The Southold Town Fire Chief’s Council urged the Southold Town Board on Tuesday to strengthen and better support its fire marshal’s office, both to improve public safety and to stop losing trained personnel to better-paying municipalities.
Council president Norman Reilly told the board at a morning work session that the current system forces the town into a costly cycle of hiring entry-level, uncertified fire marshals, training them and then watching them leave for higher salaries elsewhere.
He argued that the town should instead consider hiring a more experienced fire marshal “that goes out and will assist the chief,” who could “come in, set up that office … and run the show.”
The council’s request is centered on the scope of the fire marshal’s job. Reilly said that the office is responsible for inspecting a wide range of properties, including schools, churches, firehouses, hospitals, adult care facilities, restaurants, shopping centers, hotels and town buildings. He explained that hiring people who are not yet fully trained means “for a long time, they can’t really do anything,” while a veteran hire could begin inspections and enforcement work immediately.
Southold’s chief building inspector Michael Verity said the town’s current fire marshal, hired full time in September, is now code certified and able to perform inspections, though more advanced classes are still backlogged.
‘Independent’
Verity agreed with the chiefs that the office should ultimately become an independent operation.
“I think the fire marshal in time should be under a separate department, their own department,” he said, though he acknowledged that would require more personnel and funding.
The chiefs also pressed the board for practical support that would make the fire marshal more effective in the field. Reilly said the position should have a take-home vehicle so the marshal can respond directly to emergencies, rather than first going to Town Hall to pick up a truck.
He also said the marshal needs turnout gear and a radio capable of communicating with chiefs and dispatch. Those added costs, Verity said, are essential if the marshal is expected to respond to structure fires and other emergency scenes safely.
Beyond staffing and equipment, the chiefs urged the town to modernize code and procedure. Reilly said local law should be amended to more clearly spell out the fire marshal’s duties and strengthen enforcement tools.
He also raised concern about contractors who show up at fire scenes and pressure homeowners into signing costly contracts, saying the town should clarify whether the fire marshal can enforce county protections keeping such solicitors away from active fire scenes.
Reilly said that fire officials further west on Long Island “are getting to those people and getting them out of the way and advising [homeowners] on what their rights are, not to sign any contract for those people. It’s terrible … Luckily, we don’t have very many fires, but where they do, it’s bad news.”
The discussion also turned to newer hazards, including residential battery-energy storage systems, generators and EV charging equipment. Chiefs said firefighters need faster access to information about where those systems are installed so they can plan safe responses.
Verity said the town has discussed getting that data into emergency response systems, but the idea never fully materialized.
Affordable housing review of Clark’s Beach
Meanwhile, planning department officials talked about their review of a Clark’s Beach parcel owned by the Village of Greenport as a possible site for an affordable housing grant application, but the discussion pointed strongly away from that location.
Planning Director Heather Lanza told the board the village had asked New York State to examine whether the parcel might support affordable housing, but any such project would still require a Town of Southold zoning change to an affordable housing district.
She said the planning department applied the town’s adopted rating system for affordable housing rezonings, even though no formal development proposal had yet been submitted. Under that framework, the site scored just 32%, which she described as “very low,” indicating the town should “look elsewhere.”
Lanza said the parcel fared poorly because it is far from a hamlet center, not within walking distance of shops, schools or transit, and sits along a road without sidewalks or bus service. While water and sewer access may exist, she said the site also raises environmental concerns because it lies near a coastal erosion hazard area and adjacent to sensitive shoreline conditions. She said that both the town code and Southold’s planning documents call for affordable housing to be located closer to services, business districts and existing residential centers.
ADU code change proposal
Also at the meeting, Zoning Board of Appeals chair Leslie Weisman discussed a narrowly tailored code change aimed at making it easier for homeowners to seek approval for accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, while a broader rewrite of the town’s housing code continues.
She told board members that the immediate issue is that the town’s current code still requires an ADU to be located in an “existing” single-family dwelling or detached structure, language she said recently forced the town to deny an applicant who had secured grant funding for a unit the town is otherwise trying to encourage.
By removing that single word and holding a public hearing on the amendment, Weisman said, the town could allow such applicants to come before the ZBA for a special exception instead of being blocked outright by the current wording.
New CPF purchase approved
At Tuesday night’s regular session, the Town Board also approved the joint purchase between the town and Suffolk County of 54 wooded acres along Route 48. The purchase price of nearly $6.5 million will split 50/50, with the town using Community Preservation Fund proceeds and the county using money from its Drinking Water Protection Program.