Town Board - Regular Meeting

Good morning. I'm Tim Purtell, chair of the Green Options Committee, and I'm here today to ask for your permission to place eight lawn signs on town roadsides to advertise the August 22nd Green Expo. The signs will be placed in strategic spots where they've been placed in the past years. Assuming we get permissions, the signs will go up after the event is over at 3 p.m. I actually drove around myself. We've taken everything down and just pulled it all out that same day. We would like to place the signs in the following locations. One sign, you're the stop sign of New York Avenue at the intersection of New York Avenue and West Neck Road. I should have made a map for you. One sign, you're the stop sign of West Neck Road One sign along West Neck Avenue should go up towards Louise Beach on the right-hand side. Two signs in the town center on each side of the center divide. One sign near the top sign at the intersection of North Clear Road and Van Waring Road. That's where it crops from the IGA. And one sign along North next to the IGA parking lot. And then one side along the north side of North Ferry Road as it approaches the intersection of West Neck Road.

So going back towards the Heights, going up that road before you make the right hand turn or you go the other way towards West Neck. I've always placed a sign there someone can advise me which is better or not.

I usually put them about 20 feet back from the stop sign so that when people are approaching the stop sign, they're not distracted by looking at an advertisement alongside, right next to the stop sign. The signs are pretty legible. I made them for drive-by legibility, as big as possible. That's what I did. And that's it. It's just those eight signs. And if you have any questions or thoughts.

Ken or Chief, any thoughts on the placement and proximity to stop signs?

I'll let the Chief weigh in on that first.

And the big thing for me is always line of sight. Right. So as long as they're not interfering with any line of sight for especially low cars, I don't have a big issue with it. And that they're on the toward the property side of the stop sign, not the inside of the stop sign, so to speak. So if there's the roadway, then the stop sign and then inside the stop sign, not outside the stop sign closer to the road. Am I explaining that well?

Yes. So what I have been doing, Jim, is placing them about 20 feet away from the stop sign. So that in my mind, and correct me if I'm wrong, I figured it was more of a potential interference if they're right near the stop sign, like the feet of the stop sign, which some people have put signs up not being critical. And that way they could see it, but then they go to the stop sign and it's not going to distract them from... That's great. So does that sound good?

And look, there are few. So if there's an issue, we'll either adjust them ourselves or we'll get with you and say we have to make an adjustment.

That's fine. So just let me know and I'll go out and do whatever needs to be done. And again, they'll be gone by 5 o'clock that same day.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Excited for the green expo. I said excited for the Green Expo.

Yes, me too. We have some new people and the same vendors. It'll be great.

Awesome. Any other comments from the public? Okay, we'll put this on for the August 10th covered meeting to approve it.

Okay.

Thanks, Tim.

Thank you.

Next on the agenda is the work that Liz has been doing on the building department.

So I have just been, I started, I don't even know, maybe we started like a month or two ago at this point, just thinking about getting ready for the budget. And where I started was thinking about all the different fees outside of property taxes that the charges and just making sure that they are appropriate, right? So the first thing that I did was how I started thinking about this was that I wanted to make sure that the building department fees were covering the building department, right? Just to make sure that we weren't using property tax money to offset that. And what I found was we, you know, when you kind of look at the budget, so I want to kind of start with why I even did this, right. Like why I went through this. So basically what I did is I went through the budget and obviously we have like the direct salary expenses, but I went in and I put in like, okay, what is the, the, the, the full picture here? Like, what is it with benefits? What, you know, what is it with all those costs? Um, and so what I've found was, um, that it isn't quite covering. The revenues don't quite cover the costs. I will also just say that I don't have the final math done on it. I have done all the direct expenses, but I also did started to do an analysis of like overhead expenses, that would also be attributable to the building department. So how I approached that it was on a basis of doing like full time equivalents. So thinking about all the full time equivalents in the town, what percentage of those the building department represents, and then thinking about sharing those costs. So like, let's think about it or HR, you know, like those things that like, obviously are not totally for the building department, but are needed. So basically, I wanted to get a fully loaded expenses. What does it really cost? And also knowing that health care is going up right we've seen the increase every year so basically what I found was that we are. Again, still working on the overhead costs, because I need to get the final full time equivalent numbers from Barbara but I kind of put in a rough placeholder which I think is actually pretty conservative. that property taxes are currently offsetting about $180,000 worth of building department expenses, which I thought was pretty considerable. So I said, okay, if that's the case, then we need to go back to the building fees and make sure that the building fees that we are charging to residents are just covering the time that the building department is spending. So to that, Reed and the rest of the staff at the building department have been super generous with their time. I think I've been over there three or four times kind of going through each item and talking about how long it actually takes them To do it, and so you see in front of you. On this like little chart at the green is like the fees that we're just considering just moving. So those are pretty straightforward. you see that there is one, the first column is what the amount is now, and then the suggested one. So we probably had, like I said, I don't know, three discussions. We've iterated, we put a lot of thought into this. So as you review it, please read and I know if you have questions. Two things that I did want to point out I'm going to save the top yellow block and we're going to come back to that. I did want to talk about this second page that you have here. It's like the little pink and the yellow is kind of reconsidering the matrix of how we're charging for construction, right? And so this is something kind of coming from the building department. So you can kind of see that we've adjusted both the pricing and the square footage in this. So just I do want to just kind of point out that not only is it a price differential, but you'll also see that just to note the square footage is just the idea being that the larger, more complicated properties should cost more because the team spends so much more time, right? And so the smaller square footage tend to be more simple. And so what we're really trying to do is bring the prices in line with the amount of effort that it takes. The other thing that is not here that I know, Amber, we had kind of talked about and I don't know, is to, I gave you the, we'll talk about it next week, but the budget impact, if we made these changes, would be pretty substantial. And I do think would probably close the gap. So I have to do a full analysis. It's just a little bit difficult to get the amounts per permit. So I'm kind of still searching for that report. But also, we need to kind of talk about this. So maybe before I do so crazy. Yeah, before before I like do that whole pivot table. I was like, let's talk about this if we have questions. Um, Other things, so I go to the front. I'm just going to kind of give you guys an overview reads here to answer any questions. Or obviously, I know we'll talk about this a little bit more. One of the things that we did reimagine is shifting the way that we're doing our rental licenses. And the reason I have this blocked out in yellow is this would actually require a code change. Thomas sat in on what one of our sessions to kind of just advise us of just like, hey, what is just like a fee update? And then like, what do we actually have to change the code? So this is one of the things we'd have to change the code on. So I do want to go over some high level changes here because there is some shifts. So what we would imagine is that we would do that technically the long-term and short-term rental licenses um would be because they do require an inspection to move those to the actually the same price and require instead of every other year to require a yearly inspection just to make sure that we we have so many visitors to the island uh we really want to make sure that our safety is in a better place because we do want to encourage year-round rentals. One of the ideas that we had was the fee for the long-term rental license could be waived to $75 from $500 for those folks that are producing a yearly lease. So if you come and you say, this is actually rented year-round, the price would be lower. yearly. The other part that we wanted to put in here is we do know that we have a lot of violations, right, of folks that either don't have permits, they're not up to the safety codes, and we really want to crack down on that. Put some teeth in here so that we can make sure that both our residents that are renting and our visitors are in safe conditions. So you'll see in here that we've put in some pretty steep fees for violations and how we would imagine these are not necessarily as court fees but as administrative fees. Um, so I do just want to kind of point that out. Um, we would like to see, uh, it's gotten, you know, we need, we need to, we need to give some enforcement mechanism, um, just to make sure that, uh, just all, like I said, all these rentals that we have on the island are safe. And also I think it's really important, you know, tying in with some of our larger work with the town around housing that we're tracking them and that we know where they are and if they are rented like short-term or long-term. So anyway, that's like kind of like the overview. Also you'll see irrigation is in there and obviously that's to That's to something we're talking, you know, the irrigation we're talking about later. I know you guys just kind of got this on Friday, but if you have any, like, high level questions that you have for Read or I, I know we've, we've, we have spent a lot of time thinking about this.

