Riverhead Town Board honors 2025 employee of the year: April 7 meeting wrap-up

The Riverhead Town Board on Tuesday honored Highway Department employee Scott Vance as its 2025 employee of the year.

Vance was recognized at the start of the meeting for work that Highway Superintendent Mike Zaleski said helps keep the town clean year-round. 

Zaleski said Vance picks up three to five cubic yards of litter every day, four days out of his five-day workweek.  “We have a small dumpster at work. At the beginning of the day, it’s empty, and at the end of the day, it is overflowing,” Zaleski said. “It’s not just pieces of paper here and there,” he said.  He removes large discarded items from roadsides and wooded areas, too. 

Supervisor Jerry Halpin said Vance has demonstrated exceptional skills and strong commitment to both the Highway Department and the Riverhead community.

In a 3-2 vote, the board advanced the acquisition of the Long Island Science Center building on East Main Street. Science center representatives returned during public comment after the vote to say they had submitted documentation showing the project had made substantial progress and asked the board to review it. See separate story.

The board unanimously approved a resolution authorizing up to $1.88 million in borrowing for the construction of a highway garage in Wading River. As a capital project, the borrowing must be made by the town, paid out of the town’s general fund. But the Town Board and the highway superintendent have agreed that the highway department will pursue New York State Consolidated Local and Highway Improvement Program (“CHIPS”) funding that can be used to pay the cost of the facility “and/or reduction in annual Highway Department budgets equal to bond principal and interest with caveat that Town Board would approve expenditure from Highway Unreserved Assigned Fund Balance to supplement budget lines consistent with the state Highway Law,” according to the resolution adopted by the board Tuesday.

The board also unanimously reappointed seven members of the town’s Anti-Bias Task Force: Marjorie Acevedo, Roberto Ramos, Patrice Stokely, Harley Abrams, Salem Massage, Tom Nijon and Connie Alessandro. 

During the public comment period, resident John McAuliffe urged the board to reconsider Council Member Denise Merrifield’s role as liaison to the task force in light of the recent controversy involving the group. 

Halpin responded before the board began voting on resolutions that Merrifield would remain in that role and said he expects to attend the task force’s next meeting if his schedule allows.

“We’ll be reviewing the mission of that group together, and we’ll be growing from this as a board, as a community and together,” Halpin said.

Former task force chair Cindy Clifford also addressed the board, tracing her involvement with the group to an incident that 10 years ago that drew attention to the need for an anti-bias group in Riverhead. 

She and co-chair Michele Lynch wanted “to engage the community and raise the profile [of the task force] so it doesn’t take another horrific event for people to know that the anti-bias task force exists,” Clifford said. 

“We hosted programs on implicit bias to understand we all have biases and how to reduce them. Programs celebrating Martin Luther King’s legacy, honoring Holocaust remembrance, offering understanding about the asylum program, which is grossly misunderstood, monthly events, all in an effort to serve our town, to reduce the sometimes enormous gap between cultures and ideally to bring people together,” she said. 

“I tell you all this to explain the back story of the Riverhead Town Anti-Bias Task Force when it was living up to its mission, when the driving force was not optics but opportunities to better understanding and greater appreciation of others, regardless of their appearances, heritages or preferences,” Clifford said.

Clifford said she, Lynch and four other members were “unceremoniously cut” from the group in 2023.

“Our replacements pointed to a new, more conservative direction, serving on a group that would now be under the auspices of the town, rather than as it was originally — independent,” Clifford said. “And it seems the group has now bent even farther in this new direction, given that the once Anti-Bias Task Force is turning its back on or prohibited from speaking up for marginalized groups and communities.”

In other action, the board approved:

• An early-voting polling place agreement with the Suffolk County Board of Elections for use of Riverhead Town Hall;
• A professional services agreement with H2M for sanitary improvements at the town square splash pad;
• a short-term runway use agreement for Race Track, Not Street’s 2026 Spring Fling at EPCAL; and
• special-event permits for Hallockville Museum Farm’s Fleece and Fiber Festival, the Wading River-Shoreham Chamber of Commerce Fall Festival, the Duck Pond Society’s Duck Pond Day, the Long Island Antique Power Association’s tractor pulls and shows, the Jamesport Triathlon, the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Cancer of Eastern Long Island walk, the New York Marine Rescue Center’s Paddle Battle and Foodie Fest.

The board took up two resolutions “off the floor” — resolutions that were not on the agenda published before the meeting. One supported Suffolk County’s application for state Environmental Bond Act funding to preserve the Venezia Square property on Route 25A in Wading River as open space. The other authorized a professional services agreement with Justice Lori Hulse in connection with adjudication of stop-arm camera cases.

Correction: The photo caption has been amended to correct an error in the first name of employee of the year Scott Vance.