Full Transcript
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Just before we, Devin, can you hear us back there? We can turn it up. Yeah, probably would be, volume would be helpful. That's what I was just going to ask. Thank you. Are we good? All right. So do we have any announcements? I'd like to start with our Senior Center, which is having the Preventing the Financial Exchange Exploration of Seniors. And so we'd like to invite you to that. And that date is Tuesday, February 24th at 11 a.m. And we also have another one of the Raising of the Irish Flag. The town board would like to invite you to the third annual, March 14th, 1030 a.m., at the George Young Community Center. Does anyone else up here have an announcement tonight? No. You look like you did, Bob. I know. I couldn't tell. You were thinking about it, right? You were so close. I was completely thinking about it. All right. Town Clerk Wooten, do you have any correspondence for us? We did. We had received five letters from area residences referenced to golf cottages and the legislation that's for us for that. And also one letter from an Andrew Schriever referenced to motocross. And they are all in your packet. Those that did not put a township where they lived, they did not get published in the agenda, but they do get circulated. They get circulated to the board. So everybody has a chance to read them. And under reports, we have the receiver of taxes, total tax collection as of February the 4th, $106,912,279.60. As of February 11th, $107,340,321.44. Georgette Case, our Rivertown historian, presented her annual report for 2025. The receiver of taxes total utility report for January 2026 was $543,496.27. The town clerk monthly report for January 2026 was $7,804.60. And the billing department monthly report for January was $92,580. And that concludes our reports and correspondence. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you very much. Next, we'll be moving to our public scoping session for a special permit and site plan application of Duffy MX Motocross Track 2822 River Road, Calverton, New York, Suffolk County Tax Map number 600-136-1-4 with our senior planner, Greg Bergman. Thank you, Supervisor, members of the town board. For the record, Greg Bergman, senior planner and zoning officer with the Riverhead Planning Department. This is a scoping session on the draft for the draft environmental impact statement of the Duffy MX Motocross Track. As you stated, Supervisor, this is a site plan and special permit application being reviewed concurrently by the Riverhead Town Board for the special permit and the Riverhead Planning Board for the site plan. The application seeks to establish an outdoor motocross track with related parking and site improvements on a 15-acre property located at 2822 River Road in the hamlet of Calverton. The board issued a positive declaration on this application on October 21st, 2025. A draft scope was submitted to the planning department on January 15th. That triggered a 60-day timeline for the town board as lead agency to issue what's called a final scope, which sets forth the parameters on what's going to be studied in the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed project. I will say this is a scoping session. I would ask that comments be limited to the draft scope. There will be a subcommittee, a subsequent public hearing on the application. So this is not necessarily the forum to say you're for or against the project because those comments are not relevant and would not be incorporated into the final scope. But I will just briefly go through some of the comments we've received from involved agencies as well as staff comments that I have on the draft scope. So I will acknowledge that we've received comments from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, and there was a discussion about the draft scope. There was a letter from the Central Pine Barrens Commission which was adopted at its meeting this afternoon, which I do have a draft of. That was provided to the board and I provided that to the applicant as well. I will go through just the staff comments on the draft scope. On page three, there's a table number two, reviews, permits, and approvals required. Being that the New York State DEC has determined that a mine land reclamation permit will be required for the application, the Town of Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals needs to be added as an involved agency as a mining permit is not, mining is not a permitted use within the Calverton Industrial Zoning Use District. Adding into the New York State DEC section, they do need a WSRR permit. The DEC indicated that they would need a variance from the WSRR in order to obtain that permit, as well as a mine land reclamation permit. Thank you. adding a section into number 3.1 called consistency with adopted land use plans it's going to read the project proposes a sand mine which is a prohibited use within the Calvert industrial zoning use district pursuant to Town Code chapter 301 attachment 4b going on further in section 3.2 regarding noise both in the 3.2 point 1 as well as 3.2 point 2 gonna add language that including nearby residential properties agricultural operations preserved open space parkland areas and licensed daycare centers specifically to identify those as the sensitive receptors for noise in the area as well as analyze those potential impacts in section 3.3 point 2 under transportation add language that the traffic impact study would analyze operation of the site including special events and races under section 3.4 point 1 cultural resources adding language indicating that pursuant to correspondence with the New York State Office of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation phase 1a and 1b archaeological survey shall be conducted at the project site and included in this section in order to determine the presence or absence of archaeological site or other cultural resources in the project's area of potential effects and then under the last section 5.0 alternatives considered we're gonna add a alternative 5.2 and that alternative would be alternative without excavation and exportation of material sand mining and demonstrating compliance with the central pine barrens compatible growth area requirements so those are staffs comments again I did distribute the involved agencies letters to the board I would just ask and I briefly broached this with the applicant prior to the meeting based on the secret timeline we are required to adopt the final scope by March 16th in order for the board as well as planning staff to adequately address and I and digest comments from both involved agencies as well as any comments that we receive at the public hearing tonight I'm just going to request that the applicant give us a one day extension we have a town board meeting on March 17th so one additional day to adopt the final scope I don't want to uh if we fail to adopt it within the long frame or an extension agreed by the applicant it defaults to the draft scope that was provided so I will submit that in writing to the applicant as long as they agree we can provide all of the comments and incorporate them into a final scope before the board on March 17th thank you Greg it's like to open at this time again as Greg has pointed out and as you guys can everyone in the room can tell we have a full room tonight we have plenty of public hearings and so we just like to ask if you have a comment for this section this really is not a public hearing on whether this is something you're for against this is really about the environmental impact or what's in the scoping session again for everyone tonight because we do have a full room um we do have currently on our books a three minute time limit and so we ask that you respect your neighbor who would like to also speak and so at the right after the three minute mark I will be stopping you and asking that the next person be able to to speak as well and again if you've heard somebody say something uh that you would that you planned on saying maybe you understand that we have heard that we are listening just because we're not replying doesn't mean we're ignoring you uh we are listening and taking those in for advisement and under advisement so with all that said if someone would yes sir just I'm sorry I'm at the town attorney and the public public uh sessions generally do not have a time limit so is scoping different under town rule but usually there is no limit on speaking and during a public hearing I think the scoping yeah so I don't know I'm just checking we would treat it treat it the same as a public hearing oh I'm sorry um the rules for public hearings are that there is generally no time limit but it would be up to the supervisor's discretion to limit it limit time uh based on the number of people who are seeking to speak uh subject to additional time once everybody has had an opportunity thank you for pointing that out so there you go so I will be letting you speak I guess so three minutes yeah three minutes that's what I'm saying so yep you can come back up so you can just return the line um I appreciate that the board's issuance of a positive declaration and requirement of the full deis given the scale of the excavation the site's environmental sensitivity and the project's proximity to residential uses and a licensed daycare facility a comprehensive review is warranted so I'll try and address it uh bit by bit so first for the uh excavation and soil export which is approximately the 120 000 cubic yards I don't do know that Greg said that there'll be a mine land Reclamation permit uh required but a few other things I think the deis must address is the uh to quantify the soil and participated truck trips daily in total identify Hall routes and assesses roadway capacity and pavement wear analyze the construction phase noise and air quality impacts of both inhalable particles and fine particles and then also to clarify whether soil exports well constitutes a commercial mining activity we that was addressed my second point is on the prime agricultural soils and the agricultural District number seven this site contains uh Riverhead Sandy loom identified as prime agricultural soils within Suffolk County agricultural District 7. excavation would irreversibly convert more than two and a half acres of this agricultural land so the deis should qual quantify the acreage of prime soils permanently lost address consistencies with Suffolk County agricultural District policies evaluate cumulative impacts on agricultural land preservation and identify whether top soil will be stripped preserved or permanently removed from the site the permanent loss of prime agricultural soils is an irreversible irreversible commitment of our natural resources as far as the Central Pine Barrens and open space standards the property is located within the Central Pine Barrens compatible growth area the scope indicates that the project does not conform to the 40 natural open space requirement and may require a hardship waiver the the scoping should calculate existing versus proposed clearing percentages provide justification for any requested hardship waiver analyze consistency with the Pine Barrens comprehensive land use plan and evaluate cumulative fragmentation impacts in the compatible growth area as far as groundwater protection PFAS plume and the uh the um wild scenic and recreation River Corridor uh the site is located within the Central Suffolk uh special groundwater protection area the wild scenic and recreation River Corridor and its proximal proximity to the Calvary Navy weapons industrial reserve plant which is a state uh Superfund site and associated PFAS plume so should be requesting to be included groundwater flow modeling to assess impacts of the excavation analysis of whether depressed track Basin could alter groundwater gradients evaluation of potential interaction with the PFAS plume and detailed stormwater design and infiltrate infiltration impact analysis and also uh the clarification of the solar I'm just gonna have to stop you because it's about 25 seconds over so what are we doing the three minutes well we're gonna see if anybody else has anything else to say and then we'll let you come back up for another okay so is there anybody online nobody online is anybody else in the in the room would you like to speak okay Laura if you'd like to return thank you for one more time um so still pertaining to the groundwater protection um the clarification of wastewater disposal because the plans are calling for portable facilities and this is needed for the protection of the sole source aquaphor must be treated as Paramount concern on this site the noise impacts should be evaluated for construction and during operation the scope acknowledges potential exceedance of the town code to 251 for noise thresholds and identifies a licensed daycare within 1500 feet so it must provide modeling of Peak race day decibel levels evaluate cumulative noise from multiple simultaneous bikes analyze weekday and weekend operations address duration and frequency of exposure and demonstrate compliance at all property lines and sensitive receptors as far as traffic and public safety while the skull references truck traffic from soil and soil !
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expert the deis must also analyze intersection capacity and level of service emergency vehicle access seasonal traffic interactions and potential conflicts with residential driveways and pedestrian Safeways as far as wetland and endangered species um it it references nearby wetlands and potential salamander habitat uh the deis should include field delineation wetland boundaries and !
So as far as the lighting and Community character the proposal includes Outdoor parking lot lighting and bleachers the deis should analyze glare and light spill over include photometric plans address compatibility with surrounding rural residential uses and clarified defined hours of operation and the cumulative growth and inducing impacts it should also evaluate the precedent setting implications of percent of permitting this use interaction with other industrial uses in case of a
Calverton, long-term land conservation conversion pressures, and infrastructure and municipal service demands. Cumulative impacts should not be minimized or deferred. So in conclusion, the proposal affects multiple protected resources, including our prime agricultural soil, our prime barren lands, land use standards, sole source aquifer protection, proximity to a Superfund site, nearby wetlands, adjacent homes, and community facilities. For this, I hope that you will take a hard look at this scoping and have the questions addressed. So thank you. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate your time. COMMISSIONER MAY. I also have to submit to the Clerk of the Board. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. COMMISSIONER MAY. The scoping is for the environmental impact. COMMISSIONER WRIGHT. Okay. So, yes, so then I guess I wait for the meeting for that then. MR. Yes, that will be the next meeting. COMMISSIONER WRIGHT. Okay. All right. Thank you. MR. Your presence is known, though, and taken. COMMISSIONER WRIGHT. So, Greg, can I ask you for some clarification on some issues? MR. Yes. Thank you. COMMISSIONER WRIGHT. So we had a work session some time ago, and I brought up some issues, and I just didn't know whether or not you've dealt directly with the applicant towards some of the concerns that I arose. And I just want to make, first of all, formalities of just going down towards who's in charge of what. So sand mining is illegal in a town of Riverhead. So is it, are they going to be seeking a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals, or is the town board going to be issuing, who's going to make a determination on variance for sand MR. So that's a good question. That was something that came, excuse me, that came together through the coordination period and the distribution of the draft scope. Initially, it was unclear whether or not the DEC would consider this a sand mine. Based on the correspondence we've received, they do in fact consider that sand mining. Sand mining, I believe it's construction sand and gravel, which is described in our table of use regulations, is explicitly a prohibited use. So that would be something that would be before the Zoning Board of Appeals. The ZBA was not initially an involved agency because it was unclear whether or not that would be required. But now that it's been confirmed, yes, the ZBA will be an involved agency and it will require a. MR. So do they go before the ZBA first, before the town board, or permit, or what's the process? MR. It will have to run concurrently. You know, it's, the ZBA is now an involved agency. So it's all considered one. It's the one action, the special permit, the site plan, and any potential use variances. So before the ZBA could render a decision on a potential use variance, the town board would have to complete SECRA, you know, adopt a finding statement before any involved agency can act on any portion of their application before them. MR. The second question is, has the applicant at all considered, you know, to complete this project without removing any materials from the property? So why can't they do that? Can they dig down, keep everything, create buffers, concrete barriers, whatever it may be to mitigate noise and sound without removing anything from the site? Is that still a consideration or not? MR. So that was something that I had recommended as a potential alternative to the development. The alternative without excavation and exportation of the material where the material remains on site and demonstrating compliance with the CGA. You know, I'm not going to presuppose anything. But to get through the. MR. use variance to get through Pine Barrens compatible growth hardships, that seems like a tough decision. So, I mean, it would probably behoove the applicant to really put a lot of effort into, again, if you need to regrade the property, if they need to berm on site and, rather than dig down and export that material, again, that's the reason for including that as one of the alternative projects. If the material stays on site, it's not considered sand mining, just excavation work, right? It's excavation and grading. It's site work. I can confirm with the DEC, but if it's not exported, I don't believe it would constitute a sand mine. So, the second thing that we also talked about, and I heard back from the work session, was that if they do get a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals, and the project goes through, and they remove sand from the site, are they bonding any money? Is it their intention to bond any money to protect the site until, the actual business is opened, and they get their CO and they're in full operation? And the reason why I said that is that what I don't want to see is that they go ahead, begin sand mining a site, okay, until they get to the point of no return, and then decide the project for any financial ability is no longer viable, and step away from the land and be like, hey, guess what? We're not going to build a motor cross track. It's just not viable, and so our investors backed out, whatever it may be, and then they walk away from the project, and now, we basically have an open pit sand mine. So, I had said during the work session, would the applicant consider bonding the money? So, instead of them, you know, the town getting $5, you know, for a truckload, and the applicant getting $50, they'd have to put that money in for a restoration bid, so that until they actually, the money, the funds wouldn't be released from any sand mining until the actual project came to completion, fruition, was physically operating, and then it could be released. So, you understand my concern that they don't come in, dig it all out, decide they don't want to do it, and now what we did on the town board, the zoning board, is you just created a sand mining operation with no point of return. Does that make sense? It does. There is a lot to unpack there. So, to sort of put it succinctly, the sand mining, and I've been pretty much up front with this since this project has, you know, since its inception, since it was first before. The sand mining will present an issue both in terms of use for the town and getting through DEC. Now, I mean, we have, you know, mining is prohibited within our Calverton Industrial Zoning Use District, so I'm not really sure how to get around that. That said, absent our town codes and prohibited uses, any mine land reclamation permit that's issued by the DEC has a reclamation plan. So, there is a... There is essentially an end use for that sand mine, you know, whether it's to replant with grass, have it meadow, you know, repurpose it as an industrial use, you know, that's something that's typically under the jurisdiction of the DEC with their mine land reclamation permit. Again, I'm not the expert in that field, so I don't want to say, you know, I don't want to put my foot in my mouth. Has the applicant made any, any, expressed any thoughts towards what their reclamation plan is? So, what we've got, I don't... I don't even think they've really engaged... I don't know how much, to what extent they've engaged with the DEC. The correspondence that I've received has been generated from the SIGRA coordination and the distribution of the draft scope. I can't speak for the applicant as to what extent they've gone to the DEC and had these discussions with them. Is there a representative from the applicant that would like to speak about it all today, or...? I do believe we have another comment, though, from the public. No, I'm sorry. Okay, the applicant. I wanted to just add. Yeah. A comment, too, if I may. Mr. Bergman, has the applicant ever considered... I'm mindful of the fact that the town needs economic growth and tax revenue to help. However, considering the issues with lighting, that's a problem, noise, that's a problem, and sand mining, which this is what this is, has the applicant considered the alternative of an indoor track, which would alleviate all those concerns with lighting, noise, and absolutely no sand mining? So... My concern I have is... I have no doubt that the applicant's expectation is that the property's running above the rent rent above the indoor racetrack and again the DEIS would flush out what that proposal would look like you know and what the potential impacts that would be now again I mean traffic might be the same but that might mitigate noise may address lighting may address you know all of those things and might eliminate the need for sand mining so I will note I could put section 5.3 that could construct an indoor motocross track as opposed to an outdoor motocross track my concern is that during the work session that the applicant had stated that he was counting on the proceeds from the sand mining to be able to complete the project so how would he be able to do an indoor so the the financial viability of a project has no bearing on the town boards environmental review of this whether or not you know an applicant is able to construct a project or financially able to construct a project really has no bearing those comments about the project are not valid and I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's a good point I think that's for that I don't know yes sir Vic person I'll ski 533 Elton Street Riverhead I working with the project as a consultant we're in the scoping hearing part of the scoping as you should all know is to consider alternatives so all the alternatives that you brought up tonight will be considered number two councilman Rothwell you asked me that question we were on television on thing and I said we would be amenable for that type of a bond I understand all of you is concerned about starting a project I was on the town board when people started a project and they left it and was a big sandpit so I understand that also one of the benefits not benefit but one of the restrictions that we're going to be taking into account is that we're going to be working with the city council to determine what the conditions are for the project and I think that's one of the conditions of doing it by the way this is not a sand mine this is an operation to create the track and one of the ways and I worked on the big NASCAR project 15 years ago how Las Vegas was built is when you dig down it directs the noise up so part of the excavation of the track is that it's a part of the noise mitigation and it's part of the noise mitigation that we have to address in this report so my conclusion is we of course we would do the bond okay number two is we will explore all the alternatives we'd love to build an indoor track if we can find somebody to put up five million dollars to build that size track as a project but I think that's a big challenge and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and I think that's a big challenge for the city and deliberations where when you issue a special permit you can put conditions like that in your special permit which we have to follow through in site plan so just to clarify that we're going to do that we want to do the right thing it's a family recreation thing the it's not a sand mine just for the record since it was brought up but it is an environmental concern that pertains to the scoping hearing but it was really thought of first and I'm not saying it's the only way we can do because we're also going to burn to we're going to go down and burn that's part of the project there's also practice there's also going to be topsoil board back on to the property we're going to take some off but we're going to bring some on because we cannot we have to stabilize the track it's a dirt track so we just can't do it with the sand so and the town gets paid I think it's three dollars a yard now when we take it off the town gets three dollars a yard when we come back if they get three dollars a yard also you know you know you know the DEC requirements for the sand mine Greg is absolutely correct part of issuing a sand mining permit is the you have to have a mitigation plan at the end so he was correct on it that's part of the permit you can put that in your site plan at your special permit too so I just want to clarify a couple of those things but we will look at alternatives for the noise mitigation all the other things that you brought up I appreciate it and and I know that it may be repetitive so some things that we know that's okay I have no problem with I just want to put it on the record that we sat and I and I brought it up because you asked the question was nice and I said we would be we'd consider it that's exactly what I'm doing is just put on the record that we're talking into all and I'm up here putting it on the record we're putting it on the record so we just want the public to know we're driving concerned and we're not and they now the downside of a lot of this property no this is part of the thing well downside you can come right back up if you just think there might be a lot of problems with the property and I think it's a good thing that we're going to be able to do that. might be somebody else there's not somebody else farmland it's good it just the marijuana okay growing farmland so you better be careful you can come right back up I promise just give us a second I just realized my glasses are back in my pocket oh geez okay sorry about that public you know you're on channel 22 everybody wants to hear you I have eliminated the majority of my comments so everybody should be really happy about that but I just have to say off that at the beginning I'm appalled that there is consideration for the second time in a few short months that an application for a prohibited use would be going to the zoning board for a determination and how does that happen if it's a use of variance they have to demonstrate that they can't use that property for anything else I know it's very tempting to try to find a waiver to waive the prohibition in this town against sand mining because you stand to gain $3 a cubic yard for two hundred and twenty thousand what it's a come up to a 300 and what over $300,000 don't look at me from what no yeah it's very tempting but that would send a route of the wrong message and I am really quite amazed that the DBA is now becoming your catch-all for prohibited uses that's not really the way things generally are adjudicated over there or the nature of the things so mining is prohibited we know that question 12 on the mining application reads is mining prohibited at the location that yes it is this answer should bring this to a hard stop we have had several jurisdictional disputes with the DEC over the years but the DC has acknowledged that local zoning should take precedence like yeah it's 360 I knew I had it in here 360 thousand dollars from a 229 permit that's that is tempting its soils are required to remain on the site the scope must evaluate the feasibility of their reuse for agricultural purposes if the site is no longer used as in motocross track type Tiger Salamanders have been decided the scope should include an investigation as to whether a determining and a determination from the DC as to whether an incidental incidental take permit is required the project is adjacent to a state Superfund fight with a site and is within the p fass plume and has historically been used for agriculture Soil samples should be taken for analysis by a credentialed laboratory throughout the excavation and exportation process to ensure that exported soils, if we get to that point, are free from contamination or if there are any restrictions to its reuse. The scope must include, oh, we discovered this about the bonding. The development is occurring in the recreational portion of the WSRR. This designation is intended to promote river related recreational uses. Motocross use is not necessarily fitting into that scheme. You can come right back up if you'd like. Sure. Does anyone else have a comment that they'd like to make? Nobody online? I'll just say quickly, under the DEC's rules, part 423 does require the applicant to post a bond. Okay. And then the other part is that the applicant must have a bond that is in the !
