January 28, 2020 Sewer Committee Meeting

Notes taken by a town resident at the

Town of Ballston Sewer Committee Meeting

January 28, 2020

1/28/20 4:15 pm Town of Ballston Meeting Room

IN ATTENDANCE:

Eric Connolly, Town Supervisor

Ed Hernandez, Adirondack Mountain Engineering (Project Engineer)

Jeannette Borthwick, Ballston Financial Administrator

Drew Hamelink, Chairman

Judy Brodeur, Committee Member Rep from Clifton Park

Jim Dipasquale, Committee Member

Richard Doyle, Committee Member and also on the Saratoga County Sewer Commission

Wes Devoe, Committee Member

Dan Rourke, Executive Director of Saratoga County Sewer District

Tom Mccarthy, Town of Clifton Park Attorney

Members of the general public

INTRODUCTION FROM THE SEWER COMMITTEE:

The Sewer Committee was set up by the Ballston Town Board to provide guidance, insight and input regarding sewers in the Town of Ballston.  Today we will be discussing the Ballston Lake Sewer Project.

·       This is a public meeting and all our welcome to attend.

·       We are a committee appointed by the Town of Ballston.

·       We have no independent authority to act

·       All actions and all decisions must be made by the Town Board who acts as the Ballston Lake Sewer District.

·       There is no privilege of the floor.

·       The committee will take no questions.

·       Please respectful to each member of the committee as well as fellow residents.

·       The town has a harassment policy that applies to all.

·       Please do not engage in conversations while meeting is taking place.

·       The Committee Chair is happy to field questions if you send emails to the Supervisor’s town email, he will forward to Drew Hamelink.  It helps if you number your questions and it also helps if they are not statements but questions.

·       We have someone taking minutes and those minutes will be posted to the town website.

Drew Hamelink welcomed everyone and introduced the committee and others sitting at the meeting table. (listed above)

Tentatively, the next meeting will be March 4th at 4:15pm but if something happens that they need to discuss they will have to call a special meeting and post that on the town's website.

TOWN ENGINEER REPORT

The Chair did not receive a report from the Town Engineer.

Kathryn Serra was not able to attend the meeting today; she will be submitting a report.

FINANCIAL REPORT

Ed Hernandez stated that he will get into that in his presentation.

There are several sources of funding and some of them contracts have been signed and available and others are forth coming and work still needs to be done.

Ms. Borthwick stated the current money spent to date is around $778,000 and said her understanding when this project started and voted on there was an estimate of 10.2 million dollar and then....

Mr. Hernandez interrupted Ms. Borthwick and said he will cover that in his presentation.

BNU Note:

The inserted picture below shows a New Cost Summary with new numbers increasing the cost of the project to $17,754,661.00 - well over the original cost the voters approved of and again over last Town Board Resolution that increased the project just in 2018.  This increase is subject to a Permission Referendum.  The picture below is hard to read, you can view it in pdf form on the Town of Ballston's website by clicking HERE

PRESENTATION/PROJECT UPDATE BY ED HERNANDEZ

Power Point from this presentation is posted on the Town of Ballston website can be viewed by clicking HERE

Key points in the above presentation include:

·       The Map, Plan and Report dated July 2015 is a legal document (available to view on the Town Website). It lists all the parcels in the district. It covers EDUs and how much parcel owners will pay each year as well as estimates to hook up. New York state Law outlines what needs to be in the Map, Plan and Report.

·       The report shows approximating 700 parcels in the sewer district 560 EDUs in Ballston and 91 EDUs in Clifton Park.  The EDUs count and the parcel count are not the same because some parcels are 1 EDU and some are only .5 EDU and some businesses are multiple EDUs.

·       Presentation and mailings sent out to residents prior to the 2015 vote can be found on the Town Website.

·       A letter was sent out the property owners prior to the vote showing the cost of the project and dept service to the homeowners of $907 annually was voted on in October of 2015 and there were 280 that voted yes and 135 that voted no at that time.

·       The project has been awarded a 2.55 million dollar WIA Grant

·       The project has been awarded a 5 million dollar WQIP Grant recently – we are still waiting on formal notification.

·       The town received a 7.65 million dollar loan – half is 0% interest and half is 1.17% interest.  A 2.55 million dollar loan is also available for the same rate but has not been applied for.

·       The total amount of funding that is available is $17,754,661.00 and of that 7.55 million dollars are grants that have been awarded.

·       According to Ed Hernandez, the cost of the project has far exceeded what was originally estimated back in 2015 but with the grants, the cost to the homeowner per EDU has not changed for the original referendum.

·       Town of Ballston created a sewer use law.  There is a mandatory connection.  Any exemptions are only delays to connect and the homeowners in the district all pay the loan dept (cost of EDU) yearly regardless of exemption if they are connected or not.  This cost will be on the parcel owners tax bill.

·       Once the debt is paid off in 30 years, Saratoga County Sewer Authority will own the district.

