Public outreach for Riverhead comprehensive plan update to begin next month

Riverhead residents will get their first chance next month to weigh in on the comprehensive plan update when a community survey goes live online and community meetings get underway, Riverhead building and planning administrator Jefferson Murphree told the town board during its work session yesterday.

The town board in October 2019 hired AKRF Environmental, Planning and Engineering Consultants to update the comprehensive plan adopted by the town in 2003. The kickoff date for the $675,000 project was originally Feb. 1, 2020 but it was delayed by the COVID-19 crisis, the consultants told the town board during their initial presentation in September. Next steps, they said, would include establishing an advisory committee, conducting meetings with town officials, conducting a survey and holding up to 20 community meetings.

On Jan. 4, Supervisor Yvette Aguiar announced the establishment of a 16-member “central advisory committee” that would “review submissions” from the planning consultants and “offer critical feedback and recommendations to the town board,” according to a press release issued by the supervisor that day.

AKRF has been interviewing “all the department heads in the town as well as outside agencies,” Murphree said yesterday.

“We are currently preparing the public community survey,” Murphree said. It currently consists of about 25 questions and would take about 15 minutes to complete, he said.

“We are expected to go live with it in mid-March,” he said.

After the survey is live, the town will begin scheduling community meetings via Zoom, Murphree said. Community meetings will be conducted on a hamlet by hamlet basis, with some of the town’s 11 hamlets being combined for meeting purposes “because of similar interests and geographic locations,” he said.

The community meetings will begin during the second or third week in March, Murphree told the board.

“And the last thing that we’re going to be doing in terms of public engagement, is that we are going to be creating sub-committees,” Murphree said. He outlined five subcommittees to be formed “based upon important issues that have been identified as being important in the comprehensive plan.”

The subcommittees will be: environmental sustainability; farmland preservation; transportation; the Route 58 corridor; and housing, seniors and community engagement.

Murphree said the membership on the environmental sustainability and farmland preservation subcommittees comprise “stands to be more than half of the subcommittee members’ totality,” which, he said, indicates how important those to subjects are in the context of the comprehensive plan.

The Route 58 subcommittee is going to be “really critical,” Murphree said.

“As you know, that Route 58, we have a number of vacancies along the corridor, the real estate market has changed dramatically in the last few years and it will continue to go forward. We don’t want to see big box vacant buildings along Route 58,” Murphree said.

Murphree acknowledged receiving “concerns and criticisms” that the advisory committee does not include the public.

After Aguiar announced the establishment of the central advisory committee and the members appointed to it, civic organizations in Riverhead objected to not having any representation on the advisory committee.

Last week, the Riverhead Neighborhood Preservation Coalition, a coalition of civic and environmental groups, sent a letter of complaint to the town board.

“The CAC membership is heavily weighted towards economic and real estate development and is severely lacking in representation from neighborhood and environmental preservation interests,” wrote RNPC president Phil Barbato of Jamesport. These representatives “need a seat at the table to ensure the final work product truly represents a comprehensive vision for our town’s future that was crafted by its citizens,” he wrote.

Yesterday Murphree dismissed those concerns. He said the advisory committee is “composed of key people in each of the respective industries … or subjects. And just to give you an example of what the subjects areas are, agriculture, government relations, real estate, economic development, education, schools and community facilities, health care, parks, recreation, seniors, natural resources, public safety, community development, water resources, and legal,” he said.

“Only two representatives on this committee represent the real estate and commercial interests,” Murphree said.

Ten of the 16 members of the advisory committee are town officials. The other six are: School Superintendent Christine Tona, PBMC president and CEO Andrew Mitchell, L.I. Farm Bureau administrative director Rob Carpenter, Long Island Builders Institute CEO Mitch Pally, Richmond Realty principal Ike Israel and Atlantis Holdings executive director Bryan DeLuca.

“So it is, we believe, a well-balanced list,” Murphree said. He said there has been some discussion about adding someone “possibly from the housing sector.”

There has also been discussion of adding “somebody representing our lower income and minority communities,” Murphree said.

“We are a diverse community in Riverhead and they deserve to be representative and have a voice at the table,” Murphree told the board.

Councilwoman Catherine Kent questioned how the advisory committee was formed without a town board resolution.

“When we have done other committees, as I recall, first we had a resolution establishing the committee and what categories would be included in the group. And then we voted on a resolution with the committee members. So I’m just wondering why we didn’t do this by resolution,” Kent said.

“This is an ad hoc advisory committee,” Murphree said. “It’s not a permanent committee, unlike some of the other committees that we have in the town. Their limited role, focus goal and a timeframe to complete that. Once they’ve completed their task, then they dissolve,” Murphree said.

Kent said the downtown committee is the same, but it was established by resolution. She asked town attorney Robert Kozakiewicz whether committees are usually established by resolution and he said he could not answer the question without looking into it.

Councilman Tim Hubbard, the town board liaison to the advisory committee said he didn’t think “there’s an issue” and voting on a resolution is “just another step.” But, he added, “if you’re comfortable doing it, that’s fine.

The final draft of the comprehensive plan update will likely be delivered to the town board in about a year, Murphree said, responding to a question from the supervisor about how long the process will take. Once the plan is accepted by the board, the board will then have to begin the State Environmental Quality Review process, which will include a generic environmental impact statement. “That will take some time,” Murphree said.

“One year, okay,” Aguiar said. “And we need to make sure that the farming community is involved,” she said, “and our seniors.”

Aguiar said Murphree should make sure all the documents are on the town’s website.

Murphree said all the documents the town has are already on the town’s website and he will continue to add them. He said the link to the Draft Comprehensive Plan Update document list is under the “quick links” tab on the town website home page.

The Draft Comprehensive Plan Update page has links to the AKRF power point presentation given to the town board in September, AKRF/McLean Associates bios, a draft hamlet boundaries map, draft zoning maps, the central advisory committee membership list and a draft public outreach plan.