Town Board Meeting August 9th, 2021
OFFICIALS PRESENT: Police Chief Rickard, Dep. Police Chief Maresca, H’way Supt. Hassenmayer.
Following the Pledge of Allegiance, Supervisor Volpe called the special meeting to order at 6:00pm.
Supervisor Volpe explained this meeting is for the AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN RELIEF FUNDS. The notice is on the table. There will be 2 rounds. One for this year and one for next year in July. It will be the same exact amount each year. Total amount will be $572,839.00 of which $286,419.50 has been direct deposited into our account. He opened the meeting to comments form the general public.
Ed Fairweather: can you go over what the money can be used for? Supervisor Volpe stated infrastructure, public safety, emergency rental assistance, small business credits, corona virus relief, replace public service (if we had any lay-offs to retain the jobs), for essential workers, water/sewer/broadband infrastructure & the infrastructure is very vague but anything to make the town more compliant with today’s standards. If anyone has any questions, please come to podium and state your name.
Donna Baker: (Kohler Road) Does this fall under the infrastructure? I know the way it read said something about infrastructure that was lacking during COVID. Obviously, our road is lacking infrastructure in the things we need. Do you think that part of that money would be able to help us out with getting that brought down the rest of the way? Supervisor Volpe: it’s definitely high on our list of stuff to go over tonight. From everything I have read and everything that the attorney has given me, into something that we could do. Baker: that would be wonderful. Supervisor: you are aware that the town would only be able to run the cable down Kohler Road and NOT to individual houses. Baker: we understand. Supervisor: I have some old price estimates here.
Mary Sinsabaugh: Is there a time that this might be implemented? Are we talking another 4-5 years? Supervisor: I’m looking for things that are shovel ready tomorrow. That’s the purpose of this meeting. I’m gonna be busy the next month on the budget. I wanted to start & finish this meeting tonight and have a determination earmarked as to what we are spending the money on & depending on how many jobs we are starting perhaps each board member could spearhead one and they could see it from start to finish. Hopefully, we could get everything we want to do done immediately. Sinsabaugh: when you make your decision, will we be notified? Supervisor: everything will be in the minutes. I’m hoping to make all the decisions we want to tonight. If you give Kathleen a call tomorrow, she could let you know the outcome. Councilman Carey: If this passes and the board votes on it as far as Kohler Road, I would imagine the only thing you’re gonna wait on is Spectrum to run the line. Steve Sinsabaugh: what are the price estimates you got on that? Supervisor Volpe: the price estimate is old. Off the top of my head, I don’t know if I printed it out, it was $32-33,000.00. Mrs. Sinsabaugh: they told us 15 years ago $12,000.00. Supervisor Volpe: this is an estimate from November 2020 from the attorney for Charter getting back to our attorney & he just forwarded it to me so I’d have it for tonight’s meeting. Donna Baker: possibly you could dicker with them. I know it was 2 companies ago but they agreed to cover our entire town at the time that you let them come in. They’ve never held up to their part of the bargain. Maybe you could dicker that price a little bit considering they didn’t hold up their end. Supervisor Volpe: they stated that it was “X” amount of houses per something for density in the contract that they highlighted back to us. Baker: looking at the town, I don’t believe we have less density than a lot of places. Mr. Sinsabaugh: That has to go with the contract that was written. Did you have input with the contract or did they give you a form? Supervisor Volpe: our contract was……20 or 25 years.
Gerda Krogslund: (last house on Kohler Road). After me it says Town of Greenville. You have a couple of choices: you could let me succeed from the town of Mount Hope but I want you to know that I contacted a couple people on Pierson Hill Road. I went over there and asked them and encouraged them to come to this meeting that they will also have internet service, but he informed me that he didn’t need to come because he already has internet service. Pierson Hill Road is 4/10’s of a mile and there are 4 houses on that road so that makes 1/10th of a mile per house. Now its 9/10th of a mile to my house and there are 12 houses on our road. 13 if you count the apartment building. We’re more densely populated than Pierson Hill Road. I don’t know what you’re going to do when you have to tell those people that they can’t have internet because they’re not densely populated. I think it’s only fair that we have it. I asked my neighbor Marty Kennedy – he has Verizon, he’s in Greenville. My husband called Verizon they told us they only service all the people in Greenville. He recommended that I talk to my town board.
