The Southampton Village Board took care of several important pieces of business on Monday night, November 21, including the passage of a resolution to have an outside engineering firm conduct a review of the draft environmental impact statement prepared by a different firm, Nelson Pope Voorhis, on the proposed Liberty Gardens Housing Project.
The village decided to contract with DB Engineering to conduct the review of the DEIS in response to several village residents who have expressed concern about the Liberty Gardens project, which will be along the village border on the town side on County Road 39, citing in particular worries about the impact the development will have on water quality and traffic in the village.
The DB Engineering review of the DEIS is subject to approval from Southampton Town on a request by the village to extend the comment period on the project, and the review, which will be paid for out of the Trustees Special Projects Fund, will not exceed $10,000.
The board also approved, in a walk-on resolution, a request from acting Department of Public Works Superintendent Steve Phillips to proceed with the immediate remediation of phragmites at the Old Town bioswale, subject to approval from Dr. Christopher Gobler, a leading environmentalist and local water quality expert and consultant who is a professor with Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.
The inclusion of Gobler’s approval was something insisted on by Mayor Jesse Warren, who said he wanted to make sure that the removal of the phragmites would not cause any harm to the environmentally sensitive bioswale. Phillips requested the immediate approval of the phragmites removal because he pointed out that the cost for removal was set to spike significantly on December 1.
Village Administrator Charlene Kagel-Betts shared in the treasurer’s report that while the village was in good shape financially, officials were bracing for the impending release of health insurance premium rates for 2023, which she expected to be released any day. Last year, there was a sharp increase of 11 percent in premiums, and the potential for another sharp increase exists. Coupled with the potential for a decrease in mortgage tax revenue because of a rise in interest rates, it could put the village in a precarious position, and Warren said it could ultimately require the village to tap into the tax stabilization contingency fund that was created last year, at the suggestion of Deputy Mayor Gina Arresta.
“We’re going to be in a situation we haven’t seen the likes of in quite some time,” Warren said. “If we want to maintain the property taxes, we’ll have to tap into the tax stabilization fund we had the foresight to create.”
Cailin Riley on Nov 22, 2022