Just thank you for doing this.

Of course.

Thank you for putting in the time. When was the last time we raised building fees?

So, 4 years ago, yeah, and the inflation just because I was like, I'm always curious when we're raising fees, like, what the inflation has been since then. So over that 4 year period, 12.7%. I was kind of like, when looking just kind of pegging, like, okay, that's. It's higher, but then I wanted to hear a little bit about the methodology. Like, if you're looking at time, have you looked at other.

yeah so we did also look at other municipalities but really um it was great i mean i think all the building inspectors sat around and we literally just went through and talked about how much time it's meant to do took to do every one right you know so there was some um that just took a little bit longer. There's some that were like, nope, that's totally appropriate. Keep it the same. It's, you know, it's not, you know, and we had Mary Ellen was there too. So she was able to weigh in on how much time it took administratively. So what we really used is we used other municipalities as like making sure that we're kind of like in the right ballpark and, you know, like we're not like missing a piece of whatever goes into that, that specific task. But really we just, tried to just base it on literally how much time it takes to do these things.

We also did make an effort to lessen the hit on local residents who are already strapped by the cost of living agents this year. The building size has always been somewhat progressive. being that we try to keep the cost of permits lower for a starter home on Shelter Island than for a very, very expensive home with the assumption that those homes are much more expensive to build because of finishes as well as size. So if you're building a $20 million home, you shouldn't be You know, part of the calculus.

Yeah. And then, like, 2, 2 weeks when we did really try to, like, think about that and just, you know, kind of like, to our idea of just like, you know, waving some of the fees with the yearly lease and try and just try to, like, look for things where we could. State there, but, you know, give locals.

I should point out too that we are 1 of the few. departments that actually even has the luxury to pay for ourselves with fees. You know, basically, it's not an option in most of the other departments. If we can do it, why make the taxpayers pay for the service that we're offering to limited numbers?

Yeah. And I think for me is like how I really approached this was like really kind of putting, projecting myself forward into budget season. And it's just like, okay, well, where can we kind of make up ground? And so that's why I started with the building department because I was like, oh, there isn't, they're never going to be like a revenue center. Like that wouldn't be right, but they can cover themselves. That is fair to ask. That is fair to ask. And I think especially with like the economic dynamics on the island, I, for me, it left, I was like, I, I didn't feel good about property taxes subsidizing. Yes, exactly. I was like, well, it could at least cover itself. It could cover itself. That's fine. So that's like the ethos with which I approach this.

So one of the things on here, yeah, the home improvement licenses. Yes. Did you guys talk about expanding who has to apply for a license? So right now, like plumbers, electricians, architects, engineers don't need a home improvement license to work on Shelter Island because they have a state license. But there are others that have county licenses that still have to get town licenses. So in my mind, it hasn't really been fair to have like a Contractor have to get a license, but the plumber who is also has to be certified to do the work and not have to get a license. So that's something that I've been thinking about is actually expanding. The requirements for who gets a license to work on shelter island that way. If we do get the. License review board up and running, and we have issues with, let's say, a plumber who's lost their certification is still working. we have a license that we can then take them to task if they're doing shoddy work. I feel like we'd leave a massive loophole by not including plumbers, architects, engineers, and all these other people because they can be just as culpable, but we have no method for saying, hey, stop being shady.

i think that that's a great idea i mean reed do you have thoughts on that no it's funny i i've never understood why we don't exactly it was always explained to me when i came here that it was oh well we're not allowed to if there was some legal aspect to it but i don't like a lot of things i found looking at it in code yeah i learned anecdotally that actually that's not the case i don't know is trying to figure out ways of catching more of the people that don't have licenses who come from off island. It's a very complicated thing because of, you know, protections against unlawful search and seizure.

You know, we don't want to speak from the gashabo, but we are trying to come up with ways to get more

more people under the home improvement contractor tent because we get a lot of complaints, especially from landscapers. If we could get all the off-island landscapers who are just sending trucks over, that would also help. This problem.

Yeah, I mean, I think this. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of room here and totally open. It's interesting that we're kind of talking about this. I think next week I'll be talking about the recycling center. These but one of the big overlaps in the conversation that I was having with Ken and Ron and Reid was about the home improvement licenses and the stickering and how that works with the transportation. We can kind of talk a little bit more about one of the big things that we were talking about Between like both departments and myself was making sure that there are better stickers. Yeah. So that basically that the team, you know, the building team could be able to see, you know, at a distance. Okay, they're licensed. They're not. Ron sent me a bunch of examples from other towns also are sticker that needs improvement. We have opportunities for 27. I got like Mary Ellen, the name of the printer who does the other one for her to explore that. But that definitely also seems like something that's really important both for fees and enforcement, and then also at the recycling center to help them out. So they have some ideas about transfer station stickers that potentially could be issued at the same time. We can talk about that next week when I talk about the highway fees. But I think that expanding that is a great idea because it would I mean, and I guess my question would be then to you, Thomas, if we were to expand that definition of who gets a home improvement license, is that something that we would have to, would we have to, do we update the code? Okay.

Yeah. It's chapter 79. Okay. There's a whole chapter on it. And then there's just this one section that says exemptions and it literally lists like a whole bunch of people who I don't necessarily feel should be exempt. I don't think there's reason for it.

Yeah, but if we have to, you know, if we already have to pick it up to kind of take on the rental license fees, we might as well just, we could tackle it at the same time.

A question that I have just on the long term rental license. Yes. It starts out at 500. I think from a policy perspective, we don't want to discourage long-term rentals. We want to encourage them. And my concern is with a $500 fee, it discourages people from licensing.

So here's the thing. It's a little bit of a misnomer because long-term is over two weeks.