I'm from Philadelphia, 2822 River Road, Calverton. I'm the applicant. I would just like to address the idea of an indoor motocross track. It's been done and it's not conducive to the sport. Under, not under natural lighting, it affects the depth perception as well as like the receivership. I mean, if you're in there to view a race and you've got gas bikes inside a building, I don't care how good you ventilate it. You know, people are going to be getting headaches and whatnot, but it's okay. And as far as the viability, it's just not cost effective for us to put a building up. Believe me, it would be a 12 month a year operation. There was such an operation up in Connecticut that had gone out of business once and then it was reopened and unfortunately the roof collapsed in the steel building. No one was hurt or anything, but that was the end of that. There's another place out in Ohio that was operating for years and they are now in the middle of the middle of the year. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. They were out of business for years and they are now out of business because they couldn't sustain. You know, it's like bowling. You can't charge somebody 500 bucks to bowl even though you've got a half million dollar building. So that was that. As far as the sand removal, I did a lot of research in the beginning and I cited quite a few Department of Transportation studies that putting a noise source out of line of sight of the receptor. Okay, meaning putting it below grade or even above grade with a wall. Is putting it below grade is by far the best sound mitigation there is. As far as this piece of property isn't level. Okay, in the front of it, the houses are here, here's the front, the back where the main part of the track is, it's a big hill. All right, so that's all got to be pulled out of there. Could we use the sand as a berm? No, not really. You can, but what happens is you take a bucket of sand and you pour it on your driveway. What happens to it? It lays out. You take a bucket of topsoil, you pack it and you pull it out. It's shaped like the bucket. So to build a berm, you're better off using soil instead of sand. As far as the indigenous agricultural soil, absolutely not. We're not going to remove any of that from the property. That is what we ride on. Okay. The sand makes for great soil. Okay. So the sand is not going to be used as a drainage, but to ride a motorcycle on that sand with the rocks in it, it's like getting shot with a gun from the roost. So all of that sand, in fact, some of it has rocks in it. And when it gets closer to the sand, a lot of the soil has the rocks in it. That's what we would use for the base of the track and the base of some of the obstacles. Our study with the sand, I'm confident, absolutely confident, I wouldn't have even bothered with this site if I didn't think it was absolutely perfect. And then my other question is too, you're looking at this land one day maybe being put back to agricultural. What does the PFAS plume? Once it's in the groundwater, where does that put you with an agricultural site? You can't feed it the livestock, the water. You can't water your crops with it if it's contaminated. You would have to, I guess, use city water to water crops. I thought that was a perfect scenario. Well, Mr. Duffy, thank you for your comments. They're under consideration and you are out of time for tonight. If you'd like to come back up, you can. No, that's okay. I just want to make it available for somebody else. Nice to meet you. I'm getting off topic. How you doing, Norm? Ed Brockman. I'm from the I just want to make sure that we have an equal consideration of what's already allowed. They were speaking about noise. Right in the center of Calverton, you have an airport. You have the raceway. You were also talking about traffic implications. So I would ask, and I understand all those things. But this is just pertaining to this specific project, the environmental concerns of that one. So I understand the comparison. I do. But yeah. Just so you can center on that, please. To help you. I understand. Yeah. But if there's. Yeah. Are there any other comments? Anything online yet? Nope. Anybody else would like to come back up if you'd like to return or if you'd like to speak? Hi. My name's Dan. I'm from Calverton. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. I'm a senior in the city. foot deep hole on the other side as the existing grade shows on the property 120,000 yards sounds like a lot of material and it is but I move 8,000 yards in a day with two guys working on site so in reality it's really not that much um like I said 12 feet on one side six feet on the other I'm six foot tall digging a hole my height really isn't that big of a deal um I do understand the permit concerns and yes we do we should have a permit but when we take into the scope of what a sand mine looks like and what a motocross track set down into a grade looks like there are two different things we did bring some photos of what the motocross track would supposedly look like and like my father said we would be bringing in the soil to retain the hills on the sides of the track growing grass and it would probably be more lush and green than the field that is now because there would be working irrigation and irrigation and irrigation and irrigation and irrigation and irrigation systems to help water the grass and we'd plant trees to hold the soil together and such also taking into consideration the 40 percent natural growth there is not a tree on the property so I don't know what they consider natural growth or not but this was already a vineyard that was established as a fully functioning farm so I don't know you know if a flat field is considered natural growth it to me that's a lawn but yeah thank you for your time thank you Mr. Duffy I don't see any of the people that that wanted more time did you okay
how you doing Brett Mauritia 157 Halleck Street Riverhead New York uh EPA problems with this just like boats in the marinas and stuff like that they went from having all the two-stroke oil okay going through the Marine going through the Marine going through the Marine going through the Marine going through the engines and making a mess listen Kawasaki and all these different companies took a big Stride I'm making these things instead of two-stroke four-stroke and 90 percent of them out there except for a couple people they're all four-stroke there's no oil in the gas there's no noxious smell coming out of them the exhaust on them pretty much the stock exhaust is pretty quiet compared to somebody doing aftermarket that could be a consideration for that kind of thing is regulating the exhaust. Going back to a stock exhaust, not having a loud exhaust that makes it really loud. So my thing is if we can work through the noise thing, that is going to help. And you're not going to destroy the environment because there's no more two-stroke oil going all over the place. They're four-strokes. So the EPA has been working very hard on all these different bikes to make them like that. So that's what I have to say. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Barbara Blass. From Jamesport. To finish my comments, we were at the WSRR recreational portion of the river. And the scope should determine whether the noise from the use of the motocross track will impede or interfere with residents' enjoyment of the river. The scope must include a comprehensive investigation to determine depth to groundwater over the entire site. And finally, the use requires a special permit, as you know. And a review of that process, and the criteria, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and the determinations that must be made to grant a special permit reveals that much of what has to be evaluated has to do with the impacts of the use on the neighborhood. For example, the application shall demonstrate that operations in connection with this use will not be more objectionable to nearby properties than would be operations from a permitted use. That might be a heavy lift. That the use will not prevent or impair the reasonable and orderly use and orderly development of other properties in the neighborhood, whether the proposed use would be unsuitably near a church or a school, and whether the disadvantages to the neighborhood from the location of such use at the property are outweighed by the advantage to be gained either by the town or the neighborhood. Again, an interesting criteria that you will have to weigh. But I don't think you should wait until the end of this process in order to come up with information that will help you evaluate those criteria. The scope should include a discussion of how proposed project mitigation will address those special permit criteria and the impacts identified by the special permit process. Thank you very much for your time and attention. Thank you, Barbara.
Is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak? Yes. Yes. Sir, did you want to? Oh. Oh. Hi. How's that? Good evening. Taki Turchin, Greater Calverton Civic Association President. Thankfully, many of the remarks I was going to make have been covered. I'll do my best to go through our list here. We just have a couple of questions. One is, what is the scope of the draft? And we do have a letter already prepared for you, and we'll make sure that's sent to you by email. So we're submitting our comprehensive comments on the draft scope prepared by Nelson Pope Voorhees as contracted by the applicant. We find the scope to be fundamentally inadequate and strategically designed to minimize analysis of the project's most significant impacts. While our letter details examples, I will try to read only our summaries that are pertinent. To begin, the complete absence of property value impact analysis with zero provisions for analyzing property value impacts, the single most devastating consequence of this project for our community. We look for a comprehensive real estate impact study by a qualified appraiser with the designation MAI, Member Appraisal Institute for Appraisers, who have demonstrated advanced competency in commercial property valuation. It'll include the number of affected properties, current assessed values, projected losses based on comparable facilities, radius of impact, tax base implications for the town, and long-term marketability effects. Next is the fundamentally inadequate noise analysis. Thankfully, it was spoken to about tonight. I'm hoping I'm not repeating. Section 322 that Greg Bergen brought up, it vaguely requires the applicant to summarize impact assessment of anticipated noise sound levels. This approach is wholly inadequate for several critical reasons. No required measurements of affected residential properties, only vague references to nearby receptors. Our letter supplies four measurements. No required testing under maximum operational conditions. I think Greg addressed that. Industry experience shows testing under typical conditions deliberately underestimates impacts. Our letter supplies four required scenarios. No required analysis of low frequency noise levels. No required measurement of the ! We go into detail on both the A weighted and C weighted decibel measurements in our letter. You did address the family owned 25 year family business of the New York State licensed daycare facility within 1,100 feet. So thank you. It contains no provision for health impact analysis. Additionally, porta potties are suggested where plumbed bathroom facilities with hand washing facilities are needed. I can come back if you'd like me to finish that. Sure. Okay. I appreciate that. Thanks. Good evening. My name is Greg Dahlgren, 2764 River Road, Calverton. Close proximity resident. I have some concerns about this. Some of them which have been captured already for study in the DraftScope and others that may not have been that I'm going to run through here. I'm going to try to be quick. Some of them have already been covered, so I'm going to go over those. I'm going to skip over those. Before I get to those, I just got to clear one comment was made that there's not a single tree on the property. That's because over the last couple years, they've been cleared off the property. Although there's no trees on the property. OFF THE PROPERTY, ALL THOSE CEDAR TREES THAT WERE MIXED IN AROUND THERE. JUST WOULD LIKE TO GET THAT OUT THERE, CUT THE GRASS. THAT'S YOUR REPLY. GREAT. OKAY. ALL RIGHT. SO MOVING ON TO THE ISSUES THAT I THINK NEED TO BE FURTHER STUDIED. AIR QUALITY AND DUST. THE EXISTING TRACK ON EDWARDS AVENUE, IF YOU'VE EVER DRIVEN DOWN THERE, YOU CAN SEE THE DUST THAT COMES ACROSS THE ROADWAY SOMETIMES LIKE THAT. HOW IS THIS DUST GOING TO AFFECT THE RESIDENTS? HOW IS THE DUST GOING TO AFFECT THE NEARBY SOLAR PANEL FORM THAT'S RIGHT THERE, THE ORGANIC FORM? APPLICANT CLAIMS THAT WATER IS USED TO SUPPRESS THE DUST. THERE'S NO PUBLIC WATER IN THE AREA YET. CAN THEIR PRIVATE WELL SUPPLY ENOUGH WATER? OR WHAT'S THEIR PLAN TO SUPPLY ENOUGH WATER TO SUPPRESS THE DUST? EFFECTS ON WILDLIFE. THE SITE CALLS FOR LIGHTING. WHY DOES THE SITE NEED LIGHTING IF THE HOURS OF OPERATION ARE FROM 10 A.M. UNTIL DUSK IS A QUESTION. THE AREA IS VERY DARK RIGHT NOW AT NIGHT, HEAVILY USED BY OWLS. WHEN WILL THIS LIGHTING BE USED? IS IT ALL DARK PERIODS? IS IT ONLY AS NEEDED? IS IT ONLY AS NEEDED? IS IT ONLY AS NEEDED? THE SITE IS OPEN TO OTHER RECREATION ACTIVITIES. NOISE GENERATED FROM THIS MOTO CROSS PROJECT WILL IMPACT USERS OF THAT STATE LAND. THOSE USERS HAVE NO IDEA THAT THIS PROJECT IS EVEN IN THE MAKING OR EXISTING TO COMMENT ON IT. PROPERTY VALUE HAS BEEN HIT ON. I'M GOING TO SKIP THAT. SPECIAL EVENTS. APPLICANT STATED THAT HE WANTS TO HAVE SPECIAL RACE EVENTS AT THE LOCATION. I HAVE NOT SEEN INFORMATION THAT SPECIFICALLY DESCRIBES THESE EVENTS. HOW OFTEN? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? HOW MANY? noise levels of bikes when they aren't at grade level. It's my understanding the track plans calls for jumps, so those noise levels will differ when the bikes are 10, 15, or above grade. The sound will carry further. Why was 10th Street Motocross closed? Are those concerns that should be looked at for this project under the environmental impact statement? Was this a mine? That's covered. It is. Quality of life? This is something to think about. I didn't move into this situation. This project and the noise associated with it being proposed in the area, I'll be done in less than one minute, 30 seconds. The properties have all been there prior to the purchase of 2822 River Road and the idea of the motocross track. Even if noise levels can be brought down to meet guidelines, it's not a reasonable thing. I like to compare it to your neighbor if he goes down starting a lawnmower and letting it run every day. Is he allowed to? Maybe. Is the noise below standards? Maybe. Is it the right thing to do? Absolutely not. Mr. Duffy has stated he wants to become part of the community. Creating a nuisance of constant noise, whether it's below thresholds or not, five days a week, 10 to 11 hours per day in the summertime, is not a neighborly thing to do. And certainly not how to become part of the community. Sir, you're just out of time. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.
Hello. Carrie Reyes again. So two strokes went to four strokes and now four strokes are going to electric bikes. It's a huge thing right now. A lot of big names are making them and soon it's not even going to be noise. It's going to be like that's all you're going to hear, you know. That's all. Okay. Thank you for your comment.
Did you want to return? Did you want to finish? Anybody else? Anybody else? Anybody else? Any other comments at all? I got one more. Mr. Duffy. Mr. Duffy, I'm sorry. I didn't see you. Craig brought up an interesting point. Ladies and gentlemen, if you could, so we could hear his comments. I'm sorry. Dan Duffy, 2822 River Road, Calverton. Craig brought up an interesting point about the lighting. Dawn to dusk is our hours. The lighting was not my idea. You know, that was the engineers at Young and Young suggested that because the town would basically require that because it's a public parking area. All right. We're not going to have the lights on ever. Yeah. You know, whatever. Um, as far as the noise is concerned, um, you got to realize 70% of our membership are kids. All right. And they're on mini bikes. You're not going to hear them. We could run them without any Birmingham or without any below grade, or you're not going to hear them. We're 1500 feet away. Um, the louder bikes. Yes. You're, you're going to hear them. Are they going to be? Are they going to be aggravating? I don't think so. You know, plus the Long Island railroad track is, you know, 27 feet from the property line. And there's a lot of other noises going on besides just us. Um, I think Craig, once he gets to know us and our operation and the family that are in the motorcross community, it's going to be a big different story. All right. And again, I don't pitch that electric bike thing to anyone because whether it's going to happen or not is anybody's guess, you know? Um, however, they're faster and they're a lot cheaper to operate. And this is a racing, uh, driven sport. And once people start winning on electric bikes, it's going to say goodbye to the gas bikes very quickly. But again, I can't, you know, there's no guarantee. Um, I will offer discounts to people who want to entertain running electric bikes. So whatever. The scope. Yes, sir. Thank you for your comments.
