Beacon, New York Council Meetings & Workshops, 11 Oct 2022

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From YouTube: Beacon Workshop 10-11-22

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The City of Beacon Council workshop from Tuesday, October 11, 2022

A

Hey everybody I'm I'm told it's: seven I have a timekeeper who's very precise about these things um and so welcome everyone, uh I'm observing, there's a full house, so I just did roll call. I think the City attorney is on remote. Is there anyone else on remote? No.

B

Just the attorney okay.

A

B

A

The city administrator and the finance director here I see two of our department heads as well, and why don't we start up I think um the first order of business is oh, it says here: planning Board, review, yeah.

B

So the attorney is going to give us a little overview of the authority of the planning board. This is a follow-up to a conversation that we had an executive session last week: okay, Nick, thank you Nick! You, there yep.

C

Thank you mayor. Thank you, Chris, yes good evening. I assume everyone can hear me well. So what I want to do tonight is provide what I would characterize as a zoning 101.. It's a discussion we've had with task boards, because Sony is important. All means found it, but certainly is important that a topic of discussion in Beacon- and you know the city council's role- is different from a planning board and the zoning board you set for rules but you're not processing the applications.

C

Yet you do receive comments from from the public about how they view those developments impacting the city. So I thought it would be helpful just from a very general sense to provide an overview of zoning, and then we can expand upon some of these Concepts over at later meetings and certainly respond to questions that you may have so. Zoni is permissive.

C

You're regulating someone's use of their property and the zoning code of the city of Beacon sets forth what uses are permitted and there's a process that goes into place: approval building, department for playing board the zoning board, our office and the planning consultant and the engineer.

C

So many times there are projects that do not reach the planning board, because they've been vetted through the process, the property owners or the potential purchaser or the potential tenant or applicant before they buy a property or lease a property, do their due diligence and find out if a use is permitted or someone comes in with a proposal, they think is appropriate and they'll meet with the building department and our office will get calls or John Clark. The planner will get calls from the billing department asking.

C

How does this code section apply to this particular proposed use of the property and we'll have discussion and they'll be told that it's not a permitted, permitted use or permitted density or whatever the case may be, and those applications don't come true. So generally, what comes through to the to the boards are applicants the applications that the applicant believes meets the bill of the city's zoning ordinance and would be reviewable by the planning board of the zoning board.

C

As the case may be so more often than not, because it's permissive code, it tells you what you can do with your property. Most of the applications that come in are approval in the sense that someone is taking the time, spending money and made sure they comply with the zoning and that's why they're being placed on the agenda, and so what I want to talk about is sort of whatever regulations that impact and control the use of the property.

C

So zoning sets forth the use of divides the use of lands into districts and there's a case 1926 Supreme Court case Euclid versus Amber, which involved the city of Euclid outside Chicago, that adopted zoning regulations, and it was the first real legal challenge to telling someone what they could use their property for, and it's interesting to read, especially retrospect back almost 100 years. It's a case that is often relied upon by attorneys. It's referred to as euclidian Zone.

C

It's a zoning that you have by dividing the district as opposed to form-based zoning, and still, in that case you could versus Amber. The properties were divided and placed into districts that permitted industrial use of business uses and residential uses and then even further residential uses that prohibited apartment houses than those that permitted only single-family housing, and so your city is divided into zoning districts that follow that same format that is filed throughout New, York, State and, quite frankly, across the country where properties to divide into districts.

C

So the city council has the what are referred to as the police power. It's the ability to regulate the health safety and Welfare of its residents to determine that in between two apartment houses or in between two single-family homes.

C

Someone can't put up a slaughterhouse, as the case might have been back in 1926 or an auto dealership or a commercial use or a restaurant, and the Supreme Court has found that municipalities have the right to regulate and prevent uses within certain areas of municipality to allow for the orderly development of its community in a way that is keeping with the character of that community, so you're you're, dividing to districts, you had permitted uses and I won't dwell on that anymore.

C

The next item is, you can also regulate what the dimensions, how much of a property can be used for a particular use? How large can an industrial use be how many square feet? Can it be? How tall can the Billy be, and you set forefoose in your table of dimensional regulations?

C

If someone is not uh fit, does not fit into those categories, they can go to the zoning board and apply for a use, variance which is extremely difficult to get because you're then overturning or Define, the the intent of the legislative body and determining what uses are appropriate. So some use variances are difficult to get. You can't put a commercial use in a residential district very hard to get area.

C

Variances are easier to get in the sense that zbas are required by New York State and are deemed to be released valves to provide for Relief where it's shown to be necessary and appropriate after meeting a number of conditions, and so the role of the planning board is different from the zba and the city council. The city council sets the legislation, determines what uses are committed and determines the dimensional regulations and density.

C

Wetlands, steep slopes, regulations of that nature, and then the zba is there to Grant relief to the area or the use requirements as appropriate and as set forth in New York state law. There are criterias for area use. Variances planning board's role is to then apply fiber for a site plan. How is the land used subdivision?

C

How much land can you create into how many lots more permitted juices on that property and special use permits, which are special uses that are permitted as a right subject to checking the boxes and establishing that you've satisfied the criteria that the legislative body has determined? So the planning board does not have discretion to denying the sense that they could look at something and say we don't like it.

C

It's going to be denied any denial has to be because the applicant does not meet the criteria for um the site that set forth for site plan or subdivision right subdivision the easy one. If the minimal lot requirement is you have a one, equal law that says for each lot, you need to have a half acre. If someone wants to subdivide that property into three acres plan aboard would deny it because you need to have minimum lot area. Applicants could go and get an area variance playing board. Has no authority to create three lots.

C

Equival says two are required. Likewise, if the area is consist of wetlands or steep slopes, the planing board could Grant the subdivision, because you can meet with two lots, but then site plane would determine what could be built on that lot, because your code has constraints that you can't fill in a wetland build on a wetland. Steep slopes have to be deducted from the usable area and the planning board would apply those those types of conditions when it's reviewing site plan and before I talk a bit more about site plan.

C

Let me introduce uh secret, so secret is in your State Environmental body review, act, I think, there's only three states Connecticut New, York and California that have such a law in the country. It requires modeled. After the federal law leap of the National Environmental Protection Act that whenever there's an actual land use application, um you need to look at the potential environmental impacts and if those impacts can't be mitigated, then the project wouldn't uh wouldn't proceed.

C

New York state law says there are type 2 actions that are automatically deemed to not have a significant impact, and then there are type 1 that are deemed to be having a significant impact, and then there are those that are deemed to be unlisted actions, which is the vast majority of actions that that you need to look at and evaluate whether there are impacts.

C

Planning board is what's considered a lead agency and has to look at those impacts if it's a type, 1 or an unlisted action and would have to establish, has the applicant shown that the potential significant adverse environmental impacts has been mitigated to a practical extent possible? So what does that mean in terms of your average site plan application? Typically you're, looking at environmental impacts over Wetlands on the property? Can they be mitigated? Are there traffic impacts? How many cars are being added? Is there enough parking?

C

Will it impact on-street parking noise, you're, looking at noise impacts, potentially from certain uh properties and property uses? Likewise, when you look at the site plan, characteristics, you're, making sure that they house or the new apartment building or a new commercial building, is medium of zoning setbacks. Is it providing for safe and circulation of vehicles on the property? Is there enough access to emergency vehicles on the property? Is there landscaping appropriately place of attitude, would offer properties and impact potential impacts, noise, light things of that nature?

C

If someone is proposing a patio or a wall or retaining wall? Is that of sufficient size? Does that comply with the New York State Building Code? So the planning board has to go through those measures and look at the site plan and see if the projects check check the boxes and meet those requirements more often than not, because they've reached the stage and having gone through the time and the expense and working with the applicants.

C

Professionals they will satisfy those criteria because they don't want to spend the money to get a project is not approvable in the sense that it meets the code.

C

Staff's requirement of the planning board members require obligations, are to sort of review of a code and point out where it doesn't where it's not meeting those requirements and we've seen that with applications, where number of curb cuts are reduced, um driveways are relocated, uh number of trees that would be cut down are reduced inside was being situations where the number of lots has been reduced because of a number of wetlands on the property, and so the planning board has to take into account all of the sort of the site plan requirements.

C

How did the building fit within the environment, and these are required public hearings residents who offer comments? The planning board has to listen to those comments and make sure that those comments are addressed to before it's satisfactory. Typically, that's done by asking the applicant to respond to those questions or asking staff to examine the issues that have been raised and confirmed. Is the code satisfied or met? The planning board can deny a site plan application, for example, if they find that there are traffic impacts and their secret.

C

That could not be mitigated or if they find that the number of wetlands are putting the house there. There's not enough room on the lot to then to to meet that size of the house, and the applicant won't reduce the size to the minimal uh the level that would be in square footage that would fit within that lot. But more often than not, the the planning board is going to end up being required to approve a project because the zoning code says they can put that use in that District.

C

They meet the lot requirements so they're, a minimum amount of land is provided that meets the dimensional requirements and that they have provided appropriate design. The site plan design to show Landscaping to show drainage to show that there's no net impacts that are going to impact off-site properties, and so many times you'll see that the village, the city's engineer, will review larger projects, require storm water pollution prevention plan.

C

They'll, look at the grading of a property to make sure that the um stormwater that flows from the gutters or from the tarmac or from just hitting the surface of the grass areas or staying on property or otherwise, being funneled into dry, Wells or into catch basins, on property or on property that tie into the cities, storm water collection system and so that that is and I can expand. On some of these are in this meeting or others.

C

We can go through specific sections of the code, but that's a broad overview of the different zoning powers of the three three bodies with city council. The two land use boards, the zba and the planning board, and also the powers and limitations on the specific plan board in reviewing plans.

C

And they are unhappy to answer any questions or further expand on those Concepts that you or the council or Chris have any questions.

D

uh Thank you for that. Nick I appreciate it. um I had a follow-up question about the role of the city engineer, so am I understanding that, when it they're the ones who provide the city sign off that the applicant is in fact meeting the secret demands. I'm thinking of things like steep slopes like access like traffic impacts, how? How are we as the city making sure that we're getting the official word that, yes, this isn't is meeting it and not just taking the applicant's word.

C

So, but the combination- it's not just one individual. Ultimately, the planning board has or the lead agency has that responsibility to ensure that the secret obligations that be met- It's Our obligation as the council to advise the boards to make sure that the environmental assessment form is being filled out completely that all of the appropriate Studies have been done. We're obviously not going to weigh in on a traffic study, but we're going to offer an opinion that the traffic study satisfies the appropriate standards and is complete and answers the question.

C

It's the obligation of the planner to look at sort of the noise and the quality of life issues and the Landscaping issues. The city engineer would look at drainage at times. It would be an outside traffic engineer depending upon the size of a project who would opine under traffic, and it's the city's engineer who, on the more routine applications, would opine on the traffic.

C

The boards are empowered to use their layperson opinions, but when it comes down to certain areas of expertise, courts have established that a board member can't rely on gen General oppositions from the community. That there's too much traffic a board member can't say I, don't believe in that traffic study.

C

um You I've been at that intersection and it fails all the time. The law is clear that if there are professionals who are licensed and submit a report that meet you know the Professional Standards, there's a New York state, Institute of track or Institute of Traffic Engineers for traffic studies. Civil engineers are licensed for drainage and storm water purposes. That boards then have to rely on those reports. They can question it. They should question it.

C

They should ask questions and push back, but a lay person a board member unless they are trained and have that expertise isn't going to be able to refute other than for common sense of logic and ask those questions and push the Traffic Engineers that a traffic intersection is failing when a traffic engineer presents a report and complies with the industry standard. That shows that the traffic conditions are met.

C

Our job for cities, Consultants, is to vet those projects and ask the question so many times the Environmental assessment forms will be sent back to the applicants because they haven't answered all the questions correctly. Further reports and Analysis will be provided, and so that's sort of to answer. The question is the role of the city and board members, and the public also inform those discussions by pointing out certain areas or suggesting over um potential impacts. That should be examined.

D

E

Nick you mentioned quality of life issues. Can you expand on that? A little bit.

C

Sure this comes certainly into play with area variances, where you're looking at the impact from something onto the character of the neighborhood one of the secret requirements, not so much a site plan right, there's, not a quality of life box, but all these different issues, traffic impacts, noise mitigation, Landscaping to some degree, the replacement of the house on the lot is it in keeping with the character of the community in terms of being placed. You know if everyone is 20 feet and this one is on the curb, or this one is back.

C

Those are all quality of light topics that the planning board has within its discretion to review and look at as site plan is sort of like moving pieces of of the board on the pubble. So you can move the puzzle pieces around. You can move the board pieces around to make sure that the site plan how's that building fitting. How is it interacting with the use of that property on site? And how is it interacting with the other uses on the property? Simple example: looking at a driveway is a driveway place to a logical location.

C

Is there a traffic light, that's five feet away, and it makes sense to have that driveway relocated planning board and the staff and Consultants should be looking at that and offering comments on that is a driveway being put at a uh at a curb or at a bus, stop where it would impact for residents and what I would refer to as some of the most quality of life issues is lighting being proposed in a way that might impact and good flow off off property.

C

So the boards have those authorities when the playing board, when we're looking at the site plan to examine. How is this use within the law still going to have the potential impacts, and how can we mitigate and reduce those impacts?.

F

So that seems it could be somewhat subjective. um The the way the the board would look at it, and so I'm wondering what level of discretion the board has in determining what a quality of life issue is, and is it all based on studies by the traffic by a traffic study, or it seems.

C

Well, it's vague, well, it's controlled by zoning. The first place right, so the city council has determined what uses go on the property. So if someone objects and says I, don't want an apartment. Building, that's going to impact quality of life, plain board can say no city council has determined. That is a permitted use.

C

If someone were to object to a uh one acre lot being divided into two half acre loss, because my community has had the benefit of seeing that large lot undeveloped, and this will have an impact because now the trees removed it's going to change the character of the community. You can't deny the flame board has no authority to deny it because the city council has made that legislative determination that, in this particular District half acre lots are the appropriate size Lots in keeping with the character of the community.

C

um Some of it is is subjective right because you can't create a checklist but they're all within the secret categories. At the end, that's why Seeker is a great tool for both public and the applicant. It gives you an index a table of contents of things to look at so light is a good example.

C

um If you're looking at lighting, there are industry standards except for um the lighting. Do you have a lighting code about whether light can flow off off property?

C

There's you know measurements, how many foot candles if using old candles, the heat Lumineers of the existing LED lights, and so there are standards that would be relied upon by experts similar to traffic studies, and your coach speaks to that as well. In terms of lighting standards,.

F

And I believe uh Seeker, it's dealing with things, sort of long-term impacts um and effects on the community, not not during construction. The you know like say, noise well,.

C

Secret will look at construction, require that yeah, you know, are the ways to mitigate the potential impacts, but a lot of the construction that occurs in the city unless it's from a bigger project where you're staging materials and your you're you're already controlled, the city has a noise ordinance. The city can regulate the hours of construction um and people have the right to construct and use their property.