Well, no. Long-term is relief. per year, we do make a distinction between short-term rentals. In other words, yes, basically you're right, but we make a distinction between year-round rentals.

There's basically three categories.

There's under two weeks, over two weeks, but not a full year.

and then full year yeah and so what we're how we're trying to handle that is the yearly lease moving it to 75 dollars why don't we just make a third category let's make categories yeah less than two weeks over two weeks but less than a year and then a full annual permit

Yeah, that's fine.

Well, the only thing that we were thinking, the only reason we were considering it like this was because how do you prove that people, how do you, how do you know that you're in that third category? Right.

So it would be an annual or like a yearly with a lease is $75.

Yeah, I mean, that's basically how we were doing it here, was because if, like, because they didn't- Right, but this would just make it really easy for the public.

I think, yeah, in other words, we were trying to work within the existing law, but yeah, if you're willing to rewrite- Write it anyway, yeah.

would the only thing i would say with that totally cool obviously that's we're trying to accomplish the same thing um but i would say that you can't get that third unless you produce a yearly lease and so it would be and if you didn't have it then it would be five hundred dollars right yeah yeah okay so that's another one that's going to require a code yeah well i mean this whole section means i'm just

I'm kind of parsing them out like home improvement license. That's going to have to work on chapter seven. So this one. Yeah.

So we would want to like short term, long term and then yearly. Yeah.

Rental license, right? Short term, long term and annual maybe or yearly.

Short term and ultra short term.

I don't know.

Maybe long-term seasonal call it or something because that's effective.

Short-term seasonal and then yearly.

And the good thing about that is it would encourage people not to do that thing of you rent to somebody from September through May and then they've gotten it out of you, which is an ongoing issue.

And then I have One more question about the irrigation permit. Oh, the irrigation permits is just a, this is just a placeholder.

Okay, because I was going to say, I don't understand why grandfather did non-cistern. No, this is, this is, yeah, this was just all a placeholder because we were already working on it. And so I was just, I basically just put it in, this was part of our initial discussion. And then I was like, later today, we'll be talking about irrigation. And I believe all the updates were in there. So yeah. That makes sense. That's just, those need to be updated with the numbers from what we decide from the irrigation. But it's like in my little yellow needs a code update.

Yep. Version of the world. On the third page. Yes. There's COs. Yes, it was commercial. There's a fee that's getting increased and then residential is going to 0 and then there was nothing for duplicates updated and only sign duplicates. I'm just curious what that section was all about.

Well, that is an ongoing issue we've had. It used to be that we, it used to be that we, you know, we charged for CBOs that were called in for title companies and

and people who were selling their houses, the attorneys would want to see the CBOs.

At some point or another, because of the Freedom of Information Act, people figured out that these businesses figured out that they could get them basically effectively for free if they foiled them.

So it's a huge amount of work, especially because when people loading the whole file.

Huge, huge time suck. And at the same time that we get a loss of revenue. So we were looking at there was addressing that somehow that we, you know, that if people, if people want an unsigned version, which is basically not official, then, then they, you know, still have to, then they, They have to pay more for the side version and there's some kind of way of addressing.

And then maybe maybe our notes are incorrect here, so are we saying that because we had said to move the commercial from 150 to 250 and then the residential we had 150 were you thinking just to keep it at 150. um no i don't i think that we can raise i think because i think we should raise it okay according to the okay so maybe that's just like a typo there so you can just go ahead and let's just put in 250 and i'll double check with mary ellen and just make sure that that's the right one and things should be signed yeah yeah and then duplicates

I mean, is that, but if we're still charging $250, does that alleviate the issue of the foils?

No, and that's something else that we're addressing separately to the foil thing. And it's particularly a problem because it leads to problems with the unsigned ones because what we're finding is title insurance companies don't want to pay

And they figured out that they're not liable, that it's really all on the buyer. So effectively, I don't understand how they're offering any kind of insurance that way.

But anyway, so what's happening is they're getting unsigned ones for free. And then later, so we don't do a walkthrough. We don't know if it's actually got an illegal basement.

Sometimes two owners later, we get in because of cash deals where there's no... We have no inspection and all of a sudden we find out, oh, this has got to, we have one right now. Illegally converted basement.

Well, they're now selling it years later and they have to tear out the basement or substantially modify it to make it legal. It's a real problem.

So why can we just not submit, like not release unsigned COs?

You'll have to talk to Thomas about so it's 2 separate issues.

I've done a lot of closing separate issues. So, 1st is like. There is a CO for a property, like if the house was built in 1980 or whatever, there's a CO for it. And what the title companies are doing typically is just requesting it, or I usually do it as a buyer's attorney, request it from the town. And yeah, because you can FOIL it, it's free. And I mean, the title company doesn't care. Like they just wanna see a CO. They wanna know that the property is fit to be occupied by someone. The issue then is updated COs, which most attorneys are requiring upon transfer. So if I'm a buyer's attorney, I want the seller to get an updated CO, which is a blessing from the town that everything there is legal. The town here hasn't been charging for those updated CO inspections, which to me is nuts because every...

The last item.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was a big discussion that we had most places on the East end and I would say the fees are anywhere from 300 to 750. Yeah. Um. So, and it's all, you know, it's just kind of an accepted part of doing the transaction. Nobody really cares. You know, so doing the updated CEO inspection, like, the town should charge for that. And then getting the updated CEO is, you know. basically it's for the buyer, it's the peace of mind that everything on the property, there is not an illegal basement or whatever, a deck or shaft, whatever it is. But they're kind of two separate issues. So, yeah, I don't really see. I mean, every deal you request the, the most recent survey, the CEO, the property history. No matter what, and it's always free. So, whether the town charges as that just happens to be whatever's on record, right?

Creating something new. Yeah. But if we're doing an updated CO and we're creating something new and we're going to have to sign off on it, they should absolutely be paying for it.

Yeah. I think $500 is perfectly reasonable. I don't see a problem with that.

And I think that Thomas is being, well, either kind or he assumes And they're just not used to, there is no basement to illegally convert. And so they're not asking for them. And there's so many more, because we have a more affluent group of people buying, a lot of these are cash deals now or financed some other way. So nobody ever thinks tax.

And would we white it out as the duplicates updated and unsigned duplicate? So those will have fees associated with them?

I think what my understanding, and you tell me, is that maybe we're thinking about just having those be the same, but basically they're almost never used. Is that correct?

I'm sorry, which thing?

The duplicate COs.

Well, if somebody comes in and they want a CMO for their house, and it's their house, we just charge the copy because it seems to me that you're entitled to get a copy and a CMO for your house. But if it's part of a real estate transaction being requested by someone outside, then that's a different thing.

So we had that at 50. This is one of the things that Mary Alec didn't weigh in on.

Let's see, it's the seller that's going to request it on a transaction. So it's not the buyer. So, you know, the seller might say like, I'm just getting an updated sale for my house, but a lot of them are doing it before they put the house on the market.

