Councilman Bob Kern promises to propel Riverhead into the 21st century if re-elected
When Riverhead Town Councilman Bob Kern was first running for Riverhead Town Board in 2021, at the time he said his goal when elected was to improve efficiencies in the town’s processes. Now, after completing his first three-year term, Mr. Kern said he wants to continue to bring Riverhead “into the 21st century” if he is re-elected in November.
Mr. Kern said he continues to focus on ways he can keep the town up-to-date, specifically on revising certain codes, fees and fines that haven’t been changed in decades.
Taking inspiration from other municipalities like Mamaroneck in Westchester County, the councilman said he hopes to establish a CPI-adjusted fee schedule with every town department by the end of the year.
These fee schedules are updated to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation.
“I’m astonished that some of our fees haven’t changed in 20, 30 years,” Mr. Kern said. “From a business sense, if you ran your business like this, you’d be out of business within months. When you run a town like this, you’re really losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that goes onto the backs of the taxpayers — I’m ending that.”
Providing clean water to Riverhead residents remains a top priority for Mr. Kern, including putting pressure on the U.S. Navy to address the ongoing cleanup on the former Grumman site.
When Mr. Kern was the president of the Riverhead Chamber of Commerce, he served on the Restoration Advisory Board for four years. This allows more discussion of all environmental efforts and allows community members to have input in the cleanup process.
The RAB would meet over three times a year, but once Mr. Kern was elected to the town board, he said he pushed to meet with the U.S. Navy on a more regular basis.
The councilman is also concerned about the high level of PFAs detected in McKay Lake and the potential migration of these chemicals into the Peconic River. Mr. Kern said he is working to find ways to accelerate cleanup efforts.
“This is over 20 years without a proper cleanup,” Mr. Kern said. “PFAs attach themselves to living organisms and just kill them. I’m concerned about the fish, the shellfish, I’m concerned about tourism — it’s going to kill it.”
To kickstart efforts to bring high-tech jobs to Riverhead’s industrial land, Mr. Kern said he organized the town’s Emerging Technology Committee last year in partnership with Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook. The purpose of the committee is to advise the town on renewable energy and other new technology that could potentially be implemented.
Mr. Kern is not in favor of an abundance of big housing developments because of the pressure it puts on the area schools. He is apprehensive about the planned large-scale, high-density development project in Riverside and its potentially overwhelming impact to downtown Riverhead and the town’s school district.
“The school tax is 54% of our budget, which is huge. That will probably go up when we get the real numbers at the end of the year — that’s a big problem,” Mr. Kern said.
As the East End changes, so does the land. Mr. Kern said Riverhead has a lot of preserved parcels, and there are ongoing efforts to preserve more. However, as the town board liaison for the Agricultural Advisory Committee, Mr. Kern said he worries about local farmers and wants to support them.
“I encourage farmers all the time to create products out of what they’re growing, because that is going to help them keep their land,” he said.
He said he is interested in looking into appropriate ways to raise more money on preserved land and has researched innovative approaches, such as agrivoltaics projects that promote dual use of land for solar energy and agriculture.
