Town Board wrap-up: Jan. 9 work session

Tickets, code enforcement, zoning and a proposal for a sober house across from Riverhead Town Hall were on the town board’s work session agenda Thursday.

Dunleavy wants more summonses

Councilman John Dunleavy, chairman of the town board’s traffic safety committee and a retired Riverhead police officer, says Riverhead police aren’t issuing enough code enforcement or traffic and parking summonses.

Police Chief Dave Hegermiller told the board that the number of parking tickets issued in 2013 was up over 2012, thanks to the deployment of traffic control officers. He said police officers have been directed to focus on speeding.

Dunleavy said Riverhead police “only want to handle the big things.” The councilman said he believes the police force, which has highest-paid employees on the town’s payroll, should be more productive.

Sober house planned across from town hall

Mainstream House founder and Riverhead native Robert Hartmann and attorney John Taggart made a pitch for siting a recovery home across the street from town hall — in an East Main Street house previously used by the town building department as temporary quarters after their Howell Avenue office had a fire.

Mainstream House is a self-pay, working mens’ house for recovering addicts, Hartmann said. Residents, who pay their own way, are required to work and attend 12-step meetings, he said.

Mainstream House currently has seven locations in Riverhead, Hartmann said. The organization would house about a dozen men in the 2,500-square-foot house.

The use will require a town board special permit under the site’s current zoning. Board members agreed to call a public hearing on the special permit application.

Dunleavy praised the Mainstream House operation. “When you go past them, you’d never even know they were there,” he said. He also noted that Mainstream House is a for-profit company and, as such, pays property taxes — unlike “99 percent of these houses.”

Jamesport Manor Inn asks board for special permit to allow catering
Jamesport Manor Inn partner Frank McVeigh and attorney Linda Margolin met with the board to discuss alternatives outside of the currently pending litigation with the town that would allow McVeigh and partner Matt Kar to establish a catering facility at the restaurant’s site.

Kar-McVeigh LLC has been embroiled in litigation with the town over the proposed catering use for nearly a decade.

Margolin told board members she’d like to resolve the long dispute outside of court by applying for a special permit for the catering use. The property owners would like to have a 150-seat catering facility in a barn and tent, as an accessory use to their 80-seat restaurant.

Catering is needed to make the business profitable, said McVeigh, who said he and Kar had to put $40,000 each into the business last year to keep it afloat.

Current zoning on the site does not allow the restaurant use, which has been deemed a pre-existing nonconforming use.

“What you’re asking for is an expansion of a pre-existing, nonconforming use that is more than a 100 percent expansion,” Supervisor Sean Walter said. “I’m not about to set that kind of precedent.”

Councilwoman Jodi Giglio said she believes the restaurant lost its pre-existing use status because the use was abandoned when the restaurant was closed down for more than a year due to renovations and then a fire.

The meeting with McVeigh and Margolin ended without a conclusion as to what direction the town would take on the matter.

Councilman George Gabrielsen recused himself from the discussion due to a prior business relationship with Matt kar, he said afterward.

Proposal to require dry wells for swimming pools scaled back
New swimming pools that come within the jurisdiction of the town’s conservation advisory committee will be required to have dry wells if a proposed code is approved by the town board.

The CAC had sought to make the dry well a requirement for all pools in the town, but the town board balked at that idea, citing the expense of installation and question the need for them on upland sites.

The revised proposal will generally affect pools within 150 feet of wetlands. The board agreed to set the proposed code for a public hearing.

When is an office ‘professional’ — or not?

The board revisited the question of whether a window-cleaning company’s office met the code’s definition of “professional office.”

Ike Israel of Richmond Realty met with the board a week earlier to discuss the definition as it applies to a former gas station site on the southeast corner of the Pulaski Street-Osborn Avenue intersection. The site is currently in the village center zoning use district, which allows “professional offices.”

While board members would like to see the site, now abandoned, rehabilitated and put back to use — the supervisor referred to it as a “blight” — last week they expressed concern over the inclusion of a window-cleaning company in the professional office definition, largely because the use would involve parking of the company’s fleet of trucks in the parking lot. Much like a taxi cab company, the trucks would be dispatched from that location and parked there overnight.

Board members agreed that the applicant should meet with the board at a future work session to discuss his plans.