There's a difference. If somebody's coming in and asks for something on their own house, they're asking for

asking for a copy of something in the record that's a FOIL request right yeah so but if they're asking for you to do an updated version of their CO even if they're asking for themselves it's still a new document you're doing an inspection you're taking the time so you have to get charged and it's I think what Thomas is saying it's part of another issue is eventually do we require an update and see about for a transfer yeah oh that's yeah yeah which is a sticky issue

And so I think what we were kind of thinking about with the updated one is that we were correct me if I'm wrong guys, but we were going to charge for the safety inspection.

Yes.

They were going to charge for the safety inspection and then they're going to pay for that. And then they would get, instead of paying for the up, you know what I mean? They're going to pay for the inspection and then, and so then you wouldn't need to pay for the updated CO because then it would, that would be generated as part of the inspection, which is the last one. That's how we were thinking about it. Oh, yes. Oh, there it is.

Oh, it sounded so confusing listening to all that. Right. There's a couple of different versions of CO. One is as part of the building permit, they figure out the fees and then say CO would be attached to it, which is $150. Now, if you want to raise that to $200, that's that. I don't know if that was part of that.

Well, I mean, it certainly makes sense. Some of this is I think we can get into the, I don't think we want to get into the weeds on this.

I'm just saying there's various COs. So now when you're talking the dupe COs, that's when the title company is requesting it. Years ago, we would charge $50, do an inspection, $50 for each CO in the file and with the signature. But then like Reed was saying with the foils, now they can just foil it for 25 cents a copy. So unless the title company or lawyers want to certify, then we would go do the inspection. And then the other CO we talked about when we did that inspection, we would update it with the bedroom and bathroom count, make sure there's no finished basement, et cetera. And that's when Thomas was saying that other towns charge a lot for an updated CO, which every transaction you have that so we know that the person who's purchasing the house is getting what is legally theirs um and then it's like i said so you had the dupe ceos then you had the um regular ceos as part of the building permit and then these update that's the big change we want to make is the update and ceo yeah but we're not gonna we're not talking about that right yeah

So, the inspection, though, yeah, that's what I'm saying is that we would charge for the inspection and as part of that, you would get the updated. So, we're.

I mean, it's just, I think it's just semantics and the title company wanted to start by. Then they would pay the 50 dollars.

Okay. So keep the 50 dollars. Okay.

It's like, I had 1, let's say there was 11 copies. So they would have to pay 50 dollars a copy for each of that.

Okay.

Then they get it approved. If they don't want to pay it, then they just will take without percentage.

We could still raise the fee. Right. I don't see any reason not to raise the fee about $0.50. As you were saying, we've had 12% deflation in the past . Yeah.

All right. So I want to make sure I'm understanding everything clearly. When someone is submitting a building permit, whether it's for a deck, a new house, anything, that whole process should end with an updated CO for the work that was complete, right? So you've got a new deck, you get a CO for the deck. You're not going to get a new CO for the entire property. That has that $150 fee attached to it right now.

Or a house, but not a deck.

well yes we in other words you get one anyway right yeah but if you want to i'm confused after i don't know that we have to get into the weeds on this fees and we've now gone into probably because i mentioned it whether we're going to eventually go to

But I think we should clarify all that in the code so it's really clear what you're saying.

This section I think needs a little bit more work. And my one thing is, could we, so right now they're trying to get around the fees by doing a FOIL. FOILs don't automatically happen the next day, but could we do something where we, like if you pay like $5, you can get what you want.

part of an application or something yeah expedited um just to kind of yeah i'd have to look at the foil law i think that's probably not worth the revenue that you could get yeah i'm just tossing it out there yeah

I mean, I think that we're trying to do underground. So I'm trying to figure out the end. I think I think I mean, the thing that I would see and I don't even know how you would approach this is could you require an inspection on a title transfers or any way for us to do that at the town level? Right. Because that's that's ultimately. at least in my thinking about what we're trying to do is we're trying to make sure that the buyer understands where the property sits with the town. And if they're, you know, the title company has an old CEO, then they may not know that there's Something to be disclosed and so it's a and again I don't know that I don't know the mechanics by which you would do that. But I would that would be what that's how I would approach it is is just like there would have to be a new inspection at the title transfer just so that the buyer is aware of it, how to do it yeah. I don't know if that's something that would go into the code or whatever, but I think it would help to protect the buyers. And also, one of these things is we want to kind of remediate some of this work and some of the things that we see. some of the things that we see that maybe are not to code, or at least, yeah. So, I mean, I guess, Thomas, that would be my question is like, how would you even approach that?

Yeah. So let's see. So most of the villages require updated COs upon transfer.

Yeah.

Most of the towns do not. There's a long kind of list of pros and cons to doing that. I think this discussion about fees, because most of your transactions, especially if you're using a local attorney, are going to require an updated CO. So as far as making sure the town is charging for it, It's like the first step.

Right.

And then whether to require it is a much broader question that gets into a lot of different issues.

Okay.

That was kind of, I... Yeah. Okay. That's what I was trying to... I think we could really get way late here. Okay.

Well, for our consideration at a later date. Yeah. Let's charge and go from there.

So I have another question. Yeah. You brought up combining safety inspections with the CO. Um, I feel like the safety inspections can be done for many different things, not just to see how so I don't think we should. Like, depend on the cost of the safety inspection to bring up the cost of the CEO. I mean, I think if you're doing an updated seal, you just charge that cost is going to be and have it clearly defined instead of trying to attack other things onto it. So I think we should.

reasonable make sure it's clear and separate distinct that way if you're doing a safety inspection for a pool or fence or you know there's some concern and you have to go out and look at something i don't think it should be it just i think clear delineation makes so yeah that makes sense i will say one of the things that um liz was trying to do was figure out what the cost of of sending someone out to yeah an inspection and yeah there is a distinction i think between Yes.

I mean, because when we do a rental, we go out and do a safety inspection. So are you adding a safety inspection on top of the permit or is it part of the permit fee? You know, like, those are the things I think we need to make really clear so that people aren't confused and getting blindsided.

That would include that rental inspection. Like a long term rental.

Yeah, we had imagined that that would include the inspection, but we can, we can make sure that that's line item doubt. But that's how we had thought about it.

Yeah. Well, let me let's think about that. I know that we thought we understood what we were saying. Right? Maybe we need to clarify that. That's a good.

I think you want it to be clear. So when people look at the list, they're like, okay, I'm getting a rental permit. Everything included in that rental permit is included in the fee. You know, so like the rental permit, maybe it includes the safety inspection that includes this, you know, whatever. Yeah. And then people aren't surprised.

I think that what that had to do with too was you're, you know, when you get a yearly inspection for something or you get a, you know, there's, Yeah, we need to clarify that.

