By Hank Russell
On his 100th day as Town Supervisor on April 9, Timothy Hubbard addressed fellow town council members and local residents at Riverhead Town Hall about his accomplishments and future plans for the town going forward during his State of the Town speech. The theme was “Transparency, Civility and Action.”
“It has been exactly 100 days since I took office, although it feels more like 100 minutes,” Hubbard said. “On January 1st of this year, I stood before you and outlined an ambitious list of plans and ideas that I set out to accomplish during my tenure and I am proud to say, together with my fellow Town Board members, department heads and employees, we have made inroads at every front.”
As part of the theme, Hubbard emphasized that he has brought civility back into the Town Board meetings “with a goal of fostering a courteous, patient and polite atmosphere,” he said. “I believe we have accomplished this goal.” In addition, there are now monthly board and committee meetings in which updates from those meetings become discussion items for work sessions. He also reinstated the quarterly civic roundtable meeting.
“This is an excellent source of information for me and the board on the wants, needs and concerns of the community,” Hubbard said of the roundtable meetings. “As I told the civic leaders in attendance, you are the eyes and ears of the community so the Town Board and I can only benefit from your participation and feedback.”
He also meets with “a small, informal group of residents” about development at EPCAL (Enterprise Park at Calverton). which could expand to include developers and business leaders. In addition, he has made planning pre-submission meetings open to the public so they can discuss proposed projects and get answers to questions regarding building and zoning laws.
In keeping his promise to make town government more transparent, Hubbard announced the he will post all resolutions for upcoming town board meetings online on Fridays instead of Mondays, which is the day before the meetings. “This gives both the Board members and the public more time to digest resolutions before they’re acted upon,” Hubbard said. Additionally, all correspondence letters submitted to the town clerk will be viewed in its entirety, not just the subject line, in the agenda packet.
Another topic Hubbard discussed was the town’s finances. Last month, Moody’s upheld Riverhead’s AA2 rating. He also learned that the town has approximately a $6 million surplus from excess revenues and pulling back on spending. Some of the possible uses of the surplus, Hubbard said, include approximately $2.5 million to pay down the anticipation note on the Town Square, paying to renovate and improve the new Town Hall with cash rather than bonding out the project and for Justice Court plans and drawings.
In discussing changes in town departments, Hubbard announced that he is in the process of forming a new Public Works Division that would oversee Buildings & Grounds and street lighting, while the Engineering Department would look over the town’s GIS, sanitation, recycling and storm water management. He also has plans for a new ambulance barn for Riverhead Ambulance after the Engineering Department replaced the roof.
The Town Square project “is also quickly progressing,” Hubbard said, which includes plans to build a hotel, adaptive playground, and riverfront amphitheater. The town recently applied for a $25 million grant to build a parking garage on First Street, as well as sidewalks, lighting, landscaping and stormwater management from the LIRR station to downtown. Public meetings with the consultants will be held to look at the final designs. Most of the projects are expected to begin within eight to 12 months.
“There’s a lot of moving pieces,” Town Councilman Bob Kern said, “but we are moving in the right direction.”
The next topic was drinking water. Riverhead’s Community Development & Economic Department obtained $18.1 million to connect to the public drinking water systems. The town is also bringing water to those whose wells were contaminated. The town recently received $1.25 million in congressionally directed spending to provide clean drinking water to those residents and is currently applying for another $7 million.
Kern said the state underfunds the Department of Environmental Conservation and called on the agency to pressure the U.S. Navy to remediate the EPCAL site. “If we dropped five gallons of gas in the [Long Island] Sound, we’d be in jail,” he said. “That’s why I’m really concerned about this. We might have to reach out to the federal government and get the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] involved.”
One of the biggest accomplishments Hubbard made was the establishment of a School Resource Officer Program with the Riverhead Central School District. Starting in the 2024-2025 school year, one school resource officer will be placed at the high school and another at the middle school.
“We haven’t had a great relationship with them in years past,” Hubbard told Long Island Life & Politics. “We’re now getting along very well. We’re going to be able to do things together, we can do shared services together. That will help all of us because, at the end of the day, we are still going to that same pot of gold, which is the taxpayer.” The more we work together, the cheaper things will be and the more that taxpayers will be better with that.”
He called the School Resource Officer Program his greatest achievement so far. “To me, that’s huge,” he said to LILP, “and in today’s world, you can’t ever be safe enough.” He said he hopes to get one resource officer in the elementary schools in the future.
Referring to Friday’s earthquake, Hubbard told the audience, “Who would have thought we would need protocols for earthquakes? Well guess what! We have one!”
When the earthquake happened, Hubbard said, everyone was evacuated from the building. The fire wardens inspected the interior and the Engineering Department checked the building for any structural damage before anyone could come back in. “There was very little damage,” Hubbard said. “We were lucky. Now we have a protocol and we now know what to do. The protocol is not to evacuate unless the building starts to come down.”
Hubbard was asked what his biggest challenge was so far in his first 100 days. “Getting everything together and trying to make it come to fruition,” he replied, adding it’s a matter of applying for — and hopefully receiving — grants for their projects. “It’s [also] about getting shovels in the ground. But each say, it’s one step closer to the end, so that’s good.”
After the event, Kern was asked about Hubbard’s speech. “I thought it was excellent,” he replied. “Everything he said was spot-on.”