Town of Ballston Town
Board Meeting
Feb. 26, 2019
Key
topics:
- Application for a grant to Integrate the 2001 Watershed Plan into a Watershed Lake Mgmt. Plan
- Goslin talks about Carpenter Acres sewer plan
- Mr. Antoski talks about sidewalks
- Stewart talks about Fireman’s Grove planning
- Finance officer talks about IT costs
- Town engineer talks about water meter install costs
- Finance officer talks about costs to homeowner for new water system
- BL Sewer Project Manager presented what has happened with Ballston Lake Sewer District since 2015 (no mention of 2001 Watershed Plan)
- Acquisition of BH Fire North station for use by sherriff
- Eric Connolly presents water issue in Stonebridge Enclave to the board
Notes taken by a resident on February 26,
2019
This meeting was recorded to aid in note
taking (inaudible parts are noted with _ )
Attended by: Tim Szczepaniak, William Goslin, Kelly
Stewart, John Antoski, Chuck Curtiss, Carol Gumienny, Town Clerk, Debra Kaelin,
Town Attorney and members of the community.
Sczcepaniak
states there is no correspondence to report.
Reports: Sczcepaniak states the Dog Control, Town Highway
and Town Clerk reports are all on file.
Library
The 8th Annual
Friends of the Library Mini Golf Fundraiser was held on February 22 and 23. Eighteen
local businesses and organizations sponsored the event and over 300 adults and
children attended. Thank you to the Friends of the Library, library staff,
volunteers, and entire community for making it a success. Special thanks to
Elizabeth Newsom, Chair of the Mini Golf Committee.
Registration
for spring programs is open. Register by calling the library or on the
library’s online calendar.
Ballston Lake Water Quality Protection
& Management
Dr. Pierce reported “Kim and I have been
meeting quite a bit in the last month for the Lake Management Committee. Together we worked up a grant application to
DEC for $26,000 to integrate the 2001 Capital District Planned Watershed Commission
into a Watershed Lake Management Plan.
We’ve been working on this since 2015 with different agencies that are
in the area that are stakeholders and we thought that we could get this grant
and have a professional watershed management planning company help us complete
it. If we ever get this finished, with
help from the town and with the grant that we applied for.”
Council
Members reports:
Mr. Goslin: “I received a map from the Carpenters
Acres folks who are in the lower section there.
I haven’t done anything with it, they’ve done a really nice job. They indicated the parcels that would like
sewer of their own, the same general area.
I would like to recommend we turn that over to the town engineer, not
for a feasibility study or a Map Plan and Report or anything else, just to get
a rough estimate of the pipe and if the county could accept it at Cornerstone
Condos, so it we could just do that and keep that moving that would be great.” Sczcepaniak asked “how many parcels? I’m just curious. Approximately.” Goslin replied, “I’ll pull up the maps but
its Moonlight Drive, its lower streets there, most of the parcels in that area,
so …”. Katherine (from engineering)
stated “it is a large number of parcels.”
Goslin said “I’ll pull it up and I’ll count it. It’s significant, which
is good because it will help divide the cost.”
Mr. Antoski: “The grants for the sidewalks continue
to stretch as far as the information needs to be sent and then I find new information,
and then some of the information that I sent isn’t good enough so that’s moving
along. I’ve got to call for the Walsh
_____ tomorrow, there’s one page left with that, and two pages with the other
one. Probably the bigger issue that will
come down is the fact that the County needs to write a letter to National Grid
in regard to the posts, because its county property. The county is concerned about maintenance, I
know we’re concerned about maintenance, I was going to talk to Keith Manz tomorrow,
and see why he can’t just put the blade down for another 200 feet than they
already do. I don’t think that’s
something he wants to do. Sczcepaniak
said “Can you let me know the response on that?”. Mr. Antoski: I’m wondering why they stopped at
Kingsley in the first place. They didn’t
finish Lakehill to 50, why did they leave that in the first place. I don’t know when they put it in. Why the county would leave a gap?
Ms. Stewart: The
Park Committee will be working on Fireman’s Grove opening, we’re targeting
early May. We have a contract with Brian Cooper, he’s a local scout
representative. They would like to use the park for like a scout
recruiting/scout get-together with other scouts. So, we thought maybe we’d be
able to do that in conjunction with some service project work by the troops and
the grand opening. We kind of have a lot
of people there already, it’ll be nice to have a crowd for it. I’m going to be …if that’s ok…if the board doesn’t
have any objection to it… kind of combining
events. I will be talking with Brian
about what he’d like to see and what he’d like it to do with that event and
then figure out what else we want to do.
I’m assuming that this being in May, that the pad will be poured by that
time, if not, that could be an issue, we certainly won’t have the parking lot
done but I don’t want to pay extra and we have to decide where and what amount
of parking The next thing would be to get the stoves out of the kitchen. We have two new park committee members and we
are catching them up to speed, and then the last thing that we have to do is I’m
working with Carol on the application and rental forms and things like that, and
who is handling scheduling. Unfortunately,
it may fall to Carol’s team, but we already have at least one or two
organization inquiries and we need to respond to them, make sure those two
events don’t conflict.
Mr. Curtiss: “A couple small deals. I had a discussion a few days ago with one of
our part-time maintenance employees and he was concerned about not having time
enough to do his required maintenance in and around the building and he’s
concerned about what happens when we get into Fireman’s Grove, what are his
responsibilities there, so we need to have a sit down and figure this out,
where we’re going, make sure we’re covered.
Also, I spoke to Carol about rentals in our Community Room. There are issues there, there are some that
we don’t charge a service fee at all to, issues with damage here in the
building, a poor job cleaning up etc, we need to structure that, there’s a
problem there.” Szczepaniak replied
“what we’ve done with that, now that we’ve had someone monitor that, we’ve sent
letters out….you weren’t at the last meeting…I sent a letter to the individuals
who were responsible for ….now that we have the avenue to monitor it, we have
to have follow thru and address the issues, which we’ve done and so far that’s
worked pretty well” Mr. Curtiss: “Is this something that we should just put a
blanket….make this available for everyone at the same level? Or are we going to take care of this case by
case as they happen? “ Szczepaniak
replied, “Well it’s a case by case basis,, it happens in a handful of cases,
and now we’re taking the action.”