C

So when we're looking at the secret regulate construction, it would be talking about the larger project in terms of how many trucks are coming in, to bring in build material. How many trucks are coming in to bring to remove uh debris from a building that's being demolished and over ways to mitigate that to Stage it.

C

We had one project that was different Community, obviously where it was a large project and they were required to bring in material along the Hudson ever because they were right on the waterfront, which was a way to mitigate the impacts, as opposed to you know. Thousands of trucks coming in through uh local streets.

F

So so the planning board does have some power to um control the impacts of during construction, whether it's Vehicles.

C

F

um Just one more question- and this might be out of left field, but you say the zba is a relief valve and primarily it's a relief valve for um for the property owner can. Could the zba also be used as a relief valve for concerned citizens? Could they appeal the zoning.

C

They cannot so the intent I'm, not sure what a resident would would do. I I think I understand the question, but zoning is for the property or to make an application that, for example, I'm required to have a um 15 foot setback, but I can't beat that because my house is already built I want to put an addition on it or there are steep slopes in this area. So I need I can't be set back that far from the property line need to be closer before a resident.

C

Can't appeal to the zba and say: I want zoning to be more stringent and one can only seek to have the zba grant relief and make it less less stringent, Grant an exception of variance from the law.

F

G

Nick Nick there was a in last month's planning board. There was a comment by the chair about a developer, who, they hoped, would incorporate. Some of the Public's feedback are there and that that was the only way that those changes could take place is if they had. You know, listened to the feedback and and taken it. Is there no way to compel changes to a site plan or a project?

G

um Is there no way to compel changes that are that are outside of the outside of the zoning and the the uses in area Etc.

C

Yes, so I'm not going to speak to any present application at Penny without a pending before board, but understand your question. In the general sense, the planning board does have the ability to impose conditions.

C

Most conditions need to be rationally related to the impact they're. Trying to mitigate I can't require someone to put in four trees on a property if the property property right next door is wooded and a vacant lot, there has to be a rational basis for it, I couldn't think of one that would really be sustainable. In the record.

C

The boards do have the ability to impose conditions to mitigate mitigate impacts, for example, requiring a um that drainage be go into a a dry well on the property or that drainage be connected into a catch Basin that ties into the street so that it does drain out of someone's property. It just needs to be a connection. They can't do it without having some Authority either and identifying a a potential impact or identifying non-compliance with with the code. They could.

C

If someone applicant says I'm not going to lower that pull any anymore I need that light. On my property, even though it spills up and the code said that it spills off the plane board, can deny to approve or put a condition, that the site plan will be signed, a building permits won't issue unless it is established at all the Zone. All the lighting is at 10 feet and there's no spill over onto adjacent properties.

C

So there are ways if there is an impact that has been identified, uh that that can be mitigated many times a resident may think, there's an impact, but it's not one that has been established. So if someone is uh an extreme example, there's a uh to a lot, the two lot being Sublime, two half acres and someone said: that's going to create lots of traffic impact because you're adding two to.

H

Two more cars.

C

And four: more cars: that's not going to I, understand the concern, and it's- and it's well well stated from the residents concerned you're now going to have four extra cars, but from a realistic standpoint. Looking at those impacts from a traffic and Engineering standpoint, the rights of Proctor developer properties, you wouldn't be able to sustain a condition that restricts the number of cars on the property. For example, there needs to be a rational, reasonable basis in the record.

C

Boards can't be arbitrary and capricious that's a standard for an article 78 challenge against the land use board.

G

So what you're saying is that what I've heard tonight is that the planning board can reject applications, has the authority to reject applications and that that ability to reject an application is Leverage uh that the planning board has to compel improvements to the applications? Is that accurate? That's.

C

Right that is, and any denial has to be based in a record. It needs to be sustainable, needs to be demonstrated that um there are impacts to the wetlands that can't be mitigated, and the developer refuses to reduce it from two lots to one lot, for example, so, plan board and the plan board has that opportunity in any miscounter playing board has the ability to die when to be established, but not before we took a code requirement or under our site planning conditions that the impacts have not been have not been taken.

C

Generally, we've all would tell you that applicants are able to mitigate those conditions, because they've reached this far proof of process for building inspective review applicants having consultants and paid for them to look at Broad properties that they come up with ways to engineer solutions to the impacts that are being identified.

G

C

It's rare that you see a site plan denied, but they have that afforded.

A

Right, but the authority of the planning board to reject a proposal is not unlimited. What you said was there needs to be a basis. So let me just pick an example.

A

um You know there's going to be construction noise because there's going to be construction noise, they can't turn it down, but they could impose hours of when construction can occur, I suppose, if the Builder, if the property owner said I, don't buy into those restrictions well, that could be a reason for denial, but if they're reasonable restrictions that would be within their Authority simply denying it simply because well, there's construction there'll be noise, would not be in their Authority. Is that what you're saying that is what I'm saying correct? Okay, thank you.

G

Just kind of one last question on this thread: I, don't think we talked I, don't think you mentioned section 78 or if you did, maybe we could elaborate on Section 78, more I'm, really interested in the the definition of arbitrary and capricious and how well established that definition is in.

C

Sure, and so it's article 78, it's a reference to a section of the New York state, cplr, civil practice, laws and rules. So it's an article 78 proceeding it's a an abbreviated process. That's considered a a quick proceeding as opposed to a civil litigation where you have a complaint and answer Discovery. Article 78 is meant to be an expedited review when someone either an applicant or someone who has standing a neighbor who's directly impacted differently from a public at large challenges and administrative bodies, determination, a city council Grant.

C

You have a special permanent zba, granted the variance or claim board granting of site plan, and the Oracle 78 is also used to Channel secret determinations. If you're challenging underlying approvals, so arbitrary capricious is generally deemed to be a situation where the court is not stepping into the shoes of the board and second guessing was the board correct or wrong denying or granting the approval, but is very basis in the record that can be established.

C

For example, we denied it because the traffic studies showed that there would be intersections would would work at a level failing and they could not mitigate that impact. If that's supported by a traffic report and the applicants expert doesn't refute that the board will be. The court will defer to the board saying that you relied on your expert. The avatrapy expert is forgot.

C

The battle of the expert football Court was unlikely to find that that would be sustained, as opposed to, for example, a board ignoring its traffic expert and saying, even though they said the traffic could be mitigated and a level of service F would be reduced to a level server the and still deny the project that would be reversed because again, there's no basis in the record and I can send the council some. You know boilerplate language from case law. That sort of gives you gives you some more.

C

So you can see it in writing in front of you haven't to do that.

G

A

C

If you have any questions, please follow up with me and there's not going to be a test. Oh.

G

I have I, have one I didn't sorry, I didn't realize we were done. I was just taking a break from my questions to give other people a chance, but um so the the impacts, the secret impacts, uh as you I think you said, are determined by studies that are conducted and paid for by the developer. Is that correct and then vetted by the city.

C

G

Is correct? Yes, and that's not a conflict of interest to you know if you, shell out fifteen thousand dollars for a study, um I'm, probably not going to hire somebody for that. You know for big money to come up with a determination that my multi-million dollar project can't go forward right, like yeah.

C

I understand the concern they're done by licensed professionals, so they are putting their licenses on the job they're, also being reviewed by the city's Consultants, who are betting them uh reports, do get rejected and reached and um and comments made it's not as though it's rubber stamp. These are professionals, and the public has the opportunity to comment on it.

C

So I think that's a common reaction that you're you know: they're a Hired, Gun and they're going to come up with the right answers, but again they've reached this far in the process, because someone has done that homework before and to make sure it's an approvable project before they get there, and there are times where you'll see that there is information where the consultant for the town and the for the city excuse me and the applicants do differ and there are differing opinions of those differences, get worked out or resolved with changes to the to the plans.

C

It is the process we have and uh I have not seen examples where someone, an engineer or licensed professional is putting their license on the line to come up with an answer that pleases her client.

G

Yeah I mean I, think I, think there's some I think there's a lot of gray area. I, don't think it's always. uh You know. Just uh you know, objective, objective measures and objective studies. I mean I can give an example without giving any details where there's a well-known, Wetland and stream um that had been filled in over the last few decades.

G

uh With uh with like a 100 to 200 yards of contractor debris and the neighbors uh complained and said that you know we're going to be building on a wetland, we should be preserving the Wetland. We should be restoring the Wetland, and so the planning board said. Okay, the the Builder has to do a wetland study, the Builder hired somebody that wasn't even from New York State. They hired someone from Connecticut and brought them in to do a study and the finding was that oh there's no Wetland here, there's nothing but contractor debris.

G

So I mean it's not always very cut and dry and there's room. There is wiggle room, I, think so.

C

But even in that example, Dan and I appreciate the point you're making and right short, there can be difference of opinions and people can try to abort the lines and then it's the other consultant's job to bring that back into the board and the public, and we certainly have seen an Engaged public and board in Beacon asking the right questions and pushing back. In the example you give, though, a filled in Wetland would never meet the definition of a wetland, unfortunately right because it doesn't exist and there are State criterias.

C

That said, you need to be wet. You need to have a uh you know the right soils you need to have the right vegetation, and so we filled in Wetland wouldn't meet that requirement that so it would be difficult. But then, in that case thank.

G

A

Any last question.

E

I have a random, very specific question, which is on the definition of Frontage.

E

um Does that simply mean that the house has to be facing the street, or is there a certain definition of access to the house from the street.

C

Now Frontage would mean the amount of land that the those will so Frontage is a particular District so set forth to dementia requirements needs to be X feet long. It's the wide and needs to have X speed of Frontage on a public Street, and so the house does not need to have facing, but I'm going to double check the code, because each Miss validates different codes.

C

So I'll get back to you if my answer is different, but I believe it's correct in that your code address is not the orientation of the house, but rather that the lot itself has front to China street so that you can have a lot that has no Public Access and no public facing no Street facing um a lot. But I'll send you the definition of function, to confirm that answer is correct. It really is pertaining just to the lot heavy access on the street, not the building orientation.

A

Foreign yeah, that's my recollection of the beacon definition but I appreciate you checking um Nick, okay, okay, I.

D

Have one other question about cumulative impacts, I'm wondering if there are multiple projects being considered or projects that take several years to build? What and I would appreciate from an individual Builder. It might not be seen they might not see it as fair to make them responsible for doing a study for all of the impacts in their area. So what is in that case is the city then, on the hook for doing a study, and do they do that or what what triggers looking at cumulative impacts, Beyond just one individual project.

C

It's going to be a next semester's course. Nobody.

H

In all seriousness,.

C

So secret does talk about cumulative impacts. um It's it's! It's difficult, because New York State, unlike California right California, will allow you to assess impacts on a developer for those cumulative impacts. New York state does not impact New.

C

York state only allows you to have impact these really in one specific area, which is recreational fees, recreational fees is a type of an impact fee, wherever our cumulative impacts to your work, Recreation and park offerings, and that's why you have a perlot deal and there's a side plan or a subdivision of you lots created um so I'll have to give it some more thoughts to give you the the the best answer, but if for our humans have impact, it can't be forced upon the last one into the neighborhood.

C

That would be arbitrary and sort of a that discrimination, but it would be interest, it would be discriminate impact where you're treating one person differently than the other just because they have to be the last one in so. If a new project requires um uh road to be built that can be passed on to the developer, they have to then improve the road to grid. To have their property, but it requires an extra police officer. That's paid for the general budget has to be absorbed by the city.

C

It cannot be passed on to that individual property owner, but I'll get you a better answer to that.

D

A

Okay, uh I actually forgot to mention. Thank you Nick um your case. Anyone in the audience uh is here for something else. This is a council Workshop. This is where the council kind of goes through things like advice from our attorney or our budgets. If you think this also will be a planning board meeting, um that is not the case. Just want to make sure the planning word meetings tomorrow, ordinarily, would be on a Tuesday, but because of the holiday it's on a Wednesday. So I just want to point that out.

A

Okay, so uh Nick you're. Also uh you and Chris are going to talk to us about snow removal on sidewalks.

B

Nick, do you want to lead on this yeah.

C

No, absolutely sorry just taking a Civil War, I apologies. So yes, so there's a question. We're raised with respect to the um sidewalk warden, so vegan, like many mississippis, require that property owners have the responsibility to clear the sidewalk outside their property. That's is um generally defined to be the entire length and width of that property uh sidewalk. Rather, when you have a lawn on your property, when you have a lawn on the between the sidewalk and the roadway, there is a readily identifiable place to place the snow.

C

The question that was raised, I Believe by councilmember Mansfield, was the example of the property owner on Main Street. Who does not have that ability to place snow? They they don't have a grass deer. They don't have an air, they could pile it up readily available to them and how does that get resolved? I thought it was a very good and fair question understood because we don't want to put heat into the streets.

C

However, in looking at this from other Municipal codes, we went through a number of years about Valley and broadened it to throughout New York. State I then spoke to various associations, and we also spoke to which I thought was a good resource.

C

um The insurance defense attorneys who work for municipalities, including the cities to find out, have they seen examples of that, because one of the common traits was that someone had cleared the snow as much as possible. Then someone slipped in with them was still sued. So we looked at that because it was a good, practical question and we came up with that. Really wasn't a good answer.

C

If it's not one, because if we came up with code language that stated clear to a certain width that might not be appropriate in all situations, plus with freezing refreezing of snow, that could relate to more dangerous conditions being created if the snow was left there and I know that Chris spoke with department heads about their thoughts on this and, at the end of the day, I'm still going to continue to look at this, but I do not recommend any changes to the code because there would be varying I can come up with the right language.

C

It would create, in my view, worse conditions and I. Think the issue complained of is not widespread and I think to the extent one clears it to the greatest extent possible.

C

um That is probably going to be sustainable, but needs to be. It needs to be examined so we'll continue to look at it, but I from my initial discussions and review. There is not a ready answer to the question that was posed other than that your existing code meets your needs is a clear standard. It's an enforceable standard, it's consistent with other other municipalities and potential solutions that we could come up with would I think be more harmful, uh Chris. Anything else to add. Yeah.

B

I would just talk about how this is implemented in the city, so there.

H

B

There is a requirement to clear all of your sidewalk, even if it's eight or ten feet wide on Main Street in terms of the there's, a rule of kind of common sense or or practical enforcement, in that, if you've cleared it enough that two two people can get through it, people in a wheelchair can get through safely. It's not iced, it doesn't present a danger to most pedestrians who would go through.

B

We don't cite those and we're we're fully aware that oftentimes because of the narrow width of our main street, we don't have the luxury that some of the wider main streets have where they can leave a pile of snow and not disrupt parking and not disrupt street life. We essentially plow and leave a windrow of snow on the edge of the parking lot on the edge of the sidewalks. We don't cite people for that and when they get too high, we do have people.

B

We do send our crews in overnight on overtime to clear it if it if it is becoming a safety hazard. Generally, though, when we cite people it's because they haven't cleared anything or they've cleared a very narrow path or there's ice or other trip hazards.

B

The issue that you raised George about the live ability for the homeowner that one's a harder issue, because we don't so much control it. Honestly people fall they sued the owner, no matter what they have and they'll sue the city as well. But again, if we were to go to a different standard, our staff think it's going to be difficult to enforce. What standard we're going to do. Is it going to be three feet?

