Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 1 TOWN OF OYSTER BAY PUBLIC SCOPING SESSION SYOSSET HIGH SCHOOL May 1, 2018 6:13 P.M. B E F O R E: LEONARD SYMONS JOSEPH SALADINO JAMES ALTADONNA JR. SUPERVISOR TOWN CLERK P R E S E N T: SUPERVISOR JOSEPH S. SALADINO COUNCILMAN JOSEPH D. MUSCARELLA COUNCILMAN ANTHONY D. MACAGNONE COUNCILWOMAN REBECCA M. ALESIA COUNCILWOMAN MICHELE M. JOHNSON COUNCILMAN LOUIS B. IMBROTO COUNCILMAN THOMAS HAND A L S O P R E S E N T: JAMES ALTADONNA JR., TOWN CLERK JAMES STEFANICH, RECEIVER OF TAXES S P E A K E R S: TERRI ELKOWITZ CHUCK DAVIS Senior Vice President of Development with Simon BARRY COHEN DEBBI HUNTER (Continued on next page.) Minutes of the meeting taken by: KRISTINA TRNKA Reporter/Notary Public ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 2 SPEAKERS (CONTINUED): CHRISTOPHER DiFILIPPO JULIE GROPPER BOB FREIER LINGLING XU JOSH LAFAZAN KEVIN LAW TODD FABRICANT KEVIN McKENNA KYLE STROBER ROBIN GROSSMAN GLENN VOGELMAN ALAN KENNEMER SEAN McCAFFERY CHRISTOPHER ULRICH HENRY MO DANFEI HUANG RALPH CATAPANO LESLIE LEVY LAURA SCHULTZ DR. SHETAL SHAH ARNOLD DRUCKER DR. MICHAEL COHEN TRACY FRANKEL RICHARD MURDOCCO DEE SHRAVAH LISA ADRAGNA HANG PAN JINXU XHANG KAREN SANTORO ROBERT AXELROD SHELLY HUANG XIAOWEI SUN DR. WONG JOAN HILLGARDNER THERESA WALCH JASON GUO MIN HUI CHEN DR. UZMA SYED ZHUO LU NAREEM BARDANWALA CHAND WANG PATRICIA SCHWARCZ TASNEEM HEEMACHWALA ANDREA SMITH DAVID CHI YAR LIU DIMITRA POULOS ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 3 SPEAKERS (CONTINUED): WENDY LEVITT JOE DiLEO ERIC ALEXANDER JACK OSTRICK DR. RAKESH SHAH CARYN PORTNOY LISA ADRAGNA (AGAIN) STEPHEN MEEHAN WEI CHIN HONGLIANG QIANG JEFF TRANG TANYA LUKASIK UNKNOWN SPEAKER ANDREA SMITH (AGAIN) CHUCK DAVIS (AGAIN) Senior Vice President of Development with Simon ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 4 1 SUPERVISOR SALADINO: Ladies and 2 gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. 3 We are ready to get started if you 4 would all please find your seats. We will have 5 more residents coming in throughout the night. 6 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. 7 I'm Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino 8 and this is a Special Meeting for the Oyster Bay 9 Town Board for Tuesday, May 1st, at Syosset High 10 School. 11 Good evening. On behalf of my 12 colleagues and Town Board and Town government, we 13 welcome you to Syosset High School for this Special 14 Meeting of the Oyster Bay Town Board. 15 As many of you know, this meeting is 16 held to provide you, the residents of our Town, an 17 important opportunity to comment on the Draft 18 Environmental Impact Statement, also known as the 19 DEIS, as it relates to the private sector proposed 20 development of Syosset Park. 21 This project entails the establishment 22 of a new planned unit development, Mixed Use 23 proposed zoning, in this proposed zoning district, 24 which would potentially allow for the construction 25 of a Mixed Use Development consisting of office ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 5 1 space, hotels, restaurants, cafes, entertainment 2 uses, retail space, residential units, public 3 meeting space, and a 30-acre public park. The 4 proposal also includes a network of dedicated 5 pedestrian and bike paths, shared parking 6 structures and complete street design features. 7 Tonight residents have an opportunity 8 to express their feedback on the DEIS document, 9 which was publicly available, which has been and 10 continues to be, publicly available on the Town's 11 website for several weeks now. Whether you are 12 here to support the project, oppose the project, 13 learn more about the many aspects of this project, 14 concerns of the landfill, discussing population 15 growth, we are here to listen to you. 16 We are here to listen and not to 17 comment, so please understand that going into, our 18 role is to listen to the public. Your voice is 19 most important and that's why we're hosting this 20 meeting. On behalf of the Town Board, I'd like to 21 thank you all in advance for your participation at 22 tonight's meeting. 