Szczepaniak: Mr.
Curtiss, “I want to discuss a little bit about the FPP, Scott is here, Scott
would you give us details on the breakfast coming up and whatever else you
have?”
Farmland Protection and Preservation
Scott Draina
discussed the annual breakfast coming up from 10a-12p on March 3, where there
will be a group of panelists answering pre-set questions. Sign up thru the town website.
Financial Report
Jeanette
Borthwick: Joe and I are working to get
the town of Glenville to send the water quarterly billing that they should have
sent to us as stated in the contract. hopefully
we can get that within the next couple of weeks. The other thing, Tyler
Technologies accounting software conversion has begun, we are targeting a go
live date to be the end of this year. So
that gives us plenty of time to do what we need to do, it’s a rather
significant process to go through, I also have had Stored Tech in here to do
the IT audit that is required from Tyler Technologies and I had submitted that
audit today, and from that they will probably make recommendations or
requirements on additional hardware needed to work with the software, so you’ll
have that for the board to review, with recommendations. We need to get an IT committee together, I
still have 5 proposals for IT Services that need to be reviewed so that a
decision can be extended, or a recommendation can be presented to the board for
who we should hire for 2019. Szczepaniak
then asked for a motion to move the financial report forward.
RESOLUTION 19-19
Approve the
Supervisor’s financial report for January 2019.
Passed
unanimously
Building Inspector
14 permits
issued, 12 CO’s, ___ fire inspections, 1 stormwater site inspections, 9
planning board applications:1 sketch plan, 1 site plan, 1 special use permit,
and 3 major sub-divisions, 1 lot line adjustment
RESOLUTION 19-20
A motion was
made to approve the payment of the bills for February. The bills were approved
for payment
Water
Meter Replacement Project
Kathryn Serra of C.T. Male: “So this is definitely something that the residents are well aware of, the water
committee has really been discussing the water meter placement project for , I
would say over a decade based on the age of the water meters. The report that was prepared, I believe the
board members have a copy of, and which really all it does is explain the project
and how much it will cost the average user within the consolidated water
district. So Joe, ____ and I actually
worked on this document, and there’s only two components of what we’re calling the
project under exemption report (??).
The first is the project that, with your approval tonight, is going out
on the street next Monday March 4th, which will be the bids to
install water meters. The town is
looking to purchase the equipment. There would be a separate contract for a
plumber to come in and actually install all 1700 meters. So, the other component of the report we are
looking at would be for going out to bond per not only do the water meter
replacement- which is obviously the most important project right now—but given
the good rates the bond ___ to B, we’re looking to do some additional
maintenance in the water system. So, the
report does discuss other projects such as replacement of pressure valve in the
Ballston Lake hamlet, it’s quite old and in need of repair. And then some general water meter
replacements as Joe sees fit. We don’t
have specific areas outlined in the report, we’d like to give flexibility as to
the areas that Joe deems in need of repair, so we do have a line item in there
for about $300,000 worth of replacements.
It’s about $100/ft. average price, that’s about 3000 feet. So if the
bids come in our favor on the water meter replacements, this means we have more
money to do other areas of water meter replacements in the system. Which makes….maybe…less important to
understand why we’re talking about more than just water meters in this report. So, Jeanette can go through the project
financing in explaining how that bond and the impact to the water district
would result. “
Jeanette Borthwick (finance): We started out by going to fiscal advisors regarding
municipal bonding and the information that came back made the financing
inflexible to the town and we were looking for more flexibility. So, we reached out to BSNB, Peggy de
Koning and she came back with some recommendations, that recommendation being
that we first go out one-year BAN and she’s estimating that interest rate at
2.4% and with that we only pay the interest at the end of it. That also gives us another year to take a
look at some of the outstanding debt issues that we already have for
discussions and options during budget season,
for 9-12 months out, you don’t have to make that decision right now,
regardless of what we do on the size of the bond in a year, she’s estimating a
conservative rate for us would be 3.25% and that is what we put into this
report, and estimated a simple first year payment on that. The other thing that is required in this
report is to…. I have to report the current tax rate and this is for
consolidated water district number 2 which is in there, and the estimated first
year debt service, what would that do to the rate? What it basically comes down to is each
homeowner, assuming an average home assessed value of $200,000 would be paying
an extra $29.25 in the first year. With
that said, because you can’t put in this report--- one of the reasons we’re
doing this project is that we are anticipating getting the revenues back into
the town that we are not getting from all of the water that is not being read
in the meters. So, with that said, we
expect to use those revenues to pay down some of this debt so we are
anticipating that it’s going to be less than that $29.25. So that’s what we’re looking at. Are there any questions from the board?”
Goslin:” I would say that the report
puts us over the tax cap probably, as far as an increase is concerned, so I’m
very concerned that we would consider paying for this by raising taxes on the
water district residents. I believe the town already has a built-in water rate
increase, that will help. We just signed
a contract with the town of Glenville that saves us money. And as you say, we have the revenue capture
from the water that is not being billed currently, so I’m assuming that the
verbiage in here that you explained is just because it has to be in here for a
report, right?”
Kathryn: “Yes. The NY State Town Law 202B it has to be this
way. “
Goslin: “I’d just like to note that
there are a lot of different ways to pay for this, and the main way of paying for
it is, as you guys have already mentioned, is we’re already losing 30% of water
that goes through your meter, ummm, so people who use the water will pay for
the water and that’s the fair way to do this. I would like to expand the
verbiage on Joe, though. I know we have
a water tank issue maybe in the Chapel Hill water tank that we might have to
look at so I would like to look at…ummm…I would just put water infrastructure
in there. I wouldn’t limit it to mains
because the scouring in the other tank needs to be done and I would hate to
have $300,000 sitting on the shelf that we can’t use for that purpose. So, I
would just say ‘for future water infrastructure or to replace or repair any
water infrastructure as opposed to just mains.”