B

Is it going to be four feet, then I'm going to have a situation where we're arguing about the width of what's cleared. Where is it it's a really clear standard right now you have you're responsible for clearing the whole sidewalk again we we use a degree of reasonableness in enforcing that.

F

But but still the the property owner or the homeowner or the business owner would be liable because, even though they're not being cited by the city they're still not compliant with the existing law,.

C

I think George that they would have the ability of their attorney to argue that they had complied with the regulation and when faced with placing the snow in the street and creating Hazard and being cited for that versus clearing a path that was a reasonable width and appropriate to meet the spirited intent of the law that a court was packed. To that end, each case is individual, so I'm not going to offer a legal opinion to a third party.

C

But if people have those concerns, they should discuss it with their insurance broker and their attorney and I think those are mitigating factors that would weigh in their in their defense. There's a rule of reasonableness.

B

The other thing to just think about is sometimes you can make a problem worse when you're trying to solve a problem and.

I

That's the last thing we want to do here so if.

B

We go with some other standard, it's going to make enforcement even more difficult and the bottom line is I, don't think you're going to get as much compliance and and those walkways aren't going to be done as well as they are now because there's going to be well like it did three feet. This is two and a half I thought it was you.

H

Know and again we.

B

Don't we we use a lot of common sense when we cite people, in fact, we clear some of the sidewalks on Main Street, and we we try to do the maximum width that we can without throwing it back in the street. Again you push it over towards towards the street the lake in front of the DMV, we're responsible for clearing that in front of the memorial building in front of any of our public parking lots. So so we also are captured in this as well right.

F

Well, I do appreciate all the effort that went into it. It seemed like a simple request, but I could understand the complications. Associated.

B

And we did, we didn't find a standard that we could use. That would actually mitigate this without causing unintended consequences.

F

So I guess really: we we depend on reasonableness in interpreting the law when either someone gets sued or when we decide to cite people or not. So there is a level of reasonableness which law is based on yeah.

B

And again, if we have circumstances where you have, you know large storms on back of back to back and it requires the clearing of Main Street. We'll make that call at that time and we'll do our best to take the snow out of the Main Street Corridor. And we have done that in the past.

F

Thanks Chris thanks.

A

Anything else on this one.

E

I'm wondering if it would be helpful for the public to know which streets the city does clear and are our responsibility or if that you're.

B

Just wondering that or do you want the answer to that.

E

I would like the answer to that I think I know the answer, but I think the public also wants the answer.

B

Key, do you know that offhand or we want some time all right.

A

I

A

um There isn't any street that is strictly ours.

E

I'm sorry, not Street side, sidewalks.

A

Yeah no I yeah. Let me see if I can give you some of an answer which is in terms of sidewalks. We don't you know it's the property owner who's, fundamentally responsible, there's no Street, where we clear all the sidewalks, at least as I understand it. There might be sections of it that.

J

We could that is correct. You typically it is a homeowners or the residents or business owners responsibility to clear the sidewalks in front of their buildings. If there's common areas or certain areas um adjacent to City properties, we would do that, but we don't do whole streets so.

A

I can give you some examples right outside on 9d Academy Street no longer crosses 90., it's sort of up on the hill a little bit and has a dead end and sort of nobody owns in front of that little Hill there and so I. Believe you do that little section. Yes, we do along the wall there right and there's a couple. There's other examples like that where you will do a sidewalk, because it's sort of an orphan in a way right.

J

Correct correct: if it's kind of in no man's land, where there's no uh definitive property line or who owns it, we would do it. You.

B

Have a list of them in your code as well, you did you adopted a list at some point.

J

B

So we'll we'll put that together put it on your list. Put.

J

It on my honey-do list: okay,.

G

um I guess one last question for me: um do we ever give people a chance to kind of remediate the situation or is it always like a ticket on the first like when we, when we find a sidewalk, still covered with snow after 24 hours? Do we just go right to ticket or do we ever say hey? Can you shovel that in the next four hours and I'll be back around or is.

J

It I know that has happened in the past Dan. um Typically, the building department goes out and they enforce it, and if the, if the homeowner sees them out there, he will work with them and say Hey, you know we're coming through, but if you can get it done today by day's end, um you'll be okay with you know, he's okay with that, um and they typically go towards the school zones first um and prioritize that, because obviously the kids walking to school, you don't want them walking in the street versus a sidewalk yeah.

J

So those are usually priority and then he starts to go back into the inner streets and by that time most of the times people haven't done. But.

B

They don't do every street, so some of the back streets are only done based on complaints.

I

B

We get, um and and typically what we found in talking to the building department is most people comply with this and, if they're a little late, we don't hit hit them with any kind of citation, but we have people that chronically do not do their sidewalk and and so we've been trying to improve that situation. I.

G

I just wanted to make sure, because there was a situation a couple years ago, where a senior hired someone to shovel their sidewalk and the person never showed up, and then it turned out they had covet, and so they got they got cited and they I just wanted to follow up on that and to see like. Maybe we can be a little lenient with folks who aren't able-bodied and can't shovel themselves for.

J

The most part like Chris just said it is usually repeat: offenders It's, usually the same people, multiple Stone, you know storm after storm and.

B

If they're extenuating circumstances, it has to come to city court for them to have any kind of penalty assessed, so a citation does not equal a fine necessarily, they would have to come to court. Our attorney would um prosecute it like a traffic violation.

G

K

In Danford perspective, there's only five citations this year at this.

G

Point, oh yeah, we didn't have a lot of snow last winter.

K

Now, there's that.

A

Okay, uh let's do budget so it says. The first item is the non-department line items that's Sue and then Highway, that's Mickey, so you might as well just hang around okay.

B

Can I just give a quick overview here too, so for people that are just tuning in we presented the mayor's Budget on October 3rd per the requirement and the code? What we're going to do tonight we have the Director of Finance Susan Tucker um is going to walk through some of the overhead costs that aren't assigned to a specific Department. Then we have three department heads coming in Mickey Michael manzi from our Highway Department Ed balicki from water department and Dave Tavernier from the wastewater treatment plant they've.

B

Given you presentations that are both in the packet online and you have them in front of you. Instead of walking through the packet they're just going to give a quick summary of that, and then we can walk through any budget items that you want to talk about and I'll give you the page numbers as we get to that. But we're not going to put the presentation up and read through it. We're just.

H

Going to do an overview and.

B

And with that, Susan Tucker is going to introduce it with the over overhead costs.

K

So uh usually, what I'm presenting are the non-dependent? None departmental costs, so these are items that just don't fall into one budget they're across the lines or the uh they're across all the funds.

K

The first one that I have here is electricity, that there's multiple lines in in various departments in the general, the water and the sewer fund. I didn't include a packet for this, because I was just going to talk about it.

K

As you can see, there's a you know in the in your own Central Hudson bills, and everything that the the buildings uh have gone Haywire this year they changed over their accounting system, their billing codes, so we have about 50 accounts and we're still trying to figure it all out, because they're duplicate billing for the same period, the kilowatts, don't make sense. So we weren't getting our credits, so we're still digging into that for 2022. So, but what we did do was lock into a supplier rate which we've been doing the last couple of years.

K

It works out, we locked in and thankfully we did, because we locked in at 11.8 cents and right now, it's at 16.9, which is a standard rate, not even the peak rate. So what I did this year is uh uh our budget for electricity across all? The funds was four hundred and five thousand I did across the board 10 increase, which should help insulate us from any uh higher delivery costs. The the supply cost is a little bit higher than we've seen in the past, um but just to try to give us an across-the-board coverage.

K

We also still have our solar farm and we did the renewable energy credits too. They're included in with our fixed rate, Supply.

B

Just if, if you don't know what that is, we basically per the policy of the city council cover any of the non-renewable energy that we use for the municipal electricity Supply and we cover it by purchasing renewable energy credits.

B

So about 30 percent of our energy is covered by renewable energy credits wrecks and the other 70 is produced by the Dennings Point solar installation and Sue saved us a lot of money by locking in she had to convince me to do that and I'm really glad. She convinced me.

K

I, just uh I'm not good at gambling, some.

B

You you nailed it.

K

The second item- I, have is gas and Diesel, and that is also across various departments. uh You also realize that we have uh have had increased costs in that those areas. So what I? What I usually do is I've usually had a three-year average of our actual usage of gas and Diesel I've I pushed it out to five years.

K

I wanted to take a look at um how much we've been using each year and how that some of those costs or some of the usage has gone down as we've implemented some of our electric vehicles into our Fleet. So the items in the the left side of the page are in the gray area, is that's our average gallons per month and then on the right side in the orange area. Is our annual cost or what I'm, anticipating the annual cost to be using uh the U.S energy Administration short-term Outlook?

K

So the average for 2023 for gas is going to be 3.61 cents next year and Diesel is 400 4.29. So I used uh the annual average that we actually use per Department times it by the estimated rate and I come up with what our anticipated gas and Diesel costs will be. Hi.

I

I'm sorry to interrupt I just wanted to check. Is this available like on the city website, for somebody who's watching now and sees that we're all looking at a page, but they can't see it on the screen. It.

K

B

Now, okay, Ben, can you work on putting that up as we're speaking, please yep.

G

L

Can upload it thank.

B

You justice will. That was the one thing that wasn't uploaded.

K

So and we'll get if later into the discussion, we'll talk about contingency, but we also put money into contingency for unanticipated costs. So if we do have a rise in above this amount, we can cover it with with uh contingency.

K

The next item- I.

G

Have a quick question: actually this might be a question for Chris the there's Vehicles City vehicles that people take home right. Not all of them are left in a City Garage yeah.

B

There there are a small number of vehicles that are taken home, um detectives, police detectives, take Vehicles home, um some of the department heads have the ability to take it home, but they don't always because it just logistically is easy for them to take their own truck. But we do have a small amount that take it home and on certain occasions, will allow like a working supervisor to take a vehicle home because it's actually faster.

B

If there's like a water break, they can go to that immediately without going to the water plant to get a vehicle yeah, but at gen the general rule is most of them: don't go home other than police and fire. It's.

K

Not allowed for personal use.

G

Right but we can't really monitor that.

K

No, we we do, we can.

B

Really yeah, we.

K

B

Mileage and also some of the vehicles have GPS all right. If we suspect that it's being misused, we would put a GPS I.

G

Don't yeah I'm not saying that I suspected out.

L

I

Employees yeah.

K

It's a handful, it.

G

Seems like a reasonable yeah.

K

I I: don't because I speed.

K

The next uh the next item, I.

M

Have on the way out of here, this is going to be a new Revenue source.

K

um The next item I, have is uh our law budget, which is it's not a handout in here, but looking on page.

B

um Six in the actual budget or page 11 in the PDF that's online.

H

B

Because the one on the one on the agenda- it's page 11 of 57.

K

Of the PDF of the actual budget of.

B

The PDF of the budget, okay,.

K

B

So in your in your package, it's labeled number six. If you're looking online, it's uh page 11 of 57. and it it's under 1420 law, yeah.

B

And the updated version is um up for Sue's presentation.

H

K

Fortunately, this uh last year we negotiated all the Union uh Union agreements in their multi-year contracts, so we won't have uh well, we didn't have the cost in 2021, because uh we did it in-house with minimal uh need for legal counsel.

K

um We also have Chris has done the contracts himself for the most part, I think you've done 70 contracts this year. Did you.

B

Yeah I mean I I, don't do them myself, but I use the attorneys I think less than the prior administrator, because I did a lot of contracts in my last position. So.

H

B

um In instead of them doing a hundred percent of the work, we might be able to draft them and right and save them hours on that right.

K

B

I review them as well to check right.

K

We also have Ben's eyes on them so and.

B

He is an attorney.

K

And is an attorney so that helps out. It also helps out with our new HR Director. We don't have to rely on legal counsel as much as we've had in the past, so and also because of that Chris has been able to uh have more items under the retainer that we have for them. So that's the that top attorneys line, that's a retainer amount and they get a certain number of hours. So uh with that retainer.

K

So things like um back taxes on property collection, it's called in M, so we have to send out legal letters and things like that. Instead of billing us separately, they're building that under the retainer now so in lieu of that we've, um we actually reduce the budget. 155 000 from prior year adopted. So it's going from 375 to 220.

K

and that's in the general fund. There's a small piece in the water, the small piece in the sewer as well.

B

And this is a trend that I've been trying to drive since I came in in early 2021., um we're not getting less service, we're we're using it more strategically, so we're trying to do more multi-year contracts so, rather than doing a contract five times in five years, like we did with the flea market or the farmer's market, we did a five-year contract with really easy extension. Similarly, with the Clearwater lease, we've set that up, so it's two five-year leases instead of a whole series of things that need to go back to legal right.

K

And it's worked out too for uh uh Nick's office, because Chris is more structured in how he calls the attorneys it's not just picking up the phone and calling them you know uh every other, every other hour. It's uh you know he has meetings with them. So it's like you know from three to four on this day, they're having these meetings to go over everything, so it's more efficient on their end. So in discussions with Nick he he agreed to do all this as well.

B

Okay and- and we really have saved a lot on labor and Sue- helped to negotiate these contracts with the firefighters, police and CSEA, and it's really helped us reduce the number of grievances we've had to fight with our employees. You know morale is a lot better than it was a few years ago and and I I think that long term is going to save us money as well, because, instead of getting in battles about needless things, you know we try to figure out, what's actually important and and choose our battles very carefully.

E

G

We get um Keenan beans rate sheet, uh so we know.

B

How did we settle on that? We didn't get it today. Okay, right, where I think we're going to end up. Is the retainer, the general retainer right now, it's fifteen thousand two. Fifty a month, okay, they were going to raise that to fifteen thousand seven fifty but I'm, still negotiating with Keenan Bean on how much goes under the retainer um I want there to be transparency about the retainer. Basically, that there's an expectation for that sum of money, we're going to get x amount of hours. Now it doesn't.

B

It's not always going to be X every month, but the average needs to be X across a calendar year. So as soon as I have that we'll distribute it to the council. They are looking for. So in addition to that uh retainer we also have an hourly rate like when we would do things like discipline with employees. They want to go up from 225 an hour to 230. They wanted to go to 245, I, think I'm at 235 with them um and again we're we're driving a lot more of that under the retainer.

B

So when there's minor disciplinary actions, we don't get a bill for two thousand dollars that just goes under the retainer. We also have a traffic Court retainer for two thousand dollars a month.

B

That has been a pretty good bargain for us and they for that they cover all of our vehicle tickets um and they are now going to prosecute um uh infractions and other violations that were not being prosecuted at all, because the D.A didn't do them um so I I feel good about the direction we're going where I feel like we're, getting a lot more value for our money and choosing not to waste money on certain other things.

G

So the rate we can circulate the rate sheet once it's final. Yes, thanks.

B

I'm hoping to have that tomorrow, I was hoping to have it tonight, but we're not there.

E

Make sure I understood what you were saying about in rem being um in the retainer um I see it's also a ten thousand dollar budget line item.

