Town Hall Notes: Town to Appeal Manor Inn Decision

The town board agreed last night to appeal a State Supreme Court decision that would allow the owners of the Jamesport Manor Inn to erect a standalone barn for catered events in the back of their restaurant and to erect a temporary tent over a patio at the side of their inn to accommodate an overflow of dinners as needed.

In the past, applications for the additions had been turned down by both the town board and the town’s zoning board of appeals. The owners, Matt Kar and Frank McVeigh, then sued and won, with Justice Peter Fox Cohalan ruling last month that the actions of both boards were “contrary to the laws and procedures of New York State,” mandating that site plans for the barn and tent be approved without further delay.

When the town board voted last month to retain an outside law firm to file a notice of appeal, Supervisor Sean Walter said it was “to preserve the town’s position.” But he made it clear at the time that he would rather try to negotiate a settlement with the owners rather than have the town go through the expense of perfecting the appeal.

Last night, however, Walter said that the town’s legal department, citing case law, rendered an opinion stating that the town board had an obligation to defend the zoning board. This meant, Walter said Tuesday, that either the town itself must move to follow through on an appeal or else allow the zoning board to take on the case itself and charge the town for legal expenses.

Since the zoning board’s lawyer, Scott DeSimone, had already announced his decision to perfect the appeal, last night’s vote obviated his need to do so. The town’s appeal will now be handled by the Riverhead firm of Smith, Finkelstein, Lundberg, Isler and Yakaboski.

Phil Barbeto, the owner of an organic farm on Manor Lane, who has filed several actions against Kar and McVeigh, praised the town board’s decision. “This is our town, not Judge Cohalan’s town,” he said. “The town needs to defend its rights.”

Councilwoman Jodi Giglio abstained from voting and Councilman George Gabrielsen recused himself without explaining his reason.

Wooten: Bring back McCabe

Councilman Jim Wooten decided to ask his colleagues to table the to fill in on weekends for the town’s only full-time animal control officer, Lou Coronesi.

Wooten explained after the meeting that he had pulled the resolution after talking to Supervisor Sean Walter, who promised to consider the action that Wooten really wants to have happen – namely, bringing back Sean McCabe, the animal control officer who’s job was eliminated in last year’s budget process and is now working for the sewer district.

Wooten said that Walter had told him he didn’t like the idea of hiring a part-time worker when full-time employees were being laid off. And indeed, Matt Hattoff, president of Riverhead’s Civil Employees Association, told Riverhead Patch Tuesday afternoon that hiring part-timers to fill voids left by union layoffs is not something he’s willing to see happen.

“I’m not happy at all,” he said. “I’ll follow through with the proper paperwork and let the lawyers fight it out.”

Bringing back McCabe, Wooten suggested, would also allow the town to consider either firing Coronesi or transferring him to another department.

Coronesi – long the target of shelter volunteers who say he refuses to cooperate with them – has been accused of lying to Walter about the circumstances surrounding the euthanizing of a dog in December.

Coronese had ordered a pitbull named Bruno be put down stating that the dog appeared to be loosing his aggression and was, in fact, “showing great improvement.”

Coronesi had also reported that Bruno had bitten a child when, in fact, it was later learned that a child hadn’t been involved, but the 22-year son of Bruno’s owner.

Residents back windmill

The Riverhead Sewer District’s plan to erect a 275-foot high, 750 kilowatt wind turbine at its plant off Riverside Drive was mostly applauded at a public hearing last night as making sense both financially and environmentally.

But when a Riverside Drive resident, Pamela Hogrefe, expressed concerns about the noise the wind turbine would make, Walter  promised that a noise study would be conducted even though not required by the state’s Environmental Quality Review Act, known as SEQRA.

Peter Rusy of the Neutral Group, the consulting group working with the sewer district on the project, said that the wind turbine, expected to cost about $1.8 million, would end up saving residents in the sewer district an estimated $5 million in electricity costs during the life of the turbine, which he said was 25 years.

To support the bond that would finance the project, he said residents of the sewer district would face a 25 cent increase in their taxes per every $1,000 of assessed value, followed by a 21 cent increase per every $1,000 of assessed value during the first and second years after the bond was issued.

The increases, he said, would be needed to support the $181,000 to service the bond in the early years. By the seventh year, however, he said the project would begin to result in a significant reduction in taxes attributable to energy use.

One speaker at the hearing – Daniel Karpen of Huntington Station, who said he has been doing energy conservation engineering for 30 years – suggested that the town board go further and consider creating an wind-energy park at the town’s Enterprise Park at Calverton.

He suggested erecting three 3-megawatt turbines on the property, which, once paid for, could provide Riverhead resident with power at a quarter of the price they’re spending for electricity now.

He said the "an environmentally correct" wind energy park would also have the benefit of fending off what he called “the usual complaints” from residents whenever a major residential or commercial undertaking in proposed, thus avoiding the syndrome he described as “Banana” -- an acronym for “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.”