To be a minute.
My name is Mike Spindler from River Road in Calverton. Growing up in Jamesport, I am very familiar with the irreplaceable value of the East End's natural world. Specifically, the River Road. Calverton area where I have lived for the past 45 years. Year 45 years and run a plant nursery business for the past 40 years. I and my neighbors run benign businesses and choose to live a lifestyle that relies heavily on the peace and tranquility of the area and relies heavily on the natural world that encompasses this priceless place. Unlike me, I have seen the above above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above me above and peacefully enjoy all it has to offer likely far more visitors than one realizes unwelcome change and damage to those who have lived in this area for many many years and young people new to the area who have sacrificed greatly to purchase homes here you've got a number of young people move into this area again I respectfully implore each of you to study the items in this scope document thoroughly as if each item had consequences to you personally living in that area one thing I just want to shoot on real quick this is not a kiddie track I have three two-stroke bikes in my barn right now I used to ride back there years and years ago Eddie Houghton had a farm there one or two bikes you can see the bikes not 15 or 20 bikes I used to race at Morgan's moto I used to race at Rocky Point I used to race at West Hampton okay sir four-stroke bikes just speak to us not to them okay or allow okay we make no bones about it sound they're going to try to bring it up in the air but everybody knows sound travels through the wind the winds out of the South the winds out of the North that sound is going to travel it's very peaceful back there me me ! number one concern of area residents when they look to buy a place it's often the number one consideration beyond schools well thank you sir that's all I thank you for your comments there's a look at I don't see anyone else so if you're coming you should come if you're coming to the podium thanks I want to make sure others who hadn't spoken yet got a chance so to continue with these the notes on our letter that will supply to you sorry we're looking for an economic value analysis the current market rates of fifteen dollars to twenty five dollars per cubic yard at excavation represents one point eight to three million dollars in commercial filled material not incidental site preparation as indicated in the document this is a commercial mining operation for profit disguised as recreational development there are legal precedents for motocross track opposition so board is this in the scoping for the yes yes the town board should be aware courts nationwide have recognized motocross tracks as public nuisances and ordered their removal when noise impacts interfere with neighboring residents peaceful enjoyment of their properties we have two cases we've put the details in the document we've you've thoroughly handled the central pine barrens compliance deficiencies and we are very curious to hear whether the claimed hardship is self created by the excessive excavation plan and we'd also like to see an economic analysis distinguishing recreational development from mining mining driven development the superfund site that was brought up earlier for supplying you with a link to the groundwater modeling from the USGS that just completed the survey our conclusion is we support appropriate economic development in Calerton you know it we've seen us come come forward and support projects however with this massive commercial mining operation documented public nuisance potential and severe economic violations the project is fundamentally incompatible with surrounding residential agricultural neighborhood we respectfully yet urgently requested as lead agency the town board and then applicants draft scope issue a final record of requiring comprehensive analysis of all impacts we might deed property values operational traffic will commercial mining right economics, realistic noise scenarios, and meaningful alternatives. Retain independent environmental consultants to review the DEIS and coordinate with all involved agencies, including LIPA, PSEGL, Long Island. Greater Calverton Civic Association, along with hundreds of residents in Calverton, we count on you. You're our town board. We look for you to protect our community, our property values, and most dearly, our quality of life. We trust that you will ensure a thorough and objective environmental review process, and thanks very much for listening tonight. Mr. Turetaqui.
Mr. One last person?
Trisha Yakabaski Good evening. My name is Trisha Yakabaski. My ties to this little neck of the woods are strong. Mr. Can you just pull the mic up a little bit? Mr. The mic up a little bit. Mr. I hope everybody can hear you really. Trisha Yakabaski Sorry. Is this better? Mr. Yep, thank you. Trisha Yakabaski Okay. My children are the sixth generation of my family to live within two properties of the proposed motocross track over the last 100 plus years. The proposed track is just over 1,000 feet from my house, which is located in the northwest corner of my property, giving me pretty much full visibility of the motocross proposed motocross track from my front door, every north-facing window, as well as my bus stop. For the past 25 years, I've been a licensed daycare provider, approved by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. I'm licensed to care for children from six weeks to 12 years of age. I believe the noise the motocross will bring to my property will put the well-being and physical safety of the children in my care at risk. I fear that as my current daycare children age out, I will not be able to fill daycare positions as who in their right mind would subject their children to this kind of noise. I question how long it would take current families to seek out other daycare. Noise is defined as any unwanted or disagreeable sound and is often dismissed simply as a nuisance. Children are most vulnerable to this nuisance in the early stages as they grow and develop. When a childcare setting is subjected to chronic environmental noise, it affects the children's ability to acquire speech, language, and language-related skills. It affects how they learn, play, as well as affecting how well and long they sleep, threatening both a child's physical and psychological health. Noise can interfere with cognitive tasks, like memory, attention, and reaction time. It increases hyperactivity. What will this do to my children who have special sensitivities? For those who have an autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or learning differences that will be enhanced and exasperated by the constant noise? While children are crossing the street from their school bus, will they hear me or the driver when a motorist doesn't obey the law and we call out to them? Section 417.8 of the rules and regulations established by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services states that school-aged children can be outside of direct supervision if they stay on daycare property. As an example, it is my concern that while my little ones attempt to nap indoors and my older ones are outside in the playground, I won't be able to hear them if they call out in an emergency or in the event I call for them. What guarantee can you offer that the noise level they generate will not harm my children? I currently have children enrolled that suffer from asthma. The children's parents and I are concerned about the health of these children because kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids close out by saying now I truly believe this is not the location for this this belongs in Enterprise Park or in a location completely away from any residents regardless of their zoning thank you thank you for your comments miss you I want to thank every person that has spoken tonight on this matter thank you for your time and energy and effort and care for a key town on and we know that everybody has oh I'm sorry I didn't know you were coming back so you can have another 30 seconds and she's spoken twice but that's it I just want to hand to you the letter from that organic farmer family thank you okay reiterate that they are certified organic farm they have a CSA and they will lose their certification if this project goes through thank you thank you for doing that thank you great all right well that will be completing our scoping session for this we will be leaving this open for 10 minutes 10 days the public scoping session for written and that will bring us actually on the next business day will be Monday March 2nd Craig we will be the day the end of day and so you will be allowed to to submit your comment to there and so we want to thank everybody again for your comments and they have been taken and our board is written notes and very much so so our next thing we have five public hearings again while there is not a time limit we do ask that you you please be considerate of your neighbor if something is said that you have to say if you are leaving if you could do so quietly that would be excellent and so we have our very first public hearing is a 6 p.m. the time now is those 7 10 and it is a special permit and site plan for 2 to 1 Scott Avenue energy storage system with our planner Matt charters again ladies and gentlemen if you're in our room we need you just to be quiet as you leave we may be disposed for a few minutes she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's I do. I'll go up and ask you. Children in the room. I'm going to have to ask you to take off your hat because you are on camera. Thank you. Not my hair.
Thank you, sir. Yep. She's showing on TV, so it's not appropriate. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're in our room, if you could find your seat and just return so we could move our meeting along, that would be excellent. If you're watching at home, thank you for your patience and all that wonderful stuff. All right, Mr. Charters, give us a countdown from five in your head and you can start. You got it. For the record, Matt Char, Senior Planner for the Town of Riverhead Planning Department. I'll start as I always do. I'll read the public notice into the record and give the board an update as to where we're at with these applications. I will check with Mr. Wooten to make sure he has the mailings and posting affidavit. I did. Cool. All right. Please take notice that a public hearing will be held. Matt, the mic's here. How's that, Bob? There you go. Just for you. People of all want to hear you. Please take notice that a public hearing will be held before the town board of the Town of Riverhead at 4 West 2nd Street, Riverhead, New York, on the 18th day of February 2026 at 6 o'clock p.m. to consider the special permit and site plan applications entitled 221 Scott Avenue Energy Storage System, which seek approval to construct and develop an approximately 5.0 megawatt or 20 megawatt hour tier 2 battery energy storage system with related site improvements within a .13 acre area of a 7.4. 5 acre improved parcel known as lot 19 of the subdivision map entitled Calvert and Camelot 2, which is improved with an existing industrial building and outdoor storage and located within the planned industrial park. PIP zoning use district situate at 221 Scott Avenue, Hamlet of Calvert and more particularly identified a Suffolk County tax map number 600 dash 135.20 dash 1 dash 12. So this is a best application for lack of better terms. This was originally presented. To the town board at a work session in June of 2025. So it's an application that's been reviewed for quite some time and pretty thoroughly. I might add this was last discussed on January 15th at work session, at which time the town board did agree that this will move forward. We did the town board resolution 2026 dash 85 did classify this as an unlisted action pursuant to secret and adopted a negative declaration. And then by 2026 dash 86 on January 21st scheduled this public hearing. I the applicant's representative is here. The attorney Allison's will find a alternative over to her team to give you guys a little bit more of an idea of what's going on here. And then chip if we can have the site plan on the screen. I believe you should have the PDF file. So the town board and the public can see probably just the second page, but I'm sure the applicant will walk you through it.
Thank you. Good evening. I'm not Allison. She's my colleague. She's right over here. Uh, my. My name is Jason Stern. I'm a lawyer with Weber Law Group. We represent the applicant, uh, grand portage solar on this site plan and special permit application for a five megawatt, uh, energy storage system on 0.13 acres of a 7.45 acre parcel located at 221 Scott Avenue in the industrial park. Uh, with me this evening, I've got a number of people. I've got Paul Rogers from the energy safety response group. Uh, he'll be speaking after. Um, uh, after my presentation to address any safety concerns that the board may have. Uh, we also have Kelly Sullivan and engineer with the Bell associates, which prepared the site plan. Um, we've got Austin Schwer and Robert Thompson from, uh, sundial energy. They're both here. And my colleague, Alison Sclafani from Weber Law Group, who's been working with the planning department on this application. Uh, first, I just want to give you a little background on sundial energy. They've been providing renewable energy solutions for over 25 years. Uh, and they've been providing renewable energy solutions for over 25 years. Uh, and they've been providing renewable energy solutions for over 25 years. Uh, and their goal's to enhance local power grid, reliability and resilience. Uh, and their goal's to enhance local power grid, reliability and resilience. Uh, and their goal's to enhance local power grid, reliability and resilience. Uh, they do that with energy systems that provide clean energy directly to the grid that's served local homes and businesses. Uh, they do that with energy systems that provide clean energy directly to the grid that's served local homes and businesses. And they've got dozens of similar projects throughout the state and are black backed by Clean Capital. That's another clean energy company that focuses on solar energy storage systems. And they have over 200 projects like this throughout the country. As for this specific project on Scott Avenue, as I said, it's five megawatts. That's much smaller than some of the other projects you may be familiar with that are up to 50 or 60 megawatts. This one will be five megawatts fenced in on 0.13 acres located in a fully industrial area, more than a mile away from any residential properties. Some of you may be familiar with how these systems work, but essentially they're batteries that are plugged into the power grid. They're charged with energy from the grid overnight when demand is low, and then they discharge energy back to the grid during daytime hours when demand is high. This particular system already has an agreement in place with PSEG to discharge energy during peak hours, particularly during summer afternoons when demand is very high, and then it is charged over the evening when demand is low. The basic idea, again, is that the system charges overnight and discharges energy during the day as needed. The purpose of these systems is to enhance the reliability of local power supply by adding additional energy to the grid to avoid blackouts and prevent price spikes, particularly for the consumers who are closest to the system, and all with virtually no impacts and subject to the highest safety standards. You may already know this project's been approved already by the Suffolk County Planning Commission, the New York State DEC, the local fire department, and received the no adverse impact determination from this board. We've been working with the town's planning department for several months to make sure this project's also fully compliant with the town's own code on battery energy storage and all other fire and safety codes. You'll hear a little bit more about this from ESRG in a moment, but you should be aware ESRG has ensured that this system adheres to the most stringent safety codes in the country and contains its own 24-7 internal monitoring system that can identify, deactivate, and report any problematic issues. ESRG will also provide extensive fire department training before this system is operable. We've also submitted a noise study to show full compliance with the town's noise code, and there will be no impacts on the surrounding area. For all these reasons, this project's project satisfies the town's energy storage code requirements and the town's site plan and special permit requirements, including the special permit requirements under 301.314, which this board's probably familiar with. Number one, this use will not prevent or impair either the reasonable and orderly use or reasonable and orderly development of other properties in the area. Two, any hazard or disadvantage from the location of this project is outweighed by the advantage to be gained by the town and the local businesses and residents. Three, health, safety, welfare, comfort, convenience, and order of the town will not be adversely affected by this project. And finally, this project's in harmony with and promotes the general purposes and intent of the town code. In summary, the project represents a low-impact, high-utility addition to the town that provides additional security for local businesses and residents that rely on a stable power supply all year long. I don't have any further comments. I'm going to hand it over to the board. Thank you. I don't have any further comments. So unless you have questions for me, I'd like to bring Paul Rogers up, and he can talk a bit about the safety measures for the system. Sure. If that's okay? Okay, Paul. Thank you, Jason. Good evening. Can you hear me, everyone? Good evening. Great. My name is Paul Rogers. I'm with ESRG. ESRG is a fire safety company. We look at battery energy storage system installations. We look at a lot of different energy projects, but primarily battery energy storage systems. Our group is made up of three members. Okay. We have a lot of former firefighters and plan review people and inspections, so we have all the fire service down on that end. And we are heavily involved with creating codes and standards. We have responded to a couple of these things for the public to know. And we were very instrumental in helping craft the updated fire code that we currently have in New York State. Working on the NFPA, which is the National Fire Protection Association Standard Development Organization. And we have a lot of people working on this. And I sit on that committee. That would be considered the gold standard. But even my colleagues on that committee agree that what we put in place in New York State was pretty good and very high bar. So I'm really here to make sure that anyone that we deal with follows the guidelines on the state code. It's very technical. A lot of people don't understand it completely. So we want to make sure that they understand it on our end. And the spirit of what we're trying to do. So I'm really here to answer questions that you may have in regards to any of this. Any fire safety concerns that the town may have. Mr. Rogers, I'm just going to say welcome back for the fourth time to the town of Riverhead. I know that Councilwoman Merrifield and myself were at Stony Brook when you presented there. You had mentioned in Stony Brook, and correct me if I'm wrong, but skyscrapers have battery storage units in them, don't they? Yeah, that is true. They're actually quite frequent out there. Yeah. I know. But I've heard you like speak so many times. I know. Sorry. And I love it because, and I think it's really important for residents to know because it is unclear to them that the, in order to even flip the switch on this, the fire department is trained on how to deal with a fire. And I also know there are now single cell units. Right? So, but thanks for coming back, visiting with us. So if I could just ask. So the fire department itself, have you sat down directly and had work sessions with Riverhead fire department, fire commissioners? I think, yeah, my colleague, so sometimes we're going back and forth between us. So my colleagues have sat down with the fire department. Have they made any requests from you or what is your agreement with them? Have they asked for any services, whether it be additional equipment, cost of equipment? There was some things that I think that we worked with them. We worked with them on that end, but we're open for more negotiations if they have that. Can you tell us what, any requests on their behalf? Well, one of the things that we always like to make sure is that they have the equipment. And there is no special equipment, but it's making sure they have like a thermal imaging camera, which is basic and most of them have them already. If there's any gas monitoring that they may want, not really needed, but if they may want it and they think they can use it, we would look at that too. But the big thing that we really put in place, and this was part of the code. So it's mandated. So even if they didn't ask for it, they were getting it, is the subject matter expert being available for them. And also for a hazard support team to be there within a four hour time frame. Now everyone said four hours is a long time. I said that's the maximum amount of time. They can be there within 30 minutes. They can be there within an hour or so. Isn't there something you were working on, excuse me, I'm sorry, but 15 minutes on site? Yeah, so you'll hear 15 minutes in the code. It actually says immediately. Immediately can be in code language that's up to 15 minutes. As per the definition. But there needs to be a telephone number with someone that reach back for the fire department to use if they show up to the scene. And there is nothing showing. In other words, if there's a fire, they know what they have and they're going to call the subject matter expert on that one. It's really when there's nothing going on and they want to make sure that they can leave the scene. We know it works. We've actually done this in New York City. So there's various proof of concept that it works. When the fire department showed up, there was nothing showing on their side. We looked at the battery matter. We looked at the battery. We looked at the management system. The BMS. We looked at the state of health of the battery itself. And we were able to turn them around within 10 minutes, get them back in service, and get them out of the site itself. So we know it works. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I didn't want to interrupt. No, you're good. With regards to showing up at the scene, there is also a question I think I spoke, I know I spoke with Liam, the assistant fire chief, one of the fire marshals, rather. One of the things he spoke about is the requirement being on the business to update and give the next fire department a copy of the data. And that's a very important part of the process. I think it's important to update and give the name of the person very, like periodically, much more often so that the fire department doesn't have to keep reaching out as to who the contact person is. Are you familiar with that, what I'm speaking about? Like putting the onus on the business, the best company, to keep supplying the name of the contact person every month so we're not looking at an old number to contact. Yeah. Yeah. The continuity of operations. Yes. In other words, if someone were to actually come in and there was a change or whatever the case may be, we always like to have a point of contact. And that's what the subject matter expert is supposed to do. It's supposed to be the point of contact for all fire services, whether it's the fire marshal or the fire department itself. So if there is a change or something like that, everything should go through the subject matter expert. We look at them as like the liaison with the fire department and the fire marshal on that end. Is that what's going to happen in this project? It's mandated in the code and spirit of the code, that's what the spirit of the code is looking at, is to make sure that there's always someone available that the fire department can reach out to. And that's what we're looking at. And I think that's a really important part of the process. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. And I think that's a really important part of the process. available that the fire department could reach out to in the event that there was a, I mean, we had someone reach out, there was a tire thrown in front of, left in front of the place itself. And they called the, they actually had nothing to do with the batteries, but they called the subject matter expert at that time. And guess what? We went and we got rid of the tire. But it's the little things, it's the non-emergency situations that someone wants to have a callback and making sure that there's someone available just to address certain things that may not be associated with a fire, although it could hinder the emergency operations itself. We just want to ensure the public of the steps the state has taken and what the town has taken to make these very safe and to know that the representative will be there and it won't be, you know, dialing a number and nobody shows up for hours and this is burning and the public becomes very concerned. So I'm, I know the answers. I just want to make sure the public is aware that those, all those steps are mandated by the state and that this is coming into compliance with the state mandates. Is that right? That's correct. And I'm glad you're asking those questions because I do want to let the public know what exists out there because it is technical and you have to understand the code in order to know what we did moving forward. And again, this isn't... Anybody that's just hearing about this for the first time today or is looking for more information, you did a great presentation at work session and that is available on the Town of Riverhead website that you would be able to watch it and receive more information on this because I think the battery is going to be a big part of the work that we're doing. So I'm, I'm going to go ahead and ask you to go ahead and ask your question. Okay. So the, the battery energy storage has really come a long way since it, it first got, you know, brought to the, the public and it did have a few hiccups but because of the initiative of all the steps that's been taken to put safety first, you know, this is where, where we're at now and this is the time that we're living in and this is something that we have to look to the future with. Yeah, that is, that is correct. And, and being part of that, New York State Fire Safety Working Group, we were firefighters. Our thing was to make sure we took care of the firefighters. Yeah. And that was our number one goal was to make sure that the firefighters were taken care of on that end and, and especially the, the volunteers. And even though some of the things that we did on my big committee of the NFPA thought it was extremely aggressive and they thought it was great that we actually got it approved. They couldn't believe we got that approved by the Department of State because they're the ones who actually approved the code and then it gets deciphered throughout the state itself. Yeah. Mr. Rogers, if you just can clarify for me. So this particular project falls in Manitouville Fire Department's district. So it's commonly known that if there is such a fire, I am, I am certain that immediate mutual aid will be issued and whether it would be responding from Jamesport or Riverhead or Wading River, any of the surrounding districts. What is the difference in training that you guys will step outside of the box in terms of what is offered by the Suffolk County Fire Academy towards battery power, towards battery powered energy storage systems? And are you offering additional training at your expense to not just Manitouville Fire Department, but the surrounding fire departments that are all going to presumably respond through the means of mutual aid? And so I just wanted to like, like, like to what extent I don't want to just, it's in Manitouville, so obviously it's crucial there. But I just want to know, is Jamesport, Riverhead, Wading River, are they all going to be invited? Is there going to be on-site training? Are they going to be, you know, able to, to go through and, and walk the site prior to a CO being offered? To what extent were you going outside of the standard training that the Academy offers? Yeah, great question. First of all, we do site specific training. Not every site is going to be the actual same. So the, the emergency response plan is actually based on site specific. So everything is, they're aware of the emergency response plan. They've exercised it. They make sure they, they know what to do in the event of it. The other thing is, I always encourage, you know, I always encourage the chief of the fire department to bring in the mutual aid, to bring in actually the police department, to bring in the Office of Emergency Management, any stakeholder that they feel may show up to an emergency at this. I encourage them to bring them to the actual training themselves. Could there be questions that may be outside the fire department? The emergency response plan is developed specifically for the fire department, but we could have other things with traffic or whatever that the, that the police department may have questions about that, you know, we'll have to just kind of work with them on that. But this is where you get all stakeholders talking in one group and it works out really well where everyone understands each other. So what, what is the extent of the training in which you are going to offer? Presumably if they're, they're consultants, so I don't mean to pose it directly towards you and the applicant can apply, but just specifically, is it your intention to invite surrounding fire departments and mutual aid? To what extent, like what are we, in terms of training, is this, is this a one day training? Is this a two hour evening training? Is this multi-days? What, what do you see? So we try to balance that because we do know that the fire department has a tremendous amount of training already that they have to, they're mandated to do. Actually we put into the code that we have annual training because of turnover on that end to make sure that every year if there is someone new that comes up and they want to do the training, we make sure that they get that training that is mandated by the state. But what we do specifically is not every battery and energy storage contains, the container is the same. And they have different types of characteristics, so we make sure that we go over each one of those characteristics for that particular system itself. For instance, this one here that's proposed, we're looking at the Tesla system. That would be different from a SunGrow system, a GE system, and the list goes on and on and on with the different types of protections that they may have. Thank you. And I do have other questions. No, no, I'm just saying thank you for that question. That was really good. I don't want to take up all the time, but just I think maybe more for the applicant. So should there be a fire, any type of damage on that, what's the remediation plan? So is there bonded funding or even if in general the project down the road fails to continue, what is the remediation plan for the site to restore it back to its natural? Yeah, so there is a decommissioning plan on that end. I believe that you guys adopted the NYSERDA model law. They have something in there where they have to hold a bond in place. But there is a required decommissioning plan as part of the submission to the fire marshal's office for approval on that end. And you've been in ongoing talks with PSEG? And like do you know like where you're at with them in terms of their approval? Yeah. Thank you. We already have an agreement in place with PSEG, interconnection agreement to provide these services at certain designated times. So that's already in place. Like tax per megawatt or how is it? Talk about... Well, I mean we can address that but I think generally it's a credit that you get for putting power back into the system after you receive power at a lower rate. So this is 5 megawatts? 5 megawatts. Any other questions? I'd just like to add that two years ago we had a moratorium we approved for this site. We had a moratorium we approved on BESS because we were awaiting the requirements by the state. And I think they've done a great job with the types of regulations and requirements. Speaking with the assistance of the fire departments and everyone, it puts my mind at ease as to what's going forward moving from here. Appreciate that. Another side thing maybe for Mr. Rogers. Just in terms of like what happened out in East Hampton some time ago. East Hampton of course is unique because it's on the south end and everybody's got to go out through Montauk Highway. Is there like an evacuation plan or something set up in the region of the area so that if there is an event fire like is that drawn up towards... Yes. Is that part of the... And that's going to be presented to Mattaville Fire Department and evacuation plan for the surrounding just to protect? Yeah. So that comes up a lot about evacuations and that end. And there is a paper that's out there, a white paper that's out there put out by the American Clean Power. Okay. About the products of combustion of the battery energy storage system. So the products of combustion are aligned with the products of combustion of a structural fire. So I can tell you in all my years with the New York City Fire Department which was 25, we've never done an evacuation based on a structural fire itself. So we don't recommend an evacuation for someone who's never done it but had seen the results of an evacuation is mayhem. So we don't ever recommend an evacuation on something like this on a compartmentalized cabinet. So I would always tell the incident commander that it's highly unlikely. We have seen people do an evacuation out of abundance of caution and they spoke to us and said that if they had it back they probably would not have done that again because it was just... They weren't happy with the evacuation. So we're starting to see more and more people. We're holding off on the evacuation on that end itself. As well I would include a staging plan as well. Yeah, that will be included in there. But again, there won't be any recommendation on an evacuation inside the emergency response plan. And when it comes down to training, I'm sure this is going to come up and we're going to be speaking with the incident commanders at that particular time and explaining our reasoning for it. But even some of the incidents that I've seen. And we've seen them and I've responded to some of those incidents and I'm dressed as I am now as this thing was actively burning during the event. And there was real time monitoring that was going on by the county hazmat teams. And we have not seen any elevated readings of concern outside the perimeter of the fence itself. So this is data that we have... That is real data as far as we know. And it is real data as opposed to people who are saying there's things out there that we can't confirm. So the real data exists and it is available. And NYSERDA actually put out a report on a couple of incidents that have taken place. And they looked at the data. Again, this is right outside the perimeter of the fence. We didn't see anything that was harmful as far as the air quality is concerned. And they also went above that. They looked at the soil samples for any type of runoff that may have taken place. And they actually did up in Jefferson County up in New York. They actually looked at the water. They were concerned about the water. And they did extensive testing on water for months. Months of extensive testing on the water table itself. I'll leave you with the... I think Riverhead Town Fire Marshal's Office is doing a phenomenal job towards the creation of a hazmat team. And so just especially with your project, I know you're an immense knowledge. I hope you'll share that knowledge with a hazmat team and work with them. And advance it towards before getting, you know, issuing a CO. You're aware the hazmat team is under... I am aware. I spoke with Fire Marshal Smith about that. If I'm not mistaken, you guys have been in contact with Liam and the Fire Marshal's Office quite extensively, right? Yeah, we're actually trying to bring them into the fold on the NFPA working groups. Yeah, he told me. That's exciting. I didn't want to... If you want to share it, you can. But he did say that today. You guys have invited them in, right? Yeah, because we want them to know. We think it's important for the industry that they know it really, really well. So we invited them into a task group that we're... That I'm in charge of right now as part of the NFPA 55, which is considered the big... You know, that's worldwide standard. And we brought him in. And you know what? He was able to give us input, which was great. So, you know, from the eyes of a... From the eyes of a fire marshal that's going out doing inspections is really important for the committee itself. So we were able to grab some things from him. So we're kind of teaching each other on some of the things that we have. I do want to emphasize that the regulatory, the body of the code is in really good shape. When we put task groups together, it's because things that are not covered. For instance, we had something like we heard they were going to be battery-armed barges. Well, we have nothing in the code about battery-armed barges. So how do they actually move forward on that? So we had to build out a whole section on how to handle prescriptive requirements for battery-armed barges. Just so you know that when they update these things, the meat and bones of it are in good shape. And we refer back to those meat and bones when we're putting other things in there. But these task groups are put in place because there's gaps. We want to make sure that we cover the gaps. And I... I just gave an example of a gap. Isn't that cool? So if you're watching, you're a Riverhead resident. Our fire marshal, they have been invited in, and they're doing great stuff. So Andrew Smith and Liam and their entire team, it's incredible. That's cool. So thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? No further questions? Well, we have to open it up for comments. Comments from the public online? No online? Anyone in the room would like to make a comment? Okay. Well, we will be leaving this. Public hearing open for ten days. Again, it will be Monday, March 2nd. It will be the close of business because that is business day because the ten days is on Saturday, I believe. And so we'll be doing that. So March 10th. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Moves us to our second public hearing, which was scheduled for 6 o'clock. And thank you to our AV team for getting that microphone working. And because it's now working, we're going to rewind and do all those hearings and scopings again. I'm just kidding. It was supposed to start at 6 p.m. It is now 7 o'clock. And we're going to do it again. 6 p.m. It is now 739. We have a public hearing on a special permit application for Hampton Jitney Battery Energy Storage System with our planner, Heather Trojanowski. Had to bring the mic way down. For the record, Heather Trojanowski, planner for the town. I'm just going to read the notice into the record. Please take notice that a public hearing will be held before the town board of the Town of Riverhead at 4 West 2nd Street, Riverhead, New York, on the 18th of February, 2026 at 6 p.m. to consider the special permit application. The application entitled Hampton Jitney Battery Energy Storage System, which seeks approval to construct and develop an approximately 1,000 kilowatt hour Tier 2 battery energy storage system comprised of four units with related site improvements within a 5,000 square foot area of a 13.9-acre parcel improved with an existing motor coach terminal facility located within the Calverton Industrial Zoning Use District situate at 253 Edwards Avenue, Calverton. More particularly identified as Suffolk County Tax Credit Number 600-117-1-8.6. Whew, had a breath on that one. So we did have a work session on this application back on January 15th. And the town board moved forward on January 21st of 2026 by Resolution 2026-83, classified the action as unlisted pursuant to SECRA, assumed lead agency, issued a NEGDEC. And then by 2026-84, the action was moved forward. And then by 2026-84, the action was moved forward. And then by 2026-84, the action was moved forward. 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so hi i'm i'm uh well we get the the drawings oh i'm sad okay you can go ahead perfect hi so i'm maria fields with sprocket power um we're the project developer for this project um and i will um i'll provide a brief overview of the project and then we have a couple people also who who will speak um so and just from our team um dennis quinn is also the co-founder of sprocket power peter fazio is the project developer who's out here you know at least once a week and michael tolan who did the um the site plans for walden and we'll be marking out the the wet the wetlands and we have nick petraeus who's um front from ersrg who's they've been we've been working with esrg on the battery safety aspects so this this is a special use permit application for a battery storage system at hampton jitney it's a 500 kilowatt so a half a megawatt one megawatt hour system so it's much smaller than the prior system but has you know many of the same characteristics it's also tier two and so it has it has is subject to certain code requirements you know within the the riverhead town code um so uh and one one thing that one distinction the purpose of this project is really what's called behind the meter so this is this is really for the purpose of the hampton jitney business as they begin to plan for electrification of their fleet electrification and and charging of of electric buses can be a very um pull a lot of power from the grid and can put a big strain on the grid and can also be very expensive and so these these kind of you know these these you know these you know these kinds of systems are a way of alleviating that strain. The utility is very favorable to them for that reason. And there are economic benefits to doing that. And so this is really for the purpose of that business and their own use, although there is some resiliency benefit in the neighboring grid. So we have had a very nice working relationship with all of the folks in the town of Riverhead. Heather, we've gotten a lot of guidance from Heather. And the project is compliant with all of the site plan and the planning requirements. I would say when it comes to the fire safety aspects of a project like this, I'm actually on two working groups up in Westchester who are working on battery safety. And the relationship with Andrew Smith in the town has been terrific. And we've just had a nice collaboration, spent a lot of time with them as the project has been developed. So I am here to answer any questions. But I think mostly you'd probably want to hear from Nick on some of the fire safety. And I believe that Andrew Lynch is here, or Jeff Lynch is here somewhere. So he'll also come up and just speak about the project and the way that they're envisioning the purpose and the future for the business. Sure. Just before you step away, you said residual. But is there any energy that's being put back? Is it being put back into the grid? Or is it solely remaining on site just for charging buses? Is it taken in and holding it? Or are you selling it back? It does export into the grid a little bit. Most of it is used on site for EV charging and for the purpose of the building. But there can be at times a need and a request from the utility to provide energy back into the grid. So it's a small amount with a building of that size. But it is available if the grid needs it. And that's generally a favorable. During the WREC accession, it was mostly explained that it was kind of self-contained, that it wasn't going back into the grid. Mostly. It is. Mostly? Yeah, it's mostly, I mean, we could give you the statistics on the amount. But it's mostly used for on-site energy. Do you want? Oh, yes. And it is in conjunction with a solar array on the roof. And so it's really that. You know, the combination of that solar and the battery are really supplying the energy for the site, although it does remain connected to the grid. So that's distinguished from a grid scale. If you're getting an interconnection for a grid scale project like the prior project, you're just feeding from that site directly into the poles and wires of the PSC and G grid.
Members of the board, good evening. Thank you for having me. My name is Nick Petrakis. I am the Director of Engineering at Energy Safety Response Group. I am a fire protection engineer, licensed fire protection engineer, and I'm very lucky to work alongside Paul Rogers. I think I'm lucky I'm going up second because it sounds like you guys gave him some of the tougher questions. But we are working with the Hampton Chitney Project and Sprocket Power as their fire safety experts. Doesn't matter if the project is half a megawatt, if it's 5 megawatts, if it's 200 megawatts. As you can see, we sort of use the same standard of care across the board. We work with the New York State Interagency Fire Safety Working Group, making sure that the highest codes and standards are implemented. For this project, we've developed an emergency response plan and a hazard mitigation analysis for the specific technology. Like Paul had mentioned, different battery manufacturers will have different fire protection approaches and they'll have different response procedures per the ERP. So we developed a site-specific ERP for this project to make sure that the fire department and mutual aid companies are aware of the technology and the standard operating procedures. So I'm here to answer any questions that you may have on fire safety and fire safety regulations. I'm going to sound repetitive, but again, have you sat down with Riverhead Fire Department? I have not personally for this project, but in development of the ERP, the applicant has. Have they made any specific recommendations or requests on you for additional equipment? Training? Yes. So there has been a request that we've worked to comply with for a direct connection from the fire, the sort of heat, you know, response units within the battery to the fire safety system within the building. So that's a system that's in place already. So that connection is there and any issue with the battery goes right through that system within the building, which is a tremendous advantage just in terms of response. So again, outside of the Suffolk County Fire Academy training, you're offering training on site and are you inviting the surrounding departments, Wading River, Manorville, Jamesport? Yes. I just had one question. Wait for the train. Being that this is primarily a private operation, are you still required to comply with all the state regulations that we just spoke about with the other group? Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's what I just want to make sure everybody Oh, yeah. that I understand. Yes. The threshold is probably, I want to say 20 kilowatt hours, which is a residential system. So anything above that has to fall under all of the same regulations in the interagency fire safety working group. So a system of this size is going to have to fall under the same standard of care of a much larger system as well. So we sort of level the playing field for all these technologies. Right, because you're 100 kilowatts. Yeah, this is half a megawatt. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. And the only reason, and I understand that you have to follow all the standards. Yeah. But the only reason why I'm kind of repetitive and asking, are you offering training to the surrounding departments, is because my concern from being a volunteer firefighter, people, I'm concerned about the actual response of manpower, for firefighters to respond on the scene, because there's general concerns. Mm-hmm, I understand. And so I don't want a situation where we offer training to, in this particular case, Riverhead fire department, it's in Riverhead Fire District, I know there's going to be mutual aid. And I just, me as a firefighter, volunteer firefighter in Wayne River, I don't want to just arrive at the Hampton Chitney blind and go, well, we never invited here, don't really know anything about it. So I just am encouraging you, if anything, to make certain that we're reaching out to all the departments in there so that when we do mutual aid, everybody has had a chance to visit the site, be on site, because there's no predictability. I mean, Riverhead Fire Department is phenomenal. They're a busy department. You know, we have one fire on one side of the town, and then something happens at Hampton Chitney, and they're calling Manitobel and Wayne River, and I just want to make sure that they have also been a part of that training. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we'll make sure. And like Paul mentioned, our trainings are in closed-door trainings. We try to involve as many, I would say, any emergency response companies, any OEM, anything that would be mutual aid. We'll make sure that they're at that training. Our trainings are pretty long. We usually like to do about an hour and a half to, yeah, an hour and a half. An hour and a half, two-hour classroom session, and then we go over to the site, and we walk through the site. So it's a great opportunity to walk the facility. Like Paul mentioned, we do it on a yearly basis, so if there is turnover, we'll make sure that we get everybody within the department, and we'll make sure we invite the mutual aid companies as well. Well, you're fortunate that you have the best volunteer fire departments. We have some pretty good ones. That's why we like working out here.
