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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTB-12/02/2008 ELIZABETH A. NEVILLE Town Hall, 53095 Main Road TOWN CLERK PO Box 1179 Southold, NY 11971 REGISTRAR OF VITAL STATISTICS Fax (631) 765-6145 MARRIAGE OFFICER Telephone: (631) 765 - 1800 RECORDS MANAGEMENT OFFICER southoldtown.northfork.net FREEDOM OF INFORMATION OFFICER OFFICE OF THE TOWN CLERK SOUTHOLD TOWN BOARD REGULAR MEETING MINUTES December 2, 2008 7:30 PM A Regular Meeting of the Southold Town Board was held Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at the Meeting Hall, 53095 Main Road, Southold, NY. Supervisor Russell opened the meeting at 7:30 PM with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Call to Order 7:30 PM Meeting called to order on December 2, 2008 at Meeting Hall, 53095 Route 25, Southold, NY. Attendee Name Organization Title Status Arrived William Ruland Town of Southold Councilman Present Vincent Orlando Town of Southold Councilman Present Albert Krupski Jr. Town of Southold Councilman Present Thomas H. Wickham Town of Southold Councilman Present Louisa P. Evans Town of Southold Justice Present Scott Russell Town of Southold Supervisor Present Elizabeth A. Neville Town of Southold Town Clerk Present Kieran Corcoran Town of Southold Assistant Town Attorney Present I. Reports 1. Justice Evans October 2008 2. Justice Price October 2008 3. Board of Trustees October 2008 Page 1 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting 4. Town Clerk October 2008 5. Budget Report October 2008 6. Program for the Disabled November 2008 II. Public Notices 1. Renewal Application to NYS Liquor Authority North Fork Wines & Vineyards, 19110 Soundview Ave., Southold The Pequot Inn, Inc, 246 Montauk Ave., Fishers Island III. Communications IV. Discussion 1. 9:00 A.M. - Mark Terry Update on the Management of Private, Residential Dock Structures 2. 10:00 A.M. - Renewable Energy Committee Legislative Goals for 2009 - Energy Star Construction - Lighting Code 3. Request for Use of Strawberry Fields 4. SCWA Key Money Fees 5. Justice Court Scheduling for Meeting Hall 6. Board Appointments 7. Budget Discussion Councilman Ruland 8. Cablevision - Special Franchise & PSE Rate - Possible action Page 2 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting 9. Town Employees on Committees per Councilman Orlando 10. Vehicle Use Policy Minutes Approval RESOLVEDaccepts the minutes dated that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby : Tuesday, September 09, 2008 ? Vote Record - Acceptance of Minutes for September 9, 2008 7:30 PM Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ? Accepted ?????????? Accepted as Amended Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Seconder ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ???????? Scott Russell Voter RESOLVEDaccepts the minutes dated that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby : Tuesday, September 23, 2008 ? Vote Record - Acceptance of Minutes for September 23, 2008 4:30 PM Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ? Accepted ?????????? Accepted as Amended Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Seconder ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ???????? Scott Russell Voter RESOLVEDaccepts the minutes dated that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby : Tuesday, October 07, 2008 ? Vote Record - Acceptance of Minutes for October 7, 2008 7:30 PM Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ? Accepted ?????????? Accepted as Amended Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Seconder ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ???????? Scott Russell Voter Pledge of Allegiance SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Okay, I am just going to call the meeting to order. Would everybody please rise and join in the Pledge of Allegiance? Just to go over a couple of things, we actually have two public hearings tonight, I know some of you are here for a public informational hearing on the DEIS or the SEQRA process for the Goldsmiths jetty. Some of you are here for the cell tower. You will be given the opportunity to be heard shortly. In the meantime, what I am going to do is invite anybody up that wants to speak on any of the other items that appear on the agenda. Nobody wants to fill in for Joan Egan this evening? Hearing none, we will get some of this business done and then we will get to those hearings. V. Resolutions Page 3 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting 2008-1041 CATEGORY: Audit DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Approve Audit December 2, 2008 RESOLVED approves the audit dated that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby December 2, 2008. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1041 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Seconder ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1042 CATEGORY: Set Meeting DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Set Meeting December 16, 2008 4:30 Pm RESOLVED that the next Regular Town Board Meeting of the Southold Town Board be held, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at the Southold Town Hall, Southold, New York at 4:30 P. M.. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1042 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Seconder ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1043 CATEGORY: Grants DEPARTMENT: Public Works Improvements to Southold Town Parking Lot Grant RESOLVEDImprovements to that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby finds that Page 4 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting the Southold Town Parking LotSuffolk County Downtown , funded by a grant , as part of the Revitalization Program is classified as an Unlisted Action pursuant to SEQRA Rules and Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Regulations, 6 NYCRR Section 617, and that the established itself as lead agency for the uncoordinated review of this action and issues a Negative Declaration for the action and authorizes Supervisor Scott A. Russell to sign the short form EAF for this action ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1043 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Initiator ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Seconder ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1044 CATEGORY: Contracts, Lease & Agreements DEPARTMENT: Recreation Hire Winter 2009 Recreation Instructors RESOLVEDauthorizes and directs Supervisor that the Town Board of the Town of Southold Scott A. Russell to execute an agreement with the following individuals for the Winter 2009 recreation programs , all in accordance with the approval of the Town Attorney. Funding for the instructors listed below has been budgeted for in the recreation department's 2009 instructor line A7020.4.500.420. Antoinette Beck-Witt (drawing class)........................................... $30/hour Susan Blacklocke (Poi-dancing)…………………………………… $30/hour Barbara Blossey-Chuvalas (basket & rug making)……………… $30/hour Bernard Cannac (winemaking course)..................................... $30/hour Thomas Boucher (guitar)............................................................. $30/hour Constance Case (quilting classes)............................................ $30/hour Eugenia Cherouski (folk dancing)............................................... $30/hour Doris Coniglio (knitting classes)............................................... $30/hour John Crosser (Youth Basketball Program)……………………. $15/hour Paula Croteau (baking classes)…………………………………… $30/hour Lenora Dome (belly dancing).................................................... $30/hour Page 5 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting Martha Eagle (Aerobics).............................................................. $30/hour East End Insurance Services (Defensive Driving)..................... $30/person Bill Gatz (Youth Basketball Program)…………………………… $30/hour Rosemary Martilotta (hatha yoga)……………………………...... $55/class Judy McCleery (Digital Photography)…………………………… $30/hour Riverside Gymnastics (youth gymnastics)................................. $50/person Laurie Short (aerobics classes)................................................... $30/hour Steve Smith (Weight Training)..................................................... $30/hour Jocelyn Suglia (Youth Basketball Program)…………………… $30/hour Kathleen Tergesen (Girls Youth Basketball Program)………….. $15/hour Angela Tondo (Mommy & Me)................................................... $30/hour Touch Dancing Studios (ballroom dancing)……………………… $65/person Devon Treharne (writing and reading classes)………………….. $30/hour ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1044 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Initiator ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Seconder ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1045 CATEGORY: Authorize to Bid DEPARTMENT: Human Resource Center Readvertise for the 2009 Milk Bid for the Human Resource Center RESOLVEDauthorizes and directs the that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Town Clerk to readvertise for the 2009 Milk Bid for the Human Resource Center. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1045 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Seconder ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Initiator ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1046 CATEGORY: Budget Modification DEPARTMENT: Land Preservation 2008 Budget Mod - Land Preservation Page 6 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting Fiscal Impact: The purpose of this budget modification is to correct a budget line deficit created by the Sepenoski development rights easement purchase and to provide funding for the Ficner and Wenofske development rights easement purchases. Funds will also be used for closing costs associated with the Heaney and Dickerson open space property donations. These four projects are expected to be completed during the year 2008. Funds are available from "surplus" carried over from 2007 as well as current year Serial Bond Interest appropriations. RESOLVEDhereby modifies the 2008 that the Town Board of the Town of Southold Community Preservation Fund budget as follows: Increase: Appropriations H3.8660.2.600.100 Land Acquisitions $ 4,000,000 Revenues H3.5990.00 Appropriated Fund Balance 3,381,000 Decrease: Appropriations H3.9710.7.100.100 Serial Bond Interest $619,000 ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1046 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Seconder ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Initiator ?? Rescinded 2008-1047 CATEGORY: Authorize to Bid DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Amend Resolution 2008-1017 RESOLVEDamends resolution 2008- that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby 1017, adopted at the November 18, 2008 Town Board regular meeting to read as follows: RESOLVED that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby declares the following vehicle be surplus: Page 7 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting 1997 Dodge Van Vin #: 2B5WB35Y4VK524478 RESOLVED Be it further that the Town Board declares that the above vehicle is junk, authorizes and directs the Town Clerk to undrivable, unusable and should be disposed of. advertise same for bid. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1047 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Initiator ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Seconder ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1048 CATEGORY: Attend Seminar DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Attend Seminar - HRC RESOLVED grants permission to that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Jacqui Martinez, Senior Citizen Center Manager to attend a seminar sponsored by the New York State Office for Aging on Strategies for Effectively Managing Nutrition Programs in Today’s Challenging Environment in Uniondale, on December 9, 2008. All expenses for registration and travel to be a legal charge to the 2008 budget (meetings and seminars). ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1048 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Initiator ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Seconder ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1049 CATEGORY: Bid Acceptance DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Drydocking of Race Point Page 8 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting RESOLVEDaccepts the bid of Thames that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Shipyard and Repair of New London, CT for dry-docking the vessel Race Point, for the Fishers Island Ferry District in the amount of $77,896.00, all in accordance with the Town Attorney. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1049 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Initiator ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Seconder ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Initiator ?? Rescinded 2008-1050 CATEGORY: Attend Seminar DEPARTMENT: Planning Board Grant Permission to Mark Terry, Planner, to Attend Peconic Estuary Program Strategic Planning on Shelter Island, New York on December 8 and 9, 2008 RESOLVED grants permission to Mark that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Terry, Planner, to attend Peconic Estuary Program Strategic Planning on Shelter Island, New York on December 8 and 9, 2008. All expenses for registration and travel to be a legal charge to the 2008 Planning Department budget (meetings and seminars). ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1050 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Seconder ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? ??Albert Krupski Jr. Initiator Withdrawn ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Rescinded ???????? Scott Russell Voter Next: Dec 16, 2008 4:30 PM 2008-1051 CATEGORY: Close/Use Town Roads DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Grant Permission to the Mattituck-Cutchogue Cub and Girl Scouts to Close Love Lane to Have a Holiday Celebration and Tree Decorating with the Mattituck Chamber of Commerce on Sunday, December 7, 2008 Beginning from 3:00 Pm. to 5:00 P.M. Page 9 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting RESOLVEDgrants permission to the that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Mattituck-Cutchogue Cub and Girl Scouts to close Love Lane to have a holiday celebration and tree decorating with the Mattituck Chamber of Commerce on Sunday, December 7, 2008 beginning from 3:00 pm. to 5:00 p.m. , providing they provide the Town Clerk’s office with a certificate of insurance naming the town as an additional insured for one million dollars and contact Capt. Flatley upon receipt of the approval of this resolution to coordinate traffic control. Support is for this year only, as the Southold Town Board continues to evaluate the use of town roads. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1051 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Seconder ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1052 CATEGORY: Contracts, Lease & Agreements DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Deferred Compensation Agreement WHEREAS , State Street Bank and Trust Company ("State Street") currently serves as passive, nondiscretionary Trustee for the Town Of Southold Deferred Compensation Plan (the "Plan"); and WHEREAS , State Street has provided notice to Hartford Life Insurance Company that it will no longer provide these services to our customers beyond January 9, 2009; and WHEREAS , as a result, it is desirable to remove State Street as passive, nondiscretionary Trustee of the trust for the Plan and to appoint Reliance Trust Company ("RTC") as successor passive, nondiscretionary Trustee of the trust for the Plan; and now THEREFORE BE IT Page 10 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting RESOLVED , that State Street is hereby removed as passive, nondiscretionary Trustee of the trust for the Plan, and that Reliance Trust Company is hereby appointed as successor passive, nondiscretionary Trustee for the trust for the Plan; and Be it FURTHER RESOLVED , that the Supervisor of the Town of Southold, on behalf of the Board, is hereby authorized, empowered and directed to execute any and all documents required to effectuate each removal and appointment, including but not limited to the enclosed Trustee Removal and Appointment, and to take such actions as are necessary, appropriate or advisable to effectuate the foregoing resolution. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1052 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Initiator ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Seconder ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1053 CATEGORY: Litigation DEPARTMENT: Town Attorney Accept Artco Drainage Corp. Settlement RESOLVEDauthorizes and directs the that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Town Board to accept the sum of $7,500.00 in full settlement of the account of unpaid tipping fees for Artco Drainage Corp. ; and authorizes BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby and directs Supervisor Scott A. Russell to execute the General Release between the Town of Southold and Artco Drainage Corp. in connection with this settlement , subject to the approval of the Town Attorney. Page 11 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1053 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Initiator ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Seconder ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1054 CATEGORY: Retirement/Resignation DEPARTMENT: Accounting Accept Martha Jones Intent to Retire RESOLVEDacknowledges the intent to that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby retire of Martha Jones from the position of Clerk Typist in the Assessors Office , effective January 9, 2009. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1054 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Seconder ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Initiator ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1055 CATEGORY: Attend Seminar DEPARTMENT: Town Attorney Grants Permission to Assistant Town Attorney, Lori M. Hulse, to Attend the Seminar Entitled “Practicing in the Outlying Districts: Town Ordinances & Landlord-Tenant Matters” at Fifth District Court in Ronkonkoma, New York RESOLVEDgrants permission to that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Assistant Town Attorney, Lori M. Hulse, to attend the Seminar entitled “Practicing in the Outlying Districts: Town Ordinances & Landlord-Tenant Matters” at Fifth District Court in Ronkonkoma, New York , on December 10, 2008. All expenses for registration and travel are to be a charge to the 2008 Town Attorney budget. Page 12 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1055 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Voter ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Seconder ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Initiator ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Voter ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 2008-1056 CATEGORY: Committee Decisions DEPARTMENT: Town Clerk Town Board Review Committee RESOLVED appoints Councilman that the Town Board of the Town of Southold hereby Albert J. Krupski, Jr. and Councilman Vincent Orlando to a committee to review the issues of town employees on town committees. ? Vote Record - Resolution RES-2008-1056 ? Adopted Yes/Aye No/Nay Abstain Absent ?? Adopted as Amended ? ? ? ? William Ruland Seconder ?? Defeated ???????? Vincent Orlando Voter ?? Tabled ???????? Albert Krupski Jr. Voter ?? Withdrawn ???????? Thomas H. Wickham Voter ?? Supervisor's Appt ???????? Louisa P. Evans Initiator ?? Tax Receiver's Appt ???????? Scott Russell Voter ?? Rescinded 17. Statement MR. GAUDIOSO: And would there be a date to consider a resolution of this matter? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: That would, I would think two weeks from today. MR. GAUDIOSO: Two weeks from today? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Mmmhmm. MR. GAUDIOSO: Thank you very much for your consideration. If there are any additional questions throughout the process, please feel free to contact me. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you very much. MR. GAUDIOSO: Thank you. Page 13 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting VI. Public Hearings Statement SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Just for the people, I am sorry, for Goldsmiths inlet. About two months ago we decided to schedule the scoping session for this evening. Along the lines, it had not been published in the paper. There is no legal requirement to publish it in the paper but in the interest of trying to include the public and cast as broad a net as possible for public input, tonight’s hearing is we are going to take all the information and all the statements, we are going to adjourn the meeting and then set up another meeting for another night with public notice, so that the public will also be given another opportunity to come in and carry on with the same meeting. So we are not going to close the business of that particular issue tonight. Motion To: Motion to recess to Public Hearing COMMENTS - Current Meeting: RESOLVEDbe and hereby is declared that this meeting of the Southold Town Board recessed at 7:44 PM in order to hold a public hearing. RESULT: ADOPTED [UNANIMOUS] MOVER: Louisa P. Evans, Justice SECONDER: Albert Krupski Jr., Councilman AYES: Ruland, Orlando, Krupski Jr., Wickham, Evans, Russell 1. Waiver Application of Omnipoint Communications COMMENTS - Current Meeting: IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: that the Town Board of the December 2, 2008 at 7:35 PM, in the Meeting Hall at Southold Town Town of Southold sets Hall , 53096 Main Road, Southold, New York 11971, as the time and place for a public hearing application of Omnipoint Communications, Inc. for a waiver concerning the of the “Temporary Moratorium on the Processing, Review of, and making Decisions on applications Wireless for Building Permits, Site plans and Special Exception Use Permits for Communications Facilities in the Town of Southold” at which time all interested persons will be given an opportunity to be heard. And I have several communications in the file. One of them is the original application for the cell tower that Omnipoint made and of course it is quite bulky and lengthy. I also have a letter dated November 10 from their attorney, Carl Snyder and Snyder, LLP. “Dear Members of the Board, We represent Omnipoint Communications in connection with the enclosed application for a waiver. Omnipoint seeks relief from the moratorium pursuant to (inaudible) so that it may seek approval to locate public utility wireless communications facility at the site. The site being the Cutchogue Presbyterian church, in the steeple of it. By way of background, kindly note that Omnipoint is a provider of commercial mobile radio services and is licensed by the FCC to provide digital wireless telecommunications throughout the New York metropolitan area, including the Town. The proposed facility is necessary for Omnipoint to remedy a significant gap in reliable service. The facility consists of placement of antennae’s hidden behind a concealment chamber within the existing church steeple, together with minor equipment at the base of the church building. In furtherance, we respectfully submit the required $250 fee, together with copies. We respectfully request that the Board refer this matter to the Planning Page 14 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting Board at the next meeting. Thank you for your consideration.” The Planning Board has met and I will report, I will read their report dated December 1 regarding the wireless communication facility waiver request. “The Planning Board has reviewed the requested waiver from the wireless communications facilities moratorium for the project proposed by Omnipoint in Cutchogue and recommends a denial of the waiver request. The moratorium ends in only two months, that is January 29, 2009 and there are some key changes to the wireless facilities code pending that will help ensure that wireless facilities are constructed as safely as possible especially in situations where the public has access to the site, as they would in this case. In the ongoing wireless communications study that is nearly completed, the Town’s consultant on wireless communications facilities recommends changing the code to require full disclosure and analysis of the potential impacts of electromagnetic radiation. The FCC has established limits for maximum permissible exposure to the radio energy transmitted by wireless facilities, however, the FCC does not review, inspect or track wireless facilities for compliance. It is up to local jurisdictions to ensure that wireless facilities meet all these standards. Our town code is not worded properly to require this disclosure, nor to require the information be presented the best way for us to be confident the public is not exposed to electromagnetic radiation that exceeds federal limits. We believe the recommended code changes could be accomplished prior to the expiration of the moratorium and with safeguards in place, the Town could process this application in a timely manner.” I have before me another communication to the Town Board from a Sophia Greenfield of Southold, New York. Is she here today? Would she like to read this, I won’t read it if the proponent is in the audience and would like to read it. But before that, I need to point out that this has been a duly noticed public hearing, there is a legal in the local newspaper that has been published, it has also appeared on the Town Clerk’s bulletin board outside the door and I don’t think we have any additional notes in the file. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anyone like to come up and address the Town Board on this specific public hearing? COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: I should just say one final thing. I am a member of the Cutchogue Presbyterian church. I am no longer an officer, a trustee of it but I am a member of it so I plan to recuse myself from any further discussions or votes on this matter. ROBERT GAUDIOSO: Good evening, honorable Supervisor and members of the Town Board. My name is Robert Gaudioso, I am a partner with the law firm of Snyder and Snyder and I am here this evening on behalf of Omnipoint Communications. As was noted, this is an application under the express waiver provisions of your moratorium. As you know, that moratorium has concluded or will conclude at the end of January but it could be extended and that is why we filed the waiver application. The moratorium has been extended at least two times for a total of at least 18 months. We submitted some lengthy documents, both showing the proposed design of the facility by way of a site plan. And it is a great design, it is a design that has been approved within the town at other locations, essentially the antennas would be concealed within the existing church steeple that would be rebuilt based on the construction diagrams. The equipment would be at the base of the facility, at the base of the church and well screened. So there would be no aesthetic impact from the facility. We also submitted propagation maps from our radio frequency engineer showing that there is a significant need for this facility to provide federally Page 15 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting licensed wireless service within the Town of Southold. We also, and most importantly, submitted based on the comments of the Planning Board, a full radio frequency emissions report that shows that the facility will be in compliance with the federal regulations. And as you know, radio frequency emissions are federally preempted under the 1996 telecommunications act. But nevertheless, we did submit that report and the report shows that the facility would actually be hundreds of times below the federal limit. We have no objection to submitting additional information throughout the process if the form of the report that we submitted is found to be deficient but we believe it is within the federal guidelines. Essentially we are not asking for approval of the facility, all we are asking for is the opportunity to process the application with the Zoning Board under your quite extensive zoning regulations that have been in place for some time. If those regulations should happen to change pursuant to New York law before we have vested rights, obviously we would have to undergo that process as well and deal with the changed ordinances, as long as it was properly enacted. So essentially in a nutshell, we submitted this application because we have waited quite an extensive period of time, we have proposed a very aesthetically pleasing facility, it is not a cell tower. It is antennas within an existing church steeple which has been approved in a similar instance for one of our competitors. And we believe that under the federal law and state law regarding moratoriums that this waiver application should be approved and we should be allowed to, at a minimum, process our application through the regular zoning process. I would be happy to answer any questions that either the Board members or the members of the public may have. Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Any questions? I am sorry, we have a podium here. Could you come and ask and direct the question to us? Thank you very much. We also just need your name and hamlet for the record. JOSEPH MARCHESE: My name is Joseph Marchese, I live in Peconic. My question is in reference to the cell tower that is going to go inside a church. We had a similar instance in my hometown of Floral Park, where they were going to put up these towers. And at that time, MCI or Worldcom went out of business. So what happens if they would go out of business? Who would be responsible for taking down those antennas and taking out that equipment? No doubt it is probably not in the whole format that you set up. But they should be held responsible. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: As a clarification, the current cell tower code doesn’t speak to issues of abandonment of equipment. We, with the consultant, have tried to include that in the recommendations that he is going to be coming forward with shortly. In fact, now it is becoming a more critical issue because of all the mergers that are taking place. MR. MARCHESE: Exactly right. And everybody is going bankrupt. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: And that is why we went to the consultant, who is a professional, to help us provide the guidance. But I don’t know if you want to speak to that specific issue? MR. GAUDIOSO: Sure. We, a couple of points. Number one, we are not proposing a tower, so the issue of abandonment is not as keen as it might be with a tower that could be an eyesore to the community. We are proposing small panel antennas approximately 51 inches by 12 inches, Page 16 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting concealed and out of view with small equipment cabinets at the base of the existing church but again, what we are asking this Board to do is allow us to process our application for a special permit under the existing code and if the new code is enacted or changes are enacted before approval which is quite likely provided the Town Board proceeds diligently, we would be subject to those provisions of abandonment. But even so, even if we were out of stage before the new ordinance was enacted, I don’t think we would object to a provision requiring the applicant Omnipoint to remove the equipment at time and where it was abandoned. So the Zoning Board would have the authority under New York law to impose reasonable conditions. I can tell you, we wouldn’t oppose that as a reasonable condition to remove the equipment, even if it was not contained in your ordinance. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anybody else like to come up and address the Town Board on this particular issue? FRANK WILLS: Good evening, my name is Frank Wills, I live in Mattituck. Got a few questions. The Town, the tower height, is it all contained in the existing steeple or will it project beyond the steeple? I believe I heard this gentleman say, talk about a redesigned steeple. Does that mean we are going to have a bigger steeple on the church or not? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: If you wouldn’t mind. MR. GAUDIOSO: Again, for the purposes of this Board, it is merely the waiver application and the application specifically would have to be reviewed, I believe, by your Zoning Board. Nevertheless, we did submit plans showing that the intent is to have the church steeple be replaced in the same manner as it currently exists. Currently it is approximately 65 feet in height and that is what it would be in the end. Our antennas would be much lower than that, approximately 54 feet and 4 inches and 47 feet, 4 inches within the steeple. So there is no intention to raise the height, the intention is to duplicate what is there now and to have radio frequency friendly panels in front of the antennas so that they would be concealed from view. MR. WILLS: Thank you. My next question was addressed by the Planning Board about radiation. And depending on, there is obviously radiation being emitted by these towers, how far does it go. In the church people are close by, so will it possibly affect church goers on Sunday or whatever day they are there? I don’t think that is addressed in any of the evaluations of this potential cell tower. MR. GAUDIOSO: In fact it is. It is a great question, we did actually study that exact question and we studied it in a number of ways. We submitted a report, attaches and exhibits, the memorandum of law that you have in your package from Scionetics Corporation, an expert in this field. Essentially, the federal government has said provided we meet the federal limit on radio frequency emissions, not necessarily radiation but radio frequency emissions, local municipalities are preempted from regulating on that basis. We did the report and we took into account exactly what this gentleman has requested, so for example, we looked at the maximum amount of emissions that are possible and normally we operate much lower than the maximum but we took a worse case scenario and in the general environment, the facility would be at .35 % Page 17 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting of the allowable 100% limitation. Or in other words, 285 times below the federal limit. But we also looked at folks within the church and we actually looked at if you were right in the steeple, near the antennas. And in that case we would still only be 5.7% of the allowable limit. And we also looked at actually folks on the top floor of the church and it would be even lower there. It would be approximately 1.1% of the federal limit. So we did do a study, you do have that in your package, it is in compliance with federal law and it is also well within compliance, as those numbers demonstrate. MR. WILLS: Good. I appreciate the answer, considering the fact that the federal government, under the current administration has tried and is continuing to try to relax all environmental rules, I am not convinced that the federal regulations are, let’s say, valid or actually important. MR. GAUDIOSO: Yeah, interestingly, these regulations date back to the prior administration. MR. WILLS: Good. MR. GAUDIOSO: So it is not the Bush administration, it is prior to that. And actually the regulations were adopted by the FCC but they were based on the consensus of the scientific community. IEEE, Ancey and scientific