23 I'd like to now turns things over to 24 our moderator, former Oyster Bay Town Councilman, 25 someone who has quite a bit of experience at these ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 6 1 kinds of public forums, and someone that I ask you 2 to allow us to be led by him this evening so that 3 everyone has an opportunity to be heard and those 4 here can hear the speakers very clearly. 5 Leonard Symons, would you take over? 6 Thank you very much, ladies and 7 gentlemen. 8 MR. SYMONS: Ladies and gentlemen, 9 welcome here tonight. Welcome to all of you on 10 what should be an important evening for this 11 community. 12 Let me, at the outset, introduce myself 13 again and spell my name. It's Symons with a Y, 14 S-Y-M-O-N-S, and I say that because I have nothing 15 to do with Simon Properties, if anyone thinks that. 16 At the outset, there's some safety 17 announcements that I want to make mention of. If 18 we have an emergency evacuation, there are doors on 19 the side, two doors. There are doors on the back. 20 We ask that you not stand in the aisles, except, of 21 course, if you have been called to speak. There is 22 an overflow room that is available if you can't 23 find a seat, and there are still some seats 24 available here. 25 And lastly, I would ask that everyone ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 7 1 silence their phones so you're not going to 2 interrupt your neighbor and you're not going to 3 interrupt the discussions that are going to take 4 place here this evening. 5 We gather here tonight pursuant to the 6 SEQR law, State Environmental Quality Review Act. 7 It's a statute and that statute prescribes certain 8 events that should take place in an orderly 9 fashion, so this is not -- I think there's a lot of 10 confusion in the community -- it's not an open 11 forum, it's not a yay/nay night. That's going to 12 take place down the road, hopefully. It's not a 13 Q-and-A. It's a night that the community is given 14 the opportunity to make comment on the DEIS, and 15 those comments will be recorded. 16 We have a court reporter, court 17 reporters, that will take out every word and that 18 your comments will ultimately be addressed in the 19 final environmental impact statement, so what you 20 say here tonight is most important, but, again, 21 this is not -- it's not a night that the Board -- 22 somehow you -- there's an expectation that the 23 Board will be making a decision tonight. 24 They are here, as Supervisor Saladino 25 said, to listen, and the law provides a very ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 8 1 different way of listening. The law says that what 2 the Town of Oyster Bay could have done, they could 3 have invited all of you to make your comments in 4 writing and not invited everybody down here. So, 5 we are listening to you in person. That in -- that 6 was an important decision, as far as I'm concerned. 7 A good decision by the Supervisor, a 8 good decision by the Town Board, because there's 9 nothing better, take it from me, than listening to 10 you, the community and the voices of the community. 11 So just take a moment, look around 12 here. You ought to be very proud of the tremendous 13 turnout here tonight and I look forward to your 14 comments. 15 Now, how long does everyone have to 16 speak, which is, I know, a touchy issue? We have 17 concluded that each member of the public will have 18 five minutes to speak because of the volume of the 19 speakers. We want everybody equally to have a 20 chance here to express themselves. 21 Now, we acknowledge that there are 22 those speakers who want to go more than five 23 minutes, and so if you want to go more than five 24 minutes, do your five minutes and when we get into 25 Round Two, we will hear you, an extended period of ON TIME COURT REPORTING 516-535-3939 Town Board Town of Oyster Bay May 1, 2018 9 1 time. 2 So that, again, whether you're a short 3 speaker, and you hopefully honor that five minutes, 4 and we really want to keep to that or you're a 5 longer speaker, you will have the opportunity to be 6 heard this evening. 7 All the comments, as I said, will be 8 recorded. They will be in the appendixes of the 9 final environmental impact statement, where they 10 are going to be addressed.