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HomeMy WebLinkAboutDGEIS SCIS PH 6/23/03 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 TOWN OF SOUTHOLD TOWN BOARD COUNTY OF SUFFOLK : STATE OF NEW YORK TOWN 0 F S OUT HO L D PUBLIC HEARING Board Members PresenE JOSHUA Y. THOMAS H. WICKHAM, JOHN M. ROMANELLI, In ~he Matter of, THE DRAFT GENERIC ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT of SOUTNOLD COMPREHENSIVE IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY Southold Town }{ali 53095 Main Road Southold, New York June 23, 2003 4:30 p.m. HORTON, Supervisor Councilman Councilman LOUISA EVANS, Councilwoman WILLIAM D. MOORE, CRAIG A. RICHTER, GREGORY F. YAKABOSKI, ELIZABETH A. NEVILLE, Councilman Councilman Town Attorney Town Clerk COURT REPORTING ~/qD TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878 8047 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2 SUPERVISOR HORTON: Good afternoon and welcome to the continuation of a Public Hearing for the Souuhold Town Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. This is the June 23rd continuation of the Public Hearing that opened on June 29th -- excuse me, June 19th, here at Town Hall. Starting this meeting would you please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. /Whereupon, all rose for the Pledge of Allegiance.) SUPERVISOR HORTON: Again, welcome and thank you all for attending. I am going to t~rn this meeting over for abouu three to five minutes to the gentleman you see sitting down here to my right, Patrick Cleary, who is one of the consultants who has been working on the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for the Town. To give a brief overview, as best he can, in layman's terms as to what a DGEIS is, and then I will turn the floor over the public to make comments on this document specifically. So, that in mind, Mr. C[eary, please. MR. CLEARY: Thank you, Mr. Supervisor. For those of you who were not with us Thursday evening, the purpose of tonight's meeting is ~o provide public comment on the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. That document, which hopefully most of you have had an opportunity to review, is an evaluation of an action. An action in this case that is comprised of 43 separate planning tools. And in the Generic Environmental Impact Statement, those tools are evaluated to determine if, in fact, there are adverse environmental impacts associated with those tools. Another very importann element of the impact statement is it evaluates alternatives to those tools. So we have at the end of that document a series of tools that have been explored, the impacts associated with those tools evaluated and alternatives to those tools also discussed and evaluated. COURT REPORTING ~iqD TP,~iqSCRIPTION SERVICE i631) 878-8047 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 Now the format of the meeting this evening is for us to hear comment on the draft - DGEIS. I~ is not a give and take. We don't answer your questions tonight. The format is, you'll deliver all your comments, they're being recorded and every comment will be responded to in a document called the Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement. And in that document every one of the comments that have been delivered since Thursday, tonight and tomorrow, as well as all comments that nave been delivered in writing will be responded ~o in great detail. And that's the format of this exercise. Once the FEIS is prepared and accepted by the Town Board. The Town ]~oard ac~ing as the lead agency will adopt what are called findings. And those findings are essentially their record of a decision with respect to those 43 tools. And that's basically the process we have before us this evening. Mr. Supervisor, I hand it back to you. Cleary. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mr. Before getUing starEed, a letter was given to me today by Mr. John C. Turtle, of Mattituck and he specifically asked that I read this into the record. Normally, if a letter comes in I give it to uhe Town Clerk, but this was a specific request from Mir. John C. Turtle of Mattituck, so I'm going to read iu aloud into the record. "To Josh Horton et al: "To the west of us is the Pine Barrens preserve; in Southold Town Cutchogue preserve dedicated to tribal history and nature suudy. So why not have an agriculuural preserve where the good soils of Southold Town are reserved for ag use and dedicaued to nhe memory of the kind of farming which gave us the rural scenes which we enjoy, a fitting memorial would be a wooded area depicting how the country looked before the land was cleared for farming. Such a memorial may be funded by donations. "Many farmers have made long term COURT REPORTING AND TRtkNSCRIPTION SERVICE 1631/ 878-8047 1 2 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 4 commitments to farming by forming agricultural districts and by participating in the sale of development rights. Otherwise, in takes a billionaire to farm on billionaire land. This is one idea of preserving open space, chon I have recourse of selling my estate to ~he highest bidder and taking the cash. "Yours truly, John C. Turtle, Octogenarian." So this is going to be submitted to the public record. At this point I will turn the floor over to the members of the public. In addressing the Town Board on this specific document, I ask that you co use the microphone located ac the right side of the front of the room. Speak clearly into the microphone stating your name and place of residence, your name and hamlet would be best. As well, so we can keep accurate records, if you could just write your name out and the hamlet in which you live on that sheet on that podium. So I will open the floor to t~e public. Mrs. Egan. MS. EGAN: Good afternoon, everybody, Mr. Horton, Mr. Wickham, Mr. Romanelli, Mr. Moore, Mr. Wickham, and Mr. Yakaboski. My name is Joan Egan, .and I reside in the Hamlet of East Marion. I am not going to make an .awful lot of comments now except to as against what was said at Thursday night's meeting, ,Ne again have two Council people missing, and I think that's a disgrace. Oh, 5here he is. Do you need anything to hold your head up? I'll be back. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mrs. Egan. Mr. Gergela? MR. GERGELA: Good evening, good afternoon, whatever it is. Mi' name is Joe Gergela. I'm Executive Director of Long Island Farm Bureau, and I work in our office in Calverton. Before I get into some commenns which are specific no this document I felt that I needed to address the Board. The other night was very late when I got to speak, and I ,3URT REPORTING kND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 5 think that some of my comments were taken -- mistaken in its context. So I want to clarify some things. But before I do that I would first like the Board to allow me to speak and let me finish, and I will be happy to reply to comments questions or whatever the Board members feel necessary 5o respond back to me. But I would at least like Eo have my chance to say everything in its entirety and then respond. Last Thursd~y evening as I testified before there Board, I was interrupted and accused of lying. In my 15 years as a registered lobbyist and spokesperson for Long Island's agricultural industry I've only been attacked twice. The other time -- and I wanted you to know about 5his because iE did happen, and I just saw Tim Kelley earlier, I don't know if he's in this room, and Tim wrote the story about it. And it was in the context of the Community Preservation Fund legislation, and Fred Theile was very upset. What had transpired was that we i~ad worked, the Group for the South Fork, a number of state groups and the Communi%y Preservation Fund legislation was about to go before the legislature. We had worked to come up with some exemptions for the farm community on farmer-to-farmer sales. Be that as it may, it was the same time - like this time of year. It was the end of legislative session, ~nd I get a call from the Senate and the assembly about the bill. And at 5hat ~ime I said that we could not endorse the bill[ unless 5he language was in the bill that took care of my farmer to farmer exemptions. Anyhow, the bill passed without 5he farmer to farmer exceptions. The Farm Bureau, and myself personally, I wrote a letter to the Governor and asked the Governor to veto the bill. Guess what? The Governor vetoed the bill. In response 5o that -- and I Know that Fred was upset about iE because a lot of work went into ~he bill -- he said some comments to the paper that was less than flattering to me and the farm community. In facE, and you can find the article, it's in COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 6 public record, he said that the Farm bureau was a bunch of knuckle-scraping neanderthals, and Joe Gergela was not only a liar, but a Goddamned liar because I said that it was not an emergency for the governor to sign that bill at that time unless the bill was corrected. The following year, myself and our counsel met with Fred and all the people. We fixed the bill, went back to the assembly in the Senate, the bill passed. And what happened was at the last day of the session, the last date again the bill was stuck in the assembly, at that time I happened to be in Albany working this bill for eastern Long Island. I called counsel to the Far~n Bureau, Tom Twomey; Tom called his wife, a lady named Judith Hope, many of you maybe know nor personally or heard about her, but at ~zhat time she was the State Democratic Leader. The bill was stuck in assembly, and no matter what Assemblyman Theile did or any other legislator that bill was not moving. Tom and Judith and I went to the speaker by telephone conference call and moved the bill. At the en~ of the day, the Governor signed the bill, it became law and Fred and I still work together even though he was very upset with me at that time. To this day he's never formally apologized to me, but I forgave him an~ rose above it, and we passed. MS. ACKERMAN (Audience member~ : Excuse me, can I question the relevance of this commentary? SUPERVISOR HORTON: No. MR. GERGELA: I need to correct my statements, that's why I'm doing it. Thursday night I commented that there were 1,500 acres before the Town and County Farmland Preservation Committee, respectfully, each one individually. I furthered that landowners voluntarily came forward to get on the list, both wit~ the Town and with the County. Some were on both; some were separate. In speaking to John Romanelli this morning, and we talked privately, he suggested tha5 I also spoke in the context of the Town Board not acting on what had come COURT REPORTING Ai{D TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 87~ 80%7 1 2 3 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 before them, and ~hat is what he took exception to in my comments the other night. So I wanted to straighten that out. So that's fine and tonight I will clarify that. Okay. The other nigh~ I said that I had data to indicate the acreage and the parcel numbers and everything regarding the County and the Town's PDR programs. I got Riverhead and Southold, East Hampton, even Brookhaven; it's all compiled in a database program that we have put together at Long Island Farm Bureau. Believe it or not, Suffolk County does not have all this data on their own database, but since I put this together, and I actually went to the organization of the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association and presented this data to them, basically to get more momentum from the Town working with the County working with the State working with the Feds, to make people understand that there is a lot of acreage opportunity now for voluntary preservation. So I would like to present this to the Board. This is done in-house by Farm Bureau and the numbers came from Suffolk County Planning Department, from the Peconic Land Trust and also from the towns that worked with us on i~. And then I'll qualify what this ~eans. Who should I give this to? I've got one for everybody. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Whoever's closest. MR. GERGELA: Well, ~ny dismay was tha~ there is not a central data gauhering government body, which I think there should be and hopefully uhe Suffolk County Planning Department has heard what we said, and~ in fact, they did respond to me. As far as the acreages here, we believe that when a landowner voluntarily comes forward and is placed upon the uown or the County's list, then in is considered to be in the preservation pipeline. There are additional parcels that have come forward in Southold Town that are not yet on the list. And I talked to Tim this morning, there are a number of parcels that have yet to be COURT REPORTING A/ND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ~631) 878-8047 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 registered on my database which will be added when we get to it. Now, this is why I need to qualify the statement, is that all these parcels in the 2,000 acres in Southold, they're all in various stages right now. Some have been appraised, some have been appraised and are in active negotiation with the County and/or Town; some have signed contracts; some are in the conservation opportunities subdivision process; and finally some may have even closed already and it hasn't come out publicly that it's been closed upon. But there are 'nany still sitting on the list. In response to this data, as I mentioned, the County did give us a written letter with the status of all the parcels. It may be useful at some point in time to take a look at this and I know that everybody's got a full work plate right now, but it would be good to kind of see what that status of all this is. MS. ACKERMAN: Why? HR. GERGELA: What I want to submit to you and the Board in the connext of what's been acted upon, which was what I said the other night, yes, you may have acted upon some of these parcels that came forward to you at the Board. But what I submit to },ou is that each of the Town Board members could do more. Could do more. And both, in the sense that whatever programs or something ii]ce this is under your purview I believe that you have the ability and the responsibility to ~nonitor what's going on with those programs. It is my understanding -- and this is where you can say no me later that I'm wrong and I'll be happy to listen -- ~here are a number of farmland conservation subdivisions coupled with purchase of development rights before the Planning Board, Planning Department and a Legal Department, I hear that they are stuck in the process. In the context of what I'm talking about, my question is: Why isn't The Board acting in getting these human resources in place to get the job done? If, in fact, that we have so much stuff backed up in the Town that the voluntary programs are COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631} 878-8047 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 not working. Is the perception true that some people believe that the Town Board and members aren't supportive on the voluntary programs to prove a need in the changing of the zoning? It's just a question. If not, then what needs to be done to get these lands preserveJ? The landowners are doing their job. They have come forward and want to get their land preserved. Over the last number of years, both the County's and Town's programs have had little progress. Now that the real estate market and the appraisals have rome up to a reasonable level, landowners in general have come forward to say that they are now interested in the program. North Fork Environmental Counsel and some individual Board members have said that there is not enough money to buy it all and zoning is the only alternative to slow development. Wrong. It is only a quick fix. It does not truly preserve the land. Purchase of development rights, transfer of development rights and other programs such as conservation subdivisions will. It takes time and money. Josh, Bobby Koz, Skip Heaney and the other supervisors have worked together with me and the farm community at all levels of government trying to seek additional funding if that is what is necessary. Right now both the Town and County have considerable money, but what good is the money if the process isn't working? If there are problems with the way the Town program is working, leE's figure a way ou5 how to spring these things forward and get them done. You got landowners and there's a lady here that I talked to earlier has a project before the Town, and I don't know if she's going to speak or not, that's up to her. But my understanding there's at least six projects like that. And that was the context of what I meant the other night. Okay, if the system isn't working then let's try to fix i~, but there's opportunity to do voluntary preservation. And again I reiterate, J_f you haven't tried to make all the other programs work first, I think that it's a railroad job COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878 8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 10 to go forward with discussing punitive and restrictive zoning. What I would also suggest is tha5 if there is a way to discuss these matters further outside, the farmers and the Farm Bureau and all the other groups I think are willing ~o try to come up with a program tha~ really does real farmland preservation in the Town of Southold. And I thank you for the opportunity to speak again. I hope I was more clear tonight as to what the intent was of my comments. Ail I think is that more can be done making the existing programs work better. There's a lot of opportunity. I was criticized once before 5hat it's no5 true that uhe farmers are coming forward. And they are coming forward, there's the data. So 5hank you very much, and I'd be happy to respond and answer questions. