Riverhead Town may be installing a security camera system downtown after all.
The town in January had initially gotten a quote for a system that seemed out of reach financially — an estimated $400,000. Officials were able to get a revised proposal, reducing the estimated cost to under $125,000.
This week, officials learned that the town has $160,000 in unspent Community Development Block Grant funds from last year which can be used for the security camera system. The money has to be spent by mid-June or the funding will be lost.
Officials agree this is good news for downtown — but that may be about all they agree on.
A press release went out this afternoon from Councilman Tim Hubbard, stating that he had “secured federal funding through the Community Development Department to immediately increase public safety downtown through the purchase and installation of security cameras at strategic locations in downtown Riverhead.”
Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith said in an interview that Hubbard didn’t secure any funding and she wasn’t sure why he’d say such a thing. She then sent out a press release “correcting” the councilman’s announcement.
Hubbard later said it was “an error” to say he secured the funding. He said Councilwoman Jodi Giglio wrote the press release for him because he had to go out of town to take care of a family matter, he said.
Giglio said the town board coordinator wasn’t supposed to send the release out until Hubbard reviewed and approved it.
She said the idea to use the federal funding for the cameras was Hubbard’s.
“I worded it that way because we’ve been trying to get the BID and parking district to do it,
so in my opinion he secured the money,” Giglio said.
Giglio maintains that the supervisor wanted to use the money to buy a bus for the senior center.
Jens-Smith said she won’t deny that there are many other good uses for that money, but said the claim that this was Hubbard’s idea “is absolutely not true.”
Hubbard, the supervisor said, agreed to it, “like the other council members.”
The revised estimated cost for the camera system is $124,413, according to Hubbard’s press release.
The town board must pass a resolution earmarking the grant funds for the security camera project. Suffolk County must then approve the spending, Jens-Smith said.
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