K

This year, uh because the hours were so much less in the retainer in 2022. um Chris was able to put some of the in-rem charges into the retainer line. So.

E

It's like split for next year. Some of it is entertainment.

H

E

B

Did I kept something that's the one we haven't agreed on so.

K

B

I

B

Are a number of things that we got billed for outside of the retainer tax certioraries? We got billed for in-rem disciplinary actions, Union.

I

B

um Sales of real estate, certain leases and licenses um all but the in-rem looked like they're going to be under the retainer at some point.

G

B

Nick is no longer on the call, so I can't even ask him what he's putting in.

E

This thing well, it'll, be it'll, be in the rate sheet. When we see.

B

E

Right so um and sorry to go back into the past, um but can you remind me what this eleven thousand dollars in the 2021 budget for police reform was.

K

That was I anticipated um because we had to adopt the police report reform that our uh our legal counsel would have more involvement with it. They did not, so it was budgeted for and we did not use it.

B

Yeah, just like we budgeted a lot of money for PBM matters, iaff, which is the firefighters ncsea.

B

um So, like our actuals um we're well below, like you can see fire matters in 2021 we had budgeted 49 500, we spent 2500 so.

I

B

Sue and I negotiated and then went to the attorneys and said now: can you write this up so that it's legal and binding.

E

Yeah, thank you um and then I I noticed that the tenant advocacy services are not in the 2023 budget. Oh.

B

That's a good question: yeah.

E

We hadn't discussed that as a council.

B

Yeah, um so that was not our our choice we um and I for I'm sorry I forgot to update all of you on this.

B

We received a notification from legal services of the Hudson Valley that they had received a major either federal or state Grant, and they were basically going to do the program that they're doing in Beacon across the Hudson Valley, and so they asked to be let out of their contract early with us they're going to maintain the number that goes to the paralegal for Beacon, as of October 30th, we're no longer under contract with them. So so we won't, we won't we'll still be getting.

B

Our residents will get that service under a Federal, Grant yeah, great yeah. No, it was really cool. I was like um you want us to stop paying.

H

B

You'll still do this.

E

B

E

Thank you yeah. Is it still going to be Steven.

B

um For the time being anyway, Stephen maholic is the paralegal who was assigned to Beacon he'll still be receiving calls from our residents, okay, but somebody else will be paying the bill.

E

Great yeah, because I know they had some ongoing cases um so great.

K

Any other questions with.

D

Law I had a question about the arbitrator line. So I see it was increased some time this year and.

H

D

Something that we expect or hope going forward that, because we have new staff uh with our new head of HR, that we no longer need that or.

K

That's something that's uh oh, no I, I anticipate. We won't need that number. That was a specific case. So um I, don't I, don't anticipate it. 3000 is the usual number for that we put in for arbitrator. We hope not to use that number. We tried to stop any grievance before it goes to arbitration. We usually we can sit down and settle it so and.

B

We don't have anything on the horizon.

K

B

Would spiral to that level? That was something I inherited when I came on in early 2021 that is now concluded and.

D

B

Longer spending money on it.

D

Okay, great, thank you.

K

Any other questions on law. We can always come back too. The next thing I have is liability insurance, and that is on page nine, in your in the budget document.

K

So, unfortunately, our liability insurance did increase. um It went it's going from 4 151 000 to 516 000. Overall, um what happened was last year, I only anticipated a two percent increase. The increase ended up being more around six.

K

um That's due to we actually did an inventory of the assets at year end after going. You know, we had already presented the budget, but we did an inventory of the assets at year end and made sure that we were accurately insured and all the descriptions were correct.

K

It actually ended up increasing our liability insurance, a bit plus our final rate came in and it ended up being a little more like six percent this year, they've anticipated a seven percent increase, and that brings us up overall sixty five thousand dollars from budget to budget, and we are in discussion questions with them at this point to perhaps lower that rate. It's not final yet, but.

B

And just so, you know how our insurance goes. We have a broker through which we get insurance through a nymar and nymar is like a Cooperative. It's the New York Municipal Insurance reciprocal.

B

One of the reasons the rates are going up is across the board. The cost of construction has gone up. So a lot of this insurance is replacement. So a building burns down you, you don't just get the value of the building, you get a replacement value and because the cost of new new construction and repair has gone up so steeply they've jacked up their rates.

B

What we're trying to do is talk to them about some of the things that we think we've implemented, that will help like we've created a Safety Committee across all of our departments, thanks to our new director of HR and we're hoping to not have the full seven percent befall somewhere more around five percent.

K

The next item I, have is contingency and that's on page 10.

D

It's not going to affect us with our fire house, Construction.

B

um There I think I think in the short term would they might look at the closure of two firehouses into one and having a more safe facility as both positive and negative, like our cost of construction, the the this building is going to be worth a lot more right. However, we're also going to be able to say: hey, there's, there's this other piece that it's safer. We have better decontamination, we have a better layout, um it meets modern codes which the other ones did right. So I'm hoping it's a watch, there's.

K

Also well they'll, be partial, too, we'll have to pay during construction too, because if something were to happen with it, it'd be insured too, but.

B

One of the good things is in all of our contracts. We require liability, insurance.

I

B

Our vendors, they have to name the city as additional insured, so if they start a fire there and we have five million dollars worth of damage, it's not our insurance. It's their insurance.

K

So, as I had mentioned before with contingency, these are unanticipated costs or costs we we know about, but we don't know exactly how much it might may be. So we always like to put a little bit in contingency for some unknowns. We also use this to calculate out people. We anticipate, who are retiring to pay out their accumulated unused time, and since we negotiated all three Union contracts a lot of times the increases for for those are held in contingency, we were able to reduce a contingency, 207 thousand dollars this year.

K

That's in the general fund, there's also portions in the water and sewer fund as well.

B

Yeah and so like, when you did when the prior council did the 2021 budget, you didn't have a contract in place for csca, so we you were basically taking the same labor rate from the year before. When you knew there was going to be some X percent increase.

B

um You know, Susan tries to be very conservative and make sure we have enough money for whatever might come, and um luckily now we know the actual numbers through this year and next year at least because we have in place multi-year contracts. Last.

K

Year we also had some overtime amounts in there for police and detectives as well they're, not in there this year.

E

um And you said that retirement fund is to pay out and use sick days. Is that also for ongoing retirement payments? Or is that.

K

An address um anyone who's entered into the New York State retirement system gets paid directly by New York State. This is only for um there's. The employees are allowed to accumulate sick time. There's a current year of vacation in a current year. uh Personal leave that they're entitled to when they leave depending on you know, if they let, if they retired or resigned.

B

So if you've been here for 30 years and you haven't used a lot of sick time, this can be pretty substantial payout at the end right.

B

It is Cap, though it's not unlimited, I think we're capped at 100 and.

K

195 days, yes,.

B

And you get paid for half of those for.

K

Six hours for vacation and personal, it's 100 yep.

K

The next item I have is uh our pension, the New York, State, ERS and pfrs. So um there's there's.

H

K

Portion, that's in the police budget. There's a portion, that's in the fire budget, and the reason why that is is because it's it's billed separately by New York State like that. So then we get a um it's. It's a city of Beacon pension cost summary across the top. um Then we also get an ERS bill. That's the rest of us, besides police and fire, and we're all in uh different tiers. Based on when we began service, those tiers have different rates, um multiplied by our salary.

K

They come up with our the bill that they bill the city.

K

So on page 25 we have uh the ERS portion that I've allocated to the general fund, which, based on salaries overall, comes up to 63 percent, um actually I'm. Sorry, let's, let's start at the top, which is the total bill. The ERS bill is going down. Forty two thousand dollars, which is a seven percent decrease in the pfrs bill, is going up. 76 000, which is 5.78 increase for a 1.77 increase overall, that's not too dramatic, I, don't think so.

K

um So what what going back to the tears is? The like tier two? We may be contributing 30 of uh tier two salary, so a person hired I think for let's say police that was hired between 1973 and 1990 is in tier, two or 90 I'm. Sorry 2009 is in tier two, so their percentage is higher than like, let's say tier six, someone who's hired later at like 2012 or later is tier six, so tier two may be thirty percent of that that individual's salary, but tier six is only 20..

K

So when they did pension reform back then in 2011 2012 they reduced the the tier VI contribution because they they increased. The employees contribution amount.

K

So as more as we hire more people and uh and they're going to tier six, our our costs should be lower um and as more tier two retire, uh uh the New York state would be paying them directly and they wouldn't be as costly. Here we.

B

Don't have to just fluctuate with market returns, so the New York state comptroller's office manages the state retirement system and it has a rate of return, and so, if they're projecting that, we think we're going to get a eight percent return. Next.

I

B

Our contribution will take that into account and it will be lower if they think we're going to get a lower return. Then we have to make up more towards the contribution, because we have to basically you're you need to cover what you're going to use. So they have actual aerial, Actuarial estimates projections um and then they try to re rejigger it every year, you'll see in 2021.

B

We actually jumped almost forty thousand dollars in that and now we're going to go down, whereas the police and fire going the other way and that's both a factor of who's in it. What tier, they're in and the market condition right projected.

K

So there's there's not really a lot of control over that. That number is given to us by New York, State retirement.

E

I'm sorry remind me what ERS stands for I'm.

K

Sorry, what what.

E

Ers stands for.

K

Employee Retirement, System and pfrs is police and fire.

K

One thing I did see on the bill. Is they they're, not charging us for 384 e yet and I called them on that too. So um yeah.

B

So some of you will see and hear about the 384 e-retirement that we did for the fire department we negotiated as part of their last five-year contract, a new additional retirement benefit and they actually came up with the way to pay for it. So for five years, they're giving up stipends, they gave up certain raises, and in exchange we put in this new retirement um and we've already seen that we've had less employees leave and we actually are using it as a recruiting tool. Now, because only one other Fire Department in the county has it.

K

I know there's no pretty pictures or colors, but.

K

Is there any questions on that? Okay, so the next thing I have is workers comp insurance.

K

Which is on page 25 as well, so this is also broken up into um each fund is allocated directly to each fund and fortunately we're in the um we're in a shared service agreement with Dutchess County. We have been since 2013 and we originally. When we went into the plan, we got a significant reduction, and so this year we have a slight decrease in the overall, but I mean last year we had a larger increase, but it's much better than if we went out to the market and tried to get Workers Comp separately.

K

So I still feel good that we're doing well with with Dutchess County and the shared shared service. We have with it's probably about 20 other municipalities, yeah so um and they break. They also break up the bill separately. They have fired differently for their own uh Actuarial calculations, and so we've broken that down the fire. Actually increased 23 000 this year, but the overall went down 218 dollars. So it is a slight increase this year and.

B

And this is used a lot when we have an injury on the job. We don't pay that if that person's, unable to come to work, we don't pay them. They they're paid under the workers comp system and, as you can imagine, if you are using it a lot, then you end up paying higher rates overall.

H

B

So when they figure out like what they they, their rates are a factor of how much we're paying in salary versus how and how much we're using their program right.

E

K

Any questions on workers comp, okay, very exciting, the next one is health insurance. It's also on page 25., and there is a handout for that.

K

So this is one of our biggest costs, so, overall, our gross health insurance costs and that's on the piece of paper I, have it broken down between General, Water and Sewer, but overall the cost of our health insurance and I factored in a four percent increase for night ship, which is one of our plans and also Empire, comes out to over 4.4 million dollars, um so I break it down into General, Water and Sewer, based on where the employee works or where they did work.

K

So we have Empire for some of our I'm sorry, some some of our retirees are on Empire summer on night ship only actives can enroll in Empire. We also do Medicare Part, B reimbursements and some people pay. After a certain year of uh in all the contracts, some people were free and then they had to change to what is now 20 contributions.

K

So we have the and the contributions are in the uh the revenue side of each fund as well.

K

So you'll see that under it says, retiree reimbursement and then I have net costs of all all act, all retirees and actives we're trying to mitigate the cost of our health insurance because it's just compounding each year right and so we've actually set up a health insurance committee with the unions, because what what happens right now is the health insurance.

K

The name of the health insurance is written into the contract, so we can't even switch um so if they agree you know- and we agree, maybe we can change our health insurance that is comparable, but maybe less expensive and better benefits for everyone. So we've been discussing that with everyone at this time is that something.

D

That might take effect for 2023.

K

Or would it be in place, it would hopefully we could change this year. Okay,.

I

If that's something that you could uh change sooner with uh non-unionized departments, I guess.

K

You um you would have to with non-union. We don't really get a choice: I'm non-union as well. So.

B

We're we're self-insured, meaning we have. uh We basically pay out the claims. We put it aside, an amount of money. We get money from people's contributions and then things like drug price rebates um and but then we pay out the claims and they try to estimate what we're doing each year.

B

We can't take parts of the city and put it in a different system. So again we're we're already pretty small for a self-insured entity. We have 129 employees union and non-union. Usually when you have a self-insured plan, that's a lot bigger than that. um What we're? What we're looking to do is get acceptance from the three unions and then we'd move everybody over, including non-union, because we'd get a.

B

What we're looking to do is get a better price, get a better product and then pass along the savings to the workers, and we we have a proposal that we're going to be putting forward to the unions that gives them less added cost um costs. That'll also translate to non-union, including city council and administrative staff,.

K

So that was the uh orange part, which is was just the health insurance below that the blue part is the dental which we are also self-insured on we're also looking at those plans, um the uh the actives pay a portion, it's not an actual percentage and the retirees pay a hundred percent of the health insurance, their health insurance costs so net net. It doesn't cost us that much money, the dental and the last page is the vision breakdown, and this translates to each of the pages in the budget.

K

I didn't want to get too deep into it, because it's just numbers on a page calculations. It's not very interesting, but I did want to tell you what we were doing as an overall to try to mitigate costs.

K

Is there any questions on that? Do.

B

You need a photo to go with cereal box.

K

So interesting, no.

E

H

B

Do I thought you could use this right now Susan. This has been very dry. Okay. Thank you. Apparently,.

K

I'm not fun enough. Okay, then.

C

G

That's what cereal dogs look like? Yes,.

B

In fact, there's three of them and they roam.

G

Around in the weekend, I ran into one of the supermarket. Yesterday excellent.

B

K

To know who they are all right, so uh during your orientation we talked a lot about debt. We also talked about it during our Capital planning process, because that's when authorizations happen for debt.

K

So what you see here is the actual debt schedule that I do each year or when, when my payments are due and who they're due to and who they're and what fund they're charged to so what this is is past costs of past projects that we have issued debt for, and they give me a schedule of principal and interest when they, you know loan us the the bond money.

K

So these are all past projects, and these are the principal interest payments on those past projects that we've issued for I haven't issued since 2021 I, don't plan on issuing in 2022. we're starting we're moving along on projects. We have all of our authorizations in so we can front the money from our operating funds and then issue the bond a little bit later, I mean I'm, just hoping interest rates come down, but it's not likely. We still.

K

We still have to keep moving on our infrastructure projects, though, and fund as much as we can with fund balance. It's.

