East Hampton Town Board Work Session 03/15/22

001one town board we are live good morning everyone and welcome to the march 15th work session of the east hampton town board carol would you please read the roll call councilwoman burke gonzalez president councilman lee president councilwoman overby here councilwoman rogers president supervisor van scoyak president please join me in saying the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance [Applause] to the republic this morning we have a very full agenda we'll start with a public portion where any member the public may address the board on any topic we ask that you mute any devices you may be listening to the meeting on in the background so that we don't get feedback and that you please keep your comments to three minutes or less we also have um let's see i think seven agenda topic items we'll be

002doing bids with jeannie croz our purchasing agent we'll be discussing a revised outdoor dining legislation presentation of the state environmental quality review act process and purpose the personal wireless communications proposed tier review procedure uh additional uh amendment to chapter 167 littering amendments to town code for chapter 109 peddling in addition to the town code chapter 102 building construction surveys taking of clearing followed by these and reports and resolutions but at this time i would like to announce that after just over two years i will be rescinding the emergency declaration due to covet as well as the executive orders that were filed to allow for relaxation of our zoning code specifically with regard to outdoor dining we are going to be discussing permanent changes to the town code to allow for more outdoor dining very similar

003to what we've allowed during covet friday the 13th march 2020 was a day that i think we'll all remember and i'm really excited that things are looking up now finally after two very long years this has been a trying time for all of us i know that many have struggled uh with income with uh schooling you name it it's changed our life in every single way um and we've gotten through to this point because people cooperated with each other we worked together as a community we came together to meet the needs of those uh who were most at risk and who were most needy and uh i think we can all feel good about what we've done together and i think it's a tribute to uh the willingness of people to come together in time

004and need and it's something we should not forget and there will be plenty of other opportunities for us to work together and take care of each other so at this point i'm really exciting excited to be announcing ritz and we're sending the uh those orders um if we can now go to the phone line chase did you have any callers on the line uh mr supervisor we currently have no callers on the line even though i'm calling with my cell phone so you know uh lines are up and operational but we have no callers okay um very good uh can we go to jeannie carosa genie are you in the waiting room she's in the waiting room and coming in right now and genie can you hear us yes i can right on good morning

005everybody quite a few things this morning um first starting with the acceptance of the bid for star island dock rehabilitation keith grimes is the apparent low bidder for that one and the one million five hundred seventy two thousand seven hundred forty eight dollars and ten cents um several extensions first is the hampton hopper for the commuter extension service that will be starting april 1st extension of supply and delivery of jet a with additive and 100 low lead fuel for the airport that's with ascent aviation group and that extension will be for six months next is the supply and delivery of hino truck parts with gabrielli supply and delivery of international truck parts with scioscia truck sales then we are also extending the um household hazardous waste collection days with radiac environmental services those are the

006stop days of sanitation and lastly we have a few notices coming up westlake comfort station the new foundation for that westlake comfort station the new ia sanitary system and we'll also be doing an rfp for delinquent fines and penalties collection and that's it thank you genie any questions for genie thanks so much have a great day you too thank you [Music] okay our next agenda item is revised outdoor dining legislation as i mentioned uh we we first began two years ago looking at ways to help local businesses and the general public to be able to dine safely and keep those businesses operational and we've relaxed some of the the current zoning restrictions to allow for that and as i just announced we're going to be rescinding that that order today but during this time we've

007had multiple discussions with our business committee sylvia's been liaison to that committee and there's been a great deal of discussion and work on crafting legislation that will allow for up to 100 of a restaurant's capacity to be placed outdoors um sylvia would you like to take it from here i'll just introduce this because we've seen this that the last work session as we went through it and um you know we are allowing for a hundred percent depending on your zone i'm so sorry sylvia i just got a message are we on air jason right now jason we are streaming out onto youtube uh give me a second um my my apologies we went off air uh off the off the broadcast but our youtube live stream has been up i apologize again does that mean

008we're not on channel 22. we are we are currently on challenge 22. i just changed uh i changed our settings um my apologies we are currently on right now thank you okay and is rick whalen in the waiting room do you know no i sent him an email with the um zoom link but um anyone in the waiting room yet okay thank you all right thank you very much yes no no worries so um you know we've as i said we've seen this before this is an update that we uh talked about last week um and we're just trying to get it right so we can uh make sure that it's you know ready for uh prime time when we uh everyone gets together in april and and may to start uh hopefully outdoor dining

009maybe maybe not april um so anyway uh i don't know john if you want to talk about it jeremy if you want to you know or does the town board have any questions i think that the difference that we saw here is that it's now um as rick whalen was was putting this together is in um the actual outdoor dining legislation and in the in that section of the code so there's not two competing sections of the code which looked like what was going to happen as we had written it originally so now it's integrated within the code and i just i need jeremy to talk about it and john to also say you know um that this is going to work and that we can uh you know notice it for a public hearing

010hopefully on thursday and if if there are any questions that the town board has you know please let us know yeah i think one of the issues that we touched on the last work session that that i think's maybe been addressed in this most recent draft was the issue of uh pre-existing non-conforming and that language uh reflects the fact that they would not be eligible for the issuance of a transfer of outdoor dining through an administrative permit i don't know i don't recall if there were any other uh major issues that we really uh changed or addressed so we we did come down on a time frame which is uh this pilot program will be good for three years um and at that time then we can you know and and up and through that

011whole time we can look and see how this program is working and if we need to adjust it in any way um uh you know we uh jeremy you may want to talk about what restaurants are already allowed to have um by right and so we're not taking anything away we're just adding two correct so uh good morning everyone um pleasure to see you all and work on this so basically there i think as many of you know there was an existing section of code that allowed for up to 30 of a restaurant's existing seating to be moved outdoors and this was not an additional seating option this was a swap out so you literally moved up to 30 from inside to outside and that was subject to review by fire marshal in particular and

012there were certain triggers in there that could get you into a site plan review process if some of those triggers got tripped so what we have now is that section of code continues unaltered uh so it is exactly as it was before there is no change to that but it was observed by rick rather you know wisely i think that we didn't want to have that live in one section of the code and then have a different section of the code that had a very similar name and set of objectives attached to it for outdoor dining which is what you all discussed last time so while we have to do the the sort of formal merging of these two rick has laid it out in a way that they're sequential in the code that now

013starts with that existing 30 percent opportunity for restaurants that would like to go down that road if folks want to go beyond that and aim at something up to a hundred percent this is the proposed legislation that you all discussed last week these two pieces have now exactly as councilwoman overly said have been placed next to each other in the code so that there's no confusion sort of what applies what circumstance applies to one and what circumstance applies to the other are there any additional comments or questions about about the legislation yeah do you want to weigh in john and then tell us what we can do on thursday yeah we could we could we could notice this for for um for hearing um i just wanted to also note that there was discussion about

014the the tent regulations so basically this has been adjusted to coordinate with the existing regulations of the code it doesn't allow for any additional rights with regard to tents and i guess you know we can look at that as this moves forward but um didn't want to create a situation where we had people who were putting up tents for the season um you know with under under this administrative type of a process they need to get their tent permit from the fire marshal it's good for a two-week period go up they can take it down they can put it back up when they need it again um or they can come in for site plan for something more more substantial if that's what they want to do but um this legislation doesn't change that um

015that was one of the topics we were also discussing right otherwise i think it's good to go for public uh hearing and comment great john board members anything anything else before we move on i'm comfortable the way it's drafted and would like to hear from the public on it right and i think the three years it's on there it gives us enough of a test segment to see if we want to make any changes there and it also gives also allows for merchants and property owners to invest and know that they can amortize it over a couple years if they need to buy chairs or such so i think that gives them some comfort level there too thank you sylvia and everyone for working on it uh well and a big thank you not only

016to the business committee because they really hashed this out um for many months they've been hashing it out and the discussions have been you know everywhere from heated to to loving so um anyway and thank john and thank rick whalen a lot for getting this done jeremy thank you for all your advice as well so um we'll move forward on thursday thanks great thank you and uh while we have you on the line here jeremy our next topic is the presentation of secret process uh and purpose and um as many know the state environmental equality review act which i think became law in 1976 maybe requires that municipalities as well as individuals or businesses that are seeking to do take certain actions that those actions have to be reviewed and you have to take a

017hard look at what the potential environmental impacts might be from uh from doing that taking that action so this is a bit of a refresher course for the general public i think and for for town board members probably as well although we have spent a great deal of time uh working on secret uh for many of the projects that we've uh we've proposed dealing with everything from cell towers to um airport so um i think this will be helpful for the general public to better understand uh the constraints uh that that we and the public have to are under uh because of this legislation and our requirements and obligations and responsibilities so with that i'll turn it over to you jeremy to walk us through what secret is and why we do it well thank

018you and you know a pleasure to share this because this is the world that uh the the crew that i work with here in the planning department lives in and we rely on the attorney's office would rely on the various boards around town to uh including yourselves to help us sort of execute here but i'll get into the the details of that um you know in the slide presentation so if it's possible to uh put up the slides please i'll go ahead and walk us through this give me a second and just while while we're getting that sort of apologies there's a bit of a technical issue here so i'm having an issue on my end is somebody uh able to put those up yeah let me see if i can find it real quick

019yeah so those okay all right i'd offered to sing but that would drive down viewership all right my public comment today so we may not have any viewers might be just too nice of a day yeah and uh spring is coming right uh just next week is it is it monday first day of spring i think that's right sunday or monday i think okay all right here we go i think i found a workaround here let's see if this is gonna let me yeah there's a uh problem with the content on my end i i don't understand why so if one of you uh i believe you all have it if do you let eric hansen i think he might have the plans ready yeah that would be great i will uh jeremy can share

020a screen or eric can do it whatever works i have it open okay uh kate if you've got it and want to just throw it up that would be fantastic here we go all right thank you all i appreciate that and i apologize for the delay all right we may be going back into in-person meetings as early as thursday uh after tomorrow and while that won't uh negate the possibility of technical problems it may reduce the frequency that we've experienced in the last two years so that's another bright spot that we can look forward to there you go it won't make me any brighter but it might help with the technology all right so uh just right off the bat i i want to sort of clarify why why we've labeled as as we have

021you know secret as opposed to seek ra and it's just a stumbling block sort of you know planning nerd kind of stuff the state environmental quality review act actually refers to the piece of legislation so you'll hear people just use that term generically but i've been asked this question a couple of times recently why do we sometimes see it uh with the shorter designation of the seqr state environmental quality review as opposed to the act and the act just refers to the legislation and i it's just easier to pronounce there's a vowel in there so people just generically refer to it as secret the takeaway for folks at home is it's all the same thing feel free to use either one and there there is no distinction just in sort of uh you know lay

022conversation secret as i would ask you know people to understand it is really intended to incorporate environmental factors into an agency's decision-making process as early as possible and i'll talk a little bit in a moment about what we mean by environmental factors but the point here is really we're trying to identify what concerns may be associated with a specific proposal for development or legislation or funding you know any type of action uh that may come out of a town board or a municipal agency uh or a private landowner's uh desires here really needs to be part of a process that is well articulated and has measurable steps along the way so that everybody can follow along and understand what we're up to and why and what the right moments are where they can make sure

023to show up and have their voices or concerns or ideas shared as part of that the intent here is to seek a balance between the impacts that any project may have and our shared desire to protect the physical environment the natural world around us and make sure that we're also balancing simultaneously any need for access or enhancement or preservation to community resources and i'll describe in a moment a little bit better what examples of those types of things are impacts that we're being asked to think about here as we use this tool those can be things that happen during a construction phase of a project so if we just think of a very simple you know i'm going to build a a large facility for you know commercial retail here making up an example there

024could be impacts that need to be understood and assessed for while the construction is happening or while a project is being implemented that's one set of impacts that need to be assessed here and understood and reviewed through secret but there's also legacy impacts or things that will always you know be true for a property or may be true for a particular project or property that's going through secret those are you know things like traffic for example so if in the first example you think of construction impacts um you know there could be noise and air pollution uh and uh you know impacts to groundwater impacts to the character of a neighborhood that are limited in scope to the actual construction phase of this and those would need to be understood under secret but also you

025know once the project actually gets built there are additional impacts that uh you know made just even after those initial impacts go away the community may be asked to uh to understand what those are through the secret process as well next slide please so i want to be very clear right up front here that even though this piece of very important legislation is uh called the state environmental quality review act environment here has a very broad meaning and yes it means exactly what i think many people would assume it means which is you know trees flora fauna air quality ground water surface water those are all things that need a hard look and that's a term that'll come up again but those are things that need a hard look through this legislation and make sure

026that we are protecting them or offsetting any impacts to them in the best way possible but in addition there's a broader use of the term environment here which actually includes many other things and so it's really a generic use of the term environment to mean all of the things around you and so yes you know all of the the natural resources that we just articulated but in addition to that there are impacts uh and uh that we need to understand or potential impacts that we need to understand that uh could be part of the human landscape the physical landscape they could be agricultural they could be social economic historical or even aesthetic and so for example if we have an area that has a historic district then you know that's the kind of thing that

027would be recognized through the secret process and we would want to make sure that any project if it you know triggers a more formal review here that we were actually taking into account what the impacts to any of the items on this list might be so we might have a community park that could be you know greatly impacted by a proposal for the property next door to it and we would want to understand you know how is the community impacted how are the people in this neighborhood or this town impacted if we take a uh if we allow or move forward with a proposal on one property what's the the almost inevitable or even potential impact that might happen to a community asset or resource so uh i'll ask you all to you know jump

028in with any questions if you have them as we go um i'll pause there for a moment and see if you want to steer this one way or the other before we go to the next slide any questions at this point for jeremy all right so uh next slide please so you know the next two slides are what is secret and what is secret not right so secret is it's actually a process so it is not a means unto itself you know there there is no sort of golden prize at the end of secret that results in a permit it's actually if you think of it as sort of a layer that gets put on top of uh the review that might be done by something like a planning court and i realize that that

029may be a confusing way to describe it but it's really a tool that different agencies so town boards planning board zoning boards are required under state law to use to make sure that their decision-making process discharges their responsibility fully to understand what impacts could be and then describe them and then make sure that they're any appropriate mitigation or offsets are taken into account so secret is not a means unto itself it is really a if you think of it almost as a map or a guide that agencies have to use are required to use new york state this is a piece of new york state legislation it doesn't apply in other states there are different similar uh rules that apply over there but within new york when we have these projects come forward we're required

030to use this tool or at least to make sure that we have gone through the steps of seeing whether a deeper look using this tool is required and i'll speak more to that in a moment the intent of this process is to identify possible impacts and then describe appropriate mitigation for potential impacts another huge benefit of this piece of legislation is that it does what's called coordinating review and so you know folks who are fans of channel 22 will will know that you know oftentimes you'll have a particular application let's use an example of development on a given piece of property that actually requires more than one agency within the town for example to take a look at so you might have an application that starts with the planning board but then also has a