Kathryn:
“Will the board likely feel
free (???)of adopting the water meter replacement project?”
Szczepanik: “Sure, yeah,
absolutely.”
Kathryn: “Joe and Dennis have a draft
for about a week now, have gone back and forth on a few minor items, it’s
really a very straight forward bid document, it’s essentially for labor only,
to install the water meters, we are required that contractors are fully
responsible for contacting property owners.
We really don’t want to burden the town staff which is already over worked. So, the town has already done and can already
say that the project is coming, the contractor that is hired will be
responsible for reaching out by mail, …ya know, they can obtain phone numbers
thru public record, and basically say ‘we’re doing this project,
please contact us to schedule per our window to come in and replace the
meters.’ The other item that is included
in the document is to replace the stems and the curbed _____ , the line that
turns the ____out of the ground…they are old and rotting. We have allowance in there for around a third
of the cost to have that ___ replaced. So,
the way that we’re bidding this is it will be on the streets March 4th,
we’re a four week bid period which opens on March 28th and then
we’ll get the bids and then decide. We’re
asking the contractor to be done in December of 2019, if they complete the work
by Sept. 30th, and we’ll give them a $25,000 credit which is actually
a small percentage of the work, We’re estimating about half a million dollars,
the reason we’re opting for that credit is we feel we’ll make more money if the
meters are operating sooner. So normally
we don’t see incentives for public projects, now we currently have two projects
that have incentives. The only reason
why it’s allowed is that we prove we will save money. And that is the reason why that was allowed
in the document, it normally wouldn’t do that.”
Sczcepaniak: “Is that with the caveat that that’s why
the…ya know.”
Kathryn: “It truly is approved by the
town. It can’t have two laps (?), it
will be quality incentives to get the work done earlier and accumulate more
revenue. If they don’t meet that
schedule, they have until the end of the year to get that work done. And the town will be fully responsible for
inspecting the meters. The onus is on
the contractors to do the coordination.
Some municipalities have said ‘oh we’ll coordinate’. It’s a nightmare to coordinate 1700 meters
being installed.”
Steve Walsh:”Can I ask a question on
that?”
Sczcepaniak:” You can sir, during
privilege of the floor.”
Kathryn: “So does the board have any
questions about the document?”
No questions.
Ballston Lake Sewer Project Update
Kim Kotkoskie,
project manager, gave some background on the project. In 2012, NYS listed the
Lake as a NYS Section 303(d) Impaired Waterbody. In 2015, the sewer district
was created based on a Map, Plan and Report written by Delaware Engineering and
reviewed by C.T. Male. In the report, the cost estimate was $10.2MM based on
preliminary engineering. The project went to a public vote that passed. In
2016, the Town received a grant ($2.5MM) from the NYS Environmental Facility
Corp. which is a clean water State revolving fund. In 2017, a design phase was
initiated, a new contract was awarded to Adirondack Mountain Engineering, legal
work began and other subcontractors brought into the project. Surveys, and fieldwork
were done, extensive plans were initiated, a sewer use law was drafted, an
operation maintenance agreement was signed for the sewer with the Towns of
Ballston and Clifton Park, and public informational sessions began. In 2018, a
detailed design phase began.
There are over
200 easements on the project, final plans were done and a closer look at cost
was done. At that time, it was realized the costs had increased and the grant
was after the date the district was created. Overall project costs were increased
to $12.7MM which included the grant money. Agencies approved the plans, bid
documents were prepared and released in December. In January of this year the
Committee entered the construction phase and went out to bid. Bids were opened
on January 29th. This whole-time frame cost $760,000. The project was put out
to bid knowing two contracts would be signed; one for the construction of the
project and the other for electrical work. Three bids were received for
construction only: Bidder A: $12,352,470; Bidder B:
$18,629,509 and
Bidder C: $19,311,507. Bidder A withdrew their bid due to a multiplication
error for rock removal which created a $2.2MM difference, and their bid had to
be withdrawn.
Currently the
Committee is looking at different aspects: Is the project too large? Is it too
complex? Are contractors too busy? Are State requirements a deterrent? Every
line (100s) item was evaluated on discrepancies to our estimates and the bids
that were received. Items that had larger discrepancies were maintenance and
protection of traffic, drilling, service taps on everyone’s connection point,
general mobilization line, site restoration. All parties involved (Ballston,
Clifton Park, Saratoga County, NYS EFC) are currently looking for the best path
forward.
Goslin: “I’d like to comment if I
could. First of all, on behalf of the
town of Ballston, I do have to say we’re obviously very disappointed with the
bid results. This, for a large group of
people in the town, has been a 5 year effort and to not be in a position where
we can move forward with this project currently is a very difficult position
and not the position we obviously wanted to be in. Having said that, ya know, we could wring our
hands, we could go out and find some people to blame and some things to blame
and some of that’s already been done, but I think that the best thing to do
moving forward is to take a step back, look at where we are, look at our
options, and as a town and as a board, make a decision to choose how to move
forward. So with that in mind, we met
several weeks ago as a group and a lot of the people that Kim mentioned were
there. We brought in the town engineer, CT Male, Adirondack Engineering, the
county was there, the town of Clifton Park was there, our attorneys were there,
and we said ‘how do we move forward?’
And the sum of that evening was to the engineering firms involved and
that would be Adirondack , CT Male and Kim is an engineer as well….to go out to
the contractors and try to determine…or try to see what they could learn. In other words, understand what might have
happened, and umm, I’m gonna tell ya that I’ve seen the preliminary results of
that, and about everything is in there, ok?