Yeah, and I think that there's also, we could kind of, maybe we could go through that there was, I think in your original list, you had like asterisks next to it, like if there was an additional 100 feet, so we can just go back in and put those in. I just wanted you guys to see the broad strokes here. No, I think it's good.

It's a good start.

I have a question on page 3. Great. Okay. Existing. I think that I'm missing something here because right now, the way this chart is reading, it's less than 2,000 square foot house. 100 dollars a square foot, which I don't think that's right. I think it's 100 dollars plus 450 a square foot.

Is that. 100 dollars a square foot is the estimated cost of construction per square foot.

Yeah.

Yeah, we multiply that by the square footage come up with an estimated cost of construction for that period. Because if we, if we ask for an estimated cost of construction, they'll say 20 dollars. Well, you know, it'll be a complete reason. So what we do is we, we estimate it. We say, okay, so. $100 a square foot, which is obviously really low. Then we multiply it by a permit fee per $1,000 of construction. So if you have $100,000, you multiply it times 0.0045, and you end up with a fee.

It sounds like a weird way of doing it, but this is like the standard.

show the national fee, how people do building permit fees. This is the most commonly used one. So the fee is adjustable. It gives us the latitude to adjust the permit fee per $1,000 worth of construction. And at the same time, it allows us to create different estimated costs of construction depending on the size of the house. It's kind of like a progressive, it turns it into a progressive fee or like progressive taxes if you're making, in theory, although it doesn't work out this way. twenty thousand dollars same with the house we were trying to keep the fees for smaller houses lower relative to the larger houses and that's been that's standard every year and this is total spur fee we will we figure we figure that yeah we figure the first floor we figure the first floor at a higher rate Because in theory, that includes the cost of the roof and the cost of the foundation. You add a second floor, it's a much lower cost of construction per square foot.

So you'll see that there's like a first floor.

And then for a finished basement, if you don't have a finished basement, it's a cheaper fee than if you do have a finished basement.

I'm doing like a quick and dirty here. So under the existing, if you have a 2000 square foot, single story house, no basement, the fee is going to be $900 because it's 2000 square feet times the $100 a square foot divided by the thousand multiplied by 450.

That sounds about right. I think that would be right.

Yes. And then you've got the complexity multiplier, which I presume is like the finishes, the 0.75, the 1.25.

Well, that's actually based, it's not, in theory, it probably indexes finishes to some extent. But really what that is, if we get, for some of these houses now, you know, some of, you know, if you've got a, you know, a $10 million house, more, which we're getting now, $20 million houses.

If you have a $20 million house,

set of plans can be 200 pages long easily we've got you know we get I mean you've all seen it you know you used to bring in a little sketch and you could build a house off it now because of the complexity so basically and also if you've got if you've got zoning approvals and wetlands approvals if you've got all consumer process and so we index those that that coefficient based upon the complexity of the application so if you have you know if you have 200 pages of wetlands approval of uh you know a zoning approval a dec approval then or you know a floodplain then we're going to charge more for the fee because there's a lot more time in the uh in the process

Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to be able to, like, look to see, like, okay, so if someone's building a modest home at your best for a feed, I just wanted to see what this is going to be on that, like, a modest home.

It will be a lot less than on a larger, more extravagant. No question. We also, traditionally, if it's a starter home for somebody, we, we bring, you can also make it 3 quarters of the coefficient can become point 75. so if you've got someone who's trying to build their 1st house, you know, it's simple and then we charge we actually say.

Yeah. That'll help me. Yeah.

So I will kind of put in, I'll update this with the updates around the rentals and resend it with like kind of the new verbiage and that yearly rental category. And then like I said, the irrigation, I'm just going to leave as a placeholder until we have our discussion later today. And then we will go through and I can just, you can even see on the first page where it says includes COA. And I will go in and just mark which ones have that included, or if there's anything included in the price, just for transparency. And then just see if that answers the question.

Oh, sorry. Yeah.

Definition permanent accessory structures, the bottom of the green section on page two. Yep. First markup after $2,000, is that $2,500? $0.25. Oh, 25 cents. Yeah, I wasn't sure.

Sorry, I couldn't make a cent sign work. That's okay. I hope that makes sense. Yeah.

And then the other notes I had for shed carports and burglars, right, that you have require all sheds. Yeah. Is that making a code change to require that all sheds require a permit?

Yeah, that would be, because we've been doing that for a while for whatever reason.

I'll make that in yellow for a code change.

And then the other one, in-ground pools must charge re-inspection fee. How often do we re-inspect an in-ground pool?

Well,

So what we were talking about with the reasons, I'm just going to refresh this and you tell me if I, is basically what happens is sometimes they're putting in a pool and it's not necessarily, it's basically when it's not like they go out there and the fence isn't quite right or whatever. And so then they have to go out there again. So sometimes they're being called out multiple times on the, like basically on the initial

and the the idea with that is is to just try to make sure that people are done before the inspectors come out so it's not cool specific it's really just like any re-inspection because you didn't do the job right the first time yeah i think it may have been in there separately because uh um one of our building inspectors who does most of the rules was pointed out that it's people just i'll put that on a separate line professionals just keep We need something to encourage people to .

That makes sense. I'll take that out and put it at the end.

Just put it in as a re-inspection. Yeah, exactly.

Will do. Oh, actually, hold on. It is in here. Look at me. Look further down. I was like, it seems like something I would have done. Yeah, there it is.

Yeah, it's in white.

OK, that makes sense.

I was like, is it for pool specifically?

No, let's do that a lot. He does. He does do it a lot. It turns out.

So I think it's because. I think it's just in there as Michael was pointing out how there's certain people that will just pull over and over to get us out to do.

And fences, we don't have a fee, so that's going to require a code change. To include fences.

Yeah, that would require in other words, those are exempted. There's a broader issue that I won't get into about fences.

Well.

You know, the gets involved, right?

Yeah.

Okay, I'll I'll let's approach. Any, I will get this update. Done and back out, I can get that out to us to speak. And then when would we, this would go for public? Because we would need to do the code, we'd need to do the code, potential code changes and then the fee update. I'm guessing this would be separate.

I think just general fees we do via resolution. Okay. So it doesn't need a public hearing, but anything that requires a code change, we'd have to hold off on if Thomas dropped the code changes. Okay. Let's see with that. Okay.

Okay, sounds good. And then I will try to... Do you want to try and revisit this next week? Yeah, I mean, I'll be done. I mean, I'll do that and probably work on it this afternoon and get it back out. And then by the time... Anyway, the... if we feel generally pretty well, actually maybe I'll wait till next week. And if anybody has feelings, thoughts, vibes on pricing, let me know. And then I'll prepare kind of like the, um, the matrix so that we can kind of see the budget impact. I did that already for the highway.

Um, but I'm going to kind of, I was like, it's a little bit longer, it's a little bit longer.

Um, but kind of my initial map says, Yeah, this is good. Thanks. I was like, could help handle some of our budget woes. I'll come visit you later. Okay.