031zoning board component to it and in some cases may even find itself eventually in front of the architectural review board or by contrast you might have a application that is seeking to do something along our shoreline in east hampton town that finds itself before the zoning board because that's where they need relief but actually new york state obviously has a bunch of rules and regulations that would similarly apply to that application whether those are stricter standards or you know less stringent standards there is a need to coordinate the review between these agencies so this map or this process that secret lays out for us really makes sure that we have accurately and adequately describe who should have a say here based on what the rules of the road are what the various layers of governmental

032review uh are here and so oftentimes we will find that we will have a local board that is in charge of an application and we'll speak more about that in a second they're what's known as the lead agency that then needs either a formal look or at least a sign off to say it's okay on our end from another agency it could be department of state it could be department of transportation uh you know it could be department of environmental conservation is the one that we probably see most often but there is literally a requirement to coordinate review here and i think this benefits all of us because what we don't want to see happen is we get part way or all the way through a review process and then we find out that there

033was an agency or an organization that should have been at the table or should have been allowed to offer guidance with the idea that there were either rules we need to follow or there were recommendations that that particular set of experts could have offered to the process that we are now missing out on because we did not coordinate review so a requirement of this piece of legislation is to uh coordinate review always so the the goal of all of this is to make sure that we get a comprehensive assessment of a project's impact and as i said before this particular set of rules secret happens to apply to you know all of us in new york state that are doing these projects i'll talk a little bit more about that in a second but i

034want to spell out for us that you know we have a national set of standards that are a similar uh environmental review process uh that come into play when when we're dealing with an organization for example like the army corps of engineers so we actually have multiple review processes that have to be coordinated with each other but in our case you know the fact that something went through environmental review for a federally funded project for example doesn't necessarily mean that we don't also need to do a secret process and so we see this right now in east hampton town with the inlet dredging project that the army corps of engineers has come forward with because this project is not just the routine maintenance stretching that has happened over time but because this is a bigger

035uh you know longer term fix that's needed here the uh federal review of the project that was required for this does not actually substitute for the town's responsibility to make sure that we are also fulfilling our responsibility under the state requirements here so sometimes that plays out a little differently but i just wanted folks to be aware that there are parallel processes and we're always having to calibrate and assess which is it in either or either in a given circumstance or is it of both and more often than not we find that it's a boat depending on what the specific actions are that are being proposed next slide please so what secret is not it's not a permit i think a lot of times when people enter into these conversations they assume that what happens

036here is somebody goes through secret and that secre then is the permission that is needed for a property owner uh or an agency to do a project and in fact it's not it's as i described a moment ago it's really the process that we use to navigate the conversation to figure out what the impacts are and whether something uh whether the agency that is reviewing it has all of the necessary information to actually make a decision and so using a specific example here if there is a project that is before the east hampton town planning board what we will see is that secret is the map that gets them uh you know to understand who should be involved in this review what are the questions that should be asked who's actually going to provide the

037answers to those questions and then to take all of that information to put it together into a series of documents that we'll talk about in a moment so that in this example the planning board can then understand whether or not its responsibility to review a project and uphold our local zoning code is you know adequate within the current circumstance so what i mean by that is secret is a process that gets discharged so that it can inform the decision that is actually uh going to be required of in this example the planning department so they can decide whether or not they're going to approve or not approve secret is not the approval or the denial it is the process that informs the agency's review of a project so uh important to note here secret is

038not something that has its own built-in enforcement mechanism there's not the secret police out there the the way that this actually gets him uh and enforced over time is if somebody has an objection to either the uh the procedure that was employed in doing secret or with believes that there was an error in the determination that was rendered here then the default position the way to object is for somebody to appeal to the courts so you know there there is not an appeal mechanism locally or at a regional scale you literally go to new york state supreme court which the nomenclature which often trips up people uh because the supreme court of course in new york state is where you start uh with these things it's not you know a higher division such as the

039appellate division so very important that people understand when we're talking about secret the intent here is not to understand or to articulate every single possible or conceivable impact that may be attached to a project there's a standard of reasonableness here that says what can we reasonably expect would be some uh impacts that might be associated with a project if we clear a particular piece of land if we build a certain number of units if we add in a certain amount of traffic if we do these things what could we reasonably expect would be the impacts from that we so there the point here is that there is uh while an expansive a nonetheless limited universe of uh questions that can be answered uh and we'll get to when the appropriate moment to raise those questions

040is in a moment so uh as i said before secret is not a substitute for other review that's the example of federal review that i was uh mentioning before so next slide so who who uses this process are in our local example the town board so you all as you know well with the airport project in particular you know you are what is referred to as the lead agency and i'll give a more detailed description of that in a moment but essentially you're in the lead for that review you're the ones that have said we we think we have the greatest amount of information and the greatest uh role to play in moving this project forward so we're going to assign ourselves lead agency status you send out a letter coordinating as i mentioned before

041with other agencies you let them know you know we're going to take on this project we think given the questions that are being asked that we're the right ones to answer those questions uh you know please let us know if you don't agree with that and then there's a process whereby those can get reconciled so you know in local terms the town board often uses uh secret for many of the actions that you all undertake all the way right over to uh you know doing your budget so you know we're actually in our office now working with the bonding resolutions that you all have put forward to make sure that secret has had a chance to be the filter that those get put through to ensure that is there environmental review that's needed right so

042a mistake that i think many people make when they talk about secrets they assume that if you're quote doing secret which is just kind of a lay way that people describe this they assume that that means there's a full robust environmental review that goes along with whatever you know action somebody is putting forward here but by contrast what it what it actually means is that every time you're taking an action you're asking yourself the question is this something that should be subject to secret and if it is which path within the law should it go down we'll show a flow chart in a couple minutes that kind of spells some of that out but for the town boards part you all have a responsibility to make sure that the actions you're taking aren't going to

043have a bunch of either known or unknown consequences they could have an impact to the character of a community generating traffic impacting air quality impacting groundwater the quality of people's lives aesthetic or cultural resources and you have to have the planning department step in and say okay you know we're here to help you with that let us do that you know filtering of this particular action that you're taking and hand it back to you with an assessment that says yes this either rises for further review or it doesn't so the top two bullets there town uh town board and planning department were very often using these in addition the folks under the next set of bullets review boards planning board zoning board of appeals architectural review board and the trustees all within the town context

044at various points have to ask themselves uh you know an application or an action that is in front of us right now does it trigger a more detailed review and even if it doesn't you actually have to stare at it and demonstrate that no we we took a look and it doesn't meet these minimum triggers for more detailed review and that gets documented as part of any application in addition regional governments and agencies such as the suffolk county planning commission would you know also have a role to play in you know more regional scale projects for example uh where they might be that lead agency that i was describing before uh and so you know again the coordination comes into play and obviously state agencies as well so as i mentioned before department of state

045uh you know department of transportation dec in particular those are frequent flyers if you will for uh using secret as a way to understand and then describe to the public right so that's the whole other part of this and i think it's the real power of this piece of legislation it is intended to not only help an agency discharge its responsibility but it's also intended to provide the public with ample opportunity to understand what a given project is to ask questions about it and to even in fact propose ideas for how the project could be made better or if they're to flag very specific concerns that describe you know things that need attention or reasons why a project should not go forward and of course we also have the applicants uh you know the people

046who might be advancing or proposing a project if it's a private property owner uh you know they obviously benefit from this process as well because it allows them to fully understand what their responsibility is to answer very specific questions uh that come up and then actually have a way to move things forward and keep them from getting bogged down and get to that final approval next slide please so terms that often get thrown around uh when we're talking about secret action is really anything that is proposed right so it could be legislative it could be uh as i said before it could be a bonding resolution it could be to build a certain structure in a given place right so the action is what gets evaluated under secret to allow an agency to decide whether

047or not um it can go forward so lead agency as i said before is whichever of the boards we think has the the greatest amount of say over a project has the greatest amount of authority in determining whether a project should move forward or what the either constraints or adjustments to a project should be that organization so planning board zoning board town board planning commission any of the folks on the previous slide might be the lead agency for a project and then by virtue of that the other um involved agencies is the term that gets used the other involved agencies become essentially subordinate to that lead agency's review they still get a say and they retain any right to issue or not issue any permits that may be required from their agency as part of

048this broader look but they are not the lead agency that is moving this forward and making sure that the various timelines and responsibilities get fulfilled along the way environmental assessment form you'll you'll see in a moment when we look at this uh flowchart that's that's almost like the intake form here right so that's the the easy first pass um at looking at whether something really you know needs a deeper look through uh something that's described at the bottom of the page the environmental impact statement so how those determinations get made you know should something be subject to an environmental assessment form uh really is binary well actually that's not true there's sort of three paths that open up early on in this process there's what's referred to as a type one action and i put

049one in parentheses there because a lot of folks you know that we use the roman numeral and they assume it's a type i or you know type iii or something for what's referred to as a type two no it's actually referred to as a type one and all that really means is that there's a list of things i think it's like 37 items that say here's a list of triggers that we know if you're going to propose something like this it needs more environmental review or likely needs more environmental review and so those are called out up front there's a list and we put those things onto the right path right away by contrast sort of the opposite of that are these type two actions uh and that's where we know that these things do

050not rise to the level and so therefore uh they get discharged right away but of course you know a list of 30 something items is not all encompassing and there's this whole gray area in the middle where you say there's a type 1 list and there's a type 2 list and i'm not on either one how do i know and that's where you get to this section called unlisted actions and really all that means is it doesn't exist over here and it doesn't exist over there we're going to label it as unlisted and then there's a set of steps that then unfold for determining whether or not something requires a deeper look or further review once we get deeper into the process uh you know let's say we've got a type one we know that

051there's a um a specific uh trigger here or uh where an unlisted action is a better example where you say we're in this gray area and we're not sure whether we're going to have to do a really deep dive here and actually prepare an environmental impact statement or a draft environmental impact statement that will you know kick off this process of more detailed environmental review there this is where you have that fork in the road that says you're either a negative declaration or you're a positive declaration and so if we can go to the next slide i think this will make a little more sense here so here here's this flow chart that you've heard me reference a couple of times and then i know all of you as a town board and all of

052you as uh you know many of you as former planning board zoning board members leads etc you all have stared at this chart many a time and you have mapped individual applications through this process and going all the way over to the left-hand side for folks at home here who are trying to figure out you know why and how and all of that this is where you start that's an action as i said before it could be you know anything that is proposed for a development scheme for a piece of legislation for a funding mechanism uh it could be the adoption of a comprehensive plan for the the town any you know planning update anything that is you know has the potential to greatly affect the lives of people in a community the natural resources

053of the community needs to right up front be screened against that type one list i was describing uh and the type two uh actions that are also described or be listed as that third category of unlisted action and once you begin down this road then you can see how you would move uh through a process that under type two if you're a type two action then you know we know that you know the the state law in the case law that applies here over 40 plus years of you know people asking well what about this and i'd like to sue over that we know that there's now a very clear understanding of what are type 2 actions and what types of things don't require further environmental review and so we put it through the filter

054that i was describing before and you know okay you're deemed as a type 2 here congratulations you know please move on with your project that does not take away the need or the obligation or the legal responsibility to get a building permit to get any variances that might be required or to do something like site plan review right so in all of those examples you you understand that the board or the agency of the town the building department for example that is helping you get to you know your approvals for your project just because you went through secrets i said earlier you are not now out from under the obligations that you have to do things like get a building permit right so that's the example of this being a process that helps us understand

055where we should land uh in the environmental review universe but it does not substitute for it is an administrative step that happens before the agency can render a final determination on whether you should get a permit or your applications to be approved or legislation should move forward etc so more interest is at the top of the page where you have the type ones uh you know so the environmental assessment form that i mentioned earlier if you follow that box that says type one action that automatically means that if you're deemed to type one you not only have to fill out an environmental assessment form but you got to do the big version of the form there's a short one and there's a long and if you do the long one then that you know has

056more sections to it and it helps the agency and the applicant and the public understand in greater detail what do we think we're taking on here what are the things we need to be concerned about if you have a unlisted action you have the option to do the short form environmental assessment form but many times organizations you know agencies departments like the planning department determined that we actually think we're going to understand where we need to go here more clearly if we do the the longer form uh rather than the short form ea so you know once you get through the eaf then you get over to determining who the other agencies are uh that may be involved you have a determination of who the lead agency is uh you know if uh you're doing

057the the full eaf uh and then you need to basically get to that moment of positive declaration or negative declaration and that's referred to as the determination of significance and you can see here pretty quickly that if you get to that determination of significance uh and there's a negative declaration what that really means is that you know the the agencies that are charged with review here have determined that any potential environmental impacts and potential is a key word in secret right it's not known environmental impacts or definite environmental impacts it's potential environmental impacts any potential environmental impacts do not rise to the level and cumulatively so one on top of the other which is another aspect of secret here we're constantly asked any individual action by itself sure but if you add a you know

058another couple of individual actions on top of that do you accumulate cumulatively get to a level where there is enough concern that we're triggering some of those standards that exist for a positive declaration or are we still seeing this as something that is benign enough that it has you know we're able to describe it as a determination of significance having a negative declaration if that's the case then you actually get to the end of the review process so in the positive declaration chain here you get to scoping and the reason i want to spell out scoping is this is a really important moment for the public to know what's going on to be involved to be paying attention and to listen deeply right so the positive declaration means that we are now into this deeper

059environmental review process that if the applicant or the agency that is putting forth this project chooses to see it through then what that means is there will be an environmental impact statement that is prepared and in order for that big document that is meant to really take a hard look and get to the bottom of what are the things that people are concerned about what are the potential again that word potential impacts that we all need to be concerned about here how do we determine what those are going to be and the answer is scoping scoping means you are taking a look around and you are scooping up and creating lists of potential impacts here and you're trying to understand what those impacts could be so scoping is a moment where the public in particular

060other agencies the community community based organizations the applicant the lead agency or other boards that are involved in the review everybody gets to have a say in you know putting forward ideas that they think are appropriate for review here and just because somebody puts it forward it doesn't mean that that will necessarily be something that gets a deep dive in the final eis environmental impact statement but it does mean that it has been flagged and that the agency now will have to determine whether or not they think that is a legitimate potential impact here and they'll determine whether that is something that survives on the list of items that have to be assessed deeply as this project moves forward the reason i really want to draw people's attention to scoping is this is exactly the

061moment we are in with the airport conversation in east hampton town right now so anybody out there who is watching this or reading the newspaper or you know wants to be involved in the conversation around the airport now is your moment right the the window for scoping closes uh this friday at 4 pm and anybody who has an idea about something that should actually be assessed here or studied or understood more deeply as we move forward needs to please please please i'm asking you to take this moment and either you know call or write use the email address that the town board has provided several times and share your ideas for things that need a look i don't want to put myself in the position of commenting specifically on the airport but i want to

062you know fulfill my responsibility to make sure that the public understands that you have a right i would even argue a responsibility to participate in this process if you have concerns and now is a moment it it's not the only moment but this is a critical moment because you know as i said very early in in this presentation you know the notion that seeker is built on is identify potential impacts and do it early so you know this scoping process that we're in right now is the community's opportunity to say here's how i think traffic could be associated with a given project and here's what i think the questions are that you need to answer specific to that right i'm using traffic as an example there are any number of potential noise air quality community