organizations such as that. They took a consensus and then they build in a safety factor of five times for these types regulations, so it was the consensus of the scientific community as opposed to the latest administration that helped to promulgate these particular regulations. MR. WILLS: Those are the only comments I have. Thank you. MR. GAUDIOSO: Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anybody else like to come up and address the Town Board on the issue of the cell tower waiver request? JOHN BRADY: Hi. John Brady, East Marion. My question would be, what is the long term effect of this? I know they are saying it is much less than federal regulations, but after 10 years, 15 years, what is the effect on the people in the church then? Does anybody know? Thank you. MR. GAUDIOSO: The wireless industry as we know it, has been around for 25 years. And the studies of radio frequency emissions and radio waves, because that is what this is, this is generally, this is radio waves, just like a AM or FM radio station or TV station. That is all it is, it is radio waves. So these things have been studied for over 50 years, there are tens of thousand of reports which led to, including long term studies, which led to the scientific consensus that ultimately led to these regulations. So this issue has been well studied, the industry has been around in its current form or similar to its current form for approximately 25 years and in fact, these facilities are not only in churches, they are throughout the country. They are on schools, they are on hospitals, they are on municipal buildings. These types of facilities operate at very low power. A couple of hundred watts for the entire facility, where maybe an emergency service like the police or fire may operate at thousands of watts or a radio station at 50,000 watts. So it is a very low power facility, it has been studied, these types of radio waves for decades. Over Page 18 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting 10, 000 studies in all and it has been very well documented in the report that we did submit. REVEREND BRUCE DODD: Supervisor Russell and Board members, thank you very much for the opportunity to be heard on this cell tower issue. I am Reverend Bruce Dodd, the pastor of the Cutchogue Presbyterian church and I do favor having the tower put into the church. It would be very, very helpful to the church. It is a small church with facilities to be maintained and most of our members are older members and it would help us be able to do more of what we see ourselves with the responsibility of doing. First and foremost, we are to be a house of prayer and worship for members of the community. Beyond that, we are to be participants in the life of the community and helpful as we possibly can. We do that in a number of different ways. Perhaps others will speak to them more specifically but they do include having in our facility the North Fork Reform Synagogue and also regular meetings of AA and Al-Anon, periodic meetings of other community groups and we feel that those things that we can offer in the way of concerts and other openings to the community reaffirm the idea for us and for the community that we serve the public good. I doubt very much whether any kind of tax remission would be appropriate if we did not serve the public good and we have a historic building, we wish to maintain in good form and we feel that that, too, is a part of making this community better. I appreciate the people who will speak to this issue, I appreciate the fact that you are looking into all the hard issues that go with making a decision, so we thank you very much for your consideration. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you, sir. Would someone else like to come up and address the Town Board? BARBARA MCADAM: Good evening, Barbara Mcadam from Cutchogue. I am also an elder in the Cutchogue Presbyterian church. Just a couple of things that I brought for the Town Board that I thought might lend some clarification to this issue. One is a question and the question is, is there any risk for health with the installation of a cellular tower near a community? It was a very clear answer that a lay person like myself could really grasp so I will pass that on to you. The answer came from a Gary H. Zeman, he is from CHP Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and member of the health physics society who are specialists in radiation safety. So I will pass his response to that question on to you and the other is just a little piece of information about why we are going to see more of these kinds of situations. We are in a new wave of third generation of wireless service which requires cell sites and towers to be closer together than they currently are to provide continuous service. Also as the number of minutes the average consumer uses increases, the number of towers are going to have to increase to cover that use and third, one of the primary users why cell phone users switch service or what the industry calls churning, is because of coverage issues. so carriers are constantly attempting to improve their coverage in areas where they notice this churn taking place. So I will pass those two items along to you. I also have a brief statement that I would like to read. When you approach Cutchogue from the west via the Main Road, the steeple of the Cutchogue Presbyterian church stands as a clear beacon to this diverse and dynamic community. This small church has since 1732 been the center of activity in the hamlet of Cutchogue and continues to serve the community in a variety of ways. Across from the historic Village Green today, this small church is the home of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Anon. This small Presbyterian church also welcomes our Jewish Page 19 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting friends in the North Fork Reform Synagogue, to share it as their spiritual home. Last week, our two congregations celebrated an early Thanksgiving by praying, singing and breaking bread together. North fork residents and visitors look forward to our holiday events, antique shows and yard sales throughout the year. Historically, this small church has fought some tough battles. Through the last 276 years our small church has withstood the occupation of British troops during the Revolutionary war and a congregational division during the Civil war. So how has this small church endured? When opportunity arose, church members responded. Today Omnipoint presents us with an opportunity to respond to a diverse community at a unique crossroad in time. Housing a cell tower in our church steeple will enhance communication technology without a negative impact to the aesthetics of the hamlet. The money generated by renting the space in the steeple to Omnipoint will allow this small church, a non profit entity, to pursue mission and outreach projects in our community, which are already in planning stages. This small church is not looking for the town’s charity. Nor should granting of the waiver to Omnipoint be seen as a bailout for this church. Surely this small church will outlive all of us here tonight, regardless of your decision. The Cutchogue church would like to seize upon the opportunity offered by Omnipoint from a planning perspective, this is a win win situation. Housing an unsightly cell tower in our steeple is a fair trade off for the ability to affect the greater good in the community, at no cost to the town. This small church can and will continue to undertake major projects for the benefit of Cutchogue and the community at large. Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you. Would anybody else like to come up and address the Town Board on the issue? SOPHIA GREENFIELD: I had my thunder stolen to a degree, by my previous speakers. I am Sophia Greenfield of Southold. And I am reading also from a prepared script. Before speaking, I would like to note that I come here as an interested private citizen with no religious affiliation to the church, yet probably represent the voices of the many people that this church serves. Cell phone towers are a necessity, ugly dots on the landscape. They are needed in growing numbers to provide increased capacity. The need for emergency service personnel, police, fire and in the case of national emergencies is vital. It is my understanding that the Orient Congregational church was permitted the installation of such a tower in their steeple. It makes perfect sense. A win win situation for all concerned and the tower becomes a part of the landscape. It is my suggestion that the same option be permitted Cutchogue Presbyterian church. A venerable, historic church, this place of worship dates its congregation to the time prior to the American Revolution. In the 1730’s I believe, when as a growing agricultural community, it left the Southold church and set up its building. The current structure was built in the 1850’s and the church has been in continuous operation for almost 300 years. Sometimes when I sit in the sanctuary, enjoying the sun through the glass windows, I wonder and marvel at the stories this lovely building has to tell. The congregation membership numbers 42 families, 35 of whom regularly attend along with friends of the church. This is markedly high participation and its strength, determination, commitment and work is unique in carrying this relatively small but growing church. Under its roof, come, meet along with church membership, members of the North Fork Reform Synagogue, two Al Anon groups and an AA meeting. At high count, 250 or more people. As with its sister Presbyterian churches, Cutchogue participates in stocking food Page 20 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting banks and clothing drives. Its unique character, however, in my estimate, is its ability and willingness to welcome diverse groups in need under its roof and provide space for groups and events needing meeting places. The relationship is symbiotic and many people coming to the church give back at many levels to the spirit, building and ongoing nature and mission of the church. Its nature is embracing and inclusive. And it makes no conditions on those coming through its doors and into its programs. It welcomes. Its disparate groups enjoying the sanctuary, safety, tranquility and outreach of this tiny but mighty church. I will digress and tell you about my Thanksgiving experience this year, where I joined the First Methodist church of Riverhead in preparing and hosting an open holiday banquet. My gift was decoration, which I accomplished with the kindness of a Peconic farmer, who let me pick some small, decorated field crops along with field corn and greens which we used to decorate the tables. Very elegant. At 1:30 on Thanksgiving day, the doors opened and 350 dinners were served by the effort of 75 volunteers, for a cost of only about $300 total. All the food was donated and the labor the same. I speak of this because churches, in addition to providing sanctuary, security and grounding in immensely unstable and financially stressful times are the best investment in meeting outreach needs we have in this society. They engender boundless hours of very committed volunteer time, energy and skill. Work tirelessly with a devotion we cannot find in the private sector or government and the return is multi-fold. In my Thanksgiving example, we gave people, gratis, a dinner; valued at close to $15 or more per portion, along with whatever nurturing, comfort and joy they needed. The cost per meal was less than $1. Such efforts in those of the Cutchogue church foster tolerance and understanding and diversity culturally. In summary, I feel that Cutchogue Presbyterian church should be permitted to install a cell tower and use whatever proceeds it receives to continue to be able to offer its welcome to the community and to develop and meet needs for ongoing community outreach programs, some of which are on the drawing board currently, volunteers waiting, pending funding. PS, the holiday experience to me personally was profound and I plan to continue sharing such Thanksgiving in the future. Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you very much. Would anybody else like to come up and address the Town Board on this issue? JAMES PIM: I am James Pim, I am a trustee of the Cutchogue Presbyterian church and I won’t elaborate on the things that have already been said, this subject has been covered pretty well. Except to say that we have gotten along for 270 years without an antenna in our steeple but times are tough these days and the income from this will be greatly appreciated by the church and it is really almost essential the way things have become and we have already lost something over $20,000 with the moratorium and the extensions that have been carried out already and we would simply urge that you be sensitive to that and if you are at all inclined to approve this application finally in the end, that you do everything that you can to do this as expeditiously as possible so the process can move along and so that the income can start for us and the coverage for the community can begin as well, for the phone coverage when they install the equipment. And in answer to the question about how will it be removed if they ever cease functioning, as I understand it, as I recall from reading the contract that we had a year ago with them, there is a clause in the contract that says that in case of cessation of service, that they will be responsible for removing the equipment. So it is already in our contract. Page 21 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you. MR. PIM: And if anyone has any questions related to the church, I can represent the church. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anybody else like to come up and address the Town Board on this issue? I just want to say with one clarification, we unfortunately, don’t get to decide whether the church gets to locate a cell tower. All this hearing is about is allowing the church to go forward to the Zoning Board of Appeals who could vote to or not to allow the cell tower. We don’t get to judge based on the merits of the church itself, the historical aspects of that church, I happen to live in Cutchogue. My parents also used to members of that church. We don’t get to judge on issues of the common sense approach to locating the cell tower, we only get to judge on based on whether you have met the burden based on the waiver to the moratorium that we adopted 18 months or 17 months ago. We only have a little over a month left in the moratorium. I have got to defer to the Assistant Town Attorney to outline what we need to judge based on a vote for waiver of moratorium. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: Well, the standard in the moratorium itself is very simple and its whether the applicant has demonstrated an extreme hardship by being subject to the terms of the moratorium. And if you believe that they have shown that they do suffer an extreme hardship, you have the discretion, you don’t have to, but you have the discretion to grant a waiver and allow their waiver to proceed. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Okay. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: You might want to hear a few words from counsel on that issue. MR. GAUDIOSO: Thank you. Yes, we did address the waiver criteria in our memo. I encourage the Board to read it and there is a couple of factors and without delving too deeply into the case law, essentially we have shown a need for the site and the telecommunications act says if you show a need for reliable coverage, the municipality may not prohibit the coverage and that includes through moratoria. The extreme financial hardship that Omnipoint suffers is essentially related to the loss of its reputation and competitive position in the market and we have submitted documents and case law showing we would lose that competitive balance, that there are other similar facilities allowed to operate within the Town of Southold, as a competitive disadvantage to us and in fact, federal courts have held that the delay itself is the irreparable harm to a wireless communication facility company and we have submitted that case, specifically Sprint Spectrum LP versus Tarrytown. This is a very similar situation factually, actually this is a better situation factually because one of the second criteria of the moratoria waiver provision is whether there would be an adverse effect on the health, safety and welfare of the community and I think the speakers, more eloquently than I could, demonstrated that. Not only would it not be an adverse affect, that this facility would be a benefit to the community in a number of ways. It would eliminate the need for an unsightly tower, based on the design. It would provide the essential wireless coverage that we have come to rely upon including in times Page 22 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting of emergency and it will also provide the extra benefit of revenue to a very worth landlord in this case. So not only would it not be adversely affecting the community, we believe it would be a benefit to the community. We also believe that under federal law, there are reasons why the moratoria have extended beyond their allowable limit. Based on the time frame, based on the fact that you do have an ordinance in place, based on the fact that it has been 12 years since the telecommunications act, where federal courts have said that moratoria, even six months, I am sorry, six years after the telecommunications act are untimely. And moratoria of 270 days are essentially too long. And here we are at 18 months. State law also supports the concept that there has to be a genuine emergency or crisis. And given the fact that you do have an ordinance in place, although you believe it needs some minor modifications from what I am understanding, you do have an ordinance in place where these facilities are regulated and have been regulated. And finally, under federal law, as I touched on before, the federal telecommunications act section 332C, prohibits the unreasonable discrimination of functionally equivalent competitors and in this case our competitors, such as AT & T as was mentioned by one of the speakers, has a similar application installed in a similar church installation. So essentially, the federal law questions this moratoria but we are really not here to do that, we are here to say to you that there is a waiver provision, we believe we meet the standard both legally and factually, as the speakers have highlighted and that we are not asking you to approve the application as the Supervisor mentioned, just to allow us to process the application as federal law requires through your zoning process. As I indicated before, there is specific provisions regarding specific application requirements or reasonable conditions of approval. We are happy to work with the Town on that front and finally, under New York State law, if the modifications are made and the code does not specifically exempt this facility, we would be subject to those modifications if we had not substantially completed construction. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: When did you apply for the waiver? MR. GAUDIOSO: We applied for the waiver on the date of my cover letter, which I believe was November 10. I believe I sent it by overnight delivery. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: We have essentially had this, as you have said, in place for 17 months now. MR. GAUDIOSO: Correct. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: We are one month away from expiring the moratorium and th adopting new legislation. Why in the 17 month is it more critical than if you had applied for this 8, 10, 12 months ago? I mean, the federal law, those legal issues that you raised, would have held 12 months ago or 15 months ago. MR. GAUDIOSO: I think they are even more highlighted at this late stage but the reason we filed the application eventually is because of the repetitive extensions of the moratorium. We did make an omnibus FOIL, I am a little disappointed that the Planning Board was able to site the specific provisions being considered under these proposed amendments, we have asked for copies of the proposed amendments. Unfortunately they are not available to us at this stage. So Page 23 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting with all due respect, the moratorium may expire next month or you may choose as you see fit, to extend it or you may allow it to expire and you may be frustrated in four more months and you may enact a new moratorium and we need to really establish a record under the federal law in case we had to take an unnecessary step in the future. But the point is, I think we also highlighted to you with this application, the benefit. And really the factual nature of this application, how good it is as a number of speakers mentioned, a win win for the community. There really is no down side to you allowing us to process is what I am saying. The down side to denying this application is that it puts us in a statute of limitations period under federal law in having to make a difficult decision. We came to the town in good faith, we made I think, a very strong case both factually and legally and we are really looking to working with the town on your adoption of your new ordinance. We would love to see a draft copy, we would be happy to comment on it and give you our industry perspective that might hopefully help all parties, and I think that process would be benefitted by having an actual application, an actual example in front of the Zoning Board to be able to say that hey, you know that application that Ominpoint submitted, maybe the new ordinance could be tweaked in another way to make it even better. So I think it actually would be even helpful to allow the process to go forward, even from the Town’s perspective. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you. Would anybody else like to address the Town Board on the issue of the cell tower? Waiver of? COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: Do you want to outline what the public can expect? Remember, Pat suggested this morning? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: What we were discussing with counsel today was a draft of legislation that unfortunately we haven’t seen yet, that she is going to distribute to us within the next day or two, so that we can reconvene in two weeks and discuss the issue at a work session of the Town Board. Each Board member will given the time to review the legislation, make suggestions, make changes or accept it at face value. That would be for the work session that would be two weeks from todays date. I did not anticipate taking action on this this evening. MR. GAUDIOSO: What I would ask is the Town Board to close this public hearing and schedule it for a decision at a reasonable date of the next meeting. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: And the Board needs to recall, as he has highlighted a few times, that also in deciding this application, while what you are planning in the future is relevant, you really need to think about the criteria for the waiver application, the hardship to… SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Can I just get a clarification, the hardship is to the applicant Omnipoint or the hardship is to the host, the church? ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: Well, I mean, technically it is the applicant. I expect to have a joined interest… Page 24 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Okay. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: And I think you could probably amend their application to make it a joint application, since they both have the same… MR. GAUDIOSO: I think to the extent the facts have shown that there is a hardship both to the church but I think the federal case law is quite clear, that the delay and the market share and the competitive balance, it really is an imperative hardship to, in this case, Omnipoint. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Okay. Thank you. Let’s close the hearing. RESULT: CLOSED [UNANIMOUS] MOVER: Louisa P. Evans, Justice SECONDER: Thomas H. Wickham, Councilman AYES: Ruland, Orlando, Krupski Jr., Wickham, Evans, Russell SEQRA Goldsmith Inlet Jetty SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Let me just refresh everybody’s memory. This scoping session for the proposal, the Goldsmiths jetty inlet. The inlet reduction. Again, this did not make an advertised paper, it wasn’t advertised in the paper when we agreed to this date two months ago. Again, we do not have a legal requirement to advertise it but in the interests of candor and public transparency, we are going to go to statements in a few minutes, take your input and then simply adjourn the meeting and schedule a public meeting within a few weeks that will be duly noticed in the paper to be sure that we include everybody’s input. WHEREAS COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: , the Town Board of the Town of Southold (the “Board”) is aware of, has participated in the preparation of, or has prepared a number of studies, analyses, etc. over the past approximately 20 years, and WHEREAS, the Board caused to be prepared an analysis of these studies to determine the most efficient action to be taken, entitled “An Assessment of Jetty Shortening Alternatives Goldsmith Inlet, Bay, and Adjacent Shorelines,” and WHEREAS , the Assessment delineated a number of recommendations that would provide needed mechanisms to achieve the following goals: 1 Maintenance of the inlet by preventing sediment to accrete within the mouth of the inlet 2 Overall improvement of longshore sediment transport. WHEREAS , the Board intends to implement the recommendations of the studies and analyzed in the Assessment, to advance the goals of the Town, and WHEREAS , the Board participated with a team of professionals to assist with the implementation of the proposed shortening of the jetty, and WHEREAS , the Board finds that by virtue of the fact that it is intended to implement one of the recommendations that was contained in the Assessment, it is consistent with the overall goals for the shoreline, and WHEREAS , the action is an Unlisted action pursuant to the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and Title 6 of the New York State Code of Rules and Regulations (6 NYCRR) Part 617, and WHEREAS , the Board has the authority to effect changes to the jetty which is Town owned, Page 25 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting subject to required permits at the Town, State and Federal levels of government, and WHEREAS , since the Board holds this authority, the Town Board declares its intent to assume lead agency status under SEQRA, and WHEREAS , based on the above facts and the Part I Environmental Assessment Form (EAF) prepared for the Board’s consideration in determining significance, the Board finds it prudent to take a “hard look” at the proposed action and hereby declares its intent to require the preparation of a DEIS, and NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED , that the Town Board of the Town of Southold finds that the shortening of the jetty at Goldsmith’s Inlet is an Unlisted action pursuant to 6 NYCRR Part 617, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED , that, as the Town Board hereby assumes lead agency status in review of the action and for the purpose of compliance with 6 NYCRR, Part 617, upon completion of the coordination period, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED , that the Board hereby issues a positive declaration thus requiring a DEIS, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED , that the Board hereby sets a meeting for Public Scoping to be December 2, 20087:35 p.m. held on , at the Town Hall meeting room at in conformance with 6NYCRR Part 617.8, to allow the public and agencies to provide input into the issues and information to be presented in the DEIS, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED , that the Board authorizes the Town Clerk of the Town of Southold to file this Resolution and the Positive Declaration with the following parties: Town of Southold, Supervisor’s Office Town of Southold, Town Clerk Town of Southold, Planning Board Town of Southold, Town Trustees Suffolk County Dept. of Public Works NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Commissioner, Albany NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Regional Office, Stony Brook NYS Dept. of State US Army Corps of Engineers Parties of Interest Officially on Record with the Town Clerk (if applicable) So this evening is that scoping session, there are a number of points in here, including a draft scope for the draft environmental impact statement that I think someone will speak to. It is rather lengthy, I am not going to try to review it. Did it appear as a legal? This has not appeared at this time as a legal. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anyone like to come up and address the…. UNIDENTIFIED: Inaudible. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Yeah, Chick, can you do that? Chick Voorhis was the consultant hired by the Town to present the draft. CHARLES VOORHIS: That is correct. Good evening. Charles Voorhis, with the firm Nelson and Pope and the Board has requested that we assist in the preparation of the draft DEIS. We Page 26 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting have been in the process of doing that and had recommend that a positive declaration was appropriate in this case, we also worked with the Town professionals that have been involved with this project for some period of time to prepare the draft scope. I do have 25 copies here with me this evening. You had noted Mr. Supervisor, that this has not been formally noticed at this time but I think it would be prudent to get these in circulation this evening. I will work with the Town Clerk to make sure they are on the town website, I think that would be appropriate and then they will be circulated as necessary to involved agencies and any record, recorded parties of interest. So we will make sure that that occurs. And it sounds like this hearing will continue at a future Board meeting. So I think that is important. Let me make these available, right here. The purpose is to receive input from the agencies that are involved in the proposed project, interested parties and the public with respect to the draft DEIS to be prepared for the shortening of the jetty at Goldsmiths inlet. Scoping also is optional. The process for scoping is under 617.8 which doesn’t really give you a lot of guidance except you have to provide an opportunity for public input and after the preparation of a draft scope, a final scope has to be prepared within 60 days but it is optional to conduct this process in itself, so I think it is important to note that, that the Town is looking for full information to be prepared, full public involvement and there will be a lengthy process that will take place with respect to the draft environmental impact statement. Under the procedures of SEQRA, if scoping is conducted as I said, you provide an opportunity for public input. I don’t want to repeat some of your introductory remarks but I will indicate that the process going forward will involve the preparation of a draft EIS, that will be subject to a public hearing. It is optional but I am sure that you will seek to have a public hearing and at least a 30 day comment period for the public to digest the information and also to circulate that to involved agencies. After that, close of a public hearing and any written comments, a final environmental impact statement is prepared that would respond to comments on the draft EIS and that is subject to a 10 day period as well, before any decision can be made. So there are a number of steps after we complete the draft EIS according to the final scope based on input tonight and future hearings, there will be more opportunities for the public to be involved in this process. So I will suggest that you conduct the meeting, I will be here to listen to comments, make notes, work with the town professionals to revise the scope as necessary and propose a final scope to the Board at some point in the future when all the comments have been received. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you, Chick. Let me just ask a procedural question. If someone from the audience has a question, can I refer it to you this evening or are you just here to take comments? MR. VOORHIS: We will do our best. You know, I would urge that we are still in the process of study, that we don’t have all the answers and we are looking to gain input into the scope. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you. MR. VOORHIS: Really the purpose of tonight is to direct comments toward the scope which is currently available and will be in further circulation. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: And as much as a lot of the public and the people here haven’t had a chance to go over the scope or really spend any time of it and we just Page 27 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting put a pile of copies out there, if you want to spend a couple of minutes, maybe just summarizing, you know, parts of it? So people can maybe digest it? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: You know what? Why don’t you just give us about two minutes, let people come up and take copies and then when everybody settles back down, we will get to the….I am going to have him outline it, it’s just, I want everybody to get a copy that wants a copy. Chick, why don’t you go ahead and give us a brief outline? MR. VOORHIS: Sure. There are a number of required elements in a draft scope, this includes an introduction outlining the process, a brief description of the project, the potentially significant adverse impacts which were identified in the positive declaration that has been adopted and then an outline of the anticipated format of the document as well as a brief description of the various analyses that would be taking place. And then concluding with reasonable alternatives that would be considered, information to be included into the appendices and then issues deemed not relevant. And those are the required elements under 617.8. In this case, the Town has embarked on a number of studies over the years, long before I got involved, the New York State Department of State, the DEC, specialized consultants have looked at the issue of the jetty that was constructed on the west side of Goldsmiths inlet which was installed in approximately 1963. Soon thereafter, erosion was experienced east of the jetty in the areas that were downdrift in terms of littoral drift which in that area is from west to east. And over the years the jetty has become in disrepair and some studies were engaged in to look at potential impact of shortening the jetty. A couple of scenarios were reviewed and the town for the purpose of at least moving forward with a possible project, looked at removing 1/3 of the jetty and then restructuring the jetty so that it would function properly as intended. I don’t want to put Jamie on the hot seat but Jamie Richter is here, the town engineer and he has been involved in this for a period of time, as has Jim Mc Mahon and quite honestly it has been, there has been a great deal of interest in it, let me put it that way from residents both updrift and downdrift of the jetty. So that was the purpose of the town looking at the opportunities for properly constructing it, constructing it so number one, it wouldn’t be a safety hazard; number two it would function properly and number three, it would be a proper balance between the areas updrift and downdrift so that it didn’t cause undue adverse impacts. There are a number of studies prepared that would be summarized in the draft environmental impact statement, a project will be defined in terms of the removal of 1/3 of the jetty; how it will be done, construction methods and so forth and a number of areas will be analyzed, including the potential impact on the natural resources, the coastal geology and water resources of Long Island Sound and that area, how it affects the inlet and what would be expected to occur based on the modeling that has taken place. Impacts on soil and topography in terms of the upland, will there be creation of berms, what will happen to the dune, what will happen to the western area once the jetty is removed? Potential impacts on ecology and how it might affect birds in the area, other species that are identified and contact the various agencies and repositories of information that would be useful as well as on site field inspections and then discussion of some of the prior work that was done in connection with the local waterfront revitalization program and how this fits with the Town’s land use plans and so forth. Several alternatives are intended to be looked at and that is typically an important aspect. One is no action, not to do anything. A second is to remove half of the jetty instead of 1/3 of the jetty and then various alternatives for placement of the material that has accumulated offshore as a result Page 28 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting of bypass, caused by the jetty in terms of potentially creating a dune system west of the jetty for additional protection and that type of alternative. That is a brief summary of the scope, as I said, there will be ample opportunities for people to digest this and provide further comments but we are here tonight to receive any input. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: So the point tonight then is to allow members of the public to give comment on what they would like to see in the environmental impact statement, is that right? MR. VOORHIS: Exactly. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: The factors that need to be considered, things you shouldn’t forget; that sort of thing? MR. VOORHIS: That is correct. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Sir? DAVID EVANS: Supervisor Russell, board members. My name is David Evans, I live in Peconic and my wife and I have had property there for 35 years. And I see the previous speaker mentioned ‘63 to ‘08 which is 45, so I have visually seen what has happened over most of that time frame. I have two parts to my statement, the first part considers process, how we go about doing something and the second is focus and data. Part one, it is always useful when dealing with a problem to examine all the information needed in order to arrive at a full and sound understanding of the situation. Now if this common sense approach is ignored, you don’t have all the available data and therefore you cannot have an objective assessment. Goldsmiths inlet jetty is a man made structure on the Sound shore of our township. However, it is only one, yes one, of nine such structures that stretch from the west end of Kenney’s beach. It is also the most distant from Kenney’s beach. Therefore, there are eight intervening man made structures east of Goldsmiths inlet jetty, all of which have had erosion impact patterns on Kenney’s beach. Currently the, the Remax organization is offering a water front lot immediately to the west of the 90 foot long lockman groin. And today I spoke with RW Abatelli about this lot. I go down there frequently and I believe it has been offered for sale for four or five months and so I asked him about it. I said, are there any erosion problems and he said, “It is a buildable lot”. Now, therefore, I asked a very simple question, how can a real estate agency offer a buildable lot which is waterfront at Kenney’s beach because it is there in business to hopefully sell the lot, it is not going to suggest that the house is built in the Sound, it is offering this lot for sale immediately to the west of the 90 foot lockman groin. Now, I think I would suggest that prior to embarking on an expensive and irreversible demolition project with possible legal problems, the Town has the responsibility to examine and analyze the impact of the other eight man made structures. And if the Board wishes, I could give a brief outline of what exactly these eight are. Because I have looked at them for years. Does the Board wish to know what the other eight are? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Please. Page 29 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting MR. EVANS: First of all, at the point where this lot is being offered for sale by Remax, there is the lockman groin. It is five foot high and 90 foot long. Secondly, alongside two waterfront houses there is high concrete wall, when originally built it was eight feet high above the water. Now it is only five and a half feet high because of the build up of sand. Now it is two and a half feet wide and it is at least 100 feet long. Thirdly, to the west of that sea wall, there are five metal groins. Now to the west of the metal groins, there is the Bittner groin. Now, I have looked at these groins constantly and it is my guess that the lockman groin and the five other metal groins have been renewed in the last two years. I wonder, does the Board have information of those building projects? Therefore, to go back to point one, process and point two, about data and focus, if a really objective assessment is to be made of the Sound’s soundfront from Goldsmiths inlet eastward to, westward to Kenney’s beach, it is incumbent that all possible causes of erosion be taken into consideration. Final point, I believe that the erosion of Kenney’s beach reached its worse level between 94 and 96. Since that time, there is build up. I go down there constantly. I don’t have a measuring tape but my eyes tell me that the beach is extended out into the sea. And Remax are not fools, they would agree with me because they are trying to sell a lot that they label waterfront and as Mr. Abatelli told me today, it is a buildable lot. Therefore I would hope that the Board would take into consideration the other eight man made structures apart from the Goldsmith inlet jetty which in terms of distance is farthest away from the beach at Kenney’s. Thank you very much for giving me time to be heard. COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: Thank you. That is actually a question that I would like to ask Mr. Voorhis, although the Bittner groin is long gone. MR. EVANS: It has been renewed. UNIDENTIFIED: Inaudible SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: The bulkhead. Well, the groin that went out is no longer MR. EVANS: Inaudible comments from audience. I didn’t know, I was told in 1995, it was the Bittner groin. Here it is 13 years later, it is not the same groin, so it has been renewed but according to my eye and judgment, it is in the same place and it is approximately the same length. In 1995 I was told it was 90 foot long. I didn’t measure it but my guess is it is pretty close to that now. COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: I just wanted to ask Mr. Voorhis briefly, is the scope of this Goldsmith inlet process going to cover the groin field to the east, that was just described? MR. VOORHIS: My recollection of the work that has been done is no, there is a limit to the eastward extent of the modeling that was done and it was specifically directed to the west groin at Goldsmiths inlet. PETER TERRANOVA: I am Peter Terranova from Peconic. Thank you for holding this meeting where the public can provide input to the draft scope for the draft environmental impact statement. We have quite a few residents here tonight from Peconic sound shores who have Page 30 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting homes or live in the community and some of them have traveled quite a distance tonight. And all of these residents have invested considerable resources in our homes and property over these many years since the construction of the jetty. And this investment has been based on the assumption that the jetty would continue to provide the protection for homes and property that it was originally intended to do and has done so since its construction, first construction in 1964. And let me remind everyone that the Town of Southold was part and parcel to the initiation of the jetty construction in response to the very severe beach erosion that was experienced in the past at Peconic sound shores. Now many of the residents that we have here tonight, okay, were around for the ‘38 hurricane, the ’44 hurricane and the ’54 hurricane. So they well know the fury and the destruction that can be wrought or caused by these very destructive storms, okay? And they would not have made the investments in their property since the time of the jetty construction had that jetty not been there. So I want the Board to keep that in mind. I am glad Mr. Voorhis is here because this was a very, very difficult presentation to put together. Because as I read the SEQRA process, it defines the public scoping session as the process whereby the lead agency, which is the Town of Southold, identifies the potentially significant adverse impacts related to the proposed action. Soliciting inputs also from other involved agencies and the public, okay, and that these potentially significant adverse impacts that are to be addressed in the draft EIS. And that was my intent, that would be very easy for me to do and I intend on going through the potential impacts that I think need to be considered but I wish before we get into that, I wish to just read paragraph 3 of the draft scope. The information prepared in conformance with this scope and the SEQRA process is intended to provide comprehensive input in the decision making process for use by involved agencies in preparing their own findings and issuing decisions on their respective permits. The document must be concise but thorough, well documented and more importantly, the two most important ones is accurate and consistent. And this is where I had a little bit of difficulty in preparing tonight’s presentation. Because there are a number of statements in this draft scope by your consultant that are neither accurate nor consistent. And these need to be addressed and they need to be corrected. I really did not want to speak about these. Many of these items, as you well know, I have brought up in prior presentations to the Town Board. Sadly, none of those suggestions or corrections have been made. We even offered at one point to spend time with the Town engineer and your consultant to try and clear up a lot of these inaccuracies. But so far we haven’t been taken up on our offer. I just want to touch base on a few of them. I am not going to spend the whole evening going through it because it would take all night, okay, but I do have a prepared text which I will provide. First, this is a minor one, your two resolutions, your positive declaration, your EAF says what? Shortening of the Goldsmith jetty, right? What is the title of this draft scope? The proposed jetty stabilization and repair. Okay? I have no problem with that. Make that an alternative, stand alone action. Repair it. Don’t shorten it, repair it. Because that is what your title is. Okay? Fair enough. That is the title of your project, let’s make that one of the alternative proposals. Okay. Uh, under the project description, paragraph one. This document, the DEIS says shorten the jetty by 33 %, 120 feet. Well, 120 feet is about 40 %. It is very close to the 50 % that everyone really wanted. Okay? So let’s get that corrected, too, because the jetty as built was 300 feet. It goes on further to state that the presence of the jetty is not needed for inlet control, it is not needed for updrift accretion and it inhibits eastward literal migration. Again, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on this. But your own DEIS statement here prepared by the consultant states in the potentially and adverse impact section that a shortened jetty would Page 31 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting adversely impact inlet control by virtue of increasing inlet dredging and increasing the flood shoal in the mouth of Goldsmith pond. So right then and there, you see an inconsistency. Okay? On one hand you are saying it is not needed for inlet control and in another section of the same document you are saying it is, it would cause inlet control. Okay. Not needed for updrift accretion. That is a very interesting statement. Well, if you shorten the jetty by 120 feet, what is going to happen to the beach? You are going to lose 120 feet. Sure, we don’t need any more accretion at the jetty’s current length because the jetty has been fully impounded since 1976. And it has been bypassing sand. Shortening of the jetty will result in the loss of 120 feet or more of beachfront west of the jetty. And why do I make this point? Because this area that will be lost contains a very, very critical primary dune system which is heavily vegetated. This primary dune system, in addition to being a wildlife habitat, provides an essential element of protection for the entire vegetated land mass that exists between the primary dune berm, which is just above the high tide water mark and the homes of Peconic sound shores. Should the primary dune system berm be removed and destroyed, sea water would collect in the lower elevation areas because this is not a beach that goes all the way up to the homes. The berm comes up like this and then the elevation gets lower before it comes up to the homes. Okay? You destroy that berm, the first high tide, okay, on a full moon, the water comes over and fills the area; that low lying area. You are going to kill all the vegetation. Sea grass and other plants that are there that are currently holding everything together. Okay? Once you lose that, the sand blows like crazy in the winter and I know. Because as a kid, I had to shovel the sand off the back of my dad’s house every spring. Wheelbarrows and wheelbarrows of sand that blew up from the beach because there was nothing to hold it down. I can’t stress enough how vital this primary dune system and beach vegetation is for erosion control and protection from storms. In your assessment study, they talk about flooding. One or two feet their modeling study said. Well, we know there were flaws with the modeling study. They completely disregarded the effect of debris. Billy Eckhardt’s, I have got a picture of Billy Eckhardt in the ’54 hurricane, standing in front of his house on the second row with debris all around. It is that vegetation and sea grass that has taken over 40 years to establish itself, that now prevents debris in the event we get another hurricane from getting up there and wrecking havoc with our homes. If the vegetation and sea grass system that dissipates the energy from the waves and traps that floating debris. Now, the draft EIS does not state if the project intends on removing the beach front fillet west of the jetty before it shortens the jetty. Doesn’t state it yet. I know it probably will when you get into the construction details but if you don’t do that, this beach front will erode and flow around the shortened jetty and cause rapid closure of the inlet and rapid increase in the sediment entering Goldsmiths pond. If the intent of your construction program is to preemptively remove this beach front, then the project might very well be in violation of part 502 of the flood plain management criteria for state projects issued by the DEC which states there shall be no removal of sand dunes which would increase potential flood damage. Therefore, the DEIS needs to include that removal as a significant adverse, that removal of 120 feet of the jetty will result in updrift coastline erosion. It is a known fact. You are going to erode the beach. Either you are going to do it by default, by cutting the jetty and allowing that beach erode or you are going to be doing it preemptively. Either way, we are going to be faced with erosion. And if you do it preemptively and you think you are going to reconstruct the dune system that is going to protect us, that ain’t gonna happen. It takes 40 years for that stuff to root itself. Just in this last storm we had last week, we lost about two feet of our dune because the water came up very high. You Page 32 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting walk down that beach now, you see the little stubs of the sea grass and the root system. It is extensive. You just don’t plant sea grass and expect it to be there the next year. It is not. Okay. Just to point out another inconsistency. The draft states the jetty inhibits eastward littoral migration. Well, on one hand, that is what the DEIS says, that the jetty inhibits the flow of sand to the east but the DEIS same document also states on page 2 that the end of the jetty is in disrepair, thereby allowing sand to pass through the end of the jetty which is being deposited in the inlet. These are contradictory statements. You can’t say on one hand that the jetty is preventing the sand from moving around it and then on the other hand blaming the jetty for the sand that moves around it. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. they talk about dredging of the inlet and I know that is very you know, critical and could be problematic because we don’t know the extent and the profile nor do we know the path that the proposed dredging of the inlet channel will take and that is a critical factor as pointed out in the Army Corps of Engineer’s geomorphic analysis. Okay? Very important. Because prior dredging operations where you have tried to dredge the inlet and orient the channel, parallel and next to the jetty has actually contributed to problems in getting that sand that has been moving around the jetty for years, I have a picture from 1967, three years after the jetty was built and it hadn’t even reached full impoundment, which shows that the sand is moving around it, if you don’t allow that inlet to take its naturally eastward orientation okay, you are not going to allow that sand to return to the downdrift beaches. So that is very important. Okay. The other things, construction of the sand bridge and culvert, I am not going to get into that because you know, it, we will see the details of the final construction plan but there are some specific ways, okay, that you need to think about how you are going to dredge that channel and so on and so forth. Okay, let’s talk just minute before I get into the impacts. Site history. This is very important because the draft scope spent a great deal of time on the site history. Almost the entire second page and it just points out again, the problem with inaccuracies, inconsistencies. The discussion begins with an untrue statement. The draft EIS leads you to believe that the jetty was built as part of an incomplete marina project. This is untrue and we all know it. Worse, in the context of this proposed jetty project, it is downright dangerous. It leads anyone reading this document to the mistaken belief that the jetty served no purpose because the marina was never built. I mean, if I was a laymen and I didn’t know and I read this, I would say what do you need the jetty for? You never built the marina. Come on, guys. We have talked about this before. We all know the sole reason for the jetty’s construction was to control the enormous erosion rate occurring immediately west of Goldsmith’s inlet. This DEIS needs to accurately state the basis upon which the jetty was constructed and sir, if you need the documents, I have them. I know the Town has them but I have them also. Okay? So all we are looking for is honesty, we are looking for we want to participate in the process, Scott, I know you wanted this thing to move forward but if you want this process to move forward and you want all the agencies and the public, okay, to get behind this thing so we can cooperate and get this thing done properly, we have got to be honest. And truthful. Okay? You read this thing, man, I have got to give you credit. Very clever. You just picked apart all the little things from all the different studies that supported your position and that is not the way to approach SEQRA. It is not. Okay. I won’t get into all those details. Okay. You need to remove any reference to the conditions at Kenney’s beach. And with all due respect sir, the jetty has no impact that far to the east and I know that the Town is not even addressing that issue. You are more concerned with the beach just immediately to the east, not too far from the property, the Bittner property. You know this, I mean, that the Town just bought. You are Page 33 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting very interested in that and you know what? That particular shoreline has not eroded that much. Even if you look at the assessment study that your proposal was based on and you look at the shoreline in ’55, superimposed on a current photograph, that shoreline hasn’t changed that much. It looks like it changed that much because the area west of the jetty accreted so much sand. Okay? It looks bad. I know it looks bad. I mean, I can go to Google and you look at it and it looks bad. But I go to Mattituck, same thing. I go to any other jetty, same thing. So do we have a desire here to make the shoreline look smooth? Or do we have a desire here to protect property? And to do the right thing? Okay. We know, you know, just to talk a little about bit about Kenney’s beach but I really believe and I think you all believe, this has nothing to do with Kenney’s beach. That same study, the assessment study, page 12 says the existence of off-shore eddies in the vicinity west of Horton’s Point may explain the serious erosion in front of Kenney’s beach that was mentioned in the NYSDEC 1987 report. Okay. The DES, to be perfectly honest, needs to add that in the assessment of jetty shortening alternatives on page 26 states that the most recent measured shorelines have reversed the trend of erosion and show accretion. Okay? now their modeling study doesn’t show it because they said, well, yeah, we know it is showing that the beach has been building up and the beach is stable, okay, but we are going to make the assumption that the long term trends and the erosional processes will continue in the future. Well, I am an engineer. That is no way to do a study but be that as it may. Okay, let me just, let’s see, let’s go to potentially significant adverse impacts that I believe the DES did not properly or did not address and should be addressed. Removal of 120 feet of the existing jetty may result in updrift beach erosion and loss of the protective sand dunes and vegetation. Removal of 120 feet of the existing jetty may result and I use may, I know will is the right word but I use may because that is the terminology that is generally used in this type of statement. May result in bluff erosion returning to the bluff area which begins approximately 650 feet west of the jetty location, placing those homes located on the bluff in danger. I want to also make reference to the 1996 workshop, I believe some of you were involved in that. Al, do you remember the recommendations they came up with? The five of them? Which included a jetty off of Horton’s Point to trap the sand from going around Horton’s Point, series of groins, shortening of the jetty but, they said if you shorten the jetty you better build another groin, otherwise your bluff is going to start eroding. Now that bluff has been stable and it has been stable now for about 30 years. Why? Because vegetation has grown up on that bluff area, which has stabilized the bluff. You start losing beach there and those waves start lapping at the bluff, there goes the vegetation, there goes the bluff. Okay? Studies, the studies so far don’t address that, okay? but the need to. The DES needs to address that. Removal of 120 feet of the jetty may increase, may cause the increased growth of the flood shoal in Goldsmith’s pond, which would degrade the health of the pond and negatively impact this critical, environmental area. That is a designated CEA, Goldsmith’s pond. We have a flood shoal there okay, that is growing every single year. It has now extended from the terminus of the channel almost to the peninsula where Hugh Switzer’s property is. And the study and the proposal does not address Goldsmith’s pond and that needs to be addressed. They have, that is a significant wildlife area, okay? Shellfishing area, fish spawning area and that needs to be addressed. In fact, that is where the excess sediment is. So all that sediment that the jetty is so-called preventing from migrating to the east, okay, that sediment is going around the jetty, just as it has always done, okay, and now it is flowing into the inlet and now it is migrating back into Goldsmith’s pond. You have got to remember, before the jetty was even built, you used to dredge the inlet almost every year. The Page 34 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting opening. To keep it open. The jetty has no impact on that. Now, removal, this is very significant and I expect the DEIS to address it, removal of 120 feet of the existing jetty would dramatically change the FEMA coastal map flood zone designations for the Peconic sound shores community and that is very important. That is our ability to get insurance. That needs to be addressed. Right now, that line is right in front of our homes. If you remove 120 feet, that line is going to be in back of our homes. Can’t allow that to happen, sir. Removal of 120 feet of the existing jetty may increase the potential for structural damage to the homes in Peconic sound shores due to the increase in water levels, wave heights and floating debris during severe storms and hurricanes. This is where the assessment study was very flawed because they didn’t consider floating debris at all. Not one bit. Now removal of 120 feet of the existing jetty may increase sand bypassing resulting in the increase of available sand downdrift of Goldsmith inlet, however, you have no assurances that that sand and any sand you place east of the inlet will return and remain on the beach area of concern. Thereby negating the entire purpose of your disposal. Think of it. You spend upwards of, I know you say $800,000; a million dollars to put all this sand on the east side. How are you going to keep it there? Nothing in your proposal addresses it. Now, DEIS should also address the validity of the study, the assessment of jetty shortening alternatives. Okay? because it was that study, okay, that the Town Board made its decision to pass the resolution to shorten the jetty on and that study was a modeling study. Something they do in a physics lab. Not screw around with people’s homes. Okay. And I might add, that using that study as the basis for this project really is contrary to the stated goals in your waterfront revitalization program. In your own statement, which says that you will take action, okay, to identify causes of erosion but you will do it with some degree of certainty. That study did not provide that degree of certainty. You know, we talk about erosion. How many of you remember Jack’s shack? You remember Jack’s shack? COUNCILMAN ORLANDO: At town beach? MR. TERRANOVA: You know where Jack’s shack was? Jack’s shack was a building sitting on the seaward side of the parking lot of the town beach and in front of Jack’s shack was a beautiful beach. Beautiful. I guarantee you that the erosion that we are seeing on the east side of Goldsmith’s inlet is no more or no less that what you have had at Jack’s shack. If that building was still there, that snack bar, it would be gone now. Am I right, Elizabeth? Now come on. Let’s be honest. We have an erosion problem. In fact, let me quote you from something. This was 1969 Army Corps of Engineers report, beach erosion control and (inaudible) hurricane studied the north shore of Long Island and Suffolk County. They refer to Mattituck inlet, to Horton’s Point, reach eleven. The shoreline receded throughout much of the reach during this period. I will tell you what the period is a little later. At Goldsmith’s inlet there was an advance of up to 50 feet along 1,000 feet of the shore to the west and a recession of between 50 and 130 feet along 3,400 feet of the shore to the east. Further eastward there was recession of up to 120 feet along 4,000 feet of Kenney’s beach west. Well, you know when this occurred? From the period 1836 to 1886. so the pattern of erosion of the shoreline, witnessed over the last 40 plus years is not new. In fact, as the prior quotation depicts, the shoreline west of the Goldsmith’s inlet advanced during that period while the shoreline to the east eroded. And we have it flip flopping over different time periods. And this occurred in the mid 1800’s when no jetty existed. Now we know we have a problem, okay? I have spent a lot of time, I am sure the consultants Page 35 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting have also. I certainly hope some of you have but I know it is almost impossible to review all of the documents that have been published, studied, accumulated, okay, since the late 50’s early 60’s. I mean, reviewing all of the studies conducted over these years, at a considerable expense to tax payers and I grant you some, most of the money was due to grants but you know what? Someone in New York State paid for it. Okay? The overwhelming conclusion is you have the existence of a littoral cell between Duck Ponds Point and Horton’s Point. Within this cell, the supply of sediment is less than what you need to prevent erosion of the shoreline. And many reasons have been postulated, both man made and natural including the bulkheading of the bluff toes to the west, preventing that sand from the bluffs naturally flowing into the water and flowing along the coastline. The presence of off shore eddies, which even now well understood as to how they impact, okay, the movement of sand and the deep sections of the Sound, just off the beach in this particular reach, which makes it unique; unique amongst all along the north shore. You look at depth maps, your noah charts, you don’t see the types of deep sections that we have between Duck Pond and Horton’s Point. Now if you don’t have enough sand flowing into the system, you want to keep all of the sand that you can and keep it from going away. Removal of the portion of the jetty with relocation of the sediment to the east may reverse the natural erosion initially and to a minimal degree. In fact, your own study says you are going to remove 120 feet west of the jetty, 120 feet of beachfront, and you are going to gain 3 feet on the other side. It is not a good trade-off. But the point is, any sand you get on the east side, you have got to ask yourself, what is going to keep it there? There is nothing in this project proposal that addresses this very important point and removing the beachfront in front of Peconic sound shores benefits no one. There are no homes you are protecting on the other side. Okay? You know that. Those homes, there are no developed homes, okay, in that coastal hazard erosion area on the other side that will be impacted by this project. The jetty is currently bypassing sand, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be getting sand and sediment intrusion into the inlet and Goldsmith’s pond. And the entire beach is currently in a state of equilibrium. Your studies say that. Upsetting this state of equilibrium right now with unpredictable results, is exactly what we should not do. When the jetty was built it was a shock to the system, rightly or wrongly, we know we couldn’t get the jetty built today, okay? But it was a shock to the system and it took nature time to adjust to that shock. The sand is bypassing. The beaches to the east are accreting. If there is erosion, it is a natural rate of erosion. We have built up sand dunes, we have built up beach grass, we have built up vegetation which serves a very beneficial purpose. You shorten the jetty, you are going to shock the system again with unpredictable results. Or I should say, predictable negative results. Okay. Principals that must (inaudible) any solution. I really didn’t want this whole process to get this far, I thought we were going to meet with Jamie Richter and the consultants and we were going to sit and do a more holistic approach to this project. That is what we talked about, Scott. First, do no harm to other beaches, property, wildlife, habitats or recreational areas and second, move cautiously and in concert with nature as much as possible. I went back and read from the 1995-1996 workshop the transcript of the discussion from a lot of the coastal experts. Fred Anders was one of them. He had some great ideas. You know what he talked about? He said, instead of doing these massive shocks to the system, let’s see if we can perturb the environment in a very subtle way, okay? To get what we want and to work with nature. What he talked about was, hey, let’s do some beach nourishment on the east side, we can take the excess sediment that is in the inlet channel now and the excess sediment that is in the Goldsmith’s pond flood shoal, transfer that to the east beach and do it on a regular basis. And as Page 36 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting needed, to maintain the health of the Goldsmith pond and to move that excess sand over to the east beach. But also position some small scale rock formations, natural rock formations and erosion hot spots along that stretch, between the inlet and the Bittner property. You know, just little boulders, similar to what you would find off Horton’s Point or Duck Pond Point which serve to anchor the shoreline. Okay? And to diminish the energy of the waves impacting the shore. Leave the existing jetty as it is, if you don’t want to fix the end of it. Again, I think I mentioned it before, you say that it is a hazard but I don’t see any signs that say ‘don’t walk on the jetty’, I don’t see any fences that keep the fishermen from going at the end of the jetty. So if you are concerned about somebody getting hurt, you know, do that. But if you are not concerned, leave it alone. So the end of the jetty is deteriorating. So a few rocks are falling in the Sound. So what? Let nature take its course. We believe that this more holistic approach to shoreline preservation, when you do things in very subtle, gentle ways. If this was adopted, we will ultimately be recognized as responsible stewardship of the environment that we have been entrusted with protected. Going forward with this project, because you have got to address all of these issues that I have outlined here, okay, this is going to cause massive, massive problems. I will leave you with comments, okay? I have two extras, I will give one to you, Scott and one to Town Clerk. Elizabeth, if you could make copies for the rest of the members of the council. I do appreciate, by the way, you allowing this meeting to go forward tonight. I know there was a little bit of a problem with the posting but we did have so many of our residents come forward, I felt it was very important that you get to see some of their faces and believe me, if this was in June or July, there wouldn’t be enough seats in here. Okay? So I want to thank all our residents here for coming out tonight, I think some more of them may have comments to say. But thank you very much. ROXANNE ZIMMER: I want to thank the Town for this opportunity to speak about the proposed project. And I am also grateful to see so many of our neighbors here tonight. I am Roxanne Zimmer, Peconic. The jetty and Goldsmith’s inlet are physically joined at the hip. We all know that because we live here. And they are frequently referred to in the same breath. Oh, the jetty and the inlet but what I would like to make clear tonight is that the role and function of