REGULAR TOWN BOARD MEETING, TOWN OF MOUNT HOPE, July 17, 2017

The town board meeting of the Town Board of the Town of Mount Hope was held at Town Hall on July 17, 2017 at 7:30pm with the following present: Supervisor Chad Volpe, Councilman Matt Howell, Councilwoman Janet Sutherland, Councilman Dominick Cambareri and Town Clerk Kathleen Myers. NOT PRESENT: Councilman Brian Carey

OFFICIALS PRESENT:  H’way Supt. Dean Hassenmayer, Dep. Police Chief Corcoran & Attorney David Bavoso.

Following the Pledge of Allegiance, Supervisor Volpe called the meeting to order at 7:30pm.  He asked for audience to silence or turn off their cell phones.

MOTION TO ACCEPT PRIOR MEETING MINUTES:

MOTION offered by Councilman Howell 2nd by Councilman Cambareri that the minutes of the 07-03-2017 meeting as presented are approved. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

CORRESPONDENCE:

1. Supervisor’s budget modification
2. Supervisor’s report June 2017
3. (2) hold harmless agreements re:  Otisville Country Fair
4. Letter from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission RE: Walden Hydroelectric Project
5. Insurance Cert. re: Otisville Garden Club
6. Insurance Cert. re: MV Rotary Club
7. Proposed Franchise agreement with Charter Communications
8. Email from Councilman Carey re: he will not be at meeting due to his full time job

BOARD MEMBER REPORTS:

Councilman Howell: Master Plan meeting on 7-20-17 @ 5pm at town hall. He has a draft of the Veteran’s Day parade letter. He would like approval to mail it. He spoke re: procurement policy. He emailed a couple comments that we need to update ie: threshold the state sets for the formal bidding. He also incorporated the “best value” as discussed. Atty. Bavoso: we would have to pass it as a local law. Mr. Howell added that Chad had forwarded the 2 proposals for the hydrogeologist firm about doing work for the town with what’s possible to come with the C/O Middletown & County of Orange water theft to sell their water outside of Middletown. He thinks we should accept the bid from the firm KC Engineering with cooperation from Hansen & VanFleet. It’s better to be proactive than to be reactive.

Supervisor Volpe read Councilman Carey’s report: Summer camp: everything going as planned. New closed group face book page was created. Feedback has been very good. Early morning & late drop off has been good. Youth football – registration open until July 31. Season kicks off Aug. 1^st. Fundraising events list will be at next meeting. Little league 9-11 y/o girls & boys both won District 19 & moving on to sectionals. After that would be the state tournament. Junior boys lost to Pine Bush. Sections start this week. No issues at Devan’s Gate. Community Day: 500 water bottles were handed out by 3:15pm. Troop 1 collected $1798 in donations for parking cars. Mike Romano did awesome job with fireworks. Facebook: 20,653 hits are posts about orphaned wildlife. Page flooded with compliments since Saturday. Summer concert tomorrow night is HOT ROD. MH Historical Society is sponsoring power point on the history of Yankee Lake on July 27 at 7pm at senior center.

Councilwoman Sutherland: 109 library cards to date.  Planning board meets Wednesday.

Councilman Cambareri: Sewer plant upgrade is 100% complete; seems to be running fine. Summer camp this week was sports week. The director had varsity baseball & basketball coaches come. Girls basketball coach – he got coaches form 2 or 3 schools to come up & spend the day with the kids and go over basic fundamentals. It’s rained 2 Fridays in a row. Things are going good. Councilwoman Sutherland asked what the final # was for campers. Supervisor stated 123. She asked about before and after care. Supervisor stated before is 10 & after is 19.

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COMMITTEE REPORTS:

HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT:

Supervisor Volpe congratulated Dean on the birth of his grandchild.  H’way Supt. Hassenmayer reported the roof job has been on hold because of the rain. You need 48 hours of no rain to finish.

It’s all cancelled this week. He’s in contact with the contractor every Sunday. We play it week by week. Paving in Hidden Valley has been pushed off. We’re supposed to start it Wednesday. The contractor was in Wallkill and was delayed there. They did a lot of brush chipping – mostly on Grange, a little on Charlotte. We’ve gotten almost everything from that major storm on Friday night. They picked up some logs that the homeowners couldn’t do anything with. They helped where they could.