B

Too, locked in at a key time before the rates went up, so the last Bond that we put out, which covered us right up through that time, was it a re. They were at really good rates right.

K

So anything that we had in in progress at that time we issued for, and that was in June of 2021, so what the net the plan is is as we're doing all these other projects. We have some Dam projects going online and a lot of sewer projects, um we'll I'll issue short-term debt, so I won't lock into a 30-year Bond, but we'll do short-term debt, which is a one-year one-year debt and then I roll it over the next year we go out and we we bid it out and we get the best interest rates possible.

K

um I know so the the next page is the it's. The summary of all our debt and I showed this to you in your the orientation to, um but maybe now after you know going through the process, maybe it makes a little bit more sense, but uh we have uh the general fund, the water fund and the sewer. The year each debt issuance was issued. The principal remaining the interest paints interest payments remaining and the year that each of those debt issuances will be paid off.

K

So, as you can see in the general fund right up the top in Orange, we have a 2005 issue will be paid off in 2024 and the 2008 issue is paid off this year, so that will help to as new we issue new payments, our I'm sorry, a new debt coming online. It frees up some room in the budget for it. So we pay these principal and interest payments through the operating budget.

D

I have what might be a long-term debt or bonds one-on-one question so I see that our the amount that we're paying in principle is going up and the amount interest is going down, is that something that we have control over is that the standard.

K

That is principle and standard. What what they're doing is keeping it a level Debt Service amount. So if it's ten thousand dollars Less in interest, it's going to have ten thousand more in principle, so it keep. It helps you to budget great. Thank.

H

You you're welcome.

K

That's all for the really exciting stuff, so in the unicorns.

J

Now it's time for pretty pictures.

A

Any questions for Sue yeah I have a couple questions.

G

Okay, um two uh in the general there's a line under the city administrator. If I recall correctly, that uh has.

G

That was for severance and retirement pay in 2022. What what was that was? You didn't have a retiree and yes,.

K

You did uh the assistant to the city administrator at the Grogan, so uh her most of her salary was allocated here. She was also the planning board secretary, but that's that's her way out.

G

Got it okay, all right, thank you and.

K

G

um I think it was Paige sorry to do this right above the Insurance on page nine. We have a line in here for purchase of equipment under technology and it seems to have doubled.

H

From 2022 yeah.

K

I was wondering what that was. uh I could go through that, but it'd probably be better if our it did, but um he has a couple servers on there. They're like 12 000 each so he has server replacement on there. um uh I could get I could get you the the actual details.

G

No, that's fine I I.

K

G

They weighed whether it was better to purchase servers or to subscribe to online.

K

Cloud, yes, he's very good with that. There's always that trying to figure that out. He also manages the inventory of all a desktops laptops everything, so he tries to space it out and base it on. You know and rotating them. Yeah, yeah and.

B

I think the new Firehouse is in there a little bit like we are doing the technology and the new. um When we do the firehouse project in 2023, he's helping us make sure we have all the tech support. We need there. Our infrastructure, rather thanks.

G

That's all for me.

K

He doesn't always spend it either. So you know. uh So that's that's a good thing too. You know he doesn't get through all of it. So you.

G

Like those people right yes well,.

K

I have a couple of them, not this one, but.

B

It's a good Segway.

K

D

You have any other questions of.

B

Streets, uh Mickey, manzi, sorry.

D

I had a question for Sue, because one of the things I found fascinating about this was looking at our year end from last year and I'm wondering at what point in the year. Is it part of this process that you're calculating you're on because I assume some things might still be in flux, you're figuring out from the from the.

K

End are you talking about debt or overall, overall overall, oh well, year, end this.

D

Year well, the year ends like there's all the data about what we were at 12, 31, 2021 um and I feel like I'm still calculating still so that is stuff that can take many months, because if things keep rolling.

K

In adjustments there there's a handful of things: yeah, there's still a couple adjustments that need to be made. Yes,.

D

Yeah I just find it.

K

I find it close. Yes, it's just not perfect. Yeah.

D

I find it interesting to look back and do that, and sometimes, if we're, if we're right now in the process of looking forward and so I'm just wondering about the best time to also look back and see it's.

K

Close enough to analyze, it's just, you know, there's a couple of cruels that need to be made in reversals and right just minor accounting things, but it's good enough to say this is about where we ended. The expenses are almost always perfect. It's usually the revenues. I have to do some accruals of things that the book is receivables and stuff like that. But you can look at the expenses and it's a pretty uh accurate picture. Okay, great.

D

K

All right, no really it's your turn perfect.

A

J

A

I do have a comment so I appreciate it. So the one number I always look.

B

A

um And I'm, just gonna, just put an eye on, is The Debt Service.

H

Right, it's about.

A

Five million dollars across all our uh three funds: uh two nines.

H

I

But five, four nine yeah, four nine across.

H

A

That's that's 12, 16 and 27 of our three funds, so twelve percent of the general fund is Debt Service.

H

A

Percent of the water from 27 percent of the super fund right kind of pointing that out, we've.

K

Increased sewer quite a bit yeah.

A

And it makes total sense- and you know uh was- was talking to Ed before the meeting and I'm just actually encouraging doing the capital infrastructure. We've been doing it for 30 years. That I've been kind of able to watch and.

H

A

Pretty impressive: how.

H

A

Gotten done I I recall when I was first on Council. We were very concerned that we weren't getting to our infrastructure and we thought all right. Let's find ways of.

I

Getting all the.

A

Grants because you know when we were a needier community, the.

I

A

More available for infrastructure, but I think we've been pretty wisely kind of slowly but surely chipping away at it and I'm just very impressed at the extent of our infrastructure. We still have some work to do, but um you know I note these.

H

A

Percentages are a little high, but.

K

A

Think they're important things and we keep doing them the.

K

Percentages are high, but we're investing in our assets and that in and of itself is saving us money, we're losing less water, that you know we're able to get more haulers down at our plant, so we're actually saving money, even though we may be paying it through Debt Service I mean we have to fix the dams. It's not a you know, that's our water source, so.

G

um If the the, if the debt that we have on our sewer.

H

G

Partly driving the cost of you know per household per sewer uh when that debt starts to come off or re or lessen, would we be able to reduce the costs of sewer Services.

K

What debt is cyclical, so um once we stopped doing this project, it will be a next project that we have to fund and the next project that we have to fund. We try to spread out these projects, but I, don't it doesn't end because it's like your house, your.

G

K

Was 15 years well.

G

It's the magnitude of them can right yeah. So the difference between you know replacing entire facilities over at the wastewater treatment plan and running you know, new Mains might be different costs, but it.

A

Might it might, though, over time right, yeah.

K

A

Thing to to note on water and service, our rates are exceptional. I was at about doing some comparisons, but we consistent in my you know little bits of what I can notice.

E

A

Of data, as our rates are pretty low, they.

K

Are low um so I did an analysis and I believe at this point was from 2016. it was 24 different, sewer districts where the second lowest and that's a large in part of the offset from the haulers, the haulers.

H

K

Treat the sewage that current calculation I I believe it offsets by 30 percent, so we're able to offset in the other huge piece is the correctional facilities in the town of Fishkill. We sell water and sewer to different communities. It helps to set off the the residents so.

B

And we've tried to have reasonable increases last year was two and a half percent this year. The proposed increase for both but uh water and sewer is three percent. Now, if you look at the the cost or the Consumer Price Index of the things we have to buy, which we'll talk about more when we get into head and uh Dave's areas, those those have gone up by seven, eight, sometimes ten percent. So we we do. We are conscious about who's using our system and making sure um that you know we're not having huge year-over-year increases.

B

So again, a three percent is very responsible. Considering what we face this year.

K

Anything else all right.

I

K

B

Susan, maybe if you have any any photos, you want up, I can pull your presentation, but I won't otherwise pull it up. No.

J

I think everybody has a copy, I believe correct, all right all right. um Obviously, my name is Michael Manji I'm, the highway superintendent for and I. Believe everybody knows me at this point: um October 3rd, we did a little um tour of the highway department. A couple of council members were there, so some of this may become a little repetitive, um just a quick overview.

J

The highway department is budgeted for 22 full-time employees, including myself. The codes for the budget are in that little paragraph. There kind of explains everything.

J

We do a lot of a lot of our projects and things we do here are actually in conjunction with the water department.

J

um We typically hire a couple, maybe four or five seasonal employees throughout the course of the summer months. Typically, these college students, when they're home for college we hire for the summer it typically carries over to the following year, form for a job.

J

This year we hired three new motor equipment operators, which replaced two retirees and one individual who resigned moving into milling and Paving. We've done a lot this year and the the big one this year for April and May obviously was milling and Paving on Main Street, that's the first time in quite some time at least a generation that I've been told that the whole that Main Street has been done in its entirety. uh Milling Paving and we went with the epoxy paint, which was talked about quite a few times at the council meetings.

J

um There's a couple pictures of that on page two of that work being done.

I

J

I

J

I

Started interrupt I just want to say for people who are following online we're looking at a packet right now, but you can see all of this on page 65 of the agenda packet. Thank.

J

You justice um this year, we're slated I, know: we've had some questions. The actual dates are still up in the air for Mill and pay for this year. It's going to happen so we're going to be starting next week, I'm hoping to have a locked. In date, it's weather dependent by Thursday. So once we get that done been in the administrator will set out all calls it'll be put on the website and as we go through, we'll be notifying the residents on those streets on a daily basis to what they have in store.

J

This year, we're slated into 24 streets, which again quantity of streets, is more than we've done in the past last year. I believe we did 10 and in 2020 with 12 streets, so we're doing quite a bit more than we've done historically.

J

A couple of other projects that we've done for the capitol. Obviously it was a new roof on City Hall, which was a new roof replacement. The original roof was on there, so we did a tear off new shingles used, copper to put over top of the Dormers, which really set it off and and created a nice um look for the roof.

J

J

A couple of the other pictures I have in here we part of when we went over the um walk through on October 3rd I, explained to the Council of what we do and it's kind of where the go-to department for planting trees in the city we've recently planted well. Actually, today we planted three new trees, two on North Chestnut and one on Main Street as Replacements that were in voids. We had four. The one picture here is actually of Riverfront a red Flynn drive. We planted four red Maples down there.

B

Episode is up on the screen.

H

B

People to see so there were dead trees along red Flynn drive and we needed to take them down and Mickey put four brand new beautiful trees down there. What.

J

They did was they originally when red Flynn Drive was reconstructed or whatever they redid that road. Originally they had them between the between the sidewalk and the road. They kind of grew in the way of the sidewalk into the sidewalk. So we actually moved those trees into the grass line and we poured new concrete over where the grates were so there's no trip hazards and everything's a smooth surface there, foreign s we just did recently um in-house the Ada ramps, which kind of sets us up for a million pave. We ended up doing those in-house.

J

If you guys remember, it went out to bid a couple times and the numbers are highly elevated versus what our Engineers estimates were. So we were able to do those in-house again in conjunction with the water department. They helped out with our maintenance guys, and we got those ramps done for Pennies on a dollar I mean it was about six thousand dollars, seven thousand dollars for the concrete.

G

These aren't the Main Street ones. These are the ones that are like over on boys and, yes,.

J

What it is is when we use the chips, funds um for Mill and pay any of the streets that we do we have to have. They need to be ADA Compliant. So if there aren't ramps, we need to install ramps. If the ramps aren't met the code or if they're older, we end up changing those out. So that's why that's? How we determine where they go based on our street set, and then we um transpired a list of so.

G

Chips, money can be used for sidewalk repair.

J

um Just eight I, just to my knowledge, just the Ada ramps themselves, not actual sidewalks, all right thanks thanks and again that saved the city, a boatload of money. Thank you to those guys that stepped up um some of the recent projects that were completed capital projects.

J

um I know I just mentioned the roof. We had the HVAC Chiller, which runs the air conditioning system. Here at City Hall um we did the bump outs on Main Street um I'm, not going to steal, Dave's, Thunder I, know installation of his new hauler station I'll. Leave that for him.

J

um Obviously we did a new South Avenue sidewalk, that's completed this year um about a month ago that was completed three weeks ago.

J

Teller, Avenue fiscal Avenue are still in progress, I'm hoping to go out to bid soon I would imagine an anticipation of a springtime start, um so that's been kind of in the works for a while and then um we'll just move forward on some future planning of capital projects which we've done with the capital plan. We have everything kind of listed in there, which is which isn't here, obviously.

J

B

J

I started out with that on the front page I figured everybody would just get a kick out of that.

B

J

Have to show the dummy like okay,.

J

The dummy light was a very sensitive subject right.

G

So I get it or are we just no.

B

J

B

J

And there was no intention on the city part to not ever put it back up. It was an accident, an unfortunate accident. The employee felt terrible. It was just a long time trying to get everything together piece together, had it.

K

Painted powder.

J

Coated yeah, it was powder coated, but we had a manipulate a couple of pieces. Other than opposed to the whole light is original that came down. We had the whole thing powder coated obviously installed. So that was a big monkey off my back.

A

J

A

Other dummy light has.

I

A

Hit in the past, which is why they're not in the middle of the street anymore, except ours and I, think one other one I'm told or something some.

K

It was I, don't think, that's it. So at some.

A

Point we'll we'll probably get the hint and move it off to the side. No.

B

A

G

Get hit again, yeah I, don't think you're right about that. So it's.

J

K

Hit a couple times, it's been hit twice since you think.

B

We did put reflective tape on it. Wait to see if that helps.

J

Yeah we just recently added that that was something else we just added the yellow triangles. We actually put white and yellow reflective tape triangles in those to help make it more visible, um flashing.

B

Right, I guess neon pink. If that doesn't work, so it'll.

K

Be there, but it put the unicorn on top.

B

Yeah, we may put a unicorn by it to protect it, but.

J

It was pretty exciting, getting it put up the Hawks and the cheers and I think Rancho by. Maybe we were putting it up.

K

G

Can I go back to the road markings sure uh so that that new paint that you're using lasts longer? What's the difference between how it where, where the current paint wears out and and how much, how many years we get out of the new paint dude.

J

This is this, they say is three to five years: the the epoxy paint um we actually in the budget. We increased. My budget line for line striping I believe we're gonna go with a different type paint again over the epoxy, because what they say now is you can't really it's there's another, the other route of paint, it's easier to go over top of versus the epoxy, but it is the same cost. It's the same same time frame as far as the longevity okay.

J

So that's one of the increases in our budget was the line striping, and it was because of that. So.

B

It's one one to two years versus three to five gotcha and and what we figured is yeah, we're going to spend more on material, but you're going to have the lines look better longer and you're going to spend less on Contracting out the repainting.

B

So as we as we go forward, we're going to try to use not the the epoxy is, is a little bit higher than what we're put suggesting in the budget. But that's still a lot longer lasting and it does allow you to go back and Patch it.

B

So it's been a work in progress to try to figure out how to the.

J

Best way to go about it, yeah and in a part and part of the line strip, and we typically have one or two of our guys go around with the guys at night. So every three years versus every year helps us on labor that way as well, for us kind of frees, a guy up like I, say we're not doing it every year. You know the coordination to try to get it together and get it done it's time consuming as well. So if we can limit that to every three years, beneficial for everybody right.