063character examples that you know we could look at using the airport for example to say here's the list of questions that need to be asked and i just want to underline for everybody out there please participate please share your notions and ideas before this friday and make sure you're free to comment on process but process as you can see here from this flowchart is largely baked right we have to follow these steps and we have to follow them in the appropriate order we can't deviate from processes requirement in secret that says we have to literally live up to the letter of the law and we have to substantially uh substantively live up to the letter of the law as well so if i could just interrupt for just a moment since you you've brought up

064the topic of scoping in the airport and that uh we are receiving scoping comments through friday march 18th at 4 p.m those comments can be emailed to eh airport scope at ehamptonny.gov and again it is very important that you participate in this process this helps the town board in our decision-making process going forward right and perfect thank you i hope we can repeat that again maybe for you know folks so grab a pen now and yeah we'll yeah i'll say it again during my latest report i'm sure perfect i'm gonna get t-shirts man so um you know from from the scoping process we then move into uh in our case we're actually tracking towards what's called a generic environmental impact statement and i would urge us to not get tripped up on you know the

065nomenclature of draft environmental impact statement versus generic environmental impact statement and the point is the scoping process will identify a bunch of questions that have to be asked and understood and then we have to go actually generate the information that will allow the agency in this case the town board to render a final set of determinations here about what they want the future of the airport to be so i think if there's as i've observed uh you know community conversations and spoken with friends and you know folks who are really paying attention here i think there's this one idea that you know folks are sometimes getting hung up on or misunderstand a little bit when it comes to the airport conversation in order to fully understand what the impacts of any action at the airport

066might be then we actually have to study them right and so what what the what you all and i say this to the public obviously but what you all as the town board are proposing to do this summer is to identify clearly what the questions are that need to be asked you know name the potential impacts here and then go out and study those in detail so that you can actually make a final set of recommendations and decisions and i think where the confusion in talking to some of my friends has come in is that people misunderstand the study period of this summer where we're going to try to do some things and adjust the dials to see well you know if we do you know a certain set of you know limitations and i

067won't go further than that describing them because that's that's a different person's job um you know if we take a certain set of actions this summer that help us understand fully what our ability to actually have a meaningful impact on people's concerns around the impact are if we do those things those are not the final actions those are not the you know the destination that the community is getting to in terms of here's what the future of the airport will be that is a process that is allowed for under secret so that we can actually understand what potential impacts may be and then make a final set of determinations and recommendations so i i'm not sure i describe that very clearly but i want people if you take something away from this or if you

068take two things away from this today in specific reference to the airport it's please comment before friday as part of the scoping conversation and then the second one is that all of the actions that are being put forward or recommended or considered for this summer uh are actually things that are uh time-bound they will expire essentially uh at the end of the summer and then all of the information that is learned from that period and the rigorous study that will accompany it will actually be used to come up with a final set of recommendations right and in that list of things that must be studied very important to point out um is something called the no action alternative so if we can actually go to the next slide please so you know how do we

069make these um very detailed judgments about what the uh implications for a project might be well the environmental impact statement actually contemplates and uses what are described as alternatives and we're always required as you know so think of it as a spectrum we could do a bunch of stuff over here or we could do nothing over here and then there's probably a couple of points in between where we do a little bit we do something that looks a little bit different or we do something that's you know a lot bigger right so if you think of it as a spectrum over on one side there's a no action alternative um in in the case of you know the airport just to sort of give people some some shading and some color around that that would

070mean literally we don't do anything different than we're doing right now what could we reasonably anticipate would be the impacts of doing nothing and those get described through the conversation and through the generic environmental impact statement that gets prepared all the way down at the other end of the spectrum in the example of the airport and something that the town uh knows that it will want to take a look at not because uh you know anyone thinks that well the other things that we are required to look at are what if we do these things in the middle you know what if we apply a certain set of restrictions or requirements uh all of the ppr pieces and those get broken out and people look at those as different alternatives and those get described and

071we study as they're being implemented what the actual impacts of those are as part of this in order to fully discharge our responsibility here we are also needing to describe what the other end of the spectrum looks like if you have do nothing on this end then on the other end of the spectrum you have an obligation to describe what would happen if the airport were closed and so that is sort of the full spectrum of alternatives that get described here and just to note the town could not take action anywhere along that spectrum with the exception of do nothing without going through the environmental impact statement process without fully discharging its responsibility under siegra so you know i i've had my phone ring a bunch of times with people saying this all feels like

072you know a very complicated process i wish the the everybody in town would agree to just close the airport and the answer is even if you know everybody in town woke up tomorrow and decided that that was the path that people were going to go down that is an action it is subject to secret there is a mandatory requirement that we go through secret and that we understand what the implications or potential impacts of that action might be so nobody could wake up tomorrow and say you know what yeah i think everybody here agrees let's take a certain action that is not an option so uh next slide please so i just wanted to point out uh that there are many many resources that are available online to understand in more detail or less detail

073what secret actually is i think the most helpful one for folks who are just trying to sort of understand what this potentially very complicated uh piece of legislation is the the simplest one to start with is what i listed there is the secret handbook if you just search new york state secret or secret handbook in your preferred search engine you will very quickly land on a page that has all of those things the secret um actually the secret cookbook uh is so i should have listed secret cookbook rather than handbook the handbook is a more detailed version and hundred and something pages uh the secret cookbook is something like 18 pages or something it's got a couple of cartoons and graphics in there and it actually is a very uh straightforward way to understand what

074this process is all of which is summarized in that flowchart that we used earlier if you're looking for any of these resources in spanish in particular you can use the link that we've provided there that actually is a hyperlink so if you find this presentation on the town's website through town clerk then you'll be able to just click on that link and you'll get to a full set of resources in multiple languages um in addition my team and myself are available uh to any agency in town to the public uh i in seeing that this presentation was on today i had several people reach out to me and say well i hope you're going to address this very specific concern that i have and the best i could do is to say to those folks

075let's pick a time uh tomorrow whatever this week come on in sit down and we'll look at the specifics of the application that you're concerned about but i wanted today to be more general but also to let people know that we're here and happy to spend the time that it takes to get them to feel comfortable with this and understand when their opportunities to comment are great thank you very much jeremy uh board members have any questions or comments at this point i do want to thank jeremy for doing this there's a lot of information that he imparted on us and if anyone wants to download this slide presentation to understand it better um in your spare time if you want to do this uh then then please do and uh thank you jeremy for

076getting pulling this all together and helping everyone understand a little bit about um the process yeah i'd just like to add something for folks that are thinking about why uh why wasn't this done for the export cable for the southport wind farm to explain that the town did this type of review i called it uh the state uh department of service review for the utility secret on steroids uh was my way of describing it where there were 32 reviewing agencies the town and the trustees all interested parties of the public uh were part of that process and it was an intensive review that took two full years to complete so that was uh an even deeper dive into every single issue than secret um does and our jurisdiction was broadened by uh including uh what

077was in the state waters uh offshore as well rather than just what is in our jurisdiction so i just wanted to make that note um and i thank jeremy also for his detailed explanation thank you kate anyone else before we move on jeremy thank you so much uh we appreciate that i think this helps um folks understand you know the process that we're required to go through as well as many other individuals and agencies have to go through when proposing projects um that are considered actions that uh require review under secret so again if you want more information you can talk to the planners planning department or you can go to town website find this material click on the hyperlink and you can review the secret cookbook handbook and all the rules and regs so

078appreciate that jeremy at this point um i think we have eric shantz in the waiting room if we could bring eric in we're going to discuss the personal wireless communications proposed tier review procedure under the town code we review applications for various types of wireless communications projects and this is part of our really part of our comprehensive look at wireless communications uh master plan um but we thought that we could address this portion of the code and discuss uh proposed changes uh here today the wireless communications committee has met and reviewed these we've had our outside consultant cityscape working on this project as well eric why don't you take it away and go over those uh proposed changes to the code sure um and i i hope you guys uh memorized everything from that secret

079presentation there'll be a quiz on thursday yeah you know actually eric i think we all knew that all along because i mean uh yeah pretty much everyone on the board uh has either served on planning or zoning boards or both um but it's always great to have a refresher and it's it can be confusing for the general public so yeah and over emphasize yeah the process and jeremy did a great job of explaining it i'm actually going to recommend that all the appointed boards um watch that presentation as well you know just for a refresher sure um but anyway so moving along um to the next subject uh and right at the outset i'd like to say this is not the this is not a presentation that details the cumulative you know the the entirety

080of the changes that we're looking to do to to wireless um you'll see that at the end of the presentation where i outline you know that this is a short term step just the topic i'm speaking about today but there's also medium term and long-term efforts that we're working on most notably updating the wireless master plan which was adopted over 20 years ago which is in great need of an update and then in turn revising the town code whether it be standards um that we want you know wireless facilities to meet you know visual location design things of that sort but basically what i'm here to talk about is a short-term fix which is a change to um the actual application process itself so hopefully you can see my screen in this powerpoint uh presentation

081um and getting into it uh if i can get that far right there we go um so the reasons that we're doing this um and again right now what we're talking about we're focusing on what's required in terms of review what what what are the layers of review do applicants need based on the the type of application that they have do they need to get a building permit do they need to go to the planning department do they need to go in front of the planning board and the architectural review board what are the layers of review um and uh the big the biggest impetus for for this is the federal regulations that are relatively new um that affect what a local municipality can do as far as what's required um they also require certain

082time frames to be met uh when the town is reviewing an application um you know i met i touched upon the fact that the wireless code is very much outdated both in terms of present realities in the town as well as technology and then really we've had some difficulties implementing the code and enforcing our standards both in terms of inefficiency just because of the way our code is worded and not meshing with those other regulations but also you know we want to make sure that we're we're still having the same standard of review that the town wants for for applications at least as far as um what our authority is to to require certain things and then i'll get into this a little bit more in in the next slide but um our definitions in

083the town code are very ambiguous as is our level of review the way that the code is worded is very ungainly is not very clear as to what is required of an applicant and then again as you know cityscape is our wireless consultant they have recommended that we make changes uh as you'll see through the presentation i go through some very specific recommendations and cityscape has said that they they support them um basically what i've done what the planning department has done is take cityscape's original recommendations to change the review process tweak it a little bit and just kind of give you guys a general overview after that will come specific code recommendations is for specific language for the code that cityscape will craft with our assistants so right now our code is based on

084the concept of tiering which is basically a way of structuring the um you know level of potential impact that an application might have from you know lowest to most severe or most significant um tier one uh the definition and i you know i won't read these verbatim here but basically tier one are small cell installations they're installations that are mounted on utility poles tier two applications are the majority of the applications we get their swap outs their new antenna installations on existing support structures such as a water tower or cell tower tier three are basically new applications obviously those are the most you know require the most intensive level of scrutiny and review the so-called macro sites which are blatus towers monopoles things of that sort and i have a little red asterisk here and

085you can see that at the bottom those definitions that i provided you are from the definition section of the town code of the zoning chapter there's actually well there's one very specific other section of the town code and then another that alludes to tiering it gives a completely different definition completely different wording and includes different applications you know i don't need to point out that that is confusing and is something that really needs to be remedied um you know it's really important too um to to narrow you know the scope of review for an application you know in order so that the town can get the review that they feel is required um and the level of review based on the um the type of the application so just to give you some visual examples

086um you know as i just said tier one are utility pole mounted fixtures um or antennas i should say an equipment this is a rendering that was done by a company called extinet this is you can probably tell if you look here this is in downtown montauk on the western end of downtown montauk you can see the gas station there the town has only reviewed these in town right of ways most of them are in roadway right-of-ways most of the ones that exist in the town are in the state right-of-way of montauk highway the town does not have jurisdiction over those i will get to that in more detail as we go through tier two um this is actually a an older photo of the tower here at town hall but basically as i said

087this is a swap out of antennas or if a new carrier wanted to come in another location on this tower and add equipment but really we're focusing here on the actual equipment itself just to give you a visual and then tier three applications are new towers this is actually a tower that is coming down in montauk to be replaced as part of the emergency services communication upgrades but tier three again is basically a new macro site or primary support structure so right now this is basically what the code says again this is somewhat open to interpretation because the code is not very clear um you know this is my wording here to try and um explain the review process uh clearly this is not taking verbatim from the code but basically for tier one right

088now uh again small selling utility pole mounted um that's basically an administrative process that's the way it's worded in the code the planning department is really basically just supposed to review these and you know issue a permit um from what we've heard from our attorneys and from cityscape there really isn't very much um in the way of you know what we can require there isn't really much discretion that the town has over these but again um something that i'll touch in in more detail tier two which are the majority of the applications we have are required right now to go to planning board work session meetings sometimes that's more than one depending upon the nature of the application these are this is good that you that you know the public just had a little primer

089on secret these are usually type 2 actions that are exempt again they're mostly swap outs or what we call co-locations on existing towers they rarely require public hearings and the arb is empowered by the code um in an advisory capacity um tier three again the most important um these are reviewed by the planning board always um they are usually unlisted or type one actions depending upon the nature of the proposal there's always a public hearing and we require arb approval for those applications so this is just a um graph here that i updated recently that i've been maintaining for a while this um i will note that this doesn't include small cell applications the town well a lot of people will have noticed that equipment has gone up on many utility poles particularly in the

090nape stretch but again those are exempt from town jurisdiction uh they're in a state right-of-way so we have actually only had four small cell applications they've all been within the past two years this graph um doesn't chart doesn't uh include that but what you can see really there's two things as you're looking at this and the next slide kind of summarizes that this is basically the past 20 years since we adopted legislation requiring review of wireless applications basically most of the applications we have are swap outs they're they're tier two applications it's about 82 percent of the applications that we've had and then i guess if i go back you'll see that there's a steady progression here we've had an increase in the number of wireless applications over the past 20 years so basically our

091goals with these proposed revisions are you know first of all we want to continue to stand the standard of review that the town wants for wireless applications yes there are federal regulations that um handcuff the town at times and require um you know expedited review of certain applications but if there's you know standards again design location height fall zone things of that sort that the town wants to continue we want to continue those standards that is going to be more involved with the wireless master plan update when we get into the specific special permit standards for wireless but that's a goal of these changes and i don't think that they change that or lessen that standard of review we also want to reduce the unnecessary review uh in front of a planning board of simple

092swap outs which they basically rubber stamp um i've had you know more than one planning board member say you know look at it it's a swap out it's almost one for one say why are we reviewing this um as long as there's not an impact on the structural capacity of a tower and as long as there's really no substantive change to the aesthetic appearance of the tower um it's really just inefficient and and you know a waste of the time of the planning board who has uh other you know more important matters to review so again um the ever-present requirement to coordinate with the federal regulations is part of this um and then really a big part of it is clarifying the review process and clarifying the definition of the tiers in the town code

