The Riverhead Town Board at a special meeting last night postponed the adoption of the comprehensive plan update to Sept. 4, the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting.
It also did not take action on the “findings statement” required by state law to be adopted prior to the plan itself.
Both items were on the agenda of the special meeting last night at Town Hall. But Supervisor Tim Hubbard said the board decided to postpone the plan’s adoption because the version of the plan “that was attached to the resolution” published in advance of last night’s meeting “was an earlier version of the final comp plan.”
Hubbard said officials realized the error “within the past 45 minutes” before the start of the meeting and thought it best to postpone the action until the board’s next regular meeting, which takes place Sept. 4 at 2 p.m.
The supervisor said the board also had “a lot of complaints from people saying they didn’t have enough time to digest this.”
The postponement will “give people a lot more time to go through it, because it’s thick. There’s a lot of reading,” Hubbard said.
“So this, in effect, is kind of a blessing in disguise.”
He then asked Planning and Economic Development Administrator Dawn Thomas to provide further explanation.
Thomas apologized to the board and the public.
“The document that was attached to the resolution was an earlier version of the final comp plan,” Thomas said. “We have the final comp plan.”
The document that was attached to the resolution prior to last night’s special meeting has since been removed from the resolution packet posted on the town’s website. Only the proposed findings statement remains posted there.
The Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement (FGEIS) — the document that analyzes the environmental impacts of proposals contained in the final comprehensive plan— which the board adopted on Aug. 6, “contained all the changes that will be in the final comp plan,” Thomas said.
Thomas said the town will post the “correct final version… the right final version, and then the public will have another couple of weeks to review it.”
The correct final version will include all the changes, which are marked in red, indicated in the adopted FGEIS. The adopted FGEIS, which is posted here on the “Town of Riverhead Comprehensive Plan Update” website is embedded below.
Under state law, the town has 30 days from the date of adoption of the FGEIS to adopt a findings statement for the comprehensive plan, Town Attorney Erik Howard said last night in response to a question from Greater Jamesport Civic Association President Laura Jens-Smith.
Thomas in an interview this morning acknowledged that the Town Board could have adopted the findings statement alone last night, but it was decided it was clearer and cleaner to adjourn action on both the findings statement and the comp plan.
Alek Lewis contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: This story has been amended for clarity, to add an attribution to a previously unattributed statement. The statement about the 30-day deadline for adoption, previously unattributed, was made by Town Attorney Erik Howard during the meeting, in response to a question by Laura Jens-Smith.
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