A six-month moratorium on all industrial development in Calverton appears to lack majority support on the Riverhead Town Board. At this point it’s doubtful it even has the three votes needed to schedule a public hearing on the question.
The Greater Calverton Civic Association, other civic and environmental groups, and community residents who’ve recently been attending Town Board and Planning Board meetings in force, have for months been asking the Town Board to enact the moratorium to allow the comprehensive planning process to be completed.
Council Member Tim Hubbard introduced the measure after the Planning Board in October came out if favor of it. He initially sought an 18-month moratorium, citing the length of time it will require for the town to finish the comprehensive plan update, but reduced it to six months in the hope of garnering three votes to move forward.
Hubbard planned to offer a resolution at today’s Town Board meeting to schedule a public hearing in January on a local law establishing the moratorium, but at last week’s work session, he asked to pull the resolution from the agenda.
Hubbard said last week he didn’t realize Council Member Frank Beyrodt would be away and unable to attend the meeting.
“This is, as we all know, important to a lot of people. I’m going to ask that we have it removed and put back on when we have a full board. It’s important that we have all five of us here.
“And I always believe that when make such grand decisions we should have the full board,” Supervisor Yvette Aguiar agreed. “We’ll take this further and see where we’re going to go, possibly for the next resolution period, depending where we are,” she said.
In reality, the “grand decision” to schedule the public hearing had to be postponed because, without Beyrodt present, Hubbard would not have anyone to second the resolution and bring it to a vote today.
Hubbard acknowledged that in a phone interview after Thursday’s work session.
“I just wanted to get this going,” he said. “I thought I’d get three votes to at least go to a public hearing. But apparently not.”
Beyrodt seems to be the only member besides Hubbard to support the idea.
An alternative version of the moratorium legislation, one which provides exemptions for applications already under review and/or applications deemed “benign” because they won’t impact traffic or residents — advocated by Aguiar and Council Member Bob Kern, respectively — is “in process,” Kern said Friday. He said he was working on it with Building and Planning Administrator Jefferson Murphree. It won’t be discussed until after the new year, Kern said.
Council Member Ken Rothwell in an interview Thursday explained his opposition to a moratorium. He said doesn’t believe a six-month moratorium would accomplish anything because it’s not long enough to complete the comp plan update.
Rothwell also would not support a longer moratorium, as Hubbard originally sought, because the town needs to grow its tax base.
“If we were more economically stable and we had more projects in, and our tax base was was greater than you, then you can certainly pause and take a look at things,” Rothwell said. “I just can’t justify telling the residents of this town, step one, I’m going to raise your taxes, and step two, we’re going to stop growth and development,” he said.
“Projects like this in industrial zones, do bring in tax dollars and that helps every resident in the town,” Rothwell said.
Rothwell said Calverton is the right place for industrial zoning, citing the existence of the enterprise park there.
“That’s where I want to see high-tech, high-paying jobs,” Rothwell said. “That’s where the next generation … there’s a future of employment in the Town of Riverhead because of high-tech development jobs. And we need to allow some of that growth to occur,” he said.
Fairness to property owners is also an issue, Rothwell said.
“How do you say to a developer that you’ve owned this particular piece of property for all these years, you’ve paid taxes on this piece of property, and now at the very moment that when you’re actually wanting or have the infrastructure or the financial means to develop it, we’re going to tell you, no, you can’t?” He said. “Then we should be giving back the taxes they paid on it if we’re going to tell them they can’t develop what they’ve been paying taxes on for many years? I don’t think it’s our place to do that,” Rothwell said.
His sentiments are shared by Aguiar and Kern.
“You want to see taxes stable. I got a whole town to think about. We’re going into some kind of mild recession,” Kern said. “I have to be thoughtful and methodical.”
Aguiar did not respond to requests seeking comment for this story. During prior public meetings, the supervisor has advocated exempting projects that are already “well advanced” in the review process, citing what she said was the potential for lawsuits against the town that might be brought by the developers of those projects.
Town Attorney Erik Howard last month advised the Town Board that state law specifically authorizes moratoria to further a comprehensive planning process. He also said the town would be on solid legal ground with a moratorium that did not “grandfather” for projects already under review, which he said, under well-settled case law in New York, do not have “vested” rights to build.
Aguiar rejected the town attorney’s assessment. “I know that we talked about vested; anything can be considered vested,” she said. “I know that you stated it has to have a site plan — I’m sorry, I checked with other entities and attorneys and people in public office and they said we can decide what we want,” Aguiar told Howard during the Nov. 17 work session. She declined to disclose who she had consulted with.
Kern has advocated exempting projects he called “benign,” which he described as “projects that have no effect on traffic and no effect on residents.” He said the town could benefit from tax revenues generated by those developments and should allow them to proceed by way of exempting them from any moratorium.
Despite being cautioned by Howard and Building and Planning Administrator Jefferson Murphree about the risks of establishing a moratorium with exemptions, the board at the Nov. 17 work session agreed to consider two moratorium measures: one without exemptions and one with exemptions.
Kern wouldn’t say Friday whether he would support a moratorium without exemptions.
“This has to be done very carefully,” he said.
During an appearance on local radio station WRIV last week, Aguiar said she has not come to a final decision on a moratorium. “We’re still in talks. I’m researching it as thoroughly as I can. This is a big decision,” she said.
Alek Lewis contributed reporting for this story.
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