Letters to the Editor: Town gains little from abatements

Riverhead

Town gains little from abatements

The Riverhead Industrial Development Agency is again considering granting a developer a 20-year property tax abatement in order to build a new hotel at the Riverhead Town Square. The proposed assistance, including $1.5 million in sales tax and mortgage tax exemptions, could amount to $35.15 million, according to two local news outlets.

This is not a small number. In the application filed with the Riverhead IDA by Mr. Petrocelli, the developer, this assistance is required. The project application cites extraordinary up front costs, high interest rates and operating expenses. Without the requested financial assistance, the project is not economically viable and might not proceed.

And what does the Town of Riverhead gain by supporting this project? Per their proposal, there will be 54 full-time jobs and 10 part-time jobs with a payroll of $2.46 million. This sounds like a great boost to the Riverhead economy, but the math doesn’t work out that well.

Assuming 10 half-time jobs account for one position, make the total 59 full-time jobs. $2,460,000 divided by 59 is $41,695. Suffolk County minimum wage is $17/hour; for a 40-hour week that’s $35,360 a year. If eight employees are managers and supervisors make a livable wage, 50 people are working in minimum-wage jobs.

Also the Town Board has agreed to provide 90 parking spaces for this hotel, which will only have on-site parking for six employee vehicles. Hotel valet parking may be on the north side of Main Street, and eventually Riverhead may have to build a parking garage. This will be an expense that will fall on Riverhead Town taxpayers.

Perhaps the entire project is not financially viable, and perhaps it should not proceed.

Melinda Topping

Jamesport

IDA insanity

Every time a major project that should be an improvement in Riverhead town is put forth, there is also a request by the developer for a tax abatement or some other sort of fee or tax relief so that the project may go forward without incurring an onerous debt load. Twenty-year tax abatements get extended another 20 years — the Long Island Aquarium is a prime example — and requests for fee adjustments (mortgage filing or other fees) are granted.

Who pays for these abatements and reductions? The residents of Riverhead, who constantly face an increased tax burden in the name of improving the town.

The water treatment/sewer debt is another prime example. The plant needed improvement for several years, and rather than adjusting water/sewer rates to pay for this improvement, it kept getting pushed back until taxpayers were forced to pay a lump sum of $80/year to handle the cost. And our water rates were increased anyway.

The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That never happens.
I ask the IDA to stop the insanity and deny these requests, or at the very least reduce the amounts granted. It has to stop somewhere — and you can be instrumental in bringing rationality back to Riverhead.

Vinny Spampinato

Riverhead

Letters should go public

Town Clerk Jim Wooten is to be congratulated for initiating the practice of publishing the full text of letters from Riverhead residents to the Town Board, which deserve recognition. At least now there is some sense that others in town will understand authors’ concerns — even if the supervisor and board members are unresponsive.

Mr. Wooten is right that letters must pertain to board business. Letters by Allyson Matwey of Wading River and Colin Tooker of Riverhead directly related to the unfortunate miscommunication at the July 21 board meeting. I wonder if Ms. Waski appreciates the irony of her statement “This is what socialism looks like when history is rewritten and reality is diminished.” Does she mean Mr. Wooten is a socialist because he censored debate by not posting the letters?

Ms. Waski’s Sept. 7 Facebook attack on Kevin Shea was at root an election-motivated assault on Supervisor Jerry Halpin and was supported by Mr. Rothwell, her party’s candidate. Her attempt to tie Shea to Halpin was absurd and disingenuous. She knew, as was widely reported at the time, that Mr. Halpin separated himself from Mr. Shea during their campaign and shared her and Mr. Rothwell’s criticism of Mr. Shea’s affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America. Mr. Halpin refused to campaign with Mr. Shea and did not want to be on the same campaign materials.

I favor Mr. Halpin as the more responsible and capable candidate for supervisor but he knows I do not agree with his view of Mr. Shea. I am not a DSA member and do not support all its positions, but it is clear the DSA is an emerging and credible sector in the Democratic Party. In whatever public role Mr. Shea plays, I hope McCarthyist attacks on his affiliation will not be repeated.

Mr. Wooten, please continue your contribution to local democracy by publishing the full content of all resident letters linked to Town Board matters.

John McAuliff

Southold

Reality check

We just got a delivery of home heating oil. The price per gallon was 65% higher than last October.

Trump’s war of choice in Iran has resulted in high gasoline prices at the pump, high home heating oil prices and a myriad of other issues, including approximately 20 U.S. military fatalities and 860 wounded.

Some days, Trump and his minions claim that it’s not a war … it’s an excursion, it’s small potatoes.

Well, the high cost of vital goods and services is not small potatoes to retired senior citizens…it’s a real burden. Trump and his billionaire Cabinet members are raking it in. Today, it was reported that Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, made $250 million in 2025. These people are oblivious to the realities of ordinary American citizens.