FIRE DEPARTMENT:

Report read into record by Supervisor Volpe.

POLICE DEPARTMENT:

Dep. Chief Corcoran reported that the 4^th of July holiday was uneventful as was Community Day.

VILLAGE OF OTISVILLE:

Trustee Loeven thanked the board for community day – wonderful 1^st event. She noted the village wide yard sale is August 5. There’s a flier on the board and slips on the table in the lobby. Hopefully people can park in the old school parking lot.

COMMUNITY DAY:

Supervisor Volpe reported that he can’t thank enough people. We did need some staffing. Volunteers put in countless hours. Turnout was decent. There were 50 vendors. Total sales from vendors = $3905. Sponsors for the event = $2850; along with other municipalities. Total labor came in under $2000. Total revenue $6755. We spent $5627.04. Net profit $1127.96He thanked everyone involved.

CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS FRANCHISE AGREEMENT:

Supervisor Volpe reported that there were a few changes recommended for the Spectrum agreement. Atty. Bavoso reported that the question the board wanted him to go back with was the density requirement. The previous contract was 35 homes per linear mile and we requested it be dropped to 25. Spectrum agreed. The change has been made. His contact at Spectrum has indicated that he will be happy to attend the public hearing. Mr. Bavoso recommends setting a public hearing date as required by law. If the board authorizes the Supervisor to sign that agreement then Spectrum takes it to the public service commission for their approval. Once they approve it, Spectrum can sign and the town has a franchise agreement.

MOTION TO SET PUBLIC HEARING FOR CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS FRANCHISE AGREEMENT:

MOTION offered by Councilman Howell 2^nd by Councilwoman Sutherland to set the public hearing for the Charter Communication franchise agreement for August 7, 2017 at 7:30pm at the town hall.  All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

QUIGLEY ROAD:

Councilman Howell emailed the attorney a question with regard to Quigley Road. He asked if there would be an impact to the declaration which we are being requested to issue on behalf of the property owners for the existing homes on Quigley Road. Atty. Bavoso stated they would not be impacted. There’s an existing Quigley Road that provides access to certain homes. The portion they are talking about is a kind of paper road that runs through the property owner’s field. He spoke to the attorney for the applicant today. He said he would come to the next meeting to answer questions. Councilman Howell asked Dean if there was anything beyond the existing homes…Supt. Hassenmayer stated Quigley Road on paper goes over to Tally Ho to Dr. Feder’s property. There are multiple property owners that actually the road shows on their maps. The road that goes in to the homes off Tally Ho – Quigley Road is paved up to there & does not appear on the maps that it’s on Pierson’s property at all. Howell: this is an undeveloped section. Hassenmayer: it’s beyond those homes back there.

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QUIGLEY ROAD: (cont.)

Volpe: who actually owns it? Hassenmayer: the road? Volpe: just each home owner owns a section? Hassenmayer: yes. Volpe: we wouldn’t be hurting any of the homeowners by doing this? Howell: in description of a paper road, do you mean it’s something that’s non-existent it just shows on a map? Bavoso: right, it’s something that likely was mapped out at some point and nobody really followed through on developing it. Hassenmayer: that maps that were provided to me showed a Quigley farm back in the 1900’s; it was probably a dirt road that went out to the 2 other roads at that time. Bavoso: just so the board knows, what they’re asking for is the town to provide a quitclaim deed to that particular piece of the road and the only thing a quitclaim deed says is that the town would be transferring any interest that it has. If it turns out the town doesn’t have any interest then it’s worth the piece of paper it’s written on & nothing more. Councilman Cambareri: the portion of the road that’s accessible off your road is not listed. I couldn’t find it off Tally Ho Road. I wasn’t sure which driveway it went in because there’s no sign that says Quigley. If this is something we do, this is only gonna affect the part of that’s on Pierson farm correct? Bavoso: yes. Cambareri: if we did that, would we make anybody landlocked where they couldn’t get to their property? Bavoso: not as I understand it from the map.

