Comprehensive plan update

Representatives of BFJ Planning of New York City held a kickoff meeting in Riverhead Town Hall Thursday, presenting a timeline and milestones for the development and priorities for the comprehensive plan update, and fielding board members’ questions.

Opinion: Developers are ready to build and our Town Board is in lockstep with them — not the people of Riverhead.

Riverhead Town is entering a new contract with BFJ Planning to do the initial environmental assessment on the town’s proposed local law that would regulate battery energy storage systems.

The contrast between how government works in Southold and Riverhead is extreme. So is the end result, as anyone who takes a drive through the two towns can easily see. Riverhead deserves better.

"I don't owe you an explanation," the supervisor barked in response to a constituent's question. The outsized influence of the development crowd and the diminished influence of ordinary citizens in Riverhead were on vivid display at the last Town Board meeting. How did it get this way and why? RiverheadLOCAL editorial.

Angry residents objected to allowing large battery energy storage systems in Riverhead Town during a public hearing last week, arguing that the safety of the systems and potential locations of the new use should be more carefully studied in the town’s comprehensive planning process.

Though the Riverhead Town Board never scheduled a hearing on the moratorium the community has been demanding for many months, they had one yesterday, whether they liked it or not.

As the Riverhead Town Board remains divided on whether to pursue a moratorium on industrial development in Calverton, more than 100 people rallied in front of Town Hall yesterday to encourage the board to halt development until the town’s comprehensive planning process is complete.

“I just wanted to get this going. I thought I’d get three votes to at least go to a public hearing. But apparently not,” Council Member Tim Hubbard said after last week's work session, when he asked to have the moratorium resolution taken off the agenda for today's Town Board meeting.

The resolution calling a public hearing on a proposed moratorium on industrial development in Calverton has been pulled from the packet of resolutions scheduled to be acted on by the Town Board Tuesday night.