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mr. Gergela. O5her members of the publie wishing to the address the Town Board. Mrs. McGreevey. MRS. McGREEVEY: Hi, I'm ]Doris McGreevey from Mattituck. And I have not had an opportunity to read the generic study, but in looking at it, it looks like quite a challenge and this is what I'm suggesting. First of all, I don't know whether we have the expertise as a general public, many of us, to wade through it or the time and so forth. But, I what I would hope is that perhaps we could have a synopsis of some sort for the general public. And judging from the people I spoke to, they haven't had the opportunity going on with their lives and everything as everyone else, and all I've seen equaling that size is Harry Potter lauely. But I think we out did them. But I would hope 5hat whatever is capsulized for the general public could be given out or printed and maybe in the locals in little excerpts so forth so we can all digest in, and come back again, if you could extend these hearings on this, feedback hearings, and I think you'll get a parN of the CC, URT REPORTING AJqD TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878-8047 1 2 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 11 community that, you know, are not the lawyers, are not the lobbyists, that do not have a specific agenda, other than they want zo do the right thing. And I think they'll feel more included in this process. So, thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mrs. McGreevey. Mr. Huntington. MR. HUNTINGTON: Ray Huntington from Cutchogue. Earlier I talked about the importance of the Town Board resolving zo establish an action plan in parallel with the Generic Environmental Impact Statement and that is most important, I do have some other comments to make though. Incidentally, I still continue to offer my reduction of the five inches to a half an inch. In was done off the internet, and that's great that it was there too for our use. But testimony at this Hearing seems to show some gaps in understanding of what should be addressed. We need to define some terms so that we can understand one another. We need to define particularly "preservation." To me it means land on which the Town or other qualified government or trust owns the development rights or title. It can mean a lot of things to a lot of people though. So it's important that we are speaking the same language. We need to put more of a sense of timing into the picture. How fast shall we accomplish this thing that we will define as preservation? Many have said that the voluntary Town progra,~ is working very well, and yielding preservation equivalenn to a ten acre zoning policy. Well the land preservation is working well. I would agree with that. But it really is non working well enough for us ~o achieve our goals. Ask yourself which will be the hardest part of preservanion. The first or the last? We've all been on this Earth long enough to know that it's the last ten percent that's the toughest. No question that COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE /631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 12 experience says that the going gets tougher as you get closer to the end point of the job. So while we're doing ten acres -- the equivalent of ten acre zoning now, that is really as the property is either developed or even preserved, it's going to get tougher and tougher. That means that we need to front load as part of the plan. Do it while we can do it. We can only win the ball game while the clock is running. We can't do it at 3:00 in the morning after the game's over. We see by the Draft that we have an opportunity to affect the use on about 8,000 acres out of a Township whole of 34,000 acres. It does not take fancy arithmetic to see that it would take 40 years to preserve uhat land at a preservation rate of 200 acres a year. A rate that we are currently not achieving. Or, if we said the efforts of others like the County, the Land Trust, et cetera, will leave the Town say only 4,000 acres to preserve, we're still talking about a 20 year effort, will the problem keep that long? Can we wait that long? I think not. We must move more rapidly than that. Those who counsel that the existing program is adequate, I fear seek only to delay a remedy. Another recurring ~nyth seems Go be that upzoning will devalue properties. The DGEIS should directly examine this idea and seek proof of its validity. The DGEIS covers this topic, true; but it doesn't really drive for proof or even a model that can examine what will really happen to property values. Too many good people seem to believe in the idea that property values are going to go down significantly, change lifestyles. Since devalued property surely has a negative effect on the environment, it is appropriately addressed in the GEIS. I suggest a model uhat deals with the valuation of property given the action plan. Professional advise from appraisers is that is there may be a shorn term loss in equity that will soon be recovered in a good market, and that the COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 87~-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 13 economy -- the economy itself -- has much greater effect on land values than does transient controls such as zoning. Zoning is not one of the Ten Commandments. It's something that communities arrange to benefit their quality of life. And they seek that quality of life through Ehau rearrangement. It is a never-ending process. Surprising number of people that one meets seem to think that this is only about a zoning change. Even that it is about breaking off the Town into five acre house lots. Odd as that may sound, you do run into people who think that this is what's happening. But even with a s~perficial reading of the draft, it's hard to understand why they would think that way. So I have no recommendation to the team on that count, but perhaps the newspapers can help. While I'm addressing this about how fast we can go, it's been said in testimony to the Town that the Town is sitting on 1,500 acres that could be preserved. Boy, I wish it were so. We need that kind .of rate to get where we want to go. But we're really looking at much less the LPC has made ~ cash flow analysis that projected 250 acres a year for five years, and that may be the source of the confusion. There was just testimony on the same topic, but there does seem to be a lot of confusion here and it is something for the team to address why is there such a difference in appreciation of what we .san actually get done in terms of preservation. But, I would have to admit that it is a voluntary program, and we can go ,only as fast as that permits and partly because of the very k~nd of thing that we're doing Ehfs right at this moment. If we could settle these issues that we're talking about we could get on with the real job of preserving our lifestyle. So all I can say is all ahead full. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you Mr. Huntington. Are there o~her comments from the floor? I see in the back, yes, Mr. La Rocca. As well, there are folks I see in COURT REPORTING AigD TRA/qSCRIPTION SERVICE !.631'1 87~.-8047 1 2 3 4 5 ? 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 14 the back, if you would care to, there are more seats available in the meeting hall proper, unless you are more comfortable back there, by all means. Mr. La Rocca. MR. LA ROCCA: My name is Vincent La Rocca, and I'~n a resident in Cutchogue. Much of the comments I've heard Thursday night were centered on this relationship, this dynamic between the landowner and the government, the landowner and the government and the taxpayer; in fact, when I flip through my own notes urying to, believe it or not, cull them down, I realize that that's what most of my comments are. I think it's very important that we did not lose perspective, that this is much more interconnectedness here and to our whole community than just that relationship. This is not about, as an attorney for some of the landowners said in some of his opening remarks on Thursday, that this is not about trying to protect farm views or this is about maximizing the value for landowners. These issues touch on overdevelopment, which affects every aspect of the quality of life of the residents of this Town, from the size of our schools, to the safety of our roads, to the preservation of our bay. It affects affordable living for thousands of our residents. It affects land preservation. It has to do with taxpayer fairness and taxpayer rights, and it has to do with how do we address permanently affordable housing. So the issues are much broader and the ramificauions here are much broader than what do we do for, to or with large landowners. And I need to read something because I, unfortunately, won't make the most emotional presentation, but I do need to read something just how real this issue for taxpayers is and this comes from the Suffolk Times from January 30th that I'd like to submit, which goes as follows, and it's an excerpt from a letter to the editor. "The pressing question is can residents in particular our senior citizens afford this kin~ of tax increase along with COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE 1631) 878-8047 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 15 the high cost of such nhings such as gasoline, food, school taxes and prescription drugs." And here's the heart: "I personally know of ten families who have had to move from Southold Town because they could not afford to live here anymore once as I told the Town Board that only people who are wealthy will be able to stay because seniors, too many of them cannot afford the property taxes." Mayor of Sag Harbor, quote, People who were born here, who grew up here, who got married here and lived here their whole lives in this community, but 5hey had to sell their houses when their taxes went up. This is a crisis all the across Long Island, yes, affordable housing but for thousands and thousands of current homeowners, it's not affordable living if they can't pay their taxes. And what the report made clear, and what we've all come to agree, and what letters of 5he editor made clear, is more houses means more people in nown; it means more schuols; it means more stress on our roads; it means more police services; it means higher taxes for everyone and a degraded quality of all our lives. The issues that you should please stay focused on transcends when I an~ others are focusing on, which is just this interrelationship. It affects all of 'us in Town in very serious ways. I hope tha5 the addressing this to the moratorium work group, 'cause I have not had a chance to go through your weighny and very professional document yet, but I [hope you've taken into considerauion some of the events that you're going ~o have to make estimates on, like, whan's going to happen with all these cottages that were once summer use that are going ~o be converted into full 5ime residences, that are going to be converted to full family residences. Please take into consideration the variance reality. Any of us who grew up in Huntington Town or visited in Port Jefferson have seen over the years, you drive by a lot, you wouldn't think it was a lot. It was a slope, it was a hill, nothing could be built on it 20 years later 5he s5ilts are still up, COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 and there's a house on it. And let's not underestimate just how much our population's going to be affected by those special exceptions, by those variances over the next 50 years and those coEtage conversions. Change in reside~ts per household, the 2000 Census already showed that Southold is increasing its residents per household. That the average commute time for people in Southold was extending. You've got the suburbaniza~ion of Brookhaven, of Riverhead, companies that didn't exist that long ago, Computer Associates, Symbol Technology, the Hauppauge business district, Huntington, Route 58 in just the last 48 moi~ths. What's that going to do not only to the amo~nt of houses in our town, but the amount of full time houses in our town and the amount of children in our schools, and I'm going to drive that righ~ back again to taxes. What is that impact if we didn't have any more development? That issue alone. So what's the impact of the population, of families and wha~ is the impact of all that am our doorstep going to be on how much time we have left to get our protection devices in order to achieve our goals. Let's not underestimate what I consider the velocimy of change upon us. I want to read another quote, and I hope very much I'm not taking this out of context, bmt it's from the Suffolk Times, and again, May 15th, and it states in here, "New York received jus~ 2.2 million ou~ of $110 million the Federal Government spent and farmland preservation last year, I quote, 'a very poor showing for the Island.' said Mr. Gergela. Joe Gergela, the Executive Direcuor of the Long Island Farm Bureau said, quote, "Without a more serious commitment from the State and Federal governments, we will not mee~ our goal of preserving ~he additional 9,000 acres." Now I believe in fairness, that's an east end quote, bu~ it shows again our interdependence that the Farm Bureau's recognizing on our Federal and State governments. Let's look what's happez~ing COURT REPORTING AND TRAiNSCRIPTION SERVICE (631} 878-8047 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1~ 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 2~ 25 17 here. We have to look beyond our borders. They didn't help us when they were flush with money. The federal government, I don't even understand the size of that deficit, and I really don't. I don'n know, the trillions it gets me confused. Maybe I understand a billion, New York State faces an $11 billion deficit, New York City faces a $4.5 billion deficit and serious threats to its safety. They are aggressively competing for funds. I think nhat we've got to be very careful about what kind of assumptions we think that the Federal government or the State is going to ride to our rescue. Please, let's control our own destiny and non count mn them to come to our rescue when they have never been there for us before. I think that's a fatally flawed assumption. I hope when you look at one of the issues, which is things are going grean, which I have been saying is, if you only count the good stuff, because it's hard for me to understand. In five or so years we're going to exhausn our single and separate lots in nhis town. Up Island, land for major development will be gone. Water is going to be ubiquitous to our town. Even if we continue our current preservation trend, and I commend everybody involved in in from the Town government to those that work as consultants, and I migh5 add to the taxpayers for funding the bill, but the fact of the matter is, if we keep preserving at about 250 acres per year, in five years our single and separates are pretty much gone. We spent $40 million in the interim assuming some mix of farm acres and open space acres and we say we want our money to go no preserve, and we shill have over 7,000 acres at risk. Goodness gracious, wha~ is going to happen when those big three collide. Our single and separate loEs are gone; water's ubiquitous; the tevelopment up island is gone; we cannot fail no underestimate what is happening and whst is going to happen when those evenns converge. Councilman Wickham tells us that the rural incentive district is going t.o fix everything, and I know my questions tend to be COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {6311 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 18 rhetorical, but I ask this seriously and would like examples if they've been found, and if they're in the document, I apologize, if you could point me to them. Did you find one community within 100 miles of a major city to achieve goals similar to ours that count on only personal development rights in a rural incentive district; in a fact, did you find any community that utilized the rural incentive district and PDRs to achieve a goal similar to ours? Because I would like to know where they are, because we have not found them. Maybe our search in some Freudi~n way hasn't been as open as it ought 5o De. If you have it or if you could give it to me, I don't know how I'm supposed to interact, may be inappropriate, b%~t we haven't had access to you all. But I just would like to know -- let's not be a venture capital land here. This is the last community on Long Island. This is not a time for new experiments. This is a time for proven tools. Council members are also telling taxpayers that not only will it work but it's only going to cost