G

You could maybe even do more of the city like more of the areas that need to be repainted, because you get more longevity out of the.

J

Well sometimes that- and that is true- but some of the part like I- think when I re-bid it, because what we do is we bid out the line striping um I'm, going to bid it out based on the specs of the paint that we just got some information on along with that I'm going to have to get a layout price, because when they add lines it's above and beyond their standard contract, you know because they're measuring they're pulling string lines. It takes a little bit longer than just to repaint.

J

So I think I may actually include that into the bid. So we have numbers so it's easier to put together. If you guys request- or you know, suggest an area for some some lines that are non-existent. What would the cost be and I'd be able to tell you right and when you see if it's in the budget, if we can find money in the budget and what it's going to be.

B

And like we're, looking at additional parking stalls on all the side streets to Main Street to make for more efficient parking layout- and that was one of the recommendations of the Main Street access committee.

J

It's a little bit above and beyond our standard painting, yeah.

G

J

I think this year, when I bid I'm going to get a layout price and see if they can give me a per foot layout price, which would help us figure things out. Cool.

J

um I mean I went through that pretty quickly I think I covered all my big topics. Yeah.

B

If I could there's just one other major change in his budget, you'll see sanitation did go up by about eighty thousand dollars or eleven percent um that that is because the Tipping fees for the garbage went up from 78 to 91 dollars a ton, and when it goes up more than ten dollars under our contract with royal, we we then pay a higher fee.

B

We still think that fee is less than if we we did extend their contract for another year, because we didn't think we'd get any bids that would we actually thought we would lose ground by bidding it, because it would give them an opportunity to further raise their price, because there's really no.

H

I

B

Against these, um I am looking at that to try to break down the components of that, so I can get a bidder against them in the future.

D

I saw that recycling went down. Is that? Because we have less recycling or the rates have gone down? The.

B

Rates are volatile, they fluctuate with the market, so we've paid. We now pay to get rid of a ton of recycling because the markets have changed when Asia closed. You know China closed off from taking a lot of the recycling um that has fluctuated from about twenty dollars, a ton to ninety dollars, a ton just in the last year. So right now we're at a really high rate, but we hope that's going to come down we're, not recycling less.

B

It's it's just the price per ton that we pay at Republic Services, which is in Beacon yeah.

D

E

The um top number went down is that because we've now put um Paving and Milling in the capital budget or we're just expecting to spend less this year, expecting.

J

To spend a little bit less, if you guys remember in our Capital, we built in a hot box, so we're hoping to kind of re-utilize some blacktop and not have as much waste. So hopefully, that'll go a little bit further for us as well.

A

Did you get it yet I.

J

Have not we actually, um one of our mechanics just spoke to a supplier, Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday of last week and I. Think there's one in New Paltz that he wants us to go. Take a look at they're selling so fast. He doesn't even have a demo to bring down to us. So we got to kind of go to that, but there's a couple that we want to take a look at. We have our eyes on and that's all through Source about through State bid.

B

And other than that, there's not a lot of changes, we're not looking for new staff and Highway. You know we um we're getting a lot done and and Mickey's brought the department really to a great level. They're they're really firing on all cylinders right now and you can see it in what's happening in the city. We've gotten a lot of good feedback about Main, Street.

G

And your overtime's going down somehow over the years um snow.

J

G

Right is that what it is well.

J

There's two different: there's two different overtime lines: if there's an overtime line and there's a snow over timeline, snow.

K

Over time you just got lucky, but.

J

We still have another four weeks, at least probably of winter, for this year's budget.

J

Of this year isn't reflective on there. Okay.

E

For the repair, pretty uh line increase.

K

That's for an addition of a fence at the DBW garage.

E

um And I'm, assuming our welding supplies, went up because now we have a welder on status. Yes,.

J

E

J

Give us a lot more option and a lot more flexibility, so we're anticipating purchasing some more equipment and some more supplies. Yeah.

B

We've been contracting that out, so this is another way to bring something in-house and save money.

E

I'm also just curious- and this is a past thing- I noticed in the budget that our flowers and Landscaping budget increased quite a bit between 2021 and 2022..

B

No, that was me.

K

um Yeah trying to spruce up some common areas, some mulch in actual flowers, um is that where we put the pollinator patches to yes,.

B

Some pollinator patches.

B

When we did the South Avenue sidewalk you'll notice, there's two beautiful new red Maples there along.

I

B

E

B

We, like our flowers, the.

G

Preferred habitat of the Indiana bat by the way is a hickory Shack bark for future reference.

B

You ever try to clean up those little nuts that those drops.

A

Duly noted, those.

B

Are pretty trees, though, all right anything else for Mickey.

G

Thanks for everything, Mickey yeah.

A

E

G

Guys are great thank.

E

B

I think um order is nice.

K

Ed balicky to the dance.

B

E

You just ban Cody, oh.

B

We didn't bring it in because we didn't have public comments.

B

And then for people tuning in Ed, balicky is superintendent of water and sewers, so he not only um has responsibility for taking care of the Water Filtration plant and all of the distribution networks, but he also takes care of the sanitary sewer on basically everything in the sewer outside of the wastewater treatment plant. So he's got a lot of pipes, he's responsible for and.

K

B

The one digging up the road at Fishkill Avenue right.

K

Now that's him uh and his budget starts on page 35 with the expenses too.

L

Good evening, everyone, thank you. Thank you for opportunity for presenting the 2023 budget and uh going over some of the projects that we've undertaken in the 2022 um there's 11 staff, including myself at the water in the water and sewer department. We maintain the three reservoirs and I'd like to thank those of you that were able to attend the opening of the pocket ceremony and touring Mount, Beacon and I believe there is a request to to tour the other reservoirs as well, so hopefully we'll get that all scheduled and get everybody out there.

L

um So we maintained three reservoirs, all the piping from the reservoirs to the water plant, all the piping from the water plant to distribution and then all as Chris mentioned, the sanitary sewer, along with the pump stations that most of our sewer system is gravity, which means that the flow flows downhill, but there's certain areas where flow is not able to happen, and it has to pump uphill that'll be discussed a little later on. As it's one of our capital projects, I was going to bring up for going into 2023 is the.

H

L

Development of the West Main Street Pump Station in Forest main that's located just just before the entrance of the Metro North Pump, Station or Metro North train stations. Excuse me so my first major budget item which I wanted to bring up was the we were looking to add an additional employee to to the department. It would be entry level, Water and Sewer maintenance helper recently, this year um we had every year.

L

Let me tell you that every year we have what's called our sanitary survey and this year as part of the sanitary survey, which is conducted by the Department of Health, they brought in a couple of State officials and they uh they're. Looking at changing the survey into more of a like report card and being graded, one of the big topics of discussion was uh secession planning and how to properly staff the department in the future for oops.

L

B

Not you, oh, not sure what happened. Keep going. Sorry.

L

About that, um so probably staff to plant for future needs currently right now we have the required minimal Staffing but, uh as stated in I believe it's in the in yes in my in my statement to require it to operate or plant, you need a 1A license, and that requires 10 years of experience um to so to properly train somebody prepare for future planning and secession planning.

L

We would like to add an additional employee that would free up another employee more full time to get his training under his belt require his subsequent, like uh assistant, license, which is considered a two-way and then be able to progress to the Future.

L

Foreign, which is uh is the US EPA, has made revisions to the lead and copper wool, which will require which the biggest thing that's affecting every municipality and water system in the country is that we have to create what's a service line inventory.

L

So, as you can imagine, all the service lines from the water mains to the house are all underground. So as at this point, we have to create this inventory. We have been doing it internally, as when we go to meter meter, complaints or any.

L

When we visit a house for any instance, we always see if we can access the water meter see the pipe material we have to catalog the pipe material and if there is lead in the system as part of the program, we have to develop a plan for to replace the lead, regardless, if it's owned by the city or owned by the property owner.

L

So that's the biggest change. The inventory is due in 2024, so obviously we're gonna we've been we're starting it this year, but.

G

There's a federal program now to replace those pipes, so I expect that would the replacement of those pipes would be covered by the federal money. This was one of the president's initiatives was uh yes.

L

Our biggest issue is that we do not as a city, we don't own the service lines right, so the property owner does as.

G

Part of this, it's pretty common, though right.

L

A lot of times it's common, it's common! It's we're.

L

There's a couple different ways of ownership: either the property owner owns everything or in many in other cases the municipality owns the curb stop. So it's like half ownership. That way, there's uh sometimes that way. The property owners have to go into the right of way into the road for repairs or.

A

Construction, like.

L

Stuff, like that.

L

I

In the water plant for.

L

Those of you that toured the facility are turbidity meters. The the current operating standard, which is the hawk units, are no longer um being they're, now become obsolete. There's a new unit. We have one of the new units in place. We were looking to replace all the turbidity meters and the recorders.

L

And another item, which is we actually in they're actually in town this week, is a leak detection. We bring them in annually the to look over our water system try to identify leaks to have ensurfaced um right now. We feel that we're actually pretty tight honestly um but having them here before the winter. If there is a break that doesn't service, I think we'll have a better idea of it and you know hopefully be able to identify it. That's a break. The break, that's pictured is from tyronda Avenue. This past winter we've seen a.

L

We saw a huge upswing in Water Production, which doesn't really correspond with winter usage. So we knew we had a leak, so New York leak detect was able to find it in tyrande Avenue and it's actually leaking into a storm Basin, and we wouldn't really with our availability ability to find everything in the system or try to look through the system. We've never found it without their assistance.

L

Another item is materials and Supplies on the sanitary sewer side um I just wanted to, because we do have the four pump stations and the the 50 roughly 50 miles. The sewer Mains I wanted to show pictures of just electrical conduit that was broken at West, Main, Street pumps or not West Main Church, Street, Pump, Station apologize and then we I was able to take a snapshot from our sewer crawler camera. We actually do have a camera system that we're able to lower into our sanitary sewers as a robot and take video inspections of it.

L

So this we did Wesley Avenue after it had been a residential complaint. We wanted to identify see if there was a problem.

L

We were able to actually find a what had been a buried manhole at one point. It didn't have any impact on that residential complaint, but we were able to identify a buried, manhole I, say buried. It had been blacked off over so.

L

And that's for uh pleasure line items uh repair of equipment is when uh you know recently, we did a water shutdown over on boy Street, um where we had to replace some water valves. We actually we have in the department. We have a water truck that actually goes out and operates the valves um and we typically we during a water main break. Sometimes the valves are difficult to operate.

L

We had an issue on voice street where the valve had actually broken while trying to operate it, so we were able to get We performed a shutdown installed two new valves. So now, if there is another water main break in that area, we have greater shutdown or capacity for a greater shutdown and the same thing at cargo Reservoir. We uh one of the throttle valves had cracked in the in the valve pit and we replaced. We were able to shut down the reservoir and install a new operating valve for that Reservoir.

L

And our other departmental activities, besides maintaining our infrastructure as Mickey's, going over assisting with the highway department and multiple tasks from the sidewalks, the handicap ramps repaving of Main Street. This year the staff took upon themselves to repair multiple water fountains at Memorial Park that hadn't been working for many years along with some Highway Department. Personnel staff also identified a sinkhole that was in Willow Street, where the sewer the storm sewer had collapsed and, as we began, Excavating the storm sewer had was crumbling rotting along the way we replaced roughly 40 feet of storm sewer.

L

In just a brief uh again, we prior to the construction of the bid and rehab and mount Beacon and pocket staff, took the pocket offline used. Actually, we borrowed one of the highway Department's excavators went in and dredged the pocket to remove sediment ahead of the contractor, going in um it made less work for them and actually increases some of the storage capacity of the reservoir. The silthing that it you see is from store like the water coming down. The mountain from Storm events picks up Bank, Run and captures in the pocket foreign.

L

Project photos from the pocket and mount Beacon rehab project you'll see the the Upstream pocket, rehab rebar the concrete being poured and as many of you saw, the completed pocket when we started filling I know that a lot of people have seen, or maybe a residents have been to mount Beacon the buttresses as part of that project. The buttresses are being removed, which is the angular portions of the front of the dam.

L

When performed just a stability analysis, there seem to be not no longer necessary because the the reservoir itself is rotted into the Bedrock, so those buttresses no longer serve a purpose and by removing them we're actually able to save money on the project and, like I, said, they're no they're not necessary for the civility of the dam.

L

And as last I always like to show like a chart showing our flows from that had other previous years, I had to take it away because it they get a little jumbled, especially as the flows become more regular within it within each other. um You do see a spike mid-summer this year.

L

Some of that we believe, is associated with the Renegades being a much longer season, more attendance at the stadium and then, as stated earlier, we do sell water to the rombout district again the Dutchess Stadium area, and there was a water main break that had gone undetected in the district for about three weeks prior to it being found and isolated.

G

uh And so uh was that it was that repaired at our expense or no.

L

Okay, no, they they just ended up. We ended up I hate, saying it making money on the leak because it went for so long and why.

K

Do you hate saying that well.

L

Because it's also a waste of water, it's a waste of water. Okay, on that end, I hate saying it but sorry what did she say? It was a waste of water, I.

K

Asked why does he hate saying that I made money.

F

K

The significance of that is the with the flow is that you're using less water. Is that what you're trying to say.

L

Yeah, if you looked at, if probably, would have been better if I put the two charts from the previous budget, uh so overlapping each other or on top of each other, we've significantly dropped uh daily usage. Since we've been on from increasing our scada capacity automating, there is, there was operations I wanted to plant every day manually, just because we had to do it because the plant couldn't do it on its own, um bringing in New York leak, detect and understanding like once.

L

The system is tight and what I mean by tight is that we have minimal leaks, minimal lossage that we can identify, what's uptick in usage from increased uh usage of Main Street, restaurants being full to what's an actual leak. So that's that's part of like again in as bringing in like the capital program into that with our meter program that we have coming online, certain leaks will be identified even sooner this past billing cycle.

L

There was a significant leak at one of our larger users, with the newer meters and the new program and Reporting we wouldn't they would have known, and we would have known in a much sooner area, as have it being becoming an argument over the bill, where I ended up being about a 70 gallon per minute leak which equals almost it was equals 100, 000, gallons a day that they were built.

L

It was leaking into a drainage, Pond adjacent to the property.

F

Obviously a 2020 flow um related to the pandemic. It seems really yes,.

L

Yes, when we did that George we, there was a feeling that that was what the case was going to be in the scene coming out of it, and you saw the uh the uptick in 2021 and it stayed low and then it peaked in the summer and then started dropping off again the winter, which became more of a normal usage. But.

F

I guess no one was showering during that I.

L

Just uh with the schools closed and the restaurants activity was more take out than and then sit in at that really brought it in.

E

Okay, um can we go back to the um lead consultant I just wanted. You know it's sixty thousand dollars a significant chunk of money. I just wanted to make sure I understand what the consultant will be doing.

L

Let me just we'll get back to that page. Pull on all this sorry, so the they're going to assist there's a near the US EPA has a has a template that we have to follow for development of this plan.