093because again um you could look in various different sections of the code right now and come up with a completely different idea of what tier a particular project is so this is basically a summary of the what our proposed changes are again on the left-hand side you'll see the current um definitions uh four tiers um the main change here would really be in tier two again from one of those earlier slides um that is the majority of the applications that we get most of them are very minor there's basically no change proposed right now to tier one tier one would still be utility pole mounted small cell applications tier two um would include all swap outs all co-locations and new antennas um on existing support structures it's largely the same as the way that we've

094reviewed these applications and the way that we've tiered them but as you can see if you you know swap over to the left-hand margin there the definition is personal wireless service facilities on pre-existing structures that were legally permitted previously by the town that doesn't mention swap outs it doesn't mention equipment change doesn't mention ground level equipment changes such as you know changing the electrical equipment that might be in a utility shed that's something that we want to clarify here and then again highlighting the fact that this level what we're talking about you know at the present time is not really a major change to the code we're really not changing the the um level of scrutiny that we would have on uh tier three applications or or new cell towers so basically these this is

095the key thing here this is the change to the actual permitting structure and review process that we're proposing and again um you know this is really um a foot back in the door um to ramping up the review and the replacement of our wireless master plan um i'd like the board to have a discussion about whether or not they agree um with this permit structure and then from there we're going to craft code for this and then we're going to dive deeper into the bigger issues but so again i'm reiterating with tier one it's really an administrative approval from the planning department um the planning department does have the discretion to send those applications to the planning board and we in fact have done that with the only four applications that we've had jurisdiction over

096simply because they're new um we know the public has concerns over small cell um and the type of technology that is there um you know we're starting to establish aesthetic standards as far as what we want to see the design look like so we have sent those to the planning board but really the way the code is currently structured it would just be an administrative approval and if you go to the right-hand margin what we're proposing we're proposing at this point that it basically be a building permit um the real reason for that and removing the planning department administrative review is that we really don't have much of a say in or any discretion in what um those are going to be uh as long as they demonstrate fcc compliance we've been told from our

097attorneys and from cityscape that basically you know the town could adopt a design standard there's really kind of three different ways that you could design these you could have a conical antenna structure at the top of the utility pole which was actually the picture that i showed you as a representative of tier one earlier you could also mount the antennas um flush to the top of a utility pole um or you could have them above the utility pole but in a non-enclosed structure where they're just panel antennas back to back usually three of them i prefer the conical enclosed um you know design uh that basically would if you paint it the same colors the utility pole looks like an extension of it but that's really the only thing that the town has discretion over

098and if they do you know if we do adopt a standard of design it basically becomes a rubber stamp um correct isn't that we have some issues with the shot clock on those ones design so you know if we get that standard design or the vernacular or how i don't think it's a vernacular design you know we would be prepared to be able to move those forward without without risking the chance of the town not having a say even though it's sort of outside of our our you know our approval methods is that correct exactly and that's the idea here i mean technically the town has two weeks to to approve such an application which is not a very long time frame uh and you know like as you're saying david if we adopt a

099design standard it's basically if you submit this you submit fcc compliance you get a building permit um and that's the idea here it really and it really doesn't lessen in any way what we can require already um or what we do require so um i think that that approves um improves efficiency and also helps us meet that um that that time constraint so i personally think it'd be important to develop a design standard that the board supports and anybody else have a comment on that particular aspect having a design standard so that there it becomes completely administrative but we know that those installations are in keeping with the aesthetic that we are seeking i agree peter i think that's very important and that is something oh i'm sorry yeah i was just going to say

100that i would support that as well i mean i was just actually going on the website to see if i could find the poll results because we know that the community wants us to expedite this process because we need to improve our wireless service here so and this is a way forward and i think it makes a lot of sense to do an administrative permit for tier 2 applications and i'm told that we can codify that and it is enforceable you know that the town does have the authority to adopt an aesthetic or design standard for those facilities put it in the code and it's a requirement of the applicants um that they that they comply with it and i don't think that you're going to get any pushback from that their concern is more

101when we don't meet the time frames of review um that's when things become litigious and we did have um litigation involving um that company that i was mentioning that that had submitted those uh small cell applications and it wasn't based on any design requirement it was based on the fact that we had not processed their application in what their understanding of the law was was a timely fashion so um tier two again right and again mostly swap outs mostly co-locations right now they are required by the code to go in front of a planning board for at least one work session again the review rarely goes much further than that sometimes there's a public hearing there's rarely any af um done for secra um but basically what we would propose what we've been doing since

102cityscape has been hired we've been referring all applications to cityscape they've been preparing reports uh and dealing with the applicants and basically working to get a complete application that is all the submission requirements which is first of all fcc compliance with radio frequency emissions a structural analysis if one is needed based upon the age and the overloading of a structure and also um reviewing it to make sure that it's in compliance with certain design standards of the town code which include you know the the distance antennas can protrude from a support structure but basically they've been working with the applicants getting a complete application once they have that they've been preparing a report and basically saying the applicants demonstrated compliance with all the standards planning board approved this um that's fine and we propose to

103continue having cityscape um or any other consultant review the applications because those are important things in particular the structural analysis but this we would propose would be an administrative review you know so long as cityscape as wireless consultants and professionals have been saying that the application should be approved to the planning board the planning board has been taking that recommendation so i don't know that it's necessary to send you know applications that are swap outs or co-locations to the planning board i don't think that it is they've basically gone on the recommendation of our experts i think that that's the prudent thing to do and i think that a lot of the planning boards workload as far as reviewing wireless applications again 82 percent of them are essentially swap outs could be removed or reduced

104by making this an administrative permit that would be granted by the planning department or another town agency or department depending upon what the town board would like to do but we think that that's probably the um uh the most efficient way to do it so i mean the planning board they don't really have a lot of leeway in terms of you know approval denial do they really i mean no and that's exactly why we're kind of exactly i think that's the point we just have to drive home here is that uh having a review board basically look at something that they have have really no ability to regulate um is a waste of i think everybody's time and resources yeah agreed um and that's you're right that that's you know one of the main um

105focuses of what we're proposing right here so the administrative process would still take into account whether or not this impact on the structural integrity of the existing tower which is an important thing to look at we know that there's so much demand uh the ability to add antennas that um without uh review engineering review and and follow-up that uh it's possible that a tower could get overloaded i think that's really the one major concern when reviewing these types of applications yeah for sure um and anytime that tower or support structure happens to be a town-owned facility or on town property we've also been consulting with eddie schnell the police department's uh you know um communications technician expert um just to make sure that uh you know the structural analysis um matches what he knows to

106be the reality of the equipment that is on that tower so um we've really had a you know three levels of review um between myself my department and cityscape and eddie before it's even getting to the planning board so we've been making sure that the the applications are compliant with all the uh applicable standards so um as you say i think it is a waste board members comfortable with this proposal for tier two you have any other comments or questions about tier two um peter i would just say that uh just to make clear to the public that the this is the tier 2 does not include any new towers it includes replacing antennas that are already on existing towers that have been through the process um in kind in place or by adding an

107additional antenna and i agree with you i agree with this system i think it's uh it's a better system and uh will give the planning board you know more time to to uh to deal with the items under their control rather than just uh having to go through a function or a process that that they can't change and is really a rubber stamp process i think this would be a better review actually if it changed to this process um and especially with the adopting design standards and including the structural analysis i think those are the two key items there thank you kate anyone else okay so yeah um so the tier three is pretty simple there's really no change this is a full review in front of the planning board this includes projects um that

108have been reviewed recently that people across the town might know about as well as ones that are pending such as the application um at saint peter's chapel um the which has been reviewed and is going through through a process um you know we reviewed the new tower at the northwest brush dump property on bull path there i understand there is an application coming in soon uh at camp blue bay um we anticipate that one within the coming months uh that would go through the full review process as a tier three application there would be no change to that there would certainly be public input uh and it would you know those projects all all of those are examples of ones that would be actions that would be reviewed under under secret so i'll move along

109there's really not much of a change there but i don't know if the board wants to comment on that any comments no i just found the poll results where 87 of the community wanted excellent connectivity and if you know from what i'm hearing doing tier 2 as you know administratively i think that can only expedite you know and it's clearer to the applicant what they need to do if it's all spelled down the code and it'll i think it'll just you know work to improve uh connectivity more more quickly thanks john okay eric do you wanna yep yeah i'm i'm almost done here so um you know i think i touched upon all of these things at various points but you know the benefits here um that we see are we're maintaining the standard of

110review we're simplifying and streamlining um the review process in particular for minor applications we're complying with federal regulations um again i cross-referenced um this proposal with cityscape um they ensure us that that we will be able to do that this will better empower us to do that and really we're clarifying the review process and we're clarifying definitions in the code you know based on the things that i've said here we're really not changing too much um you know at least as far as what the town even has an ability to control with review of these applications so um this is a key part here um and maybe a good jump in to the larger discussion for the town board here so this is a short term um you know uh proposal here uh this you

111know um basically you know i gave this presentation um we will work with cityscape and the town attorneys to formulate new definitions for the tiers and a new review process and by that i mean specific code wording um that could ultimately ultimately be adopted by the town board that would of course then come back before the board for another work session just to discuss the the actual verbiage and language of those code sections and then of course you would have a public hearing on that before it would be adopted so that's really the short-term process that covers what i've talked about here today there's still a lot that needs to be done as far as updating our our wireless code and our and our wireless master plan some of those things that we would do

112in the medium term uh would be going over the application requirements there's a section of the code that outlines what applicants are required to submit it is not only i think a bit outdated it mentions you know plans in a scale of et cetera et cetera but you know it doesn't even it doesn't actually even list that visualizations visual renderings are required uh it doesn't even list the structural analysis is required i mean that's a major item that we require of every application uh and it's not very realistic on the the types of plans that that we require to properly review an application so that's something to update another thing is the fee structures um our we charge of various amount based upon the tier and whether or not it's a modification it generally ranges

113from about 2500 for the most basic application to uh i think 12 500 for a tier three um application i've actually heard that even that for the small cell we can't charge the two thousand five hundred uh i will say i have looked i've seen all the invoices um again we send every application to cityscape for review uh currently and i wouldn't propose to change that i've looked at their invoices uh we're not in a situation i don't have exact numbers for you but we're not in a situation where they're charging much more than the applicants are providing for the for the applications but really taking a look at the fee structure which has not significantly changed in a number of years would be something that i think would be important and a fruitful discussion

114to have uh we would update the forms and instructions and then another topic that i brought up to the the town board before is the concept of the wireless registry which is something that is codified currently it's in our code it basically is a requirement that every carrier within the town give a list of their facilities what equipment they have give an update on an annual basis and say you know here's this you know here's our equipment at this location here's our equipment at this location give us a demonstration of what coverage they they um estimate that they provide it's something that would be very beneficial it's something that we have not kept track of since we had somebody hired years and years ago um around 15 years ago when i started with the town

115who was uh their sole task was keeping track of these things it's something that we could have cityscape um work on it's something that obviously if we're either hiring somebody in-house or farming this out to a consultant will cost money um right now we don't charge the applicants for the registry that's something that could be considered um and should be considered and i think that that's something that we that we should get on and maintain as we change the code um and adopt the new plan so um this is basically can i ask a question about the wireless registry are you saying for even um wireless that's in the state right-of-way you would want we would want to know where all of them are correct yeah we certainly would um that i guess requires a

116deeper delve into the legal um implications of that but i wouldn't think that it would be something that would be difficult um as long you know the carriers don't care to i wouldn't think would care to let us know where they have the you know what you'd call a node of that that network of small cell um you know i think they would block it at us saying that we have jurisdiction over that because my understanding is we absolutely do not but i don't think that that's something that they would object to in a registry and i think it's something that would be very beneficial we want each carrier to tell us where their facilities are where their coverage is give us the the full scope of you know where they are in the town

117um you know so that we can as we move to you know part of the and this is i guess a good segue into the next slide which is my last one which is long term um yeah yeah yeah sure will there be a fee schedule associated with that registry that is i would imagine so uh and i would recommend that uh you know if we're having either town staff or consultant working on this it costs money uh and i it's reasonable to require that you know each carrier you know offset that um and that's something that in the future you know as far as the exact figures we can discuss but um it's something that in that code section that's referenced on this slide it says you know and in other sections of the

118code it says and my understanding is that it is legally enforceable that uh the town can charge carriers necessary and reasonable fees for processing applications so i would think that that would definitely be a part of that that effort eric i recall that there were preliminary discussions with cityscape about that and i i'm not i i was looking for my notes but they're um you know packed away i believe that you can only charge basically what it costs to maintain that registry it can't be you know a revenue driver exactly yeah and i believe cityscape thought that maybe annually was you know that it was more you know every other year you updated it because it is a very time-consuming project but i believe it was something that they could take on if we wanted

119to do that yes yeah they definitely said that they would do that um again the the the dollars and cents and the the term those are all things we can hash out but i'm just identifying these because i really would like this first of all you know i would like the town board to adopt the short-term changes to the review process and definitions that i presented here today but i'd also like this to be um a step back we we've you know we've been working behind the scenes as many of you know um on this but we haven't had the you know the wire a general wireless discussion from the town board um in a little bit of a while and i'd like this to be um you know a commencement of of really moving

120um in the direction of of setting all of the short medium and long-term goals the biggest of which and i'll um just segue to that is updating the wireless master plan um that is absolutely vital uh that is something that cityscape will come up with uh based upon their expertise and and their experience they've worked they've worked on master plans for numerous other municipalities obviously that is not something that i anticipate the first draft um will be absolutely perfect um this is a process it will require public hearings discussions of revisions the town board and the people of the town are going to have to have to have a discussion about what standards they think need to be met um ultimately the wireless master plan would be adopted and then the code would be overhauled

121to to reflect the the recommendations of that and of that adopted plan that is how we did it 20 years ago when the um first and only wireless master plan was adopted um but that's really the the process again i would mention um you know the the um steps that we have taken and have accomplished anyone i'm going to the town website can see right on the the home page there is the infrastructure report that was done by cityscape which outlines and illustrates the areas of coverage and coverage deficiencies part of the wireless master plan update and part of updating uh new code standards is to identify you know not only designs that that the town prefers but also through identifying where we have deficiencies in coverage also pointing the carriers in the direction of

122properties and locations that we feel are appropriate a big part of what um hamstrings and ties the hands of of the town is that basically from what i've heard and i'm paraphrasing if a carrier can demonstrate a coverage gap in an area the town has to give them something now the standard is that it the applicants have to propose the least obtrusive means of remedying that coverage gap that is available to them but a big part of doing that is identifying areas and potential properties where you could have less impacts where where you have a project that it might not be perfect but is much better than what an applicant might happen to be proposing at that time so um with all of those uh considerations i'll uh leave it to the town board to

123discuss and if you agree with uh at least the changes to that well the general idea that changes to the definitions in the review process i'll get working on that with cityscape and we'll and the town attorneys and we'll uh look to have something to you sooner rather than later as far as a uh you know code revision for you to vote on i do have a question that eric like from what i understood the the master plan is really a sum of the parts that cityscape has either completed or is in the process of right so you know they came out here and they surveyed all of the infrastructure they've cataloged everything they did the mapping analysis for us and now we're up to revising the town code so when you say short term