There are some estimates that could have been better, yeah there are
some estimates that may have been low,
and some estimates that were spot on.
There are overhead figures that are out there, there are rock, there’s
wetlands, there’s small roads, there’s market conditions, there’s overtime,
there’s traffic control, theres yada yada yada.
You name it, it’s in there.OK? So
what we’re going to do with that is we’re going to summarize that document so
that the public can see it and we also asked the engineering firms to write a
letter based on what they have observed and who we’ve spoken to and suggest
paths forward by the town. So probably by the next meeting Tim we will have a
report on what we’ve learned, we will have recommendations from three different
engineering firms and then it begins the town determining what they may want to
do. Alright? Right now the options moving forward are we
could do nothing, we could sit right where we are , we have a lot of things
that we’ve accomplished , we can put those in a time capsule , we can put in
the design, we can put in all of the easements, all of that, we can give $1.7
million back to the state, we can do that and just walk away and say ya know
what? Sewers around Ballston Lake are
just too expensive. And they are
expensive. We didn’t miss this one by a
little, we missed it by a lot. The other
thing people are thinking about is you could re-bid this as a smaller
project. Some people think that these
size of the project may scare away some smaller vendors, or smaller
contractors, and the sum of the parts may be less than the whole. That’s certainly an option. The …ummm…you could divide this larger sewer
district up into smaller districts. You
could say Buell Heights is one, the West side, the East side, the town of
Clifton Park…that’s an option. So that
if you did go out to bid you could build the sections that make sense from a
cost point of view. And I think there is a lot of other alternatives
there. One of the things that’s been
suggested to me, and maybe its time for the town to take a step back and look
at some of the other ideas that we’ve received and maybe study those before we
look at moving forward. So at this point in time I’d just like to summarize
where I think the town is is that A) we’re obviously disappointed, (B) we’re
trying to learn as much as we can from the bids we got back, we’re looking for
some engineering recommendations, we still have $1.7 million of state money,
we’ll talk to EFC later in the week about how that money could be used, I’d
hate to give that money back, but we really need to take a step back and try to
figure out where we are and figure out what the best way to move forward is for
the town and I would just state to everybody her that umm…that this isn’t
something that they need to decide today, tomorrow or next week, the money
….alot of the money and the funding is out there for 10 years. There’s a lot of opportunity for us as a town
to really take a step back and see where we are. We should have more at the next board meeting.”
Sczcepaniak: “Well stated councilman. One thing I want to add to that is the
easements…all the work…that was performed already, I checked with our attorney
Deb Kaelin about that, in other words, how long does a easement that’s been
granted last, and …”
Kaelin:
“It runs through the land”.
Sczcepaniak: “So, that’s another good aspect if the
project does get shelfed.”
Stewart:
Has two questions, the first is that as a town board they are
responsible to do something when a water body is deemed impaired and she wants
to hear from Kim and have Kim explain what responsibility the board has and
what action the board must take to satisfy their responsibility. The second question is what is the percentage
of septic systems around the lake that are failing? How do we determine what systems are failing?
Kim:
“I would do the TMDL first (Total Maximum Daily Load). So what the state
would be looking at would be specifically phosphorous, and they would want you
to do studies as to how much that lake can handle of phosphorous, and what are
all of your sources of phosphorous? And
eventually you have to look at all of your sources of phosphorous and say
‘you’re allowed from your streams to have so much coming in, umm…and how are
you going to measure it, so this is a very difficult thing, from your runoff,
from your septics, you figure out all of your sources and you would assign what
is your maximum allowed into the lake from each source. So looking at that amount that is healthy for
the lake , this would take years to really create that TMDL. There are other
water bodies in NY state that are going thru this process with DEC. And then once you have the TMDL created it
takes even additional years for it to bounce back. It’s a very lengthy process.”
Stewart:
” Generally, to bounce back, something needs to change.”
Kim:
“Yes. So, what it would mean for
the community is that permit limits would be set on each of these sources which
means people would literally have to change how they function so these sources
don’t continue to contribute. And then your other question is how many septics
are contributing and how do you measure that?
And this is a committee that Dave and I, we go to the county on a
certain frequency, we meet with them, that they’re really trying to beef up the
septic monitoring and education process in Saratoga county and that would
involve more inspections of peoples homes , how they take care of their
systems, eventually , and this is a comment I heard from EFC is ‘do you have
documentation on file where people have bumped into situations where they need
help? ‘ And right now that documentation
is lacking. The fingerlakes they told
me, go look at them, they took their building inspectors and they trained them
in septic technology so that they go out and inspect everybody’s homes. So, it’s not an easy solution that way,
either. “
There was discussion on possibly
creating a Septic Use Law.
Burnt
Hills Fire Department North Station Acquisition
Sczcepaniak: “ We talked about this at previous meetings,
and fire commissioners have discussed this and we actually want to move forward
with this proposal. Again, we talked
about a great location for Sherriff Zurlo.
Sczcepaniak stated “Talked to Sherriff
Zurlo, he’s interested in that, and with our population will be exceeding
10,000 in 2020 census, we are going to be required to have our law enforcement
covered. So, anyway, I’d like to get some input here from the board.”
Goslin asked “what is the cost?”
Sczcepaniek: “They’re trying to
determine that right now. I’ve heard
numbers anywhere from 60-80 K. And the
buildings in really good shape, it’s pretty much in move-in condition, and so
I’d like to get some input from the board, what direction we would like to take
on this, if any at all. “
A board member asked if the Sherriff is
going to charge us.
Sczcepaniak replied “We have to work
through all of that, I would assume so. That’s what Clifton Park currently has
set up, that’s what Clifton Park has and Halfmoon, they have contracts. So, that are negotiated.”
Goslin stated: “So we can give a,
apparently, a location at Town Hall here.