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Supervisor: exclusively, there is no exclusivity. Another one can cross over into Mount Hope. But, it’s an unwritten rule that they don’t. Inaudible. Mr. Sinsabaugh. It’s probably 700’ from my house. Krogslund: but you stop ¾ of the way down the road. Left us with nothing. Councilman Carey: how many years ago did that happen? Mr. Sinsabaugh: 25 years ago, maybe. Carey: clearly no one on this board. I hear you loud and clear – Kohler Road. I get it. I wish we could have done something for you before. I don’t think that it’s an issue. This is money we were given. I’m hoping that we’re gonna be able to help you out. I wish I could personally run the line for you down to your house for Spectrum. I don’t see this as a problem. We’ll find out who decides to vote for that. Krogslund: maybe we should also be compensated for no service. Having paid taxes for that service for those 25 years.
Ed Fairweather: I don’t have hard & fast numbers but the historical society main barn- we’ve been nursing the roof along for a couple years. We could probably get another year out of it. Rough estimate – we’d like to put a steel roof on it. Not like the one on the house. Not as historically correct. Steel costs somewhere $15-18,000.00 and then we would have to add labor to it. It could be done in 2 – if we’ve got money this year and next year. Supervisor Volpe: what do you think the total cost would be? Fairweather: Looking at $15,000.00 in material, I’m thinking $30-35,000.00 total – rough estimate. That would give us a really good start. The house roof was 26,000.00 and it took us almost 7 years to save the money to do that. That would be a big plus in the right direction. Thank you.
Supervisor Volpe: I would say ½ the people here are for Kohler Road. I wasn’t gonna do it this way but do we wanna stay on this topic? What’s the board’s thoughts on this? Councilman Furman: in favor of doing it. Councilman Howell agreed. Supervisor Volpe suggested to do an estimate not to exceed $34,000.00 to do the infrastructure on Kohler Road to run the cable down Kohler Road with Charter. He needs a motion.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE KOHLER ROAD CABLE FUNDING:
MOTION offered Councilman Jennings 2nd Councilman Howell to authorize moving forward with Charter to extend cable down the remainder of Kohler Road with Charter not to exceed $34,000.00. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
Councilman Carey: when they come out and give a price as to what it’s gonna cost, how will each homeowner make contact with them to find out what it’s gonna cost each person? Supervisor: I will – David said tonight that he would be readily available – so once we have at least a few things to ask him, I’ll call him and ask him how – that we’ve earmarked some of this money for this purpose, he may be able to get it done rather quickly for us. Mr. Sinsabaugh: I’m getting stuff all the time from Spectrum that they will give me internet. I call them up they say yes then they say no. They’re willing to hook-up with no charge. They shouldn’t be throwing another thing out there where they’re gonna get money from us. Discussion.
Alison Miller: I trust that you have the letter from FOTOS? Supervisor: I do.
Monisha Maldonado: (Schoolhouse Road) If you can do something with the basketball court and the volleyball court – to update it? It needs new hoops. It needs new asphalt. New netting. H’way Supt.: asphalt was done 2 years ago. Maldonado: new markings. Hassenmayer: it could use sealcoating and relining.