Any other questions from the board? And I know, Jeff, I don't know if you wanted to say a little bit about the, you know, the fire department. Yeah. Yeah. Just the business purpose of all this.
Good evening. Jeff Lynch, president of Hampton Jitney, 253 Edwards Avenue in Calverton. Going back to the difference between us and the prior project, this is, it is Hampton Jitney specific. It's not meant to be the arbitrage situation where we're selling power back to the grid and buying. And buying it and cheaply and storing it. That's not the purpose of this best system. This is, we have a solar roof system that we've installed, and we need to store that energy for whether it's charging at night or other power needs. This is really meant to be for Hampton Jitney's, you know, to use buzzwords, sustainability, resiliency, all that fun stuff. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant. It's meant.
IT'S FROM PSE AND G FOR THAT POWER THAT WE'RE NOT USING AND NOT DRAWING FROM THE GRID. YOU KNOW, OUR POWER NEEDS ARE ONLY GOING TO GO UP FROM HERE. SO WE'RE TRYING TO GET READY FOR THAT. I WOULD COMMEND YOU BECAUSE I BELIEVE IS IT BY 27 OR 28 THAT YOU'RE SWITCHING OVER TO THE ELECTRIC BUSES AND SO THAT'S A MORE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE. WELL, WE DON'T HAVE THAT SAME MANDATE AS A PRIVATE CARRIER. A LOT OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICTS HAVE THOSE MANDATES. THE PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEMS HAVE THOSE MANDATES. WE ARE AN OPERATOR FOR SUFFOLK COUNTY TRANSIT. WE HAVE THE S92 WHICH I'M SURE EVERYBODY HERE IN THE TOWN OF RIVERHEAD IS FAMILIAR WITH. SOME OF THOSE S92 VEHICLES ARE STORED AT OUR FACILITY. AND THE COUNTY IS ALREADY ORDERING EVS FOR THE TRANSIT. SO WE'RE GOING TO NEED CHARGING SYSTEMS RELATIVELY QUICK. YES. ANYBODY THAT HAS DRIVEN BEHIND THE SUFFOLK COUNTY BUSES AND WATCHED THE DIESEL ADMISSIONS SHOULD BE DELIGHTED TO FIND OUT YOU'RE GOING ELECTRIC. THEY'RE COMING. THEY'RE ROUGH. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANKS FOR LEADING THE CHARGE. ANY COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC? ONLINE? NO ONE ONLINE? NO. ANYONE IN THE ROOM? A COUPLE SECONDS. ALL RIGHT. SO THAT CONCLUDES THAT PUBLIC HEARING. WE WILL BE LEAVING IT OPEN FOR TEN DAYS. AGAIN, IT WILL BE MONDAY, MARCH 2ND, CLOSE OF DAY WILL BE THE STOP POINT FOR THAT. SO WE THANK EVERYONE FOR THEIR QUESTIONS ON THOSE TWO PUBLIC HEARINGS. OUR NEXT PUBLIC HEARING WAS SCHEDULED FOR 6.05. IT IS NOW 7.54. AND IT IS REPEALING LOCAL LAW ARTICLE 1, CHAPTER 105, ACCESSORY APARTMENTS, ENACTING PART 7, AND THE RELEASE OF THE PROPOSAL. ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS WITH OUR SENIOR INVESTIGATOR, RICH DOWNS. WOW, RICH, I'VE NEVER SEEN YOU THIS LATER. GOOD EVENING. A NIGHT OWL. LIKE FIVE SECONDS. DO YOU NEED ME TO READ THE PUBLIC NOTICE? I DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE A COPY OF IT. NO, BUT IF YOU COULD JUST GIVE US LIKE TEN SECONDS FOR THEM TO CLEAR UP. SURE. GENTLEMEN. OKAY. GO AHEAD, SIR. I DO HAVE A COPY. I'M JUST GOING TO TAKE A QUICK LOOK AT THIS. OKAY. I HAVE A COPY OF THE PUBLIC NOTICE. THERE YOU GO. ALL RIGHT. OKAY. PLEASE TAKE NOTICE THAT A PUBLIC HEARING WILL BE HELD BEFORE THE TOWN BOARD OF THE TOWN OF RIVERHEAD AT 4 WEST SECOND STREET RIVERHEAD, NEW YORK ON THE 18TH DAY OF FEBRUARY, 2026 AT ABOUT 7 SOMETHING RIGHT NOW TO CONSIDER TO REPOSE LOCAL LAW REPEALING ARTICLE 1 OF CHAPTER 105 TITLED ACCESSORY APARTMENTS OF THE RIVERHEAD TOWN CODE AND THEREUPON ENACTING NEW PART 7. PART 7 TITLED ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS, ADUS OF CHAPTER 217 TITLED BUILDING CONSTRUCTION AND IMPROVEMENTS IN HOUSING STANDARDS OF THE RIVERNAY TOWN CODE. OKAY. SO THIS AMENDMENT BASICALLY REORGANIZES AND MODERNIZES THE TOWN EXISTING ACCESSORY APARTMENT REGULATIONS. WE ARE REPEALING THE PRIOR ACCESSORY APARTMENT BOARD BASED SYSTEM UNDER CHAPTER 105 AND REPLACING IT WITH A STREAMLINED ADMINISTRATIVE PERMITTING PROCESS UNDER CHAPTER 217 WHICH IS OUR PERMIT SECTION OF THE TOWN CODE. THE GOAL IS TO PROVIDE A CLEAR ENFORCEABLE STANDARDS, EXPAND SAFE HOUSING OPTIONS AND IMPROVE LONG-TERM COMPLIANCE AND OVERSIGHT THROUGH THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT. THE CODE WAS WORKED ON. AND REVIEWED BY THE CODE REVISION COMMITTEE. THEN IT WAS PRESENTED AT TWO DIFFERENT TOWN BOARD WORK SESSIONS WHERE IT WAS ANALYZED BY THIS BOARD FOR SPECIFIC CONCERNS. AND THEN IT WAS REDRAFTED WITH RESPECT TO THOSE CONCERNS. SO I DON'T WANT TO BORE YOU WITH THE LEGAL EASE SO I'LL JUST KIND OF GIVE YOU THE READER'S DIGEST VERSION AND JUST KIND OF TAKE A LOOK AT IT. OKAY. THANK YOU FOR THE FORM. I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU SOME OF THE KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CODE. THIS UPDATE ALSO HELPS THE TOWN PROVIDE PRACTICAL HOUSING OPTIONS FOR OUR RESIDENTS. WHETHER IT'S A FIRST TIME HOME BUYERS LOOKING FOR A LITTLE SUPPORT WITH AFFORDABILITY FOR FAMILIES WHO WANT TO KEEP THEIR PARENTS OR GRANDPARENTS CLOSE BY. AND THEN THE FAMILY HOME AT THE COLLEGE. THIS GIVES THE HOMEOWNER A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF FLEXIBILITY. AT THE SAME TIME THIS AMENDMENT MAINTAINS CLEAR GUARD RAILS AND STRONG SAFEGUARDS. IT MAINTAINS SINGLE FAMILY NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTER, ESTABLISHES CLEAR PERMIT STANDARDS AND IMPROVES ENFORCEMENT METHODS AND PLACES THE ADMINISTRATION AND PERMITTING PART OF THE COMMUNITY'S COMMISSIONS. AND THEN THE PERMITTING PART FULLY WITHIN THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT AS OPPOSED TO BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS. SO WE USED TO HAVE AN ACCESSORY APARTMENT REVIEW BOARD. WE NO LONGER HAVE THE ACCESSORY APARTMENT REVIEW BOARD. SO THE PERMITTING WILL BE DONE THROUGH THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT. SO THERE WILL BE NO SHORT TERM TRANSIENT RENTALS WITHIN AN ACCESSORY APARTMENT. WE'VE COVERED THAT IN THE LAW. WE SET A CLEAR SIZE AND USE LIMITS. MAXIMUM ONE BEDROOM CAN BE IN AN ADU. MAXIMUM NO MORE THAN 40% OF THE BUILDING CAN BE UTILIZED FOR AN ADU. NO ADUS IN ANY TWO FAMILY RESIDENCES. SO THAT'S COVERED IN THE LAW. WE REQUIRE THE PROPER PARKING INFRASTRUCTURE. WE WOULD REQUIRE ONE ADDITIONAL OFF STREET PARKING FOR AN ADU. AND WE ESTABLISH STRONG ENFORCEMENT TOOLS IN THIS CODE. WE HAVE A PRESUMPTIVE EVIDENCE SECTION. WE HAVE AN INSPECTION AUTHORITY SECTION. AND WE ALSO HAVE A REVOCATION SECTION FOR ANY PENALTIES. THE PROGRAM IS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT. BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE IT'S LATELY BECAUSE SO, YOU KNOW, OVERALL IT'S A CLEAN MODERN FRAMEWORK THAT BALANCES HOUSING FLEXIBILITY WITH NEIGHBORHOOD PROTECTION AND CLEAR ENFORCEMENT. AND I'M HERE FOR ANY QUESTIONS. NEW SPEAKER RICH, I HAVE A QUESTION. WE HAVE OVER 2,000 RENTALS IN THE TOWN. SO IS THIS GOING TO APPLY TO PEOPLE WHO OWN AND LIVE IN THEIR HOME AS OPPOSED TO SOMEONE WHO IS RENTING, RIGHT, RENTING A HOUSE AND THEN DECIDES THAT THEY'RE GOING TO BUILD AN ADU, RIGHT, SO THEY CAN PUT THEIR RELATIVE IN IT? THEY WOULD STILL BE REQUIRED TO GET A RENTAL PERMIT, IF THAT'S YOUR QUESTION. WELL, RIGHT, BUT THEY GET THEIR RENTAL PERMIT. YEAH. ARE THEY STILL ALLOWED TO DO AN ADU? NO, THIS IS ONLY FOR OWNER OCCUPIED. THAT'S WHERE I'M GOING. SINGLE FAMILY. I JUST WANT TO MAKE, I JUST, YOU KNOW, I DIDN'T HAVE A QUESTION. I DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO READ THIS. HOW DOES THAT BLOW? YEAH, THE LANGUAGE IS IN HERE. GOOD FOR YOU. YES. YEAH. FOR THE PUBLIC. YEAH, YOU DID A REALLY GOOD JOB. I FEEL LIKE IT'S A GOOD JOB BECAUSE IT CAPS THE LIMIT OF, THROUGHOUT OUR TOWN, YOU KNOW, IT CAPS THE SPACE, THE SIZE, ALL OF THAT. YEAH. YOU KNOW, OWNER OCCUPIED. I BELIEVE THAT'S GOOD. SO DOES ANYBODY? YEAH, I'D LIKE TO THANK YOU VERY MUCH. YOU DID A GREAT JOB ON THIS, RICH, AND THE TOWN ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, FANTASTIC JOB WITH HOW TO MAKE SURE THERE'S NO GRAY AREA WITH REGARD TO MATTERS GOING IN COURT WITH THE PRESUMPTIONS AND THE LAW. IT'S FANTASTIC. I THINK IT HELPS OUR RESIDENTIAL OWNERS. WE HEAR THE TAXPAYERS. THEY'RE VERY CONCERNED ABOUT AFFORDABILITY. THIS HELPS RESIDENTIAL HOMEOWNERS WITH RELIEF. AND WHETHER YOU'RE A COUPLE THAT'S YOUNG MOVING IN OR A COUPLE THAT WANTS THEIR PARENTS TO MOVE INTO THE HOME, I THINK IT'S A GREAT WAY TO HELP THEM ECONOMICALLY AND ALSO GET PEOPLE INTO COMPLIANCE. BECAUSE WE KNOW PEOPLE ARE DOING THIS ILLEGALLY. SO WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY'RE DOING IT THE RIGHT WAY, LETTING US INSPECT TO MAKE SURE THE HOMES ARE LIVEABLE. THERE'S NO ISSUES WITH FIRE CODES OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. I JUST THINK IT'S GREAT. THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT SHORT-TERM RENTALS. MY BIGGEST THING IS THAT YOU'RE MAINTAINING THE RESIDENTIAL CHARACTER OF A NEIGHBORHOOD. YOU'RE NOT LETTING PEOPLE TURN THEIR HOME INTO AN APARTMENT BUILDING. IT'S ONE ROOM, ONE BEDROOM. SO I THINK THIS IS FANTASTIC. IT COVERS ALL THE BASES. THANK YOU. A LOT OF GUARD RAILS AND SAFEGUARDS IN THERE FOR THAT TRANSIENT RENTAL PROBLEM. I ECHO WHAT COUNCILWOMAN MERRIFIELD SAID BECAUSE WE HAVE WORKED WITH YOU IN THE TOWN ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. I CAN'T TELL YOU, WELL, YOU KNOW, THE AMOUNT OF TIME THAT WAS SPENT ON THIS, HOW MANY TIMES IN CODE REVISION THE DISCUSSION WAS HAD AND YOU KEPT GOING BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD AND MAKING SURE THAT EVERY T WAS CROSSED, EVERY I WAS DOTTED. WHAT YOU CAME OUT WITH IN THE END IS SPOT ON. YEAH, I APPRECIATE THAT. THERE WAS A LOT OF GOOD INPUT FROM THE BOARD DURING THE WORK SESSIONS. HOW MANY ARE THERE CURRENTLY IN TOWN? ADU UNITS? YEAH, LIKE WHERE ARE WE AT? I WOULD SAY APPROXIMATELY 130 THE LAST TIME I CHECKED. SO ORIGINALLY THE ORIGINAL LAW WAS CAPTED AT 300 AND WE STILL HAVEN'T FULFILLED THAT CAP. SO WE'VE INCREASED THE CAP TO 500 WITH THIS LAW. OKAY. SO HOPING THAT WE'LL GET MORE OPPONENTS. I THINK IT'S A GOOD THING. IT'S A GREAT THING FOR RIVERHEAD RESIDENTS AND HOMEOWNERS. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS. YES, ABSOLUTELY. I DON'T BELIEVE SO, BUT JUST THERE'S NOTHING ABOUT IN TERMS OF THE CAPTING OR VOLUME OF ADU IS BASED ON HAMLET IN MANY WAYS. IS IT JUST 500 ANYWHERE IN THE TOWN FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE OR HAS IT GOT TO BE SPREAD OUT THROUGHOUT THE DIFFERENT HAMLETS IN THE TOWN? IT'S PRETTY MUCH. I BELIEVE IT'S 500 FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE. IT'S NOT SPREAD OUT THROUGH THE HAMLETS. BUT THE BOARD HAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPAND ON THAT SHOULD WE REACH THAT CAP. OKAY. YEAH. I'D BE CURIOUS AS APPLICANTS IN THE FUTURE JUST TOWARDS WHERE THEY'RE ALL LAYING AND SO FORTH. I IMAGINE IT'S SOMETHING EASY FOR YOU TO COMPRISE A LIST IN THE FUTURE JUST THAT IF WE FIND THEM ALL PRIMARILY IN JAMES PORT OR SOUTH JAMES ROAD OR WAVE OR EVERYTHING AND JUST ANALYZE YOUR CURIOSITY. SURE. SEE TO MONITOR WHERE THEY'RE BEING BUILT. YEAH. AND THEY WILL BE INSPECTED. SO MOST OF THEM WILL PROBABLY BE RENTED AND THEY WILL BE INSPECTED ANNUALLY ALSO. SO. AND AGAIN, THIS IS GREAT BECAUSE THIS IS RENTING ON A LONG-TERM BASIS. THIS IS NOT AIRBNB'S. YOU CAN'T TURN YOUR HOME INTO A HOTEL EITHER. YOU HAVE TO BE THE RESIDENTIAL OWNER. AND IT HAS TO BE FOR A USE, A RESIDENT, IS OVER 30 DAYS. RIGHT? IS THAT CORRECT? RIGHT. YEAH. YOUR LANGUAGE IS GOOD BECAUSE IT'S NOT A ONE AND DONE. YOU HAVE TO DO IT EVERY FIVE YEARS. EVERY FIVE YEARS. CORRECT. YEAH. THERE'S ALSO SOME STATE INCENTIVES, I BELIEVE, OR SOME STATE GRANTS THAT CAN BE OBTAINED, YOU KNOW, THROUGH LOCAL ADMINISTRATORS WITH THE STATE. I THINK DAWN CAN SPEAK ON THAT. BUT THERE ARE SOME GRANTS AVAILABLE TO RESIDENTS TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS. I'D ALSO LIKE YOU TO BE IN CONTACT WITH THE BOARD IN TERMS OF AS THE VOLUME OF AFRICANS GOES UP. I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU'RE NOT SHORT-HANDED WITH STAFFING AND SO FORTH TO FISICALLY GO OUT AND VISIT THESE SITES AND OFFER THESE RENTALS. SO IF THIS IS SOMEWHERE APPLICANTS ARE PAYING A FEE FOR THE PERMIT, I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE WE CAN PROVIDE THAT AND I'M JUST UP FRONT. WE HIRED ADDITIONAL CODE ENFORCEMENTS WHEN WE REALLY CRACKED DOWN ON THE YEARLY ANNUAL CODES AND I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE KEEPING UP ON YOUR STAFFING THAT'S NECESSARY TO COMPLETE THESE TASKS. YEAH, GREAT. I APPRECIATE THAT. YEAH, THAT'S A REALLY GOOD POINT. YEAH, IF WE'RE ADDING AN ADDITIONAL 500 RENTAL UNITS, I MIGHT NEED A COUPLE EXTRA GUYS. BUT IT BECOMES SELF-SUSTAINING, RICH. I MEAN, RIGHT? RIGHT. IT'S CORRECT TO SAY THROUGH THE USE OF THE PERMITS AND THE FEES WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO HIRE ADDITIONAL STAFFING SO THAT WE'RE DOING THE JOB AND YET WE'RE NOT, YOU KNOW, THERE'S NO COST TO THE TAXPAYERS OUTSIDE OF IT. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. WE WANT THIS TO BE SELF-SUSTAINING. YEAH. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. DO WE HAVE ANY COMMENTS IN THE ROOM? IF YOU'D LIKE TO COME UP AND JUST MAKE YOUR COMMENT. AND ONLINE, CAN YOU GET ONE? OKAY. WE'LL GET TO THAT IN A SECOND. NO, WE'LL DO YOURS. IF YOU COULD CUE THAT ONE UP ONLINE. HI. LAURA JEN SMITH FROM LAUREL. JUST BEFORE WE START, I JUST WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR AT THE ONSET. MY COMMENTS TONIGHT ARE FOCUSED ON THE FUTURE OF THE PROGRAM. JUST BEFORE WE START, I JUST WANT TO BE VERY CLEAR AT THE ONSET. MY COMMENTS TONIGHT ARE FOCUSED SPECIFICALLY ON ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS LOCATED ON NON-CONFORMING LOTS, NOT ON THE ADU PROGRAM AS A WHOLE, BECAUSE I THINK THE CODE THAT YOU GUYS ARE PUTTING FORWARD IS VERY GOOD AND VERY TIGHT. SO I SUPPORT ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS. THEY PROVIDE IMPORTANT HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR SENIORS, WORKING FAMILIES, AND MULTI-GENERATIONAL HOUSEHOLDS, AND THEY ARE A VALUABLE TOOL WHEN IMPLEMENTED THOUGHTFULLY. HOWEVER, WHEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT ADUs ON UNDERSIZED, NON-CONFORMING LOTS, THE CONVERSATION DOES CHANGE A BIT. MANY OF OUR HAMLET NEIGHBORHOODS WERE DEVELOPED DECADES AGO ON LOTS THAT ARE SMALLER THAN TODAY'S ZONING STANDARDS. THOSE LOTS ARE LEGAL AND PART OF THE COMMUNITY FABRIC, BUT MINIMUM LOT SIZES WERE ESTABLISHED FOR REASONS. SEPTIC CAPACITY, STORMWATER MANAGEMENT, PARKING, AND NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTER. IF WE APPLY THE FULL ADU STANDARDS OF UP TO 1,000 FEET AND PORT 40% OF THE PRINCIPAL DWELLING TO LOTS THAT ARE ALREADY BELOW TODAY'S MINIMUM SIZE REQUIREMENTS, WE RISK INCREMENTALLY INCREASING RESIDENTIAL INTENSITY BEYOND WHAT THOSE PARCELS WERE ORIGINALLY INTENDED TO SUPPORT. AGAIN, THIS IS NOT ABOUT ELIMINATING THESE ADUs. IT'S ABOUT SCALING THEM APPROPRIATELY ON UNDERSIZED LOTS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. I HAVE SOME CHANGES THAT I'D LIKE TO PRESENT. I'LL GIVE THEM TO YOU, JIM, SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO WRITE THEM ALL DOWN. THANK YOU. SO I HAVE AN AMENDMENT THAT I'M PROPOSING ADDRESSING ONLY NON-CONFORMING LOTS THAT ARE AT LEAST 75% OF THE REQUIRED MINIMUM LOT SIZE. THIS PROTECTS THE SMALLEST AND MOST CONSTRAINED PARCELS. SECOND, IT ADJUSTS DIMENSIONAL STANDARDS FOR THOSE LOTS. ON NON-CONFORMING PARCELS, THE ADU WOULD BE LIMITED TO 800 SQUARE FEET INSTEAD OF THE 1,000, AND 30% OF THE PRINCIPAL DWELLING. WHILE RETAINING THE ONE BEDROOM, THE ADU WOULD BE LIMITED TO 800 SQUARE FEET INSTEAD OF THE 1,000, AND 30% OF THE PRINCIPAL DWELLING. WHILE RETAINING THE ONE BEDROOM, THE ADU WOULD BE LIMITED TO 800 SQUARE FEET INSTEAD OF THE 1,000, AND 30% OF THE PRINCIPAL DWELLING. THIS ENSURES THAT THE UNIT REMAINS CLEARLY ACCESSORY AND SUBORDINATE TO THE ORIGINAL HOUSE. FINALLY, THE AMENDMENT INCLUDES A THREE-YEAR PHASE-IN SPECIFICALLY TO NON-CONFORMING LOTS. THAT ALLOWS THE TOWN TO MONITOR REAL IMPACTS, PARKING, ENFORCEMENT, SEPTIC CONCERNS, AND ADJUST POLICIES BASED ON ACTUAL DATA. TO BE CLEAR, CONFORMING LOTS WOULD CONTINUE UNDER THE BROAD ADU. THESE SAFEGUARDS APPLY ONLY WHEN THE LOT IS ALREADY BELOW ZONING STANDARDS. THIS IS A MEASURED APPROACH IN SUPPORTING HOUSING OPPORTUNITY WHILE RESPECTING INFRASTRUCTURE AND NEIGHBORHOOD STABILITY. SO I THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING. THANK YOU. CHAIRMAN BRYANT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS. AND WE HAVE ONE ONLINE. WE WILL CUE THAT ONE UP. TWO ONLINE. BOB'S LUCKY NIGHT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. ARE WE READY? THANK YOU, JIM. THANK YOU. JUSTIN? DON'T FORGET THOSE ANNOUNCEMENTS WE TOLD YOU ABOUT EARLIER WITH OUR SENIOR CENTER. YOU CAN CHECK OUT ALL THOSE GREAT PROGRAMS THEY HAVE WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR THEM TO PULL THAT UP. YOU CAN ALSO GO ON AND CHECK OUT OUR RECREATION APARTMENT. THEY ALWAYS HAVE GREAT STUFF FOR THE FAMILY. THERE WE ARE. GOOD EVENING. MY NAME IS JONES SEAR AND I LIVE IN JAMESFORT. AND I JUST WANT TO ECHO LAURA JEN SMITH'S COMMENTS ON CONCERNS ABOUT MINIMUM LOT SIZE. SHE CAME UP WITH SOME EXCELLENT RECOMMENDATIONS MORE SPECIFIC THAN ANYTHING I HAD THOUGHT OF. SO I WANT TO THANK HER FOR THAT. BUT I THINK THAT THE ADU PROGRAM DOES NEED TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE FACT THAT NOT EVERY PROPERTY SIZE IS THE SAME AND PERHAPS THERE SHOULD BE AT LEAST A REQUIRED MINIMUM SQUARE FOOTAGE OR SIZE OF THE LOT FOR SOMEONE TO PUT INTO BUILD AN ADU. THE SECOND COMMENT I HAVE AND THIS MAY BE A LITTLE BIT MORE IMPORTANT. AND THIS MAY FALL INTO A LEGAL ASPECT IS WHETHER WE CAN SET A MAXIMUM OCCUPANCY. WE SAY IT'S ONE BEDROOM. BUT UNFORTUNATELY WE ALL KNOW OF CIRCUMSTANCES WHERE MANY MORE PEOPLE THAN SHOULD BE PERMITTED RESIDE IN A SINGLE HOME OR APARTMENT. SO I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THE PROPOSED CODE CAN SET A MAXIMUM OCCUPANCY PER ADU. THE THIRD ITEM COMES UNDER CRIMINAL PENALTIES SECTION 217-128A. THE LANGUAGE AS I READ IT DOES NOT SPECIFY THAT THE FINE PER EACH CODE VIOLATION. IT APPEARS TO ME THAT IT READS AS THOUGH IT'S PER INCIDENT. AND SOMEONE THE HOME MAY BE INSPECTED AND SOMEONE MAY HAVE MULTIPLE CRIMES. SO IT'S A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT. I THINK IT'S A LITTLE BIT DIFFICULT. I THINK IT'S A LITTLE BIT DIFFICULT. I THINK IT'S A LITTLE BIT DIFFICULT. SO I DON'T KNOW IF THERE ARE MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS IN A HOME. BUT IS THAT GOING TO BE FIND AS ONE VIOLATION OR AS SEVERAL? SO I JUST THINK IF THAT COULD BE MORE SPECIFIC AND SAY PER EACH CODE VIOLATION, NOT PER EACH INSPECTION OR EACH INCIDENT. AND THEN UNDER SECTION 217-129C, I'M A LITTLE CONFUSED AND MAYBE IT'S UNDERSTOOD BETTER THERE AT TOWN HALL. TALKS ABOUT RECONVERSION TO A LEGAL SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENCE. I'M PRESUMING THAT MEANS WHERE AN ADU IS BUILT WITHIN OR ADJACENT TO, ATTACHED TO ANOTHER STRUCTURE. BUT IF THE ADU IS A FREESTANDING UNIT, HOW DO YOU CONVERT IT TO A SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENCE? IT ALREADY IS A SINGLE FAMILY RESIDENCE. SO THAT LANGUAGE IN THAT SECTION, AGAIN, 217-129C, TO ME WAS CONFUSING OR NOT CLEAR. SO MAYBE THAT CAN BE TWEAKED A LITTLE BIT. AND THEN FINALLY, I WOULD JUST URGE THE TOWN THAT ONCE ADOPTED AS YOU'RE ROLLING THIS OUT IS TO REALLY ROLL IT OUT, PERHAPS HAVE AN ORIENTATION MEETING FOR RESIDENTS WHO ARE INTERESTED BECAUSE I'M THINKING ABOUT THE IMPACT IT'S GOING TO HAVE ON PEOPLE'S PROPERTY TAXES. AND THEY MAY SEE THIS AS ANOTHER AVENUE OF INCOME FOR THEM. BUT IF THEIR TAXES GO UP 50 OR 70%, AS HAS BEEN KNOWN TO HAPPEN IN AREAS WHERE PEOPLE HAVE BUILT A ROOM ONTO THEIR HOUSE, THEY MIGHT WANT TO THINK TWICE ABOUT WHETHER THEY MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS. SO I WOULD JUST ENCOURAGE YOU TO DO A GOOD ROLL OUT OF THIS WITH INFORMATIVE MEETINGS SO PEOPLE REALLY UNDERSTAND THE BENEFITS AND THE POTENTIAL INCOME. AND I THINK THAT'S THE ONLY DOWNSIDE TO DOING THIS. THAT'S ALL. THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER SO JUST TO CLARIFY, THE ADU THAT WOULD BE PERMISSIBLE WOULD ONLY BE UP TO 40% THE SIZE OF THE MAIN DWELLING HOUSE. AND THEN IT ALSO PERTAINS TO THE OVERALL SETBACKS. THERE IS SETBACKS IN PLACE, TOO. SO THERE IS SOME METHOD IN THE PROPOSED LEGISLATION TO PROTECT THAT AND MAKE IT PROPORTIONAL. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. NEW SPEAKER. Any other comments? One more online, right? Anybody else inside the room? If you would stand so we know you're there. Thank you, Joan. One more Zoom. Again, don't forget to check out our recreation department, which is amazing. You got what? The recreation department. Which is amazing. Check out their website. A lot of great stuff. Ron? Yes, this is Ron Hariri of Aqibog. My question is, has the town and this individual
considered the impact of having 500 units with potential children on our school system that is already bursting at the seams? What analysis, if any, has been made as to the number of school-aged children to be added to our overburdened school system? And secondly, although I appreciate the efforts to try to draft appropriate legislation, it's hard for me to have any confidence in the town's ability to enforce anything when at this time it remains unable to enforce its existing rules and regulations pertaining to kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids its own existing rules doesn't inspire any confidence in trying to enforce this legislation.
If any of you choose to comment, I would look forward to that. I just couldn't see you, Mr. Harry, so I wasn't sure if you were finished. I wanted to give you a moment, but we thank you for your comments. The school impact question is a solid question. Anybody have any comments, questions? Okay. We just can't see you, so just let us know if you're through. No, I mean, do any of you have any? Well, first of all, have any members of the board ask this planner what impact adding 500 new housing units will have on our overburdened school system? And sir, you're there now. Can you tell us whether you studied that? Are you asking Rich that question? Yes, Rich. I believe that every, go ahead, Rich, if you want to answer.
I just want to reiterate one thing. The law, the accessory apartment law was already on the books. We already have an accessory apartment law on the books under our current chapter 105. The 40% rule is also under our chapter 105. We just restructured, restructured, and above that, above that, above that, above that, above that, above that, above that, And none of that, sir, answers my question. Have you considered how many students will be in these 500 new housing units that you propose, sir? It's calls for a yes or no. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump in quickly and just remind the town board and advise the public that the accessory dwelling units were actually recommended through the comprehensive plan update. For which the town board adopted an environmental impact statement. Also, these accessory dwelling units are limited to one bedroom. So in the event there were any additional children, they would essentially be all living in the same bedroom with their parent or parents. And don't we have town code as to how many people can reside in each in one bedroom of a home? Yes. So there's under state code, there's a minimum minimum sizes for each occupant. But, Rich, I think it's 70 square feet is for one and then you need. Minimum was 70 square feet for a bedroom and 50 square feet for any additional occupant. OK. All right. So. So, again, my question calls for a yes or no answer. I take it, sir, that your answer is you have not analyzed the number of pupils and children that would be added to our overburdened school system based on this proposal. Is that right, sir? So, Mr. Mr. I believe what our counselor just said was through the comprehensive plan, which would have looked at all of that. That would have been taken into consideration if I'm not mistaken. That's that's correct. And then I would also note that addition. And this was something that was pointed out by one of the people who commented that doing one of these accessory dwelling units could, in fact, increase your taxes. And those taxes would generally also go towards the school district to supplement. Whatever additional children are going into it. But you don't even. But no one on this board. No one can really predict the future or anticipate everything that could happen. So let's predict the future. So you said you said that the New York state dwelling law allows one person or one person per 70 feet. Right. So a one bedroom of 750 feet. Could have 10 people in that one bedroom. So let's just just tell us what impact would 10 people in one of these accessory dwelling units have on our overburdened school system, which now has a budget of 200 million dollars. Mr. Mr. I just. Sorry. I don't mean to cut you off, but I did actually. And I apologize for that. But Mr. Downs would like to explain that. That. That square footage for you a little bit better. So you have a better understanding. So. Yeah. In order in order to be considered a dwelling unit under New York state rules and regulations, you also have to have the appropriate size living room, the appropriate size dining room, the appropriate size kitchen bathroom. So the bedroom would not be in any case 750 square feet because of those rules. The law is. A. 100 square feet per person. Is sufficient. Right. So one bedroom. I don't know. That's 70 square feet. I'm a real estate lawyer. OK. I went to Columbia. I don't know what your background is, but I can tell you that it's 100 square feet per person. So your one bedroom apartment, like many of the immigrant. Flophouses all over our town that you've allowed to develop here can have maybe 10 separate people. And continue to overburden us or our school system. So sir, sir, with all due respect here, you're wrong. It's 70 square feet minimum size for a bedroom. 50 additional square feet per person. That's state code. That's state code. So that's not my question. The question is how many how many people can live in a 700 foot. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
this legislation, you need to consider the impact on our school system of having 500 new units with, I don't know whether it's two or 10, you need to do the analysis and figure out how it will affect our school system before you jump into this. And unfortunately, I don't think we have an answer. Well, I would also point out that we did notice this as a public hearing. So if the school district had any concerns, they were on notice to appear tonight and they would still obviously be able to send in any correspondence that they could deem relevant to the conversation. And as long as we have the benefit of council's advice and analysis, I don't think anyone can speak to the difficulty of enforcing rules affecting housing and overcrowded housing in Riverhead. Second, I think it's above me to say that the hypothetical. It's a case study. Your years of fighting Victorville, which was an illegal rental, lasted for what? Years and years. You relied on the town's police department and investigators to shut this place down. So Mr. Harry, I do want to ask that you go back to the accessory dwelling language in the code that's been presented instead of going on hypotheticals. I understand that. It's not hypothetical. I'm simply pointing out. Hypothetical, not hypothetical. I'm simply pointing out. If you'd like to bring that up at our open comment period, you can, but this is on the legislation for this specifically, and I do understand that, but you're beginning to bring up the specifics. So my question is if you've had so much difficulty enforcing existing laws, you need to be particularly prudent in being sure you can enforce these regulations, however well intentioned they are, and I think you need to consider seriously the impact on our infrastructure, including our overburdened schools. That's just my point. Thank you. I think that's why we're having a public hearing. I think it is, and I believe it is, why we've gone to this great work and why we're having yourself speak. So thank you very, very much for that. I appreciate your passion for the town and for the subjects. Thank you.