When would we want to consider implementing this? Do it as a mid-year change or January 1st?

We were thinking January 1st. We wanted to give folks a while to kind of wrap their mind around it. I don't want to change anything. At least that's how we were thinking about it. Just give folks a chance to weigh in and everybody kind of understand. What's going on with the idea that if it's like, you know, goes into effect for 27 and.

And it would probably take us that long to do the code changes.

Yeah. Yeah, but we could pick those up. You know, we could I mean, I don't know. We'll see. I know our schedule is kind of wild, but if we can start working on the code changes that we can slip those into the agenda and then we have all fall to get those through.

Any questions from the public? Thank you.

Thanks for hanging out. I'll come hang out with you later today. You too. Sounds good. Thanks.

Okay. The draft of the CPF acquisition plan.

That long last. Yes.

And then Jess gave to us, because it wasn't attached, was the... WQI.

It should be the appendix.

Well, the appendix was... It needs to get put together. Yeah, it needs to be collated. And it was so long ago.

I have to just like... Yeah, I'm noticing that there's some things in here that have already changed. Like it says increase the grant to 10,000. Well, it's already... Oh, like, part of these changes.

So, yeah, this, this hasn't been worked on in a number of years because the CPF committee did their piece and then we had to wait for the CPF to go back. So I think that the WQI portion should go back to them for their next, you know, their next works meeting to just review this. But we can look at the CPF piece and Jess also gave us, she gave us two sheets. that have the properties themselves. And we just have to figure out the best format to put them in. And so I looked up Southfolds just before the meeting. And so what they have is they have the district number. They have the South County tax match number, 8 Bridge, and then category of properties. And so I think that's a good one. So we should probably reformat. What I really liked in their last plan was they had a map.

I do love a color coded map. I do love it.

So I didn't have to see how easy it is to pull this together. I'm sure we could. They would have the parcels already in the plan. And parcel in the plan means it is a targeted property. And then what's already been protected. So I kind of like that. I know there's a little bit of a feeling on the part of the CPF committee, but they didn't want to publicize like, hey, these are, properties in our plan because they wouldn't want to tip the hat, drive up.

I guess I would just say back, which is it's mandated that we list them. You know what I mean? And I feel like that's one of the reasons why this has been held up is because we are required to have this and we are required to list them. that's just you know we're either we're either doing the law or we're not doing the law and so we don't have to say you know cv jones owns this one but we we must we can't be we can't be so mysterious as to not push them there's no point in yeah hosting that it's like this yeah

I think what we should take a look at is the longer one that Jess gave us has descriptions of the owner name of the parcels. I think what we should do is just review that. Is there anything that we as a town board

um feel should be considered for cpf acquisition that's missing i feel like properties less than what is the smallest acreage on here three acres should also be considered these are just I think that we should be considering properties outside of this list as well. I don't think we should only be considering properties that are 3 acres or more. I think that there's a lot of value in some of these 1 acre properties in the middle of a community that right now. So, I mean, I would like to see a comprehensive list of almost all the properties of the town so that they're open to consideration.

I mean, and that's what was in the plan. When we do, we do, we do have that years ago to the town board. Right. So we can move forward at the time because there was contention that the CPF committee did not like the inclusion of like as many.

They didn't like the inclusion of the concept of wells potentially being put on the property. Oh, that was their big beef. But I think that if if we're somehow tied to our property list, as far as our ability to purchase goes, then this should be a very broad, all-encompassing list. Because there are properties that are half acre, one acre, quarter acre, that could be really valuable to preserving in a community because maybe they act as a habitat or they're a good recharge site for that community. Like for example, the one property across from Gordon Gooding's house that's just a hole, that used to act as like a recharge site for the whole property, now it's a new house. That would have been a useful purchase through CPF money to protect the aquifer in that area. So I don't think we should be limiting ourselves based on large acreage because we know that's going to shrink. And some of those small parcels can have a lot of value to a community.

I mean, I would be fine with that. I know that the list exists. So maybe what we say is we... we go back to that list, take off everything that has sold and just kind of, I mean, just has been built is what I mean. And just update it. I would also love to, I also think, to your point, Meg, I would love to see it on a map so that we could see which ones, like, I think it would make sense, you know, when we kind of look at a list like this and you're like, oh, why don't we have this half acre? Like, oh, look where it is. Right? And so I think that that would be useful. So maybe what we can do is go back, put in the expanded list, and then see if just as, you know, and try to do it on a map. But I mean, I think the only other, I think that like the, this was important piece of it. I feel like we've got some direction there. The only other item goodness, I apologize. I'm sorry, you're gonna come back to me. Oh, and the only other thing that I guess I would consider or that has been on my mind is the uses of preserved properties. I think it's like we're talking about like the passive recreation use. And I know that there's been some contention about what that is, like what that, you know, I know there's a big, so just do we feel like that this covers what our intention is? And then also, you know, something that's not really in here, but maybe for our consideration is, you know, historic buildings. We don't really talk a lot about that, but I think it's something worthy of consideration. I know in other communities, it is something that we kind of that this is used for and considered. So that's the only other thing I would kind of put forward for our consideration.

So we have a little bit more work to do on this.

So I think we could bring this back to CPF with the direction. And here's a question, and maybe this is just like a newbie question, but Do can we include the expanded properties list or do they need to like, okay. Because I mean, this is this is 1 of the reasons it has taken so long is because it's been an absolute gridlock in the committee. So, I mean, just. Yeah, so, I mean, I wonder, I guess my question then is, do we just take this and. Update this. Appendix?

Appendix? Yes.

Okay. I was like, you know, I don't know, because if I think if we, I mean, obviously, again, communication with two Ian, but I don't want to have this grind, have another five years stuck in committee.

It's going to get stuck again. Yeah. I mean, this has been the only list they want to consider, then I would say we take it, we run with it, and they can come and speak at the public hearing. Yeah. Okay. It's taken, what, five, six years to get this far, so it's too long.

Too long. So I can take this up with Jess. Yes. And work on this. So doing the math might take us a little while, so maybe give us two weeks.

Yeah. And we also need the WQI to When is there a meeting?

That one's not. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Well, I'm just going to 2 meetings. Okay. Yeah. How about this? I would my, my dream is that you're not waiting on the piece. Do what you need to do. I would like to, we can be ready to go whenever you guys are ready, but, like, let's. I don't. If CPF is ready early, we can do it, right?

Yeah.

All right. So I will take that on with Jess.

education you My thinking here is I know we're going to have community input. We're not going to get this done in one public, you know, one public hearing. Right. If we have comments, address them now, and then see if we can get this on to setting the public hearing at the August 10th meeting.

Yeah, that would be great.

We can have a public hearing, listen to what the public has to say, and then bring it back with comments. The only thing major that I sort of thought we should decide upon, but I'm sure other people have things. is the drip irrigation but at the end of three years the drip irrigation shall be removed like i had a note like is this necessary so i just wanted to what section you're oh i'm sorry it is 82 11 d4 right on that yeah

I think it's 829C4?