It would also help our security problem, to have a Sherriff in the Town
Hall. So, I think the real issue is…what
is law enforcement…I’m all in favor…I’ve been in favor of hiring law
enforcement for a long time. I just
don’t necessarily want to tie it to the firehouse. So, it’s a place you have to maintain, heat,
pay for. Unless there’s a valid reason
for it. Although I’m not opposed to it
so I guess we need to understand what the Sherriff would…I would approach the Sherriff
two different ways. I would say ‘yeah,
we may want to contract for an individual for a certain period of time but it
also may be a good place for a sub-station where these guys meet, just the traffic
in and out of there would help us, so maybe….cuz I know Clifton Park contracts
are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a Sherriff that…to be
there…so if we could work something out where it’s sort-of half sub-station,
half resource for the town, I think that that would work out. If they If they would prefer a separate
location, ya know, the kind of money we are paying for the station as opposed
to what we’re paying for the resource is really nothing. “
Szczepaniak:
“What about the rest of the board?”
Stewart: “I’d
like more information.”
Curtiss: “I’d
like more information, too. There’s an
issue. I’ve spoken up about this a few times as far as farm traffic
safety. Yes, it’s an issue, but again
what are the real annual costs going to be?
I have myself noticed in the last couple of years since we started to
talk to Sherriff Zurlo about these issues a couple of years ago and I have
noticed more of a sheriff’s patrol on these rural roads. Also, the state police as well. So, as I’ve seen that more intensely in the
last six months. Let’s just see how this rides.
Apparently, the sheriff is listening to us, there are more patrols in
the area. And this is what I see, and
also the state police, so we’re really getting ahead of what the costs would be.
Sczcepaniak
“One last thing, I’d like to ask our town attorney to look into the legal
aspects of when we change that classification.”
Attorney Kaelin:
“The requirements.”
Sczcepaniak: “Yeah,
if you would. For follow up I’ll get
with Sherriff Zurlo, get that dialogue going, get that information that we’re
looking for, in the meantime Deb will go out and see the legal requirements
there, too.”
Lighting Assessment
Sczcepaniak
said he received an email. Back in 2016
they conducted a lighting assessment with National Grid, energy efficient
program and they’re interested …if they want us to revisit a no-cost energy
assessment of the lighting inside and outside of Town Hall here, again it is
no-cost and again the LED lighting to upgrade, it would be an upgrade to LED. So again, is the board interested in
that? A no-cost obligation to have an
assessment done again?”
Goslin “Yes.”
“It’s a no brainer.”
Sczcepaniak:
“Ok, we’ll reach out to him and take care of that.”
Privilege of
the Floor on Resolutions:
1.
Steve
Walsh, Kingsley Rd:
“I just need
more information. Will all of the curb side valves be tested? Or do you shut off the inside valve for the
meter? “
Katherine from
engineering: “The curb valve will be shut off by the water department.”
2.
Zachary
of Rip Van Court, Town of Milton, a student at Ballston Spa spoke. He offered an idea to have school students in
the environmental clubs help with cleanup around Ballston Lake.
Goslin mentioned that the first Saturday
in May is a county-wide clean up, you meet at the Ballston Lake Firehouse.
3. Jill Strock, Lancaster Court
“I’m a new
resident. I just moved here in
July. And so, some of the issues that I
am seeing is and just trying to figure out the correlation of just how agencies
are working together, from an outside view, I don’t really see that actually
happening. So that’s just my personal
observation, as far as saying that the certificate for septic systems
inspections does not exist, I wanted to know more about that, and what
departments you are working with, I work with the department of health. I also work on community health assessments
which is coming out for 2019 for the county and a lot of our incubators as a
county are directly related or similar to the issues that are happening
here. So, I just wanted to know more
about the town there, so I’m just very interested in learning and understanding
so that I can learn more about our town and community.
4.
Peter Solberg, 166 Charlton Rd:
In reference to Resolutions, I saw that
the reappointment of David Blair for the Planning Board First Alternate doesn’t
have a term expiration date.
In reference to the water meter
replacement, I think there was a 30% loss that we’re expecting to re-coup so
that’s a net add for residents, but it may be a hidden cost for residents
because they may or may not be aware of that 30%. I’m sure there are residents that live in
that water district that do not understand that they should expect 30% increase
on their bill and that it’s not taxing dollars for that equipment, we’re going
to recoup that from the resident’s, the additional 30%.
Sczcepaniak:” Well, there’s actually
variables there. “
Peter Solberg: “It’s going to be a
surprise for residents. Whether they’ll
see the 30% and say “whoa, this is a whole lot different.” So, it could be more for some and less for
others? I’m just hoping that during this
process, residents should be aware that it will be increased.
The other is that I believe there is a
lot of discussion about third party contractors that are used for replacing
water meters. There’s a whole slew of
reasons why they don’t get installed.
And there’s some pretty good lessons learned that I think the state
submitted on individual townships that are getting contractors to do the
install.
Goslin:
“I think they’re modeling after Glenville which really just completed
their replacement, we’ve been in touch with them, trying to figure out lessons
learned, the issue is you just don’t have the manpower, and the time that they
have to replace the meter is not during the normal work hours of the highway/water/whatever
else we need to have done, so the manpower is not really there. “
RESOLUTIONS:
RESOLUTION 19-21
Approve to
authorize the financial administrator and the bookkeeper to make budget
transfer adjustments for 2018 - results to be completed by February 28, 2019.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-22
Approve Chuck’s
Reconditioning to perform body work, painting for the recently purchased
ambulance to be used for a water department service truck in the amount of
$5,425.
