Southold maps out five-year overhaul of Town Hall

Southold Town officials are preparing for a roughly five-year renovation of Town Hall and the Annex — as the Town Board settles on where municipal departments will be located as the project moves into its planning stages.

The renovation would be completed in phases, with officials first developing a plan for the entire building before determining the order in which individual areas will be renovated. 

“Before we can move forward with trying to get plans and specs done for the complete renovation as a building, we have to agree and lock where departments are going to be at the end of this renovation process,” said Town engineer Michael Collins at Wednesday’s work session.

The majority of the departments will be moving, but the Planning Department, Land Preservation Department and the town historian will not. Mr. Collins said staff members in those offices were satisfied with their current space and layout.

The Town Attorney’s Office would relocate to the current court office area, while Code Enforcement would move into the space currently occupied by Records Management. The Zoning Board of Appeals would move to the former Town Attorney’s space on the second floor, giving the board roughly twice its current floor area.

The Building Department would expand into the first-floor space currently occupied by the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Town Trustees. The Comptroller’s Office would expand into an adjacent office.

Under the proposed layout, the Town Clerk and Records Management offices would move into the renovated former bank area, along with a new office for the Town Trustees. 

The former bank area is being renovated as part of the project. Moving the Town Clerk and Records Management offices there would set off a chain of department relocations throughout the municipal building.

The project could include upgrades to the buildings’ heating, ventilation, electrical and plumbing systems, as well as additional meeting and office space, climate-controlled records storage and improvements to employee and public areas.

“It’s going to be an RFP for a soup-to-nuts design and engineering, permitting, all of that for the whole building, including laying out the stages — what happens when, who moves when,” Mr. Collins said. “It’s going to be like a five-year plan, and then you can work in pieces.”

Town Supervisor Al Krupski said an earlier plan had the Town Clerk’s Office moving into the Annex’s lobby area. 

“I put a pause on that because we should do a complete renovation,” Mr. Krupski continued. “We need to do a complete renovation because we need that space to stage everyone else’s operations during the renovation. 

The town bought the building in 2018 for $3.1 million. Since then, officials have drawn and redrawn plans for the space, producing a “hodgepodge of about 150 different scenarios,” Mr. Collins said.

Mr. Krupski told The Suffolk Times that he’s unsure when the next set of drawings will come before the board. 

“It’s a wonderful building, it’s ours. We need to keep it upgraded,” Mr. Krupski said. 

Southold Public Safety Task Force will be transitioning into a Public Safety Committee

The Southold Town Board voted Wednesday night to transition the Public Safety Task Force into a Public Safety Committee.

The committee will include two representatives from the Anti-Bias Task Force, two from the Police Advisory Committee and two members of the Police Department, including the school resource officer. It will also include a school district representative, a Village of Greenport elected official, a community business leader, a representative of the town’s houses of worship and two Town Board liaisons. The two board liaisons — one from the Anti-Bias Task Force and one from the Police Advisory Committee — will serve as co-chairs, according to the resolution.

“The Public Safety Committee, acting at the direction of the Town Board, is charged with communication, education, and coordination, regarding the public safety response procedures, including working with the Police Department to develop educational materials explaining those procedures, what residents can expect from the Department during outside agency operations, and how to report through 911 or police headquarters,” the resolution said. 

This change takes effect immediately. 

Deer Management Task Force meets

The Deer Management Task Force met Aug. 31 to discuss expanding crossbow access, allowing greater flexibility for handling harvested deer and potentially using professional sharpshooters as town officials say recreational hunting cannot reduce the herd enough.

The committee also discussed working with the New York State Department of Health to determine whether the deer situation could qualify as a “health hazard.”

Town Councilwoman Alexa Suess said the committee considered declaring a state of emergency, but such a declaration would be extremely difficult to obtain. A health-hazard designation, however, could potentially open up additional legislative options for Southold to manage the deer population.

Erosion mitigation at Town Beach

Several years ago, government liaison Gwen Schroeder, working with Mr. Collins, Highway Superintendent Dan Goodwin and town GIS coordinator John Sepenoski, applied for a New York Sea Grant to address erosion at Town Beach.

“We were not awarded the grant, and the grant was basically for a soft launch towards mitigating erosion at the beach,” Mr. Krupski said Wednesday morning at the work session. “Luckily, we didn’t get the money, because it would’ve been a plan or something that would not have held up under nature’s demands. The grant was reapplied for and we were approved for it this year.” 

This year’s application proposed using cobble rather than sand to mitigate the erosion, an approach developed by Mr. Collins.

Mr. Krupski outlined some of the work that may be needed, including raising the elevation of the parking lot and potentially raising the adjacent county road.

Officials said the road is a priority in Suffolk County’s coastal resiliency plan, and they also discussed pursuing county and federal support, including through conversations with the county executive and Congressman Nick LaLota.