No. OK, 829C4.

It's the second time.

829C4. Yeah, I didn't get the red blue line.

Yeah, I feel like there's a typo with the C got, yeah, it blinded.

Yes. OK. Covered with mulch.

Yeah, it's covered with mulch. I could see it. Yeah. So just let's talk about that for like, what was the committee's thinking and discussion on that topic?

It was, I'm going to say it was sort of split. One of the things is if the concept for drip irrigation was just to establish plantings, then you shouldn't need it forever. That was part of the idea. But then the other side to that was that if you have, let's say, a really harsh summer, like, you know, one we're sort of having, although we've had rain, you may want to start using your irrigation again just a little bit to keep the plants alive now that they're established. Maybe they're still struggling. It's such a bad season. But it was also brought to your attention that you may not have to run it all the time. It's something that you might have it, but you might not need it because now the plants are established. They're kind of doing their own thing. And also, it's a big to-do to take it out, right? It is.

There was some concern that then you're just around. Yeah. Yes. Right. Yes. Yeah. But, I mean, it does say if it's unless the drip irrigation system is set by a cistern.

Right. Then you could keep it.

Yeah.

So, and then there's that flip side debate is, well, do we want everybody to have cisterns and more trucks with more water coming to the island and all that? So it's trying to find a balance. You know, part of it is that if you're in the near shore overlay and you have a drip system, you are required to do the water testing. So if it shows that your well is too sensitive to support it, then you would have to abandon it as part of the code or convert to a cistern. So, I mean, I think that will be self-limiting if you're in sensitive areas, you just won't be able to sustain that irrigation and safely keep your potable water. So, you know, we may not need to remove it if they're showing that they can use it responsibly and it's not impacting water quality in the area. Pretty much any irrigation system that's showing that the area is too sensitive for it by compromising the quality of the water is going to be told you can't do that. Like, you have to shut down that system. So, I mean, I have no problem leaving the drip systems in place. I mean, if you leave it, I would say they have to continue with the chloride testing if they're in a near shore area. But then if they convert to a cistern, then they wouldn't have to continue the chloride testing because the water should be getting delivered. So I'm okay with leaving the systems in place as long as the chloride testing continues. I feel similarly.

I mean, I think because ultimately it's a pretty, if you are going to water, it's the most efficient. I'd rather see that than a sprinkler, you know what I mean?

Oh. Did anybody have anything else I had a couple. Minor edits. But it's just scripture so okay. I mean I don't have a problem moving into having.

To listen one that's that take out that yeah.

I think you're on a different page now. Just at the end of three years, the drip system shall be removed unless it's fed by a sister.

So we're saying remove.

Yeah, as long as they, you know, because they'll still have to continue the chloride testing. And if the chloride testing shows that you can't sustain it, then you have to take it out anyway. But then you also have to look up. Up to so the drip irrigation shall only be used for the establishment of plantings for a period of up to 3 years. So, maybe we get rid of the period for 3 years, because that's where you'd have to remove it. If we're not going to force them to remove it, we'll say it should only be used for the establishment of plantings. Yeah, so it's not just used for.

Yes, yes, OK.

Should the turf irrigation system, should they be outfitted with leak detection devices?

That's a good idea. Was that in there? They don't have leak detection, but they have the other.

I don't see leak detection. That's something to be considered.

Yeah. Let's see. new turf truck and it's 827 right new turf irrigation yeah 827 or 82 i mean irrigation system 82a is irrigation system operation with that boot if we put it in there um let's see no because that's more how it's being used okay in the irrigation let's see where is it Or would it be considered as part of the review with the building department? Is that covered in that?

Yeah, there's a list of requirements that we have for the irrigation system, like a time clock, a check valve, a, let's see, let me find it.

82.5.

Yeah, it's in the beginning. It's like when we list all the things, you know, 82.5 C3.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah. We can add something there.

Right. You have to show the water source, the number of zones, the irrigation heads, the type and number of feet, make a model of the time clock, location of the master valve, the rain sensor, backflow prevention.

What were you calling it, Albert? Leak?

Leak detection device.

Okay. Somewhere in between like master control or brain sensor, somewhere around there.

We'll just add it in there. I was going to add G. A leak detection device.

And typically people put those on the whole house, which depending on where you insert it into the plumbing can sometimes be problematic. But I think you could probably do it just for the irrigation system so you can tell if there's water running when it shouldn't be.

I think we should put it in here.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Even if someone has a whole house one. Yeah. You're right. Where the location is. Yeah. Yeah.

Where is that? I know I saw that turf irrigations are not allowed to be hooked up to public water systems. Where is that?

Yeah. Yeah. I saw that.

We did add that.

It's right on the next page. So it's That's 828254. Turf irrigation systems are prohibited from connecting to a public water supply system.

Is there something funky at the top of the page?

Yeah.

But then we need to go back to the 1 we were just looking at, because there is a line in here when connected to public water system, the location backflow prevention device, but the whole thing. Yeah, you shouldn't.

You can't do it.

dislocation of master control valve and rain sensor um where are you and when connected to a water supply so if we're saying yes yes yes control valve brain sensor period period yes and brain sensor here because then the rest gets deleted yeah okay What else do we got Albert? Stupid question. So we have 82 dash 5. And then we have 82-5.1. Right. Why?

Because, yeah, and it's purely logistical. So the reason why we have that, so 82.5 is the whole permit process. 82.5.1 is like an additional process required for the permitting. So we took, we had fluoride testing requirements in different sections of the code and I pulled it all out and made it one section. Because if you have an irrigation system, either turf or soap or drip irrigation in the nearshore overlay, this is an added requirement. The chloride testing is an added requirement to your permit. Okay. So in order to get your permit, you have to pass the chloride testing. So we made it its own section because it was sort of complicated and to have it sprinkled throughout the code made it more confusing.

And it does fall under the permitting.

Right. It's it's a requirement in order to qualify for the permit.

Okay. Yeah, just it seemed a little awkward to me, but yeah, I mean, we could make it 80 to 5 H, but that just seemed like a lot.

So I felt like it made sense as its own thing. That's fine.

Anything else?

We can make those changes on that.

Yeah, I was going to say, since Christine is away.

I have it.

Okay, I have, yeah. And then when would this go? We would set the public hearing on August time. For August 20 something.

I thought it was like the last day. Yeah, August 31st. Okay.

Okay, cool. Just wanted to have that in my mind.

Okay.

So you'll make those changes and then recirculate it.

Do you want me to send both the red line and the same version to post? Or do you just want a clean version? Let's do both.

