In a joint work session of Greenport and Southold officials this week, village trustees continued their campaign to persuade Southold to allow Community Preservation Fund money to be spent on water quality projects there — while town officials maintained their position that Southold’s limited CPF money is best used solely for land preservation.
On Tuesday, the Southold Town Board brought in the town engineer, the GIS land management coordinator and the executive assistant for land preservation to make the case to Greenport officials that Southold is already funding water quality projects townwide, and that there are other, better ways to fund water quality initiatives in the village.
For their part, Greenport officials argue that the village pays into the CPF with every real estate transaction and — with little open land left to preserve in the most densely populated pocket of town — want more of a say in how that money is spent. They want the Town Board to expand their CPF funding to include water quality, as other East End towns have done, and to use some of that money for pressing village water projects.
At times, the nearly two-hour session devolved into a chicken-or-egg debate. Greenport officials petitioned Town Board members to commit to supporting the use of CPF money for water quality projects before the village goes to work putting together its project proposals, while town officials insisted they couldn’t and wouldn’t commit to anything until they could review the specific proposals that the village has in mind.
Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi repeatedly asked board members to declare their support for spending CPF money on water quality, without success.
“This is a very important issue for the village,” he said near the start of the meeting. “We continue to struggle with climate resiliency issues and have some pretty significant issues with water quality and stormwater runoff. And so we are asking again of this board to … allow for the use of CPF funding for water quality … We’ve been paying in for many, many years.”
For weeks, Mr. Stuessi and other village officials have been aggressively advocating for a change to the town’s CPF policy, through public comments, a guest column in this newspaper last month and community letters to the editor. Two weeks ago the entire Village Board and dozens of village residents showed up at a Town Board meeting seeking to change the policy.
Town Supervisor Al Krupski, who responded to Mr. Stuessi’s column with his own guest column a week later, defended the town’s CPF plan Tuesday.
Mr. Krupski, who served on the Town Board before becoming a state legislator in 2013, said that Southold has been vigorously pursuing water quality projects since the mid-1980s through grants and partnerships with county, state and federal agencies — without ever dipping into the CPF money.
“We embarked on a stormwater program back in the 1980s and 1990s, and we worked with the Suffolk County [Department of Public Works], with the New York State [Department of Transportation]. We had a lot of good partners on stormwater work … so we’ve got a history, pre-CPF, of focusing on these issues.”
The supervisor offered the town’s assistance to Greenport.
“We’re happy to partner with you on that stormwater issue. We do have a lot of experience and a lot of expertise on that, and that’s really where the money is, as far as stormwater remediation and water quality is when it comes to drainage.”
Lillian McCullough, Southold’s executive assistant for land preservation, told village officials that in order to include water quality projects in CPF disbursements, the town would need to update its Community Preservation Project Plan and create a detailed project proposal for how the funding would be used moving forward.
“So ultimately, what the village is asking is for the town to change its project plan, which is a completely reasonable conversation to have,” she said. “It’s just a more complicated action than simply adding some projects onto the plan, because you are essentially asking the town to reassess its priorities.”
She said that Southold took in an estimated $11.4 million in CPF funds last year and that the 20% of that money the village wants to tap into for water quality projects could buy 31 acres of farmland at $73,000 per acre, or 15 acres at $145,000 per acre — average prices paid based on the town’s most recent purchases.
Ms. McCullough said that the town has its own, detailed priorities for the money, but that “prioritizing doesn’t mean that the town is never going to pursue other projects using CPF.”
“But any change to the set of priorities, especially under these circumstances where revenue is trending down, development pressure is high, the cost of land is going up — the town has to carefully consider and methodically consider when it’s going to make these changes, why and what parameters they’re going to set around making those decisions,” she said.
Ms. McCullough also displayed a map showing how the town has so far preserved 345 acres of open space surrounding the village.
“So this amount of preservation spending-wise, accounts for roughly 9% of total CPF spending,” she said. “The village’s contribution to revenue from its inception is roughly 6% of the total CPF revenue. So this preservation accounts for 9% of total CPF spending and roughly 12% of total CPF preserved acreage. That’s a significant investment in the Peconic Bay estuary directly around the village, contributing to the waterfront right in front of the village.”
Across the five East End towns, the CPF real estate tax has generated more than $2 billion since its inception in 1999, though 85% of that revenue was generated in Southampton and East Hampton.
Mr. Stuessi told the board that buying open space is valuable, but that updating the town’s zoning code is the “fastest and surest way to deal with some of these issues.”
Southold zoning doesn’t apply to Greenport Village, which has its own zoning code.
“Buying land will absolutely be helpful, but as a village we’re seeing around us the rampant expansion of a number of different businesses — whether it’s hotels, commercial properties, etc. That’s all happening, and none of those folks are going to be selling off their property to preserve the land.”