the jetty is very different from the role and function of the inlet and I want to spend some time on the inlet. And I am sorry to see Lillian leave because we are working on this together. The inlet is a dominant flood system, which means that it needs, always has, always will need help to keep that open. As you all know, long before the jetty was built, the mouth of the inlet was kept open by the mill owners who would put logs out in front of it. It was, then gangs of men from the Town of Southold would come and shovel it out. And then in the 40’s and 50’s, neighbors who are here can tell me about, tell us about how they sank pilings and lashed Christmas trees, did I get that right? To actually keep the mouth of the inlet open. We realize now that the inlet is part of a passive county park in the Town of Southold, so that lines of responsibility for maintaining the quality of the inlet are somewhat blurred. And to its credit, the Town has come forward and acted on an emergency basis to dredge, keeping the mouth open but it can only go back so far because of various county and state issues. for the purposes of this study, I think the DEIS must be aware that there are no scientific claims that the current jetty is contributing in any way to the problems of the inlet and with this in mind, I am reminded of the medical phrase, ‘first do no harm’. Where is the evidence that shortening the jetty will in fact benefit the inlet? If any of you read the geomorphic analysis that was done on both the Mattituck and Goldsmith inlet jetty, it Page 37 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting was not paid for by the consultants, it was not paid for by anyone. It was done by marine scientists and they conclude, in fact now that the jetty is close to its natural state and that its recurring problems are the result of the manner of the dredging, not the presence of the jetty. So we would like answers going forward about how this proposed project might negatively affect the long and short term of the inlet. We are realistic. Money is tight and getting tighter. Where are the resources that are going to be needed to keep the mouth of the inlet open? The Town needs as you know, to keep its ongoing commitment to dredging that, not just on an emergency basis which is very costly to the Town but on some kind of routine way that is much more affordable and indeed positively affects the health of that inlet. Those of us that live there care very deeply about its health. If that water doesn’t move, that is going to stink and it is going to breed disease. A group of us have, are in the process of forming the Goldsmith inlet stewardship project. It is headed by Hugh Switzer, who regrets that he can’t be here this evening to join us, but we are very worried about the inlet and its unique features as an eco-system. It is a winter flounder estuary, there are many populations of birds and shellfish in the inlet. And we are fearful that this will be compromised with changes proposed to the jetty. And there is a different kind of concern, we fear that the inlet is going to be given a good deal of lip service in the name of this project but few effort and very little money will be allocated to maintaining its vitality in the long run. Put another way, when this project is finished whether the jetty is shortened by 10 inches or 120 feet, the inlet will still need to be dredged on a regular basis. And so that we are hoping that all of the agencies that are concerned with this important and precious body that is right near us, whether it is the county, the DEC, the US fish and wildlife, all of the agencies that are in some way involved with preserving this, will indeed be involved in the scoping process. I thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anyone else like to come up and address the Town Board on this? COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: We did mention the dredging of the inlet today at the work session this morning and we suggested that this be placed on a county list for capital projects and I agree with you as far as the way that inlets dredge is more important than quantity. The quality is more important there. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Just as a side issue on that, we have had difficulty in the past in that we have had people design the way that dredging was going to take place, against everyone’s wishes. That was a thumbprint put on there by one individual that I think one year actually wasted money because the dredging lasted about a week, if that. JOSEPH MARCHESE: My name is Joseph Marchese. I have been a resident, land owner since 1974, built my home in 1976. So this is a number of years after the jetty was built. Ironically enough, I had a mortgage on the house, of course, and I had to have flood insurance. The bank insisted on it. After I paid off the bank, I stopped. I went through hurricane Bob, hurricane Andrew, never had any flooding issues. in fact, the issues that occurred was that, I was afraid that my, I have the, on the corner of Mill Lane and Sound Avenue, I am the second house west. Got all glass in front of it. Okay. the issue I had, that I was going to get flooded out from the back. That because Autumn lake has pipe that runs directly into Peconic pond. It is really a Page 38 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting sump, it takes the drainoff from the hill, floods the lake or sump, whatever you want to call it, goes heading into Goldsmith’s pond and that is where this sediment is occurring. That sediment might not be from the jetty, some parts of it. But it is filling up. Now if you cut that jetty by 1/3 and I don’t know how this arbitrary figure came about, that annoys me. Okay? that you pick a number and that is what it is. You make all these decisions based on the good boy network. And that really offends me, okay? I look back at those other groins there, they had, they did whatever they wanted to do to these groins. And the Town didn’t follow up on any specifications, the Town couldn’t even tell me how big the parking lot, how much asphalt was in the parking lot. And this is the Town. This is Kenney’s beach. So I am a little skeptical about the Town’s decisions. Okay? The funding from that jetty was funded through a erosion problem. That is where the funding came through, because of erosion and it was protecting the people west of the jetty. Through all these years, all different ways of attacking this, the Town has consistently tried. First it did the scope from Mattituck to Horton’s Point. Oh, that don’t work out because you proved it wrong. Freeman Peterson report showed that the jetty only caused an erosion 1,500 feet east of the jetty. But those other groins were never addressed. They did whatever they wanted and the Town let them do that. Okay? Now, I know that tonight, when you are going through the agenda, docket 1051, the Girl Scouts want to hang decorations on your town. Okay, which is great. And you wanted them to have an insurance certificate in the Town’s name. That was to protect the Town in case they did any damage. Well, the residents here, you put up a $100,000,000 bond for 100 years that we will not have our properties destroyed. If you’re that secure about it, just like you wanted the Girl Scouts to have this insurance, we would like to have the same insurance. I don’t know what the agenda is but it just gets me upset. It really does. For years, the Town has been constantly destroying our area. Didn’t give a damn th about the people who live there. you would dredge that inlets on July 4 weekends or Memorial Day weekends, okay? piles of sand in the parking lot. You didn’t have a care of the residents. You took away the lifeguard, okay? You really didn’t care about, town, people who reside there had to fix the fences over there. I mean, it is really sad. And now you are going to tell us you are going to protect us? We have people on Second Avenue got flooded out, people lost their cars because of that whole system there. And you are going to do the right thing for us? I don’t know about that. Past records don’t show that. I don’t want to manipulate everything but I think if the funding for the jetty was for erosion control for Goldsmith’s inlet and people west of that, that is what you have to look at. You are jeopardizing the fact, you are stating that that erosion is no longer valid. Then I am concerned like Peter mentioned about the rebuilding. With the dune process there. If we get flooded out and they determine that we can’t rebuild, then we are out of luck. And what are we supposed to do? Oh, the Town made a bad mistake? No, that isn’t reality. I concern myself with eminent domain, too. The Town could come and say, well, we want to make a recreational park there. You can’t rebuild, we are taking all your properties. And tell me you can’t do that? COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: We will tell you we won’t do that. MR. MARCHESE: Okay? Where is the protection? Just like you wanted protection that nobody would do any damage for the Girl Scouts here, we would like that same protection. You know it is, I don’t understand it. We do all these reports, we twist it one way, we twist it another way. Now where the focus is just on Goldsmith inlet. If we are having another meeting, then the Page 39 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting people of Kenney’s beach shouldn’t be allowed to speak. Because it doesn’t affect them. It doesn’t affect their beach if the focus is on Goldsmith’s inlet. (Inaudible) to get the right combination to do what you want to do there. Okay? And you really don’t care about the residents here. And if you can prove that you do care, okay, fine. But like Peter said, you know Josh Horton spoke at a meeting about five years ago, at your house Roxanne? And inadvertently, he said that the jetty was dangerous. He retracted it later on because that left the Town open to all kinds of suits. Anybody who fell on that jetty, anybody who slipped into the water and got hurt kept the Town open. I will bet you to say that there is nothing in the Town records that say that that jetty is unsafe. That is my personal belief. I don’t know it for a fact. Okay? but it is just this whole idea. Hey, we want to coexist, we want everybody to feel safe. But you are taking away a portion and don’t think we are overreaching here, you know its, I know you can talk to some of the people on Second Avenue. They can tell you, when the pile broke that led through from Autumn lake to Goldsmith pond, they were getting floods over there, couldn’t even drive down there. and t his is a small pipe. Now we are talking about bringing that water level closer and during hurricanes? You are just putting us out there to get slaughtered. And that is basically it. And you know what? We are only summer residents. They don’t mean nothing. That is the attitude. You know. I am really fed up with it. I really am honest with it. You know, we are good people. We contribute to the Town whether you want to believe it or not. But it is just ridiculous if you are not going to evaluate what the effects year after year, to the people west of the jetty and around Autumn lake and the bluff, if you are not going to take that into consideration and just taking the fact about people from Kenney’s beach. You know, it is ridiculous. Because they live there all year round? That isn’t fair to us. That is all I can say. TOM FOSTER: Members of the Board, my name is Tom Foster. My wife and I bought the property at the corner, where the parking lot is, on Sound Avenue, just over a year ago. So you might say that I am one of the more interested parties in this matter. I have a question for the consultant. Is recreation an important part of the environmental impact study? Is recreation an element of environment that should be considered in the study? MR. VOORHIS: We will be looking at land use and that would include recreation. MR. FOSTER: It is not mentioned in the potentially significant adverse impacts but we have been living here, we vote here and we noticed this summer, if you look at McCabe’s beach which has facilities and a lifeguard and Kenney’s beach which has facilities and a lifeguard and our beach, our beach, our parking lot is always full, the fillet is always full. There are always fishermen along the jetty, it is a very actively used recreation area. And I think it would be a shame just to eliminate acres and acres of recreational, prime recreational land for no particular purpose. Thank you. CHRIS BERGMANN: My name is Chris Bergmann and I will try to keep it very short. But I have owned my house for 17 years and I have paid my insurance for 17 years without ever making a claim. In December, I was summarily dropped from State Farm, so and I am on Sound Avenue, I am the third house in. So cutting back 125 of sand would definitely bring my house within a couple of hundred feet of the Sound, so I had a really hard time getting insurance when I was dropped. And I had never made a claim. I think, I have gone through a lot of these studies Page 40 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting in the past, I think the last meeting I had gone to was in 2004, maybe 2003 and it really just sounds exactly the same. The proposals were like, take the whole jetty out and then they backed off and said, take half of the jetty, oh, take a third of the jetty. And it seems very arbitrary and I just want to voice my strong opposition to any removal of the jetty. I think it did its job with erosion and according to one study, it actually built up by 1969, where sand was drifting past the end of the jetty. So it seems like it met its purpose and its goal and it prevented the erosion from occurring to the west. BENJA SCHWARTZ: Good evening, Benja Schwartz, Cutchogue. I remember when I first got to Cutchogue and we used to go down to the beach east of the jetty and off shore there, we used to get the blue mussels. You know, the tasty ones. I don’t know if there is any still around, I haven’t looked for them for a while but certainly a beautiful part of our town and I can completely understand the people who have the property there being very emotional about this issue. I am emotional, too, but also I have a legal perspective here and I would just like to, the purpose of this meeting and I don’t think anyone on this, I don’t, I would like to find out the history in the first two pages of this are just for your descriptive history. Really the third page is what starts maybe a proposal for an environmental impact statement and the fact that we are doing that indicates to me that the Town has made a decision to at least consider revoking the decision to shorten the jetty. Where are we actually? Where do we stand? As far as, apparently there was a decision at one point, it is not included in this summary, this historical site history here but there was a decision to cut off a third of the jetty by a previous Board I am assuming. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: No, I don’t think there was. It was a proposal that we elected to have Chick Voorhis do a scoping and a thorough environmental impact analysis and statement on. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: The Town can’t decide to take any action without going through the SEQRA process. And this is, you know, not the first stage of the SEQRA process but it is one of the beginning stages of the SEQRA process. But the Town cannot, let me repeat, take an action, they can’t decide to shorten the jetty without going through the environmental review process. COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: And this is an important, tonight is an important component in that SEQRA review is to get everyone’s analysis and input of the project and of the whole area. So this is an important component tonight. This is how you work through the process. MR. SCHWARTZ: And you are all so lucky, I can’t believe it because you are going to have two opportunities for scoping, not just tonight. Since we had that little, anyway, I would just like to talk very briefly about the potential impacts and alternatives which really are the heart of the environmental impact statement. And the impacts that it talks about here calls them the changes to coastal geomorphology but the impacts that you all are talking about are just mentioned in passing at the bottom here, the potential adverse impacts to updrift properties basically. And I am not saying that those are not important but there are other impacts that I think should be considered if we are going to go through this process of environmental impact statement analysis. I just made a quick chart while I was sitting here. A, B, C and D. A. To the west of Page 41 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting the jetty, the beach on the west side and the waterfront properties behind it. That would be one area of impact. The impact on the inlet to Goldsmith pond. And on Goldsmith pond. The impact on the beach immediately to the east side, where we used to get all those good mussels, blue mussels, and then although we have heard many statements today that this doesn’t affect properties farther east, I am not so sure because the sand travels along the coastline or we think it travels along the coastline. It might be heading out where they are trying to build that liquid natural gas facility. Who knows where the sand is going? But that is what really this process is, to find out what is happening and another major impact or impact on the coastal geomorphology would be the question of and really this is I think the heart of the issue here is that there has been some proposal that sand bypassing the tip of the jetty is not returning to the eastern shoreline. So I am not a coastal geomorphologist but I have been in Southold for over 40 years and I have been living on the water and in the water. And there is an inlet, it is on the Bay, for years it was a great place to