Chief Rickard: Obviously, public safety is one of the key planks to this plan. We’ve talked about the air handler which no longer meets anything close to acceptable filter levels and the HVAC need to be replaced. Councilman Howell: there’s 2 parts to what we’re discussing. We looked at with the engineers to replace the heating unit under the PD. There’s 2 units that originate from one central boiler: one for the senior center and does the police/courts. The one more in need of repair is under the police/court side. The engineer gave a rough estimate to replace that one (police/court) side of $18,000.00. Chris & Jim had some questions on some emails that were coming through. There’s 4 options: repairs what is there or 3 replacement options. Supervisor: would that control everything or only police/court side? Howell: police/court side. Discussion. Howell: The engineers recommendation is to replace it. We would need to add the duct work in the hallway as previously discussed. Chief Rickard: if we can try to do this sooner than later to hopefully catch the in between seasons. Supervisor asked Matt to spearhead this. Howell: this would have to go out to a sealed bid because of the cost. Discussion to put $40,000.00 to this request.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE THE ENGINEER TO GO TO BID FOR THE HVAC SYSTEM FOR THE SENIOR CENTER/POLICE/COURT BUILDING:
MOTION offered Supervisor Volpe 2nd Councilman Carey to go to bid for the HVAC SYSTEM FOR THE SENIOR CENTER/POLICE/COURT BUILDING not to exceed $40,000.00. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
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Chief Rickard: I talked with Brian about adding some midnight shifts. This money is clearly able to be used for adding police hours for officers….from Thanksgiving eve through New Years on weekends to do 2 officers on the midnight shift would be $5,831.04. The 2nd half would actually be next summer from graduation weekend through labor-day weekend – 2 officers on the weekend for $10,690.24 – total $16,521.28 over the 2 years. This would give us the data from the holiday season & the summer. This data would help to prepare for the 2023 budget. Carey: does this have to be spent by a certain time? Supervisor: no. But it has to be allotted and allocated. Howell: This will be to use our current staff for additional hours. Jennings: what are the hours? Chief: midnight to 8am.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE FUNDING FOR EXTRA OVERNIGHT HOURS FOR THE POLICE OFFICERS:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Furman to authorize $16,521.28 to be used for extra overnight hours for Thanksgiving weekend 2021 through New years weekend AND 2022 graduation weekend through Labor-day weekend. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
Chief Rickard: The speed trailer is a public safety, permitted use. It’s a speed sign that has a 24” display sign. You can put road closed on it. The advantage to this unit is this is cloud-based. If Dean calls to close a road, we can move it and put on there remotely. It also does a stealth mode. It will record the data but won’t flash. It’s a trailer. There’s a camera on it that will take a picture of the car. It will also take a pic of the person that smashed it with a baseball bat. Carey: is there an upgrade out there for your existing sign? Chief: no. This is $16,685.00 includes delivery, training, 3-year warranty, Bluetooth/GPS. It’s a message board. It’s all automated. It’s cloud-based. We can set it up to run a report every Monday morning. It would take 7-10 weeks from ordering date.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE THE PURCHASE OF SPEED TRAILER:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Furman to authorize expending $16,685.00 to purchase a speed trailer. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
Highway Supt. Hassenmayer: A shiny new dump truck. The problem is, if we order today, we wouldn’t have it for almost 2 years. A year and a half is the assembly time. Jennings: what would this replace? Hassenmayer: an old truck. Supervisor asked the price of it. Hassenmayer: probably $350,000.00. Our oldest truck right now is 22 years old. We have 2 behind it that are 20 & 19 years old. It’s time to start thinking about the big trucks. The roof on the barn which is owned by the 4H is bad. I had a contractor come in and gave me 3 different estimates. One was a steel roof; one was corrugated asphalt & one was shingles. They varied from $50-130,000.00 for a building we don’t own. He’d like to ask to build a 3-bay garage at the park below the pavilion down where the big stump is for a park maintenance building. I think we could do it with highway labor for under $60,000.00. Then we could let them have their barn. I’m sure we’ll utilize it. I think it’s a lot of money for us to put into it. Supervisor: we could have a brand-new building not to worry about. Hassenmayer: We could put electric in it very easily. The transformer at the park is not far from there.