124definitions of tiers um and then medium term is the applications doesn't it all kind of have to be done together like you know if we agree and and i said earlier that i support the administrative permit for for tier two because that makes perfect sense to me um aren't we doesn't i guess that's my first question really isn't short term and medium term aren't they pretty blended together yeah i mean all of them are um in a certain sense um and when i say short term medium term long term i'm i don't mean you know next week um a year from now and 10 years from now we're going to get working on this i in fact spoke with susan raybould of cityscape this morning um and i have been talking to her well i

125talked to her yesterday about this i basically told her i was going to do this presentation we'd be looking to do the definition and review process revisions right away but you know we'd like to have a meeting soon to discuss how we're going to update the wireless master plan um i don't so i guess you you're right they they are all interconnected and they they all um relate to each other and bounce off of each other but when i say when i'm defining the length of term it's not that we're going to get started on one thing and then the next thing and you know we're not getting started in the short term then the medium in the long term i mean i'd like to start working on the long term stuff um and we

126have you know in various capacities but really start hashing out a time frame for when we're going to have a wireless master plan update and some of those other elements um within the you know coming days and and weeks the point here was that this was something that needed to be immediately addressed that you know we we have a quick solution for let's clean it up let's get it done uh some of the other aspects of the of the wireless master plan will take a little bit more time to flesh out and and there'll have to be a lot more conversation about this was really the low hanging fruit if you will and um so you know we picked that off right away because it does it does take up a great deal of resources

127adds confusion to the whole process the way the code's currently written and it's something we can fix without you know a great deal of time going by so you know rather than wait until the whole thing's fully baked and we can present it all at once it seems to make sense to take care of this portion and uh there is there is more work to do obviously on closing the coverage gaps identifying properties in a process and you know way to to really address those um some of those larger connectivity issues that we have yeah exactly obviously the other thing we'll have to talk about some more as well is is the design standards for the small cell and there are a number of different um you know locations that can incorporate small cell whether

128it's a utility pole whether it's a actually a light fixture in some cases street lighting that's something that we're going to be updating throughout the town with led lighting and some of those fixtures have the ability to also house a small cell so if we adopt that type of standard then we have some control over the aesthetic and location to some degree anything else any other questions comments before we move on no thank you for explaining it all and i look forward to moving this ahead [Music] great thank you eric and uh next up we have thanks guys uh amendment to chapter 167 littering and i think we have david mcmaster and kathy you you've been working with david mcmaster is joining right now thanks jason i'll wait till david gets in the meeting and

129david is in and david can you meet your device in the background thank you awesome okay folks may be feeling like you're having a little deja vu because we did review this uh last month but then we decide and we noticed it from public hearing but since then we heard back from uh our code enforcement director kevin cooper requesting one more modification so if david you want to just take us through the modification and explain why uh mr cooper had requested it that would be helpful sure um good afternoon so uh like kathy just said at the request of kevin cooper uh director of code enforcement um we're presenting additional changes to chapter 167 of uh the town code litter and dump control on the document that was circulated to the town board members the

130new changes are highlighted in blue the town code defines yard waste as organic materials consisting of leaves brush branches vines and yard clippings the proposed changes today um will require vehicles transporting uh loads of yard waste within east hampton town to cover and secure those loads the goal is to reduce spillover on the town roadways which is you know part and parcel of the other changes we made to chapter 167 with uh drag out um i think that there had been a number of situations where they were seeing uh trucks driving around um with uncovered leaves and um potentially if you know they don't happen to to see the leaves blowing out of it um there was hesitation to write a ticket but obviously a truck you know if it's uncovered and full of leaves

131isn't really secured and um it's just waiting to have those blowouts so um that's the extent of the the changes for 167. so what we'd like to do when we notice it for public hearing we had set the public hearing date is april 7th so what i'd like to have is a new resolution uh noticing this and and keep that april 7th date to hear the the amendments to this code so uh if the board agrees we'd have that um hearing noticed uh on thursday okay yes any comments or questions about this i'm good with it uh thank you kathy and thank kevin cooper it's reasonable and i support it thank you yeah i'm actually surprised we didn't already have something in the code about covering loads i thought we'd just hard waste just for

132garbage huh well it's all loads have to be covered or secured um and so i think that kevin spotted was a loophole where somebody in this situation with the leaves in the truck that haven't blown out even though they're uncovered he said well nothing is blowing out so they must be secured you know obviously that's not true right i got it all right this is kind of like belts and suspenders okay yeah yeah it's thankfully i only have to wear belts right now but i'm headed for suspenders if cove would last another year i'd have to have suspenders i think i hear ya okay great uh thanks david thank you kathy and that brings us up to another amendment to the town code that's proposed and that is chapter 109 peddling right so this came

133up when we s last month when we were talking about special events and uh we had said then that we wanted to look at um making uh amendments to the peddling code in order to clarify activities on the beaches so david if you want to take it away again please yes i apologize there might have been a clerical typo on the email i sent around it's actually chapter 198 of the town code and these changes were drafted at the request of the east hampton town marine patrol and are also related to the changes to chapter 151 special events that we've discussed in previous meetings in summon substance the proposed changes clarify the existing definition of peddler to confirm that that definition includes i'm going to read from the proposed changes any person who solicits orders

134processes transactions or otherwise conducts business on the internet or via mobile app as a separate design to evade the provisions of this local law later on in that section a person who charges a fee for the delivery or installation of beach chairs or umbrellas at a town beach shall also be considered a peddler a person who charges a fee for the provision of beach fire services including but not limited to the building and or maintenance of beach fires shall also be considered a peddler a person who rents water sports equipment including but not limited to kayaks paddle boards surfboards and wind surfers shall be considered a peddler that's the the first part and i think the most significant part of the proposed changes and the second part of this is at the end in section

135198 13 uh in the penalty section this uh adds explicit authorization for the police or whatever enforcement agency is writing a ticket um to seize the instrumentality of peddling um as um to be used as evidence and justice for prosecution um i think that adds an additional layer of potential deterrence um that our marine patrol officers have requested so dave let me just ask this question do we allow peddling on town beaches we do not allow peddling on town beaches peter but they're excuse me mr supervisor but there has been um a perceived loophole in the law about certain activities um and whether or not they constitute peddling because the um i just want to make it clear that what we're looking at doing is tightening up the regulations surrounding activities uh to incorporate them

136as pedaling so that the no pedaling on town beaches can be fully enforced where there may have been a loophole before is that correct that's absolutely correct okay i just want to make that clear for the public because they may not understand uh how this all fits together and what we're trying to do that's a good point and then if i could also share that um hampton beach services were it was in justice court on march 7th and they pleaded guilty to 36 counts of no special event permit from mr meaners and it was 36 counts at 250 dollars for per count for a fine of 9 000 and just want to thank david and coat and uh code enforcement and marine patrol for you know being uh so diligent and following all that up

137thank you any other questions or comments just two comments first one i i appreciate this and also specifically how we're keeping up with what the new age of the internet and how a lot of transactions are being placed right now and it gives that accessibility uh so there's not that loophole there my only other one is just for discussion it comes to um 198.11 c1 it's actually about concession locations and also goes to e1a through c about peddler locations i'm wondering since we do change those time to time should we should we put a discussion point in there about doing that through a resolution instead of the code or that means we have to change the code every time uh some of these locations aren't even actually uh locations that we put out for rfps

138anymore um but it it means anytime we change it add it out there bring it back in we would have to change the code or can we do that through resolution uh it's just something i caught up as the caught as i was reading it i don't know if there's any discussion on that i think that's a good point um david i i do think that you know we would have to change the code anytime we wanted to issue a concession agreement at a different location um as this is written um so i i would ask to um maybe discuss that with john a little bit and um carol as well uh carol i see you're shaking your head do you have trouble i see there yeah can you hear me yes yes okay the

139only trouble i see there is the amount of people that call in that want to pedal and don't fall into the scope of the law we tell them to read the code and i think for them to go back looking for resolutions each time for a different place or or whatever it is is going to make this code even more complicated than it already is for these people that's all that's good as well right and i guess what we could do david we could go back and revisit with with genie carosa too to see if there's anything missing from this list um and you know obviously we can conclude just because that location is in the code doesn't mean we're necessarily going to you know give a peddler's permit for it maybe we can maybe

140i don't know david instead of shall be available is there a way to um counter that so that it's you know at the discretion of the town board or something to that effect so or you know including but not limit i mean i don't know i'm not a lawyer yeah that they're a way to couch it and make sure we and and that way we haven't you could have an exhaustive list we can certainly look into that and i can follow up with the board at another meeting um with my ideas well i mean it's not even another meeting even if you got it here by by tomorrow uh you know i don't want that to hold back what we need to do here and we need to get this we need to get this

141notice in april for april so we can be ready to prepare that for uh for everyone so they can do their own jobs either for the town entities or businesses so i don't want that miss to hold it back it was just a discussion point uh but maybe we can even get that get that quicker than them but uh i i thank you for any any look into it but the rest of it yeah i'm fine with and that and that's a good point david because one more point is and you know need this to be adopted before the start of the season right i agree go ahead carol but one more point is the reason why all those beaches that we were allowing it were listed even if they didn't have a bid was

142because people that have a license going street by street or just want to have you know whatever they're going to do they're allowed to go to the beach that's listed there that does not have a concession and not remain standing opposed to going to a place where they feel that you could pedal like stephen hands that's not there where pedaling is not allowed at all that was the reason for them being listed so um at those locations there's a time limit as to how long they can stop there right is that correct is it 30 minutes or 30 minutes yeah yes is there a certain period of time they have to be away 30 minutes in a day and that's it or like they go away and do a risk that's not in there they

143have to move and yes there has been some that have done that so that would be a clarification that could be put in at some point they'll they'll stay 30 minutes drive around the block and come back for another third to the next road and then come back again after another 30 minutes or something okay anything else on this topic okay so we'll go back and you know incorporate all the board's comments and i guess bring this back we bring it back to the work first work session in april david we could probably still notice it uh the first thursday and here at the third thursday okay yeah so that'd be april 5th right so we're to get that back on for april 5th okay moving on we have uh this is the code chapter

144102 building construction this has to do with uh surveying and staking of uh clear proposed clearing and david and councilwoman overby have been working on this yeah this really came out of the wainscot cac so thank them for their efforts they had started a new group called the wainscot tree society and they are concerned about trees coming down indiscriminately or because someone has over cleared or they have those moments where they say ah it was i didn't know that so we're going to have them a little more conscious of where the clearing is taking place so working with kim shaw mark abramson and david so david i'm going to let you discuss it's pretty simple and let's talk about it so as the board knows we're in the midst of a construction boom and one

145of the downsides of this has been over clearing of vegetation incidental to that construction that's in violation of the town code to help remedy this problem uh we're proposing to add additional requirements to the building permit application process that set forth in chapter one of two seven namely we would add a requirement under subsection h that would read a survey together with an affidavit from a new york state licensed surveyor indicating that the clearing limitations for the subject property as set forth on the survey have been staked in accordance with the east hampton town code clearing limitations and then there's a number of exceptions that i have added after conversations with ann glennon and mark abramson now mark has actually just emailed me a um updated copy of uh when he wants to even get

146into more nuance for the exception so the board doesn't actually um have those so i apologize for that but i will read it uh to you now it just adds um that lots with legally existing um or sorry lots of legally pre-existing clearing predating adoption of code in 1984 1996 and 2004 and then it cites the um the applicable sections of town code or other or otherwise legally approved over clearing so the copy that the board has just says 2004 the other years refer to i think the year that the water recharge and harvard protection districts were adopted um so that's i will provide the board with copyright i have a question about that so the first one lots that are pre-existing um are exempt from the requirement and and i guess my question is

147um they may have different standards of what's allowed to be cleared but we wouldn't want them to be cleared even further right if they're already at the limit i mean the whole goal here is to keep additional over clearing from taking place is that correct well i think that i i take your point but i think that this refers to lots where they're you know grandfathered in that they can clear cut um well we don't want to encourage them to to do that okay so so but you're talking about a case where they're entitled to clear further yes yes those properties would be exempt if there was like egg overlay properties have um they're exempted from the the clearing restrictions so they probably wouldn't be required to stake because they're exempted from it so if

148the lot was cleared prior to say water recharge overlay right yes you're saying that they still retain the the ability to clear 100 percent of the lot i'm not i don't know specific for water for that that that district but whatever their my understanding was that whatever you had cleared pre-existing is frozen in time and if for instance you were only allowed to clear a half acre and you cleared three or three quarters and then the code changed and said you're only allowed to clear a half acre um you can't clear more than you already have at the at the point of non-conformity right yes that's my understanding as well so i think this means in my reading of it uh it's a little confusing and maybe leaves a loophole that they're that they're exempt

149simply because they had some pre-existing clearing they may have more that they could clear but they're not entitled to clear it under the law and we we want to prevent over clearing clearing beyond what was focused on it's a time if you will so i think you know that could be time to exempt those properties i mean in the case where they they have 100 percent clearing ability then yeah you wouldn't require this but there i think there are other cases that fall into this definition that um so maybe we could add with pre-existing 100 clearing yes and that i mean that makes sense to me because yeah that makes otherwise you know you can clear beyond what you're allowed and the point here is to basically require that it you know that we preserve

150um the amount of natural vegetation on the lot that's an excellent point and i will add legally pre-existing 100 clearing or any further caveat that makes more sense because i don't want to provide a loophole for people to uh over clear because that's that's definitely not not the goal and so um so again the staking part of it currently the way the building permits are issued in my understanding is you have to submit a survey showing that the clearing on the property or or the proposed clearing for the project so if it's a existing lot where there's an existing house and you're going to build an addition for instance you have to demonstrate what you're allowed clearing is whether or not you're in compliance and and the limit of any additional so we're staking out

151the the boundary between uh the uh permissible clearing and what needs to be retained i think it's the the language is the the the clearing limitations so whatever the area that they're allowed to clear to um would be the line of the property delineate right so so let's say instead of uh clearing we're talking about right now we're under the code you have to stake the location of a swimming pool yes you actually stake out the perimeter of that area where you're going to be working for the pool and that's where it's located so so we'll be delineating between cleared and allowed clearing and and clearing that has to be maintained right yes that's the intent here yes just uh thank you for that i just want to make sure i understand it so if

152you don't mind i just got a couple couple comments and thoughts like i know when i was uh from the zoning board clearing was becoming one of the major issues from the town and you know i'm really happy where to that to this point for having this discussion and sylvia how we brought we got to this point um so there's there's a couple things here you know i know an avid david i don't know if it's necessary because the um the signed survey uh signed a sealed survey should should act as that also it might just be another encumbrance of money that would be charged to the to the to the property owner um our biggest thing one anoth another thing is about uh what about a fine schedule for non-compliance above clearing are we