MOTION TO MOVE FORWARD WITH QUIGLEY ROAD QUITCLAIM DEED:

MOTION offered by Supervisor Volpe 2^nd by Councilman Cambareri to move ahead with the quitclaim deed for Quigley Road in the Town of Mount Hope.  All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

NARCAN CLASS:

Supervisor noted that there will be another NARCAN class on Sept. 23, 2017 at 2:00pm at the senior center. We will not be able to do more than 100 people. It’s free/open to everyone. Kathleen & Angie will start a list. It’s approx. 1 hour class; end of class you’ll be NARCAN certified.

HOLD HARMLESS AGREEMENTS WITH OTISVILLE COUNTRY FAIR:

Supervisor Volpe spoke re: hold harmless agreements. Sue Marshall called to see what the status of the agreement is. He reached out to David for the hold harmless agreement. He wrote one. He also wrote one for the use of the park for the fair. Sue spoke to Chad about wanting to set up on Monday (8/21) the garden tent, petting zoo tent & the cattle tent. This would be done prior to Wednesday. It would have no impact on our last concert. We would have to modify the hold harmless agreement with the dates. The amended dates would be the 21^st through the 30^th.

MOTION TO APPROVE BOTH HOLD HARMLESS AGREEMENTS WITH DATES TO BE AMENDED:

MOTION offered by Councilman Cambareri 2^nd by Councilwoman Sutherland to approve the hold harmless agreement with the new dates to be August 21 through August 30, 2017.  All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

BUILDING DEPARTMENT NEW HIRE:

Supervisor Volpe is looking to hire Laurie Powrie for the building department. It’s a part time position approx. 5 hours per week give or take. We’ll keep track of her hours. We are not adding any new building dept. hours; it’s to work on the back log we were left with to try to get all this stuff cleared up. She would get training 2 Mondays with Julie to see what our differences are between here and the village and Port Jervis. He would like to get some of the old issues cleaned up. There’s more than enough money in the budget line as we didn’t fill both positions as they were prior to the new hires.

MOTION TO APPROVE HIRING LAURIE POWRIE AS PART TIME EMPLOYEE IN THE BUILDING DEPARTMENT:

MOTION offered by Councilman Howell 2^nd by Councilman Cambareri to hire Laurie Powrie to fill the part time position in the building department. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

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RESOLUTION TO APPROVE SUPERVISOR’S OFFICE BUDGET MODIFICATION:

MOTION offered by Councilman Howell 2nd Councilman Cambareri to approve the following budget modification:

Increase Revenue A2089 by $4595.00 AND Increase expense line A7550.4 by $4595.00. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

JOURNAL ENTRY FOR CREDIT CARD PAYMENTS:

Supervisor added that there’s additional funding that’s done when credit card payments are made and everything goes in to the general account. No budget modifications will be made.  All of that will be a journal entry made through Kelli. He wanted everyone to know it gets moved manually when payments are made with a credit card.

HIDDEN VALLEY PAYMENT SCHEDULE:

Supervisor Volpe spoke re: payment schedule for Hidden Valley. We loaned money to get the capital project done. When he asked Kelli (accountant) as to how we start paying it back. Through a board meeting we do a voucher. She said that each month it should be brought up at a meeting. Our loan payment is going to be $1,000/month. Loan from Capital Reserve B to Hidden Valley for mandatory upgrades – the town will be making it’s first of 63 payments on July 18, 2017 in the amount of $1,000.00. Councilman Cambareri asked what the status of grant money is. Supervisor had her call today and it’s in the final stages.

MOTION TO APPROVE SUPERVISOR’S REPORT:

MOTION offered by Councilman Cambareri 2nd by Councilman Howell to approve the Supervisor’s report for June 2017 as presented. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

MOTION TO SEND LETTERS REGARDING VETERAN’S DAY PARADE:

MOTION offered by Supervisor Volpe 2^nd by Councilwoman Sutherland to allow Councilman Howell to send out the letters for the Veteran’s Day parade. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

PROCUREMENT POLICY:

Councilman Howell spoke re: procurement policy. He would like to see “best value practices” added to the policy. Councilman Cambareri verified that other figures changed within the policy with Atty. Bavoso. Bavoso added that there’s a provision in the proposed local law that states that would “follow the existing statute if you put it into place or that it would change with any state law that would change it”. It automatically updates it so you don’t have to continue changing the local law.