We could even put water in there. Supervisor asked if he needed money for the basketball and other court? Hassenmayer: they will need seal-coating and re-striping. Probably $5,000.00 right out of the parks budget. Supervisor: the only thing then – I can’t grant you that new truck. We can start earmarking for it. Hassenmayer: we have some capital. At budget time I’ll have some solid numbers. I’d like to get one ordered. Supervisor: how does payment work once we order it? Hassenmayer: you don’t pay until it’s delivered.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE BUILDING A 3 BAY GARAGE AT TOWN PARK:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Howell to authorize up to $60,000.00 for a 3-bay garage to be built at the town park below the pavilion. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
Councilman Howell: Do we want to set aside any of that money for the truck? Supervisor Volpe: let’s see what any other board member wants. I asked Paul to get us the info on the speed trailer.
Chief: I check with O&R. The light for the parking lot is on order. Supervisor: Dean & I spoke with Aileen Gunther and got the 1st round of parking spots put in there, we were only allowed to put up to 50 without getting into the whole thing with moving too much earth. We added the spots. We did the loop around. That was paid for by Aileen Gunther. Now that youth center is open and we are over 300 cards issued, people are renting for major events, I mapped out off of the phase 2, we could do an additional 40 spots. He noted where to put the additional spots. He estimates it would cost about $50,000.00.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE ADDITIONAL PARKING SPOTS AT YOUTH CENTER:
MOTION offered Councilman Howell 2nd Councilman Carey to authorize the new parking spots at the youth center facility not to exceed $50,000.00. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
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Councilman Furman: the 1st thing will be Hidden Valley. I had to do emergency repairs to the system itself. I went out to see the siding. The fence needs repair. We need some cameras at some point. I spent about $60,000.00 between repairs and maintenance for the facility. I will ask for $75,000.00. That will cover both repairs which were emergency. It will move the blowers in to the main plant. That should do the siding, fence and cameras and possibly a small generator. Supervisor Volpe: I own a house in HV. There’s 100 houses. They currently pay $1800/year to flush the toilet. With the repairs that were necessary for HV, they’re looking at $500/house raise in their taxes. HV is a sewer district. Clearly, falls under wastewater. The flow issue that they had is when the other board put the sewer plant in they actually built the sewer plant for up to 200 houses. The flow going through HV was almost as much for 400 houses. There was such a leak underneath and they had to figure out where the water was coming from that the plant was overloaded. At 100 houses, there’s no way the plant could be overloaded. Hidden valley is paying to clean water. All the water going through the district gets UV lighting, gets everything that it needs and goes back out. It wasn’t all waste water. It’s a lot of clean water coming in there. To rip up manholes and research where there’s issue, not to mention an emergency repair, it was $5,000 to bring an excavator there. They’re in dire need of help. We have to do something to help the 100 homeowners. Councilman Furman then spoke re: bathrooms at the park. Unfortunately, we’re gonna have to put a septic. We’re gonna have to drill a well because the cost factor to dig under a stream would be astronomical. If we build the bathrooms maybe put a concession stand too with an announcers booth above it. He also asked for bleachers for the football & baseball fields. Hassenmayer: normally we move them back & forth. Councilman Jennings asked the h’way supt. roughly what it would cost for the bathroom. Hassenmayer: at least $100,000.00-$125,000.00.
Councilman Howell: 2 things we covered already. Heating system at police station and Chris brought up the bathrooms at the field. He’d like to have a generator at the youth center. One coming from hidden valley – if it’s something we have the funds for instead of waiting for a renovation to come through, would be a benefit to have there. Supervisor: we are at $26-34,000.00 for an 80KW generator. You have to order them online. Councilman Howell: next, if we could use it towards the town hall expansion. I know we got it started on paper. Hidden valley was also covered. If it comes down to it and we don’t spend the money, it’s gotta go back to the government. If we have it to use, the premium pay/hazard pay would be a last resort. Supervisor: would the generator be #1? Howell: a couple other things: supplies & improvements to respond to COVID-19 situation. If we made the expense after March 3, 2021, we can use the funds to reimburse ourselves. Supervisor Volpe: through FEMA, Angie and I have already gotten everything from Paul and everything else fell under buildings. I’ve already submitted through Sept. of 2020 – we were getting 100% back of anything we spent for masks and anything else. After that it went down to 75%. We had to upload every bill, every invoice. Depending on when we bought it is the amount that we’re going to get reimbursed. We already have a portal. We will get money back.
