Civics Prepared To Blast Board Over Bus Barn

A proposal to move the Riverhead school district's bus barn to Riverside has some community members seeing red -- and they plan to pay a visit to the board of education Tuesday night to give members a piece of their minds.

Members of the Flanders, Riverside, and Northampton Community Association, as well as the Bay View Pines Civic Association and the Riverside Revitalization Community Coaliton, and others, will attend Tuesday night's school board meeting to speak out.

"If the district feels it doesn't need to come to the community to tell us about facilities it plans to build in our neighborhood, we will have to go to them," Vince Taldone, FRNCA vice president, said.

Taldone said school officials never attended any FRNCA meetings or approached town board members about its plans.

"Such stealth facilities planning should not be the policy of any government entity, including school districts," he said. "That is insulting, and simply wrong."

Community residents believe siting the facility in Riverside will bring unwanted traffic congestion and pollution to the area.

Taldone and others turned out Friday night for a heated meeting of the Bay View Pines Civic and Taxpayers' Association group, during which Riverhead Superintendent Nancy Carney shared a possible site plan for the new project but told residents nothing was set in stone, Taldone said.

"The district is asking for permission to sell valuable development rights on its property in Acquebogue and use it for an undetermined bus facility," Taldone said. "Yet, in hand at the meeting, was the site plan for putting all those buses and parking for drivers and the attendants next to the Phillips Avenue Elementary School. Hmm."

He added, "The town and community have been working for over 10 years in the LI 40 industrial park to develop for economic uses that create jobs and taxes - not to store buses. Now, that is really insulting."

The ballot proposal authorizes the district to purchase land in the Riverside Light Industrial Park, Taldone said. "The loss of property tax revenue that will result is initially small but in the longer term, the district's use of the land for a driveway and parking lot precludes the higher, desired use of the land for a business that will make substantial improvements, generate increased property taxes and, most importantly, create needed jobs. The school district's imposition of a bus depot does not meet any of the community's revitalization goals," he said.

Lastly, many in the Riverside area consider the sale of valuable Aquebogue development rights, the proceeds of which will go to pay for the Riverside facility, "as raw social injustice," Taldone said. 

"The district wants to preserve land in an affluent area and create athletic fields in another more affluent area and place a huge bus depot on the grounds and next to the elementary school that serves its lowest income students. Are the Phillips Avenue children worth less than others? it seems so. Apparently the district has no problem creating playing fields in Riverhead while creating a parking lot and bus fumes for the children of Riverside."

Brad Bender, FRNCA president, wrote a letter to the district last month blasting the plan. 

Bender said the civic organization, as well as the RRCC, has been working for years to revitalize the hamlet, increase the tax base, create new jobs, and alleviate severely blighted areas.

"Southampton Town officials as well as our state elected officials are aware of our opposition to any development that is not coupled with commercial or other non tax-exempt uses," Bender wrote in the letter to Carney. "For uses deemed beneficial by the Riverside community, we ask that town and county approval of tax-exempt developments be conditioned on the requirement of payments in lieu 
of taxes, or PILOTS, to our special assessment and school districts. For an undesirable use such as the 'bus barn,' we ask that the town and county refuse to sell any public lands or otherwise cooperate with the school district."

Relocating the bus barn, Bender said, would increase the tax burden in Southampton and mean a "significant" property tax loss to the FRNCA hamlets.

"We request that you consider offering to make PILOT payments equal to what a commercial bus operator would pay for such a facility. An equitable PILOT would at least remove the tax issue from the discussion," he wrote.

"The district may want to create new athletic fields but dumping the bus barn in our community is unacceptable to residents of the Riverside area."

Riverhead Board of Education President Ann Cotten-DeGrasse said should the bus barn be moved, the plan would be to utilize the land for an educational complex that would include sports fields.

As for Bender's PILOT suggestion, Cotton-Degrasse asked, "We should pay a PILOT on land the school district already owns?"

If the bus barn is moved, she said, the new facility will be sited behind the Phillips Avenue school. The only property that the school district would need to purchase would be a parcel that allows for easement between the school and an industrial park that was never developed in Riverside; the land would be purchased from a private owner.

The proposal residents will vote on, on May 21, Cotton-DeGrasse said, would allow the board of education to establish a savings account, so that after the sale of the Tuthills Lane land is complete, and the Riverside land purchased, any additional funds would be put in the account; once $10 million is amassed, the board could tear down the existing bus barn and site a smaller facility in Riverside.

The location was chosen, she said, because of traffic concerns. "We looked at several other parcels and our main concern is trying to get the buses out," she said. "We can't tie up, for example, Route 58."

In May, the Riverhead Board of Education voted unanimously  to sell the development rights on 25 acres of Aquebogue land to Suffolk County for $1.325 million. The land, located on Tuthills Lane in Aquebogue near the Aquebogue Elementary School, will be preserved as farmland under the Suffolk County New Drinking Water Protection Program, should the county approve the purchase.

On Monday, Cotten-DeGrasse said she had been unable to attend Friday's Bay View Pines meeting due to a death in the family. 

The new facility, should it be sited in Riverside, she said, "is not going to be an eyesore."

Trees would be planted to buffer the area, she said.

As for traffic, Cotten-DeGrasse said an buses on Route 24 and Route 105 would come and go at 6 a.m. and during the mid-afternoon, not during rush hours.

"I understand that no one wants the bus barn in their neighborhood. But it need to go somewhere. And if we are in need of additional field space, this does seem to be an ideal situation -- to use land we already own and to purchase a portion that will allow us to have access to the industrial park."

But, she stressed, "The public has the last word on this."

Carney did not immediately return a request for comment.