153gonna see if we can incorporate a greater fine schedule or free schedule that will make uh anyone you know being becoming a little bit more of a cynic uh that doesn't comply on purpose to not to do this you know where does that come to a point um i have a couple of comments on that when you're ready sure okay i'll just i'll just go through a couple here then too um i think what another big issue here is um it is the outreach you know uh surveyors are licensed and legally bound by licensed by this by this by the state so the surveyors might go there but you know the survey only really gets checked into the by the town when there's a building permit uh or uh or is being requested there's no

154trigger so sometimes there might be two three different surveyors on the same property they all might survey the you know the clearing areas differently you know this is sort of targeting uh new builds or new constructions which is good but um i guess it's how can we make sure that there's less ambiguity to clearing uh can can we potentially do that through outreach to our landscapers to other contractors through that license can we offer a course potentially uh you know but be a continuing education course to any of these individuals to make sure that surveying is uh the definition of serving and sorry of clearing the town of east hampton is set across the board um i would also be interested in in putting if it's new clearing such as this or clearing that would

155be through a building permit to adding a project limiting fence and specific overlays i would only like to look at each pod harvard protection overlay where you know it's sometimes the most important uh protective areas uh an h-pod where water can run typically a lot of times right down to the sorry water or runoff can go right down to the land um but uh those are some of my main questions also you got i want to watch out for we had this couple times in the zoning board where an ia system was going in and there's additional clearing for an ia system particularly if it's a a high water table uh and the drain field has has to go in how how can we address you know potentially still allowances for uh ia systems which

156we want and upgrades but allow for clearing you know can can we we renotate that is there a percentage that we can discuss on that um but i think that would be a different discussion um that would be just addressing clearing and clearing calculations i mean when you when you said project limiting fence i mean i think that's basically what we're we're looking for is to say look you have a building envelope and a clearing envelope and we want you to stay within those and we want them delineated so that there's no mistake oh oops we over cleared yes um you know i think that's really the problem and you know we've seen frankly far too many times where uh you know builders come in they're maybe not familiar with our rules or they think

157it's okay or the owner insists that they want the property cleared beyond the limits of the law and uh they already have you know when they get a stop work order or it comes the attention of the town they say well here's our revenge plan here's our revegetation plan they've already developed the plan because they they want to over clear and uh yeah they simply provide a revegetation plan to make the landscape as they as they'd like to see it um so i think we want to i mean that's the reason swimming pools ended up being required to be staked as to their location because far too many times the pools would go in and people come to the zoning board afterwards oh it's too close you know i need a setback variance or in

158one extreme case the swimming pool is actually built on a neighbor's property i don't know if you all remember that it was probably 15 or 20 years ago and uh you know so that having the state surveyor uh the surveyor state the property there's there's really no mistaking mistaking sorry about the funds but that leads into my questions and from my experience too on the zoning board and i think i was on that pool one where the property owner actually had to cut off the uh part that that was in setbacks and and reached into the name jardin as it was a heart-shaped pool phil gamble said we hate to break your heart um yeah so but the issue is for me is once they have it staked out do we go back in and

159out and inspect um or before the actual structure foundation is placed in is there i know there's inspection triggers for electrical and septics that have to be looked at but in order to stop people from doing something that you really can't fix even with a re-vegetation plan they don't have to plan mature things how do we stop the process for moving beyond that staking and ensure that um that's in compliance so we don't have to do things retroactively is there an inspection trigger is that too onerous for town employees i mean how do we you know staking sounds great but if there's nobody there to say that stakes correct we're still going to be at the same place at the end of the day is my fear yeah i think so i was just going

160to say i think that if you if you start out from the point of this is the line don't cross the line um then you're kind of dealing with a different situation as opposed to maybe a mistake um and that goes back to the discussion about what the fines what the penalties are um maybe you get your maybe get a time out i don't know if that's illegal or not where you have a stop work order issued and you know you can't you can't start work again until the revegetation plan has been uh vetted and approved and put in place you can't continue with construction i mean that would be a huge deterrent because uh my experience is that time matters more than money in many cases and so you can't get time back and

161you can make more money and so i think that that might be one possible to disincentivize what has become a common practice so it still doesn't answer the question of inspection i don't think um i think the point of you we do have inspectors that go on the site and if the the line's there they'll see that that's not to say somebody can't move stakes okay but the final survey is going to point that out right um and again you know having some sort of maybe you don't get a co issued so i mean there are there are remedies but i think you know we have to figure out what the disincentives are because that's that's preventative and it doesn't take too long for the word to get out just like the word got out

162among developers oh well you can just clear it and then show up with a revegetation plan you know that's the remedy just re-vegetate and it's not commensurate with a a natural landscape by any means mature trees understory you know all of that it's hard to duplicate with a revet splint so so david we had talked about doing the revenge plan issue at a later time or in a different section okay um at both davids david and david um is that correct david mcmaster we were going to do that later yes um and i think it i don't know if the board is aware but the over clearing is an unclassified misdemeanor so um someone that's convicted of this potentially you know runs the risk of carrying a criminal record as a result of it which

163um from my experience is a surprise to a lot of the defendants in justice court so i think that um there have been some discussion of possibly reducing it to a violation and even moving this to the admin bureau but this is one of the um offenses that i'd like to um to keep in justice court as a misdemeanor because i think that's the best leverage that we have to try to indicate that david for everyone listening over clearing is a misdemeanor yes and um i've had um you know negotiations and uh cases in injustice court where you know the um person worked in a profession that was regulated by the sec and i you know was discussing that that's in a regulated profession you have to report your criminal convictions um and after that

164we got compliance so perhaps that should be uh i know i think you have to notarize your building permit or get an affidavit sign that you understand that was thinking the same thing actually that that would be you know there'd be a little paragraph somewhere in there explaining clearing the process do you understand it and understand what the penalties and violations are and have to actually sign and get it notarized right would that be in this section david would you put it here i think i'd have to totally know about that form itself maybe yeah probably in a different section but i would defer to anne where she wanted it okay um you know i i think too like part of the because the goal in justice court is is compliance so when i have

165the defendants that um are charged with over clearing and then successfully submit and implement a revegetation plan sometimes you know that could run them a lot of money um at that point if someone's already spent over ten thousand dollars um and the property is in compliance uh you know how much more are we really out for you know is the goal of the sentence at this point is a punitive is it because i i think that they've you know but probably the problem is that the reve if you're in justice court and you agree to revenge plan or whatever it's too late you're not going to duplicate you know mature trees on the property under story you know soils etc absolutely i completely agree but from a deterrence and just um you know criminal justice

166perspective like what is the the goal of increasing the the fines on this i'd rather go for um having somebody require them to to re implement to implement a revegetation plan and get the plants on the ground part of it but i think i mean i don't know if um if there's a a way of holding up i don't know if that holds up the co if that halts the building progress you know i really liked your idea earlier about the stop work order potentially um some kind of variation of that if they clear past the the line that that you know because time time is money and i i think that's something that we could explore and uh would be a great deterrent in fact that's a really excellent idea and is it doable

167to make it a part of a standard condition on the zba approvals and um planning board approvals um that you know the statement about you know understanding the penalties for clearing we can certainly look into that i know this goes off to another side of clearing but a lot of clearing doesn't just happen when there's fresh construction a lot of clearing happens through transaction or transactions you know because there's no trigger for uh inspection when the house is sold i know southampton and other other communities are now doing uh triggering a cfo for any i need update a cfo for any transaction that would be one way that clearing would have to be confirmed on a property before it gets lost through multiple you may make a really good point there because so many transactions

168are not reliant on uh mortgages anymore which would have which would then trigger a co if it's a cash sale that that can take place without a co and then you know we don't we don't find out about the over clearing uh necessarily and the buyer in some cases doesn't find out about the clearing either because we've certainly had plenty of cases where somebody bought a property that they thought was okay uh and find out only when they go to get the co that now they're stuck with the over-clearing and re-vegetation issues i saw kate and i saw that a bunch when we were together in the zoning board at that time then too and then they go after the you know the builder but the builders now one year guarantee is gone and such

169like that so david mcmaster that might be another thing to look at uh triggers for co on transfer i mean it's not it's not just uh even clearing it can be safety issues to proper pool fence smoke detectors all that sort of thing for properties you know changing hands without getting an updated co you can't verify whether or not the property is safe and in the end i'm very happy this is being addressed now and that that other aspect of outreach you know it's is that through a town communications or or how can we do that potentially through our you know our our licensing when everyone gets a renewals informational packets to what the code is uh because that's just as important because how many people are actually watching us now uh or read the

170papers if it gets the papers which i hope it does um but like you know how how do we get it out there further which is always one of our difficulties as boards but tell me this i'm enjoying this conversation because it's been brewing for a long time it really has so um this particular addition to this [Music] chapter 102. so david can you david mcmaster can you articulate what we can do now for thursday if we can um schedule this if you need to go back and redo some of these things or are we going to add in things like a stop work order we're not going to talk about applications you know on on permits yet but and then and we're not gonna this applica this uh law wouldn't talk about triggers for

171ceos i don't think i think that um we should proceed with just this piece of it because i'm when i'm mulling over the stock work order and the basis in the code for issuing a stop work order right it's there has to be necessarily a dangerous condition so i i don't know that i'm sure we could find a legal basis to to do it but it just doesn't jump out at me right now that well david don't worry if you stop workloaders for non-compliance with building codes that they don't or zoning codes that they have nothing to do whatsoever with safety yes we do um uh sorry i mean i can think of a couple instances where there are stop work orders issued because um you know the plans don't jive with uh yeah with

172what yeah that's a good point i don't think that would be an impediment because i just did another uh totally uh unrelated uh okay we could talk about it off air but it was when the people were living in the the modular homes um there was a reluctance at the construction site that the employees we couldn't issue a stop work order um for that um even though that was a violation of the uh yeah yeah but that's not part of the construction that's uh all right well uh you know let's take some more thought and review but i i i think we could certainly if we can come up with it that's easy enough to add into the the penalty section uh of this later on um but i'll obviously defer to the board if

173you want me to notice it on thursday for a hearing i can do that can we license yeah you know can we can we give a license to a surveyor for the town of east hampton meaning that they that we know who's working in the town of east hampton even though they're licensed by the state because you know surveyors that might be here locally definitely know probably the code verbatim but individuals might be coming from different areas of the state might not know our fauna our vegetation our matters as well uh can surveyors have to be licensed in the town of east hampton to work in the town of east hampton is that one is that one way that we can add a protective layer of knowledge i don't know the answer to that i'd

174have to look into that i know that we have the licensing review board for the the contractors and um and everything else but i would say that that opens the door to you know like lawyers accountants and other licensed professionals having to then get a local license and i know that the um you know the contractor's code typically we defer to us to a county i mean if there's a state license you're a licensed surveyor licensed you know in some way by the state as uh you know typically under the education law we accept those licenses um we may be required to we'd have to double check but it may be a mandate that we can't have a local layer on top of that for those professions um we'll have to look thank you any

175other comments on this topic before you move on i just need to give david direction and david would like direction i think on whether or not to hear with uh what i heard was adding the 1984 1986 and the 100 percent clearing issue that was in that first line um which was page i've got it on page three at the bottom highlighted yeah i think that i think those dates don't don't matter as much i mean you just say legally pre-existing i mean clearing i don't think that would exempt you from being required i thought we kind of came to the conclusion that if you exempt them then the chance of further over clearing is is still a problem all right so dave can i just ask john what do you think about do you

176think that we should try to do the potential stop work order um at another work session and combine it or do this separately um i think it'd be good to get this out there and then you know look at the stop recorder separately okay you know that's a small but probably a minor change but at least we get this out and the requirements will be implemented by the billing department right away okay do you think that about the avid data is that too onerous or is that a stamp sealed a stamped survey already akin to an affidavit i i kind of think a stamp survey is is basically the it's the surveyor's representation that what's on the survey is accurate so i think the affidavit might be you know it's it's a little redundant i

177guess um the affidavit would be for like the builder or the owner or both saying that they understand what the clearing restrictions are right it also attends to the physical staking of it so that sets up kind of the whole means of enforcement of it is that that person's saying i've gone and i've staked this clearing line and then that allows for the enforcement mechanism like you said of nothing past this line so that affidavit just shows that that's been done okay you know i think yeah the survey just speaks to the abstract existence of the line on the survey the affidavit is for the physical presence of the staking on the property are we are we requiring the staking to be on the survey though for the permit i would think so then you

178wouldn't need to have the affidavit in that case but you could have that we could change that to the homeowners and and you know make them agree that they you know they are aware that you know moving those stakes is a violation of law and you know submits them to penalties because you know that's that's what happens sometimes i remember you know talking about zoning board cases where you have that situation where an owner comes in that says yeah you know we had to lift the stakes to get some equipment in and i guess we didn't put it back in the right place you know it does happen and then you'll have those people who probably do it you know maybe with a little more sinister intent but um so it wouldn't be a bad

179idea to have it i guess and maybe include the property owner in it as as a an additional enforcement tool right now on the surveys all you have is uh what you see is proposed clearing in a kind of drawn line but it's not dimensional or you know you can't tell what the dimensions and it's only in a written word that that you get those clearing dimensions delineating a clearing line and you know then there's a sign off by the builder and the owner that they understand the line has to be maintained throughout construction and that you know over clearing you know has certain penalties and that they fred and understand that and they sign off on it in this same section that we're talking about john would you have to have it even in

180the code or could it be just on the building permit application form i think it could be part of the permit application yeah they kind of do that now in a lot of ways so we could just add that into the permit application specific reference to the clearing and the over clearing liability under the code yeah it's just akin to a jaret where you sign something that says false statements made to your end or you know punishable under whatever section of the penal law right you could have that for clearing and said you know over clearing is punishable by whatever yeah [Laughter] classified misdemeanor i think it's a um a b so it might be up to 60 potentially um or there's a chance it might be if it's an a level it would be

18190 but i i believe that it's 60 and so john if i said about staking him in accordance with the east and town code and we wanted to stake him clearing on certain increments instead of like four stakes could we do staking every 50 feet something to that effect or would that also be best place for the permit or is that best place for the code i i think you could put that in the permit i think that's going to have some discretion because there might be situations where you know just to straight every 15 every 20 whatever it is might not work and maybe the billing inspector would want to see it delineated more frequently well maybe something to the fact no less than right right can we just say project limiting fence that's

182that's another financial constraint on to it also that's what i'm saying in one area plastic fencing does doesn't cost a whole lot and you don't you're not saying how large the fence is i mean i i don't know i mean you look at some of the revenge plans and they're 50 000 so i don't think you know 300 worth of plastic fences that'd be too hard too much of a hardship it could be i don't know i i think uh i think the surveyors in delineating state delineation i mean they they're not going to be able to do an arc with two stakes you know that kind of have to leave it to their discretion i think to some degree and then it's up to the owner of the builder they behoove them to put

