April 2, 2019 Ballston Sewer Committee Meeting

Town of Ballston Sewer Committee Meeting

Notes taken by a town resident on April 2, 2019 4:00pm

Attendance: Dick Doyle, Wes DeVoe, William Goslin, Drew Hamelink, Ed Hernandez, Kim Kotkoskie, Guests & Observers: Chris from AME accompanied Ed H., Ruth Osterlitz, Carl Thurnau, and Paul Simpson

William Goslin started the meeting. 

Goslin: The main focus of this meeting is far as I am concerned and the town is concerned, we are moving forward on all of the things that we have discussed previously, and I will outline those for you.

First, I would like to say that Kim Kotkoskie is transitioning and will not be the project manager.  She is will be assisting us in transitioning with whatever is necessary, and we are looking to fill that position and I am looking to be rescued because I am going to be the interim person who has very limited time to perform all the fun things that a project manager has to do.  We will try to keep the boat afloat, in the mean time we will be looking for a resource that can fulfill Kim’s shoes.  Formally I would like to thank Kim for her efforts. We would certainly not be in the position that we are in without her help and we certainly appreciate her willingness to assist us with the transition. That is the first thing.

The second thing is and I do not know if it is public yet but it will be now:  We are also transitioning our legal team.  Matt Chauvin who is the Town Attorney who has extensive experience in these kinds of issues will be taking the lead roll here and will assigned the resources as necessary.  Particularity, in the face of the operation that we are in, he can provide guidance on how to navigate the grants.  I expect Matt to bring in resources as necessary and that is something that I have discussed with the Supervisor and something we agreed to last week.

So, moving forward, the message to everybody is that we are moving full speed ahead on a number of fronts.  First of all, I have asked Ed to prepare bid documents into segments, we will be dividing the project up as we discussed into segments.  We will be re-bidding that. We are not sure on the timing of the re-bidding yet.  Our goal is come up with a more realistic cost of the project. It is many people’s opinion, including myself that the two bids we received is not indicative of the true cost and we will do much better with the smaller projects.  Also, that gives us an idea that when we get those bids back, it could give us the ability to segment and give of an idea of the real money we need from grant sources.

On the grant front, I have asked CT Male for a quote, but I have not heard back from them.  We are going to be moving forward on all the grants: Northern Boarders, WQIP, WIIA and IMG.  These were all suggested by EFC.

In addition, Wes Devoe has offered to help out where he can. Wes has a strong background in project management and construction related activities in his career.  I would like Wes to work with Ed and Kathryn to look at all the suggestions that came up for modifying the bid documents and try to find language that would allow us to ease the burden on the contract. One example is overtime.  We left them responsible for overtime and I think overtime for the inspector, and we thought that added great pools of money where they put in huge reserves for example and maybe there is a better way for us to do that since we are going to pay for it anyway at a town level.  Another one is traffic control.  A lot of these roads are difficult to get down and access.  We have the ability as a town to work with neighbors. For example: If they are working on a road, say they are working on Outlet Road, we can work with them to make a single lane and traffic mitigation. That would be partnering with Joe Whalen.  So that the contractors are not responsible for that. There is also a document that is about a page long that suggests PVC verses another kind of pipe and things like that.  Those are just some of the things that can help us with pricing.

Wes DeVoe:  Are there more documents other than the ones from the three engineers?

Kim K.:  There are many notes

Ed H: I will sit down with you and go over that

Wes DeVoe: It all makes a lot sense

Goslin:  What we want to do is, we want to understand what we wanted to do originally and what might have been wrong with that and we want to come back and make sure bring this to the board level so they understand what we are doing.  We are not cutting corners, we are taking constructive feedback that we have and applying it to the bid process. If we can find a compromise, we can present to the board as “this is how we did it the first time and this is how we are going it now”.

Ed H:  On that same note on the traffic.  If we already have an easement for the project to get from Eastside Drive to France Lane it seems to me that we already have the agreements and easements for the contractors to be able to do that.

Wes DeVoe:  You may have to do that again because I know there are a lot of issues with the people on Eastside Drive and France Lane. They do not want that open all the time

Kim K: Easement language allows that

Goslin: I did have a call with EFC today. They like to have calls where we get all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men on but that cost us a lot of money.  I talked them out of that.  I will explain the conversation in an email.  We are going to have to send them a contract document from CT Male, there are additional charges that AME has and a small increase in Kim’s contract.

Does anyone have any Questions?

Drew Hamelink:  If you go out to bid, will the construction start in the fall?

Goslin:  We cannot have that discussion until we are ready.