Passed
RESOLUTUION 19-23
Approve payment
to AJ signs in the amount of $1,800 for town emblems and 3m high visible safety
markings and letters for the recently purchased ambulance to be used for a
water department service truck.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-24
Approve Hodgson
Russ LLP as bond counsel for the consolidated water district project not to
exceed $6,000.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-25
Approve setting
a public hearing required under town law with respect to the consolidated water
district project for Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at 5:45 p.m.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-26
Approve the bid
documents prepared by C.T. Male for the consolidated water project to be released
on March 4, 2019 with a bid opening date of Thursday, March 28, 2019 at 2 p.m.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-27
Approve
authorizing Ed Hernandez of Adirondack Mountain Engineering to reject the sewer
bids and release the bid securities for the Ballston Lake Sewer Project.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-28
Appoint Sarah
Statham as a member of the Parks & Rec Committee commencing February 26,
2019 and ending December 31, 2023.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-29
Appoint Caleb
Farrell as a member of the Parks & Rec Committee commencing February 26,
2019 and ending December 31, 2023.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-30
Approve the
Ballston Spa Central School District’s Annual Scotties Stampede, the Ballston Apa
5k for Education, for Saturday, April 13, 2019, to use town roads that include Mann
Road, Garrett Road and Ballston Avenue.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-31
Approve
building inspector Brian Theriault and assistant building inspector Eric
Rutland to attend the Adirondack Code Enforcement Officials Annual Conference
in Lake Placid March 3- 7 at a cost of $305 for class and $432 for hotel per
person plus reasonable expenses approved prior by the supervisor.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-32
Approve the
reappointment of David Blair as the first alternate planning board member
effective immediately.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-33
Approve to
reschedule the second public hearing for public comments on the town of
Ballston’s current Development Block Grant (CDBG) project: 73ME101-16
Microenterprise Grant - $200,000 for Tuesday, March 26, 2019 at 6 p.m.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-34
Approve the
rescheduling of the public hearing for proposed local law #1 of 2019 amending
the Katz Pudd for Tuesday, March 26, 2019 at 6:15 p.m.
Passed
RESOLUTION 19-35
Authorize the
supervisor to proceed with National Grid to replace street light bulbs with led
lights at a cost of approximately $7,043.62 with reimbursement of $7,355
through an energy efficiency incentive from National Grid.
Passed
Privilege
of the Floor:
1.
Scott
Draina, Outlet Road
I have a question about the
water meter replacement for the third-party contractor and how that works as
far as their authority, especially someone mentioned about after hours. What if a homeowner doesn’t allow the
contractor into their home to replace the meter, what kind of authority does
that third party have? Can you do
anything about it?
Joe Whalen: “The town has
the right under certain conditions to enter the home”
Katherine (from
engineering): “We are aware there are issues”.
Draina: “What about vacant
homes?
Goslin: “There’s always the
option to turn the water off, too. Then they might let somebody in.”
Draina: “My comment was, I
heard rumor, and it’s obvious that Charlton hasn’t built their fire department yet,
but it’s been planned for 10 years at least now. But I heard they were thinking of a similar situation,
if and when they ever do build a new fire station, that they are basically
going to give the old fire station to their Charlton police sheriff and the
state police who have their barracks in Charlton now. So, they’re going to have a multi-unit
station at their old firehouse. So, it’s
something to consider, the sheriff says ‘yeah we’ll move it here’, and then
they bring an even nicer newer larger place.”
Sczcepaniak replied that
that was the first he heard of that and what he’ll do is talk to Al Grattidge, who
he sits next to at the County Board of Supervisors about it.
2.
Eric
Connolly, Lancaster Court:
“I’d like to discuss what’s
going on over in Stonebridge PUDD with regards to the proposed
development. Did you receive our
petition that we had stamped by the Town Clerk?”
Sczcepaniak replied “yes we
did receive that”.
Eric Connolly: “So we’ve
been organizing as a group for 3-4 weeks now discussing what’s going on. The more we get organized, the more stories
we hear about the water issues over there.
105 and 107 Lancaster Court in particular have had a ton of water in
their back yard, primarily during the storms, the storm water is not really
doing what it is suppose to.”
Sczcepaniak: “could you
reach out to our storm water management individual over there in the building
department, Sophia Marusso?”
Eric Connolly: “I did. Yeah, that didn’t really go anywhere. So, we kept meeting. And, Michelle Brant on Lancaster and a number
of other homes have had significant flooding in their basements. We’re also going to talk to the Planning
Board tomorrow night as well and reach out to the
engineer plan about what was supposed to take place and what actually took
place. We have some neighbors people
here, if you wouldn’t mind standing… that have water issues, put it on the
record, we’ve got, there’s two neighbors….”
Barbara Beers: “My daughter Megan, she lives right next to it
and she has major flooding in her backyard.
Submitted that picture, I did turn them into the Planning Board back in
November. “
Eric Connolly: “ So, we
decided to do some research and we were looking at the type of delineations and
regulations and laws regarding those and storm drainage SWWP laws, and I had Ryan
Biggs, Clark Davis Engineering & Surveying, D.P.C, actually Thomas H. Field
III, P.E. came down and he walked that block in question and it’s just north of
the Beer’s house, 107, and he was shocked.
He said you definitely have issues going on here and he basically read
some of the Army Corps of Engineers information that said wetlands can
definitely move. Wetlands can definitely
be created due to all of the development in Stonebridge area. So, with that, we’d like to request a
moratorium on all future development inside of the Stonebridge PUDD for a
period of 8 months. Or until proper
environmental studies are re-visited. We
feel significant changes have occurred with regard to drainage and
wetlands. In the research that we’ve
done we did find that wetland delineations expire after 2 years, it can go as
far as 5 years. But everything that we
can tell or can dig up, show studies were done almost 12 years ago in the
Stonebridge PUDD. So that’s kind of our
basis for requesting a moratorium, from having that engineer out and based on
exploration of studies that have been done”
Sczcepaniak: “One thing I like that, that’s why I invite
our town engineer to our board meetings here, for questions like this, and I
know we have our guys here, at the Planning Board meeting still, Katherine do
you want to comment on that?”
Katherine: “I’ll comment as
well as I can given that, this is new.
Or new wording. It’s not a new
issue. I’m well aware of the issues
they’ve had in a past report.”