MOTION TO SET DATE FOR PUBLIC HEARING REGARDING AMENDMENTS TO THE TOWN PROCUREMENT POLICY:

MOTION offered by Councilman Howell 2^nd by Supervisor Volpe to set a public hearing on August 7, 2017 at 7:31pm at town hall for the amendments to the Procurement Policy. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

MOTION TO ACCEPT BID FROM KC ENGINEERING REGARDING HYDROGEOLOGICAL SERVICES:

MOTION offered by Councilman Howell 2^nd by Councilman Cambareri to accept the bid from KC Engineering received on March 3, 2017 for their hydrogeological services. All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

AT THIS TIME: Councilman Howell added that the firm has attached a proposed fee schedule. There’s 2 pages with their fee based on the work they perform. It’s based on not only their grade/classification of the employee but the time they pursue each. The bid didn’t have a set cap in it. We got 2 proposals which we reviewed but haven’t made a decision on but each of the 2 – one is a water comprehensive plan & gives an outline based on the attached fee schedule with a dollar value cap not to exceed. Other item they proposed was to fill out state forms. The water one he believes was a cap of $50,000.

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The other would be forms and filings with state departments to prepare us for what’s to come from the city & county. He believes that was $3,500. Councilman Cambareri added that is to gather the information from the DEC as Middletown and the county apply for permits. Howell added that the bid was for 1 year unless the cap is met. Mr. Selg asked if this work would be done before Middletown starts pulling the water. Cambareri added that as they start their application process he has to file the paperwork to see their application process to be part of the application process so that we can monitor it otherwise we have no idea what’s going on. We have to solicit from the DEC all the paperwork that the county or Middletown files with them so we can monitor what they’re doing. There was discussion about the aquifer.

MOTION TO AUDIT THE CLAIMS:

MOTION offered by Councilman Howell 2nd by Councilman Cambareri to approve the following bills:

GENERAL A:               #389-436         $  71,618.44

GENERAL B:               #56-59             $    5,007.68

HIGHWAY:                   #103-113         $  32,388.36

SEWER:                       #54-56             $    1,205.83.

All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION:

Ken Pinkela thanked the board for community day. It worked great for them. He spoke re: cable. He thanked the board for the cable issue being taken care of. He spoke re: Stop CPV. Middletown does not care. Mayor of Middletown doesn’t care. They’re coming after our water He’s gonna get paid for it. He thanked the board for what they’re doing. He next asked if we had an O&R liaison. Supervisor stated he has a contact at O&R. The school would like to link up the town with O&R – the Deerpark expansion is ongoing. It’s supposed to be coming online this fall. This will help for the school for solar expansion. They are asking them for pro-bono community support for their 50% solar initiative to NYC. We’re a win-win situation. He added that we are now listed as the 4^th largest community center in southern NY. They’ve been approached by a nicely established large corporate donation. They hope to have something in the next few months.

Mary Maurizzio thanked the board for the 1^st community day. She read into the minutes a letter she wrote. See letter at end of these minutes.

BOARD COMMENTS:

Councilman Cambareri thanked everyone (police/highway/volunteers/Kevin/Jim) for all their work done for the community day.

Supervisor Volpe added that Jim is a celebrity. People hate people but they love animals.

Councilman Howell thanked all departments for their involvement in community day. The trailer for the kids was a huge hit. He thanked Paul Barth as he was kind of the “unassigned volunteer” everywhere – helping.  He would like to have the Veteran’s Day parade advertised on facebook. He will also get in touch with the Times Herald Record to have something put in there.

Supervisor Volpe thanked John at Ulee’s for the car show. He would like to have the car show closer to where everything else was. He funded it and did the prizes on his own. For the 1^st year it was awesome. Mr. Pinkela thanked Chad for the recycle bins at community day. They got 7 bags.

MOTION TO ADJOURN:

MOTION offered by Councilman Cambareri 2nd by Councilman Howell to adjourn the meeting at 8:20pm.  All in favor: Howell, Volpe, Sutherland, Cambareri; carried.

Next meeting is scheduled for August 7, 2017 at 7:30pm in the Town Hall in the meeting room. There will be a public hearing at 7:30 for the Cable Franchise Agreement and a public hearing at 7:31pm for the proposed Local Law entitled: Establishing the Procurement Policy for the Town of Mount Hope.

Respectfully submitted,

Kathleen A. Myers, RMC

Town Clerk                                                       75

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