The target completion date for Riverhead’s comprehensive land use plan update has been pushed back to the fall of 2022, town officials said Tuesday night.
The plan was supposed to have been completed and implemented — with a completed plan, a generic environmental impact statement and the text of zoning code amendments and subdivision regulations drafted — by the end of May, according to a project schedule in the contract between the town and planning consultants AKRF.
The $675,000 contract with the New York City-based firm was authorized by the town board in October 2019, signed by former supervisor Laura Jens-Smith in December 2019 and fully executed Jan. 2, 2020. AKRF was selected by the town board after the board issued a request for expressions of interest June 4, 2019. AKRF was one of two firms to submit a proposal.
Commencement of work was delayed by COVID pandemic shut-downs. The original Feb. 1, 2020 kickoff date was delayed to September 2020, when the consultants came to a town board work session to update board members on what the firm had been doing. AKRF principal and project manager Robert White and senior technical director Lorianne DeFalco told members of the town board and planning board on Sept. 17 the firm had been doing prep work — researching, reading previous planning documents and preparing maps.
The next steps would include establishing an advisory committee, conducting meetings with town officials, and holding up to 20 community meetings. Some or all of the meetings will likely be held virtually, White said in September, due to ongoing pandemic restrictions.
Supervisor Yvette Aguiar in January announced the formation 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 from the supervisor.
There have been two meetings of the Central Advisory Committee so far, Building and Planning Administrator Jefferson Murphree said at Tuesday night’s town board meeting.
The next meeting wouldn’t occur until after “breakout meetings” of subcommittee on specific topics, such as Route 58, housing, farmland preservation, Murphree said Tuesday night.
According to an April 12 progress report posted on the town’s website, AKRF has completed 22 stakeholder interviews — 12 with town departments and 10 other stakeholders, including the BID, the school district and other outside county and stat entities. There have been no further progress reports published.
No community meetings have yet been held, Murphree said. In fact, he explained, the way they will be conducted is being changed. The town will now utilize technology to reach a wider audience and gain more community feedback than was possible relying only on the traditional in-person meetings, he said.
Typically there is a series of community meetings where the consultants present maps and community members express their opinions, Murphree said. Then the consultants come back with their recommendations.
Utilizing online interactive maps will give the community more time and opportunity to participate in the process, Murphree said. The maps will be up for two months, in not longer, he said.
The town is updating its website to publish the interactive maps online, Murphree said. He has been working on the website update.
“The website is being completely redone,” Murphree said Tuesday night. It is currently “not interactive at all,” he said.
“The new website is going to knock your socks off,” Murphree said. “It will have four or five or six different ways the public can interact.”
Murphree said the online survey for the comprehensive plan is “ready to go” and will be online once the updated website is launched.
The January 2020 contract with AKRF is being revised, Murphree said, to reflect the new timeline and other changes.
There will be a slight fee increase, he said.
Town Attorney Bob Kozakiewicz said he has the proposed contract amendment on his desk and will soon review it.
“Once we get the contract amended and we post the online survey, we’re going to go out to the community,” Murphree said. “We’re either going to do it in July or August,” he said.
The online survey was initially supposed to be launched in March, Murphree told the town board at its Feb. 11 work session. The community meetings, which he said would be held via Zoom, would begin during the second or third week in March, Murphree said at the February work session.
Murphree’s comments at Tuesday night’s town board meeting came in response to questions posed during the meeting by Riverhead residents Mike Foley, who said he was looking for “a good idea on where we stand” since there haven’t been “any real updates since the April update on the town website.
He said Tuesday night he hopes the website update will be “done within the next week,” at which point the town will publish the online survey.
“Then we’re off to the races,” Murphree said.
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