East Hampton Town Board Work Session 03/11/25

001East Hampton Town board we are live being streamed in recorded thank you LTV good morning everyone and welcome to the East Hampton Town board work session for Tuesday March 11th 2025 Carl if you could please read the roll call council member fle pres council member Lee pres council member Rogers pres council member C feont pres supervisor Burke Gonzalez president if we could all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God with liberty and justice okay let's go back speed speed pledge okay I apologize so we start today's meeting with public portion we ask you to please kindly keep your comments to three minutes and then we have a number of topics on today we're

002going to start with a topic that we added uh yesterday morning and that's a fire safety update and we'll hear uh from members of staff on that we're going to do a community housing fund funding request for 109 Hampton Street Sag Harbor that's going to be followed by by three presentations of 2024 accomplishments and 2025 goals that's from the natural resources department land acquisition and management and aquaculture and that's followed by the 2025 proposed cpf management and stewardship plan then we'll have a presentation on the New York State Department of State Coastal resiliency Grant and that'll be followed by the proposed thunder lightning policy at Town Parks then we'll have liaison reports and resolutions so we're going to start with public portion Carol I don't know if you've got anyone signed up okay so we're

003going to go for a show of hands is there anyone that would like to address the board sir um you have to come to the podium and if you could please state your name for the record this way uh we can capture it on tape thank you uh good morning my name is Jay lipin I'm one of the residents of 109 Hampton Street and I've lived here and out here for about 8 years I've lived in 109 Hampton Street for about 6 years so I'm here for support of the purchase of 109 Hampton Street um I live out here year round I volunteer at ARF in East Hampton as well is I work as a chef in food ADV advocacy for local farmers um helping them uh take their excess produce and making shelf stable

004products um making it more sustainable able for them to you know be out here and support uh the local economy um one of the things as what I do and a lot of the people that live out here year round uh affordable housing is very important we are the backbone of the community and you know we really need to be able to live out here if rents get raised and there's less places for people to live we're going to have to leave and go somewhere else uh we love it out here we love the community and we love being out here so you know please support this great thank you J welcome is there anyone else that would like to welcome Tom thank you superviser and Council men Council women uh Thomas Gardella is my

005name I live on 42 Hemstead Street which also happens to be in sack Harbor Village also in East Hampton Town I'm also the of Sag Harbor Village and I wanted to rise in support of the purchase of 109 Hampton Street as you heard from my previous constituent it's important to us affordable housing is a big part of what we're working on and this shows that you know if we show real leadership if we put these funds where they need to go that uh we can be successful and we can preserve housing for people like Mr Litman and those in our community especially our Emergency Services people who as you know the trend is slowly decreasing for volunteers and people that can live in the community and volunteer and something like this would definitely help it's

006a first step it's a model that I've been speaking of in the village to preserve housing where it exists and where it's historic houses that uh need to be somewhat refurbished the town can come in and support the village so I just wanted to say thank you and support this purchase thank you mayor would anyone else like to address the board please welcome thank you hi um to I have a residual of a c so excuse me uh my name is Gary Gallagher I'm the owner of uh I and My Two children are the owners of 82 holes of water Road um it's one of the property it's ajoining on the I believe it's the Westerly side of the proposed property to be purchased at 86 two holes of water for affordable housing um I

007have some questions about the proposed development I understand it's in the early stages of analysis um I don't know if this is the appropriate venue for that if not I'd appreciate if I was direct to whom or whom I should speak to but the one question I have is um has the town at this point um come up with the density of what's proposed for that property um I've heard and read about a wide range anywhere from five to 60 units with the treatment plant um the property is in a water recharge overlay District subject to clearing limits as you all know um and there is no public water to that property so I I want to understand how the town or what analysis has been given to weighing the environmental impact relative to the

008uh opportunity to develop affordable housing if you could leave your contact information your phone number and email with the clerk certainly uh one of us will get back to you and I like I say I don't know if that's the venue for this now but I that that's one of my questions concerns absolutely we understand thank you jeie hi my name is Jean Kane I'm a trustee in Sag Harbor I also live live uh on the East Hampton side in East Hampton Town at 325 Division Street um I just really uh want to thank uh all the members of the community housing authority the community housing Advisory Board as well as all of you for looking at this opportunity because we do know that historically there were many more multi-unit homes that took care of

009a lot of s Harbor families um and in the last it's probably 20 years as we've seen this decrease um that these homes were purchased and then turned into single family housing and so when a house like this goes on the market um the fact that all of your different parts work together so smoothly and and in a very quick Pace because we're competing with public buyers um and that you understood not only were you saving a multif family home and I know formal Public House public hearings have to have and it's not done yet but just I really want to thank everyone um for the effort and the work that's been done to date um and we very much appreciate this in the village um because opportunities don't like this don't come up very

010often um and so I just want to say thank you thank you is there anyone else that would like to address the board Jason is there anyone on the line yes we' have callers give me one caller give me a second thank you hello caller ending 9004 you're on the air good morning this is Gloria frzy uh East Hampton I'm on the eastampton sustainability committee but I'm speaking in my capacity as re wild Long Island giving a huge shout out to unhung unsung heroes who are presenting today Kim Shaw barley Dunn and Scott Wilson along with their teams Emily Megan and the crew they work so amazingly with the high school kids and that's not in the deck for today but they do a lot of work with the town with local organizations like re

011wild and just a huge thumbs up to them so thank you very much thank thank you Gloria and that's it okay I'm gonna one more time anyone else would like to address the board all right we're going to move on to topics so the first is a fire safety update and we uh addressing us today will be council member member Tom flight senior environmental analyst Andy Drake John wett from the New York State DEC supervising Forester and our Chief Fire Marshall David Brown uh first I just want to take a moment to thank our local fire firefighters and First Responders who assisted in the Westampton Beach fire their dedication and bravery never goes unnoticed and we are grateful for their service like many of you I spent the weekend watching the coverage on channel 12

012and it was a tense and difficult situation but when I Heard County Executive Ed Roma say that they had the resources they needed uh to fight this fire that was quite reassuring but still it's a reminder how we need to stay prepared prepared that's why on Monday morning I brought together our officials from our Police Department Fire Marshal's Office emergency preparedness team in land acquisition and management to assess our fire risks and discuss ways to strengthen our prevention efforts East ampton has been proactive for years clearing hazardous trees improving emergency access and working closely with our local fire departments and environmental experts but fire safety is a shared responsibility and today is about keeping this conversation open and answering your questions I want to thank council member Tom flight for his leadership on this issue

013Tom has been deeply involved in these efforts and and I know he'll have important insights to share so with that I turn it over to Tom thank you very much Madame supervisor um so just to give an overview of what we'll be talking about today um we're I'll give a quick overview of just the overall emergency preparedness system and some of the background there we'll then move on Andy and Johan we'll talk about what actually happened in West Hampton just make sure you guys have the right right information uh I'll kind of then give a quick update of how we're managing the Wildfire risk across the town um and then we'll do an update on management of specific Town owned properties so there is a delineation there there's properties in the town and there's properties

014owned by the town um John and Andy will go over and give a quick um uh overview of the current condition of the Town owned properties uh and then I'll do some discussion on how we're working with the uh East Hampton Town fire departments um and looking at infrastructure and then we'll end with uh the fire Marshall talking about um managing risk on your property so um to to kick off here um you know emergency preparedness we we we Face many risks living out here we do have the suffer County um Hazard mitigation plan which all the towns on the East End are part of and in there we list the primary risks we face as a community these include Coastal erosion disease outbreak earthquakes expansive soils extreme temperatures flood groundwater hurricanes infestation invasive species

015nor easers severe storms shallow ground warning flooding and Wildfire now if you just think about that list for a second there's quite a few of those we've experienced in the last decade um so management of emergency risk is something we are on the entire time um you know different risks occur at different times and we have to put focus into them and a lot of this is about how do we prepare for them so you know the first thing I want to say is I want to Echo the supervisor's comments and thank our emergency services that we had 90 Mutual Aid fire departments come to manage that fire in West Hampton is phenomenal it's why living in suffer county is such a benefit to so many people because we care about our communities um so

016the emergency response system you know I I think the first thing you know to do here is is education I mean there's a lot of people who kind of understand how the system works when you have an emergency like that but but not fully so you know whenever you see an emergency 911 is the activation of the emergency system and you know that will go through to the Police Department dispatch and the relevant resources will be dispatched by the town according to that now as that as those come on scene there will be the IC the incident command system and depending on the nature of the incident a fire chief or a police chief or the Emergency Management coordinator will take control of that scene the scene will be assessed and then as needed additional

017resources will be called in the first thing happens that Mutual aid from surrounding districts will come in if they cannot manage the incident with those resources then we reach out to the county and we reach out to the state and that's exactly what happened in the West Hampton instant recently and it's why we have these resources it doesn't necessarily make sense for the town or the hamlets to have these resources in their own fire districts we have to pull these resources to be efficient with taxpayers money um the second important piece here is understanding for the public where to go for the correct information so the town has its own resources we we have an excellent public information officer Patrick derenzi who puts out regular updates on our town social media the the police chief

018Mike Salo is also excellent at keeping people updated on the town's police uh Facebook web page we then have the town website where if anything is an IM immediate impending emergency we'll have headers across the town website advising people um and additionally we have a Civic alert system where if there are issues going on in specific geographies within the town we have the ability to text people across different areas to ensure they're getting the right information um some of the questions we've had in this kind of Realm relating to the recent issue is you know what happens in an evacuation system and you know obviously it varies with the nature of the event we're facing and you know as the event evolves that information will be shared with the public accordingly but you know our

019primary kind of focus on most emergencies out here given our geography and the nature of the events we face is a shelter in place program and it's important for residents to understand that there's a great deal of information on the town website about what that means and what sort of resources and responsibilities you have a resident to ensure of your safety you know planning for your medications ensuring your cell phones charged um you know do you have a plan for your pets do you have a call list of people who you're going to contact these are really important considerations you have to take into account as residents to you know ensure your safety um with that I'm G to hand over to Andy and John now um and if they could just give a quick

020overview of what happened in West Hampton um and we'll go from there thank you thank you Tom welcome Andy and John how it good morning supervisor members of the Town board uh again for those that don't know in the public my name is Andy Drake uh I work for the Department of Land Management of the town and I brought along my uh my friend and colleague John wett uh Forester from the New York State DEC uh division of Forest Health um uh in terms of um going over what has happened in Westampton um I'm going to kick it to John to to kind of to go through that as he's a little bit more of an expert on fire uh management and Forest management than myself um sure yeah y thank you for having me

021um it's a little early to tell the exact U determination of the fire I'm sure everyone saw the uh supposedly s'mores started it um but in the coming days uh we will figure that out but uh as of right now I believe the fire was approximately 450 acres um burning some state land and some County lands uh but we're very thankful for all the um you know Mutual Aid and the fire departments to put it out so quickly uh it could have been much more catastrophic but uh it's important to note that that ecosystem is fire dependent and it it was coming up on the 30-y year anniversary of the uh 95 wildfires and that is typically what the uh fire regiment is it's around 25 to 30 years uh that it burns and uh

022looks catastrophic but that is what um you know that ecosystem evolved with and in a few months it'll green up and then in coming years that it you'll almost not even know uh that it happens so it's uh it's scary but that's a part of the um living in the pine baring so John if I may because that the original reporting was that southern pine beetle in infestation was part of the the fuel yes thank you for bringing that up uh so that area the the pine beetle typically attacks trees um you know that are much larger uh we have not had an outbreak in the dwarf Pine uh that area so pine beetle did not add to the uh fire risk in that situation but in other situations uh what drives fire is is

023the fine fuels so it's the you know the the little needles the um Huckleberry the that's what drives the fire these large dead standing trees uh lash on the ground and such really doesn't drive the fire in fact when the Fire Hits that it stops because uh we call those there's 1 hour 10 hour, hour fuels so it means like it takes one hour to change the fuel moisture and such so like grass is the 1 hour fuel the the small Twigs or one hour fuels the the big standing dead or the uh Slash piles and such thousand hour fuels so it'll just it'll hit that and just smolder it it won't burn so it doesn't really add too much to the fire risk that's something I think we need to promote because I know

024from most folks the the inquiries we're getting is that's what they their biggest concern of course right areas where we've managed Southern pine beetle in the town get closer to the microphone and yeah areas where we've manag Southern pine beetle in the town uh you know although these properties may look uh aesthetically unpleasant and and maybe scary and and and may present um concerns um for dangerous situations or hazardous conditions it it is nice to know and I I feel reassured you know knowing that you know these you know the piles on the ground uh would would rather stop a fire rather than add fuel to the fire in in in a lot of ways um and you know I I'll get into the the current state of our our forest lands in our town

025owned preserves but um that was always a a secondary goal you know looking forward um and rather than leaving dead standing trees uh while managing for southern pine beetle suppression we're also putting the material on the ground to to further degrade and break down so uh although these lands were not specifically managed at the time I'm talking 2017 to 2021 for fire risk um I think it was a secondary um outcome of managing for suppression so I'm happy to hear John Echo that today so yeah I mean just in terms of the Wildfire risk across the town I mean some areas are more obvious than others you know you look at AIG as you drive across in the dead Pine there and obviously that is huge risk that that's on state land and for those

026of you who weren't able to attend the New York state did an excellent presentation on February 13th which you can get a copy of which just kind of really went over what their management plan is for that area um the clearings they've done adjacent to houses and what the plan is going forward for that obviously there's risk Elsewhere on the town and so you know when we're looking at that we're looking at Town lands we're looking at County lands and State lands that in different areas and you know as we see risk there um we work with those municipalities organized and I I also want to kind of just pause here and just say how grateful we are as a town to have both Andy both Andes Andy Drake and Andy Gates who are trained

027arborists who since his incident really kicked off in 2017 were out in the woods cutting trees and really fighting this this head on and it's it's a real benefit to have them in there um in terms of town-owned properties so the way we've addressed this is is to fold the first is to actually look at where is the fire load concern and that's associated with dead Pine and other stuff and anding the Land Management Department's been very proactive in getting into our properties and kind of looking and assessing that um the second part of it is what is the infrastructure we have in order to to kind of combat those fires so um and what risk does the fire pose to potential infrastructure so any worldfire assessment looks at resources and that's you know it's

028the balance of risk versus reward so what are the resources that are at risk from the fire so in terms of what we're looking at in this area we're looking at okay what are the adjacent houses so we're working with our GIS team to put together a mailing list to discuss with people you know things like management of property on their land which Dave will come into a little bit more we're also looking at you know where are the locations of the nearest public water fire hydrants because that's something that our fire Crews need in order to effectively manage this uh I'll talk to that a little bit more as we get into working with the fire departments but for now um Andy if you want to just go through um you know managing the