just take a quick detour and get out of the weather because it was a very small little inlet, it was completely bulkheaded. Well, I can’t do it anymore. Ten years ago, they changed the jetty in front of it. The following winter, the mouth of the inlet shoaled up with sand. The next summer, they dredged it out. Two months later it was filled with sand again. It remains filled in with sand to this day. I would think that rather than just considering keeping the current jetty full size, 33 % reduction or 50 % reduction, you know, there are no straight lines in nature. What about changing the shape of the jetty? What is the economic analysis? Not, I think the economic analysis is of the value of the property around the jetty should be a part of the, this whole process but also the cost to remove the end of the jetty. If you take off even 33 % of the jetty, what do you do with those rocks? Where do they, you know, you have got to take them away. Instead of taking them away, maybe we could bend the end of the jetty and I don’t know if it would be better to bend it to the east or to the west but that would certainly have an effect on the movement of the sand. So instead of just being stuck with the same size, maybe we should consider, have some alternatives considering varying the shape and the orientation of the jetty. Maybe a part of this process could include a part of the project as a mitigation measure could be added instead of just, we could do alternative, try some dredging first and monitor that and see how that impacts this issue but also maybe we could do something like find some colored sand somewhere and put a load of colored sand upstream and see where that sand is going. We don’t know. Anyway, those are just some thoughts and good luck. And I hope that…. COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: Thank you. MR. TERRANOVA: Kieran, just to respond to your statement. The Town has made a decision to shorten the jetty. What we are doing now with the SEQRA process is going through the state environmental quality review act, okay, which is required in a project of this magnitude. Okay? before you can proceed. Alright? But the decision was made, you passed two resolutions, another resolution was passed by the prior administration. The study, assessment of jetty shortening alternatives was just that. You went to the consultant and said, look, we want to shorten the jetty. Give us two alternatives, a third and a half and tell us what the results are going to be. Okay? So the decision was made. You are just now, what this process is doing is you are going through the process to examine those impacts and see if you can see if you can make it work under SEQRA and get it past Army Corps of Engineers, DEC, Department of State, Fish and Wildlife and all the other regulatory agencies that are involved. That is what this Page 42 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting process is all about. ASSISTANT TOWN ATTORNEY CORCORAN: Well, you know, putting aside whether you believe the Town has already made up its mind on what it is going to do or not, I can’t speak to that. I will tell you legally the Town cannot approve something, okay, does not have, it is beyond their power to approve something without first doing the environmental analysis. MR. TERRANOVA: I agree with you 100 percent. That is exactly what I said. COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: The Town has defined the project. The project in this case is to shorten the jetty by about 30 percent. MR. TERRANOVA: Do you want me to go back and read the resolution? The resolution says you want to shorten the jetty. Okay? Okay, let’s let that go. I don’t want to talk about that anymore because it is plain as black and white in the resolution. You want to shorten the jetty, okay? Now we are going through the process to see if this project, as defined by your consultant, can muster, can pass muster of SEQRA, can pass muster with Army Corps, DEC, fish and wildlife and all the other interested agencies who have an interest in protecting our environment, protecting and hopefully protecting our property. Because that is why the jetty was built in the first place. Okay? People just didn’t come up with 300 foot jetty. It was built at 300 foot for a reason. Okay? That wasn’t arbitrary. So you are changing that around. Maybe we ought to get Mr. Gilman down here who was the superintendent. Okay? We have an affidavit from Mr. Gilman, okay, from New York state, who was the superintendent, who clearly states why the jetty was built. So the claim has been claimed in this report as well as other reports that it was built because we were going to build a marina, we know is untrue. So. Scott, we had a meeting. Scott wanted to go through the SEQRA process, I said, you know what? We are going to play ball with you. We are going to go on board, we are going to participate in the process. Okay? That is the only process we have. Short of you rescinding your resolution. You don’t want to rescind your resolution? You want go forward with the process and spend money, which we think is a waste but, I am not on the Town Board. All I am is a voter. Okay? You want to spend the money on this project to go through this project with the consultants, fine. I think money could be spent in other ways or saved for a rainy day, you know. The big storm is still a coming. But nonetheless, this is the Town Board’s decision. So if we are going to go forward, I said I was going to participate, everyone at Peconic sound shores that met with you, Scott, Marissa, Roxanne, we said we were going to participate. We volunteered. We will spend time. You want us to meet with Jamie Richter, you want us to meet with the consultants, Mr. Voorhis, okay? We can sit down and give them the benefit of our experience. Okay? many of you weren’t even born when the jetty was built. Tom, you were. But you understand what I am saying, okay? Some of us have the experience…. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I would like to say everybody but me on this dais but… MR. TERRANOVA: Some of us have the experience. Don Bracken, this man has got… SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I understand. And I made a promise and a commitment to you that I Page 43 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting will include you every step of the way which is what tonight is about, which is what the next… MR. TERRANOVA: I understand. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: But I never promised I would stop the process. I did tell you I am interested in a holistic approach… MR. TERRANOVA: Yes, sir. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: But the holistic approach, by definition, means you have to include the jetty and all other eight encumbrances along the way, although Bittner’s I don’t think, I was just out there a few weeks ago. Bittner doesn’t have a functioning groin, it has a bulkhead, not a functioning groin. But a holistic approach mandates that we include everything. Including that jetty. MR. TERRANOVA: Right. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Because we have serious erosion issues…. MR. TERRANOVA: Then again, I am still waiting for that opportunity, okay? To sit down, okay, and I have the capacity, I know I am getting on in years and I have senior moments, but I do have an engineering degree. I have the capacity to understand, okay? And to analyze. And I think I can contribute, with input from other residents to the work of the Town engineer and consultants in coming up with a project that is a win-win for everyone. Because as I said, taking 120 feet of beach front on the west side is a non starter. So….okay. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you. COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: Let’s move this along, shall we? LILLIAN BALL: Hi. I am Lillian Ball and I would like to say that it is obvious that we need a more creative perspective on this. A more open kind of solution than one side or the other can present. So I am here today to tell you about the group to save Goldsmith’s inlet, which actually has been functioning for some time now. The group to save Goldsmith’s inlet includes a number of people who have been working towards saving the eco-systems of Goldsmith’s inlet for several years. Hugh and Susan Switzer, who asked me to come here today, Bill Higgins and Mike Bartos, have been advocating for Goldsmiths inlet since 1997. They circulated a petition that was signed by over 500 people and supported by the North Fork Environmental Council, the North Fork Audubon Society, the Peconic baykeeper and the Peconic Land Trust. As you may know, I have been involved with the health of the globally rare, maritime freshwater interdunal swale that stretches to Goldsmiths inlet to Horton Point for several years. So when I heard about the group to save Goldsmiths inlet, I was immediately impressed with t heir efforts. It is a completely separate entity from either the Peconic shores civic association or the Kenney’s beach civic association and has goals that are distinctly different from property rights issues. the majority of the land around Goldsmiths inlet is preserved by Suffolk county and the Peconic Page 44 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting Land Trust. However, that does not mean that it is safe from environmental degradation. Over the last several years, the inlet has lost much of its natural tidal flow, as everybody here knows well. It has become silted up and its disturbed state has made it susceptible to several invasive species, nitrogen loading, stormwater runoff and a general loss of its unique habitat. There are many sightings of blue herons, egrets and wood ducks, often called the nature’s prettiest waterfowl, in the area surrounding the inlet. The native high marsh areas which are in jeopardy from excessive sedimentation, are threatening the spawning areas of many fish. This habitat is protected and covered by the New York Department of State significant habitat map. But that doesn’t mean the state actively maintains this formerly pristine area. Whatever is decided on the fate of the jetty will have direct bearing on the health of Goldsmiths inlet. Perhaps there is no perfect solution for all the parties concerned, especially in light of sea level rise and continual change. Anybody who has walked that beach, as I do nearly every day, knows how much it changes. It is never the same. Never the same year to year, day to day, season to season. The group to save Goldsmiths inlet calls attention to the compelling evidence that the health of the inlet must be considered whatever decision is reached, even if there is no immediate jetty action. The Goldsmiths inlet group maintains that total coordination is necessary for all phases of any possible jetty removal and any necessary dredging, including Bittner’s, to ensure that the littoral drift continues along the shoreline and does not further clog the inlet. Nobody here even, Scott mentioned it briefly but Bittner’s is preserved and the bulkhead and house and pool surrounding it are due to come down. We have a grant, a federal grant to take down Bittner’s. That is going to change the whole scenario all the way down the beach. In the event that the jetty situation is not speedily resolved and it does not look from this evening that it will be speedily resolved, the group will continue to lobby for results, apply for grants and stay actively engaged to find creative solutions that can solve these problems of immense scope. The group to save Goldsmiths inlet encourages Southold Town, Suffolk County and the New York Department of State to do what is necessary to maintain the inlet and not let it stagnate and be further destroyed. The group to save Goldsmiths inlet will keep this issue before the public, emphasizing again and again the public private partnerships that are necessary to work toward appropriate cost effective solutions. The longer the shoaling situation is allowed to continue, the more difficult it will be to restore. Everyone in Southold should be aware that this natural parkland is for the benefit of us all. We all owe it to future generations to keep it healthy. Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Thank you. Would anybody else like to come up and address the Town Board on this issue? JOHN BETSCH: Once again, I did not come here for this purpose tonight but sitting here listening I just, simply put, I just again want to reiterate I think that the Town Board has an elected and a moral responsibility to address the needs of all the citizens of Southold, not just Peconic shores, not the other. I think it is important that you use scientific data and I don’t think it is also important that you don’t consider some of the diversionary topics that were presented tonight, like Rick Abatelli’s statement which is taken out of context. Of course, Rick Abatelli, he is referring to the fact that it is a buildable lot because it is behind the coastal erosion hazard line. It makes it a buildable lot. Period. Or the fact that the eight mentioned groins that exist is kind of laughable to compare a 300 foot long by 20 foot wide groin, the effect that has on the littoral drift of sand to a 1 foot wide by 6 foot piece of metal in the sand. That is laughable. Page 45 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting UNIDENTIFIED: Inaudible. COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: No, let him finish, though. MR. BETSCH: Excuse me. There was also a statement made that there are no homes to be protected to the east and my property is just as important to me as those in Peconic shores, so you should be considering people on both sides of that inlet. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Can you give your name and hamlet for the record? MR. BETSCH: John Betsch, North Sea Drive, Southold. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Would anybody else like to address the Town Board? Can I get a motion to adjourn? I am sorry, let’s get a motion to leave this open. What I am going to do is, we are going to set up a date. Peter, can I contact you as a contact for your organization when we set up the next public hearing? Okay. COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: Move we adjourn? Closing Statements BENJA SCHWARTZ: Tom, Scott? Tom, Tom. You are going home already? I know but this is not the hearing. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Can I just ask everybody as you leave, we are still taking public comment. I am going to ask everybody that is remaining, if we can just keep it down because we just want to finish up the meeting and take public comment on other issues. Thank you. Benja, do you want to go ahead? MR. SCHWARTZ: Thank you, Scott. At the Town Board work session this morning it came to light that the connecting, the newly constructed animal shelter to the public water, provided by Suffolk County Water Authority, Suffolk County Water Authority wants over $25,000 to make the connection and I just wondered if you can give me a quick answer, if possible. I mean, did we know that when we were, when the project was being…. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Let me clarify, first of all for the actual work, the cost of the tapping fee and the water maintenance installation, Jamie, what is the exact cost? For Suffolk County Water Authority. JAMIE RICHTER: I think the two are, for the eight inch tap and the installation of the meter was $9,500. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Okay, that was no and that was no and that was financed as part of this capital project. The $25,000, $24,000 key charge was not part of the capital project. We did not envision having to pay a key charge as a municipality. Page 46 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting MR. SCHWARTZ: That is in addition to the $9,000? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: That is in addition. That is a general levy for general capital investment. MR. SCHWARTZ: I mean, I, I just can’t believe Suffolk County Water Authority could get away with something like that. How much are they going to charge us for the water if we do connect and start using it? COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: How ever much they want. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: What ever their water rates are. COUNCILMAN KRUPSKI: Whatever they want. MR. SCHWARTZ: The same cost that it costs the residences? There is no discount? SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: I don’t know if they have. MR. SCHWARTZ: We are putting in an 8 inch main. That is going to be a lot of water. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: No, the main doesn’t dictate how much water you use. The amount of water you use dictates how much water you use. The main is there as a supply for future growth and need. MR. SCHWARTZ: Well, I like the well water. I still have a well. Last question, did we ever get an accounting from the Southold-Raynor animal shelter foundation incorporated? COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: There was an accounting and I believe the money has been transferred to a trust account held by the Town. MR. SCHWARTZ: Because I have foiled for that, I have filed a FOIL request for that accounting last year. COUNCILMAN WICKHAM: I will try to find it for you. MR. SCHWARTZ: I would appreciate that. Thank you. SUPERVISOR RUSSELL: Okay. Anybody else? (No response) Okay. Motion to adjourn. Motion To: Adjourn Town Board Meeting COMMENTS - Current Meeting: RESOLVED that this meeting of the Southold Town Board be and hereby is declared adjourned at 10:04 P.M. Page 47 December 2, 2008 Minutes Southold Town Board Board Meeting * * * * * Elizabeth A. Neville Southold Town Clerk RESULT: ADOPTED [UNANIMOUS] MOVER: Scott Russell, Supervisor SECONDER: Louisa P. Evans, Justice AYES: Ruland, Orlando, Krupski Jr., Wickham, Evans, Russell Page 48