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Officials update status of grant-funded projects throughout town

At a work session Tuesday, government liaison officer Denis Noncarrow and town engineer Michael Collins updated the Town Board on a laundry list of completed, pending and future grant-funded projects that took shape this year.

Several completed projects, including the renovation of the Ray Dean parking lot near Love Lane in Mattituck and installation of solar panels at the town animal shelter, were funded almost entirely by grants through Suffolk County’s downtown revitalization program and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority clean energy program.

The town is also continuing to use nearly $600,000 in state grant funds to remediate lead water service lines in Greenport and on Fishers Island. Mr. Collins said he may seek to reallocate some funding to Fishers Island, where the presence of lead pipes is more frequent in their system, which is over 100 years old.

“The budget allocated to [Greenport Village] may be more than they need,” Mr. Collins said.

Work is expected to begin soon at the Peconic Lane Community Center after the town was awarded a $50,000 state grant to address lead paint and rotting wood at the former schoolhouse. The project is in the process of being contracted, Mr. Collins said.

The Town Board is also awaiting the results of the expanded Love Lane traffic study. Mr. Collins said the contractors, AKRF, recently completed a survey of the Love Lane and Route 25 intersection and will send a draft report soon.

“That survey is critical because that will let us know if we can fit a roundabout in that intersection without the need to ask for easements,” he said.

Mr. Collins also announced plans to better spend grant funding for a $50,750 stormwater project on South Harbor Road in Southold and $200,000 awarded by state Senator Ken LaValle’s (R-Port Jefferson) office to address remaining outfall systems townwide. He plans to use more in-house resources on both projects, which will mitigate stormwater and are expected to move forward in early 2020.

For example, the $200,000 grant was originally budgeted to cover 10 of the remaining 132 stormwater outfalls throughout town, but Mr. Collins indicated he may attempt to change the scope of the project.

“We could theoretically cut as many as half of the outfalls in town,” if town officials complete the work and use the grant money to purchase supplies for the multi-year effort.

Mr. Noncarrow also anticipates hearing back about several pending grant applications he submitted in 2019, including a downtown revitalization grant sought for Silversmith’s Corner in Southold and a state Department of Environmental Conservation grant for a drainage project at Wolf Pit Lake in Mattituck.

“There’s a lot going on,” he said.

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