029existing properties we have the historic actions we've taken uh and then I'll jump back into the five funds okay thank you Tom uh so yeah um historically it all begins like I said the the worry and the concern about our town properties and the current state uh stems from Southern pine beetle management I think um and the first the first Southern Pine be in East Hampton Town was discovered in 2017 uh by myself and Andy Gates at the Curtis preserve on Swamp Road um at that time we we knew quite a bit about Southern Pine be based on Research forums we attended at Brook lab and just research we had done on our own knowing that it was in werheim uh national uh uh Wildlife Refuge in 2014 and then uh crept further west into

030conc quat State Park and uh red Creek Park in Hampton Bay so we we knew the telltale signs we we we anticipated this happening um but we quickly worked with GIS to map the perimeter of the infestation and put it on a map uh we returned to the property one week later uh and it had more than doubled in one size in in size in one week um so at that point it was considered an outbreak status and it was moving very quickly uh so our department um called to meet with the town board and the supervisor Larry kentwell at the time um to just go over this the state of things and what was happening in the woods and knowing that a large loss of forest land was about to occur um supervisor cwell

031declared a state of emergency in October of 2017 um and that was because Southern pine beetle don't care whose property it is where you know they're infesting trees they're they're getting into trees so we have a lot of town and County co-owned property in that area on Swamp Road but right across the street is all private lots and uh so to declare a state of emergency kind of uh allowed us to to um with landowner permission hire um tree Crews to to fell fell these trees and and attack um um and manage for suppression on not only Town land but private land as well uh since 2017 uh our records show that uh 22725 give or take Pitch Pine trees have been filled uh for the purpose of suppression uh and what you know we

032use the uh method uh known as cut and leave uh This was um advised by the uh the dec at the time who we are so grateful for um their assistance at that time they they came out and uh essentially taught us forestry um John was out there with a chainsaw on his back um hiking through the Curtis preserve putting trees on the ground and um the whole division of Forest Health I mean Nate Molly the whole crew uh coming out to help us with this situation at that time was was very very beneficial and we learned a lot from them um honestly during that time we were really hopeful that we could stop the spread of Southern Pine bill because it was so new to our town we were really hopeful we could stop

033the spread two points East such as nap and Monto um that was kind of like the final frontier we were trying to hold on to and maintain that healthy Forest land um but unfortunately uh in 2021 um Andy and I were driving down the highway and noticed a patch of brown trees in nap State Park and sure enough we we walked and found about 200 to 300 trees infested and quickly notified the state on that issue um aesthetically I'd say you know for forests um looked better at that time but you know again I was happy to hear John um explain that you know the forests now our town preserve LS now after management are actually perhaps healthier at this time than they were uh previous to infestation because of uh just an overstocked um

034Woodlands that are very susceptible to infestation and to actually fire risk more so um years later um yeah the the slash piles um have been degrading new growth of Pines have been coming up um not only pitch Pines but White Pines as well and that's occurring naturally uh as as the sun is is now hitting hitting the ground uh ground level and also because of plantings that we did through uh through our own department and also volunteers getting them involved we had we had students uh we had the Surf Rider Foundation coming out to uh to to plant white pines and Pitch Pines we did cone collection events with East an Trails preservation Society um and we've done I think we we planted over 2,000 trees in the Northwest Woods area just to repopulate our

035Pine forests uh in the Years 2019 um and uh yeah it's it's unfortunate that you know that goal of of stopping the the spread further east you know it you know Southern P the battle kind of became a losing battle um but um you know we we've kind of focused our efforts uh after after that that point to um to managing Hazard trees uh adjacent to private properties uh felling trees that have the potential to fall on uh uh private land owners fences or homes or yards or you know uh so our department have gone through and walked perimeters of all of our town preserves and you know we feel pretty confident that we've we've managed all standing Hazard trees uh that that threatened uh our neighbors um so yeah I mean that that's kind

036of where we at we're at we had a you know basically a shift in management Philosophy from suppression to Hazard management and uh and now here we are talking about um fire risk and possibly you know further management of Hazards possibly along trails and uh and elsewhere but uh that's where we're at currently thank you Andy so yeah I mean Andy myself and John have spent significant time in the differently affected areas and and it it's been great actually having John there too because his experience across the east coast in managing forests associated with wildfires is is more extensive than pretty much anyone I've ever come across so his advice has been incredibly valuable but we've also had the fire departments in there with us and just understanding what their needs are and and that's

037critically important too because you know we we have our brush trucks but they have specific dimensions so if we're going to do clearings or fire brakes we have to understand okay what sort of parameters do you need in order to get your trucks and your equipment in and out of here um you know additional conversations are kind of what sort of resources do you have and what sort of resources do you not have that you might need so you know one thing that we saw when we were fighting the fire in HIIT the hills a few years ago was you know getting public water supply and there is not possible so the use of trash pumps to actually have an adequate water supply into into the affected areas is key so you know encouraging the

038districts to have that that number of trash pumps is key obviously too but then there's bigger pieces of equipment that you know they say would be incredibly helpful that we don't have things like bulldozers so if you go back to that hether Hills example we're incredibly fortunate in that case that we had Mr duno who who's since passed who came in and actually opened up the pathway for the firefighting teams to get in there yeah um thank you yes you're right yes sorry Danny Shield um you know but it it doesn't make fiscal sense for fire districts or the town to have their own bulldozers because these instances are so rare so understanding how can we get those resources I have begun discussions with legislative and welka to kind of understand is there possibilities to

039work with fres that they have some of this equipment that can be called out say what fres is oh sorry fres is the suff County Fire and Rescue Emergency Services organization and and they support all the towns across suff County with management of fire and emergency systems it's a fantastic organization um you know and and and when we Face risks like these or any emergency um they are you know one of the first people our emergency coordinator will reach out to for additional resources um so you know that dialogue with the fire departments is critical you know one thing that's come back that we'll be working on next is you know ensuring access in there because the fire department's key feedback to this is look from our perspective there there's two things that we have

040primary concern one is is speed of access you know the sooner we can get onto these fires to put them out the better and then secondly obviously the saf of the firefighters we don't want to send anybody into areas where their lives are at risk this has to be done in a professional manner and that's critically important too because that takes time I I understand that a lot of people kind of have have concerns having seen what's happened in LA and also what recently happened in West Hampton but understand from what we've talked about today that our risk is very different based on the vegetation based on the geography that is not to say there is no risk we are actively managing but is a very different and I would say lower risk uh in

041that sense but you know as we build these plans for how to address it we're looking to do it in a way that takes into account all the critical aspects you know our Woodland is a resource to the town it's one of the reasons people come out here it's also habitat for our amazing ecosystem um you know just tearing it down is something we have to be very careful about doing it it's at president uh and also destroys habitat um you know it also costs money uh and look you know all these emergencies we face that there is a FIS element to them and it's management of that risk um with those resources is key and we we got to do this in the right way it takes time and we we're doing that working

042with the relevant partners with that I'm going to oh actually one more thing just to talk about quickly is is water infrastructure yeah I you might want to just take a break for a second to see if board members have questions for Andy and John yeah I I have quickly just it's less of a question then I just want to explain to the folks some of the acronyms like GIS mapping which is an incredible tool that we have if you could just let folks know what that is we tend to say these acronyms because we deal with them all the time Global Information Systems right glal information system really what it is yeah we're working with the IT department which is uh Robert Mas Bob Mason and uh Barnaby Freedman um there if we're if

043we're you know um doing any kind of land planning from our department we we look to them to help help us put it on a map essentially so um GIS and it their Department we can be quite specific uh with our mapping so Tom was talking about mapping out hydrants and things like that so we can pick that up from a system we already have and put it on a map and understand it quite quickly I just wanted to folks to know what that there's different layers we can and also um uh I know the use of drone technology using drones has in the last number of years has really become an essential feature and I know all your department natural resources uh use drones quite a lot to help you have eyes on everything

044as well oh yeah so I want folks to know that if they saw drones over the forest it's you guys it's not just land acquisition and management it's also the East Hampton Town Police Department they're using drones as well you want to yeah yeah most importantly not only using drones as well as a fire department too in ampton Village they have thermal drones H and in terms of fighting wildfires that is unbelievably helpful the one that East Hampton fire department has is the most up to date it's also capable of talking to people um as they're on the ground should they need to um but you know in terms of actually managing the risk being able to get the drones up there is key um the other piece just to quickly talk about before I

045hand over to David is just you know goes back to infrastructure you know when we're mapping this with our our geographic information systems and looking where the hydrants are we we can see that there's you know a vast area where we don't have public water and we don't have public fire hydrant so you know we've reached out to suffer County water authority to understand you know what is the plan to increase the water supply there they have been doing that in in absolute fairness them over the last few years adding hydrants across the town um but you know obviously the more we have there the more we're able to manage this risk so we're looking to and we we've actually outreached to suff County water authority and asked them to come to a town board

046work session to give us an overview of what their their plans are um Chief yeah before kicking to uh uh Buzzy Dave Brown um John did you have anything else to say on the current conditions of our our townlands Our Town Home preserves before we move on just um sure So Long Island just like most areas of the state has been uh you know lived in for hundreds of years and it's important to note that many of these trees are reaching you know the edge end of their lifetimes uh so we're going to see a lot of these U you know if we don't manage the forest nature will so we're going to see outbreaks of insects disease fire of course uh so that's important to note that we're on the edge of decline in

047general and the reason why we have these outbreaks is because uh there's very little management being done versus Upstate where we have logging active Force management that when these events do occur it's more catastrophic than areas that we do Management in and uh it's just important to note that these unfortunately these events are probably going to become more common in the coming decades and how does drought affect that I mean drought's another Factor right drought just exacerbates everything it so the trees are already weakened they're competing with each other for resources uh so then when you add drought in you know the uh the southern pine beetle just makes it even worse because the trees are already stressed then when we have drought increase fire risk increase beetal risk so it just you know exacerbates

048everything and and is the dec have any um um best practices for managing um wooded property on private properties as well um has you know cuz that's also um um while clearing and you know keeping the rural character of our our neighborhoods is important it's also would probably be good to educate people on their own good management uh of their properties and it's interesting to hear you say I have a lot of wood mostly Woods on my properties natural Woods I don't do anything to it um but uh I never thought of felling dead trees is a best practice Yeah and and um of course you have to um I I myself live in the Pine Bar as well so there there are clearing limits and such like that but there's a a great program

049called firewise um and it's uh advises you know uh as zones of protection for your home so you can do certain things you'll clear your gutters make sure you don't have vegetation touching your house uh so when there is a wildfire uh you lower your risks uh of your own home but firewise is a great resource thank you for that it's a great segue to Chief Marsh absolutely you gentlemen all right thank you good morning my name is David Brown and Chief Fire Marshall um they stole a little bit of my information great tips great tips um I'm going to talk about you know the home safety High home fire safety and preparing for exteriors I'm not going to talk about the interior um I guess you first start with your homes um the way

050our homes are designed the way the materials we used to build the houses um if you're thinking head of fire prevention we can think of terracotta slate or metal roofs uh fire and Embers uh land on these beautiful cedar shingles that we love to have in our traditional homes but um that's what I use in my fireplace for Tinder is the seedar shingles so these houses are going to be more likely to go up um going to the sides of the houses also cacious uh shingles or you know more of the fireproof shingles that we can use again are going going to prevent the fires from encroaching on our homes um we're talking about exposure um we're not talking about the fire from in the house it's the exposure towards the house so again about

051the rush pardon me sir could you move that microphone to point up towards you thank you there we go awes good good okay um so we're talking about the brush and our our our Shrubbery that we put around the houses um we want to be more strategic keep them further away from the houses we don't want them right up against our house and we want to make sure that they're well watered we don't want dry and uh you know more more like likely to you know combust and cause fires um then we're going to go out to the outer Lane as we go we talk about felling some of the standing trees some of the standing dead trees um once they're on the ground again they they'll they'll absorb moisture they're going to be a

052slower fire they're going to to uh be more of a smoldering fire rather than a quick moving fire towards your house um then we're going to talk a little bit about um the Duff and litter the duff is what you see is all the the the packed down leaves and everything we're not going to disturb that too much but the litter on top if it's starting to get too much branches and stuff like that that's what we want to clean up a little bit of the branches so those things are coming the Fire doesn't spread across the the ground quickly coming towards the house trim some of your trees up so that the canopies is all the way down to the ground again it's going to be harder for the fire to jump up into

053the canopy if it's if it's trimmed up a little bit higher um another very important thing that we're finding right now and it's been brought up by the fire departments is driveways and access getting into our homes um we love these beautiful winding dirt roads and dirt driveways through the trees and the woods to our beautiful homes but the fire trucks um the mandates are not getting any less the fire trucks are getting bigger they're getting wider they're getting longer and they're getting harder to get into these driveways um the code says that they have to be a minimum of 12 ft wide and clear to 13 1/2 ft High um the fire trucks now they're getting out to about 8 and 1/2 ft wide with another foot on each side for mirrors we out

054to 10 ft wide so take a look at your driveways at home when you're driving in could I get a big truck in there how about an ambulance uh that's that's more likely you have need an ambulance somewhere along the line you might not need a fir truck but you might need an ambulance um and they're just as wide and it's just as hard for them to get in some of these driveways um the grading of the driveways if there's ruts and potholes and big mud puddles it's going to be again harder for these emergency service vehicles to get into your driveways so start thinking about yourselves you know think about yourselves be greedy you know get myself clear get my nice cleared pathway into my home my driveways um you may want to have

055to stop into natural resources or planning once in a while and make sure you're not over clearing um Fire Marshals we like over clearing because there less firewood um but I get myself in trouble there um but you check make sure you're not going to be over clearing and hit any of those limits yeah if you have questions about clearing um the natural resources department Mark aberson is available via email and just generally if you have questions we have created a town email fire safety at eh hamptonny .ov and we will forward that to R department to get those questions answered for you I'll just give a shout out to Native plantings which require a less watering are more hearty because they're actually native to the area and less susceptible to uh diseases Etc they'll

056Thrive better and and Cost You Less in irrigation as well nice absolutely bzy could you also just address gates gates yes okay oh this is another one um Gates against private driveways um due to the some of the codes we have some driveways don't require a permit as it is right now and the problem we're finding is that people if they're building them without the permit they're not necessarily going through the planning process or the process of review to make sure that they are wide enough or they are far enough back onto the property and then not too close to the road because when we get an ambulance that pulls up and the gate is only 3 or 4 feet off the road they're sticking out into the road you're putting them in danger um

057and again you're slowing them down you're hindering them getting into your properties again think of yourselves mind everybody else think of yourselves how am I getting into my property how are they getting to me um and then it all falls in line everybody will be better off of that um but right now the the code is 12T wide again for the gates and the clearing is 13 and 1/2 ft High buzy what about the code It's like because we when we had our meeting yesterday one of the Town staff is in East tempton fire department he said he's had to climb climb fences in order to to get into the uh the proper again I think that's where we're the ones we're getting that are that don't need a permit so that's where we need