·       Easements are legal documents that allow access to private property for specific purpose.  Approximately 230 easements were needed, there are 5 easements that require eminent domain and are pending completeness.

·       The first time the project went out to bid, there were two bids and they were too high. The sewer committee recommended to break the project up in to 5 separate smaller bids.  It went out to bid in pieces and came back too high once again.  The town hired CT Male to apply for another grant and received an additional 5 million dollar grant which the committee states will give sufficient funding for this project.

·       There is a 1.82 million dollar contingency.

BNU NOTE:

The Town Board needs to do the following steps in order for The Ballston Lake Sewer Project to be built:

1.) Need to receive official notice from DEC on the WQIP 5 million dollar grant.

2.) Need to hold a Public Hearing and adopt a Supplemental Bond Resolution and add additional 5 million dollars to the project cost increasing cost to $17,754,661.00*

3.) Need to proceed with final funding applications to close on the all additional funding that has been indicated available to the town.

4.) Need to approve a Contract Amendment to add additional construction contracts and service or find someone to manage 5 separate contracts as project was divided into pieces.

5.) They can not award any of the 5 bids until all of the above is done.

*The increase to the cost of the project is subject to a Permissive Referendum and is the only chance for residents that were not happy with the information available in 2015 and subsequently displeased with the results of the first vote in 2015 to force action upon the Town Board.  This is a small window of opportunity and would require action by residents. 

Mr. Hernandez is asked for more money in the updated cost summary and it is subject to a contract amendment.

The following questions came up during Mr. Hernandez’s presentation:

Supervisor Connolly: When you say other engineering firms have taken a look at, is this holistically from start to finish can you clarify that.

Mr. Hernandez: They have looked at it in detail every page of those 100 plus page documents every service connection, every wetland we crossed, rock quantities incorporated from the extensive geo tech work that was part of the project.  The archeological evaluation has resulted in some minor changes. 173 soil probs, 17 deep test borings that were done in fact I left DOT out, they have looked at rock and how we are going to cross every state highway. SCSD has reviewed all the details as they will be responsible. NYS EFC and DEC engineers reviewed the plans extensively. When we re-bid the project, all changes to the project went back thru to those agencies for review. Town engineers from Ballston and Clifton Park have also looked at it. And there are several licensed engineers on this committee that have gone thru this in detail.

Supervisor Connolly: How many financial hardships exemptions can the system handle. I know in Buell Heights we have a number of folks on a fixed income, retired.  Has there been any studies to see how many exemptions? Even though the connection would be much less expensive, there would still be an expense.

Mr. Hernandez: I believe the law set the exemption at 3X the poverty level.

Mr. Hamelink states it varies by the number of children you have, for example if the poverty level is set arbitrarily at $20,000 and you have 3 children the rate would be $60,000 and if you make less than that you would be exempt.

Mr. Hernandez states it is not anticipated to be a lot of people, there has been a survey done of the medium income in the area.

Supervisor Connolly asks if this information can be put on the website to put some folk’s mind at ease.

Mr. Hamelink state he can do that.

Mr. Hamelink says that NYS law states that if a pipe goes within 100 ft of your property line you are required to participate in the debt service.

Supervisor Connolly asks if the project can be started if all the easements are not obtained

Mr. Hernandez says you can, but the anticipation is the easements will all be in place before the project is started.

Supervisor Connolly says he and Ed had a conversation last week about contractor’s freezing their prices until a certain date. Can you just sum that up for everybody?

Mr. Hernandez says they ask the contractors would you hold their pricing until May 1st. Many of them said they would be willing to go beyond that. A couple of the bigger contracts, 1 and 2, agreed to freeze their price until May 1st. A couple of the smaller contractors wanted to revisit material cost, but it is expected the change will be minimal if any.

Supervisor Connolly states that he and Ed had another interesting conversation about change orders.

Mr. Hernandez says typically when an engineer does a map, plan and report, you are preparing a cost estimate when of a construction budget when you have not even done the design yet.  Once you have designed the project, we prepare the construction estimate which typically drops about 15%.  Once the project costs are actually known, we typically see on a project like this about 0-5% and because there are concerns with quantities in there we tend to go under in a lot of places. With  the 1.82 million dollar contingency that we currently have that is about 13% which is higher than the 0-5% so as an engineer who does a lot of these projects over the last 25 years,  In fact I managed a project with some people at this table few years ago that was 50 million dollar for Saratoga County. Their budget came in under budget.  It was a 30-million-gallon a day expansion for the SCSD to serve Global Foundries which now has the largest sewer plan in the capital region.

Judy Brodeur asks if the 1.82 million dollar contingency, if those funds are exhausted, is it possible that the cost for the debt service, per EDU would be reduced?

Mr. Hernandez states he believes that will not be the case. With the grants, half up front, half at the end while there may be a balance what we don’t use we will probably lose. He does not believe that will reduce the cost per EDU.

Supervisor Connolly if the unforeseen happens and we go over the contingency what happens to the EDU at that point?

