The Brookhaven Town Board on Thursday adopted its 2027 tentative operating and capital budgets as the preliminary budgets for the coming year, setting public hearings for Nov. 5 before final adoption.
Earlier in the meeting, the town supervisor said the new budget differs from last year's by just over 1.6%, which he said 'pretty much keeps taxes flat' in the town, with no fund balance used to balance operations across the town's six major taxing districts. He said the town expects to maintain triple-A bond ratings from Standard and Poor's and Moody's and recently received a zero fiscal stress score from the state comptroller.
The supervisor said ambulance district property taxes would be cut 2.05% across all nine ambulance districts, and the capital plan includes $49.6 million in new investment, mostly for roads, drainage and parks, while $70.4 million in existing debt is set to be retired in 2027.
During public comment, a resident named Philip DeSouza asked the town to adopt an online litter-reporting and cleanup program modeled on one used in the Town of Babylon, saying he and others have spent years picking up litter, including needles and broken glass, along Brookhaven roads. "It's a low priority, but it's something that needs to be done," he said.
A council member responded that her office has been developing a new initiative, called the Litter Brigade, that would organize hamlet-based cleanup groups to do full-scale pickups four times a year. "It's something that if other council districts want to do similar they can," she said. The town supervisor told DeSouza he is familiar with the Babylon program. "I am familiar with the Babylon program. I will look into it, and you will get a call from me," he said.
The board approved the award of a bid for a stormwater mitigation project on Hammond Lane in Centereach, which one board member described as addressing flooding that has affected many families in the area. The board also approved accepting a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development grant for dredging and wave wall construction at Port Jefferson Harbor.
The board set public hearings for Oct. 22 on raising income limits for the senior citizens' property tax exemption, on expanding a tax exemption for permanently and totally disabled veterans, and on a license agreement allowing a nonprofit to operate the town's former kayak launch building at Town Commons on the Carmans River.
The board also accepted the final environmental impact statement for the Brookhaven Logistics Center LLC application, and adopted eminent domain findings authorizing condemnation of parcels in the Mastic Beach neighborhood road revitalization area.
After a public hearing, the board approved amending restrictive covenants and a site plan for the Holmes View Commons property in Farmingville, removing a requirement for a village green and granting several zoning variances to let Stony Brook Medicine occupy a former Amazon Fresh building and construct a new 30,000-square-foot medical office. Attorney Anthony Guardino, representing the applicants, told the board the Farmingville Residents Association has supported the changes. "I don't believe that any of these variances are quantitatively substantial, either on their face or based on the existing conditions or the prior approvals," he said.