058to address it in the code because they're putting them in with a per without permits they don't put in the safety features that we require typically like um to get into a gate um if it's electric gate we can require noxbox key just like a nox boox to get into your homes when you have an alarm system it's the same exact key at your gate the fire department Chiefs are the only ones that have this keys they put it in it opens your gate there's also another method which is a siren method where the gate activates on a siren police or fire department ambulance come up and hit the siren for a certain amount of time two to 3 minutes whatever it is and that decel and it will open the gates and then there's

059a third method of another noxbox key where if the gates are locked with a KNX key the fire department and everything could open that gate key also with that so when it goes through the permitting process we review all this stuff and we catch all this stuff we make sure it's safe rather than again the firemen showing up and having to jump over a fence or climb over a fence to get in to find out if there is a fire or if it's EMS to get in to help you and every minute every second is is precious yeah and then you just want to talk about the burn band the burn band Yes um Statewide burn band no open burning no burn per no burn you know your outdoor burning pits no outdoor chimney fires

060or anything like that um I'd even say you know keep your fireplaces to a minimum to make sure you're not using you know too much papers that can cause Embers or too dry of wood that can cause the Embers to come up make sure your spark arresters and your caps are on your chimneys again maintenance Home Maintenance make Sure Fire Prevention that I'm just going to throw in Beach fires too Buzzy Beach fires no Beach fires no open pits no open fires at all um your grills you can still use your home Grill um but again not not not anything with the open wood or open fires open Flames any question and that caps it off to the update yeah so uh just we're going to be putting out a press release this afternoon when

061Patrick gets back to the office um and we're really grateful for everyone making the time this morning to be able to be here um but we've also uh want to hear from our community as we work to strengthen brushfire prevention and response efforts we invite residents to share their concerns ask questions and provide input on fire safety in our community we're going to be hosting officials and fire safety experts at Town Public Work sessions we talked about we've reached out to the suffa County Water Authority we've reached out to fres to see if they could come and to to address this and we're also setting up a uh a special email fire safety at ampton n.gov and we're asking folks to uh send in their questions uh your input is essential what we'll do is

062we'll bring these questions to town board work sessions and discuss them it'll help us create an FAQ um and uh so this way we can protect our homes our woodlands and our neighborhoods from the threat of these brush fires can I just mention sure um just to mention also of getting out information or looking for the information and getting it out on how to sign up for our alert system yes um it's uh it's I I signed up for it years ago uh uh way before I was sitting in the seat and it's always been a valuable tool uh for a mass communication on what's going on right so you can get a text or an email whichever you prefer and you can do that on our website Madam supervisor can I get an update

063on NE PE and some of the state for on that peig uh as we're aware the southern pine beetle is devastated the NEP uh State Meadows Parklands and those areas also then too uh working with Governor hok's office chip Corman from New York state parks and Tim Watson who is the park Master not master may be the regional park director for Monto state parks and the dec actually owns and operates uh Barcelona neck specifically in that Pig right now they have an open contract out right now to create burn piles this is part of the protocol plan that they put together out there at the last public meeting which you can get that information on the state's dec's website we can provide it also uh that uh that is an open contract that is uh

064out right now they had on-site meeting to create burn piles they'll be going out to another contract that will create a burn plan and hire a burn boss for a potential prescriptive prescriptive burn that would be happening in the fall of 25 into the winter of 26 so those are efforts on the state's lands that we currently see they're also working with the local fire departments and the town board Town Council and the supervisor also but that's where they're at right now as far as you know getting the contracts out those contracts are millions of dollars worth of contracts uh unlike what they're doing any other place into in the State uh governor hok's off office is completely committed to assisting the town of East Hampton by reducing fire risk in the state park LS

065and he I I would just kind of say something to commend my colleague leagues here which is that it's because they were ahead of the game in recognizing this that the state is where it is with nap other areas haven't got to this level yet so um I I think that's been effective management so thank you guys thank you Tom and what we're in the press release we're we're including the link to to YouTube so that folks can see the meeting uh February 13th I believe it was when the state came out here to Monto downs and did a presentation on their plans for nap peek so you'll there'll be a link there if you care to to watch that video and just add on one more apologize it's prent uh the recent contracts that

066they the state's done they've reduced the fire ladder so that that contract's been complete right now where they reduce the fire ladder fuel that's on into the ne State meows and also by cranberry whole road right now these next steps will take a little bit of time on there but yes you will see Foresters felling trees in those areas upcoming weeks and months then and I will continue to alert the board on that when to work with Tom yeah Andy would you mind coming up again cuz I do know that some folks have said you know they've heard about the plans that the dec has for nap PE and looking to do a controlled burn and and why that isn't an option for us uh well I think when considering uh the the management option

067of a controlled burn in our area that was affected by uh by Southern Pine be and our our most of our Woodlands of the Northwest Woods there's just such a a fragmented ownership um of of land uh we only own some smaller pieces in relatively to um the larger swath land of Na PE State Park where that's being considered uh for instance our largest preserve on Route 114 is Edwards hole preserve which is approximately 50 acres 52 Acres um there's some other smaller preserves that about 10 acres 15 Acres so um it's just there's too many there's a conglomerate of of different ownerships from private or Reserve areas or or County Land it's just I'd say that's probably the biggest hurdle size too right I mean it's it's a smaller area so the risk yeah

068um just just the last thing I want to do here um is a plug so many of you in your hamlets see signs for sign up for your local fire department and EMS these are the people out there fighting these fires they need you we heard earlier that with how it's it's challenging keeping the numbers up in the fire departments um I get it's a commitment I do it myself I encourage all of you to do it I have people who are 84 running EMS calls who me I I you know or in ladders or running pumps age is no barrier gender is no barrier you know it's something about living in your community it makes a real difference and they need you thank you thank you Tom all right well thank you Andy John

069uh Buzzy we really appreciate you being here and Tom for taking the lead on this okay so now we're up to our second uh topic and that's the community housing fund request for 109 Hampton Street in Sag Harbor and today we have Joanne Pilgrim our community development program analyst to take us through the presentation so Amry if you could get the presentation up um I love good morning everyone so we're going to go through an overview of the uh proposed acquisition of 109 Hampton Street in SE Harbor oh there she is um by the East Hampton Housing Authority with the help of a grant from the town of East Hampton Community Housing fund and uh financial assistance also from the SE Harbor community housing Tru TR um this is a picture of the building itself

070um 109 Hampton Street it was uh brought to East the town of East Hampton as a possible affordable housing Opportunity by the SE Harbor Village trustees it's a 4unit multiple residence building legally pre-existing um as you know U occupied by tenants um it's one of the contributing historic properties to the SE Harbor Village historic district built in 1890 and basically serves as a deao affordable Workforce housing um it's for sale on the open market with a accepted offer of 2.65 million and um if purchased privately it would likely become a single family residence that would not uh act as affordable housing next slide shows a location and site information it's in a half acre residential Zone on 29 Acres that's 12,790 Square ft it's served by public water and the suffk County Water Authority it

071has an individual septic system that is at this point an Antiquated uh style of system there are no protected natural features it's not within a flood Hazard Zone um it is located along Hampton Street which is 114 so that's a major road and it's with within about 1500 ft of the Sag Harbor business district and about 500 F feet of the Sag Harbor schools so the town of East Hampton received a funding request from the East Hampton Housing Authority uh for a grant of 1.5 million from from the community housing fund um to help with the acquisition price of the property that East Hampton Housing Authority would take care of any needed repairs or upgrades or other expenses um we don't anticipate that there would be a further need for any more Town funding as

072the rent revenues would support the project going forward the uh East Hampton Housing Authority has already retained a right to purchase the property through an agreement with the owner with the forthcoming deadline to act um and the idea was that the Housing Authority would put down 10% of the purchase price or $265,000 at closing with a commitment of future funding um the Housing Authority would also receive funding from the Sag Harbor Community Housing Trust which is committed to give 1.2 million toward the acquisition um that funding would come partially from another um property that the uh Housing Authority is purchasing from the the SE Harbor Community Housing Trust with the help of a community housing fund Grant uh it's called The Cottages on Route 114 that's another uh affordable housing that would be um preserved

073perpetuity through that action and then the SE Harbor Community Housing Trust would also commit an additional $700,000 toward the purchase this request was reviewed by the town's community housing Advisory board at their meeting on January 9th uh those present uh um barring one person who had to recuse because they were otherwise involved in the situation uh voted unanimously to recommend that uh to to approve this Grant and expenditure um they cited various various items um to support that decision one is that this serves as Workforce housing um and could serve people at up to 130% area median income which is a demographic for which there is often kind of a gap in housing some of the other affordable housing projects uh can't serve PE can't serve people with that much income uh the funding is

074readily available the community housing funds has the funds available and we felt the committee felt that the request does not significantly limit the potential funding of other future projects the location within uh close to the Sag Harbor Village business district was considered an optimal location for Workforce housing it would also preserve the historic home and the committee also looked at the the cost per unit of the investment by the town which essentially um factors out to $375,000 per unit um in considering projects to fund the community housing board has kind of used a rule of thumb um of how much it cost to build units affordable housing units of $500,000 per unit based on recent projects so this this investment per unit by the town did not exceed that amount the chab as we call

075them community housing Advisory Board the chab issued a letter to the town board in January um supporting this proposal considerations um that the that our office would like to bring bring up are that there be no changes to the exterior because it's a historic property there's no resoning or similar changes required um this has been four units there's no expans since since it's certificate of occupancy there's no expansion proposed this is as I've said the opportunity to preserve deao affordable housing and a historic structure in Sag Harbor and um it would be the first use of community housing fund money in Sag Harbor which is a contributing area to the fund um and the office of Housing and Community Development recommends a couple of conditions of the grant award including that the sanitary system be

076upgraded to a low nitrogen system um that system could also the cost for that system could also be um potentially eligible for the town septic rebate program or the cpf water quality improvement grants that are available for that uh for those types of systems um we would also recommend that all four units be reserved for moderate income families which would mean incomes of up to 130% of area median income um that figure is tied to an annual calculation which presently is for um one person $ 14222 for two people $162,500 $ and I'll just jump to a four-person family um that moderate income would be 20360 we also would recommend that the units remain affordable and be rented at uh prices that don't exceed our affordable rent thresholds um for studio apartment right now that's

077$ 2,42 for a one-bedroom that's $2,913 and for a two two-bedroom that's 3,362 so the property would be both owned and managed by the East Hampton housing authority and maintained by the Housing Authority which I think as we're all aware of they have extensive um more than 40 years of experience in owning and operating and maintaining housing developments in East Hampton Town and the last slide goes over the next steps so the town board should discuss whether or not it supports the 1.5 million dollar Grant request at this time if so um the town board should discuss any special conditions or requirements and then would go ahead and schedule a public hearing at a forthcoming Town board meeting vote on the funding award and at that point um if approved the town attorney's office would

078prepare the resolutions and any other documentation um to memorialize the town's commitment to in conditions for the funding great thank you Joy Jo you know off hand are they all one bedrooms the four units I don't know I'm sorry yeah one two bedom and 3 one bom okay thank you yeah thank thank you Joanne um and thank you to Eric chance the the director of housing um and thank you to Tom gella and Jean Kane for bringing this this to us um it's obviously a unique opportunity and that it's such a historic building that's acting as a deao affordable housing um development and there are concerns with something like this which is upkeep because it's obviously maintaining a historic structure is going to be a little more complicated than you know a new simpler structure

079uh but we don't want to lose affordable housing that we currently have as everybody knows um it's something that we need in town but can also be controversial when there are new developments and so um I think this is a good opportunity to preserve something that exists and you know I know I didn't know Jay lived there but that's you know it always makes me happy because this is something that I was I believed in to begin with but then when you hear the type of people that and what they contribute to our community who they're providing housing for um I can't say that I'm surprised but just it it confirms I think the the goodness of this this opportunity so I'm I'm definitely supportive and and I also want to recognize eastampton housing authority

080and that having somebody like that who's willing to step in um commit to the maintenance and the upgrades that are needed and you know preserving in perpetuity uh gives me you know more confidence in the project uh we talked about a number of ways to approach this and their willingness to participate um certainly is is a Cornerstone of I think hopefully a successful Endeavor here I agree with all of the um all of the conditions that were that were outlined I mean certainly if we use community housing funds money we have to restrict R the income and the rent that can be charged because that's the whole point we're never going to play around with that there are standards here that we've all agreed to and and I've you know on the record recognized the

081need for even income above that but to be clear if we're using community housing funds we're going to stay within those standards and that's a you know a concrete rule um so yeah I'm supportive I do want to just you know highlight a couple of other things to be aware of one thing that I've learned um in talking with chab and and and looking at affordable housing issues is that that the CHF money the community housing funds money aren't going to go as far as we might think and so we do have to be considerate about sort of cost per unit which Joanne addressed in the um you know the presentation here and this is a little bit on the higher end but I don't know of any other affordable housing project in Sag Harbor

082that we have um I think it's important that we address this need throughout all areas of the Town um so I'm supportive I just want to sort of highlight that and and frankly I had I've had conversations with Andrew Garvey from community housing Advisory Board who is quickly realizing how um you know we're blessed by these funds but they are limited and so we're going to have to use care but I think this unique opportunity of preserving an existing um affordable housing or deao affordable housing development the historic um structure the fact that it's one of the first ones in Sag Harbor that you're bringing some of um your own money to the table and that the East Hampton Housing Authority is willing to step in uh makes it a very good project and one

083that I wholeheartedly support so uh I agree with everything that Ian has said and I thank all the work that's gone into this from from um from our office and the Housing Authority um I can't think of uh anything more important than providing housing affordability as as Tom talked about losing volunteers losing the backbone of our of our communities uh through lack of housing affordability in the private sector it's all the more important that we preserve any any ability to uh to have uh affordable housing we pursue it and also uh interesting that this is a multi-resident uh property so we're preserving a use that would likely disappear where it would become one family versus the ability to house so many folks that contribute to our town so I'm fully supportive I I so I

084I like how this is full circle um community housing uh sa Harbor Community Housing Trust actually The Cottages were purchased with funds I believe that came from the bouevard watch case Factory which is outside the v in the Cottages are outside the village of SE Harbor now that funding finally has come back to provide affordable housing within the village of SE Harbor I think that's something that's missed on this thing too and I like the Karm of the full circle aspect of it Joanne nice to see you thank you for bringing this forward and to the mayor Tom trustees your dedication and commitment to the Village of sag harbor and looking immediately forward to affordable housing is what puts you at the top and your constituents in the village should be very happy to have