Mr. Hernandez states he feels that is highly unlikely, but we would go to the state and request more grant money. The residents cannot be charged more than they voted for, bottom line.

Mr. Hamelink states that all additional houses built in the district will result in a drop in the price per EDU.

Supervisor Connolly asks how much additional capacity can the system handle if additional homes are added?

Mr. Hernandez states it was designed for an additional 20%, that was a hot topic at the time as there was concern of developers wanting to make connections to the system.  There are currently 700 EDUs. Dan Rourke states that anybody that is going to connect to our system in general, not just this system, we review the engineering capacity for that system. SCSD says yes there is capacity, or no there is not.

Supervisor states potentially 150 more EDUs that could be added.

Question asked (speaker unknown) the price freeze, do you have to award by May 1st?

Mr. Hernandez says that is what is in the letter, if we were to change that we would need to go back them.

The supplemental bond resolution, the public hearing will he held, will also need to be held in the town of Clifton Park as we did last time when we got the grant.

Chairman states the next item on the agenda, legal, Mr. Chauvin was going to be here, but is not.

Last item on the agenda is response to previous submitted questions. The supervisor previous advised response to email questions will be given in a reasonable amount of time.

Jim DePasquale states the sewer committee is made up of all volunteers who have worked hundreds of hours for the benefit of all of Ballston.

Supervisor asks regarding the construction management since it is broken up into 5 pieces, is there anyone overseeing the 5 pieces to make sure all goes as planned.

Mr. Hernandez says that will be within our scope, we would manage the 5 contractors. Each contractor must meet state and federal prevailing wages. There are a lot of funding requirements. Each of the contracts have a two-year schedule window.  We anticipate assigning a construction inspector in order to meet all are in compliance with requirements.  The costs associated for this are in the contract amendment that I submitted to the Town Board.

Dan Rourke states the SCSD will be also out doing spot inspections.

Wes Devoe states the system can’t be turned on until it is all done.

Mr. Hernandez states that is not necessarily the case. The east and west side are separated. Once the east side is done, that can be turned on. The west side must be entirely done before it can be turned on.  Assuming construction starts in the spring, the earliest he sees people being able to connect would be end of 2021.

Mr. Hernandez states they want people to connect as quickly as possible, and they have negotiated some pricing for the grinder pump system. They offered a 30% discount to any homeowner that purchases the first year and that goes down by I think 20% the year after that, and then 10%.  The grinder pumps are made by a local company E ONE out of Niskayuna.

BNU Note: Mr. Hernandez stated that Environment One is a local company but the truth is that Environment One is located in Niskayuna but is one of 98 subsidiaries of a large global company called Precision Castparts Corp.

Supervisor Connolly asks if there any truth to the grinder pumps having a short life?

Mr. Hamelink states there are some numbers out there that are misleading. Their website has some great examples, typically they will go for 10 years and at that point there is maintenance to be done on 2 or 3 parts.  In the audience there is a resident in the lake district who works for E One, Bill Bashant does not know the pricing, but advises people to use the website.

BNU Note:  according to tax records, Mr. Bashant lives in Clifton Park but owns 34.67 acres of land with 475 feet of waterfront near Villago as well a nearby separate property with a home on it that he purchased after the 2015 Sewer Project vote.  The committee allowed him to speak from the audience after stating no one else could speak. Interesting conflict since there were many people who will not profit from this project that were not allowed to speak.

Dan Rourke states SCSD uses E One, they are top of the line. 10 years is a good number has seen them last longer. 

Wes Devoe states he has gotten questions about how residents get plumbers for installation.

Mr. Hernandez states there are contractors who are certified with E One for installation. He encourages to save money that if there is a block of neighbors, maybe 10 homes in a row that want to connect at the same time, they could get a better deal if they all use the same contractor as they could be all connect at the same time as a group or homeowners association.  We are still two years away from that.  In order to connect, you will have to go to the Saratoga County Sewer District, fill out the application, schedule a time for them to inspect and permit the connection.

There was a few additional minutes of the committee members and engineers complimenting each other before the meeting was adjourned.

Supervisor Connolly asked residents to email him at econnolly@townofballstonny.org if they have any questions for the committee and he will forward them to Chair Hamelink.

Meeting adjourned 5:25pm

The next Sewer Committee Meeting will be March 4th at 4:15 in the Town Board Room

Links to any new questions submitted by residents will be added as they are posted by the town.

Links:

Questions submitted by Kristen Frutschy

Questions submitted by K. DuBois

Questions submitted by D. Hull

Questions submitted by R. Osterlitz

Questions submitted by Drake

Below you will find a link to 2017 Press Release that basically gives you an idea of the schedule and path the project was on when Adirondack Mountain Engineering took the driver's seat of the biggest and most costly project in the history of our town.  Why are we where we are now?  Eduardo Hernandez of Adirondack Mountain Engineering has been the Project Engineer for over 33 months and is continuing to add to the cost of this project by the millions.
Link to 2017 Press Release