Paul Simpson: You really expect to accomplish the same amount of work when you have four independent contractors and do all this for less money?

Goslin: Is does seem strange on the surface I will admit but that is exactly what we feel.  We feel that the project was too large for many of the contractors that would bid on smaller projects.  All we got was big firms with big overhead and big assumptions.

Assuming you can do this, the residents agreed to have you pursue the project based on X number of dollars.  I cannot conceive that you are going to bring this project back to that level of cost so that you do not have to involve the resident community again.

Goslin: I would agree with the statement that we will not get it down to the original cost, but we believe that with substantial grant funding which we are going after for different grants, we will close that gap.  Our intention is to not change the cost to the residents at all in the progress.  If that is the case, then we realize that this project will probably not go forward, and we would package it up and leave it for the next person.  We put that in a time capsule until the next person that opens it up. When they open it up, whether it is because someone issued a consent decree or something else happened all the work that was done was not wasted.  It is years’ worth of work that we have done.

Kim K:  The breaking up into smaller pieces when it is rebid, even thought he language has not been drafted yet, but our intent is that someone could win all the pieces if they had the capacity to do them and they get the economies of scale or win portions of it.

Paul Simpson: There is a $8,000,000 dollar gap. I find it strange that if this money that is available through a grant why wasn’t that pursued prior to this?

Goslin:  I was told that the Ballston Lake is the fifth worst lake in the State and the fact that the State has already kicked money to us could influence other grants.  Remember, when we started this project, we had zero grants.  Our partner in this, which is EFC, is heavily suggesting we apply to more grants.  I prudent thing to do is apply for them.  To spend the amount of money it would take to apply for these grants and to find a way out and perhaps lower our costs is the best way forward and if that does not work then we are in trouble and we have done everything we can.

Drew Hamelink: One of the largest grants (IMG) is an inter-municipal grant now.  At the time last year, we did not have the inter-municipal agreement in place so we could not apply for it.

Kim K:  The other grant, the WIIA is a percentage-based grant and was based on the cost estimate at the time.

Wes DeVoe:  Ballston Lake is an impaired water.

Ruth Osterlitz: You mentioned: “Whether someone issues a consent degree..” What does that mean?

Goslin: Typically, when you have an impaired water body and DEC does not feel that you are solving that, the way they get you to solve it is by court order.

Ruth Osterlitz: Is there funding involved with that?

Goslin: No

Kim K. It is kinda like the State suing you.

Drew Hamelink:  They will come in and do a detailed study, they will do the calculations on how much you have to reduce the problem to solve it and then give you the instructions to go forth and figure out how to do it.

Goslin:  Essentially, they would be ordering you to solve it.

Drew Hamelink: Driven by the Federal Clean Water Act

Kim K. Not a good approach

Goslin: You can kick the can down the road but..

Ruth Osterlitz:  How much will it cost us to apply for these grants?

Goslin:  I do not have that, I will provide that

Ruth Osterlitz:  May I have a copy of the financial statement and the summary cost spent to date for this month?

Goslin: I do not have that and that may be a while in the coming. We are a little bit behind in the finances.

Ruth Osterlitz:  You stated that you “brought this to the board and we are moving forwarded”. When did you bring this to the board?

Goslin: We took it to the board in executive session.

Ruth Osterlitz:  You took it to the board on how to move forward?

Goslin: We took discussions on contracts to the board, we took discussions on contractual items, on who to hire and look at for these things.

Ruth Osterlitz: And when exactly was that?

Goslin: The last executive session was at the March main meeting whenever that was.

Carl Thurnau: You have to address the issue that the impairment to the lake is phosphorus.

Paul Simpson: Across the lake from me on Eastside is an old installation, there is a miniature treatment plant that the person put in his own yard because he did not have the physical real estate to have a conventional septic system and leach field.  This is a three-chamber miniature treatment plant and the effluent is essentially clear.  They did not pay anywhere near at the time for the system that a conventional system would cost.  It takes some owner participation but that is still required with conventional.  Some of the problem around the lake is that people do not do the maintenance.  Since we have this hick-up where the sewer system is in jeopardy how about looking into that.

Goslin: Your points are well taken.  I think we could get to a point where the board considers having a septic ordinance that requires some of things you are talking about. I can tell you that some of the people that are against sewers are also against maintaining their own systems and I can give you some prime examples of that.  I think it is something the board should consider.

The next meeting will be May 7, 2019 at 4:00pm at the Town of Ballston Meeting Room.  The Sewer Committee Meeting is open to the public.