085you there then too because from our first meetings on there you put the stamp that you wanted to make sure s Harbor was not just affordable but affordable and attainable to have this so I look forward that commitment I know you're committed to and I'm committed to this project also and to g uh to the Housing Authority thank thank you for being a great partner on this project then too so thank you yeah I'll just echo my colleagues comments um yeah I think this is a great project at the fact it actually has a history preservation element as well I think is fantastic um and you know Housing Authority you continue to do an amazing job so thank you yeah I mean it's an incredible collaboration Village trustees brought it to us the town the

086SAG harer Community Housing Trust the East tempton Housing Authority um so I just want to go over some dates so we're looking to schedule the public hearing on at our meeting on Thursday March 20th for a public hearing on April 3rd and then we would have the ability to vote on that uh actually back here in mon talk on April 8th because I know that there's Katie I don't know what the date is what you're looking at but what I'm hoping Carol is if we you know vote on this on April 8th and we decide to move forward we can also get a special warrant so that on the April 20 20th meeting April 17th meeting we could have uh it on the warrant so that the funds will be available for the closing if

087all goes according to plan all right so we're going to wrap this one up and thank you for joining us today and being a part of the conversation thank you much okay so next up we're doing our 2024 accomplishments and 2025 goals for our departments that work with the environment we've got natural resources uh Kim Shaw is going to be presenting um as our Environmental Protection director that'll be followed by Scott Wilson for land acquisition and management our director of of that department and then we will have John Barley dun our director of Agriculture give his accomplishments and goals so welcome Kim yeah that's not me oh sorry should be the first yeah yeah sorry okay next page please here we go thank you um good afternoon so the natural resources department Miss statement is

088to protect and restore the natural environment through sustainable practices and promote healthy ecosystems we are committed to reestablishing Native vegucation ensuring clean and accessible water and advancing the use of clean energy as well as safeguarding our endangered species um some of those photos on there just so to highlight it all of our our mission statement so to go through some 2024 accomplishments um I obviously didn't list them all I just picked a few key areas um the renewal renewable energy roadmap plan um the key elements of that are renewable energy integration Energy Efficiency and fossil fuel reduction some of the Core Concepts of the plan and include adopting uh a CCA which is a Community Choice aggregation program that allows local governments to purchase electricity on behalf of the residents offering an alternative to traditional

089owned utilities um one goal that CCA is to pay less for renewable energy potentially leading to um greater local control of your energy choices um another program that we're working with is just transition it's a nerta program we're uh so happy to collaborate on a lot of our um large scale projects with nerta uh just for everyone's knowledge nerta is New York state energy research and development Authority and we've had a great partnership with them our just transition program is looking at uh the National Grid property on three Cove Hollow Road there's a um Antiquated peer plant there diesel fuel and uh we're looking to come up with a beneficial reuse plan for that site and so uh the team that we're working with um was selected by nerta their TRC out of New York

090City and they're developing recommendations uh well they already have developed draft recommendations for re of that site some of those recommendations are may require a code change um this is this site is also home of the battery storage um unit that uh so we're hoping to keep the newer components and just transition with um the peer plant another program that we're uh working with uh nerta is the build ready and this is a collaboration where the state is looking for large scale vacant Parcels to develop large scale solar installations um it's been very successful in Upstate New York where they have large commercial properties what they're allowing the town to do is um blend several properties to make a package uh appealing to people that may potentially bid on uh maintaining and installing the solar

091so a couple of the sites we looked at are former brush dumps um Mon talken and East Hampton we're also looking at Town Hall campus to do a large scale installation there um one of the downsides of this program um is our aging infrastructure and it's whether or not we can have enough megawatts on any one of those properties to be able to transmit through town so there are some complications but it's still moving forward and uh we'll have a presentation with the findings uh to the town board another really great project that we worked on last year uh was a cpf water quality project and that was at South Lake Mark uh South Lake everyone knows South Lake Beach um it's uh I lifeguarded there many moons ago but it's been closed since 200

0925 since uh with poor water quality we are with cpf monies looking to um target areas so um we had some Residential Properties just east of that upgrade to an Innovative alternative we had a restaurant uh just west of it upgrade and then we looked at doing something on our own property so one of the things we wanted to accomplish was controlling storm water uh we had a very large parking area that just drained directly down into the beach so we uh did some bio swells a lot of native vegetation planting we upgraded the sanitary system and um installed perious pavers in the parking lot um it looks really great there's a little picnic area down there and I think it's a a nice little Retreat now if we could just uh we're still focusing

093on improving water quality overall in that area and we've got some um great ideas on the back uh that we're going to introduce in this year moving forward um we're hoping to uh develop a nitrogen smart communities plan we are going to be presenting to the town board uh and outlining that the first step is to do a resolution committed to um funding a plan and uh Melissa is going to be working on that in the next couple months just before she leaves town to have a baby um we are also getting ready to roll out our Coastal resiliency website uh we finished up late last year with our developer she also developed a website for Nantucket and it's so user friendly it's for public education Outreach um news about Coastal resiliency um and just

094general information um it's going to be a great tool we think moving forward the pictures uh the videos everything is stunning on there it's really easy to to read we took a lot of the C plan and put it um in layman's terms in there so everyone can look things up and we have references back to the car plan I think it's a great uh website um and then moving forward with cpf water quality we're going to be um incorporating some of the changes that uh were adopted late last year which allows cpf water quality Monies to roll over which is significant um and it allows us to do projects I think on on protected lands uh as long as it's subsurface um two big projects that we rolling out in this year uh is

095the Cove Hollow constructed wetland in East Hampton Village and the 27 rest stop in waycott um the 27 rest stop project is a collaboration with the state and ponic land trust and we're um doing a rain Garden bio swell on ponic land trust properties which is the Gateway into East Hampton really going to clean that up uh we're going to make a more formal boat uh uh Public Access uh not boat uh public access to the water and we're just going to beautify that area in general control that storm water using some green infrastructure and some pretty Innovative uh technologies that are team came up with so we're really looking forward to that uh I think we are pretty close to putting that out to bid uh the state wanted some assurances about ownership and

096construction details and we're working on uh the next uh slide is just some statistics uh we have a very robust endangered species program we um are hiring two new interns so we'll have four people on board two days a week two different teams covering the ocean and Bay beaches um every year we try and Implement something new into the program this year we're uh we've had cameras uh we've had a bunch of different um opportunities to look at protecting the birds uh and the cameras are great it's it's unfortunate that we see some predation in them but um it's been really helpful this year we're going to be doing some um trying to outsmart the crows they're really really smart and they can figure out where the nests are by following where the team goes

097on the beach so they notice when they stop so um have trouble outsmarting crows I'm telling you no but um the are flagging used to be blue with every nest and now we're switching that up to Pink we're going to be doing some decoy nests we've gotten some uh eggs that we've ordered we've got some um model um clovers that we got from oron and we're going to set that up and see if maybe that can help um but uh what a robust team that is they're really excited to get out in the field they probably going to start uh just in the beginning of April um I've got two uh young interns that are graduating uh one's going to start part-time in April and they'll both be on board in June so it's exciting

098rev compliance unfortunately um the numbers just keep going up um you know uh it's it's just crazy and now with a new policy in place that a new CFO has to be issued upon property transfer uh we're seeing more and more applications um and I think 2025 is going to be one of those Banner years unfortunately it's just so many properties properties have either cleared over cleared the properties or cleared into an easement and they can't move forward with the closing until they resolve some of those issues um fees for that uh We've increased there are now 550 for a full reveg plan and 225 for uh additional inspections that doesn't seem to curtail any of these issues and the price of native plants just keeps going up so uh we're really going to uh

099ratchet up on a public education Outreach um program this year we're going to team with ccom to do everything from Innovative alternative septics to Native vegetation to water quality so we've had a couple preliminary meetings and we're going to kick it off with a couple neighborhoods uh Community groups throughout the town and then water quality um this program is really kicked off we um since the program started in 2018 uh we've had 780 installations we have thousands of applications but not everybody's installed this uh last year we had 165 new installations and that's not counting all the applications so oftentimes people aren't ready for that commitment and they we offer them an extension so uh we have a lot of people getting ready to install this year uh we also have the 2024 um Grant

100Awards we had seven projects last year totaling $1.3 million and I forgot to mention that um the cvf incentive program or the rebate program for the Innovative Alternatives was uh just over $2.8 million we typically budget about three and A5 million um so we're a little shy this year but uh um based on the number of applications we've had in the past that's how we figure out the budget um so we did the same thing for 2025 and that's about it if you guys have any questions thank you Kim first of um I do have questions South Lake mon talk and just just Lake mon talk in general I mean um the water quality in Lake mon talk is is not the best uh and I'm really happy that we've got the South Lake Monto

101part going because I do think I hope that that will see some improvements um are there any other projects that you know we could look into to kind of mitigate that water culty G degradation I mean even the flushing I know when we've worked with the feds previously kind of clearing the channels has been great but I've also had residents reach out to me like why not clear it further down to increase the water flow into the lake and actually clean it that way it's it's something that is deteriorating um you know just interesting to hear kind of plans or initiatives that you know might be in the works so it is difficult um I know the federal navigation Channel only goes to basically the Calico property um we petitioned the feds in the past

102to extend it um I don't know if you remember years ago some of the marinas wanted to bring in larger V vles and the only way to do that was to widen and F extend uh the channel further south and that just really never went anywhere one of the problems with circulation everyone assumes that bring in more water and it will circulate there's a powerful freshwater head there that prevents a lot of circulation so that's why we have so many problems at South leg because of all the freshwater inputs mainly from ditch yeah yeah so we are um embarking on a Shoreline and we're planning to do that in um one portion of it in uh the lake so I'm going to be working with barley on that uh I think that's a great opportunity

103uh our Engineers are just finalizing some of the drawings um Samantha Klein is working with the our grant or to make sure that um they're okay with the new locations that we've selected and our second uh area that we're going to be doing in living Shoreline is in Fort pond off of Industrial Road and that's Incorporated some resiliency re removing some invasive um species in the area and then Shoring up that area um with um green infrastructure so and the water quality testing that goes on those location do we do it ourselves or do that come through ccom typically the water quality testing so I believe Surf Rider does it for ccom um they are this year upping um their program they're doing a quality control program or a quop and once a quop is

104in place other agencies will then um be more confident in the findings and that all the samples were properly handled so in the past uh the state and the county really never recognized um that the samples were properly secured as they should be and then um processed in a a certified lab so they are stepping up uh they're looking to either um find a lab or develop their own lab so they've got a lot of plans uh we spoke briefly a couple weeks ago but uh yeah we're going to be working with them on their revised water quality monitoring plan the county also does it um um but they grab at like the headwaters so we're not really getting a picture of what's going on on the you know inside of the water bodies and

105like I mentioned we're going to be working with CC and really targeting Fort Pond residents and Lake uh the lake residents to get maybe like a cluster of people to get together to sign a pledge that they're for clean water uh and you know maybe work with contractors to see if we can get a discounted deal if we get x amount of people to participate in the program so we've got a lot of good ideas um coming up for 2025 to get out there with public education Outreach so um CCM has some new staff that's really uh wants to really you know hit the ground running this year and really get more installations on uh Fort pond in Lake Monta because um a lot of the IAS are going in three mile um hog Creek

106area um and it's I think it's because the homeowners association really encourage at every meeting for the homeowners to get involved and to get the county rebate I mean the county state and town people you know we've doing this since 2018 and a lot of people don't know what kind of money's out there so um I Heard statistic the day that about like approximately 20% of properties around Fort Pond actually have the updated septic systems is that sound about right to you um well we've had a lot of commercial um Comm in so that's good um which one just came in Ian they just they're doing a large scale system um and harvest we approved last year too yeah so yeah all right thank you sure one more input that we're doing in like M

107talk will come up probably to the board in April would be the the West Lake boat ramp right that's another project that we're going to look to see bring to the board and potentially install somewhere hopefully maybe early 2026 also so that's another level of a large input that we'll bring to the board very shortly too yes and um we just uh got our final report on uh the Lowenstein Surfside uh drainage pipes and uh Melissa and I are going over that we'll fine-tune that and bring it to the board but there's some significant findings there for water quality improvements you know we have that outfall that leads to the beach um and that's one of the places that Sur Rider and ccom test and it's just been a nightmare for years and we're hoping

108to um come up with a plan to drop some of that water off on the Upland versus just discharging directly to the beach I was just out uh two weeks ago with the team and they're running a camera um we've got to show you some of that footage it's just incredible like um the abilities of and the skills of the team that we we hired it was really impressive yeah I'd love to see that yeah anybody else yeah I just want to Kim Kim if you just mentioned that uh about um the ditch Dune um that we're um planning to build the the restoration we've submitted everything to the dec yes we did uh surveys that had to get requ we were required to get that we did locally and with Kim's input and Matt

109and members of the team that's moving forward that project y so it was a complete package the DC always wants photos we gave them Drone footage still photos uh the survey the site plan a very good narrative um on on why you know um when we did the interim plan uh last year um the DC was super helpful so um I'm hoping uh they have a quick turn around in this if they have any questions you know we've always made ourselves available we'll probably do a quick um meet and greet you know probably go to their office in Stonybrook and sit down and see if there's anything that they still need from us because we want to make sure that stays on track to get that Dune in place and we did do pre- meeting

110with them um in in discussing the design of the Dune and have already incorporated into the um design Suggestions by the dec for their permitting right thank you sure thank you Kim Scott welcome Scott it's a nice venue down here I haven't been down in pretty nice okay so I'm the director of land acquisition of management for the town and our mission statement is uh this Department's goal is to help protect our sense of place through acquisition Land Management and implementation of water quality initiatives to preserve East Hampton's unique natural environments Open Spaces farms and historic places for the enjoyment of all those who share our community quite a mouthful actually I'd have to cut that down um so 2024 accomplishments on the land acquisition side uh since the Inception of the program we have

111average approximately 20 partial Acquisitions a year uh the range actually is significant one year was as little as three and one year it was as many as 56 Acquisitions in a single calendar year in 2024 the town preserve 15 properties comprising 48.3 Acres at an approximate cost of $67 million the town is in contract on seven additional Parcels comprising 23.8 Acres at an approximate cost of 11.08 million although we did just have a closing uh at six Source shes Rose so that's down down to six um our acquisition rate will always revolve around the inventory of properties that meet the criteria for preservation that are on the market in any given year as well as available funding our department had a second multi-use path installed at the boys and girls Harbor property that's attracting a

112robust user uh base additional amenities include a pavilion with picnic tables um I think we're going to actually have a grand opening this spring so I'm looking forward to that we have the plaque in place which needs to be installed um our department created and um worked with a disc golf committee on a revised course layout adding six additional holes at The Bu buil Meadow preserve 12 holes in total we look forward to working with the Long Island uh disal Association out of hexer uh to come and maybe give a clinic and I'll work with Patrick on that um it's very gratifying to see properties the town purchase for recreational purposes being utilized by a grateful public there is more and more user base there which is fantastic um so that should make it obvious