us $60 million dollars. Well, let's look at some common sense benchmarks and see if that makes sense. Long Island Farm Bureau, about nine months ago estimated it would cost $275 million to protect 11,000 east end acres. Newsday reported that it cost S190 million to preserve 10,000 Suffolk County acres in the 1990s, and land values have, shall we say, gone up a tad since then. Riverhead, we just hear ge~s reported spent $18 million last year and saved 600 acres. Our land preservation committee reports to the Town Board some months .ago that we'll probably be out of money in about a year, that's current cash money, not all the community preservation use dollars. So look, whatever they think it's going 5o cost if we're going to talk about trying to buy this all, could you please at least be straigh5 with the taxpayers and tell us what in the world this is going to cost because many of us don't understand how we get to $60 million. It would be very nice to have an independent COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ('631} 878 8047 19 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 report that worked with that that would reconcile this against these numbers. We've also searched - and bi' the way, I was the author of the report on the Blue Ribbon Commission, so when I was doing that work, some of us searched and said what's working around the country. And again, define the scope as within one hundred miles of a major metropolitan city. The only tocl that we identified that preserved goals anywhere similar to ours, was zoning regulation more restricmive on development that Southold currently has in place. If there are communities ~hat met that definition that you found that could broaden that discussion and open up some of our minds to other our tools, I would certainly appreciate if they're in the document could you direct us to them or let us know where they are because we didn't find And again, this is not a time for experimentation, may be 50 years ago, n~aybe 20 years ago we could have experimented. The time's run out on experimentation. We need to go on proven tools and a proven record. I'm going to go off a little bit here, but i~ was of m~ch the issue of rhursday night, the issue of private property rights and how you think about those that relate to this. I'm not going to touch on the legal issue, because the legal issues are very clear on this. Let's go to the moral issue. The moral issue isn't that you get whatever you want regardless of what it costs everybody else in town. That's not what private property rights mean. Doesn't mean that for homeowners. We all face numerous restrictions on hew we build our house, hew tall we build our house, how close I build my house te the lot. We incur those restrictions which impinge the value ef our land because it's deemed to be in the interest of protecting our neighbors, an overall community fairness called living in a civil society. Some landowners say - and I say obligation to maximize their pro[it regardless COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE i'631) 878-8047 2O 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 of the cost to everybody else. Well, let's look at the precedent that would sec. Councilman Wickham, I understand, and I know many other people in town are very concerned about watching these tiny cottages and in cottage beach front communities getting knocked down and turned into enormous homes, impinging on all of their neighbors' rights. And a lot of people in town say, we've got to put a stop to it; that's not the community we want to live in. Now, when we do that, if we say, look, yes, your cottage has gone from $100,000 to $350,000 but we're not going to let you sell it and have it knocked down and turned into a McMansion. Well, if I cern it into a McMansion, I can sell it for $500,000. Is it the community's obligation then to reimburse every cottage owner $200,000 because we want to stop that? I'm not sure I follow that. Many of us, I proposed in the minority report, affordable housing density incentives that is co allow development on new lots if they commit to permanent affordability, more lots than they would otherwise be entitled co under five acre zoning. Basically, believe it or hOC, chis sparked a debate, four acre zoning equivalency. Not in our prime agricultural source. And I just read Supervisor Horton had a similar feeling that 25 percent of the build out should be permanently affordable housing. So if we say that 25 percent of those lots, to me a community goal of keeping a diverse work force, a diverse housing stock will we, the taxpayers again have co go to our wallets and reimburse every one of chose lots chat sells for less under affordable housing than it would have sold for under full value, or is that deemed in the community interest? You cannot go down the slippery slope of saying every time ~ha~ you have to ~nake a compromise in the community, you need to be fully reimbursed for maximum value at taxpayer's expense. Josh, that's a really slippery slope you cake us down, and will affect many, many decisions beyond just the one we see COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631i 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 21 before us today. It will basically stop the community from being able to conurol its destiny because too man}, people are screaming you can'u afford that kind of policy, you can't afford the forfeiting of the currenu rights we have as a community. As to some of the scare mongering, the taxpayer fairness, the taxpayer fairness in their right is somehow going uo cause disaster. You can research and have an economisu report. The Blue Ribbon Commission had an economist and a land appraiser come in and they said these forecasts of doom and gloom are ridiculous, and they're in nhe minority report, and if you need the names well, they're in the report, you can query them yourself, both an economist and a land appraiser. But you know, we can just look at the facts. Since we upzoned in 1983 in $outhold land values are up 500 percenl in Sou~bold. Napa Valley I ~hink even more aggressive appreciation in their value since their zoning change. In fact, our farmland is among the most highly valued in the Country and the reason that farming, the reason iu's a value to developers, and one of the perverse arguments here is when you start looking at this objectively, and before my life runs out La Rocca argues for lower land values for farms, but the fact of the mat~er is that lower land values, stopping alternaEives uses for farmland protects ~he farming. And I'd like to say where uhat comes from. I hope the moratorium work group has directed their eyes to the Agricul{~ural Markets Law of New York State and I'd like to read some of ~he preamble on that and submit it to the record. "When nonagricultural development extends into farm areas, competition for limited land resources results, and hope for speculative gains discourage invesument in farm improvements often leading to ~he idle conversion of polenuially productive agriculture." That's not the State Environmental Law, that's the Ags and Markets Law. COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE !631} 878~8047 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 22 And I'd to read one example of that from a local farmer. I am not picking on this individual, and I appreciate their candor. The source of this Suffolk Times March 20th. "I don't have Crop insurance" -- I'll just say, said the farmer .... you just have to keep your fingers crossed. It's a little bit different here on the north fork than upstate. They're on the edge. Here there's always the option to sell out and become a multimillionaire." So let's be honest when we talk about alternatives and uses and land values. So I'm pointing this out not talking from bad land values or shouldn't pay their value but we're arguing they're wonderful values and the scare tactics of the doom of farming are grossly unfair, grossly unfair. As to borrowing, we had bankers as well as lawyers representing the landowners here on Thursday night. The landowner is the client of the bank. The bank seeks the landowner to do business. So I just hope you understand that conflict right off the gate. The interest of the bank is not the community's interests; it's the landowners interest. And superceding the iandowner's interest is the bank's interest in its own collateral. And banking is something I know a little bit about. Bankers always want more collateral than less collateral. No banker is ever going to argue for less collateral than more collateral. That has nothing to do with our policy in this town. Also, we know that there's an active market for farmland with no development rights on it, and I'd like to read something here, back to the value issue and the ~ssue of collateral risk and valuation risk. A~d it comes from Councilman wickham and the preamble to ~he quote is discussing, "At an average cost of $25,000 per acre, the value of the development rights sale, to just 20 acres would yield half a million dollars." And the quote is, "To be candid, you would get more money than you can logically use in the business of farming." The Councilman said. COURT REPORTING AND TRA/qSCRIPTION SERVICE !631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 23 And now this is outside the quote, "As a result much if not most of the public money invested in farmland preservation is not reinvested in the ag industry, he added." Tom, that's a quote from the Suffolk Times, May 15th. The point here is I'm not making a value judgment that they failed to reinvest in their land, uhat's their business decision, but it's about value, and how much value in land is necessary to run a successful farming business. Landowners have known about zoning changes for 50 years. They've had 20 years to sell their development rights at 100 percent of their fair market value. They've had the right to keep the full ownership in their farm, they remove any risk of zoning c.hange and diversified their families' assets and that's a right we've been specially extending to our farmland owners for over 20 years. And PYI for the moratorium work group: I will never argue that the appraisal process is perfect. It's as much art as it is science. The fact of the matter remains in the six months of the Blue Ribbon Colnmission work there were no serious proposals, objections, or comments or investigations unto the general health of the process as it relates to the community's purchase of development rights. So when you hear uhis is all because somehow the Town is being devious, it was a six month opportunity to present and substantiate and has failed to materialize. I've done my own back of the envelope calculation, if we had stepped up -- excuse me, if landowners had suepped up to the challenge and offered the community, back in 1984 and sold 4,000 acres of land at that time, it would have cost the community about $16 million to protec~ 4,000 acres of land; after tax, 20 percent capital gains I gon to got to go back and see what the ra~e was, about $13 million. That land is valued au, now it will cost the community over $100 million to protect. Had the landowner accepted the offer of the community, insulated his risk COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ('6311 878-8047 24 i 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 from zoning changes, preserved his land, diversified his portfolio and invested his money after tax in a diversified stock index portfolio, he would be jus~ as wealthy as he is today. (Laughter) MR. LA ROCCA: A little louder? Just as wealthy as he is today. The rate of return, the market, the broad index, would leave him with equal wealth as he stands today, and we wouldn't be here asking for taxpayers for yet more money, yet more contributions to the pot. Everyone could have won. So ~he fact of the mat~ez is we have now, with the second passing of the community preservation fund insure the taxpayers will have in total provided aver $100 million for land preservation; that's purchase preservation, not voluntary preservation; that's taxpayer funded preservation. We've offered property tax breaks. I understand we offer sales tax breaks. We have tried to work very hard to encourage our farmers. I'm sure not perfect, government has never done anything perfect to the best of my knowledge and the community as a whole and the taxpayers have worked very hard to do their fair share; they could not compel the sale, however, of development rights. Like I said, I was going to spend most of my time talking about the relationship between the government, the taxpayer and the landowner, but I also had, and I don't know whether it got in there, I submitted as pare of the scoping minority reporu to the Blue Ribbon Commission, the use of affordable housing density incentives, that is four acre zoning equivalency if landowners would agree to shift a portion of the futura housing stock build-out from expensive homes into permanently affordable housing programs, creating the first substantive multi-hundred dwelling unit program that would have existed not fully on the backs of the naxpayers. Bnt the taxpayer's willing to absorb ¢he density that came around with that down zoning, if you COURT REPORTING .~ND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631} 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 25 will, of five acre, but everybody contributing towards it, and I don't know if that was - was it looked it at? Was it contemplated? And then lastly, believe it or not, lastly, I hope you can look at something that really is critically important, all besides the two main groups have both accepted this 80 percent preservation number and 60 percent density numbers up and through today, at least as it relates to the contribution that we'd asked for large open space land and farmland. The difference between the two plans when you cut to the heart of it is, one plan says it's time for taxpayers to be treated fairly, it's time for some taxpayer relief, and after 20 years it's time ts update our zoning codes to reflect the risks and the events that have transpired in 20 years. The ether plan says, no, t~xpayers should pay for all ef that. My question is the one I can't get an answer on, maybe the moratorium work group can give me the answer on it, how in the world is the plan that has the same density reduction goals, the same land preservation goals, as the plan that calls for updating our zoning cedes somehow more fair to these in need of affordable housing, how in the world is that plan more fair te average Southeld residents, average taxpayers, to a diverse community, to stable property taxes? Because I can't get an answer en that, and it just doesn't make sense, and, quite frankly, it's polluting the public debate, however we decide te move on. Thank you very much, Supervisor Horten, for being generous and letting me take up what is usually tee much time. Thank you all the very much. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Comments from the fleer, yes, Mr. Giannaris. MS. NEVILLE: Hr. La Rocca, did you have some papers te turn in? HR. LA ROCCA: Ne, they're mine. MR. GIANNARIS: My name is George Giannaris. I live in the Hamlet of Cutchogue. I am here because I am concerned about the small little paragraph in the lindicating) big Harry Potter-izod about COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE 631~ 878~8047 2 3 6 7 8 lO 12 13 16 17 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 26 the country inn which offered the right of the vineyards to turn in some of their development rights for the right to build a country inn on their vineyard. And about 15 years ago I had a decision to make. I decided to move out here. And I had gotten my degree in electrical engineering, and I was at a crossroad as to whether to take over the family business or to become an engineer, and I chose ~o stay local. It's a very seasonal area, as we know, and being that in the past few years, God has decided to remove spring from one of our four seasons, it seems as if really an interest in the vineyards is strictly summer and fall, which is approximately less a little less than half of the year. My concern is nhat if these vineyards were to have their own inns as well as their own cooking facilities, what it would do is it would take a large portion of my season and spread it out into thin slices of the pie. Because we really don't do very well in the winter months, and I'm wondering what kind of impact 30 extra inns with 30 extra restaurants in them would do to a seasonal economy. I don't see an interest in an inn on a vineyard in the winter. I mean, 'fou're looking at dead vines. So, my concern is that we'll get a large portion of our summer business thinned out because everyone will come out to stay at the vineyards at the inns, and then nothing will happen in the winter. So I just want to -- I hope this issue gets addressed because I have a vested interest in year round business here that I would not like to lose. And, my other concern is I spent the better part of eight years trying to simply get a building permit to renovate cottages that have been there for over one hundred years, and we firsm started oun, we had 20 units; we wanted to just fix up the 20 units. And we were ~enied by the zoning board. So we scaled it down now to ~en units, in the process, the department of waste water management was gracious enough to keep our COURT REPORTING A}ID TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631} 878 8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 ~9 2O 21 22 23 24 25 27 grandfather status on the land. So being that we were not allowed to have ten extra units, we decided to take uhat extra sewage and use it uo increase our seating capacity an the restaurant, because you said we couldn't use it to build cottages. The Town wouldn't leu US. Well, now I'm all ready to go to build these ten cottages, and I'm concerned that I won't be able to, you know, compete wiuh Raphael Vineyards and some uremendous winery and a beautiful sprawling inn on 50 lush acres of vineyard. Do I go forth and invest my uime and money in a piece of property uhat will just get a thin slice of the seasonal business for ten cottages now? I mean, it's a very hard decision to make. And I'm sure uhere are other people that came out here winh the innention of suaying year 'round, that purchased bed and breakfasts and smaller inns that will probably be pressured like I am at this point, and I simply au uhis point don'U know what to do. Right now we just want to just pun down grass because it looks And once we get the demolition permit, we'll do that. But where do I go from there? I'm second generation, if my children wish to, why not have a third generation, so I just want to make sure uhat that gens addressed. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Any other comments from the floor? Mr. Krupski. MR. KRUPSKI: Good afternoon. Albert Krupski, Cutchogue. First I'd like to address uhe item in the document; that apparently it pertains to limiting the park disuricus in Town. And I heard about this and I really couldn't believe You know, growing up out here, the park districts were paru of growing up out here. And it made every area a paru of the community, and if you lived in Cutchogue/New Suffolk Park District, nhau's where you went to ~he beach, and thau's what you grew up with. And the park districts I thoughu always COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878-8047 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 28 did a very goo~ job of keeping the areas nice and clean and open and accessible to everyone. And I think it would be a huge mistake to try to homogenize these really local little park areas into some kind a Town project, and especially where I've seen some of the Town projects in the past where some of these park areas turn into Fort Apaches with fences and lights, and it's really not a park at that point. It becomes more like a compound or something. So I'd just like to make that comment about the park. And also, I hear comments and I've heard them for years about this whole five acre zoning issue, and I think I represent the environmental community and the environmental community are people who own the land, who take care of the land and who have done so, and maybe they have only owned it for a year, or maybe they have owned it for eight generations, but that's the environmental community because they've actually done something. And I'd like to express my regret at the way this whole thing has proceeded. The document itself is pretty much inaccessible and how this whole process is being rushed t~rough, and I thiz~k a push for five acre zoning, which is really a mandate, for increasing development, you just push for five acre zoz~ing, you just turn your back on agriculture as it stands today, and that would really be a shame. It would be a shame not to take a better look. Land preservation benefits all of us. And really to punish the people who have kept the land open for so many years is the wrong thing to do. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mr. Krupski. Yes, ma'am, in the back. MS. DALEY: Good afternoon, my name is Silvia Daley, and I'm a resident of East Marion. I'm also a member of the North Fork Bed and Breakfast Association. The reason I'm here is to just review again what George Giannaris said two persons earlier. That it has just come to our notice about the tiny paragraph in the volume COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ~631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 iS 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 29 and volume and volume of this document, that the wineries have applied for country inn status, which to us means that they would have the facility uo rent lodgings and that they would also have restaurant or cooking facilities. Now, as the previous owner of a restaurant said, we of the North Fork Bed and Breakfast Association and other inns and smaller establishments out here have managed to stay and hang in there year round. We are not a seasonal, summer, fall business, but we have tried to weather the leaner months when not many people are coming out here. What we've done is initiated a series of promotions of the north fork and that's available out here in order to promote tourism and spending in the shops and in the different places out here on the north fork. And, if, if, the country inns that would become established by these vineyards were in place, it would seriously affect the businesses of bed and breakfasts and other restaurants out here. And I am hoping that when the present body here go back uo review all these comments made by the community, that they'll take into effect, take a serious look at what this impacm would mean au the bed and breakfasts on the north fork, thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, ma ' am. MR. COOPER: I'm Doug Cooper. I'm what would be traditionally called, years ago, a peasant. That's it. I'm part of that class of people that have been trampled on and slaughtered and murdered and taken advantage of by empires over millenniums. I'm proud of it. Just to touch on some of the terms, on some of the phrases used, "time for proven tools" and "not time for experimentation," I agree with those two lines. The proven tools for our preservation of effort so far are easy to see. It is not time to experiment with other things than may well harm the community in general. It is a time to use the prudent tools and to tweak them. And the Blue RiObon Commission had some COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ~311 878-8047 3O 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 recommendations here, and I don't see any recommendations to speak of in this report. This report, uhat very few people have been able to see, this report that has probably cost the taxpayer, what was it, $10 for every man, woman and child, in direct cost to our consultants and to your consultants. The real cosu was probably $20, $30 for every man, woman and child, probably pushing half million dollars for whatever you want to call it. It's very disappointing to see that it wasn't more widely spread, and even I had to laugh, because some people in the planning department couldn't get copies. Some of the things I'd like to touch on, why uhere was no yield build-out scenario for five acre zoning. I asked about this other night. The question is, the real question is, was there a yield build out for five acre zoning, and if so, why was it not puu in this document? And if it wasn't done, why wasn't it done? That is a very important piece of information. Have any of you consultants participated in any other DGEIS plans of this size of this thoroughness? Can you guys give me an answer now or not? Have any of you participated in other plans? MR. VOORHIS: I don't know if this is the appropriate time. We have all varying background and experience. I have personally been involved with Southampton's agricultural program that was mentioned, that Lisa Kombrick, one of our team members has ~lso been involved with. We all have varying background and experience, and Town representauives who are members of the team as well, and their input was valuable, and they have been wrestling with these issues ~er years. So it was a collective effort. MR. COOPER: Well, if you were involved in Ehe Southampton plan, hew long did that process take place? How long a time was there for public input? MR. VOORHIS: I don't wane to get in~e a dialogue. We'll accept your comments. I don't knew how relevant that is. We'i1 certainly address your comments. COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878-8047 1 2 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 2~ 31 MR. COOPER: My undersEanding was the Southampton plan was open for a year, year and-a-half, I think probably 18 months held open for public comments and input. Why then do you want to have this open for a week or two? Something this thorough and this is only half of it, something this involved and you want to push it through in a very short period of time, you want to limit the public input, this is crazy stuff. How has previous upzoning affected agriculture? Such as, how many farms were there before the Town upzoned land; how many farms after upzoning? What affect on development did the previous upzoning do? What affect did it have on developments? Were there more developments, less? How much property was taken out of farmland and open space for these developments? It is my understanding, ant maybe you can tell me if I'm right or wrong here, the answers to our questions that we propose, that we pose to you people will be answered in a Final DEIS, yes? MR. VOORHIS: Yes, that's uorrect. MR. COOPER: What if you misunderstand our questions? What if your answers lead us to other questions to ask? Are our comments and other further questions limited? MR. CLEARY: There's a comment period on the FEIS, just as you're having here. MR. COOPER: How long would that proceed for and will further questions be answered? MR. VOORHIS: I'll just talk about the procedure. The procedure has been designed, it's New Yor~ State Law under 617 Code of Rules and Regulations. There's a ten day comment as part of Ehe FEIS er the FGEIS. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Minimum. How long a comment period for this phase as well as the final phase is at the discretion of the Town Board. There's a minimum comment period that it has to be left open, but the Town Board can elect to extend that period. ~f COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631/ 878-8047 1 2 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 2% 25 32 that answers your question clearly. MR. COOPER: Yes, it does, but it seems very, I don't know whether I should say arrogant or preconceived that %rou wanu to push this through very rapidly to have the time frame so far limited to about two weeks for this part of it, when SouthampTon went on for 18 months. That's a serious concern. I mentioned why were no~ more of the recommendations from the BRC and the 2000 Southold Town Farm and Farmland Preservation Strategy incorporated? I see very little of this. What is the cos~ ~© the taxpayer for preservation, and uhis is something I think people have talked about, and there's a lot of fear, the sky is falling I dare say. We better be careful here. Currently for the preservation we've done so far it is my understanding that we've preserved about a quarter of our farmland and open space and the current cost to uhe taxpayer on an average $6,000 lot is $50 a year. This is no cost. This is a no-brainer, this will not drive people out. What may drive people out is going to a five acre upzoning when we are currently doing in a neighborhood of 20 acres - and I've heard other numbers. We have had ten acres town-wide, buu in the AC and R-80 land, we are currently pushing 20 acres for an approved building lot 20 acre reserve - maybe it's 18 acres, but in that ballpark. 'Fell me which is going to have more houses, which is going to result in more traffic, which is going to resulu in therefore more school kids and traffic; I'm going to tell you it's five acre zoning. It's going to do that because that is where you want ~o propose upzoning and we are already doing -- pushing 20 acres and you want us to do five acres. There's going to be a whole lot more houses and taxes in five acre zoning. On table 3-3, Page 3-22, Row 4, Column 3 states, "Perceived reduction in land value after upzoning," why is it perceived? It seems like it's a slanted term. How does uhe relative value of upzoned land change wi~h COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE 1631) 878-8047 33 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 respect to non-upzoned land? This is an important issue. How does a value of upzoned land change over the long term with respect to non-upzoned land? Row 3, Column 4 states, "Agricultural land are key to Town character and economic vitality." If this is true, why push a policy that will or at least may have a negative effect on the economic vitality of not only the Town and its taxpayers, but on the agricultural land? Why push a policy that will have a negative affect on the Town's character? This may well result in a lot more traffic, a lot more taxes. Row 7, talk about better land use pattern; wha~ better land use patterns are you looking for? What changes in land use designation on privately owned land that you mentioned are you talking about? Will landowners be notified? You have a lot of stuff in here, just like they're talking about the country inns or the park districts, many people in this community have no idea what's in this book, and it's a disservice to the community to have something like this and not have it disseminated to the population. And then have the open hearings scheduled for two weeks. This is -- it makes me very untrusting of you folks. SUPERVISOR HORTON: That would be of the Town Board. The time frame is our decision. MR. COOPER: Yes, Josh, that may be out of your personal hands. That's the majority of the Town Board. SUPERVISOR HORTON: It's a Board decision. MR. COOPER: Comments made about being out of money in a year, a year ago there were comments that the money is not being spent, and now there's comments that the money is being spent too fast. And this is baloney. It is easy -- and I would like to see the breakdown for the funding for preservation. It is easy, very easy to bond the money now, use the two percent money to pay for the bonding and preserve now, and the two percent money will come in the future at a COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE 1631) 878 8047 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 34 higher rate. This is can do much better at a no-brainer. Our Town this than what we are currently doing. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Miss Ackerman. MS. ACKERMA_N: Thank you. Doug - Terry Ackerman from Cutchogue. We a vineyard. -- Doug, don't play like you guys have are peasants, SUPERVISOR HORTON: Excuse me, Mrs. Ackerman, please address ~he Town Board. MS. ACKERHAN: I'm sorry. Any landowner in this Town are not peasants, and I kind of resent that categorizalion. We've been talking about how to preserve this town, the character of it for years, and this study even poinzs out the previous studies who say we need to do something. So we do need to do something now, and my question is: What are we waiting for? We have proof up Island that everdevelopmen~ increases taxes. The figure that bothered me last week is that we will nave a $6,000,000 deficit in our schools if we build out to our capacity, and as we have heard planners say, you get what you zone for. We also heard that we have -- we're unique in that there's roughly 20 percent plus of senior cizizens in our Town. As a mother of small children who will be going zo the school system here, and as a daughter of seniors who live here, I can envision the day when my parents will be voting against the school budgen and my Kids will be on austerity, and I wouldn't blame my parents. My alma mater, Miller Place, 17 percent rise in taxes for zhat school, and I've seen what development's done there. And it was voted down. Those kids are going to be leaving school at 11:30. I think we have an opportunity now to preserve this Town, Zo protect the naxpayers and to preserve our quality Df life :ogeEher with many different tools including COURT REPORTING PkND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631 878-8047 35 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 continuing the use of preservation tools. My specific questions regarding the study, I would like to understand what makes us different from the rest of Long Island; the preservation program has been in place since, I believe 1976; we were the first county in the nation to enact it. And it certainly didn't save the other towns of Long Island from overdevelopment. So I would like to understand if there is something special about us and the way we're doing things to see if it's possible that voluntary preservation will in fact save our town and the quality that we enjoy today. I've also read a study regarding eastern shores outside of Maryland. They did a study specifically to explore if land values decreased when they upzoned and their study stated they did not. And, in fact, they did increase. I would like to see the proof that has been presented by many of the people who don't believe we should rezone the Town included in the study so we could all take a look at it in the public forum and understand how, if there is proof that land properties will be devalued and that the business of farming will, in fact, be jeopardized. I would like that looked at. In an eastern shore study, which is a farm community outside of Maryland, 40 percent of the farmers there supported upzoning to ten to 20 acres. The farmers who did not, according to the study who did not support it, were categorized as "gentleman farmers." So, I would like to understand in this Town, how we're actually hearing that most farmers are against rezoning the Town. As a farmer, I would like to have less houses here. I would like to have less people running their ATV's across my property. I'd like to be able to get my trucks where they need to be. I'd like my children to go to school an intimate setting, like we have here today with some limited growth built in, and I would like my parents to be able to afford to live here while my children go through their high school years, ten to 15 from years now. I think the time is now for us to COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICEIr,o31) 87.9-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 36 make a decision. The Town has certainly been exploring this issue for many years. Everybody's had their input. We've all had a chance to mull this over for years, and I think the Board's doing a good job in terms of listening to everybody and giving us all a chance to speak, and I thank you for Ehat, and I look forward to the answers to the questions I have posed today. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Miss Ackerman. Other questions for the Board? Mr. Schriever. MR. SCHRIEVER: My name is William Schriever. I live in Orient, 20275 Main Road, and I lived in the community now for 50 years. I spoke at the last hearing, and this is, in effect, an extension of what I said then. I'm not going to repeat that. First I'd like to explain why I'm interested in this issue at all. I mean, you know I'm not quite an octogenarian, but I'm knocking on the door, and, you know, I won't see much of the effect of what we're doing here, but I still care about the community. And one thing ~hat really concerns me is the farmers. Now you may think from what I said that I'm not concerned about the farmers, but that is absolutely not true. What I see happening is the same thing uhat's happened before, and that is that they're going to upzone the property with five acre zoning, and the farmers are going to yell and scream, but they're not going to have any impact on it, and the net result is that the farmland is going to be destroyed, and our d rural heritage is going to be destroyet in the process. Now one of the fundamental principals that hasn'~ been addressed in this DGEIS is the face thau in order to preserve farmland you have to preserve farmers. You cannot have farmland without farmers. There has to be a steward for the land in order ~o keep it as a farm, and that is what I"~ concerned about as much as anything. You have to make the farm productive in order to keep it in farming and in order to keep the farmers COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE !631) 878~8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 37 financially solvent. And we need to think about that aspect as well, as the environmentalist concern to try no make in -- the whole Town as inhospitable as possible for any outsiders to move in. And so, what I want to do is I want to try to try and come up with a plan which will preserve the farms and preserve the farmers and somehow head elf is this impending disaster of five acre zoning, and I want to try to explain it in a way that makes it palatable to the farmers because without the support of nhe farmers it's going nowhere. One thing that it makes it very important ~o deal with this issue effectively is that uhe farmers, I think, are misled by this issue of zoning and development rights; and it is much mere of a positive scheme than it looks like. These who get out early you, Irou know, get out whole, but the majority are non going to get out with anything, basically and by trying to hang en to this concept of the current zoning by whatever scheme aild to pretend that that's going to held off the indians for uhe next 40 years, is just totally unrealistic. And so what I'm asking the farmers to do is te please, look au this thing more realistically and try to figure out a way in which you can preserve uhe farmland and the farmers, and get compensated for your development rights without having no convert the land to residential development. You see, the only wa}, you're going te collect on the development rights that you're so concerned about is thau you have te development the land. There is no other way. And givell the uncertainty ef ~his thing, speculators are not going te pay much for the land's development rights because there's a very good chance that these will evaporate. So the only way you can be sure ~o collect is uo develop that land. I~ you develop the land, you're going to destroy the farm. So anyuhing in which you're going to recover your money by developing the land, you know, it's just prostitution. You're net -- you're giving up the thing you want to COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878-8047 38 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 preserve, and it's just ridiculous. And you've got to come up with a new way and that's whag I'm trying go propose. I've given it a lot of ghought. I've had to revise it dramatically from whag I had developed out in Fremont in a similar siguation. Fremont was ag ghe situation where they were 97 percent built out, and the problem there is that the town bureaucrats were living off of the income from the development of the land. In other words, the Town City Counsel, the}, call it in its infinite wisdom had set it up so that ghe members, all of :he staff of the development and the building departments, zoning, ghat whole wing of the government was required to be funds out of the fees they collected from the activities of their department. Well, now you can imagine with that kind of incentive, I mean, ghat makes ghe mafia look like nothing. So they had this enormous incentive to keep development going. The fact that the general plan by ghat zoning was 97 percent built out. Bu: believe me, ghe build-oug is just a ficgion, a gogal fiction. It will be a fiction here, you want to look at it, if you want to, bug don't have any faigh in it. I: doesn't mean a damn ghing, because what happens is they simply down zone the property selectively and the Oevelopment continues. So build out is not going to happen. And the idea tha: zoning at a certain density is going to stop the development at that point is just noL wha: happens in the real world. And what I was trying to do is to get them to step the development. I was grying te bring it tea halt, and my proposal was ghat you issue development righgs for all ef the land that was developable at ghat poing, and then when ghose development rights were used up, thag would bring the process to a halt, and you would have te buy ~hose development rights in order te develop on some ogher piece of preperEy. So it would restrict the gotal, you could redevelop, but you would put a cap to the total quantity of development. It didn't fly, believe me, ef COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631} 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 2% 25 39 course politicians couldn't stand that. But anyway, I'm trying to adapt something of ~hat concept to this, but I've had to revise it enormously, but and one of the things I'm satisfied is you cannot issue development rights on ~he land. You need to get rid of those. The reason is because when you issue development rights and you bring in the Suffolk County Health Department or whatever you call i~, Departmen~ of Health Services, I don't know, whatever it is. You bring them into the picnure, and they're going to connrol the motion of those or transfer of nhose development rights from one piece of property to another, and they're going to insist on all kinds of rules. And one of the rules they have already thought of is when you transfer a development right off of a piece of property, you have to restrict that property in many, many ways. And one of the ways you have to restrict it is you can't be putting nitrogen on ~hat property. Well, now, you know modern farming depends rather heavily on that and farmland has to be turned in~s open space. So you have to destroy the farmland. So you simply cannot zone the land for development if you want to preserve it as farmland. You simply cannot do that, and you just have to rethink nhe problem from that point. Now, whan I thought of doing, and that's what I've examined in nhis little memo nha~ I handed out. I have thought of rezoning all of the farmland, now I'm using the AC zone as farmland in my analysis, that doesn't mean that I'm married to that, I mean, you san find it, make a new analysis of what's farmland, but I'm just using that as a code name for the farmland. What I'm suggesting is you rezone that land ~o prohibit residential development. And then in ~hat process, you set up a deal whereby the farmer gets compensated for the loss of the development rights as they currently exist under two acre zoning. How you do that is the key ~o the whole thing, but the point of it is that if ~he farmer can get compensated for his development rights without developing the COURT REPORTING PkND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631~ 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 4O property, then you have preserved the farmland, Number one, and the farmer is still in business because his property is not developed, but he's compensated and so in effect you preserved the farmer and the farmland. Now, I want to discuss for the minune how many acres are involved arid how many units and all that because it's important in understanding the size of this thing. I'm not going to read all this, but I'm going to read the first two paragraphs and read them in reverse order since they sort of seem to read better that way. In my speech to the Town Board on Thursday June 19th I argued that the only way to preserve farmland was to zone it to prohibit residential development. The reasons can be summed up as follows: Preserving farmland by converting it to cluster subdivisions may restrict development on 80 percent of the land, but it does not preserve the farms. It systemically destroys them. Preserving farmland one parcel at a time through the purchase of development rights is an extremely costly and very slow process that is incapable of competing in the market with the rapidly accelerating demand for residential development, and preserving farmland through the conventional transfer of development rights in which residential density is actually transferred from the farmland to undeveloped land in tRe town is extremely unlikely to receive the approval of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, particularly when an application is made to apply to 5,659 acres of undeveloped farmland. It turns out that's more than half of all the land, undeveloped land in the town is farmland. I have calculated that figure, later on I'll mention it again. But anyway, and I refer you to Appendix G, which mentions some requirements for that process. So these proposals that we're considering I thi~k are included in one of those three things. And then my comment is this: This DGEIS has failed to demonstrate COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 than even one of these three plans is actually capable of preserving the farmland, uhat is the primary jusuification for this action. So what I'm saying is that if the goal is to preserve farmland, you haven't demonstrated in the blue book that you can do it with anything that you have proposed, and I think that's absolutely fundamental to the Environmenual Impact Statement 'cause you can't demonstrate how you're going to do it and that it will work then you haven't got a complete statement. Now, the ouher point, the paragraph I'll read is importanu because it's the basis of all my calculations and I state here the Blue Ribbon Commission for a Rural Southold recommended as a goal 80 percent preservation and 60 percent density retuction, that's in quote, that both farmland ant open space be preserved. Now that's the way I read it. The achievement of ~his goal is apparenuly the basis for activity being participated in in uhis DGEIS. As discussed previously in my comments on DGEIS, which is the other paper I turned in, the concept of the 80 percent preservation and 60 per2enU density reduction, appears to be a code name for the suffusion of five acre zoning for ~he existing two acre zoning in the AC and R-80 zones, where the AC zeno is the cede name for farmland and the R zeno is the cede name for open space, this is the definition ef this goal that I have chosen to use in the absence ef any definition being presented in the DGEIS. So I've had te invent eno based on what I observed in the document. New, te give you some of these numbers based en that definition, it turns out they're using Table 3-1. These are taken from there and this paper has the reference in every case, but what I've shown is tha~ if you continue the two acre zoning, the number of units, housing units that you can devekep in the farmland in the subdividabie pare of the farmland - that's important, that's not all the farmland, just the subdividable part - is 2,078 units; and, similarly for the open space, which is the R-80, is 1,066 units. Se COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631~ 878 8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 42 these two areas combined, which are the two areas now under two acre zoning, and by my definition are the two areas going no be upzoned to five acres under this plan, the combined yield from this under two acre zoiling is 3,144 units. And since converting from two acres ~o five acres saves you 60 percent, the number of units -- the reduction in the number of unius that would occur by converuing to five acre zoning would be 1,886 units. And so uhat is what you're going to achieve with the goal that you have set. You're going to save -- you're going to reduce the number of unius built in the town by one huildred -- by 1,886 units. Now, my proposal is to upzone only ~he AC zone or farmland to prohibit residential development. Leave the open space, two acre zoning as it is, and let's see how many units we get. Because if we're going to meet this goal, we're going to demonstrate that we can do uhat. So that's the next step and it turns ouU that you can find the answer of how many units are going to be developed on the AC zone way over the right-ha~d side of the column there, and it's 2,321 units, that is the number of units that can be built in the AC zone. Now, remember uhis includes not just the subdividable part, but the individual parcels which zoning will not affect. But anyway, ~hat is how many units of housing you would lose in the town if you do uhis rezoning. Notice that 2,321 unius is a greater reduction Ehan would occur under five acre zoning that's being discussed, which is only 1,886 units. And another way of looking at it, this proposal causes a 53.82 percent reducEion in density, as opposed uo 60 percent under five acre zoning. So this is clearly more effective in accomplishing the goal that you are looking to accomplish tha~ the five acre zoning. In fact, there's 435 more units that are lost under this scheme than would be lost under five acre zoning if it were included in uhe factor. COURT REPORTING ~gO TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {6311 878 8047 ~3 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 And one thing I have proposed to do with that 435 units is to put them in the R-80 zone, which is the open space zone, not farmland zone, and use them to down zone a portion of that R-80 zone to R-40, which is a double density in that part of the zone. And I calculated how many acres would be converted from R-80 to R-40, it's 1087 and-a-half acres that you convert from R-80 to R-40, just to get back to where you were if you had money for five acre zoning. Now we're just compensating for being overly effective. So what I propose you might do with that additional, if you wanted to do it, you could add roughly 1,000 acres to the R-40 zone and take a thousand acres out of the R-80 zone, and that would give you an area of the Town that you could select where the development could be done, that could not have been done on the farmland. So it doesn't mean you're stopping development. It just puts it right there in place. Now, adding this all up, the total number of acres of farmland that would come under this restriction would be the 5,159 that's subdividable and 462 plus that's in small parcels that are too small to subdivide, but it's still in the AC zone and the sum of those is 5,600 - 5,659 acres, approximately, that's a lot of the Town. And using the same type of calculation, there's only 11 -- a little over 11,000 acres developable land in the Town under any class ef zoning er residential zoning, I guess it is at least from the table. Se therefore, the