OK. Yeah. That's not too much. Nope. OK. for liaison reports. I can start with the Peconic Bay Regional Advisory Committee. We still haven't adopted the final layers of operations, but we are slated to do so at our next meeting, which won't be until October Oh, my goodness every other month, but we're getting close. We should be able to adopt. It went to the entire committee. It came out of subcommittee. So the entire committee had some comments and it's, I think the biggest open item is. Whether or not our meetings have to be. In person with a forum, or if we can have. you know, a Zoom forum. So that's been pushed up because this is enabling legislation coming from the state. You know, we want someone higher up to weigh in on it rather than the town, one of the town's town attorneys weighing in on it. Okay, but we can start to get questions put together so that the committee can start to evaluate whether or not it's something that can be answered quickly if it gets sent back down to the towns to make a decision or if it has to go up to the whole committee with formal advisory that all of it. So we are getting close.

Right. Okay, I just have a couple things. Obviously, just a super busy week for the community.

We have the Glass Pass, the Lions Rock the Rock, the Ed Foundation. Everyone's not totally burnt out from so many amazing events.

Are you even living here. The other thing that I guess I just didn't want to talk about community housing board. So we didn't necessarily have a meeting, but we are We spent like two hours last night, we're going to be spending some more time working on the contract negotiation. So that is moving at fast pace i think we might even have to start meeting every week um to do it so that's we're starting to do that um the one thing i did want to clear up that actually had a resident reach out to me about an article in the paper um that there was some misunderstanding so i just thought i wrote a letter to the editor but i thought i would clear it up here also um the way it was printed it looked like so just to set the stage we're talking about our proposed rental uh units. And we were talking about the, if we were to do 80% of area median income. Now we had considered 80 to 120, 130. And so what we were talking about was that for one person at 80% of area median income, that income level was about $95,000. Now I think how it was understood in the paper is that those folks would have to make that at least, okay, but it's opposites. That's the most you could make, right? And so I think how it was, some people understood the article was that you had to make at least that much. That was the cap. That was the cap and that we were surprised that there were limits. Now, we are not surprised. We know that there have been limits. Our surprise was that 80% of area median income was such a high number. So I just wanted to clear that up. If anybody has any questions, please reach out to myself, Ben, or Bran. We're happy to provide any clarification on that. But again, if we were to go for 80% of area median income, $95,000 is the most you could make, not the least you would make. So just so we're all Cool on that. And then the other thing, just if anybody has any questions or anything I do, I'm doing office hours tomorrow. I'll be here from five to seven. It's night and evening for this fun. And that's what I got.

Water Advisory Committee had Know Your Water weekend this past weekend. So you probably saw people posted around town. giving out information on how to get your water tested for $100 through Suffolk County. One of the things I did want to mention is that we had someone come up to us with a letter from Suffolk County Department of Health, the Office of Water, because they were going door to door and offering to do three water tests. and the person was a little bit freaked out by that, you know, nothing's for free, right? So they wanted to know why they're getting this offer. So the reason that the Suffolk County Department of Health Office of Water would come around and offer free water testing for you is because someone in your neighborhood or a nearby neighbor had their water tested and it showed a high level of a certain contaminant. Typically, what they've been doing is for PFAS. If there's some PFAS family type of contaminant, that's been found in your neighborhood at a higher concentration than they would expect then they offer to do free water testing for all the people in that neighborhood so they can determine if it's a vocal problem if it's maybe just that one property or if there's like a plume that they're not aware of so that they can identify any problem areas so If someone from Suffolk County knocks on your door and offers to do free water testing and they give you a piece of paper that says someone in your neighborhood has high PFAS, we'd like to test you for free, I highly recommend you go for it because that's a $1,200 to $1,300 water test you're going to get for free. and then you'll have a better understanding of what you're drinking. And it helps Suffolk County Department of Health control or find plumes or problematic areas. So don't be alarmed if you get that because it's very likely that you won't have a problem, but it is good to know one way or the other. I just figured I'd bring that up because I've had a lot of people ask that. Sometimes they'll do it if there's really high nitrates in an area or any type of contaminant that would consider non-potable, they'll do a survey. Not so much for manganese and iron because those are naturally occurring and expected, but for some of these other contaminants where it's obviously man-driven, They were human driven, they want to make sure that they're understanding if there is a specific location that it's coming from that they can target that. Like, if there's a leak somewhere that nobody knows about, or an old oil tank or something, they can try to find that through the water testing of the area. So that's why they not in fact survey. Otherwise, that was, I think, a very successful event and that was really the only thing that was committee related.

well thank you so much to the water committee for getting that together so awesome yeah yeah I have I don't have anything to report just um questions um what's the status of the facilities master plant where are we

We should get an update from Joe. Why don't we have him come in next week and do that? He was on vacation last week, so I haven't had a chance to talk to him to find out where it was.

Has it been started or?

Yeah, Tim came out. They came out with four or five people. Okay. And they took dimensions of all of the different buildings. They, you know, tried with different people and looked at, so it's definitely started.

All right. Yeah, that would be good.

Because I too am anxious to keep that going. Okay. All right.

And what's the status of the secret review for the Colligan application? Where is that Stan?

Have we gotten back? No, we submitted to Suffolk County Planning for a letter of determination. We're waiting to hear back.

I'm sorry.

We submitted to Suffolk County Planning for the letter of jurisdiction or determination.

The actual secret review. I know Grocer was working on it.

Oh, they can't they can't do it until we close it. You know, we need that letter from Suffolk County Planning Commission and then. Pw Grocer when they get that, they will close the secret review and issue their report to us.

All right.

Yeah. Sorry. I misunderstood the question.

And Meg, you indicated that you and Christina went there to talk to the commission. Who'd you talk to?

We, yeah, so we talked to, we had a meeting with the members of the planning commission and also members of all of the separate county planning departments. So it was a very large meeting and it's probably quarterly. We go to this. And so we asked them in that meeting. If this was the type of application they would want to see from us, and we explained. The whole situation, and they said, no, that would be an issue of local determinants because. it doesn't impact any of the neighboring jurisdictions, like the county or the state, or the property doesn't back up to anybody. So we'll get a letter from them, but I'm just saying that's the conversation we have.

Yeah, it is a quarterly meeting and I know I get invites to it, but the last number that I've gotten, I've always had a conflict. So, Christina was interested in going between, you know, because of her relationship to supervisor, town board and legal and ZBA. It's helpful to at least have somebody and then make the appointment. I've been going for the last couple of weeks.

Last 2 years, because we don't have a planning department, so they invite all the planning departments to come and meet with the planning commission and Suffolk county planners. To talk about issues facing Suffolk county facing each town things that are coming up. And, you know, at the last meeting, we talked about, um. data centers, we talked about battery storage, we talked about a couple of different things that impact your zoning, impact your regulations, impact your code. So those are the kind of topics that we talked about, but this application is actually one that we did bring up. How would you handle this? And they said it's local.

All right, and then I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session for contract negotiations and the history of a particular employee. Second. Paula Daver?

Aye.