A discussion prior to the East Hampton Town Board’s unanimous vote last Thursday to authorize a $175,000 bond issue for design plans and specifications for a new shellfish hatchery on Gann Road in Springs quickly became heated when Councilman Jeff Bragman questioned the resolution.
A plan to relocate the shellfish hatchery from its present site on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk was unveiled in March. It envisions a combined educational center and exemplar of environmentalism and sustainability alongside the hatchery at a 1.1-acre site, which the town purchased last year with $2.1 million from the community preservation fund.
The hatchery seeds town waterways with millions of filter-feeding juvenile clams, oysters, and scallops.
Conceptual plans detailed in March call for solar panels and walkways, a low-nitrogen septic system, rainwater collection, rain garden, bioswales, a permeable reactive barrier, and permeable pavement on Gann Road to capture runoff before it enters Three Mile Harbor. The parcel is contiguous to the town’s aquaculture nursery site, Marine Patrol headquarters, and the commercial dock.
The town was awarded a $400,000 Empire State Development grant to expand and upgrade its hatchery last year, which the board said in March would be allocated toward design, permitting, and preliminary construction costs for the new facility. The town has yet to receive that money, Councilman David Lys said last Thursday, hence the bond authorization.
Mr. Bragman asserted last Thursday that until he raised objections, the board was poised to vote on a bond authorization for the full cost of the project, estimated at $2.865 million. Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc and Councilman Lys disagreed, but Mr. Bragman continued. “Given the fact that you’ve now limited this payment for design work, I’m more comfortable with that in terms of the environmental review that’s involved,” Mr. Bragman said. “Still and all, before I authorize signing the check, I’d like to get a proposal from the engineers saying exactly what they’re going to do.”
“It’s an authorization, it’s not the actual expenditure,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. Of the $400,000 grant, Mr. Lys added, $175,000 was earmarked for the design phase. “No one’s going to design something for free,” he said. “We’re hard at work now coming up with conceptual plans.”
Mr. Bragman insisted that the board was going to vote on a bond authorization to fully fund the project, and added that, “we haven’t even put a pencil on a survey of this property. We haven’t engaged our Planning Department, even to put down the setbacks that apply. I haven’t seen anything that is a concept plan, that has a footprint of a building, that estimates parking, that puts the setbacks on it and shows what the initial constraints are.”
Mr. Lys said that Mr. Bragman had failed to attend meetings about the project, and Mr. Van Scoyoc agreed. Mr. Bragman said that was untrue. The proposed facility was estimated at 5,000 square feet, and “this is a small property,” he said. “I’m okay with proceeding on a concept plan, [but] it seems to me that before we spend the $175,000 . . . we might want to get Marguerite Wolffsohn,” the planning director, “to do a site plan and talk about what the zoning is” — the site is zoned residential — “and see what will fit there.”
“That’s absolutely going to happen,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “The way that happens is you actually have to come up with a design. And when you’re working on that design, all those thing are taken into consideration.”
“We can put a footprint on a survey, Peter,” Mr. Bragman said.
“That’s what the design is, Jeff,” said Mr. Van Scoyoc. “ That’s what we’re authorizing money to do.”
“It’s kind of a lot of money, $175,000,” Mr. Bragman said.
An exasperated Mr. Lys told Mr. Bragman that he was “being obstructionist to this project” and that it was aggravating. “What you’re suggesting is I haven’t done everything that you said. I’ve done everything that you said.” The town has the data needed “so I can now go to design with our architects, our engineers, our Planning Department. . . . You’re trying to tell me I’m not doing my job, and I disagree.”
Mr. Bragman insisted that “at a very minimum we can put the footprint of a building, you can plot out the parking, you can put in the setbacks, and see if it fits, before we hand over $175,000.”
Mr. Van Scoyoc said whatever is designed will have to conform to the parcel’s building envelope.
“So I guess we don’t have to do it,” an annoyed Mr. Bragman said.
“I’ve done it!” Mr. Lys countered. “The audacity, for you to say that. . . . We are doing everything possible to make this a wonderful design project to get to the point where we can have schematics. But no one is going to continue for free, so that’s why you have to bond for funding right now to get the engineer and the architects on point and be able to have a funding source to pay them so you can stay on schedule.”
Mr. Bragman was unmoved. “When you’re going to start a project for a big building whose budget is potentially almost $3 million, it might be a good idea to engage the Planning Department first, to put a survey down, draw some lines on paper and say this is approximately what a footprint looks like.”
When the board voted on the $175,000 bond authorization, Mr. Bragman voted in favor. “I’m voting ‘aye’ because this is appropriate design work,” he said. “I just wish we would get some specifications before we allocate the money.”