In the midterm elections, we need to vote out the Republicans, including Nick Lalota. We can’t afford another two years of these runaway prices. We can’t afford to have a Congress that permits this madness to continue.

Dick Sheehan

Greenport

Fighting a rising tide

The recent nor’easter made a painful reality undeniable: Greenport Village is losing its footing against the rising tide. Greenport is entirely cradled by the Peconic Bay Estuary, an invaluable marine ecosystem that defines our economy, culture and way of life. But when a storm stalls, that estuary pushes directly into our doorsteps, leaving Front Street completely submerged and the heart of our downtown at Mitchell Park facing an existential infrastructure crisis.

While we cannot hold back the rising tides alone, a powerful tool is available that we must fully leverage: the Community Preservation Fund. Under the CPF framework, up to 20% of the fund’s revenues can be used for water quality improvement projects. Because our village is deeply integrated with the surrounding estuary, using these funds to safeguard our waters and our streets is a natural and necessary evolution of the program.

But Greenport cannot fund this massive defensive transformation in a vacuum. Southold Town is required to create a comprehensive plan that officially designates CPF allocations for these critical projects. Crucially, this municipal plan must serve as the structural backbone that allows Greenport to bundle and stack multiple alternative revenue streams — such as state resilience grants, federal infrastructure dollars and county environmental funds — to fully finance these goals.

CPF water quality funds, combined with a coordinated Southold planning initiative, could completely transform our village’s defense system by: upgrading Front Street drainage to stop severe street flooding and prevent toxic, untreated runoff from washing back out into the estuary; installing engineered tidal gates on stormwater outfalls around Mitchell Park and adjacent docks, blocking high tides from rushing backward into our village streets; and funding living shorelines and wetland restoration to naturally absorb wave energy, improve water filtration and cushion downtown from severe storm surges.

We need Southold Town to deliver the required planning framework immediately. Without a unified roadmap to stack CPF funds with outside grants, the very estuary that sustains us will become permanently flooded.

Mary Bess Phillips
Greenport Village trustee

Cutchogue

Honoring Columbus

Columbus Day is about honoring Columbus’ historic voyage and admiring his courageous feats and risks that changed the world.
Columbus was maligned in Howard Zinn’s book “A Peoples History of America.” Because it was historically misleading, it was not accepted by the American Historical Society. Mary Garbar’s book “Debunking Howard Zinn” shows how Zinn corrupts history.

Columbus was a religious individual telling his men to treat the natives with kindness. When he claimed the island for Spain, he made them Spanish citizens.

Columbus’ ship was sinking and the Taino chief ordered his men to save his crew and supplies. In return he promised that he would, by “the sward or by chains” (Zinn made it appear as if Columbus wanted to enslave the natives) put an end to the Caribs attacks. Caribs were cannibals. Another phrase taken out of context by Zinn is: “They would make good servants and of good skill, for I see that they repeat very quickly whatever was told to them.” This was why the Caribs enslaved the Tainos, not Columbus enslaving them. According to Zinn all natives were friendly!

The Queen decreed that indigenous people were not to be used as slaves unless they were cannibals. A loophole in the decree made it possible to label any tribe as cannibals. Columbus never forced natives to work against their will and treated new tribes with respect.

Francisco de Bobadilla was appointed governor to investigate rumors of cruelty by Columbus, who was brought to Spain to face charges and was completely exonerated.

Hearing of Bobadilla’s atrocities, the King sent Nicolas de Ovando to replace him. However, his reign was crueler than his predecessor.

Columbus was a human being. Like all humans he had flaws, but that should not stop us from honoring his achievements.

Philip Buffa

Cutchogue

Sweet and sour

The price of gas is now declining and has stayed below the peak levels seen during the previous Democratic administration. That administration’s decision to cancel the Keystone Pipeline had a major impact on gas pricing.

To explain: America’s refineries are primarily configured to process the heavy, sour crude oil that Canada exports. Canceling the pipeline forced Canada to build infrastructure to its west coast, expanding its market to other buyers. Increased competition for Canadian sour crude raised input costs for U.S. refiners — a cost that remains baked into current gas prices.

Although the U.S. is a leading oil producer thanks to hydraulic fracturing, fracking yields light, sweet crude, which domestic refineries are not equipped to process. Reconfiguring a single refinery to handle light crude would cost billions of dollars. As a result, we export most of our light domestic crude while importing heavy, sour crude from Canada, Mexico, South America and Venezuela. The so-called Donroe Doctrine makes long-term strategic sense in this context.

Oil remains the lifeblood of the global economy. Looking ahead, the U.S. must embrace nuclear power alongside other energy sources.

While America leads in oil production, our refining capacity remains tied to older infrastructure. Without reducing government regulations at all levels to allow for new refinery construction, consumer savings will remain limited.

Bob Bittner