Mr. Stuessi went on to say that he had spent a lot of time studying the town’s comprehensive plan and had participated in meetings of every civic association in Southold Town.
“Our biggest concern is overdevelopment, and we need to update the zoning and do so fast. Every single one of [the civic groups] said that we need to look at a larger [commercial building] moratorium than what was considered in order to update the zoning plan. Every single one of them also said that we need to look at community housing — and water quality was a huge issue with all of them.”
At times the session grew animated.
Town engineer Michael Collins told the village officials that “a lot of things have been brought up: I’ve heard climate resiliency, water quality, stormwater runoff, flooding.
“Flooding is not an issue we can solve with CPF money. If you have a flooded street or a flooded parking lot and it doesn’t run off into the bay, it’s not a fundable project [through CPF].”
Mr. Stuessi and other village officials replied almost in unison that “all of our streets run off.
“We’re only one square mile,” the mayor said. “Every single street that floods runs into our bay.”
“Then what I’d like to see is a map,” Mr. Collins responded. “We’ve been asking the village for a map for a while so that we can coordinate with you on stormwater runoff. In 12 years, I’ve never received one. Ours is publicly available. It these things, these elements, that you need in order to do what you are asking. You don’t have a specific idea of what you want to achieve, how to achieve it, and what it’s going to cost,” he said.
Town Board member Greg Doroski urged village officials to put together a detailed plan.
“We do need to put together the project list, whether we’re going through CPF to fund it, whether we’re going to bond or where we’re going to seek grants, we need to have a clear idea of what these projects are because we’re all part of the same estuary,” he said.
Village Trustee Lily Dougherty-Johnson said that if the town doesn’t at least signal its support for expanding availability of CPF money for water quality projects, it seemed pointless for the village to labor over proposals.
“It just sounds like the first step would be that if you guys want to implement [adding water quality spending to the town’s CPF mission statement], implement it and then we can come back, because if we spend the time and energy to write down all the plans — and then you guys are just going to say, ‘we’re not going to implement this’ — it’s all a waste of time.”
Toward the end of the meeting, Mr. Stuessi said village officials would return with project plans, but again asked town officials to commit to using the CPF money for water quality projects.
“We are prepared to come back with something to say what our needs are. We will make sure that we vet things for what is legal or not relative to CPF. But we see what our friends have done on the south side in a number of different places, Sag Harbor being a great example — utilizing CPF funding for sewer and also for stormwater runoff … So what we’re asking is this board to simply agree to implement the water quality planning, and then we’ll sit down at the table and do the heavy lifting together.”
Mr. Doroski again pushed back: “I think, to put members on the spot and say, ‘Do you support CPF money for water quality?’ — What are we talking about? What are the individual projects?
“I think I can speak for every board member that everybody here supports water quality,” he said. “I think you all support water quality. So let’s put these projects on the table and say, ‘How do we do this? What can we do to get this done?’”
New figures released this week by the office of Assemblyman Fred Thiele, one of the architects of the original legislation, estimated that Southold took in about $5.75 million in CPF funds in the first half of 2024, compared with Southampton’s $41 million, East Hampton’s $25 million, Riverhead’s $4.6 million and Shelter Island’s $1 million. Revenues in 2023 and 2024 are below the pandemic bubble of 2020 to 2022, but higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Despite the lack of concrete progress at Tuesday’s meeting, Greenport may eventually get some of the CPF money it is looking for. Pending changes to the CPF legislation, which await Gov. Kathy Hochul’s sign-off, would mandate that 10% of the funds go to projects in communities deemed to be disadvantaged by the state’s Climate Justice Working Group. Greenport is one of those communities.
In the end, the meeting seemed to herald more cooperation in the future. As Mr. Thiele observed in an interview last month, when it comes to Southold’s CPF money, “there has been an issue, quite frankly, between Southold and Greenport at different times over the last 25 years.”
Deputy Greenport Mayor Mary Bess Phillips appeared to acknowledge that on Tuesday, but said the village needs to be more involved in the decision-making processes at Town Hall.
“We have to have a seat at the table,” the veteran village trustee said, “and I think that’s what this meeting is about. Is there a commitment from the town board to discuss — moving forward — involving the Village of Greenport in a different perspective?”
“Absolutely,” replied Town Board member Jill Doherty, who said the joint sessions should be held quarterly.
“The past is the past,” Ms. Phillips said. “We have a new administration that’s very active in wanting to participate with the town of Southold. I would like to put away … the animosity that used to go on between the village of Greenport board and the Town of Southold Board.
“I don’t want to see that anymore,” she concluded, prompting nods of agreement all around the table.