L

So if you picture the again like your service line going into your the house, there's what comes off the water main there's a curb stop, which is the external shutoff of the house and then there's a piece of pipe that extends into the house.

L

What the consultant is going to help us do is go through historical records, use, best management practices and the inventory that we've created already and mapping along with- and this is the thing I didn't mention before- and thank you for going back to it. It's as part of the meter program, the vendor. That's going to be doing the meter! Well, more of the mxu switch outs. They are going to categorize the pipe material.

L

That's going into that's at the meter, so half of that service line will be identified so knowing that type, if I had brought it with me, I'd apologize. So, knowing that they'll help us be able to identify and categorize what the pipe materials are now in the staff that's been with the city for almost 30 years and at no point have we ever identified a full-led service line. There's pieces of there may be pieces of lead they're what are called a gooseneck.

L

um There may be lead to solder, but we've never seen like a full roll of lead. Like you see there.

E

So is that for two different Consultants, because one is for the meter project and one is for the mapping or.

L

The the consultant will be handled the review of the projects and and the mapping of it and looking to work with wsp who's, been our water consultant and hydrogeologists on multiple projects, including the mount Beacon rehab project.

B

And the and the up upgrade to the meters that we're doing starting next spring is in your Capital program and they're, adding that, as as part of the services, it's not in this budget, it'll be in your Capital, but it's a minimal cost.

B

It's basically just a reporting on a form because they're going to these houses anyway, they're seeing what's coming into the household, um so we're we're going to be able to get important data that that's one of the benefits that meter project was stalled because of covid, and now, with the lead-in copper rule coming up, it gives us a chance to use that project to kind of jump. Start our mapping for the anticipated start of the letting copper roll next year, October 2024.. That's.

L

B

Two a year and a half two years and.

L

There may be some in areas that are to become questionable to maybe some Excavating, that's required minimal, like with the ability of our back truck. We could be able to vacuum down, created just a small daylight to get a visual observation and move on we're, hoping to keep that to a minimal.

E

I

L

Sorry I'm getting used to wearing them all the time.

B

Okay, great and I I also it didn't tell how much they do with our other departments. In addition to helping with the curb ramps, his staff helped with the the Main Street rebuild that we did, they helped with snow plowing when we really need them um again. The the the Departments.

B

Don't really have these sharp edges, they help out whenever we need them at highway or other departments and Ed often helps and you'll, hear that with um Wastewater too, they just did a project with Highway and that's one of the things I really appreciate about Ed and his Department they're just willing to step up on anything that needs to be done.

D

um I had a couple, a couple of items: there's something water Administration, that's administration fee to gen that might be cut off in the budget and it's I'm curious because it seems to have gone up just kind of what it is first and why it's increasing.

L

My contribution to generally City Hall.

K

L

I

Staff actually does.

K

The water so we're billing so.

H

That's gender is general fund, so.

K

What what I have to do each year is there's certain things that are only being charged in the general fund, but a portion of the third time is directly related to Water and Sewer. So there's a number of employees, including myself and Chris, a percentage of our salaries are allocated to Water and Sewer uh Insurance. uh It's not directly built to Water and Sewer. It's it's built in an overhead allocation and that's what that is. There's also one in sewer and there's an offsetting Revenue in general.

K

D

And it's it's going up because uh our salaries are going up and therefore.

K

There's a number of different costs that go into there. um You know if Chris in general is working, if he's doing when he was negotiating the hauler contracts, I allocated more of his salary to sewer, because he was spending significance.

B

K

B

It can we use different words.

K

I didn't take it away from you after.

G

K

But thank you um so uh you know Insurance. There's also, you know a building costs. So if you know the billing and collection happens at City Hall, so it's in all of the expenses for City Hall reside in the general fund. It's a chargeback.

D

um And then another under water supply, water from other government Something I'm, assuming it kind of, seems to fluctuate a lot. So I was curious to know what that was, what caused it go.

K

L

Not say why I fixed it, that's the where we purchased a order from the village of fish go for the use of well, eight.

D

K

So Ed would normally budget at the max amount that we would take could take from there and uh I I felt. That was a little too much so we reduced it I'm, hoping that with more water supply in our line that we wouldn't use well, eight as much I.

L

Would budget for the full million gallons a day for 365 as a contingency, but we haven't? We haven't used that.

B

Right great and you just finished the pocket Dam, which saves us somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 90, 000, gallons of lost water every day. That's about a month's Supply, so.

I

B

To have more of our own Supply now because less of it's running down the stream great we're.

F

Not obligated to buy x amount.

B

For them, no we're allowed to buy up to right.

D

So you were budgeting that we could go to the Max and we're adjusting.

L

That amount it's been just for the record: it's been a St, it's been part of our water supply and it's considered in our safe yield. So it's for what we can safely produce every day, so it's built it that water supply is built in that purchase of that water is built into our water supply.

G

So we buy our we bought by water from Fishkill and we sell different.

K

Fish different fish skills, we buy it from the village and we sell.

B

It to the town, okay, if you buy raw water and we sell them to clean.

I

D

um And last underwater purification I saw that the chemicals line had increased I, don't know if that you kind of included that, under your supplies and materials, just the the cost of things increasing.

L

The cost of chlorine on our end has doubled. We were paying we at the water plan. We use gaseous chlorine that comes in 150 pounds, cylinders. We were paying 350 a cylinder it's over 700. Now for one cylinder, we use almost 13 000 pounds a year and then another chemical that we use on the raw water side is aluminum sulfate. It's a chemical, that's used to as a coagulant to grab particulate out of the water that went up 50 cents, a a gallon and.

H

L

Only one distributor in the entire East Coast that you can purchase it from.

K

Yes, so we've been watching that all summer making sure that we have enough in Supply and.

B

You'll see later in our our agenda, you have a budget amendment dealing with the chemicals for both water and waste water.

L

On our end, there is there's a there was a significant National shortage of chlorine. It was uh scary at times um when our supplier couldn't meet our demands. We had to find one that could luckily the company that we're using we had a relationship previously and they could meet whatever whatever our needs were. I could say not on our end, but there was another water system within Dutchess County that uses similar chlorine that we do and they had one cylinder left on hand which was equivalent to two days of disinfection.

L

So we never got there. We always had enough redundancy where we felt comfortable, but it was. There was many water systems that were struggling to find chlorine and then, most recently, with the potential rail strike, that was another I, went right to sue, to discussed with her about purchasing enough inventory that we needed to to maintain it through the year. So there's been definitely supply chain has has affected us and and some times some scary times.

E

I'm curious what the water legal fees are used for, that bill collection.

K

Or uh so I'm actually changing the title of that to just law, but that is the allocation to water for the king and bean retainer.

B

So like they, they recently did the dam project with um uh Doyle, I'm, sorry and, and so the attorneys worked on that contract anytime. We do. We did an easement for the West Main Pump Station, with Metro North. They worked on that yeah.

L

They worked on the easement for handling every.

B

Project that we do they're involved.

A

Remember, as they said about even Chris's time, right that, to the extent that the time belongs,.

C

H

Water and Sewer.

A

We should properly allocate to them and have it covered by the.

K

Right so some things are directly built, um so I'm able to just directly build to water into our summer. Just they come in one bill. So it's easy enough to just put it in the overhead allocation.

H

E

Now that makes sense so just to know that um you know certain expenses are spread out over the budget. So if you want to know how much one particular consultant costs overall, you gotta dig for it. If.

K

You do, or you can just ask or you just ask.

L

Yeah fair enough- and there was a question earlier about um technology- there is part of Evan's line- is he's working I've been working with him to increase our security, so he's budgeted for some cameras at some of our remote sites, which allows us to monitor those a little better.

E

um I had one more small thing: it looked like to me, or maybe I was looking at the wrong thing under um The Leak Detection that the amount actually went down from 15 000 to 12. 000. am I just reading.

L

That uh it's because we brought them in twice this year, so there was a that's. There was actually an increase in this year's budget because we brought them in in.

M

The winter and.

L

Then we finished we're completing the survey now, so they were here, I believe in January of this year.

E

L

So that the question sees is split between the two visits, so they came in as a.

I

L

An emergency call and now they're here on a scheduled plan visit so you'll see their trucks throughout the city, so the ground, penetrating radar they're here this week.

F

L

Just real quick uh I've glossed over real quickly, so on a capital side coming up this year, we will have the West Main Street Pump Station, enforce main. As Chris mentioned, we negotiated an easement for the land, uh just above the just above the parking lot, we're also working on the mount Beacon Tank, which is located at the pocket.

L

We began surveying the property this week and we move forward and move forward with engineering next year and once Mount, Beacon and pocket are completed, we'll be hopefully going out to bid for the rehab of melzinga reservoir. So those projects, the.

B

Water meter upgrade and.

D

Then water meter.

L

Upgrade as well thank you is.

D

The plan with the pocket tank to to move it or to part of what's going on.

L

Because your plan is to move it, move it uphill, a little bit which will grain, which will gain, uh hopefully a few PSI or make the tank taller, um but to potentially move it uphill. Now there is piping, that's there. So there could be some conflict, uh that's in the ground and there is the overhead power line. So there is.

L

There is a couple restrictions that we do have at the site, but the plan is to move it away from the creek bed and a little further uphill there's what we call the lay down area as sorry, if I wasn't speaking loud enough before the uh where we dredge the pocket there's a flat area where we put the material down and let it drain out and then haul it to recycling, because that area is kind of the most open area. That's kind of what that's kind of what we're looking at and for the.

F

When we toured the.

L

Pocket that day, some of you, some people had parked there. That's kind of the area that we're looking at.

D

Yeah I think that I I ask because I know there has been discussion not related to the water department, but about potential, a small parking lot there for hikers. So it sounds like that might be something in a couple years that we might have the actual, depending on the results of the survey, and if we can move it, we might be able to do it. So at least people can turn around in there. We.

B

Plan to at least evaluate that, if there's any opportunity for it, we'll look to do that. But.

H

B

Rules about having vehicles so close right.

D

B

Again, maybe we deal with that by a heavy duty guide rail that you.

L

B

People from getting anywhere nearer.

L

And also as much like when we redid Fairview tank, the 10 State Standards require security, minimum security of fencing around our tanks and that tank really has no no fencing on it. So there'll be some fencing and that will take place on the property as well.

D

Would be great I'm.

L

D

Ren's children will be disappointed.

B

Are they the ones that Drew no.

A

It makes a great sound and.

E

Just because we I know that we also talked about on that trip, um protection of the Watershed um and um uh dry book. Yes, yes and potential ideas about how to effectively monitor, who drives an up and down that road, and you know we're talking about the budget, and maybe this is totally off topic, but I know that we had potentially talked about once the construction um was over. Phase was over. That would be the best time to start discussing monitoring that road is.

B

That still the idea, that's a long-term project. We just didn't want to tackle it with all of the traffic we're sending up there right now to work on Mount Beacon, and we got our fences all over the place.

B

um Again, we there's a lot to unravel up there in terms of ownership, easements, police, jurisdiction.

I

B

Jurisdiction in which it's in it's in the town of Fishkill I'm in the Hudson Highland Park, so it it's it's a longer term project that that we will try to tackle at some point.

L

Yeah, the answer is, is complicated. It's and it's it's kind of we're. Gonna need it's gonna, be a lot of discussion and a lot of help to whatever the answer is.

B

It's on the list, though,.

E

A

Right we're gonna get Damon here before you.

E

B

Next, up is Dave Tavernier, who is our chief wastewater treatment, plant operator and Dave picks up where Ed's pipes go into the wastewater treatment plant um and that's such.

I

B

Such a complicated technology that um Dave basically oversees all the activated sludge processes that we use to treat and disinfect our Wastewater and Dave. Let me know if you want any of your.

G

A

B

G

Yeah, maybe getting better at sharing this stuff thanks for waiting Dave, while we're.

M

Up here, cracking jokes: are we there yet? Maybe that's the way we all feel but I'll try to make it short and sweet.

M

um So my name is Dave Tavernier and uh I want to bid you a good late evening, so we're in the business of cleaning water and it's a great business and every month about 90 million gallons of water, clean water go to the Hudson River and about 500 tons of solids the then they go to a landfill and those solids are tested for metals and other harmful uh chemicals, so that they're they're safe to to put in a landfill.

M

Now that means that every day about three million gallons come through our plan and that's what we treat and it's done through physical, mechanical, uh biological, mainly and uh and chemical means, um and just to give you an example of how we are stewards of the environment.

M

We did a acute toxicity water tests uh this uh this year, it's every five years and what they do is they take organisms like misotrip sheep's, head, Sheepshead, minnows, and they put them in our effluent, our treated water, and so they see how they behave because it mimics the receding, Waters and basically so far in the three quarters. No significant effects, no mortality in these live organisms. Dave.

B

Could you get a little closer to your mic.

H

Yeah absolutely.

M

Thank you for that. So you know it is. It is important what we do now do you want to put the the shot of the entrance just to give credit to to the beautification of the entrance.

M

And we'll talk a little bit more about these, these flower pods that have been put in there and we'll give due credit, but it's a nice little shot of our of our plant.

M

um So now, if we get into the department Staffing, there is currently 11 slated for 11 slated Personnel. We are. We have one vacancy from a recent retirement. It's going to be filled so I want to do. I want to take time to give credit to this crew of hard-working, resourceful employees because they run that treatment plant 365 days a year, two shifts Monday through Friday. So it's pretty uh it's a it's a mammoth task, and so nobody does anything alone right, so I just want to give them credit for this.

M

2023 budget does not propose any additions or reductions in staff that vacancy we are waiting on on on some details from civil service, and once we have that information, we'll come back to you councils for recommendations on how we were to fill that position.

M

So we have uh now if we move on to major changes.

M

Projects in 2022 I want to start by thanking the council, because a lot of these things that I'm about to talk to you approved last year, and so now this is the fruitage of you know you approving these cmms is short for computerized maintenance management system and so basically that what it, what it is, is you bring all of your assets at the plant, every pump, every motor, every every Gear Drive, and you put it into this system, and then you look at the manufacturer's recommended recommended schedule of Maintenance. You went through that.

M

You enter the types of lubrication that you need when you're going to Loop something, and then you put it into a basically like a cycle, and then you assign it to somebody so maintenance is always taken care of what ends up happening is that you focus on predictive and preventative maintenance and therefore your corrective maintenance events start going down. You don't have those breakdowns that are so costly. You got to replace the whole thing, and so that's what cmms is going to help us to do.

M

It does many many more things, but just for short, it's going to help us to improve the long-term maintenance of the city's facilian equipment. Another item is the hauler portal.

M

This is a portal that is helping us to really maximize the excess capacity that the city has to treat things such as septage and leachate that is brought in. uh It allows the scheduling the planning also when we have to make any changes, it's easy to communicate with everybody through electronic means, whereas before you would have to do a phone call to all of these customers, and so one of the nice things uh about that is, if I'm, a hauler and I go onto our website and I go there.