amount of land in the Town that would be preserved by this prohibition ef residential development on the farmland represents 51 percent of all the developable land in the Town. Now, for those who want to preserve open space, this has got to be the best deal going because if you could take half ef all the land that's developable and preserve it in perpetuity, you've get a deal that will preserve the open space and the rural character of our community. And so, there's a couple more data COURT REPORTING AND TP~ANSCRIPTION SERVICE !631} 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 44 points I want to give you, one is that the number of housing units which have left, have not been built yet in the Town would go from 6,335 down to 4,014. And nhat is more than a third reduction, 36.6 six percent reduction in the to~al number of housing units that can be built from this point to build-out. Assuming nobody changes ~he zoning which, of course, I'm saying they would. Now, that's the numbers we have to work with. The question is how do you pay the farmer for his development rights? And I've got several suggestions, none of which I'm married to. Let's look at these numbers, and that's why I want to get these numbers. Fifty-one percent of all the developable land in the Town would come into this restricted area. So presumably the people who own that land, in which they have not already sold the development rights, in other words, s~ill have the right to develop that land. So I'm not talking about every single acre, but those people need to be compensated for the loss of their development rights in or{er to preserve the land for the rest of us. And I think that's fair, I really do. But we don't want to preseFve -- we don't want to compensate them b!, developing the land in order to give them the money. That is stupid; that defeats exactly what you want to do, which is preserve the farmland. So we've got to find some o~her way to do it. And we certainly don't want to tax all the residents to produce money to buy the development rights. That would just bankrupt the Town and besides, it would put the burden of preserving the development rights partly on the farmers, of course, and on the res~ of us who have lived here all our lives and are not contributing to this problem. The people that would have reimbursed ~he farmers under the sale of the development rights would be those who bought the house lots, or ~he developers or whoever, whatever the transaction was with the farmer, the farmer would have received his money for his development rights from ~he sale of the lots basically. So my suggestion is let the COURT REPORTING AND TRanSCRIPTION SERVICE {6311 87~ 8047 45 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 farmer recover his money from the sale of the lots than are being developed instead of the ones on his land. In other words, we're developing 4,014 units, and I'm not sure how many acres, but because of all the restrictions -- but never say 4,000 units of housing are going to be built in the Town, by build-out, and none of those are going to be built on farmland remember, because we restricted the farmland. So you can't develop on the farmland. So then you decide when those lots are sold or the houses are sold or however that is realized in terms of development, at that point the farmer would get money out of that pie. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Mr. Schriever, are these incorporated into your document that you submitted to the Board? MR. SCHRIEVER: No, they're not, not all this that we're talking about now. SUPERVISOR HORTON: We do have some other people. I certainly will allow you to continue, but there is time that we can make use of. MR. SCHRIEVER: I'm getting tired. If I have the fortitude to do it. SUPERVISOR HORTON: You certainly, may continue. MR. SCHRIEVER: It's a work in progress. So the question is how would you do this and I thought about two ways you could do it. One is you could do it in proportion to the number of acres that are involved. You could take the total number of units that are going to be developed, which is 4,014, and distribute that over all the undeveloped land in the Town, which is 11,090, and then that would give you the number of units per acre, that you could -- or acres per unit in this case, that would be averaged over the entire Town, high density, low density everything. And the farmer, based on his ownership of the land, would get his proportion of the money based on his proportion of the land. And the farmers tend to have large lot developments because of the COURT REPORTING AiqD TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (6311 878 8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 46 zoning restrictions as compared with the high density. So if you distribute it by land, then those people who are developing small lots are going to pay a lot for developing their lots because they have very little land to get their share of original zoning. So that may not fly. It seems the most fair, but things are not always the way they seem. Another possibility is to do it on a strictly unit basis. In other words, you uake ~he two hundred - 2,321 lots or housing units that the farmers are giving up by the rezone and you distribute the development rights to the 4,014 units of housing ~hat will be built on the rest of the land and that probably may be a simpler bookkeeping and probably a better way to do it. But this thing needs a lawyer, and I'm not a lawyer to figure out how to implemenu this. But I believe t~at that would solve the problem. One of the big advantages of this is it's no longer a blank scheme uhe government steps in and sets up the mechanism. It cannot pay off immediately because the developmen~ isn't immediate, but then the farmers weren't going ~o get the money. This time they're guaranteed. The other way t~ey could be upzoned, lose it entirely. This way would guaranuee the farmers their compensation. It would have a source of that compensation which uhe government would watch over. So I uhink it would be extremely fair, and I think uhat what it would produce would be so autractive that it would make this Town the envy of the whole of Long island. I mean, we would have the same landscape a hundred years from now uhat we've got t~oday, maybe a little bit more density in the hamlets of course, but the open space, the farmland all than would be essentially preserved. And it would be done, not at the cost of the taxpayers, but at the cost of Ehose who were moving into the Town and buying the lots, the same way the farmers would have been compensated had they sold their own lots. So I think it is as fair as other way, and I think it will lead to the COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE 1631) 878 8047 47 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 real preservation, not 80 percent farmland, 100 percent. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mr. Schriever. Are there other comments from the floor? Mrs. Egan. MRS. EGA/W: I will address what I heard at the meeting last Thursday and I will first comment 5hat I very much resent people who refer to "seniors." What is a senior? Some people consider it 52, 53; some people consider people born ten minutes before or after they were. And having worked in advertising and publicity where we had to present to potential advertisers figures, and you take these percentages, and this is what I found, which is very true, your percentages and people who do not have the time, like this gentleman was so good to do, and some of these farmers have done, to really understand, they are very, very, very impressed with percentages, what makes your program look great. Also, I find that this underlying current here is quite interesting. You know, you all should watch these reviews of these shows on TV. It's a freebie, no commercials. You get a firsthand. And you should look at all of you. What you do and what you don't do. So my overall comment is you spent too much money. You're not listening, and I think it's a political football for a lot of you up there. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. Bye. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mrs. Egan. Would anybody else care to address the Town Board at this public hearing? Yes, in the back. MS. DUFFY: Hi, I'm Darlene Duffy from Greenport, and I just wanted to make a couple comments abouE the country inn paragraph that's in the report. I remember we had this COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE /631) 878 8047 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2S 48 conversation in Town abouE Eon years ago give or take a couple of years, about allowing the vineyards to have country inns. So there was a couple of uhings. I remember everybody said, oh, when you go to Napa, it's so beautiful, you can stay in a hotel and you can eat in a resuaurant, yada, yada. So, my daughter wenu to a wedding in Napa non too long ago. She said to me you know it's the weirdes~ thing the wedding was -- the reception was at the Suerling Vineyard. She said, when we got there we had to take a tour of the winery. She said there was no wedding cake; there was no band, nothing, because they weren't really allowed to have wedding. And even on the invitation they were invited to a celebration. They had a caterer bring the food in. So I started bi' calling Sterling Vineyards to ask them, why is uhis. And the gentleman went on to ~ell me that Napa County does not allow the vineyards to have all that ancillary entertainment commercial bus~ness. He said the County of Napa actually outlaws it for the vineyards. I asked him why is that, and he said because they want their agricultural land in agriculture. He said we also don't want people trampling all over each other's opportunities. He said we want our restaurateurs running the restaurants; we want our bed and breakfast and hotel people running the hotels, and we want our farmers farming. So what they do is limit the vineyards to educauion, which is why uhe wedding people all dressed up had to go for a winery tour, because they were following the letEer of the law. They have to be educational. They're allowed to sell uheir product, and it has to be an educational program. So, the other uhing I wanted to tell you about, if you decide to leu them have 20 rooms at the farms or the vineyards whatever, in Riverhead, I don'~ know if anybody's been pas~ East Wind, but I think Riverhead limits the number of rooms that are allowed in a country inn. I know we don't sall them hotels, we call them "country inns," COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE !631) 878-8047 2 7 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 2~ 2~ 49 so we can determine how many rooms. And Riverhead limits uheir number of rooms also to uheir country inns. So I was discussing new bedspreads for my family's hotel with a gentleman in Queens, that makes bedspreads, who just made them for the East Wind, who was telling me, that well you know, they're only allowed to have 40 roolns, but what they did was they made really big rooms w~th doors in the middle, really big units with nwo banhs and they split them in half. So they allow 40 rooms, but what they allow is 80 rooms au East Wind. And I can tell you Ehau I was before your - I don't know if in was before nhe Planning Board or the Zoning Board - it was the Zoning Board, about the parcel across from San Simeon, we had the same discussion. They wanted 600 square foot hotel rooms, and they get up there and tell your Board that the kind of people that we are going to have expect two bathrooms and a 600 square foot hotel room. And we all know nhat what nhey're going to do is they're going to split those rooms after the building department does their inspection. So I don't know what you have to do to put i~ the code to stop that from happening, but it happens. And it's what the builders do, and it's what nhe developers know. They know they're non really going to come back and look au it later, so if you have to go that route. But I just wanted uo you tell you aboun uhat because uhey really, in Nape Valley, they really want to promone uhe success of everyone in their communiny. A lady from the Visitor's Bureau said ~o me if you allow spas and restaurants and conference centers and lodging at your wineries, people wouldn't go anywhere else. They would just go to the winery. I would like you uo keep t~an in mind. You have a lou of businesses in Town that promote, actually promote thau wineries. I've been promoting the wineries since Alex Hargrave puU out his very first bottle of wine before you could actually drink it. In was COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE 1'631/ 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 5O pretty gruesome, but we were giving it away no our guests because we ~hought it was good industry, and we wanted to help them get started. But, you know, I'd like you to keep in mind that a lot of other people out here depend on a very short season and not very many customers. Some people think in the hotel business, if you build it they will come. What we need out here is more rooms because my cousin Betsey had a wedding, and we couldn't get enough hotel rooms, but we are sold out in July and August, I hope, you know, for all the people that are in the lodging business out here. Many times you can't get 20 or 30 rooms because my regular customers come out and I can't not take them for your wedding. Actually, we took a whole wedding, we took 20 rooms one year, and the bride and the groom had a fight, and I had an empty hotel for three days. I wanted to hang myself. So any resort area that there is in ~he country, you can't get a Saturday night in July in Nantucket. I assure you. They all require minimum night stays, and they are usually sold out in July and August. It's just the way it is. We are mostly empty in uhe winter. It's a very long, long season. So you know, I know most of the people here are farmers and I [eel for them, but in that report there's a little paragraph that can be very detrimental to a lot of the other people in uhe community. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Mr. Russell. MR. RUSSELL: I ditn't want to speak tonighE, and after sitting here all night, I really don't want to speak £onight. Darlene, are you running for Chamber of Commerce president on a "Gruesome" ticket? (Laughter.} Ail right. There's a lo~ to this report It's a lot more about all sorts of changes to the town. It's not just about five acre zoning. And know most of the debate tonight's been focused on five acre zoning, conservation zoning. COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878 8047 51 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 1,3 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 There's an awful loE in there. I do have to say I agree with some of Ehe speakers earlier. There's a lot to digest, and Eo ask the public to digest in over the course of about five days and three Public Hearings is unfair, especially since it was just laid on the table a matter of a few weeks ago. I don't even have a cop7' -- my office doesn't even have a copy yet, and I'm quoted in the reporn. And I tried no read this nhing. I sat down in one reading and I tried reading it over the course of an entire evening until the morning lighn actually, and nhe only difference between reading this and War and Peace, is I began to understand War and Peace after a while. There are a that are llnfortunately, incorrecn. There are a that maybe have merit. are unfornunate. lot of aspecns to this I believe, are lon of aspects no this There are aspects nhat I think even someone who supports five acre zoning can still oppose this reporn, at lease 90 percent of in. Some of this I ~ctually think declares an all oun assault on agriculture as we know it in Southold Yown. Some of the more troubling aspects are discussions of scenic byways and ii_mining construction on farmland. The fact of uhe matters is Ag and Markets speaks to nhese issues. Ag and Markens Law pronects agricultural operations and building agricultural buildings. I don't know if scenic byways, overlay is designed no circumvent than law or not, but these are the hypes of nhings thaE we really need to thoroughly invesnigate and discuss, before there's any type of official action on this report. The issue of country inns is troubling no me because to this day I've yet ~o find a legal description of what a country inn means. I'm certainly not opposed to allowing wineries no have country inns if there was a substantial trade off for the public benefits. Again, those are ratios we would need no work out, maybe down Ehe road we'll be COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE !631i 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 52 able to do this, after this hearing clsses. But what concerns me is that country inn seems to offer something to one specific part of an industry, which is wineries. That's only about 25 percent of the agricultural operation in Southold Town. Actually, it is nursery, container stock, greenhouses that come to about 50 percent of the agricultural production. And I think a report that calls for strict regulation on farmhouse construction or farm building construction in one