113our department is not just acquisition we're also Land Management um our land managers remedy town properties and preserve violations encroach and encroachments via voluntary compliance whenever possible we had 38 violations discovered in 2024 25 of those are closed and Counting uh violations are anything like um people mowing outside of their border or extending fencing dumping on the town side uh our department hired a new environmental Tech to further our Land Management and stewardship goals for all municipally owned properties that are not cpf or Nature Preserve so that's 200 additional properties added to our repertoire we annually monitor 50 5800 Acres uh monitoring means we walk the boundary of each property there's 1,142 properties um we maintain over 50 miles of single track Trails it's just what it sounds like we mow um we walk all

114of those properties we cut out both Hazard trees and trees that have fallen across the path to keep them open and we maintain 17 grasslands on our preserves which generally means it's an annual mow Scott how many Department how many employees do you have well we do that with three employees small But Mighty um I included a chart because I thought it would be easier for the public to see you know sort of acquisitions by Hamlet and Mont we've acquired 21 Parcels 31.1 Acres uh amanza 10 Parcels 20.5 Acres East hampt Nine Parcels 16.4 Acres Springs 17 Parcels 3.39 Acres Wayne Scott one parcel 28 Acres but oh what a property it is uh and the village two Parcels 2.9 acres for a total of 60 Parcels look at that I did my math right

11520 per year 129.95 $ 15.87 million Investments okay um so on to 2025 goals for the land acquisition side we plan to continue to purchase uh uh pursue the preservation of environmental sensitive properties Parcels for recreation those Parcels that build on other Open Space Trail connections and Trail buffers uh on December 21st 202 for governor hokel signed a modified cpf law into effect and eastampton has taken the lead in coordinating with the other four eastn towns to hire a cpf Regional Council as well as reestablishing a panic Bay Region Committee in fact we just had a meeting this past Friday uh with assembling skone and Giglio and Senator Palumbo as well as four of the five eastan towns um and so we are working diligently to meet our 90-day mandate to both establish the council

116and this committee and our first meeting is actually April 25th we're going to continue our practice of recapturing former Farm Parcels to reinvigorate our farming Heritage we have a closing actually on the 24th of this month um 20 Springs fireplace Road it's about 20 acres uh once acquired we're actually going to be submitting a new RFP so we will be soliciting Farmers for that property so I'm looking forward to that um we uh balance land preservation activity with affordable housing initiatives and coordinate directly with our Housing and Community Development Department and we will continue our work with the planning department the town attorney's office ARB building department Town board and engineering firms towards the rehabilitation of several historic buildings Acquired and designated by the town board and on the Land Management side for goals we

117have two arborist on staff who are coordinating with the heing department and the town board to perform tree risk assessments as well as the general public for that purpose um as you heard earlier uh we're also working with the dec and town uh board with regard to fire Risk Solutions and issues uh we're continuing to explore uh and Implement bamboo management options uh monitoring the increase number of preserved Acres walking each property corner to corner participate on the wildlife management committee tick committee Nature Preserve committee and continue to maintain over 50 miles of single track trails and I really um I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to give a shout out to my staff because not only are they doing all of their day-to-day management monitoring creating management plan and meeting

118uh suspected encroachment violators on site but we have uh an ongoing project at buckskill met updating that disc golf course that I and it was actually on the cover page a picture of that um uh using uh SPD spb uh pitch fine Feld trees is part of the props we made a log wall and we're doing other things with trying to repurpose that wood that's uh down on that property uh continuing to do the tree RIS risk assessments doing drone photography for the board Etc and no matter what I throw at them or what the town board May throw at them mostly David they are ready willing and able and I just want to express my gratitude to them for their hard work and uh dedication and if you'll indulge me I want to give

119you a couple of fun facts on this Golf Course cuz I'm pretty proud of it uh it's one of three courses on the island and there's an app called udisk and um and you could track the analytics right on that application so there are 49 players on the udisk app that have put in 261 recreational hours played 311 rounds and taken 652 th000 steps why do I find that interesting because I played with 24 different players so far on that course and only six of that 24 actually were on that udis g which means there's actually at minimum 10 times that number that actually utilizing this park so that's 2,610 Recreation hours 3,110 rounds and a staggering 6,520 th000 steps and add to that the multi-use path that rings that there's got to be at

120least 10 times again that number 65 million steps wow you're going to break your out okay before you go on cost to use the property free free free all that to say thank you to John Rooney our director of recreation who initiated the disc golf course and a great big thank you for the town board for supporting creative uses on these uh pars that we've acquired with cpf for recreational purposes and I I really just on a personal level I'm just be I'm grateful to be a part of it so um that's what I have what let to take any questions maybe I see a department head meeting in the future SC just SC well Mr Lee and I have an appointment on Thursday to do that so all are welcome questions for Scott Scott

121just to advise the public like the cpf fund itself the tax the transfer tax the timing of that is going to expire is when exactly 2050 right we'll be collecting revenue for a while there's still some great properties to acquire so I'm glad to have that resource to be able to do it you know half percent of that going towards housing which is great I mean what a shot in the arm for the program for you and for the town so all good things and the other thing to speak to you have that great graph in there with you know what the cpf fund has brought in over the years and how it's gone up and down you know what have been the I mean I I kind of look through and I'm like thinking

122oh co hit you know a lot of people moved out here there a lot of real estate transition that drive it but you know obviously the income to that fund is indicatively tied to the economy out here as well and the number of real estate transactions so you know do you concerns with the economy right now for what the cpf fund is going to be this year based on where at or no just too early to tell no I don't really have a concern I mean it goes up up and down over the years I mean the low is probably 2009 um where we where there was an actual concern by the on board that we wouldn't be able to cover our debt service but it it never it never came to pass and so

123um preco you know a high year was probably 32 million and you know last year was uh last year 2023 audited year was a little over 47 million this year it's going to be over 50 million 20 excuse me 2024 was going to be over 50 million I don't suspect it's going to go down I mean even if it went down to 40 million haven't forbid it's an amazing amount of money it's a It's a Wonderful resource to continue the projects that we've got going on so no I'm not concerned thank you and Scott I look forward to bringing up some of the changes potential changes to the town board for chapter 182 also we know The Preserve committee has discussed that and sending a recommendation to the town board this has been a slow

124burn eight years I've been on the board started before that so I would like to try to get that to the board sometime maybe in the spring time for discussion on there I think that would also assist not just your staff your staff manag but also also uh for the town to be able to adjudicate any issues on any of the town's lands also that's it I think it's the biggest change and thank you for bringing that up um re really there's no teeth on the Land Management size for what we can enforce that's outside the code and so this is an opportunity for for not only our land stewards but also you know Marine Patrol or police to actually have something that is adopted by the town board after public hearing so that we

125can continue to enforce what would otherwise be common sense not storing your boats for long periods of time on a community resource or trailers or cars for that matter so we have all of those issues and that will that would be a great help if we can adopt that thank you Scott sure thanks Scott all right next up we have John Barley Dunn share with us his accomplishments and goals for agriculture good afternoon thanks for having me I haven't been down here yet either it's really nice um tough act to follow there Wilson but I'll do my best um aquaculture and habitat management okay our mission statement is also kind of long-winded I have to cut this one down but we exist for the purpose of enhancing commercially valuable molescan shellfish stocks and local Waters

126shellfish are available for Harvest by all properly licensed Town residents the department produces large quantities of she seed shellfish currently hard clams Eastern oysters and Bas scallops and disseminates them into local Waters including Lake Monto nap Harbor 3M Harbor aabon Harbor hog Creek and Northwest Creek we operate a shellfish Hatchery on Fort Pond Bay which is right down the road here uh a landbased ambient bayw water nursery on three mile Harbor and an off bottom field growout system in nap Harbor all beautiful places all spread throughout town and some species are also overwintered in various s sites throughout town our 24 accomplishments of one of the most things we're most proud of is we built the third oyster Reef in aabon Harbor so there's now three oyster reefs in aabon Harbor we couple with the

127South Fork sea Farmers on those projects a lot of volunteers are involved there's East Hampton High School students that are involved doing actual research on those reefs um we reinvigorated base scallop spat collection which I'll elaborate on that's my prop here uh we completed a a many shellfish dive surveys which is something that we haven't been able to do for the last several years due to Staffing and uh one one one aspect of if anybody remembers Southampton College when that used to be around they had a class that used actually used to come out and do our dive surveys for us so that's kind of one thing that went by the wayside when when the college went Belly Up um and although there is a there is a lab there now we do work with

128that lab now but not not really Hands-On stuff like surveys we set a record for the largest average size seed oysters yet at 62.6 MM which is about 2 and 1/2 in so what that translates to is basically our is to grow as many shellfish as possible get them up to as largest size as possible so that when we seed them onto the bottom they'll actually survive right so the largest shellfish Will Survive so getting a 2 and 1 12 in Oyster in one season is is a really really nice oyster size so the more more of those Will Survive to be harvested and there were about one and a half million of those um we managed to to grow out about 4 and a half million seed clams uh Bas scallops which was a

129very a disappointing year so we hope to overcome that this year we worked with ponic Bay keeper Coral cooperative and Rob vas Luth of save environmental in a novel eelgrass restoration method which you might have read about in the papers basically Rob goes out and and harvests eelgrass seed and we take those seed and we glue those to our overwintered hard clams which are about the size of of a nickel actually glue them to the clam seed those clams onto the bottom those clams burrow into the bottom and then give that eelgrass seed a place to start growing so instead of broadcast seeding eelgrass seeds which is one method and having them Drift Away in a in a storm event the clams actually get those seeds into the bottom so that was done uh in

130nap peig Harbor and Steve shot from Cornell will come back this summer and assess the efficacy of that method so hopefully we'll get to do a whole lot more of that and as usual we had about 100 or so oyster gardeners at our five sites in town and a shout out to Scott actually because if it weren't for land acquisition and working with Scott we wouldn't have access to some of these Gardens some of these Gardens are actually accessed through cpf properties like the one at hog Creek uh the one at the lake 159 East Lake uh so it's that's a nice partnership that we have when Scott um accumulates a property on the Harbor usually lets me know and if it works out we can establish a garden there it gives people access to

131the water and the oyster gardening program is great for those that don't know people in town can pay us a fee get all the gear they they need and they get 1,000 baby oysters each year to grow and then they can grow them and eat them as they wish so basically um I don't know how many oysters you all eat but having a thousand at your disposal is a a lot of oysters all and all the while they're filtering their food an adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day all the gear that they're using to grow their oysters provides habitat there's all kinds of other stuff living in and around those cages so it's a great program so barley when does the application for that open up uh it's open and I

132tried to I usually you know deadlines are deadlines are vague I set a deadline and I usually allow things to trickle in so if anybody's interested sure I'll take it I'll take an application now um for the next few weeks and applications are on our website so they can be accessed um 2025 goals so one of the things I'd like to do is establish a citizen Science Program affiliated with our oyster gardening program to collect base scallop spat and what that means is quick shellfish biology lesson when shellfish spawn they have a cycle they're larva or plantonic for about 2 weeks and then they set to the bottom so this funny looking kind of grubby thing is actually a scallop spat collector this gets hung in the water column figure June 1 which is right

133around the time that they're going to naturally spawn we hang these in the water column they soak for 6 weeks the base scallops spawn larv are all throughout the harbor and when they're ready to set which is about two weeks post spawn they're actually attracted to the green bag which mimics Eel Grass which is Choice number one but doesn't really exist anymore so they they're attracted to this bag the larby actually get in through this tiny mesh and attract to this blue material called netron so we will soak these for 6 weeks during that critical time round about June pull them out and there can be as many as 100 to a, Baby scallops in each one of these bags so one thing we'd like to do is incorporate this base scallop spat collection in

134all of our oyster Gardens so oyster gardeners can help collect the baby scallops they'll be able to grow them but it also help us to monitor the spatfall because believe it or not although we're all we're hearing about a dead scallops there are enough scallops getting through the winter spawning during the summer that there's a there's a great there's been a great spatfall there's been great juvenile Recruitment and then of course as we know they once they are about to be harvested in the fall they perish in about August September when the waters warm up their parasite proliferates so this will help us monitor the population we'll be able to engage all of our oyster gardeners and uh give them some scalps to grow another thing we'd like to do is also monitor recruitment of

135oysters in all harbors and that's that's a littleit more intuitive basically what we can do is take a mesh bag with oyster shell in it put that on the bottom around that critical time oysters are attracted to oysters so we can monitor uh oyster spatfall as well more oyster reefs is on the docket we're shooting for about one a year and that's basically based on the infrastructure we have available so we're going to have permits are all set we'll have another oyster Reef going in 3 Mile Harbor at the end of Harbor I'm drawing a BL Batman Batman road which is just North of uh Briggs Marina there's a little tiny bit of land there we're going to stick and oyster Reef so keep an eye out for that in June uh we'll continue to

136grow millions of hard clams and oysters for the town hopefully have a better base Gallop season um and continue to host tours for school groups community community organizations we have a great relationship with uh South Fork Natural History Museum they have a marine a marine summer camp they come around every year um Pete topping from aonic Baye keeper he's going to do some tours with us so we're always open for tours volunteer groups come through it's pretty interesting stuff and I think that's about it happy to field any questions thanks questions for comments every time you give a presentation I get so hungry just that time is that time and actually I would like to get an application for nice gun I would love to do that it' be great this year um no I

137I have no questions I want to thank you for what you do I think it's got so many benefits for this town um you know across Industries for our Bayman um you name it it's it's one of those things this town does that's very unique but so valuable so thank you yeah it's it is unique and it's one of those things that uh it be hard thing to start up but once you have it you definitely very very wise to hold on to it because it's a hard thing to recreate and there's two only two of us on the whole island us and iip that's it as far as Town wise townwide Town wise yeah municipally yeah barley you've heard this from me before and the board has also the unique one of the uniqueness

138to your department is the only Department in the town ofast for the town of eastampton that actually grows something then too A lot of times we're either building something permitting something reviewing something but what you and your staff actually do in nearly a 100y old building is actually grow Millions upon millions of mesk on there then too to try to better the environment but also as Tom just mentioned the Fisheries then too so I commend you and your staff for that our true scientists to that I also would like to continue with working on the consolidation efforts also as we continue to move forward it's nice to see that the town of East Hampton wants to make sure that we protect uh as in the goal six you know environmental uh Fisheries needs also then

139too I know some things in Southampton might not be as strong to that but the town of East Hampton definitely does support our aquaculture yeah and a shout out shout out to the crew too Jeremy Sam Luccia Ava they're they're feet on the ground right now and uh do they they're they're an amazing crew I went away to Vacation came back everything was smooth as silk so I felt like you know I mean but there's one thing I ra point is it's a fairly unique skill set you guys have and obviously Staffing must be challenging in that realm getting tougher in terms of creating that pipeline for future people in the town who want to get involved with this what degrees what are the requirements for young people who might want to go into this