M

I know that today, there's actually availability and now I can put in and I say, I want. Five thousand I want to be able to dispose of 5 000 gallons. So what we've been seeing is that we're we're selling out our capacity every day, but you can see that you can capture it and also we're able to create the reports for for finances. How has it been since we've done, that? Has that been a little bit of a help.

K

So it's been helpful before billing would take ease easily my staff one person a week to enter in all the tickets and produce the bills she uh she could probably get it done in three hours now. So it's reduced, uh for you know 40 hours a week in between phone calls and all that to three. So it's it's been amazing and I'm, so easy to use so and we can get out the bills more timely.

M

So that's a another Fringe benefit of having this portal up and running. It's been very successful and so we're very thankful for that option that we have now, along with the hauler receiving, we installed a brand new hauler station office. It's a very humble cargo container office if you will, with a very nice concrete foundation which I got to give credit to the highway department.

M

Vicki thanks for helping us with that and your guys as well. It's very it's a very humble building, there's nothing to it. But if you only saw what was there before, you would understand that you bring you really raise the city's profile in many ways, and you more than more importantly, is that you dignify the worker. He has a proper space. He has baseboard heating. You know it gets so cold, the previous building or the shed right. You know the shack. Okay, if you can call it that uh it.

H

M

It wasn't a proper place for a human to be inside of so you know this has to do a lot with dignifying the worker raising the city's profile and it, and it's very, very timely that we got that. So we move on now to the challenges in 2022 I. Think we've already covered a lot of the Steep cost increases right.

M

I just got a letter, the other day and Ed touched on it, his my our sodium hypochlorite, which is uh liquid chlorine, the cost just doubled so and and and what they do. Is they say this is your price now starting uh three in three days. This is going to be your new price and so we're subject to to that volatility, so we're trying to absorb it as best as possible, uh but that goes along with everything, repairs supplies. Everything is just you know, skyrocketing um aging infrastructure.

M

You know when they talk about Jackson Mississippi, one of the main reasons why they have that water crisis was because their infrastructure failed and nobody nobody cared. So it's it's very, very uh it's a great thing that the city of Deacon does care, and so they have invested heavily recently in in replacing old infrastructure uh of the wastewater treatment plant. One big item is the belt press system which that's what dewaters the sludge. That's part of the separation between you know the water and the solids uh it's past, its uh it's shelf life.

M

So to speak, and right now it's on CPR. We we're throwing everything we can at it just to keep it going, but as a result, sometimes we have to shut down the process, and so what happens is we have to cancel haulers and that's the loss of revenue for the city, it's stressful for for our operations as well, um but thankfully the city is currently designing a replacement system for 2023.. So that's a that's a good, um that's a bright light capital projects update if we can move on now uh primaries primary settling tanks.

M

They were supposed to start this year, but due to supply chain issues, namely critical steel parts, we're now going to start it in Spring of 2023 to be completed in Autumn of 2023..

M

We have another item as a capital project, which is a renovation of the restrooms and the locker rooms in the admin buildings, and so we have a conceptual design. But we hope to finalize a design for this upgrade in early 2023 and get construction going. Mid-2023.

M

And then the third item is replacing them in the dewatering system. We touched them on that earlier.

M

um It's urgent that we replace it. It's it's failing. It's a miracle that it's running right now, but it is, um and so this funding was included in the 2023 through 2027 Capital program. The engineer and design has has started as a matter of fact, the Kickstart we're going to have this Thursday for this uh upgrade for the dewatering system. The nice thing about it is that as us, major State infrastructure Grant has been applied for and so we're waiting to hear back and we hope we can get it because it's a significant one.

M

um Moving on to major changes in proposed 2023 budget I think you've covered the electric right. The electrical costs is there anything to add as far as Wastewater.

H

M

This is what I have here.

B

M

It's the 10 increase. We did.

B

Across the board.

M

And then, if we move on to repair of equipment, this is a one that that is necessary. The line item has been increased from 120 000 in 2022 to 210 000 in 2023.. Now. Why is this well because there's a lot of old infrastructure that still needs to be replaced uh as an example, we need to replace one pump, that is uh 10 years old and it's sixteen thousand dollars. We can't do it all at once, so we hold off and then we plan for the next year.

M

We keep it going, but then we have to address those issues and there's a long list of items that we have to tackle in replacing our our aging infrastructure.

M

Then there's the correctional facility Revenue one of the Department's Revenue sources, was the treatment of a Wastewater from downstate Correctional Facility, as you may know, it closed permanently in 2022, so the budget anticipates an overall reduction in revenues of approximately 124 000 annually or 10 percent of revenue from correctional facilities.

M

However, the city continues to provide service for the Fishkill correctional facility and that has increased by 30 percent and also the hauler. Revenues have also increased in 2021, due to renegotiations Bringing about 450 000 additional Revenue every year. So that's that's a a bright spot in in in these Changing Times to end in a bright spot. We want to give credit to the the green teens I. Don't know if you're able.

B

To put those pictures so.

M

The beautification of the wastewater treatment plant entrance was no small task.

H

M

No worries I'll I'll, give them the summary, so the Department's um partnered with the recreation department and the Green Team program, and so basically they transformed the entrance of the wastewater treatment plant admin building they put in pollinator Gardens, and it was a huge success as a matter of fact. But what I noticed is a whole ecosystem or ecosystem um occurred, butterflies, bees, Birds squirrels.

M

They they were there at the beginning and at the end, when they wanted to take advantage of the sunflower seeds and eat them so As. The adage goes: if you build it, they will come. They certainly did come to the entrance of the Wastewater. They stayed at the entrance. Give.

B

Them credit for.

M

That so uh thank you very much for your attention and if you have any questions.

E

That particular pollinator patch is doing really really well, if you look at it against some of the other ones too. So congrats on that, oh.

M

I got some beautiful, like individual flower pictures, uh it was just I.

B

Think it's all in the fertilizer that we use well.

M

They did, they use dead, fish and.

B

Not from our affluence.

D

um There's a line item under water pollution control that says carbon media looks like it's new for the 2023 budget. I wonder if you could say a couple words about what that is so.

M

We have uh two systems of Odor Control, so in order to keep the neighbors, you know as good neighbors, we have to aspirate the uh basically what is called the hydrogen sulfide that is formed in some of our tanks, and we have to run it through a carbon media and what it does is it neutralizes those acids, and so then it then that that noxious odor is neutralized, and so we have two systems in place. This year we replaced one of the carbon media on one of them. I was 36 000.

M

We didn't want to do both of them, even though they both need it. So we spaced it out, and we put it in in the budget for next year.

K

There's an actual for 2022, but we haven't paid for it yet so waiting on that bill. Great, thank you and.

B

Longer term we're actually seeing if there's a way to recharge these, where you send me out the carbon and you have them burn off the compounds that have attached to it and then you can reuse it. So we we are exploring that too. At.

M

The currently that, oh, please, is.

E

This also called char, or is that something else.

M

I think I believe it's it's like I'm, not mistaken, that you may know Alexander side Countryside.

L

The the media, the carbon media.

L

M

It's different, it's it's, uh it's pretty hard, I mean if you, if you were to grab like a handful of it. It's it's like rock.

E

It just I happen to have a constituent talk to me recently very excitedly about biochar and I was wondering if this was.

H

The same thing.

D

um This might be a question more for Sue, but I know. There's a fiscal agency. There was for the water department as well, and I was wondering what that is and how it gets allocated across departments.

K

um That is what I uh charge the band Council and the debt advisors to issue the debt.

D

So so they have because they have some more debt that we just approved well,.

K

There's more debt: we've we've also done uh since our last issuance some other projects, we've we've paid for or been completely done. I haven't issued the debt for yet so I am planning to issue debt in 2023 at least short term. So that's that.

D

All right, great thanks.

E

No, you go ahead before.

M

I forget I just want to thank the mayor for having gone down there and taking a tour of the plan showing interest in that and I think some of you also were able to.

H

I

M

Very much it means a lot to us and and Greg uh that's his passion, Greg posts, he's I, I, I love just seeing how passionate I just want him to stay away, not to steal his Thunder and he really appreciated it. What did they think about it? What did they think I said? I think they I.

I

Absolutely loved it. I took videos.

M

I

Would take the tour again.

E

Or so I would definitely take the tour for the first time, I'd.

G

Love to have children, seeing it yeah.

E

The environmental program at.

G

The high school and others.

B

We actually have taught um Paloma and I, went and spoke to the participation in government class, and that's one of the things we're trying to arrange in the next year. Cool.

E

um uh One of the budget line items under materials and supplies seems like it went up from 4 000 to 24 000.. Did we discuss that and I missed it.

K

Materials and supplies yeah, you said.

E

G, eight one two zero four one: six.

K

E

Zero zero that.

K

That's Ed's line and that I can tell you he doesn't have to get up it's uh it's the structures on Fishkill and Teller and uh yeah.

B

So part of the sewer budget is the sewer treatment plant which Dave administers. Another part of the sewer fund is the collection Network, which Ed takes care of the pipes.

E

E

B

Yeah, so it said um he's off Mike that some of these costs had to do with things that we needed to pay for off of the fish guilt, Fishkill Hannah, Lane, sewer replacement project that we needed to do in advance of that project.

E

Right um and it looks like your gas and Diesel cost went down, is there a? Is that a accounting funniness or is there a campaign, uh fewer vehicles.

G

Funniness well.

E

Well, we discussed um another item where it was just being budgeted funny and that the four thousand dollars is probably more accurate because the number has been going up and down.

B

We overestimated um in 2022 and we're back to more of a historic, no.

K

Not not for gas and Diesel, that's based on their actual usage or I'm. Sorry, their average usage over five years, the wastewater treatment plant I think they've had less diesel I'm, not sure what you're using diesel for okay.

B

Can you use your mic dick.

M

Sorry, thank you, yeah. The generator.

K

A little bit more gas, but overall it looks like less diesel.

E

K

Yeah and so last year's would have had another average in it or uh be four years instead of the five years that I used this time.

K

I

K

Because that was just an anomaly.

B

I and as if you have any other questions, I just want to take a moment and acknowledge Dave for his leadership at the plant. He's really embraced the use of technology, and we already see the benefit of that he's really worked to help the staff develop their own skills and and get people into the right roles and he's brought a new level of professionalism to the plant. The prior administrator was only the prior operator was only part-time and there was just no way in those part-time hours that Charlie could do this. This amount of work.

B

So in the just over a year that David's been here 14 months, we've really had a great change at the plan.

H

B

Thanks and he has great support staff like Greg, post and some others.

M

Yeah and I could bounce back and say thank you, you and and sue for helping me achieve these goals. uh You already thanked the council because they initiated the approval, but it's nice to have that support and make these things happen. The goal is to make things better in the end to save the city money, it's not to spend the money and not get anything back in return. So thank you for that confidence in in us we're trying to achieve as well as having the the workers enjoy working where they work.

M

You know dignify, there's always a stigma when you work at a Wastewater, Plant everybody's, like oh, you know, but the.

H

M

Is is that it's a very complicated process to take gray Waters that come from you know domestic.

I

Commercial industrial.

M

And then a pristine product goes out. You know it's like how do you it just doesn't go in one pipe and comes out the other way. So you know I I appreciate that I'm trying to get them to understand it and feel good about work where they work as I do so. Thank you for that.

E

I will say: anecdotally, I know we were making a joke about effluent water, um but my sister works in a water district out in Illinois and she has made effluent beer and it's pretty good. That's.

B

Right, please warn us if.

H

You do that no idea, a.

E

Professional Brewery did it, she didn't just do it at.

M

Home yeah some cities are starting to actually use their effluent, of course, quite a few more steps, but they circulating it back into Infinity. That's a tough sell.

H

M

Know if you have no other option, if you're, if you're up, then you got to do what you got to do. Yeah.

B

And mayor, we have just two very quick amendments again. um Thank.

G

You thanks Dave thanks Dave Dave.

B

Mickey Ed great job.

A

Can you could you please go home.

G

Thanks for sticking it out, Mickey.

B

Really right: nine o'clock: Main Street, right, yeah, okay! Thank you, sir.

A

Let's get two done.

E

K

So we have two budget amendments tonight. The first one is for fire over time and, uh unfortunately, uh they're not going to make their budget this year. We, we did put some money last year when we did the operating budget in contingency we put in about 89 000 from what was requested uh from the fire department. We had put that in contingency so due to it, we've had a couple workers comp um with the firefighters, and we just got our last firefighter on shift.

B

A week ago, yeah.

K

A week ago, so with the fire department, each each shift needs to be covered. So when you are, you have one in in the academy or one down, all of those shifts, 12-hour shifts uh each day need to be covered with overtime, um we're requesting a 95 000 for the fire overtime to come from the contingency fund. As I mentioned, there was already 89 000 put in there at the beginning of the year.

K

B

And before we leave that point, I would just say in the budget for next year we're proposing and and we'll talk about this in in two weeks we're proposing to hire a 17th firefighter. So we have four shifts of four people and anytime somebody goes out. We have to go right to overtime. We want to hire a 17th person who can flow amongst the shifts. So if somebody has an injury, we know they're going to be out for four weeks. We move them over to cover that shift.

B

If we lose somebody like we had a retirement in February of Mike Merritt, and then we hired a new firefighter at the end of you, approved them in February, but it took all these months for them to go through Academy. Do the training and get on shift right.

H

B

We're we're also trying to fill that Gap that we seem to have right.

K

uh The second budget amendment that we have we spoke about quite a bit tonight- is the increase in chemicals, um so we're seeing that um Ed was very concerned multiple times this this year, with the shortage of supply and and because supply and demand, the prices have gone up, um there's also from what from what Dave tells me. It also fluctuates with the gas and oil Market.

B

um Yeah so it provides a polymer.

K

B

Stabilizes, the sludge and that's going crazy as.

H

B

Dave has three chemicals. He buys right.

H

B

The hypochlorite, the polymer and Odor Control thing.

K

B

K

So uh we're requesting for the water fund, uh thirty thousand dollars and for the sewer fund, 55 000 and both of them would come from the contingency in their respective funds.

B

And some of this allows us to stockpile at the end of the year. We.

H

Have left over and.

B

That's what we're trying to do.

K

Okay, thank you.

B

Nice job Sue. Thank you thanks, yeah.

G

Thank you. Thanks for everything, Sue all.

B

Right so next week, you'll be considering a resolution to set the public hearing for two weeks from that day um and then sue will be back with fire, police and Recreation on the 24th.

I

D

I have a question: um when do we talk about like our City Council budget? Like you brought the idea, we have 50 000 I think for projects like a what point in the process. Is it already scheduled, but we'll get into that.

K

No, we could talk it. We could talk about that. The next meeting.

B

Why don't we do those miscellaneous items on the 24th like so we'll do the three presentations and then why don't we open it up for anything that you're interested in going over like we didn't bring all we didn't do the clerk's budget, we don't typically do building or.

K

Much smaller the.

H

B

um But any of that that you have questions on, we can do with that meeting or and or the subsequent meeting. Okay.

D

A

D

Great. Thank you.

A

um Do we need a motion to adjourn no.

B

No I don't think you do I.

D

Think did you say next, let's go home and.

A

At 10 o'clock, I forget everything.