Eric Connolly: “At Stonebridge?”
Katherine: ”Correct. You are correct that the wetland delineations
expire, that wetland changes, moves around.
Umm, I guess the best forum for this would really be at the Planning
Board tomorrow night. The application is
before the Planning Board, it is not before the Town Board, it would never be
in front of the Town Board. In terms of
the PUDD language, the town wrote that, but the applicant is not coming in to
change the zoning. He’s coming in to
build a site permitted for that zoning.
The engineer for that developer has proposed a site plan for that
zoning. CT Male has commented, we do have a comment letter that will be brought
up at tomorrow night’s meeting. Ya know,
that’s the appropriate board to discuss this issue with. Secondarily, issues with basement flooding. That is not a town board or planning board or
zoning board issue. That is for building
code, or possiblyand I am not saying this is the case, I’m just saying this
generally. It’s not my professional
opinion but it could actually be something that was done during
construction. That really, the town
boards themselves would have no basis, ya know, it’s very tough to say that the
problem that you’re experiencing is because of X. In my experience, storm water, ground water,
wetlands, they generally don’t have one defining, reason as to why this is happening. Ya know, you have to look at it in terms of
what the board can legally mandate. So, again this is not a Town Board matter,
it is a Planning Board matter at this point for the application at the Planning
Board tomorrow night. “
Eric Connolly: “I expect
that we are going to show up there in much larger numbers, we didn’t really
plan on coming tonight, but I was informed that the town Planning Board does
not really have the authority to do any type of moratorium.”
Goslin: “Your right. I’d like to say that I was
talking to Peter Solberg last night, he indicated to me some of the issues you
guys have. I think that the town board,
as your representatives, needs to fully understand the issue. I think if you sought relief from our
enforcement folks and you have not gotten what you were looking for, we should
bring them to the table. And I certainly
think that the new buildings and things that are going in are a Planning Board
issue. But I understand that there are
questions as to how things were built and why things were built and the plans
one way, the plans another way, these are all rumors that I’m hearing. But I would like to hear about are your
issues, and I would like the town board to be fully aware of what your issues
are and then make a decision about respective to Katherine’s opinion, so, I’d
be happy to meet anytime, invite the board to do so and I think we should have
our storm water folks there as well.”
Eric Connolly: “Is the issue
of wetland delineation and expiration of that, who deals with that? Is that a planning board issue?”
Katherine: “The Army Corps of Engineers is who is regulatory,
who’s in charge of that, there are state vs. federal, the town does not have
jurisdiction over wetlands so if you have an issue with that, you actually have
to talk to Army Corps of Engineers and you have to take it up with them, you
have contacted the Army Corp? (Eric
replied “YES”) So again, that’s something…we have no say. Ya know, CT Male have scientists, we can go
out there and delineate the wetlands all day long, but this town doesn’t
delineate wetlands.”
Eric Connolly: “That’s why
we want to request the moratorium because if there is an issue, the wetlands
have changed, the SWWF is way off from when it was originally created. We can’t see that move forward because that’s
going to affect both sides of Stonebridge Drive and downhill to Lancaster, and
we don’t want to see the town be liable or the residents themselves
suffer. I mean, what they have
experienced…. The Beers family is at their wits end. Mr. Beers, Jeff, he’s out there
ice-picking channels to channel water away from his house…at his age ..”
Sczcepaniak: “So like Councilman Goslin said, it sounds
like there’s definitely a serious issue there, it needs to be slowed way down,
need to bring the experts to the table, as Katherine said, get the right folks
there, and I’ll tell ya right now, if we did need to put a moratorium on that
so they can’t do that, I would have no problem entertaining that, again, the folks
that it actually does effect. I’ll tell
ya that straight out.”
Eric Connolly: “Ok. We’ll be
back tomorrow night.”
3.
Barbara
Beers, 107 Lancaster Court: “I have a question, I’m not sure who this should be
presented to but it’s my understanding that Encon has no authority over our
wetlands because it’s not 12.5 acres or larger.
Under 12.5 that comes under army corps of engineers. And they do not require a buffer between the
building-and the wetlands. Howeve, it’s
my understanding that a lot of the towns do require a buffer regardless of the
fact that the army corps of engineers does not.
Does the town of Ballston require a buffer? And I’d like to know why they don’t. I would like to understand why not in our
town”
Katherine:” I’ve got the
answer to that. No. Does the town board
want….”
Goslin: “We did increase
buffer size on the creeks, I know that.
We passed that in the latest zoning, the proper buffers were made by the
creeks.”
Barbara Beers: “Because I want talked to the Supervisors
from Town of Clifton Park, Town of Milton, Town of Greenfield, they all have a
buffer and they were quite surprised that the Town of Ballston does not and my
husband and I and my daughter who lives right next to us are suffering the
consequences. So, I hope that that might
be something that you can fix”
Sczcepaniek: “So we’ll do
that, and as Councilman Goslin mentioned earlier in the meeting, those handful
of items we still need to look at.” We will definitely add that.
4.
Jill
Stock, Lancaster Court:
We are next to the newest
development of town homes. They have not
closed on those houses, three of those homes have been flooded before they have
been actually lived in. And that is
under a new builder. So, I just wanted that to be noted. The second thing is, I don’t understand why
this is not a board issue because we have a large amount of homes that have not
been developed, we have luxury apartments that are not at full capacity, and we
are looking at the town putting more condominiums in when we are not even filling
to occupancy the homes that we have, and the luxury apartments that have not
been filled yet. And so, that is an economical issue, all of these developments
are not on any major transportation line so it will only bring in a certain
type of individual, and clearly over the last five years we have demonstrated
that we have not brought in those individuals that would fill the housing, and
so I don’t understand why this zoning problem is not a board issue, I feel that our goal is to build our town
economically and so building more homes in a town where we don’t have full
capacity just does not make economic sense.