Is there anybody else in the room? Okay. All right. With that said, I think we've closed our public hearing, and we will leave that again open for 10 days, which will be again Monday, March 2nd, at the end of Business Day. And so if you have written comment for that, that would be great, and we will be reviewing that. Our next public hearing, which is number four on the 9th, only two more, is scheduled to start at 6.05 to amend Chapter 265 of Sewers with our Sewer District Superintendent, Tim Allen. The time is 8.26. Hello. Good evening. Hello. Good evening. Thanks for being ready at 6.05, Tim. Just appreciate that. The first thing we're doing is taking out... We're moving the mic down a little bit. Tim, the first thing we're doing. Gotcha. We're changing some codes. We've taken out a special code. It says pipe that was in there. We're putting DR18 only in place of that. Cast iron pipe is still in there. We've taken out the $10 fee for inspections, and the 75 cents, that was in the codes. It's going to be in our new code, our new fees. That's going up from that to $250 and $10 a foot. Tim, can I stop you there? Can you say why, like how long it's been to those fees? That fee's been on the town code for I don't know how long. Years and years. Well, decades. Yeah. But like one instance, we had a problem. We had to go inspect a line up at Calverton Incubator. We were up there four times, at least an hour apiece, for $10. Yeah. So it was just a waste of... You bring the horses and stuff. When you got back, you realized there were cars. Thanks, Tim. Okay. And that's really all. It's just really... Code fees update and everything? Yeah. Okay. Yes, sir. I commend you doing this. This is like plain ketchup. Yeah, it is. It is. Thank you very much. I mean, grease traps, we had no fees. Now there's a fee for it. And how far out are we for that fee schedule to be presented? You adopted it. Okay. But is it immediately active? Yeah, I believe it was immediately active. Okay. I didn't know if it had like a post date. Okay. Any other questions? Oh, sorry. Questions? No. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. Denise? Thank you. All right. Any questions or comments from the public? Anyone online? Want to wait a little bit? All right. With that said, we will be closing this hearing and leaving written comment open until again Monday, March 2nd, 10 days at the close of business. Our final public hearing tonight is to amend Chapter 279, Taxation. So I will begin with the Auditor General's question with Councillor Howard. Thank you, Mr. Supervisor. This is a proposed amendment to Chapter 279, our Taxation chapter. It implements an exemption from property taxes authorized by the New York State Legislature for up to 50% of the assessed value for surviving spouses of police officers killed in action. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. follows what is set forth in state law, provides for definition of the term police officer, and provides for an application process to the assessor's office. And that's, I mean, it's relatively straightforward. If the town board has any questions. I just want to say that putting forth this legislation, there's no way to measure the loss of life for someone that is killed in the line of duty. And there's no words to express how to show gratitude. You know, when someone gives their life. But with that in mind, there are just simply daily burdens that come with it. And so you have, you know, potentially for a husband, wife, one is killed in the line of duty. This certainly becomes a loss of revenue. It becomes a financial hardship for the duration of one's, you know, surviving spouse's life. This is a very strong. Small way for us to show appreciation to someone that, you know, makes that ultimate sacrifice. And so I just, I commend my fellow board members for putting this together to put this legislation forth. It is a small token of thanks for the hardships that are incur after the loss of life. And I just, I think I'm proud. This is the set. And I think that we do need to work on expanding this towards our firefighters, towards our veterans and others that made that ultimate sacrifice. So this legislation was passed by New York State just recently. And so we've been in kind of a very quick, fast motion. And I commend the town attorney's office for putting things together and then speeding matter and allowing this to be taken off the floor at our last meeting so that we can expedite this. Because if we can, in the end, help one single person. Thank you. And I think that's what we're supposed to be doing. So I thank you.
Thank you. Are there any comments online? No comments online? Any comments from anyone in the room? Again, as Councilman Rothwell said, this has been long overdue by the state. And it's something that, yes, was put together quickly. I did misspeak at our work session and said that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. is valuably important. We know that it is vital to those that need it and long overdue by the state of New York. And so with that, with no comments from the room or online, we will actually be closing this tonight so that we as a board can vote on it during our resolutions tonight. So this will be closed, and written comments will not be received after this moment. So again, I just want to give one more opportunity to anyone in the room and anyone online still know. All right, so that public hearing is closed. And so are there any comments on resolutions? This is not open comments. This is comments only on the resolutions that we have at hand before I turn it over to our town clerk to begin to go through our resolutions tonight, which there are over 30. Any online?
Any online comments for our resolutions? One, okie dokie. Any other? Any other? Any other? Any other? Any other? Any other? Any other? I know. I was ready. You were so excited. He sounded excited. I love it. He's alive. He's alive. All right. I think everyone in the audience. Nope. And just like Johnny said, back to you, Jim. We're ready? Yes, sir. Resolution number one, which is 155. Water District Capital Project 82518 Sandy Pond Links Water Service Budget Adjustment. So moved. Second. Vote, please. Waske? Yes. Murrayfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 156. 2026 Ambulance District Budget Adjustment. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waske? Yes. Murrayfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. And Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 157. Accepts donation of trailers from the Riverhead Fire Marshal's office. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waske? Yes. Thank you. Waske? Kern? Yes. Yes. Thank you, Suffolk County. And Halpin? Yes, sir. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 158. Authorizes removal of fixed assets. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waske? Yes. Murrayfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 159. Authorizes attendance at seminar by Assistant Fire Marshal. So moved. Second. Vote, please. Halpin? Yes. Waske? Yes. Murrayfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. And Halpin? Yes, sir. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 160. Authorizes one police department employee to attend a training. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waske? Yes. Murrayfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 162. Amends Resolution 2026-113. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waske? Yes. Murrayfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 163. Resolution 164. Resolution 165. Resolution 166. Resolution 167. Resolution 168. Resolution 169. Resolution 169. Resolution 161. Resolution 162. Resolution 163. Resolution 163. Resolution 163. Resolution 163. Resolution 163. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waske? Yes. Murrayfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? I just wanna, before I vote on this I just wanna let everybody know that this was something that happened in last year and there was a percentage, a mistake made in the percentage that just needed to go up by one percent so this is not something new this is just a clarification and making things right. So yes. I vote yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution number 164. Approves an unpaid leave of absence. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 165. Reappoints Monique Parsons to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 166. Reappoints Connie Lissandro to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 167. Reappoints Steve Chagra to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Second. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 168. Reappoints Dean DelPretty to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 169. Reappoints Ray Castanova to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution number 170. Reappoints Ike Israel to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 171. Reappoints Lee Mendelson to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Second. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 172. Reappoints Scott Middleton to the Town of Riverhead Business Advisory Committee. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 173. Adopts a local law to amend Chapter 273. of the Riverhead Town Code titled Taxation. Article 11. Exemption for volunteer firefighters and volunteer ambulance workers. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 174. Adopts a local law to amend Chapter 279 of the Riverhead Town Code titled Taxation, enacting Article 11, Exemption for Civil Rights and Human Rights. So moved. Seconded. Vote, please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Yes. Larson? Larson? Larson? and that should not go unnoticed, and I fully support this. Yes. Maryfield? Yes, fully support it. Kern? Absolute yes for me having police officers in my family. Rothwell? Absolutely support this and grateful for putting this together. Again, it's a small way to say thank you and give assistance to a family who's made the ultimate sacrifice and suffers through this. Vote yes. Elpin? I agree with everything that was said here and long overdue by the state of New York, yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution number 175. Authorizes town clerk to publish and post public notice to consider an amendment to Chapter 289 entitled No Parking Certain Hours, so moved. Second. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 176. I'm going to do it, Jim. Authorizes town clerk to publish and post notice to bid is for generative maintenance and emergency service, so moved. Seconded. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 177. Rejects bids for PFAS. Treatment at Well No. 5-2A SRF Project No. 19591 Riverhead Water District and authorizes the town clerk to publish and post notice to bidders for re-bid PFAS treatment at Well No. 5-2A SRF Project No. 19591 Riverhead Water District, so moved. Seconded. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 178. Authorizes the town attorney to execute an agreement with Municipal Valuation Services, Inc. So moved. Seconded. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution No. 179. Authorizes the supervisor to execute an agreement with the Nassau County Police Activity League lacrosse unit for referee umpire services and team fees for town of Riverhead Police Athletic League Boys Lacrosse Program grades K-8 for the 2026 calendar year, so moved. Second. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution No. 180. Authorizes the supervisor to execute a professional service agreement with P.W. Grosser, consulting engineering and hydrogeologist DPC for the Meeting House Creek Stormwater Wetland and Handling Project. Resolution No. 180. Authorizes the supervisor to execute an agreement with the Nassau County Police Department for professional service agreement with P.W. Grosser, consulting engineering and hydrogeologist DPC for the Meeting House Creek Stormwater Wetland and Handling Project. Resolution No. 180. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution No. 181. Authorizes the supervisor to execute a professional services agreement with the Raynor Group P.E. and L.S.P.L.L.C. So moved. Second. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. And Helton? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution No. 182. Authorizes the supervisor to execute a license agreement with DMS Apex Holdings LLC Skip Barber Racing School to utilize runway at EPCAL. So moved. Second. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Maryfield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Elpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution No. 184. I may not get all their names right, Eric. Ratify the authorization for the town attorney to execute a retainer agreement with Sertleman? Sertilman. Allen? There you go. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. Allen. services inked in the parentheses so moved second vote please wasky yes Murrayfield yes turn yes Rothwell yes you know before I vote yes and quickly I just want to say I had another supervisor from another town thank me for us for a different pine barren credit that we were able to give to the cell to them so that is a great program and yes that resolution is adopted resolution number 186 approved special event chapter 255 application for Riverhead Home Depot plant event so moved second it vote please wasky yes Murrayfield yes turn yes Rothwell this means spring is coming yes we wish Alpin yes resolution is adopted resolution 187 prove special event chapter 255 application for New York Marine Rescue Center run for the running name she's running she's running she's running she's running she's running the Ridley 5k so moved second vote please waski yes Murrayfield yes turn yes Rothwell yes help it yes resolution is adopted resolution number 188 approved special event chapter 255 application for slow food East and Earth Day so move second vote please waski yes very few yes turn yes Rothwell yes open yes resolution is adopted resolution 189 approved special event chapter 255 application for st. John Baptist Ukrainian Church blessing of the cars show blessing of the cars car show so moved second vote please waski yes very few yes turn yes Rothwell yes open yes resolution is adopted resolution number 190 ratifies the amendment of resolution 2026 dash 148 authorizing submission of an application to the office of Parks recreation and historic preservation environmental bond Act Municipal Parks and Recreation Grant program for Stotsky Park lighting replacement project so moved seconded vote please bosky yes Perry field yes turn yes Rothwell yes open yes that resolution is adopted resolution number 191 is the bills so moved second vote please bosky yes Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 192. Authorizes Lawrence Indamine Consulting Corp. to conduct an appraisal in connection with a real property tax law article 7 proceeding. So moved. Seconded. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 193. Authorizes the supervisor to execute a retainer agreement with Timothy James Hopkins Esquire doing business as Hopkins Law Services. So moved. Seconded. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 194. Appoints hearing officer and authorizes suspension of an employee. So moved. Seconded. Vote please. Waskey? Yes. Merrifield? Yes. Kern? Yes. Rothwell? Yes. Halpin? Yes. That resolution is adopted. That concludes our resolutions. So at this time as we've finished our resolutions, we would like to open it up for comments from the public on open comments. We ask when you come you state your name, where you're from, and then also you will be asked due to the length of our meeting tonight to adhere to a strict three-minute policy within that. So we ask. And cue them up online too. Good evening everyone. Thank you for doing the job that you do. That was really amazing to watch. So thank you. My name is Minerva Perez. I am the executive director of OLA of Eastern Long Island. Minerva Perez. Thank you. OLA of Eastern Long Island, a non-profit serving the full east end for 23 years. Certainly we do a lot of work in Riverhead and we love doing that work. I'm here tonight with some folks that were able to stay to the end, the bitter end, with a level of urgency. Normally you know we would talk with the board. We'd have some conversation. We'd have time. We'd try to get an agenda. We would do all that kind of thing. We have urgency behind us right now. So we are looking to have you sort of fully introduce. So we are looking to have you sort of fully introduce. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. that have their own police departments. And this is a public safety and accountability local law. We are putting that forward for very real concern across our East End in general because of the change of patterns and activity that ICE has been using to do random raids. So this is not an anti-ICE resolution or local law. This is not a doctrine that's anti-ICE. The work we do certainly, we're impacted by a lot of work that's happening with immigration. But what we're seeing right now in the East End of Long Island is the relative peace and calm and safety that people have come to truly enjoy in the East End of Long Island, including the town of Riverhead, is disrupted at a very different level when ICE comes to town with little regard for public safety of kind of any kind. So if you or your grandma or friend is going to get a cup of coffee at a local place, there could be some of this running someone down or cars driving erratically, all kinds of stuff that we've already seen happen in Hampton Bays today. There was a raid here, of course. It wasn't as erratic as some other raids have been, but it does, there's no faith in the fact that there's going to be order and calm and safety in the actions of ICE at this point. So we can't rely on that. We can't ask you to curtail the actions of ICE because, of course, that is not your purview. But what we can do, which is what this law, this law is about, is sort of reinvigorating and reconnecting the fabric of our community, many of the non-Latinos, non-recent immigrants here and across your town, reconnect everyone to what can we do as towns and villages? How can we approach and respond to public safety concerns? What can we do within the law that exists? So this local law was written not by me. It was written by Fred Thiel, who is a member of our board at OLA. He is a person who has 30 plus years experience with local law on the town and villages.
He was a member of the town and village side as our assemblyman for our district for 30 plus years. And I think he was also a town supervisor, maybe a lawyer for one of the towns or villages. A lot of good experience and a lot of time went into this. So it's been a long night. I'm going to ask you to consider it. Fred Thiel, Thank you so much. Natalie Alinsky, Thank you. Greetings. My name is Natalie Marie Alinsky. I live at 30 Blueberry Commons in Riverhead, New York. First thing I'd like to say is, thank you for listening to us tonight. Second thing I'd like to say is, I do not like the fact that in my backyard, ICE is being staged at the local police department. As a matter of fact, I don't want it anywhere in the town of Riverhead. I ask the board to resist. Please resist this happening in our township. Second thing I'd like to say is that the local police department, across the, across our east end, are the entities that are responsible for the safety and emergency concerns. That being said, if the police department is helping ICE in any respect, that takes away from my safety, your safety, everybody's safety. Please, I ask you to resist using our police force in this manner. The second thing, the third thing I'd like to say, and this is not an apple for our supervisor, okay? It is the beginning of Lent, okay? I refer to Leviticus 20, 26, which commands the Israelites to be holy. What I ask you, the board, is for the town of Riverhead to be set apart and be holy, that we love one another, our neighbors. This is what we're commanded to do. This is what Christ has commanded us to do. This is what Christ has commanded us to do. Our Lord and Savior. Thank you. Hello. My name is Aiden Doyle. I grew up in Sag Harbor. And like many people in Suffolk County, I'm an immigrant. I'm here to advocate for the passing of the East End Public Safety and Accountability Resolution as a means of protecting residents of Long Island, citizen or not, from the unlawful activities of ICE and those legally posing as them. This resolution would not interfere with the constitutional duties of law enforcement, but would hold accountable those who act outside of the law and encourage community policing between local law enforcement and residents. It may not be the be-all and end-all of resisting the fascism of our current federal government, but it is a step in the right direction. Speaking for myself, as an aside from what the proposed resolution states, I would encourage the board to introduce legal means of preventing ICE from using local resources for the purposes of unconstitutional or extrajudicial acts or behavior. And I will do this in accordance with the law. Thank you. Thank you. Second, I'll welcome the above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above above authoritarianism at the risk of personal harm. It is your duty as the board to exercise your power by enacting legislation that will protect the people you have sworn to serve by passing the East End public safety and accountability resolution. I trust that history shall look fondly upon you and the rest of us. Thank you.