183up project limiting fence if they if they're in tight quarters can we suggest something like you know staking every x number of feet or and or project limiting fence so we give them an idea sure yeah i mean that's that's two good options on them um but uh but besides that oh you know let's we've had a lot of discussion on this which i again i think um but uh there's gonna be more to add but it'd be really interesting to see what the public says also so i don't mind moving this the public hearing the certain changes we just made i do see um you know authority for revocation of a building permit and stop work orders in 2 202 11 and 12 uh that go beyond uh dangerous conditions that actually they state

184that if it's not you know uh plans applications specifications on the basis of which a building permit was issued comma or in an unsafe manner but the language seems to be there that if you don't comply with the what you submitted you can either have your a stop work order or revocation of the building permit well there you have back are we are we saying are we leaving in and aft having the affidavit from the licensed surveyor are we saying it should be the property owner or are we not or or have we eliminated it all together i'm not clear i i was thinking that if he's if he's submitting um a survey with this line delineating clearing it's a stamp survey that's essentially the same as an affidavit makes more sense and yeah i

185mean that's i think we were that we rely on fine stamp surveys for atta surveys the testing to you know pool location or proposed or existing buildings john is suggesting that it goes on the on a building from it right for the owner and the builder i think that makes sense okay and how fast can we get that done that's a discussion question yeah that's a discussion with ian glennon and i don't you know that's literally just adding maybe a paragraph okay and notarize the existing permit anyway right so it's just literally maybe you just initial that section okay um so david could you get that wording correct uh to me or to um you know so we can look at it and then i can ask anne if that's okay or you can ask

186anne if this is going to work you can add it absolutely okay thank you all right so affidavit is coming out david is going to rework this a little bit and then we'll try to get it ready for thursday to be noticed for public hearing great thank you very much sylvia for pushing us forward and david for your work on this we're still pushing that's right well get this done we'll get there we'll get there this is i think this has been a good discussion okay thank you okay and that brings us up to liaison reports do you have a liaison report for us i do so i just wanted to get the board up to speed that uh last week diane patricio and i met with the team from r2 architecture the folks that

187are going to be designing the new senior center and we were discussing how we're going to use and implement community engagement as a tool to help shape the plans for the new senior center and we've agreed that we're going to be meeting once a week as we develop the mechanics of this process some of the components though that we believe will include include uh will be a survey in english and spanish and david you'll be happy to know that we want to use qr codes to get folks to the surveys uh in-person meetings insurance we feel now you know folks hopefully will be comfortable because it would be really beneficial to be able to do this in person but we also know that there'll be folks that will be more comfortable uh attending remotely so

188that'll get built in uh to the process as well so right now we're targeting um like a thursday evening through a saturday morning similar to what we did when we did the hamlet studies and looking at our schedules for late april or early to mid-may in the meantime r2 has tasked the town with identifying groups and community partners that we can work with to help spread the word uh as we get into this uh you know as we seek community input and participation uh in the community engagement process next up i just want folks to mark their calendars i had a conversation earlier in the week with uh sergeant alversa who is responsible for drug take back day you know pre-coping we used to do them twice a year in april and october uh sergeant-aversa

189has said that they've designated saturday april 30th uh as drug take-back day it'll be here at town hall and i'll be we'll be running ads in the local papers like we've done in years past i wanted to talk about resolutions for thursday i'm hoping to offer a resolution uh to change the use district for those properties on route 1514 you know we talked about putting an affordable housing overlay district over 776 780 and 782 route 114 we held that public hearing on march 3rd we've got a great deal of public participation the transcripts have been up so i believe we need to have them up for a week before we can vote on it and i think we've met that we'll meet that threshold for this thursday march 17th john i did want to ask

190a question we also held a public hearing for the chapter 151 special event permits and i was wondering how i could get expedite getting that transcript posted because we really need that legislation in place before the start of the season because that would be most helpful so if there's anything i can do to get that moving that would be great have you been posting it hasn't been posted um the two affordable housing transcripts were posted the management stewardship um you know plan for the cpf public hearing was posted but that's the only thing i saw as of this morning and then i just peter touched face on it and i just wanted to talk about you know you know will we be going back to in-person meetings you know we've been conducting these remote meetings

191and um under an executive order from governor hocle which um that suspension is set to expire tomorrow march 16th at midnight so tomorrow's planning board meeting will be uh remote but you know typically the governor uh lets us know like the day it's due to expire so we're all you know waiting here on pins and needles to know whether we're going back into public meetings um so in the anticipation of that councilman kate rogers and myself uh set up meetings yesterday in the main meeting room with uh our i.t folks heath leedman and nancy serafin as well as the folks from ltv jason now are in that loans lounge so that we can ensure that town staff would be prepared you know for that imminent switchback and we these meetings gave us the opportunity for

192for folks to understand some of the uh updates that have been made in the main meeting room i think folks are going to find the sound and the picture much more improved when we go back to in person we wanted to troubleshoot any potential issues and decide whether any new equipment was warranted and sure enough you know our planning staff had requested that we put in a desktop computer with two screens so because that has been one of the great things that have come out of these remote meetings how you know having that flexibility would be really helpful and i think kate you know coined it the presentation station so in the short term we're going to have a laptop there but i t will be ordering a desktop for that spot and it will

193also be ada accessible whereas at times the podium isn't but given the historic nature of the main meeting room we were hoping that the towns carpenters could build the table to accommodate the uh the desktop and some other equipment that will be sitting under it um so i'm i'm hoping that we can um make that happen and maybe meet with the carpenters maybe kate and i can meet with the carpenters this week and and get that moving and i just want to say that i'm grateful to the partnership with ltv because it's been you know it was things went seamlessly yesterday and i think everybody had an opportunity to have a dry run that wanted one because um you know as i said there have been some changes in the main meeting room and then

194lastly what i just wanted to mention that um i've talked about how kate and sylvia and i are considered in state law counsel men and uh that has always made me crazy and i had reached out to assemblyman thiel's office and i learned that fred was a co-sponsor of legislation that replaces all instances of the words counsel man or counsel men with the words council member or council members and that it is past the assembly and it's in committee in the in the senate and i'm i'm excited to you know get new business cards and uh we'll all be council members which we should be because if you looked at the ballot last november we were the i believe the only office on the ballot that was gender specific and you know it should be

195gender neutral so i'm excited about that and i appreciate you know uh fred being a co-sponsor of that bill and that's what happened today and it's so fitting it's in one woman's history you know historic event having a majority uh the town board being all uh women so um let's see who's up next i'll take it sure uh i want to continue letting everyone know about uh the towns live here work here initiative the town has wonderful jobs that are year round positions the work in town government and also seasonal positions that can be anything from lifeguards laborers a lot of positions please contact our human resources department to look into our inquiries of our our jobs and how they might be beneficial to you if you're looking to do any type of transition to

196a different job we have we have numerous ones live here work here please let's live in east hampton and maybe you want to work for the town of east hampton then too the nation preserve committee met last week uh it was a very nice discussion uh we talked about uh we had a management report uh one of the discussions on our management report that came up was about the amount of fire load that has become into our towns preserves and areas based on um based on the felling of our southern pine beetles um um trees and that the town you know might want to have a discussion with some of these fire chiefs just to discuss this you know as as we continue to move forward and the trees continue unfortunately to die and perish

197and how we can coordinate any any any discussion on that uh we had a let's see we had a discussion on the last point management uh uh plan and uh that was led by uh um new member glenn and then also by some members of the aquaponic protection committee about the designs that we're looking into there overall the designs haven't come back at all they're still a little bit of a while while out but primarily the committee and then also abc members want to see water quality actions but in a way that it's designed not to take away from the harmonious area in the way that it's traditionally been used then too so that was a nice discussion um we also discussed the management plan for rods valley which is in montauk and the navy

198road and how there might be potential changes to that management plan that would address the increased use of combustible elements generators and such uh for evening uh evening action specifically fishing on the on the dock and the pier in that area so we're discussing that um i won't let the four know that i am uh putting up a notice for public hearing uh the gold dart and the fresh pond grasslands management plans we'll have that on for april and i'll send it on to the board and if any members of again a senator board again but if any members of the public have any questions on that please contact my office um the working group for the 395 panago affordable housing project met this past week we as kathy did mention we had the public

199hearing before for some affordable housing projects ios will also have a resolution on for authorization for approval to the changes in density that we've noticed that that that determines a lot of what our density in this location will be we planning department came up with some draft schematics for potential yield that we we discussed here we also discussed as a group of limitations and protections that we might want to put into designs or covenants on on the properties at this specific subdivision to make sure that we maintain this affordability in the future uh because that's not true in some of our other properties that we've had affordable housing projects so we want to make sure these properties are able to stay within our our discussion uh sorry our retention excuse me um i would like

200i think it i will probably be able to get some of these schematics and discussion to the board in may um uh working with the planning department and the group um that we can start seeing what we are looking looking to do uh there um but again the main key is uh um the resolution for increasing the density this thursday uh let's see here um in public works uh i we've been mentioning mentioning steven hands path in 114 for some time right now as we're starting to see that on 114 the state's project has started for installation of new drainage structures on there we're getting to a point where the discussion for this intersection should be brought to the town board for work session on on the design on the towns aspect of it most

201of this is going to be for public safety drainage uh any issues that we might have with the with the state with uh subsections of federal uh federal guidelines for retention of the of the properties too so i think i might want to try to schedule that in for for the intersections at stephen hans path and cedar street and northwest road also then too so that whole area is is being focused on but uh i think we're ready to bring that forward in april um i did i have uh been reaching out to uh trustees and our eastern town trustees and the clerk of our trustees mr francis bach about uh uh the beach smoking restrictions that we discussed some time ago um at that discussion that the trustees had they you know they they're

202unsure of where they want to be on a certain linear footage uh i think the majority of the trustees will fee are landing at the 500 linear feet away from the edge of protected areas i will continue my outreach to them but i think i would like to notice that for a public hearing on uh notice the public hearing the first week in april to be heard at the end of april so that we will have that in place for the summer season i think it's ready to get to the public and the trustees will have to do the same also so that's my time frame on that right now and where i've been working in the background there um i've been working with sylvia on beach parking uh and beach parking designs uh in

203everywhere from wayne scott with sylvia to to montauk uh trying to find out how we can uh increase the public's access to uh to our beaches through added parking making it safer uh some areas we're looking at again beach lane atlantic drive a lot of our right of ways a lot of our right-of-ways right now they're they're they go from anything from 50 feet to 100 feet so we're looking at ways that we can make them safer and also maybe potentially increase parking which increases our access to our public our public speeches so uh i think sylvia will be able to get that to your willing wins cac for april uh with any charts and for that discussion her i will continue to work on that uh as i mentioned the bureau of administrative adjudication

204uh we're moving that forward also to a point where i think the board will be prepared to notice any code changes in april so i look forward to getting that on there in the next two weeks and to the board for those changes and that we can discuss that and notice the public hearing for that in april essentially prepared so that's moving along steadily montauk's ccom is having montauk on my mind a virtual uh discussion uh with laura tooman that is going to be on thursday march 17th at 5 00 pm if you're interested in joining on to that please contact uh please contact laura at ccom and monotalk for that type of discussion on conversations of monotalk and its environmental priorities um i want to thank uh i want to thank members of the

205east end's emergency medical uh systems from uh particularly chief jerry terza he said the fire department other members of ambulance tom giardella we participated in a in a panel discussion last thursday i didn't participate i was there with tommy john scavoni we did have some comments there um but the discussion went around uh the future outlook of our emergency services are they going to be paid at one time how is the retention for their personnel how does affordable housing and specifically what's so important computers can be leading is our offering plans for our affordable housing transfer tax could be used to assist our volunteerism where do we outreach for volunteers for volunteers it was a great discussion there i want to thank them i also want to thank chief jerry terza as i did at

206that moment there he is he is stepping down for being chief of the east hampton fire department after staying on for an extended period of time uh he has done a tremendous job i believe for the town of east hampton uh our residents as a chief as uh the chief of the fire department and the fire engineer uh and during covet even more so so congratulations chief terza um i want we had a meeting with the little league uh baltic relocation meeting committee uh recommitting to the plans that we have are moving forward with and the designs and the needs that we have discussed telling them about the funding in place also letting them know that little league will be played at the pango fields this year uh they're all in agreement so moving forward

207they thank the town board for doing so and i will look forward to trying to get an rfp for construction potentially uh at out by the end of uh april if not early may uh to have this uh to have the little lake fields prepared and ready for the 2023 season talking about another form of recreation the montauk skatepark project is being launched this week we had an on-site meeting last week on friday of of uh american rant company who's going to be building it and other construction agencies and town agencies to go over this this project we are looking to start that work up this week we are actually fencing off the project with project limiting fence uh today and after today uh unfortunately to some of the skateboarders the skatepark is going to

208be closed for use into the completion of the project but in the long game it is going to be an absolutely wonderful skatepark skateboard a skatepark uh that's going to be open to all but again it's going to be shut down for a couple of couple of a couple months here right now as we get to that point um lastly i know this is our second to last meeting i know we have a meeting on thursday to the end of the month of march then to my birthday month uh my daughter's birthday month uh but also uh it is the month of uh of saint patrick's day and the friends of aaron and i would be remiss if i didn't congratulate uh mrs b hand this is marilyn behan on be the grand marshal of

209the friends of aaron parade upcoming on march the 27th then two uh and i want to thank uh you know kathy and kate for getting this special event for them and everyone to be able to get ready to bring back one of the greatest funnest events uh for east hampton and montauk the st patrick's day parade which kicks off at 12 a.m on sunday march 24 p.m 12 p.m it goes to 12 a.m you're my your prey might start at midnight march 27th so uh congratulations mrs behan well deserved that yeah that's terrific i think everybody's looking forward to the parade uh council member sylvia overby thank you add my congratulations to marilyn and also don't forget about the m.o ganza parade um which is happening this coming weekend i believe right this saturday at

21012 and we've got amanda marrow and katie baldwin as the grand marshals of that parade excellent so strong women yes all around um i'm going to start with business committee we met last wednesday march the 9th i always start with what uh robert ross gives us information uh covid related at the hospital southampton hospital had three covet patients two of those patients are on ventilators um stony brook hospital had 18 and five of those patients are on ventilators eastern long island had one patient they did testing on march 5th and 7th that he had information for on march 5th there were 38 people tested and zero were positive on march the 7th 71 were tested and one was positive so um good numbers uh at least for the testing and and hope it stays that

211way um our obviously we focused entirely on the outdoor dining legislation which we discussed earlier today um it was supported unanimously by the committee a big thank you to rick whalen again um one thought was that the communication and outreach needs to be considered to uh to the restaurants to make them understand that the emergency permits have gone away and are no longer available and that this is the program that is now available and they need to do it through the planning department as an administrative permit so we um we might want to brainstorm on how to get that information to to the restaurants um before the season uh the anti-bias task force also met uh east hampton village is planning a tribute for juneteenth and uh has invited the um uh uh through chief