Councilman Carey: #1 thing on my list not covered is the community centers generators. Both of them. The senior center generator – we’ve had issues with it over the years. We’ve talked about replacing it. Chief: it controls everything but the police garage. It had to be serviced during one of our longest outages. Carey: Maybe we can do 1 now and 1 later. I want to add to what Matt said as far as town hall expansion. Supervisor: we are guaranteed $100,000.00 from Aileen Gunther but last year the state was ‘broke’ and they finished Paul’s grant for the bathrooms which was from the year before. They did not distribute any new funds. Carey: We talked about the park and doing a stage at some point. It doesn’t have to happen this time. I’d like to see $10,000.00 for upgrades at the youth center. I think we have a great thing going there. There’s some things there we didn’t think about and now we are running into issues. Another thing is paving of the walking trails. We’ve had people come to our board meetings. Maybe we could get grant money for? Lastly, I have fencing at the dog park. People use the dog park. People from Devan’s Gate use the dog park. But we have nothing in the front – road frontage – a car goes off the road – there’s nothing to define parking – where you can go, where you can’t go.
Councilman Jennings: We discussed a lot of things on my list: Kohler Road, the generator for the community center, increased parking at the center, bathrooms by the football field. Little league approached me they’re looking to install (17) 20’ poles in the back on D-field. They had some home runs that have damaged some of the houses back there. That would probably be about $25-30,000.00 for that. Upgrades for the basketball courts was another thing I had. I checked the ones in Port Jervis. They used Pro-Dunk. The kids that use those love it. Maybe that’s something to look at for our park. They’re about $2,000.00 each. Complete backboard. About $8,000.00 for that. The last is the FOTOS request – give them some money for their project.
Supervisor Volpe went over the following: Hidden Valley sewer district is on the list we need to consider. The generator for the youth center is on there. FOTOS. The roof for the historical society. Councilman Furman would like to see money given to the 2 food banks in this town. Suggestion is to give them each a monetary donation. They get more food if they buy through the food bank. He would like to see the roof for the historical society as well.
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Supervisor Volpe wanted to prioritize. [We get the same exact amount next year in July 2022.] Hidden valley sewer, youth center generator, FOTOS, roof for historic barn, church/food donation. Councilman Carey asked Ed Fairweather how bad the roof is for the barn? Mr. Fairweather: we could get another year out of it.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE FUNDING FOR THE HIDDEN VALLEY SEWER PLANT:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Howell to authorize $30,000.00 for the Hidden Valley sewer plant. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE FUNDING FOR THE 2 LOCAL FOOD BANKS:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Howell to authorize giving each food bank (Holy Name Church & OMHPC) $1,000.00 each. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
MOTION TO AUTHORIZE FUNDING TO GO TO A GENERATOR FOR THE YOUTH CENTER:
MOTION Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Howell to authorize $37,213.22 for a generator for the youth center. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
Supervisor Volpe will talk to David about Kohler Road. HVAC – Matt will handle. Paul will let people know we are looking for shifts. Paul will order the speed trailer. Dean will take care of the garage. Dean will work with the Supervisor on the parking lot. Hidden valley is going to be a lateral move. Food banks will be vouchered. Jim will look at the generator. Supervisor will look into a state or county bid with Dean for this.
MOTION TO CLOSE MEETING:
MOTION offered Councilman Carey 2nd Councilman Howell to close the meeting at 7:30pm. All in favor: Howell, Carey, Volpe, Jennings, Furman; carried.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathleen A. Myers
Town Clerk
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