preservation and the Justice Court so along the way there are cases that come up where people get tickets in Justice Court and then we you know figure out what we're going to do moving forward to make sure that these things don't happen so anything that's struck out is what we're going to remove and there's a lot that I'm adding or proposing to add so my idea because I think altering a landmark and demolishing a landmark are two very different things and they should be treated very differently so that's why I created two sections so obviously first second third offense on a demolished landmark doesn't make any sense but it makes sense for the alteration As you can see, the penalties for a demolition of a historical structure or a landmark, the starting point is going to be much higher because it has to be tied to the egregiousness of it and it needs to be accounted for. We also have to be mindful of Town Law 268 so that we can match that fine with the offense. and keep in mind this is only justice court fines so these are the highest fines that I could find that are similar to other villages and towns and we are also there's a section in there that is authorizing us to pursue other methods to make sure that these things are addressed which is our civil penalties our supreme court actions and so on so that is what we came up with and I did put the legislative intent and the additional remedies to make sure that we're accounted for on all fronts on this. I have one question. Sure. On the unauthorized alteration, so not less than $1,000, right? Is that enough? I mean, it seems to me, and you'd have to give me some examples of unauthorized alterations. Sure. and it just seems like I like the demolition, I think is right. You know, I mean, I think that's a good start because I think it was a lot lower because I sat with you on this. Wasn't it like $5,000 or something crazy low? You're raising, it's now $10,000. Everything, no matter what it was, was capped at $1,000. So the floor was zero on this. All right, so in B, so it's 5,000. See, it says not less than 1,000 or more than 5,000 for first offense. Are you guys good with that? I mean, it seems to me that if they did, I would start at 5,000. So an alteration is a broad term, so it could be as little as changing out. Right. Right. So I didn't want to have it be completely, you know, I didn't want it to be arbitrary, but I also didn't want it to be an excessive fine. So that kind of lands us in a good place where we can account for any and all types of alteration. We've had many cases that have come through the court where the homeowner or the property owner will come in with a plan on how to remediate the issue. get materials that are you know during that time period to try and fix what they did whether they weren't aware of it whether they you know they know now so there's it's it's and Kelly can tell you a little bit more about this it's a broad spectrum of issues that we see in landmark when people come after the fact so like siding is an example somebody replacing like cedar siding with vinyl that's like a big offense in our mind but the cost difference between vinyl and cedar is fairly significant we have some other options that we throw out there to people like hardy planka solobolics like cement products but just if the vine doesn't account for the difference in cost then it starts being somewhat one of our major concerns on landmark preservation was the spices building they tore it down demolition permit just overnight it was gone and that's something you know everybody knows spices and we'll never get that back and the fine for that was $1,000 which you know keeping that building was gonna cost them more than you know so it's really it was like oh very much an open case in court that we're trying to work out remediation on So, yes. That's a great lead-in. It's a perfect example. I would ask you to maybe take a closer look at the maximum fine of $15,000, and let me just state why. If I'm a developer and I say I cannot work with Spicey's, it's not what I'm looking for. I want a new restaurant. I want a new design layout. And I just decide I'm going to take the whole building down and clear the lot. $15,000 is a very small investment for now me being able to file building permits and build whatever I want. So if there is, I'll go another way, if there's a, you know, an old barn or shed that's a historic landmark and I want to, you know, I'm a homeowner and I want to take it down because I want to put a pool or expand my driveway and other things, you know, $15,000 seems like, all right well if i just take that i'll pay fifteen thousand dollars it's a cost and i'll get my pool i'll get my expansion or or my pool house whatever it may be or a whole new shed structure you know um would there be any consensus to say that maybe you look at the historical value of the building and assess the value of it and say that maybe that it needs to be if you're going to tear something down and something like spicy's is worth a you know a couple hundred thousand dollars do you then say guess what don't tear it down because maybe the fine should be 50 of the appraised value of building you know through a corporate scheme or something you know what i mean where we need to be much more stronger i just i think it's great that this is coming forward and you're addressing it but i i could see a developer just go fifteen thousand dollars cost of doing business let's get rid of that because everyone knows historic landmarks are extremely costly to restore, refurbish, and the materials specific. You know, in today's market, like you say, vinyl signing is a lot cheaper. And so if I thought, well, you know, and I'm looking at, you know, mahogany planking and everything, that's going to be an enormous amount of money, and maybe I can save a lot of money, just take the whole thing down. And I think maybe a very much stronger fine for destruction, complete demolition of a mine, I think needs to maybe take a look at as a percentage of what the value of the structure was and i like that that adjusts

i did cover that concern in additional remedies i just want to remind the board that um criminal fines are intended to punish and deter not to uh you know it's it's not necessarily to uh you know get all the value back for the property and I say that because we will have additional civil remedies there's also you know we can't compensate for the entire value but there are other ways like as you stated if there's something as egregious as that that would be you know a supreme court action where we would kind of get the valuation of the property and and go through that channel to specifically address that concern. And that's, you know, we have the civil penalties, Supreme Court, and then Justice Court for the deterrence as well. What would trigger the Supreme Court action? Is there a monetary amount that would trigger it? No, I mean, it's any other way that we bring something to the Supreme Court. If we feel, you know, if we know that this is hypothetical, But if we know that a developer or someone bought the property and we find out that they're going to demolish it, that's something that we could get a TRO in Supreme Court. So things like that to hopefully prevent it. And then after the fact, we would assess it as we assess any other Supreme Court action. Does the verbiage, though, like when it says be punishable by a fine not less than $10,000 or more than $15,000, if you struck out, like, for example, not more than $15,000, does that leave it more open-ended for you to seek more? or if you're doing 15 as a cap on it it's got to be tied to the offense and it can't we can't just have it be to infinity so um i'm willing to explore 20 000 i just want to be mindful of state law and our you know application uh through town law to kind of you know make sure that we're not you know making the the fine arbitrary but yes and infinity and beyond okay um but that yeah that would be you know so i will you know i'll look into to bringing it up to possibly 20. um but just keeping in mind that we have other you know we have other avenues in place that we can um address this as well and again keeping in mind you know also um building permit fees would be you know doubled if not more if they're trying to get some sort of permit to remediate this this. Good stuff. This is really good. So that's what I have. It's, you know, it was reviewed on our last landmark preservation meeting. We went over it. Everybody got a look at it. And then I collected them back after. And then, and that was, you know, everybody on the board that was present was in favor of this so so with with looking at the the higher fine I will draft that I'll send it back around and then hopefully we can get this on for a public hearing within the next month if that's good with the board thank you great job thank you so much for coming Kelly I appreciate it come back to talk about other stuff yeah there's some historical markers and a lot of things that the landmark preservation commission is working on that they'd like to make the board aware of all the day all good things unfortunately the chair Richard wines was unable to be here today he was when we originally scheduled this but we didn't want to have any more time go before we presented this to the board but I look forward to you guys coming back thanks for coming in Kelly thank you to close this session going to executive session we'll talk about legal matters matters surrounding possible legal action addressing code violations with Howard Thomas and Muller and contractual matters surrounding contractual agreement between the town every read a PBA with helping Howard and the Apollo may have a motion to adjourn so all in favor

Thank you.