212mike tracy who is also a member of the antibiotics task force and so they have invited the antibiotics task force to uh participate in their event which will be in harris park and we are happy to do that um our diversity show continues michael butler who is a local artist and a long time resident of eastfield is going to be the next guest on our diversity show with audrey gaines being the emcee of that show that'll happen on march 22nd we also had a discussion on what appears to us to be the latest attacks on human rights issues and this is through a bill that was passed in florida and is on in the process of being considered in 28 states dubbed the don't say gay bill and we are concerned about the the results

213of something like this bullying for our children and um [Music] the squandering or the squelching i guess i should say a free speech and these are all issues that we are going to address uh through letters to the editor so you should see some of those those letters hopefully this week in the east hampton star we think it's a very serious issue and we will continue to have responses to things that are an affront to members of our community let's see the community housing opportunity fund committee met we have a letter from them that to the town board on issues to consider uh for the point five percent transfer tax spending um we had written it over a month ago but we've been adding to it some some issues that we think need to be

214refined for and sent to the town board so that'll that'll be forthcoming and i know peter has is putting together the group that is going to be looking at what those concerns are what those things for spending will be for the five percent tax transfer tax point five percent i did say point five percent i hope um clearing has begun on the housing authorities project on three mile harbor road the clearing started on march the first so you should see that as that progresses there was a discussion also about martha's vineyard they have a not-for-profit what they call island housing trust at martha's vineyard they do things a little bit differently than we do here but we are going to have somebody from martha's vineyard as a guest at our next event at our next

215sorry meeting to discuss kind of how how they are progressing with some of their issues which are some of the same issues we have here um their median price income for a house on martha's venues is 1.2 million so it is also very difficult to live and work on martha's vineyard uh the arts council met and uh the one of the things that uh is on our agenda and in our sites is the brooks park there will be a letter that was unanimously agreed upon by the group and every member of the arts council was there except one and we want to continue to support brooks parks even though the condition report from drew bennett was dire this project must move forward and we voted to restore and and we must restore those four buildings

216on the property so you will get that letter coming soon um march madness at the high school um is going to be this week and we do and sponsor an art competition which is between the classes and the east hampton arts council provides all the paint brushes and big thank you to tony littman who in the workshop cuts out the 4x4 panels and primes them and gets them ready for hanging before the kids even start their projects so thank you to tony for doing that and he delivers them to the high school uh the judging will take place this thursday five members of the east hampton arts council will be there and we again thank uh art teacher heather evans for doing this program we can see at the high school all of the panels

217are hung from the past years and it's really fun to see um you know what what the kids have produced over the years and thank you to the arts council for you know having this project year after year uh there's going to be an alumni art show for east hampton high school students sponsored by the east hampton arts council and the east hampton historical society it'd be the week of may the 13th and it will run through the 22nd you have to be a graduate of east hampton high school and then there'll also be a section of current high school students that will also be able to participate and that is um uh i think i said that the opening is uh may the 13th and it starts at four o'clock on may 13th but

218we'll we have time to talk about it again um uh i also attended the police reform committee i think the supervisor is probably going to have that in his his report so i will i'll let the supervisor talk about it i went to the amigant citizens advisory committee um and was the liaison for this month for them there was a presentation by carolyn logan gluck and sarah davidson about the development of the wayne scott commercial center i think some of the biggest impacts they wanted to make sure that that uh that the community is aware of is traffic and environmental issues associated with the development of this property and um it was it was well received and they had a nice presentation lots of questions were asked about it the lighting subcommittee also discussed and

219was a long presentation by john broderick and they had walked amicans at main street and there were some issues that they're looking at i think um you know they they saw that there was some uneven lighting the lights are too high particularly when the trees are in bloom then it sort of diffuses the light and it seems unsafe they need an attractive fixture one that has better illumination um they cautioned against doing anything that looks like runway lighting and which i agree with uh one of the issues of concern that has less lighting is is that entrance into the parking lot so if you go down that small kind of little road that goes into the main parking lot there's no lighting at all on that section and they'd like to see some lighting added

220to that section or at least to be considered we did talk about what the town is doing and they would hope to be involved in what the town is working on with naipa and i know kim shaw's department is really spearheading that seth turner was there he wanted to thank the uh cac for advising the town and advocating for the need for another crossing guard so they now have two crossing guards at the amigans at school seth turner is the if you don't know is the superintendent of the amigans at school and they're hoping for um in-person meetings this spring and that is my report jason sylvia yes i do peter thank you uh first before i start my report i just want to call everyone's attention that um tonight is the energize east hampton's

221free home efficiency webinar it begins at 6 30 pm again this is a free informational webinar that will give folks the tools to save thousands of dollars while protecting the environment certainly worth going to this evening it's virtual it's free and it starts at 6 30 and you can register at energizeeh.org and look for the events tab the other event that i want to make note of is the springs historical society and community library presents another great meet the author night wednesday march 16th at asheville hall at 6 00 pm again the admission is free and this month's meet the author is randy lorden who writes the mysteries sydney sloane series and her most recent mystery she's dead who cares takes place here in east hampton and will be a great read and everyone's invited

222to go there and enjoy that evening it's those meet the author nights are really really fun um and enjoyable and it's a great time to get together with people as we move forward um without the emergency declaration and i'm just so excited about that i just want to take a quick moment to not only thank everyone here um for all the work uh keeping us safe during the the emergency of covid here on the screen but also all the staff in the town and extend that to the community the teachers i'm gonna try to mention everybody but not gonna do it but people who worked in the schools and the restaurants and the stores and the first responders who kept our town safe and running and still in business uh throughout this time with under

223the leadership of the supervisor and and this town board my my fellow town board members and i can't thank you enough um i attended a follow-up meeting with change hampton in the natural resources department with kim shaw going over their proposal for a pollinator pathway demonstration project here at town hall near the front entrance we also saw a representation of the sculpture i'll call it the sculpture pollinator project that the supervisor is putting together and everyone was really excited about both projects so change.org is an organization that is facilitating education and resources about the impacts of clearing on our insect population but also across the board and the excellent options that are there for creating instead pollinator pathways um and it's a really great project and i look forward to moving that forward and bringing

224a presentation to the board when we get to that point uh shortly on friday we had a meeting with the carp committee that's the coastal assessed assessment and resiliency plan committee meeting was very productive we had both departments and natural resources and planning involved along with the members of the committee to take a look at carp make some work group minor changes to the document and then we'll be bringing that forward again to the town board in a presentation for adoption so we can get moving on um implementing some of the recommendations in the project to um strengthen our coastal resiliency here in east hampton uh it was a really excellent productive meeting and i thank again everyone who attended uh and the afternoon many of the same people also attended the waterfront advisory committee

225and this is a committee that's formed to update the local waterfront uh revitalization plan that's adopted into our comp plan and again this is a very important coastal planning document i i mentioned that i used it many times while i was on the zoning board to support my determinations for living shorelines etc and the lessening of heart structures um we had at that meeting a presentation from joyce novak from the peconic estuary partnership and she made a presentation that was uh already presented in front of the trustees and the staff here in town and myself we had many questions on the data that was presented there um an idea of an amount of shoreline that was created and had many questions about how that data was compiled and members of the committee and brian frank

226will take a look at how that data was actually correlated and look to perfect it to be more meaningful with what we know happened in east hampton town but i thank joyce for her presentation and for her patience during the question and answer period um [Music] we'll uh we also got a new representative from new york state for the waterfront advisory um committee uh uh her name is barbara kendall and she works across the state with the local waterfront rivada revisal revitalization plans and we look forward to working with her in the future on monday as we had the meeting of the wireless communications committee and discussed what eric presented to us today in detail and lastly i would like to i also before that i went took a ride down on friday with kim

227shaw the director of natural resources to beach lane and did a field inspection of the uh trenching that's going on there and compliance with keeping one lane open etc and the wait times for traffic down on beach lane was about two minutes in one direction and four minutes in the other well and that was caused by just moving uh vehicles uh up and down out of the line and back into the line to continue this kind of caravan of trenching and then closing up the road um the lastly i will reiterate uh the call for comments as part of our secret scoping session and please members of the public if you have comments send your comments to eh airport scope at ehamptonny.gov for friday march 18th at 4 00 p.m and that's what i have

228uh thank you very much kate um i'll start with the covet update so over the last six weeks uh the test results that our testing location at 110 stephen hands path has resulted in only four positives i'm very pleased with that progress and as a result i will be rescinding the emergency declaration that's been in place for just over two years two years and two days and the associated executive orders as well again i'm extremely happy to be at this point uh feeling good about the way things are going let's hope this continues as the weather warms we would expect that the rate of infection would continue to go down hopefully this is completely gone and uh we don't have to deal with it anymore and if we do have to deal with it that

229it becomes more like a seasonal flu and uh not quite so disruptive the whole world's been turned upside down for two years and it's caused a lot of people a lot of grief and i'm happy to see the end uh really pleased to see that we're getting back to parades that we're gonna have this year again the the montauk friends of erin st patrick's day parade on sunday the 27th at 12 p.m excited about that get out and see everyone have a good time and celebrate with what is really in some ways the beginning of summer it's when a number of local businesses start opening up and people start going out more um i will be you know we'll be monitoring as kathy said that the governor's suspension of open meetings law is due to

230expire we don't yet know yet whether it will be extended we're prepared to go back into in-person meetings on the 17th if necessary if for some reason it's it's extended um we may wait until the first meeting in april which would be our next meeting um again one of the things that we have noticed is that overall we've had much more public engagement in the town board meetings when people have been able to call in we won't be able to do that anymore until enabling legislation is passed there i know there is a bill before the state legislature to amend the open meetings law which would allow for hybrid meetings in the future um we think this is a good thing on many different levels it allows for better accessibility to government for all sectors

231of our community disabled people who are taking care of children people who are at work can all take part in our democratic process uh in real time and there's really no substitute for that we have a better government when we're informed by the people that we uh we work for so um that's the that's the update on on the meetings um i'll be offering a resolution i think it was sylvia that alluded to the community housing plan i'll be uh offering a resolution to appoint that committee which will be involved with developing the plan for how community housing fund monies may be spent working out those parameters and that process we think that it will be somewhat similar to the way water quality funds are authorized through the current cpf water quality component that there

232would be a board that would review and vet projects and recommend them to the town board recommend those expenditures to the town board there will be a referendum this november and we we expect to have the plan pretty well in place ready for the public to come in on by june and to be able to give us enough time to properly advertise that plan and make the public aware ahead of the re the referendum in addition to that and kate talked about this a little bit a couple of years ago just before coven struck i had been meeting with edwina van gaal and some other folks my interest was to help inform people that there are other ways to treat your residential landscape that you don't have to have all lawn there are ways to

233plant native species and other species that help support the biodiversity of our town and support insects and birds butterflies all of that which we're all dependent upon and it it's uh it's hard to assess i think for most people the impact that all those species have on balancing our environment helping our vegetation grow keeping other pests in check and so it's really the web of white web of life and when i gaze out this this office window and i see large expanses of lawn i think you know we could lead by example so um there has been interest in converting uh some of this property some of this landscape to areas that won't need regular mowing that this will help support and promote wildlife and wildflowers and pollinators and as kate said there have been

234a number of discussions over the last couple years about installing a pollinator garden at the entrance of town hall so that people can see that as a demonstration project and see that you can have beautifully landscaped area in your home that really supports these different types of wildlife we already have a pollinator garden here it's right outside my back window here it's beautifully done the east hampton garden club installs maintains that but it's a little bit out of the way so the general public might see it briefly as they drive in but they don't get to closely inspect it because there's no sidewalk there and there's really no reason for people to walk over to this part of the campus so having it right in front of town hall where everybody comes and going gets

235a chance to opportunity to see it and there can be you know great opportunity for education so i'm excited that we're back on track with that priorities are starting to shift now the code's finally easing up and so i look forward to seeing some further advancement on that i'll just reiterate it again because we again are looking for your comments about the airport about proposed rules and regs about things that we should consider possible impacts of any actions that we might take or steps that the public think we should take we're not looking so much for complaints as in as we are for constructive comments to help guide our future decision making process this is a requirement under new york state environmental quality review act that we have this scoping session and take comments from

236the public again those public those comments may be emailed to the town board at eh airport scope at b hamptonny.gov and we'll take those comments through friday march 18th 4pm [Music] sylvia did mention the police reform committee which basically put together a re-envisioning plan for our local police as mandated by new york state and one of those steps includes the formation of a community review board and that committee has been uh i guess voted on and adopted through resolution we had our first meeting uh it was a very good meeting we took the opportunity to get to know each other a little bit and go over a basic outline of the different things that the committee is charged with accomplishing and essentially the most important aspect is really to for the for the community review

237board to monitor the progress that we have in achieving the objectives and goals of the plan and that includes better communication outreach to the public better understanding and a whole series of metrics the police department chief sarlo is in the process of completing his annual review for 2021 and a number of the issues that are mentioned in the plan will be updated and progress will be noted on those topics uh we will be meeting again in another month to review that plan i think you'll have the excuse me the the report done by then and we'll have a chance uh to review it uh make suggestions and focus on what what still needs to be done and uh that covers my liaison report we have a few resolutions to offer and i think kate you're

238the first yes thank you um the first uh resolution is uh 20 22 349 and that's a modification to 2022-327 and that's where uh we the town board approved the prior resolution for cost associated with the survey of the army corps of engineers downtown montauk beach replenishment project site to determine the quantity of sand required for compliance with the operational management agreement and the town retained robert h fox dba c-level mapping to perform the required survey of downtown montauk and would like to include the option to survey ditch planes beach to determine the quantity of sand needed to maintain use of the beach through the 2022 season and so it is resolved that the firm of robert h fox at sea level mapping is retained to perform the required surveys for downtown montauk and additionally

239ditch plane speech as per proposed um and with the total cost not to exceed six thousand dollars for both locations and uh resolve that uh robert fox is hereby retained to perform the required survey for downtown montauk and ditch planes beaches second favor all right i passed the caring and my second resolution is 2022 350. this is a 2022 budget modification for the highway department and the highway department needs to cover supply expenses for excessive snow removal and icing due to the recent severe storms the 2022 budget lines are exhausted and additional funding will be needed to cover the remainder of the season so it is resolved that the town board at the request of the highway superintendent directs the budget office to make the following budget modifications and that's to take forty thousand dollars

240from the road surfacing material budget line and move it to the same forty thousand dollars to snow removal supplies second all in favor aye aye aye pass and carry resolution 351 is to authorize attendance at the new york state gfoa 2022 conference uh resolved that uh niji valeria is hereby authorized to attend new york state government finance officers association annual conference from april 6 through april 8th that it cost not to exceed 775 dollars sorry sorry second yeah all in favor aye pastor kerry we do have uh items to discuss an exact session um i make a motion we go into exec for personnel for uh real estate purchase uh for um outside agreements and advice of counsel right now all in favor all right aston carriage shall we reconvene at 3 15 3 o'clock

241what do you think okay 3 15. perfect 3 15. okay very good i'll send out the league shortly thanks very much everyone stay safe and be