Hello. My name is Andrea coat. I'm a local teacher and artist. Pull the mic down a little bit too. Okay. Thank you. That makes it easier. Thank you. So my name is Andrea coat. I'm a local teacher and artist. I've known and worked with Olaf for over 10 years and I've seen their incredible care and the impact that they have on our communities. I've admired the strong and mutually respectful relationships they've built with our law enforcement. The emphasis is always one of mutual respect. The resolution that this resolution builds on the trust between our community and our community. And our police force, which has been trained and in whom we put the lives of our children and neighbors under their protection. Uh, we are terrified right now for our neighbors, for our friends, for our children and our schools, there is much fear and anxiety about the violence of ISIS activities, masked heavily armed agents appearing and wreaking, wreaking ha chaos in Minneapolis, Portland and New York city. And they have come to severe to Suffolk and they have come to Riverhead and addressing. This resolution. Um, as I said, we understand that, you know, we're, we're trying to get it, get this in advance, um, to have a plan. Um, we've seen the dangers to civilian lives throughout the country. We don't want to wait and see what and when chaos could unfold here. We need to address it. Now the need is urgent. We are asking for transparency and communication with the public. We, as members of this community need to be included. The emphasis is on collaboration between our. Police. Between you and with the community, something we value and take pride of in our towns. Um, trust and public safety are our priorities. We urge you to act quickly with foresight to consider and pass this resolution, which will protect our communities. Thank you, ma'am. I just like to ask what town of Hamlet are you from? You didn't. Oh yes. Um, I currently live in Hampton bays. I've lived in, um, Flanders and Riverhead in the past. Thank you. Thanks. Very involved with this community. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Sarah Reynolds. I live here in Riverhead, Hamlet. Um, and I'm here to support the east and public safety Ola's east and public safety and accountability resolution. Um, I want to reiterate some of what's already been said, but, um, we do rely on local police, uh, protection and response during, um, all threats to public safety, however, due to the nature of these raids and the unprecedented actions, as Minerva said, um, it's not correct for our own local. police agencies to shoulder the burden of navigating these heightened public safety needs without guidance by towns and villages in the form of local law. And you may ask why it's necessary to create a local law. A resolution that becomes a local law will connect accountability to action while defining roles and emergency plans for each town and village. I just want to add that my grandmother was an undocumented immigrant. She was French Canadian, was carried over the border as an infant by her parents who were seeking jobs in the textile mills of Rhode Island. And I don't think things are any different today. People go where there is opportunity. And businesses like the mill owners who hired my great grandparents, they need and want immigrants to fill jobs. My grandmother was without legal status for almost her whole life. And she married my grandfather, a US citizen, a farmer. She had three kids, all US citizens, including my father. And it's the same as many blended families in our communities today. So thank you. I just want to add that. And thank you for your time. Hello. My name is David. I'm a resident at 325 Fisher Avenue in Riverhead. And I'm here to support that resolution for the immigrant families. Our community is being affected and concerned by what is going on right now in the community of hardworking residents with no criminal records. They're being persecuted by federal agents only because they're Hispanic profile. Businesses are being affected. Children are being affected. I know a first grader that he didn't want to go to school because of the cows and all the persecution that is going on. Scared, afraid of what is happening in the community right now. I've been a Riverhead resident for more than 25 years. We are very diverse. We are very diverse. We are a very diversified community. Hispanic community came to the town because the support the town has provided and inclusiveness. But most importantly, we are here to work and in some way contribute to the economy, the growth economy of the town. We cannot ignore the growth of the great Latino community and the contribution we represent to the town. We love our town. And we need a clear and express support and protection from the authorities and you, the board that will represent us. We are doing this right now because we want to have that unity in our community. In the near future, Algina will be the big majority responsible for who is in the board taking the decisions for us. all because we are a community that we cannot ignore and that we must include, protect, and support for an unfair persecution going on right now. Thank you. Rosario Rodriguez, I know you. Rosario Rodriguez, Hello. Good evening. My name is Rosario Rodriguez and I am a constituent of Riverhead. OLA of Eastern Long Island has proposed a resolution for the public safety and I respectfully urge you all to support it. Right now many families in the East End are living in fear as you continue to hear. They are farm workers, small business owners, parents of children in our school district on the whole East End, and workers who help sustain the economy that makes these towns thrive. Today, immigration officers were seen at the county court parking lot detaining someone. Community members who were peacefully observing and filming these agents, one agent in specific had pepper spray ready to be used. There is video and photo evidence of such. That raises serious concerns. When fear spreads through the entire segment of the community, public safety suffers because trust breaks down. I want to be clear that I appreciate our local law enforcement and the difficult work that they have to do. I have family and friends, specifically close family, who serve our country. Supporting this resolution does not oppose law enforcement. It supports safer coordination, clearer standards, and public awareness so residents know their rights and local officials understand when outside agencies are operating here. Unlike other kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids and no criminal record. He was gone for months. Experiences like that ripple through families and workplaces and creating lasting fear. This resolution is about transparency and trust. It ensures that federal agents are present. There are clear procedures and accountability that strengthens public safety for everyone in Riverhead. I would also like to respectfully ask for all of you on this council, especially the support of Councilman Ken Rothwell, who serves as the town liaison of the Hispanic Development Empowerment and Education Committee. To clarify, I'm not speaking on behalf of the committee. I have attended one meeting and hope to continue attending as I resonate with their goals, strive to ensure the Hispanic voices are heard and valued in the decision-making process, promote equitable access to resources, and create pathways for leadership and development. Leadership matters in moments like these. Supporting these resolutions affirms that Riverhead's values, safety, dignity, and fairness for all who call it home. This is our home. Now, I know I have 54 seconds, but I'm also going to translate it in Spanish, if that's all right with you, because there's no one here that can translate, unless someone here would like to do that. Thank you for your time. OK.
Mario, why don't you take a moment and come back through the line again, OK? I got it. Don't worry. OK.
Rosario, I'm going to have to stop. Just because you're over here. Thanks. Have a good night and happy Lent and Ramadan.
Thank you.
We're all a tough act to follow, huh? My name's Andrew Anselmo. I'm at 31605 County Road 48 in Peconic. This resolution seeks to acknowledge, through a local law, the power to protect local communities from ruptures in the public safety caused by random, warrantless ICE raids that cause fear, panic, chaos, and injury. And for everyone. Just tuning in, if you're at home, for the past three hours, we've been hearing the members up here. And everything that we've been speaking about has alluded to the highest codes and standards, protocols for emergencies, responses, quality of life, response time. People being abducted deserve the same considerations. Please consider, like South Hole Town is, and many other towns around here, a plan to respond to this new reality. You know. One of the last things that we all applauded for was if we could help one single person, one single individual, it's what we should do. They don't necessarily have to be on the job. I mean, everybody is a human. Thank you.
Good evening. I didn't come really with anything in hand, but. Could you just get as close to the mic? We want to hear you. So thank you. And your name and town? Your name and town. My name is Gilda Rojas Munguia, and I live at 160 Riverside Avenue. Right now what I'm taking out is my passport and my social security. You don't have to do that here. OK. Well, I wanted to show you this because back in the 1930s, that's what people had to do. Or they had the Star of David, right? And unfortunately, I've had to take precautions with my own children. I've had to take a lot of precautions with my own children to try to get them IDs at such a young age. They're real IDs. So I do think that this resolution would definitely help, especially with transparency, and it would give peace of mind, especially me as a mother and who has children going to the Riverhead School District. It would give me peace of mind. It would give everyone peace of mind if we had more transparency. And if, sorry, I have. OK. So the clause related to the false imprisonment of law enforcement is important to highlight. They need for any masked or unidentified person acting as an agent of law to be identified by local police. So that means basically if a random person comes up to me while I'm walking and they have a mask and they say, I'm ICE, or to my children who are young, I'm ICE. And of course, they're young. They're going to believe someone with a mask and all these gears. What am I supposed to do if something like that were ever to happen to one of my children? So I really do hope that you take into consideration, and please listen to us. Thank you. Thank you for coming.
Supervisor Halpin and members of the board, my name is Eva Roberts. I'm a Riverhead resident, taxpayer, homeowner. And I support the proposed amendments to Riverhead's town code, especially to help our town, to help our police departments, to prepare for, as it says in the proposal, the dangerous and chaotic ICE actions that are already taking place. There is no question that ICE is engaged at times in lawless and criminal activities and is using terror, not the rule of law. We need to step up action so our community can demonstrate unity and respect for the safety of our residents, no matter the color of the skin or the language someone speaks. We need a push for basic human dignity and decency. And I want to say, we were talking about the police earlier in this meeting. And I want to say, when that was, and police unfortunately dying in the line of duty, and it reminded me of what happened on January 1st. I think it was January 1st, January 6th, where Capitol Police officers lost their lives in the line of service. And I think it's also a relevant point when we're thinking about trying to enforce safety here in Riverhead, to remember that many of the people involved at January 6th that were responsible for the deaths of these officers were pardoned. So and I do want to thank the police officers for all the times that I've had to call them. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Carrie Flanagan. I live and work in Riverhead. I support this resolution introduced by OLA tonight. Like Carrie. Could you just put the mic away? I'm a little closer. Like many others in our local community, I've seen and heard about the brutality of ICE agents against our community members and in other communities on the East End. We see our immigrant neighbors terrorized, chased, abused, and disappeared. We see our students terrified for their parents. We can't allow one group of people in our community to be terrorized this way. We didn't see this happen when our town had a huge influx of other immigrants. They were immigrants years ago. The Polish. This town loved and embraced our Polish neighbors and continues to do so. Was anyone checking the immigration status of the Polish back of the day? Were the Polish being chased and abducted off the streets of Riverhead simply for being Polish? We have to do better as a community and the leaders of our town have to do more to keep our residents safe. All residents. Regardless of immigration status or the language they speak. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. when ice is here through various sources and we respond peacefully safely and most importantly at a safe distance without interfering or impeding ice agents we document with photos or videos who is taken where they are taking from how many agents were present who took them what identifying labels were worn by the abductors were they ice homeland security cbp etc most of the agents have no clear indication of who they are or who they work for how do we know they are even agents we photograph their license plates and note what vehicles left behind by those abducted and who might have their keys so we can get them to a family member when i'm alerted that ice is here if i'm able to i go out to document what i see i've done this early in the morning before i go to work on my lunch break or any time i am able to do so i'm a middle-aged white woman with a daytime job who never thought i'd be doing this i don't speak spanish but i have warned spanish spanish-speaking neighbors that ice is here as best i can not because i'm protecting criminals because i know i know ice is not looking for criminals they are looking for non-white people they are looking for our hard-working brown and black neighbors families are unaware that just because of the time allotment that we have i am going to stop you at the three minutes thank you no she can't actually it's not how our rules work thank you thanks to be a good neighbor thank you hi allison matway waiting river i've lived in riverhead town for almost 25 years now both my children graduated from the university of ferguson river kids from ferguson river kids from ferguson river kids from ferguson river from Riverhead School District. Some of you may have gone, kids may have gone to school with my kids. I have prepared speech, but seeing the high school students walk out of their high school and show more courage than most adults have shown during this fiasco that we're living through right now made me so proud. I feel like I'm their mom because I know so many of them from my children, and I think they're terrified. My children who are no longer in the schools are afraid. There are children in our neighborhoods that are afraid that are or are not from the community. And I think that we need to support this resolution. And the reason I support it is partially to protect obviously our community, but it also keeps our police officers safe. And you all talked about, you know, police officers dying in the line of duty, and we don't wanna see that. And there are circumstances where if the officers don't know what's happening, it becomes chaotic. We've all seen the footage from Minneapolis, right? It becomes chaotic and it puts the police officers in an untenable situation where they're being tear gassed because there's stuff happening and ICE is, you know, randomly harming people or pulling people off the streets. So I really support this resolution from OLA, and I hope that you guys strongly consider it. It is designed to change the unaccountable and lack of transparent operations that are happening by ICE, and to hopefully keep our police officers safe, our community members safe. I actually had a friend who lives in Patchogue get arrested by ICE. She's an American citizen. She was filming and they arrested her, and the Suffolk County PD was called. And thankfully they knew her from other situations that she was very involved with the police, and they took her into their custody and released her. Otherwise we don't know where she would have ended up. So I think for the sake of safety of our community and for everyone in the community, and the police, I think we need to do something. I think we need to do something. I think we need to do something. I think we need to do something. I think we need to do something. I think we need to do something. adopt this resolution. Thank you. Hello, I think I'm batting clean up here. My name is Anita Boyer. I live in Hampton Bays, but I work all across the east end of Long Island, including Riverhead, and I'm very active in coordinating vigils and protests in all of the towns and villages on the east end. And you've heard a lot of the talking points about what we're actually asking for, what's actually in the resolution. So I just want to talk about what I saw this morning. I was one of the responders on site at the county center in front of the family courthouse where the man was detained. And I don't know how y'all vote, but however you vote, I do not think you want me to vote. I don't think you want me to be the one protecting anyone. I'm a dance teacher. That's what I do. I should not be the one that's being asked by the police officers on site because I was being asked by the court officers on site, who is that? What's going on? Who is this? And I'm like, why are you asking me? I feel like that's what this resolution aims to fix or to assist, is to make sure that the people who are trained to de-escalate, the people who are trained to protect everybody in the community are the ones and not the obviously raging liberal purple haired person, right? I'm not helping in that way. And I also really appreciated what you said earlier, Councilwoman Waski, when you said that you were talking about safety first and looking to the future. This is what that does. This resolution doesn't wait for a problem. It preempts the problem and it makes our community stronger. It makes the public feel safe and secured. And I don't know, I'm not a fortune teller. I can't see the future. But if we are united and if we do have a strong system in place and resolutions, maybe we become a less appetizing target. Maybe we can prevent future things, future incidents of ICE coming. And like when they came and took two men, three men, and they were like, oh, we're going to have to do this. And I'm like, man, kids like kids like kids like kids like kids like kids like kids like kids like kids like kids like kids like
I appreciate your time and I hope that you will add us to the list of your resolutions and go quick yay, yay, yay, yay like you did for everybody else. Thank you so much. Have a great night. We have a couple online and we will pull them up and while we're waiting, don't forget recreation. Check it out. A lot of great stuff going on there and our senior center and the raising of the . Any other announcements that you guys remembered while you were? No. I mean something had to happen while we were sitting here. Martin. Hello. Can you hear me now? Can. Yes, Martin. Can you hear me? Sure can. Go ahead, sir. Thank you. Martin Zanluski, 215 Ronald Cavanagh Riverhead. I'm here tonight. I was actually going to speak prior to the resolutions. But it doesn't matter. It has to do with resolution 2026193 that was approved tonight. A retainer agreement for legal services for the water district. Scope of services has in their items such as developer infrastructure, cost recovery strategy, cost allocation methodologies, general legal research on water district matters, long standing legal issues, resolution, etc. Obviously, the town board has seen reason to bring in outside counsel for matters pertaining to the water district, which is very interesting because during the past few years have been a number of a history of issues with a number of developers and the water district relative to how fees are being charged. It's really relative to the original map. Original fee structure. That was adopted. And they have changed from the fee structure that's currently in the code, which has a table 11, which are the fees. And they're charging now map and plan fees for all water applications. I submitted a correspondence to the town clerk today. One was a letter from October 12th, 2021, which we submitted that highlighted a number of things and indicates that we don't believe the current practice by the water district. I'm not sure if it's a good thing. I'm not sure if it's a good thing. But we're hoping that the current practice by the water district complies with the town's own code. We also submitted a copy of a ruling. It was actually an appeal that was put down after the Supreme Court had ruled against the township with regard to fees. And it notes in there, it says the town's authority to impose tap in fees on its water facilities is likewise limited to the cost of installation of the supply pipe. Here the town exceeded its permissible powers by exacting tap-in fees in order to offset the cost of capital improvements. That's what's been happening in the town of Riverhead with the Water District. They've been going beyond, we believe, what they're allowed to do. They've been doing this for a while. Therefore, now that you as the client and the town board have hired this attorney, I think it would be very wise to request as their client, their first task to be to review the town code, the fees, and what they've been doing, and give you as a client an official attorney opinion letter as to the legality of what they've been doing. And we'd also like to know how we can keep in touch with these matters as members of the public. Thank you. Thanks, Martin. One more? One more. Thank you, Martin. We appreciate your comments and your concern.
Looking at that little person on the screen. Next one.
Don't forget, folks, after this, we have one more meeting. We have a CDA meeting. We hope you all will stick around. And at midnight. It's going to be a movie. Do we have verbal? Only if you have popcorn. Hi. Go ahead. Okay. Sorry. Hi. It's John McAuliffe from Rollingwood, Roanoke Landing. I'm using a pad because we're out of town. So I don't know. Can you hear me okay? We can hear you fine. Yes, sir. All right. All right. Well, forget this. I'm just seeing for the moment that first I owe to Ms. Waskey something I had promised to do at the last board meeting. But I was we're in Virginia for our son's House of Delegates inauguration. And that was to congratulate her for the dance, the red, white and blue dance, which was a truly enjoyable event for both Mary and I, as well as other people. And I. Unlike me, she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's she's around the country, in a coat and tie now, emphasized that when they were forced out of Minneapolis, they had not abandoned their agenda for mass deportation. And mass deportation means a lot of people are getting grabbed who do not have the promised criminal histories. Except for the question of their being undocumented. But that was not what we thought we were getting. And I think we have to be ready in Riverhead for attacks that will affect, you know, we have two-thirds of our high school students are Hispanic, and we don't know all of their family status. But I think we have to be prepared. They have all of this budget to spend now. They're creating what are, in effect, consequences. They're creating consequences for the concentration camps, detention centers around the country that all have a terrible history. And I think this legislation is complicated. It's an effort to basically engage the police forces of the towns on the East End in a positive way, not taking a position on ICE per se, but taking a position on good, and I think that's a very important part of the legal process. So I hope that you will do what South Hold has done, create some kind of a stakeholder task force, and seriously look at... Thank you, Mr. McCullough. Because of our length tonight, we appreciate your comments. Okay. But we are going to stop you. Let me just end with one thing. No, sir. That's the end of our comment section for tonight for that. Happy to. Is there anybody else online? Okay. Anybody else in the room? Did you want to... I just want to clarify that I did not ask Mr. McCullough to thank me for the event. Yes, you did. At the end of the America 250 Ball, he was telling me what a great event it was. And I said, you know what, John? Why don't you come up to the podium and tell everybody how wonderful it was? And he did just that. And thank you so much to everybody that participated. We all worked very hard together. And I'm so glad that Mr. McCullough was there and that he approved. I think that's a great way to end our meeting tonight and our open comments. We want to thank everyone for coming out. Wow, look at that. Round of applause. Thank you, Vichu. But we are, if you could, if you're planning on leaving this part of our meeting, we'd ask you to do it quietly. We are going to ask for a first and second... Supervisor. No, no. I have something totally different. Oh, okay. Less than during... Okay. Okey-dokey. Sorry. Is that Oregon? Yes. Okay. I'm from Oregon. My name is Natalie Maria Linsky. Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please be respectful. I'm formally a Bayer Estate resident and now live at 30 Blueberry Commons. Ten years ago, I was very, very blessed to work with Laura Jen Smith on a revitalization of Bayer Estates. Okay. Something which I believe Mr. Rothwell is working on now. I think she's running a kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids into that plan. And if you could reach out to me, I would appreciate it. You need to send me an email for contact, okay? Yes, I will. Thank you very much. Is she talking about two bears? Two bears. So, again, ladies and gentlemen, if you're in our room, we just ask, as we have our meeting that you're disrespectful to that, I'd ask for a first and second to close this meeting and move into our CDA meeting. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. No, let's stay here for a while. Bob opposed. So moved. Our CDA meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, again, we just ask that take your conversation out as quickly and quietly as possible. Again, as quickly and quietly as possible. CDA was mine. Thank you for being as quickly and quietly as possible. Go ahead, Dawn. I had some stragglers back there, Supervisor. Do you have a motion and a second to close and open? We did. We did. You voted. Yes, it was unanimous. I'm sorry. That's okay. It was quite noisy. So this is our CDA meeting. We have no resolutions on the agenda. So the first order of business would be to take open comments from the public on CDA matters. Okay, I have lots to say. Bring them all back in. Any open comments online from our CDA director? Let's read the minutes. I don't see any, and so there are no open comments online, so we're in the room. Okay, and so that would just be an adjournment, so a motion and a second to close the CDA meeting. So moved. Second. Okay. Waskey. Yes. Merrifield. Yes. Hearn. Yes. Rothwell. Yes. Halpin. Yes, ma'am. CDA meeting is closed. That concludes our business for this evening. Thank you so much. No, don't do that. I almost think I should do this. I love all of you. Good night.