140and continue this for the town um I mean biology is a great background but even then uh you know our Hatchery manager is he's got a background in geology and a lot of it is just the P really a lot of it is personality having the attention to detail being regimented basically what we do is the same thing over and over again just like any any other Farm we we plant the seed we we nurture it we do this we keep things clean doing the same thing over and over again we can teach anybody how to do this if they have the passion um can I take that one further biology marine biology is always helpful because then if if something does happen we need to figure out what happened and that's where the biology

141comes in and can I just Echo what uh caller said earlier about um the appreciation of your intern programs your student education programs I think that's where it cor that's what I was going yeah that's one of the best that's one of the most rewarding things like these high school students that are working on our oyster reefs are they're going to go to college for Marine Bio and they're getting hands on they a lot of them they helped with our permitting which nobody touches until well after college just knowing how to deal with the permitting process you know dealing with the maps and the Aerials and getting all that stuff done that's a huge advance and and having hands-on experience you know we'll take on anyone anyone you know we have volunteer interns paid interns

142and just having that on the resume for anybody who wants to pursue this is so much more valuable than anything they're they're going to get in the classroom and I just go with Kate and Thomas saying it's and you just mentioned it I think what's happening with you and the Youth of East Hampton right now it's fun as just going off a paddle board and throwing seed out there as fun for a fourth or fifth grader maybe a sixth grader but when you get into the high school years right Steph forsberg and her team at the high school right now it's doing all these science programs that the Val torians of the high school are moving on with and I think you just mentioned it if you seed your youth you nurture your youth you

143will then have a pipeline for the needs of of the town or aquaculture in general I think that's something that you've been able to do outside of growing M mesk you're actually growing interest within your science field then too and that's I think even more difficult to do uh you know with youth nowadays and too for that you should be commended and that's where the oyster guarding program comes in too just you know some people don't even eat them they just want to be out there growing them and they learn so much just by going through the process so when you're putting the oyster uh refin in in June who's going to be assisting you with that is do you have a group of volunteers are you we have some volunteers but we'll take more

144we still have to bag all the shell there's still a lot of preparation that needs to be done we have a pile of pile of oyster shell out back behind the Hatchery that all needs be bagged and then we're going to have to hump it from the Hatchery to the site just a Chain Gang of people is really what gets it done and then we're probably goingon to have a party there afterwards so all the more all the more reason well thanks barley for all that you do I'm particularly interested to hear how that eelgrass experiment goes because that's a really novel way of thinking about I hope it works great thank you beautiful okay so moving on we are now up to Scott your back yes to present the 2025 proposed cpf management and

145stewardship plan okay so 17th edition of this okay Town law 64e the community preservation fund Law requires that we create a management sewry plan for all acquired CP properties particularly if we intend to spend um stewardship dollars on them so while required I mean it's just a simply a good opportunity to revisit manager of stewardship is an EB and flow so anytime I can put my eyes on a plan for uh updating it is a good opportunity uh because all properties need some form of stewardship being posting up signs uh cleaning up a debris or uh reconciling encroachments we have acquired interest in rights and real property for 542 Parcels with six more in contract representing 2, 43724 Acres we accomplish the vast majority of our stewardship work in house uh we create a baseline

146document which basically documents the parcel of the time of acquisition we help create management plans for those properties with some proposed human use and we regularly monitor all cprf properties for encroachment stumping or other issues now both Baseline documents and the management plans are available on the town's website and we included um links uh page 67 for for those um sites on the website right in the plan and Beyond in-house management the proposed management stewardship plan discusses any known projects along with Associated expenses significant projects for 20125 may be historic restoration on the Carl Fisher house on Foxboro Road engineering is in process and the Edwards house which is on the Duck Creek Compound on squa road and Engineering is on process on that please not we have not going out for a request for

147proposal for these projects and therefore we don't have an estimate of cost um they may also be other projects that we are not yet aware of so once adopted we may need to revisit this plan over the course of the year for modification via public hearing that's a nice feature of the law that we can modify the stewardship budget being just over 4.67 million is the allowable 10% of available stewardship funding based upon our last auditable year which in this case was 2023 at 47 million and with regard to this plan the responsibility of our department was to create a document which will guide us in our efforts toward appropriate manager stewardship goals and objectives assist in prioritizing projects and control related expenditures and this just leads to transparency to the plan giving the general

148public an opportunity to participate and discuss surrounding uh proposed expenditures discussion around proposed expenditures the draft plan can be found on the town's website in the town clerk's office and again this is a year-over-year document I mean not a lot has changed other than updates to the numbers and obviously you know the different types of projects can change year over year but basically the big ones would be historic restoration or if the town board elects to put another multi-use path somewhere in town we can revisit that it's not currently in the plan but again it's adaptable is there any questions on the plan I wish we had actually a cover page to that can you just show the cover of the first page I don't know if that's it should be it's a beautiful property

149yeah I just just so that is actually feather Farm on uh Cedar Street and um it is lovely but it wasn't that lovely before I mean it was lovely you shed all along but if you get a chance to actually stop by there and walk that property with Isabelle and Nick um I think Kathy you probably did I know David and I walked it it's just you know phenomenal change from basically Raw land I mean there were used to be houses along Cedar Street the houses were removed before we acquired it and then um converted to an active farm and they're doing a great job over there very proud of them I'm sorry ask you a question you know it's the U the the copy that's on the front page is that the revised copy

150from the from the updated law because well because it used to be that agricultural land was first in the litany wasn't it it's it wasn't first in the the law um directly relates open space and agriculture in the same lump because that's how you know the federal government recognizes it so so the language with regard to um agricultural lands being the number one priority is still in the modified law it's just it's deep but it's there but this leads with now establishment of parks yes res so the original LED with establishment of parks too oh it did it was later in the in the document that that mentions that Farmland is is the number one priority for the program that's still there I mean my any question and we've had this conversation many times in

151Ian and I've talked about it too is you know how we are assigning funds for repairs to historical properties what is the process for that you know how are they selected you know it's it's I know it's in the works but it's just you know if you could just I get give us how it has operated and what you think we might need to change in that realm oh wow well behind your backs I usually call you guys The Twilight Zone you control the horizontal and the vertical so a lot of that comes from the top down from you to me um but in the past with regard to an historic restoration is that what you're referring to so the so the then Town board this is years past this isn't like the last few

152years uh under your Administration but the process was a little bit more rudimentary and the board would ask me to you know restore a historic site that we Acquired and we would you know go right out to hire say for example an engineer like Drew Bennett and a bob Hefner because he was our historian at the time that guided us and they would produce a report for the town board to review we would review sort of it was like a point by point this color paint this type of window this type of material and once the town Bo was comfortable with that with the you know with the parameters or or the list of projects that were going to go forward we would actually go out for a request for proposal from you know contractors

153um and once those um once those came back and we reviewed them and chose a winner the project would simply start at that time in the beginning because you know we were new at this or I certainly was new at this we didn't run through the planning department or planning board um Buzzy was involved the fire marshal at least um at least we did that part as right as we could and so you know times change and we involved and as we learn the process changes so I mean at this at from today forward we have five historic um more than five buildings but five need some some form of Rehabilitation and so from today forward I mean I'm guessing it's going to be a minimum of 10 years before we get all of those

154historic buildings back up to a usable status so we can hand over a key to a potential lensee and you know we had some discussions with regard to how that process works do we go through the full site plan process and that's a discussion I think the town you put me on the spot hereid sorry I was um that's a discussion the town board is going to have to have and it sort of give me direction because we want to do it as right as we can at all times and I I'm here to admit that we probably didn't do as right as we could have in the beginning so this is an opportunity to do better we always want to do better there's always a better way to do the same thing that's I

155I I use that anytime I interview a new staff member there's always a better way so please tell me if you see something I want to improve it so I also think that the the commitment to the town to historical preservation and specifically using within the bounds of the cpf laws and guidelines protecting some of the structures are some of the uh that provide some of the greatest amount of uh high quality Vistas in the town of East Hampton has been super important and what we've done so we've accumulated more historical structures probably in the last eight years in the last 20 years so what happens now it's by doing so before everything gets out priced like the Dodge property the Dodge property is the heart of Springs the amount of phone calls I've received

156on that for individuals I thought would never contact me on on this or anything else uh I loved it were were uh acutely aware if that was a Miss there would be a hedge row in front of it the same with the 66 Main Street and others then too but what we've done that's the one of the biggest differences that we've accumulated more properties and while we go out to engineering we are still Bound by the law as far as the amount of stewardship funds that we could have for restoration restoration then also has to go within what the Ada uh uh needs are desires of the of the property based on the town board but also uh to prevailing wage and out to open bid what I think we have to do as a

157town board is be very realistic to some of the operators or some of the interested parties that are partnering with the town on when in that queue that funding might be able to move forward and that conversation I think should be had and can be had potentially now when we look at some of those properties on on that list going back to the Edwards house at the tuck Creek there was a preservation of the of some of the structures but not the main Edwards house uh it was cladded but again over time it needs to be done more you have the Dodge property you have the Carl uh the a the Carl Fisher house on there 666 main Main Street on there then two in Wayne Scott you have uh Brooks Park these are all

158properties that are in some part some in some form of need of restoration either for safe health and safety for Ada needs uh or also almost to a full Recreation on that um I think setting out a priority list of where the town wants to focus on the efforts and the need of the Town board members and the department to say we should probably do this first over last also will be make reasonable expectations for what the the town board wants to see the staff work on but also for some of those lenses or interested parties out there personally myself I believe that since we're already within the restoration that we h efforts as far as engineering for the Carl fiser house and also the Edward house those should go at the top of that

159list right now because we we're already well ahead of the others right now than two and and that funding for those will probably be ca at what the stewardship plans would be to try to get those completed instead of kicked again then two the Dodge property is a very solid property we were very fortunate that the brothers really took care of that property so it's not going to take nearly as much but we should look onto that 66 uh Main Street in wkit right now the barn is in great shape the main house has been fully gutted but saved some of the structural elements of it that should be secure but also go out to the these steps of engineering or historical not structure report historical analysis of the structure itself that's these are all

160steps that we can go in that might take us years Brooks park to me right now is almost on the last one of those by because of the deterioration of the building where it is right now uh I want to make sure we save what we have historically but also just set realistic goals to our partners in the community on what to anticipate from the town that's just my personal belief on there there's not funding to go around for them all but to be able to put a time frame out there that funding can be used and I think will just help manage everyone's time efforts expectations that's something I I would like to have discussed or allow for you to go do your job better do not saying you're do it not good but

161even even more effectively so did you just say I should go to site plan review no I didn't say that what I what I what I said what I said is trying to focus on certain properties PRI priority properties as far as finances right now you know that's before even the other types of review you know so because the finances are baked within what we're discussing here right now and within the finances to get something complete right now I think we have to be very very very realistic sorry if I told I think you have to be very very realistic you know reasonable to our partners to when that those projects going to get complete because they put a lot of time and effort into it and that's something I want to be just you

162know uh uh have have that that greater understanding out there the process we'll get to but also part of that is making sure we have a priority list and to so you've identified the five properties that scottt referred to you the Dodge property 66 way Scott Main Street Duck Creek Farm the Edwards house the car Fisher Carl Fisher house in Brooks park that's correct yeah so I think there's there's two issues here and I've spoken about this in the past because it comes up with the the property management committee I think it's our priorities and I think everybody brings a very good points that we should decide what properties are the most in need you know what what is the most important work we could do now and allocate funding based on what cpf allows

163that's important I think what Scott tactically asks us for is a Clarity in the process and I think that we can decide which priorities which projects we want to proceed with but if we don't have permitting and approvals in place or whatever is required there we still can't move forward and so I look forward to continue to talk about that and providing some clarity so that we can stay up on top of this as Tom and Dave have have both mentioned yeah and I I I I appreciate that and I think everyone is saying the right thing uh here um I think a priority list is important um and I also think uh uh Clarity in the process is important and one of the things I think we need to look at is um is

164where we establish a community benefit um uh code a community resource a a community benefit uh some anytime uh a property is to be used for the entire Community then we should evaluate and update our code on the process for permitting yeah uh for that um so that uh so that we can have a defined a definition in the code which is really what we need uh we don't that we don't have now um and uh so I support that moving on that ASAP as as we're looking at the priority list I think that for me that's one of the my top priorities so that you have your process and everyone understands the process I agree with that and something I've talked about you know in terms of the prioritization even the process is some

165form of rubric because I I think you know one of the dilemmas here is that you know it can be arbitrary the decision-making process and I don't think that's fair to the community or or the public as a whole I I think the way we make decisions to prioritize and move projects forward should try to ideally follow this this you know it should be the same for every property because I I think there's just you know people have whims Etc but a rubric that says okay look this has benefit for the entire Community well that would be a high scoring kind of thing on my rubric versus you know other issues might scrore it down but I think having that in place to prioritize and move things forward engineering plans being another example you know

166I think is a great way to kind of say okay this is why we're prioritizing kind like the water technical advis exactly exactly and I'm going to put a plug in because Scott and I have had this conversation about these ada8 compliant you know paths that we we put in at buckskill put in at boys and girls Harbor uh they get a great deal of use you know folks doing some Rehabilitation folks that don't want to you know want to walk in nature but are worried about ticks kids learning to ride a bicycle strollers you name it and I believe that every Hamlet at least should have uh that opportunity so um I know you're going to be coming forward Ian soon with the Dodge property and in the management plan and I don't know

167if that's something that's been considered but um you know I'd like to see more C cpf Properties have this kind of very natural rambling path because it is widely used by our community it's great thank you thank Scott thank you very much I've always stated that this is one this document here actually has such great information and insight into what the town does is because it hits everything from agriculture Recreation open space and water quality all in one then too it's a very good read so thank you again for you it's the community preservation fun encyclopedia okay next up we have the New York State Department of State Coastal resiliency Grant we're going to get an update with from our Deputy supervisor Kate Rogers and from Sam Klein Our Town intergovernmental relations coordinators Sam thank

168you for uh being so patient oh yeah of course Sam so I'll just uh start a little bit and just bring everybody uh back up to speed on this we received one of the largest grants on Long Island which was a $600,000 award from the Department of State and in saying that I also want to just uh make note that this is a state Grant there's no federal funding involved and this grant is uh protected it's secure and that's why we're all confident of moving forward um we are now at that takes uh much longer than I anticipated to work with our we now have our contract Managers from the state all of the infrastructure uh for organizing this uh and and uh communicating uh is in place and uh we're we've been given a