part on the code -- in one part of the report, and then starts to allow all these uses for wineries in another part, it's divisive to the agricultural industry itself. It pits them against each other, and it's just not fair, and it's also incongruous'to a community that's purportedly trying to save farmland production or farming institution. There is an issue, just minor points, but, again, an idea of the kinds of things as an and these are this gives you that really have to be evaluated thoroughly. There's a discussion here on farm labor housing, and the ability to trade off with farmers owners so they can construct farm labor housing. The fact is, they're already allowed to by Ag and Markets Law. They don't need concessions from the Town. The}, can do that tomorrow. The Town has to honor that presuming that the property is in an agricultural district, and there's really no way around that. We're trying to entice them with something they already possess. There is one very incorrect aspect to this, and maybe this is near and dear to my heart because it concerns taxes, and I don't want to look like a cheapskate, but there is no basis in New York State Law for the Town to offer tax abatements to people who do things with their property like preservation. I've discussed this with people, Melissa, I know a couple of times. The fact is that the Town, any town can't create its own tax exemption policy. Any exemptions that are available, are already available policies are alzeady COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631/ 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1'4 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 53 there as a matter of New York State Real Property Tax Law, and it's not for us, it's not in our jurisdicnion to add to that or subtract from that in any way. But again, these are things that need to be talked about larger more thoughtful setting, I believe. That's as an assessor. As an individual I have say one of the most scary proposals is to shift special exception authority from the ZBA to the Planning Board. It's in my mind not only probably legal by State law; it's just illogical; it doesn't make sense to me. The ZBA is quasi-judicial body than spared away the interests of the applicant versus the interest of the community. To put that all under one roof doesn't make any sense to me. You know what, I'm going 5o wrap up. This has all been a long night for all of us. I would just like to ask the Town Board to please consider extending these hearings to give us more time to thoroughly evaluate all of these aspects that are being proposed in this report. Thank you. MS. NEVILLE: Mr. Russell, please give your full name, residence for 5he stenographer and sign the list. MR. RUSSELL: You're right. Scott Allen Russell. I live in Cutchogue. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Mr. Russell. Yes, sir. MR. JOSEPH: Wilfred Joseph, and I live in East Marion. Just a few points. First of all, I'm an owner of a bed and breakfast, and we're a small group, but we're vocal. And a small paragraph was brought to our attention because we have not read the document, and we're very concerned about it. I had no intentions of speaking but after listening to that woman whose ~lame I can't remember, I thought I'd like 5o say a couple of things. First of all, the short period that a number of other people spoke about concerns me in the sense that something that COUPT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (621} 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 54 will have long term anO significant - make a significant difference in all of our lives requires a little bit more review, especially since the document is not widely distributed and it's a huge document and requires fairly sophisticaued understanding of it. I know that sometimes in Csngress what is done when people would like to get their pet projects approved, it is stuck in something in a significant little paragraph in another document totally unrelated to it and nobody notices it, and then it becomes law and it's impossible to be reversed and we all live with it. The interesting thing in a democracy is that everybody gets to have their say, even if they're in the minority. But it seems to me, just observing in the short time that I've been in this community, that somehow, people with money and influence seem to have a few more votes 5han the rest of us; and I am saying this because it seems, I've observed, 5hat things that may not be in the best interest of the rest of us, seem to be implemented for a few powerful, rich people. And the short period concerns me because I'm sure that the great majority of the people in the Town are not aware of this, and since we are all going to be impac5ed, the reason that I got up ~o speak was to request an exter~sion and maybe more publicity of this document; so that we can have more discussion, more open discussion. So when it's implemented, whatever is implemented, we don't have people feeling it's them against us, whoever "them" are and whoever "us" are. Because at the moment it seems like it's them against us. The farmers against the government. The wineries against 5he B and B owners, against the restaurants. The landowners against somebody else, 5he developers, and we're all in the community. Everybody wants to make a Living, everybody wants a quality of life. That's why we came here, whether we came here 300 years ago or last year. So, I think I've said it again, and I don't want to repeat myself, I am requesting that we extend the period, first of COURT REPORTIb}G AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878 8047 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 55 all. And that we notice, that it is the conversation, that when I speak to people that it is the conservation that if you've got money and you want to do something that is contrary to the best interests of the great majority of the people, you can get it done. And that's not a good perception. We're living in a time where government, whether it's federal, state or local, is being held to a standard that people are saying they're not living up to. Integrity is being questioned, and you know, as the British jurist said that justice must not only be done, but it must also appear to be done. And appearances and perceptions are significantly important. And I'm just asking the Board to take that into account, so that we can get more time. I'd like to be able to read this, and I don't know whether I'll understand it or not, but I know part of it impacts me just through the grapevine. And that's my request. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you. It's become clear to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the public input period is going to have to be extended on the draft portion of that the Generic Impact Statement and period of time will be established by the Board, if the Board so chooses to extend that time. And keep it in mind that may call for possibly a significant extension ef the moratorium to actually give us proper time te review, take public input, have the document scrutinized by the public. I think there were several important comments made here tonight, and I think Mr. Russell articulated the bottom line of it most clearly and eloquently, as well as it's been supported by several people here. So, this is the second out efa series of three scheduled Public Hearings, and at the next Town Board meeting when we're going te discuss extending this public comment time, or if we need to schedule a special Town Board meeting te accommodate tha~ discussion, we'll de so. Would anybody else care to address COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ,[631) 878 8047 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 56 the Board at this time? Mr. Keil. MR. KEIL: Thank you, my name is Eric Keil. I'm a residenn of Mattituck. I would like to first make a few comments about something that was Mrs. Ackerman said. She said based on this document that this document showed that we needed to go to five acre upzoning now. I haven't seen anything in 5he documen~ that indicates that to me. If anything, the document seems to indicate that we're doing terrific at preservation now. She also asked the question, can't we expect Southold ~o go the way of the rest of Long Island. And she asked the question why we wouldn't. I think one of the reasons we will not is because of what's taking place here tonight and what we have been talking about for ~he last three },ears, and ~hat is tha~ we've identified what we want this Town te be and we're seeking a road map to find that. I don't believe the rest ef Long Island had any interest in preserving agricultural heritage. In Huntington, where I spent most of my life, Huntington went so far as ~o zone its agricultural land for industry and office. They took their agricultural land and placed the highest value zoning on it. Virtually guaranteeing its development, and much of Long Island has done similar things Ee agricultural land. I'd also like Ee say that while I'm not sure tha~ i~'s exactly ~be right thing to de. I think that the comments that the Business Alliance have made with respect to ~heir P.A.I.R. Plan warrant significant further review. It's a read map for achieving just whaE we said we wanted te do, and John, Craig, Louisa Evans have said to me, said I feel like we've get to de five acre zoning because it's ~he only guarantee that we can get. The F.A.I.R. Plan seems mo me ~o be a road map ~o reach just that kind of guaranteed result and to do it in a wa}' that's much ~ore fair than a zoning increase wel~ld COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 2O 21 22 23 24 25 57 be. Basically I feel like that I'd real really like to see the Town Board, and the committee give 5his F.A.I.R. Plan much more thought in the DGE - the Draft Generic Environmental Statement -- get my tongue around that. I think we ought to give Ehat the consideration that it deserves and ~o review it in the context of 5he other tools that are being considered, and that I would think that we ought no do tha~. Thanks. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you Mr. Keil. evening, Mr. Van Bourgondien. MR. VAN BOURGONDIEN: Good Members of the Board. MS. NEVILLE: Please state your name. MR. VAN BOURGONDIEN: Bob Van Bourgondien. I live in Southold. Farmer in Peconic. I have a question of the moratorium group that produced this document, and that is in the decument that was dated December 13, 2000, key goals and policy considerations of the project plan, the Town of Southold Comprehensive Implementation Strategy. Under the natural environment page we have goals and contacts and targets. We have targets, no net loss of wetlands, no construction on slopes in excess of 15 percent. My question on the 15 percenn slope is, how do you calculate that acreage on a 15 percent slope? The acreage seems to be very, very low. I've got a 30 acre farm and depending on how it's calculated I probably have to three to four acres on my 30 acres. So I think your 15 percent slope there is a little low. The next question I have is no construction in areas with depth of greund water to less than ten feet. That's also stated in the summary, Page S8, it's the fifth of sixth bullet are high groundwater areas of less than ten feet. I do not see in the analysis of the theoretical build-out potential. I see wetlands, but I don't see anything to deduct properties of groundwaner less 5han ten fee5. COURT REPORTING Ai~D TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878 8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 58 My question also is: Is who might own these lands? Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Are there other comments from the floor? Yes, Mr. Baiz. MR. BAIZ: Good evening, Chris Baiz, Southold. I just wanted to make a couple of comments reflecting on some of the remarks tonight. Obviously, there is a lot of new input in specific areas. A lot of nhings need to be considered. I certainly appreciated and he's already left, but Mr. Scott Allen Russell's remarks with regards to the ag district law, and the way that runs contrary to material in the document, even to the fact for farm labor housing, and how this document was simply going to offer us as farmers, farm labor housing under an incentive zoning basis within our own lands for workers who only work on our farm individually, and I only h~ve a question to that point. Specifically, if my daughter's working on the farm, and I give her a place to lives as farm labor housing on the farm, and she gees married and her husband decides to work in Riverhead or at a marina or on a fishing boat, does that mean he can'~ live in the house too? Now, one of the things I also try to follow is the S.E.E.D. project, the Sustainable East End Developmen~ project. I go to these regular meetings, probably once every two weeks. We met last week twice we've got another meeting this Wednesday over on Shelter Island. I've watched uhis process. There's been one other gentleman at times in those meetings from the Town of Souuhold, and either he or I wind up being the de facto representative from the Town of Sounhold, while we watch what the other four Towns of ~he ease end of are ~rying to crea~e. And nhey have been urying to design these scenarios, five scenarios, from lesser ~o greater capital development over a period of time; and how to resolve the east end's regional transportation problems. Scenario number one was ~he sEatus COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE /631) 878 8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 59 quo other than finishing up Front Street in Greenport and a few other odds and ends that are right on the plate right now of the State highway department. Scenario number two, when I walked into a March meeting was to have four lanes of highway running from the end of the Long Island Expressway to the Greenport traffic circle on the North Road and to have another three lane highway running from the intersection of Route 105 and Route 25 all the wa}, to Orient Point. That means right through every village, right through all of our countryside, they were going to pun seven lanes of highway on us, and that was to justify the increased ferry traffic load expected in the future, and to have an already established corridor. Well, in that night I said, no you don't. And with that it was taken off of Scenario number two, for one voice. Now, last, let's see, I guess it was las~ Wednesday I was at a S.E.E.D.'s meeting over at Southampton College and the East Hampton Town Planner raised the issue, well, what's consensus. And somebody said, well, I don't know. And the East Hampton Planner said, Oh, it's 51-49, that's consensus. And fortunately there was a gentleman there representing New York State Department of Tra~sporta~ion, Mr. Jerry Bogats -- I think I pronounced ~hat correctly -- and he said no that's not consensus. So one of the other planners sitting around the table said, well, then it's got to be 60-40. And Jerry said, no, zt's not 60-40 either. And so somebody else sazd it's got to be 75-25. And he said, no, ira's not even 75-25. And then somebody said, well then 90-10 is certainly consensus. And Jerry said not until every last person is brought along do you have consensus. Okay. Now right now, we've got a very cumbersome totalogist document here ~o wade through and sift out and sort all ~hese little extraneous radicals in 50,000 different directions. Right now we've got tools in place to take care of things while COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION _ERVI~E lesll 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 60 we hash this out, and get consensus. We have the right to extent moratoria, and by the United States Supreme Court rulings we have the right to do it indefinitely until we resolve the issue, and right now the moratorium says no new subdividable building lots unless it's in a C.O.S. form, Conservation Opportunity Subdivision form. That's the only thing that will be considered meeting the Town's .goals. Now, what's also available to us and what was alluded to in the F.A.I.R. Plan is the right, again, b}' United States Supreme Court ruling, to limit the number of building permits for new building to be issued .each },ear. And in the case that they ruled on, they allowed that as not restricting development, that is allowing a community to manage its development until it has consensus. So, I speak to this point right now. You've got a yeti, awkwarO document. You've got other communities who have already set the standards, such as Southampton, that kept the DGEIS portion I believe open for over 18 months as they worked towards consensus, and in the meantime, we have the tools in place to do this. Now, you know, I'm fourth generation of my family to be farming here. My great grandmother came here at the end of World War I and started growing potatoes and cauliflower and then her son, my grandfather, and then my uncle followed in behind, ~nd iu seemed like nobody else in my family wanted to continue farming. Until I came along i[ said this is wha~ I want to do, and I knew l~hat from a very early age in my life, but I had to buy the farm from the family. I didn't inherit it. I'll probably the last guy out on selling development rights because I have the most expensive development rights to be sold uo the Town if there were ever a program like that. So I'm not ever looking for a successful negotiation in that eno simply because it's a waterfront farm. It's one of the last three bay front farms on Route 25, whether you run from Queens or just from COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE 16311 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 61 Riverhead, out to Orient Point. And it's something that my wife and I have -- we simply want to keep it that way. But, in doing that, it was -- that's my savings account. I don't have any other savings. In fact, I had about a 899 savings account in Southold Savings Bank that I closed out last year 'cause it was just foolish to keep a $99 savings account open. I don't have a 401K plan. The only pension plan that I have, if it will be there, is Social Security. M!, value is in the land, and that's what I look for mtr children and their children to have in the future as the basis for developing and expanding their interest in farming. So, in sum, we have an opportunity for consensus. I try to remove myself from the picture of the upzoning question, because whatever we want to do -- whatever happens, we simply want to protect and preserve that farm. So the important issue here for all of us with the report is to achieve consensus, take the time that's necessary, the tools to maintain the status quo for nhe time being are in place. Let's get to consensus. Good evening. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you Mr. Baiz. Are there other somments from the public at this point? This document is at all of the local libraries. I believe there's one for reference as well as one that can be checked out, and if you have internet access. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Where on the internet? SUPERVISOR HORTON: It is on mhe Town website, which is www.southoldtown.northfork.net, and yes, I may be one of the only people in this room that knows that website. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Southoldtown -- SUPERVISOR HORTON: .northfork.net and if you have any trouble accessing that website maybe I gave you a dot in the wrong place, call my office an 765-1889, and both Volumes I and II of the document are accessible online. When you get online to the Town website, if you actually scroll down COURT REPORTING ]kND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 62 we're first. about half a page, you'll see a heading that says "What's new," and just below that there's a bar to click on for Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Are there other comments from the floor? Yes, Mr. Cooper. MR. COOPER: Doug Cooper again, Matnituck. Do you gentleman know which is the leading agricultural county in New York State in terms of agricul5ural output? SUPERVISOR HORTON: Suffolk County. MR. COOPER: Do you know which is the leading Township in Suffolk County? SUPERVISOR HORTON: Southold Town. MR. COOPER: I'm not sure, bu5 either first or second. SUPERVISOR HORTON: We're the MR. COOPER: Which puts us probably either first or second in the state. This is impressive numbers for a township like ours. I hope we respect our agricultural communiuy in whau we do. Just a couple more quick commen~s on your document. Some of the preservation numbers and the way you figure ~hings, I was at a work session a couple weeks ago where the moratorium committee made a presentation. I was very confused with the example of how they figure preservation numbers when a landowner comes in and sells the PDRs on half the farm; for instance, if I have a bad year and I need some operating capital, I can come in and hopefully they'll allow me to sell development righns on half my farm. The numbers, as in was explained to me and if I'm wrong, please nell me, if you sell your development rights on half your property, there's a hundred percent preservation on that half of the property. The other half of nhe property is non being developed in this scenario. It's still going to be farmed. It's not going no be developed for anything. The landowner is not going no COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ~6311 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 restrain it. Theoretically, on half the farm there's a hundred percent preservation on the other half nothing is done. It's the same as it was before; however, as I explained at that meeting, it goes into statistics as a 50 percent preservation project. This is a complete distortion. This is wrong. AU some point in the future that other half of the farm is going to come in before this Town Board for development, for further preservation, for something at which time that half of the farm will develop its owi~ numbers. And now you're going to have two sems of numbers for that same half of the farm. This is crazy stuff. What it does is go from preservation of a hundred percent on half my property or half somebody's property and making it look like 50 percent preservation, which means the other half of the property was developed. It implies that the other half of the property was developed. This is wrong. It distorts your numbers. It will bring your preservation numbers down, and I think it's very inaccurate. Another thing that troubles me is that if there's a house on the property, a landowner comes in, and he has a farmhouse, but he wants to sell the development rights on the whole piece; how is that treated? The way it appears in here that it's treated is that let's say it's a ten acre parcel, you take off two acres for the house, he's in two acre zoning. You take two acres for the house, he sells the development rights on the other eight acres. So the farm has a hundred percent preservation on the eight acres of actual farm. It's a hundred percent preserved, but it goes, as it is my understanding and the way I can read it in these papers, is that you coun~ that existing house. So rather than being a hundred percent preserved, it's 80 percent preserved. This is an existing house. It can be 200 years old. It's not a new house that was just put on your property, and this is wrong. It distorts your numbers. Thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Tha~lk you, Mr. Cooper. COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE (631~ 878-8047 1 2 3 ~4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 64 Do we have other comments from the public? MS. LANDAER: Adrienne Laildaer from Mattituck. Well, I came out here's five years ago because it's beautiful. It's rural. It's really a very special place. I travel in my business all over the world, and I see the way the world is changing. I don't come to nhese meetings, but I read the Suffolk Times, and, you know, I feel that what is really going -- how are we all going to get together; how are the farmers going to get together; how are the people in the community going to get together; how are the people that vacation here going to get together. I mean, I think thatz the one thing is if this land is preserved as a beautiful place, it's a beautiful place for people to come and visit, tourism, you know, it will survive. And as far as the land values, I mean you have to look like five years from now, from five years ago when we bought the land i~'s gone up so much. I mean, you know, if the land is in five years what it will be worth. I mean iE could be worth a lot more to the farmers than if they sold it to the development rights right now. I mean, I don't know any of the laws or this or that, but I was thinking, if I know you said something about getting tax incentives. I mean, are there things that could be done for, you know, the farmland? SUPERVISOR HORTON: There are several programs in place and this document is where this process is seeking to review possibility of furthering those programs or utilizing other government powers of authority to achieve various preservation goals. MS. LANDAER: My feeling is basically keep it beautiful. Keep it special and people will come. If it's not -- if it's like Huntington, Long Island people will not come here, and there won't be any business or, you know, tourism, farms, people visining the farms, people visiting the vineyards or beds and breakfasts, and I think that's really a long term vision. And thank you. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you. COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ~631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 65 MS. NEVILLE: Ms. Landaer, would you please sign the sheet? COUNCILMAN RICHTER: Miss Landaer, I think that all of us have that same thought that you do. SUPERVISOR NORTON: Dr. Damianos. DR. DAMIANOS: Dr. Damianos, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Dan's my name and wine's my game. I'm really here, and I reserve the right to really synthesize what I have to say perhaps in tomorrow's meeting, et cetera; however, there were a few items and I've been listening very, very closely in the past few days, and I'm in total agreement with my colleague Chris in terms that we really need more time. I became aware of that epistle. It reads to some people like Greek, but I speak and read Greek, and I still don't understand it, and so I have a problem with that, and I need more time. I think the idea of continuing the moratorium is it a wonderful idea. We've accomplished everything we want to accomplish, and that is, we've accomplished preservation. We've kept our farmlands, and so, sounder minds can prevail to come up with an alternative solution for preservation. I'm for preservation, ladies and gentlemen, not for regulation. AnO there are ways to do this. I'm not sure about the sta[istics I've gotten because I haven't had an opportunity really to study that, but I'm told that there are 10,000 acres of which on yet to be built are 5,200 acres, and it turns out than I own ten percent of 5han. That means you can take 10 percent of the 2,300 homes that you can build on that and just check nhat off, because, hey, I'm non developing my land. But I have more to say on that. I think preservation works great. I've done it, and I think it's a wonderful thing. It needs our time, and by giving us tha5 moratorium for a year or two years, we can continue with this program 5han has such great potential. I'm happy to report, and I'm not bragging, please, because it worked great for me ~oo, with the Peconic Land Trus~, I was able to donate in COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE .~31) 878 8047 1 2 3 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 66 November of ~his past year, %0 acres Eo the Town of Southold. And I was thrilled in order to do it. It helped me significantly on a tax basis, but I preserved wonderful acres tha~ are going to be vineyards for ever and ever, right on Main Road, righ~ where we'd want it. The year before I donated to the Town of Southold another 25 acres of densely wooded property. And I ask ~he Town, if they would, it's their land, they can do whatever ~hey want with it, but wouldn't it be nice to make a small park or a village green for ~he residents of Southold. There are many things we can do, but I think we just need some time. I need time to find out what's going on. I have heard Mr. La Rocca, my good friend, Theresa Ackerman, who I have known for years and years. I've known her as a child. And I get upset when she says, well, Dr. Dan, you know what happened in Port Jeff, you know wha~ happened in Miller Place, you know, in 1983 when this came about and nobody cared about i~. I said, you know, you weren't even born then, for God's sakes, Theresa. I sat down with John B. Klein in 1976 when he came out with this plan, and I remember distinctly in Smithtown. I lived in Head of the Harbor in St. James in Smithtown, when he came out with this program. And I said that's going to be the most innovative, marvelous program in the world. Do you think the people of Smi~haven, Brookhaven cared about saving farmland? They didn't care. The program was there. The people didn't care. They moved in. They wanted houses. And as Chris said, and it's right because I own a piece of industrial property that was zoned L-1 in Port Jefferson Station, tha~ was at one time a wonderful farm. They upzoned it. Get rid of the farms. But in Southold we're different. So why are we in such a panic here to rush to do something that could cause irreparable damage to the very, very thing that we all moved here to have, open land and open space? Of my 550 or 600 acres, 550 do not have land rights sold. I've kept those COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE !631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 b 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 67 land rights, but you know what, when I go to a bank as I had uo, to get a loan, I was able to say and I had X number of lands that I can give in terms of collateral, and banks want collateral. Mr. La Rocca stated, and iE made me really upset, that banks, you know, obviously are pro-farmers because they do business with farmers. Excuse me, they don't do business with you? Are you so wealthy that you got your house without a mortgage? I mean, are you really dumb? Where does that come through? And people are listening and nodding. I see people nodding. It really is very disturbing. And when Chris tells me the same thing, I said Eo Chris outside, Terry I mean, I said you know what, Terry, you're absolutely right about Brookhaven. You know wha~ we should do, let's get back. Okay, let's get active politically. Let's go to John LaValle in Brookhaven, our supervisor. and say, John, we want open space in the Town of Brookhaven. We no longer want malls. We want to you bulldoze the Smithaven Mall. We want you to bulldoze this mall and tha~ mall, and we want open space. And just put it into law. It's a little dramatic, but in a sense, aren't kind of doing the same thing here? Just put it into law. I really got up primarily because I was very upset with our lovely people who have the bed and breakfasts here in the Town ef Southold. They are concerned about wineries having hotels, et cetera, believe me, I try to assure them that 99 percent are really net interested in it. It's nice te have the option Eo do that, but they're really not interested in it. In order to make a hamle~ like that or a hotel, you have to have a uni~ greater than 60 te make it financially viable, and I don't think anybody cares about ~han. As far as restaurants are concerned, we met with our Supervisor a couple of weeks ago as a member ef the Long Island Wine Council and explained te our supervisor that we really don't want restaurants. What we would really like te have is the ability to have a kitchen, commercial type kitchen, and COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE ,[631) 878-8047 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 68 when we do have an event, we can bring one of our local restaurateurs in so he doesn't have to bring in any trucks in refrigerated trucks and other things like thau, and come in and have something available to serve, et cetera, which works out very, very well. So I wanted to express that and I will, I see they're all gone now unfortunately, but I'll get to them at any rate. I have lots of other things to say. Once I can suudy that and I'm going to be up all night, and I'll probably be babbling by the time I get up here tomorrow night. I'd like to thank you very much for uhe time you've given me. Have a good night. SUPERVISOR HORTON: Thank you, Dr. Damianos. Are there other comments on the floor on this document this evening on this Public Hearing? If there is nothing further, we will recess this Public Hearing and reconvene tomorrow night at the scheduled time here an the Town Hall. Refresh me if I'm wrong, but I believe it is 7:00 p.m., where we will again take public input on this document. (Time ended: 7:30 p.m./ COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE !631~ 878-8047 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2O 21 22 23 24 25 69 CERTIFICATION I, Florence V. Wiles, Nocary Public for the State of New York, do hereby certify: THAT the within transcript is a true record of the testimony given. I further certify that I am non related by blood or marriage, to any of the parties to chis action; and THAT I am in no way interested in the outcome of this matter. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 23rd day of June, 2003. Florence V. Wiles COURT REPORTING AND TPJkNSCRIPTION SERVICE (631) 878 8047 RECEIVED dUN 1 9 2003 C~outhotcl Town Cle~l SPECIAL PUBLIC HEARING SOUTHOLD TOWN HALL 53095 Main Road, Southold, NY ON DGEIS (Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement) prepared for the proposed Town Comprehensive Implementation Strategy (A Planning Study for Southold Town) Public Information Session Thursday, June 19, 2003 - 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. 0 ortuni for Public to Comment Thursday, June 19, 2003 - 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 23, 2003 - 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 24, 2003 - 7:00 p.m. (10 days provided for written comment after close of public hearing) RECEIVED J(]N 19 2003 Southolcl Towa Clerl THE DGEIS PUBLIC HEARING HAS BEEN MOVED TO SOUTHOLD SCHOOL AUDITORIUM