It does not look good on the town, it doesn’t look good as an employer,
it does not look good. And you have tons
of homes that are available. Why are we
not having new people moving into the area?
And so, I think it’s kind of bad for condominiums, when we still have a
number of vacancies in buildings that are not occupied. We’re planning new developments, but we have
substantial neighborhoods that have not been fully developed. So, I definitely would like to know what was
the thinking behind that and how that is not a town issue, but other than a
zoning issue and is not a combined issue why not seeing the full picture and
looking at it together“.
Sczcepaniak: “I’ll answer a
piece of that. We looked at our zoning
that’s about to be implemented, is the PUDDs on the outskirts of our town, we
actually eliminated that. So that there
is definitely a step in the right direction, I fully agree with ya, we’re
pretty much at capacity here at what this town Comprehensive Plan states in
there, okay? As far as passing for
residences, right? So, we’re there, and
it, it is time to slow things down. “
Goslin: “We also added traditional
neighborhood design and lowered density for a lot of those, the density for
those types of buildings and even if it wasn’t a PUD. So, a lot of the things
that you saw or see currently on the east side of the lake are no longer around
that I know, and that’s specifically the density that was there. And the PUDD
is only allowed on Rt. 50 currently. I
know there’s another creek in town, and we’ want to look at that as well. We understand and we’ve taken action and more
action needs to be taken. I think Kathyrn
was speaking from an engineering point of view as to what the agency does. We certainly
would like to understand your issues and take action as necessary and
appropriate.”
Goslin: understand the
Planning Board has a set of rules and laws, has an attorney there, has an
engineer there to advise them every step of the way, so the Planning Board does
not in a lot of cases have the latitude
to do some of the things that even the members of the Planning Board would like
to do so please understand they have a task and they have to follow the laws or
we’ll be sued by this party or that party so “
Jill Strock: “and that is well respected, my comments have
been misunderstood, this town has an award winning school district. It has
several key things. Having this
conversation and being a new resident, I have to tell you it is disheartening.”
Goslin: “Well I would say I
understand your frustration, but this is a great conversation, this is where we
should solve problems like this, this is how we should discuss them. And this is what small town government is
about. So, I appreciate you coming in
and I welcome you to keep coming back.”
5.
Tom
Shaginaw, Longcreek:
“I want to talk about
something that I observed at the agenda meeting held on the 29th of
January. I would have addressed it that evening but there is no privilege of
the floor. I have been attending town
board meetings and agenda meetings fairly regularly for the past several years
and at the January agenda meeting I saw for the first time a very disappointing
exchange that included some overt and strongly partisan political
comments. There were comments made about
the disappointing exchange and actions of the current state of government and
how they misspend their time on legalizing marijuana, etc. There’s no value in that exchange for this
town. Everyone’s aware of the rule of
government. No one expects you to abandon your beliefs. However, all democratic
government, especially local government benefits from the full engagement of
its citizens. The exchange at the agenda
meeting did not encourage that engagement.
It was explicitly antagonistic to different views, that’s not in the
best interest of the town. Now, my
observations tonight independent of the content of the comments, Albany or
Washington or whatever story set you want to talk about, red or blue, whatever,
there’s no value to the town in those conversations. Regardless of your personal beliefs, regardless
of your views of the state or federal regulations, or party affiliation, you
represent all of your constituents, you know this, all of the citizens in the
town. Regardless of their political
affiliations, regardless of their views, regardless of their personal
beliefs. Be sensitive and aware of it.”
6.
Mark
Osterlitz, Magnolia Lane:
Thank you everyone for their
comments, there were some good comments tonight. I appreciated the boards comments on dialing
back on development tonight. I see that
developers are really chomping at the bit for these sewers, I see they want to
tap into that BLSD and develop develop develop. We not need it here like you
have allowed on the edge of town. Mark
then asked about where does phosphorous pollution in Ballston Lake come from. You say its septics, what does someone put in
a septic system that has phosphorous in it?
He continued that we’ve had detergents for a long time that no longer
have phosphorous in them.
Goslin: Human waste creates
phosphorous.
Dr. Pierce: answered that septic
systems that are not working properly are the source of phosphorous. When sediment washes in from around the lake
it ends up in the streams and creeks and contains phosphorous. Also, the biological depletion of organic
material in the lake, like algae, weeds that die in the winter may regenerate
phosphorous back into the lake and there’s ways to tie that phosphorous up but NY
state has not permitted those materials to be used at the present time. They were permitted about four years
ago. So those are the main sources of
phosphorous to the main water body itself.
New building exposes virgin
surfaces, rainwater comes down and washes over the surfaces of the land and into
whatever waterbody is fed by those lands.
NY State did away with phosphorous in lawn fertilizers so that’s
probably why we’re not seeing phosphorous levels going up in the lake at the
same rate they were going up 3-4 years ago in Ballston Lake. He concluded that the phosphorous levels have
doubled in Ballston Lake since 2000.
7.
Gregg
Adams, Lake Rd:
Hopes that the Ballston Lake
sewer project is not tabled.
8.
Karen
Hollowood:
Pointed out that the
Stonebridge PUDD is in the Ballston Lake watershed and drains into Ballston
Lake, so problems Stonebridge is having directly effects other problems the
town is having.
9.
Peter
Solberg:
Littles Farm: discussed how
there is talk about putting trails through here. Can we do this? There’s talk about doing a conservation
sub-division and trails would be in alignment with plans.
Talked about how when there
is bulk trash removal there are transients that come to town going thru the
trash, it can be dangerous for children to be out near the road when people are
stopping by and going through trash. Suggested
a notice should go out to residents informing them to be safe. Another topic was that Charlton Septic will
do septic inspections when they pump for a small upcharge. Also, for federal wetlands there are packets
discussing waste removal for wetlands. So,
when waste removal is required for federal wetlands, there are ways to actively
monitor and perhaps that technology can be used in a septic type
situation.
adjourned
No comments:
Post a Comment