169green light from the state to start moving forward uh on on uh uh utilizing this Grant and uh and getting this study completed um I ALS also uh want to set expectations up uh for the community that uh this grant uh this study is a very long-term engagement community-based engagement study that's why uh you know you look at $600,000 it's quite a lot it's to uh a third of the component a very important part of this through all of the tasks that were going to go through is using consultants for Community engagement so this is a very very robust uh engagement centered Grant process and Sam will explain what it's about um and uh I'm going to stop there for the moment yeah yeah no that was all super great hit on a bunch of

170points um yeah so this project is going to have a really broad scope of work around sustainable planning for a yearround resilient community and a focus area of Monto um so given this project is about resiliency planning and code changes um um as Kate was saying we understand that there's going to be a lot of complicated and lengthy conversations um so we're definitely wanting to start engagement early and have it often so that's kind of why we're here today of taking the opportunity of there being a work session in Monto to initially talk about the project need description our partners how we picture the framework and Direction being figured out um and kind of next steps to where we are now um as Kate was saying we were notified of the award in November of

1712023 and we want folks to know that this isn't something that's tied up in the federal funding freezes that have been on the national news and that this is secure and moving forward um it just takes time because we're going through the state processes of physical review and qualitative review and um collaboration with them and it's it's an intensive study that's going to even the study itself is going to take a number of years so I want to set expectations this is nothing that would indicate any change for tomorrow the idea of this study is a longterm look a far out look in planning for maybe postf for maybe 30 years out in the future of resiliency in mon talk so it's a long term it it the study itself will be a long-term study

172and it'll study long-term planning so I I wanted to highlight that as well for the community um yep and then so uh to dive into what the area that we're talking about for this project is um so it's the downtown Monto area with the central business and Resort districts and then it goes uh North to wrap around both sides of Fort Pond and include the Industrial Road area as well as The Monto fire department and The Monto Playhouse so it's pretty inclusive of a number of community Assets in the area and also areas that are vulnerable to climate risk um so the initiation of this project and the chosen study area partly comes from years of long range planning that the town has already undertaken um through plans like the castal assessment resiliency plan and

173the Hamlet studies um as well as our actual experiences with storms um and a recognition of this area being of critical importance to the overall Community um on the image of the right here it's from the coastal assessment resiliency plan and it highlights some of the vulnerabilities of the area um and I don't think we can highlight enough uh and to me it's obvious but to everyone the importance of econ continuing the economy uh of this area as well so this is a a a one of I'm one of our I'll say that because I represent other hamlets but you know an intrinsic uh economic uh basis for our town from job creation to the phenomenal amount of taxes that we sent County and we can talk about that another Forum of what we get

174back um and uh a a hard uh foundation for our tourist economy yeah so it's definitely about more than just the property owners in this area it's about a much broader economic impact of job opportunities um tourism recreational activity um and a source of goods and services for people that live here or visit here um and folded into the V an of this economic Center is its proximity to the beach which is a major draw to monok and a focal point of the area um and there's this interdependence between the economy and the environment and we want both to succeed for overall Community resilience um and that one picture is uh pre nourishment so I just want to highlight um I think it's good uh to remind folks what it looked like before the tremendous

175beachville that came from the federal government that David's been working on a 450,000 approximate cubic yards and uh if folks go down there now it it's it's a vibrant huge beautiful beach yeah and um uh just to go along with that um the the shorelines are so Dynamic they're ever changing and so F immediately restored recreational activity and and preserved that community resource that's also a natural buffer um and in doing that we also recognize that uh projects like this are longrange planning as well so just trying to commit to both of those short-term immediate relief that's so necessary but also that long-term thinking and solutions um see so the project description the project aims to protect and Revitalize the monok sustainable planning project study area to support a year round res Community planning will

176include community supported options for protection of economic infrastructure Key Community Assets in the tourism industry strategies for reducing Coastal risk and preserving or restoring ecological systems and specific recommendations for building and Zoning code updates to support the vision for the community um so the options put forward will need to be backed by data assessed for feasibility and developed with input from the community Through the scope of the project um we anticipate there being a system to collect and narrow down recommendations we rather have a few very detailed recommendations with a blueprint of next steps to implement them that they're pretty shovel ready to move forward um so we anticipate that being developed with the Consultants um sorry Sam would you just mind talking a little bit about the community assets because you know when I'm

177my mind's going to like critical infrastructure you know is that what that that's talking about so yeah yeah so critical infrastructure but also housing needs um transportation networks um Wastewater um community centers the monok precinct is there as well as Mont fire department um so we think that the Community Asset inventory is going to be something that the Consultants are facilitating but we'd like for that to take kind of the format of maybe a public Workshop um I think that we want to have a system of prioritizing what we're looking at and so hearing from people um you know what they want to see happen I think there's room for us to narrow in on on which ones which commun ask thank you yes Tom and while you know traditionally a lot of Studies have

178happened in strictly the downtown area specifically for what you just talked about uh what does our infrastructure look like including you know electric needs where are our substations the fire department how do we make sure the fire department and you know uh uh access routes Thrive uh as we we handle sea level rise um so that pushing that area up past Industrial Road um was on purpose so that we could expand the assets that we're looking at and I think the asset list will be part of what we'll uh formulate with the consultants in the community thank you um and so I know we're describing a project with a very broad scope um so that's partly due to the large umbrella that phrases like resiliency and sustainability um what they Encompass and so when we're

179talking about categories of resilience that enable a community to withstand disruptions and avoid or recover quickly from potential hardships um we're talking about economic infrastructure ecological and social resilience um so moving on to project Partners um and the grant so we already went over this a little bit but this is a project that's funded by the Department of State from an application that we made through the Consolidated funding opportunity um it was for $600,000 there is a match requirement and the town is meeting that with in kind um Town employee staff hours as well as um donated Professional Services and um dollar spent on another projects from our project Partners so they are also helping contribute to a significant match uh a significant portion of the match requirement on this uh The Nature Conservancy a

180Global Environmental organization they're one of our partners we were working with them in the application Phase of this project kind of coming off of the carp work um their New York adaptation director was one of our carp committee chairs and we weren't sure if we were going to end up getting award Ed this project so we wanted to make sure we were still moving the ball so they agreed to use some funding that they already had on a community consensus building project with Monto business owners so that way at least one part of our planning efforts would be able to move forward regardless of funding for this um and that's been completed um we're going to talk about that in a later SL yes um one of our other project Partners to mention is The

181Monto chamber of Commerce um preliminarily we anticipate their involvement to include leadership on a project advisory committee engagement with stakeholders assisting with the economic and cost benefit analysis and and overall assisting with the whole management and direction of the project another group is the Waterfront advisory committee they've done a lot of work on other related plans um going back to the town comprehensive plan the local Waterfront Rev calization plan and the coastal assessment resiliency plan so we also um are thinking that at certain Milestones of this project will be taking it to that group at their regularly scheduled meetings um for input they also this is a uh an lwrp local Waterfront advisory uh uh uh uh plan uh this is that that's how we uh obtain the grant as well so so this is

182through the our if we didn't have a local uh Waterfront advisory plan we wouldn't have been able to access any of this funding and we're one of the few towns that do so little plug for us we deserve it um so now I'll Circle back to the nature conserves match project um so it was completed by Consultants that were hired by The Nature Conservancy the project ran from around November of 2023 um through the springtime of 2024 uh the purpose of the project was to include members of the mount business Community some of whom have previously felt left out of resiliency planning and hold engagement opportunities to understand Co concerns around Coastal resilience find shared ideas and gather information uh the previous town planning director and I were some of the Town staff who served

183as regular participants on the TNC project um due to our involvement with the carp and also the upcoming project that we're talking about today um the consensus buildings projects were to goals were to understand and understanding starts with listening so that's definitely what we viewed our participation on this project as we wanted the Consultants to really take the lead and just listen and learn to what happens when you give stakeholders the microphone and we kind of take a step off stage um so the Consultants use regular small group meetings individual interviews and then a report back Workshop which uh councilman David lease and councilwoman Rogers both attended I know that meant a lot to the stakeholders who had been a part of this um group to then have the council people come to a meeting

184um some points of consensus included a shared understanding of monto's vulnerability to climate events a desire for improved communication and engagement shared Visions for a vibrant yearr round mon talk um some other consensus raised by participants in this project were concerns around demographic changes accelerating with a loss of local middle class families um concerns with lack of affordable workhouse um workhouse affordable housing um and the winter of 2024 seeming significantly slower for businesses than previous years um so that's all information that just came out of these conversations and then some recommendations for future work that the Consultants helped put together included combining smart growth into resiliency planning to have a holistic approach to the current challenges enhance partnership between the business community and town through communication and strategic engagement and performing a municipal economic analysis

185to explore the interdependencies of residents business owners um and tourism for Monto I'm just going to stop you there for one second because uh I know if any people have been looking at uh at uh the ecology and and and preservation of the environment um for a long time I'm not going to say how many decades um uh the word smart growth or the concept of smart growth was at one time defined as like a new urbanization and uh was really not uh uh from the environmental side really a scary term for people to hear once you heard that you envisioned you know four-story apartment buildings and and all of that that term has evolved and has a different meaning now and it is about how to plan out your community in a sustainable resilient

186way I wish they would have found another expression they recycled this older one but uh that's the term that that that that's what this term has evolved into meaning so I just want to point that out because when I used to hear that you know the hair on the back of my neck would stand um yeah so we can go on to the factors that we think are going to guide the Project's Direction and set up a framework to develop this um so one of the main factors is the work plan between the town of eastampton and the Department of State which is the grant agency the work plan we've been really collaborating on it outlines agreed upon task items that compose the scope of work as well as deliverables that the task items have

187to develop um so those are what we're agreeing on as reimbursable work under this grant award currently there's a draft document pending final review with the Department of State but we've preliminarily been given confirmation from our grant managers of the revisions and requests um that we've made another main document which will have similar content to the work plan for consistency is the request for proposals that the town is going to issue and the proposals we get back and score from consultants and then move forward with a Professional Services agreement to whoever is competitively hired um the project advisory committee and a possible subcommittee will be formed to guide the project um members are going to have to be vetted by the Department of State on who they are and what their role is for our

188strategy of figuring out who's going to be on the project advisory committee we were thinking that it might be a best approach to think about the types of stakeholders and input that we want to be on this in order to make it successful um so preliminarily we were thinking of having a local and Regional environmental organization uh multiple business owners that might have slightly different points of views so maybe someone who's a yearound business and also someone who's not yearound but would like to be um or if there's a difference between a multi-generational business owner versus a new one um as well as maybe involving some of the other relevant Town committees or town uh boards to see if they have input as well even certain expertise like a local Builder if we're talking about

189building code updates so I think we're going to be more looking at categories and then who could potentially fit into those categories and has time to so basically we want to talk to everyone yeah and if we can have a an ambassador that represents a bunch of people that's ideal on our end so we can kind of have someone that uh facilitates to a broader group the public education program and stakeholder engagement program those are the other key documents that we see really shaping a lot of this project so we want those to be formed into strategy documents that include goals and scope of the outreach program key Partners an analysis of audiences that we want to engage and then recommended engagement methods uh these will be followed throughout the project to share deliverables obtain

190evaluate and incorporate feedback I also wanted to mention that I would love for kind of in the background for this project to be creating some sort of standard operating procedures that the town can consider for future projects that have nothing to do with this one um but in order to put forward something like that we need a proof of Concepts so I hope that maybe we're able to develop something into a format that would make it transferable for other people to use at the town so where we are now at the project so we had the award notice November 2023 we then had a draft work plan between the town and the the town received the draft work plan from the grant agency in August of 2024 um then we spent a couple months just

191reviewing that having back and forth with them at this moment that work plan sits with the state so now it's going through channels on there and um as Kate was saying they have more recently kind of given us a informal green light that we can go ahead and start moving forward and issue an RFP that they would want to see that RFP and approve that RFP but that we can get started on this work now now um and we have that in writing yeah we do um typically the town would wait until we have an executed contract before moving forward with releasing an RFP but in this case the state has let us know that it might be 1 to five months before we receive that contract from them so they encouraged us to move

192forward because of that delay in the timeline um especially out here there certain audiences that we can only really engage with certain times a year so I think the sooner the better that we're able to do this and when Sam when you say the state um uh it we have uh dedicated project managers that we've been working with so um I just want to put some you know there's people that are dedicated to this grant that we're working with that Sam has been in communication with for a year now and developed the relationship there as well um yeah so I think that's uh pretty much all I have so yeah our next step is um working on a request for proposals and getting that approved by the state and then if the town wanted to

193issue that then we would hire Consultants to really run with the rest of the scope of work and it coming back with another presentation on the detail well well thank you I mean look mon Talk's my home it's my kids home and you know I I acknowledge that our infrastructure is not perfect um historical planning could have been more thoughtful but we we love it and you know I will say that you know residents can be resistant to change um so the more communication we have the better but you know in this case for residents as much anything else the clock is ticking you know we have F that's bought us some time but we have to get a move on on this and you know to residents of this town please be involved in

194the process don't come on the back end saying you don't like this you don't you know get involved as early as you can you know join groups maybe not your voice but you know if there's an interest group that you're part of Jo join it and have that representative get in contact because this this is critical to monto's future thank you so I've sat in the past with uh James Lima and I look for to continue with you Kate on forward as it Lees onto M talk and others but yeah let's uh see how moves forward thank you thanks Sam thanks Kate no I I mean I think given the the long lead times with the state it's incumbent about on us to develop the the RFP to get their sign off on so that

195we can get it out to the field okay by putting it out there in the field with an RFP I wouldn't mind putting out there till wider net also then too I think that would also assist us in other communities and could be East Coast to West Coast on yeah yeah that's a great idea all right thank you Sam all right great thank you okay John was the most patient of them all very John bringing the Thunder our superintendent of recreation here to discuss the Town Park thunder and lightning policy yeah hi hello everyone um so daveid and I wanted to propose um to have a thunder lightning policy for recreational facilities and uh it would be something our Department could distribute um along with uh um a an approved permit for let's say a

196picnic area or Ballfield um Filan Fort paon housee so that's what this is all about and um we had some help from the town attorney's office as well so do you guys have copies yes we do have a copy a lot of this what John's going to was mimicked off um section 11 section 11 exactly that mimic might be the wrong word but modeled off some of the language from section 11 the town does have actually uh a thunder lightning policies for our guarded beaches that the lifeguards uh do deal with but if I can read it through is that okay Madam supervisor so the thunder and lightning policy at active Town recreation facilities one this policy will apply to all town-owned active recreational facilities two thunder lightning necessitate that you uh that any use

