The Riverhead Town Board will begin its official public review tomorrow of the comprehensive plan update that’s been in the works since 2019.
The board is scheduled to accept a draft impact statement for the plan, issue a notice of completion and schedule public hearings on the document at a special meeting Thursday morning.
The acceptance and notice of completion begins a period of public review and comment required by the State Environmental Quality Review Act. After the review and 30-day comment period are concluded, including the required public hearings, town planners will gather and respond to comments on the draft impact statement. The draft plan, comments and responses together will be published as a final generic impact statement, which will be then accepted by the board. That will complete the review process and allow the town to adopt a findings statement and a final plan.
At that point, it will be up to the town to adopt code changes to implement the plan.
As of Wednesday morning, the resolutions to be considered by the board at its special meeting were not yet posted on the town’s website.
Representatives of BFJ Planning, the consulting firm hired to complete the comprehensive plan update begun by a prior consulting firm in 2020, are scheduled to meet with the Town Board at its regularly scheduled work session Thursday morning to present the draft plan and discuss next steps.
Planners, together with a steering committee appointed by the Town Board, have circulated preliminary draft plan chapters and received community comments. BFJ summarized the draft provisions, community comments and reviewed them at the last steering committee public meeting on April 1. View the consultants’ presentation to the committee here.
Draft documents, resources and videos of meetings leading up to the completion of the draft generic environmental impact statement — the document to be accepted by the Town Board Thursday — are available at the town’ comprehensive plan website.
The special meeting is scheduled to take place at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Riverhead Town Hall, 4 West Second St., Riverhead.
The meeting will be live-streamed on the town website and carried live on Optimum Cable Channel 22.
The meeting will also be available via Zoom at the following link, https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86764686629?pwd=ckNaTU1XZnUycW1CRE5WYVlYOHFKZz09, or by phone at 1 (929) 205-6099.
For further instructions on participating in the meeting via Zoom, see the notice of special meeting.
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