197to the town active recreational facility be suspended the occurrence of thunder and or lightning is not subject to interpretation or discussion three if lightning is observed uh at the site of the Town active recreation facility 15 or fewer minutes prior to the schedule of a start of the park no use of the Town Park shall occur for a minimum of 30 minutes four when Thunder is heard and or lightning is seen the following procedures should be adhered to suspend use of the Town Recreational facility members of the public Andor staff shall not stand under or near tree uh near a tree and shall stay away from all poles antennas Towers Underground watering systems after Thunder and or lightning has left the area wait a minimum of 30 minutes um after the last boom is heard

198or strike is seen before resuming use of the Town recreational facilities if if at any time during the 30- minute delay additional Thunder and or lightning occurs the 30 minute delay clock starts over again and two so again it's uh one of those things I think we have to effectuate in a ridden policy that might be more commonly used but we want to make sure that there is no ambiguity to this policy and that's why we're looking to Institute this here so that's the discussion John any other comments we'll probably do sign if the if the board wants to move forward with this we'll do signage at the parks also and I would imagine it would yet included when you got a recreational permit right yeah like I said at the beginning um we have

199uh user groups families you know who book uh Pavilions picnic areas ball fields and we would distribute this along with their approved permit so they would also have that um we can make it available on at the recreation portion on the town's website so it'll be there as well so I'd just like to also include um any of the special events permits that we give out on uh outdoor properties um particularly town properties like clamp bakes on the beach etc etc I I I think this policy should extend to that as well yeah that would make sense yeah John you're on that committee as well so you wear more than one hat yes yeah I it's common sense I think it's just yeah yeah yeah I I agree and I think that the uh the

200clarity is important though because I I wouldn't know the exact time and and so I think having a policy we hand it people so everybody knows rules in real black and white way is helpful so thank you for your work on this right so this is just a policy so it just it needs to be adopted by Town board resolution correct so I I guess let me just go back to if you don't mind what the what Kate said so this specifically States for active Town recreational facilities um for this policy should we uh have a policy that mimics this that the title will also then be for special events on Town public proper on public properties also that uh that we can just mimic I could we recirculate that to the special event committee

201if they're comfortable with that then too we can adopt that into policy also then to through resolution is that I support that okay so we when when do you meet again Wednesday tomorrow tomorrow hey there you go government work so let's uh we'll get that ready to the committee tomorrow John Tom and Kate and that maybe we'll do both of these the upcoming um resolution March 20th sure so any other comments or just let let uh John myself now go from there it's a common sense for safety thank you John have a good day thanks John thanks John okay we're up to the liaison portion of the meeting um thank you very much Madam supervisor um last night the Aman citizens advisory committee met um there's a great deal of discussion around the um planning

202board um's decision to deny the bowla gas station and I'm against it did they deny it or they just well they they they had a vote that was came out as a memorandum from um the chair saying that how members voted on the application um you know the the residents in in the meeting itself were was you know happy with that decision um still great concern over cranber Hall Road um that they just don't feel this is moving forward and you know it's it's distressing to Residents uh you know whether this is something that we need to have the MTA come out and do a work session um there just seems to be very little accountability for how they're moving forward with this and so it's it's I I I honestly don't have the right

203answer to give them at this point I know where we're at and what we've been told but it does seem to be a lack of movement going on there um better news Human Services um Tuesday March 11th today we began our first painting and drawing class this is in conjunction with East Hampton Town Arts Council uh Teresa laa will be teaching the class today at 2 pm uh it will be in the activity room um additionally Human Services um really rather wonderful the knitting club has been busy at work at the senior center and they will be donating their products hat gloves scarves and blankets to The Retreat shelter um so that's good um in conjunction with the retreat we'll be presenting a free workshop at the senior n program on Friday March 28th um

204titled partnering partnering to provide safety and support seniors will learn about the wide range of free confidential service of the treat and how to recognize signs and dynamics of abusive relationships um we we also uh sorry go back guess we did have a lot of discussion around the um the fire risk in the and one thing that did come up there um was in the lanes um we talked about fire access as well and I think it's just you know one of those areas we might need to expand our Outreach to um residents you know in some of those Lanes there's been encroachments into the road and fire trucks really cannot get down there so it's getting that public education out there to those communities um the the other point um just bring up David

205was on further Lane at the junction of Indian Welles there's concerns about the safety there there is a hedge on that corner um that stops the visibility to the South um and also traffic goes fairly fast down that road there was uh you know consideration perhaps for a stop sign at that Junction on um uh Indian Welles itself South as you're going south just to kind of make some traffic safety improvements there but just something for consideration say if the they have them send a letter recommendation to the town board or a request on there great thank you and the Hedge the Hedge itself um believe that property is primed for redevelopment right now and I think there is a section of the code that a hedge can only be at a certain height that

206is correct on a corner property and that that's something we're going to have and as far as the lanes having the roads being encroached I mean that's code enforcement and Fire Marshall I would have that we could bring it up at the public next public safety meeting y um Monto wasw wastwater we will have a resolution on the next uh meeting to reform that committee um moving forward um some residents have outreached me it's going to be relatively small um the new committee um but anyone who is potentially interested feel free to reach out to um that's really it for my years update this week so um thank you very much Thomas sorry mam supervisor I'll move on I only have uh about three or four things here mostly montal Ecentric here than two uh

207the only other one is not the Water Quality Technical advisory committee is reviewing the RFA one for our calendar year 2025 the review is starting and I anticipate uh doing a presentation to the town board from the chair sometime in April just to let everyone know uh I had a conversation and meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers last week to talk about uh a lot of projects on Long Island but specifically asking about the MTO overpasses uh that were to be removed that is going to be pushed to post summer because we don't want to be removing them during the summer season so they'll let that bit out during the summer for a post-summer removal of those overpasses once they're engineered I'll get more information to you that was the first time I got

208a response from the Army Corps on that uh I want to continue the discussion about the mon talk bottomlands on there I know we went out to survey of those bottomlands there's a couple situations that have Arisen that I'll bring to the town board um about ownership rights of those bottom lands and use of those bottom lands uh lastly I know as we get ready for uh St Patrick's Day and specifically the mon talk um uh parade I want to thank the labor crew leader Paul Columbo and his crew and Steve O'Brien um for the upkeep of downtown M talk right now um all the planter boxes and all the trees is looking wonderful down here I want to make sure I want to thank that department for all their efforts and preparing for the

209masses that will descend upon mon talk um upcoming that's all thank beautiful Kate yes um uh we already talked about the ditch jom project that the full permit application has been submitted and also we just gave an update on the grant so I'll go to the litter action committee met and they have announced their event for no fling spring litter action awareness don't trash East Hampton and this event will take place is a beach clean up at Maidstone Park in Springs it's on March 22nd it'll take place from 10:00 a.m. to noon and if you have a a group uh any type of group a group of neighbors or an environmental group or uh we also have a great connection with the Sportsman Alliance now who like to come out and do cleanups as they're

210concerned about litter as well um please get in contact with my office uh uh 631 324 2620 and I'll guide you to how you can get your group signed up uh for to be participate in the cleanups and that I'll stop there okay on um March 13th this Thursday there's going to be an a advisory meeting at 5:00 P PM with the Department of Land Management which is uh I'm sorry I don't have the exact address I wish Scott was still here um it's the the building just best of town hall um on on Town Hall campus there uh they plan on discussing I think uh a structures like they've been doing for a number of years and uh that event is open to the public so anybody who would like to show up um

211come come there or feel free to reach me reach out to me for more clarity of of where it'll be um on March 18th there's the Springs CAC that's next Tuesday at 6 p.m. at ashwag Hall um there is not an agenda yet but I'll update you next week but just if you want to put it on your calendar that's 6 p.m. uh next Tuesday at ashwag Hall lastly Springs Park the test plot invasive species removal project will begin shortly we don't have an exact date yet but we have awarded the bid um to a contractor and I just want to remind the public or let the public know that the park will be closed during that um those times as per Scott Wilson and and and Department of Land Management uh for safety the

212work will be during the middle of the day so if you want to recreate either by yourself or with your pet I I recommend going sort of early or later in the day the project shouldn't take more than a few days um in the meantime please feel free to reach out to me I have heard a number of public comments on that project um some very helpful some less so but um very open as I've said previously what we're trying to do is a test here to get rid of the invasives um but we want to do it as Scott and I have talked about with as light of a hand as possible so somebody pointed out a few trees that might have been mismarked or or the markers had been removed um just want

213to reiterate to the public that it doesn't do anybody any good to remove markers because those are actually marking trees that should be saved and so I think there's been some effort to sort of um impede this project and I think that that actually will probably have counterproductive results though we're going to be careful to double check everything and make sure that every tree that's not invasive that we can save we do uh that's all I have uh Ian when once you know the schedule when the contractor fir finalizes his schedule let's get it to Patrick and we'll put out alerts and we'll put it on social media and Scott Scott Wilson is also working with Patrick and going to do what he can so obviously last Thursday folks know we held the public hearing

214where we considered amending the gross floor area formula to 7% of lot size plus 1500 square fet we received robust public comment we closed the record at the time of the hearing so right now the after hearing discussion has been tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday March 18th uh when we're back in town hall and that's all I have for my liaison report so now let's move on to resolutions I guess David you're up first I'm happy to offer resolution 2025 406 I will have to make one small amendment to it this is the Appo of maintenance mechanic 3 uh Michael fresa uh to the buildings and grounds full-time position maintenance mechanic three excuse me in Street lighting our be rate at $296 cents uh annual salary $60,000 $645 62 the effective date has to be

215amended to 32425 second is amended all in favor I 407 is approved supplemental grant funding for the long housee Reserve IA system they were uh Lous was granted uh uh grant funding of $1,240 for the cpf water quality round two of 2024 this is additional cost of re locate a a poble water well serving the main house and the amount to sorry 13,34 second all in favor 408 is adopt local law amending chapter 240 vehicles on traffic of the East hton Town code section 27.2 paid parking this public hearing was held last Thursday second all in favor I I have resolution 409 which is to import appoint part-time natural resources employee Aaron Z zilberman and and this resolved that Aaron is appointed to parttime position of environmental AIDS at the hourly rate of $255 cents

216um and this will be effective March 25th 2025 second all in favor I resolution 410 is to authorize the energy manager agreement with New York Power Authority uh this is where naifa offers an webbased energy management platform which can provide uh virtual audit to analyze data relating to energy cost which when completed is expected to result in Energy Efficiency recommendations resulting in Energy savings opportunities um the town board believes it is in the best interest of the town to renew this agreement for another two years with New York Power Authority um and resolve that the supervisor is authorized to renew the agreement at a cost not to exceed $1,795 and20 second all in favor resolution 411 is to retain consultants for planning applications best practices excuse me uh study whereas the town of East Hampton

217planning department intends to update its procedures for res for reviewing site plan applications with the goal of making the process more efficient consistent and accessible for all stakeholders in the planning process whereas akrf has expertise in the application review process through its Service as a municipal planner for community communities throughout New York State and submitted a proposal to assist the planning department where all recommendations would be done in uh strict alignment with the town's existing code and overall development goals and objectives be it resolved that town board hereby retains akrf to conduct the study um accordance with their proposal dated February 10th not to exceed $155,000 second all in favor I resolution 412 is to retain akrf MP group LK McAn and rer group for Professional Services and this is to provide uh planning Services

218Technical and Engineering analysis related to review of the waycott commercials Center subdivision and draft Eis for the project and uh this is RFK has provided a proposal to the town uh with a not to exceed budget of $130,000 LK McLean has provided an updated proposal to the town uh for services through uh December 31st 2025 in connection with the project of $4,150 and whereas Vincent gelio ver Marina group has provided an updated proposal not to exceed $12,500 resolve that all invoices relating to Services analysis from these three uh from RFK FMP LK mlan and rer uh for the project shall be paid from uh particular budget line Second all in favor I resolution 413 is a except of a uh Scenic and conservation easement at 22 Shore Road um and from 22 Shore Road LLC

219this public hearing was held on March 6th and the town hereby accepts the easement listed below which is uh The Grand Tour is 22 Shore Road LLC it's a conservation and uh Scenic easement and the location is 20202 to Shore Road amaganset the reviewing agency is the zoning board of appeals second all in favor resolution 44 is approval of various special events for March 2025 and this is to approve uh the special events as agreed upon by the reviewing committee for the amaganset Chamber of Commerce for the amog ganit parade from the municipal lot to Indian Wells highway on Saturday March 22nd noon to 1210 p.m. uh the next uh event is the friends of Aaron Monto St Patrick's Day Parade edgm road to Monto Highway ending at Kirk Park Sunday March 30th noon to

2203M rain or shine next is the clam clamshell Foundation clamshell Foundation 42nd annual fireworks display three mile Harbor East Hampton this will take place on Saturday July 12th 9:30 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. the rain date is the next day next lastly the clamshell Foundation 32nd annual clamshell uh sand castle contest at Atlantic Beach on Saturday August 9th 2025 9:00 a.m. to 300 p.m. the setup is the day before uh a setup is the same day at 8: a.m. the take take down is the same day at 4M they have a rain date which is Sunday uh August 10th second all in favor I um resolution 415 is to release Security in urban renewal parcel 75 in mn-2 and this is uh that the security a report has been received from the town Consulting engineer about

221road work done uh the town board uh request is made by the town board returned security posted for said road work be it resolved that the town board is hereby release the uh um the security it's the applicant was Brett Harris it's Caro Bondo and Hammer and this is uh for a parcel on 21 South Eden Street in Monto and it's in the amount of $112,000 second all in favor I uh also uh uh resolution uh 416 is to accept accept Scenic easement or renewal parcel 65 and e-7 and this is a a hearing was held on March 6th for this uh to accept this easement resolve that the town hereby accepts the easement listed below the gr tour is Joe Ryan and James C Kushner and it's located at uh three Hedges Avenue East

222Hampton second all in favor I I resolution 417 this is the authorized payment of Camp hero 2024 water bill this is for an invoice in the amount of $752 186 for the energy consumption at the Madison Hill Drive Pump Station from December 28th uh to December 30th to uh December actually there's typo here uh it's December 20th 8 2024 to December 30th 2024 I believe um no is it might be an it's 2024 water bill so it's going the end of the you know okay so so it'll be as as written the invoices in the amount of $752 186 cents and that's for a period from December 28th 2023 to December 30th 2024 second in favor I resolution 2025 418 is to promote Frank sokoloski to detective Sergeant in the East Hampton Town Police Department

223at the annual salary of $178,800 ski uh the her the training fee for $195 for a total amount not to exceed $1,170 second all paper and lastly I have resolution 420 which is a budg budget modification for the planning department moving uh $176,600 from outside professional to outside professional way Scott commercial center in the same amount second all in favor okay okay so that wraps up everything we've got on our uh desk for today and do I have a motion to go into exec session yes I'd like to make a motion to go into exec session for personnel advice of counsel and litigation second contracts and leases also sorry uh cpf and leases also really cpf yes adding cpf and leases to my motion second all in favor I thank you everybody thank you Jason

224at LTV thank you guys