Town Board - Regular Meeting

town board meeting, Bedford town board meeting of July 14 2026. And please rise if you are able for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Before we call to order the business meeting, we are going to start with a public hearing that was posted to consider a local law to adopt a six month moratorium for new development on parcels over 20 acres. This came as we were discussing in our last meeting, The work of the conservation board, which has been ongoing for 5 years, I think, maybe 5 and a half since they applied for a grant to map the wildlife corridors throughout our town worked with Miami server, Gorge and a consultant to do that mapping. And then the grant required that they move forward to consider legislation to propose to the town board. regarding the use of conservation subdivisions on large parcels of land. This was also something that was mentioned in our comprehensive plan to consider the use of conservation subdivisions to protect land and also achieve housing in the town of bedford as the comprehensive plan also recommends a variety of housing types so we are expecting to hear from the conservation board in august on their um culmination of these five years of work and this recommendation to update the code and when we if we hear that presentation and want to take up some of that legislation or start to consider it it would take a couple of meetings to consider any change to the law to have public hearings, to engage the community around the concept of conservation development. When that came up at the last meeting, it seemed that any potential big development might be dramatically impacted by an update to the conservation development law. THEY MIGHT NEED TO RECONSIDER HOW THEY LAY OUT AN ENTIRE SITE PLAN. AND SO INSTEAD OF GOING INTO POTENTIALLY UPDATING CONSERVATION SUBDIVISION LAW WITH PEOPLE MOVING FORWARD WITH ANY POTENTIAL PLANS, WE PROPOSED THAT WE PUT A MORATORIUM ON DEVELOPMENT ON LARGE PARCELS SO THAT THEY DIDN'T WASTE THEIR TIME AND THEY DIDN'T WASTE OUR TIME EITHER. So that was how it came about. We also have a housing task force that's delivering a report, I believe, in September on a variety of evaluations of our town code with respect to housing and affordability. And some of those recommendations may also impact a development that is considering a percentage of housing, single family homes or a unit to be a certain percentage of the area median income affordable. We've talked about how our current laws require a certain amount of affordable and sometimes it makes the applications not fit what we want as a community. They have to be too big or too tall or squeeze in the affordable units in awkward ways. And we want to take a holistic look at what those regulations are and how we might update them to better get the whole variety of housing that we are interested in having in our community, not just the lowest and not just the highest, but kind of everything in between. And what we have now really forces the low end and the high end and not the middle income. So that's something that we also might be looking at over the next, literally they're writing, like the report's almost done. So this proposed moratorium is not to just freeze development forever, it's to really look at the things that are already well underway, well in the pipeline, and that have already really are teed up to be on our agenda over the next two or three months. and if there needed to be time to adopt legislation and hear from the public, it would take a couple more months. Six months seems reasonable. The problem is when we talked about this at the last meeting, our town attorney drafted something that I didn't realize was going to be too broad. Upon looking at it, our planning director brought to my attention the other day that even if someone wants to put in an application to build a pool house on their property. If their property is over 20 acres, what's been drafted would not allow that application to come in. Now, I know housing is important, but pool houses are even more important. But the unintended consequences may mean that people are doing much smaller projects and what we we weren't talking about even a two property subdivision or a um you know a new house being built that's not really what was intended by this to limit anybody on a 20-acre property it was really meant for these much larger broader um Potential changes to a conservation subdivision that would would be over 10 or 20 acres and involve 5 or 6 or more parcels. And so I. Before we will hear from the public and have people weigh in, but we will not be adopting the current moratorium as it's been drafted this evening. We will definitely change it to include. 20 acres or more if it's a proposed development of five or more units and um we also will you know hear from the public if there's any other changes we need to make we will repost it we will have another public hearing and um hope to you know move forward with all of this at the next meeting so um any comments from the board before we open the floor to the public comment okay would anyone like to make a comment I'll wait. Come on up, Peter. Just state your name and address for the record, please.

Housing housing for middle class families.

I think you have to tap the button on Yeah, thank you.

Okay. Any type of high housing plan, whether it's affordable housing, apartments, large houses, I think what all boards have to also consider the infrastructure impact as we increase population. My sister lives in lower Westchester. She doesn't get on the road till after 9.30 in the morning because the roads are packed with cars because of so much development. And it's good at development because it's housing that people need, but the roads... and some of the infrastructure, the water systems, the sewer systems, and the single lane roads can only handle so much. So in any plan, I think that has to be part of the equation to think how that impacts our way of life for people who are here and for people who come here with the perception that it's gonna be better, but then they're in traffic every day. So I think all plans should consider that. I do think property owners rights need to be protected, but also the overall plan of the town also has to be implemented for the greater good for everybody. But please consider that I implore many people to study with housing, has to be coupled with infrastructure. And many of us know when you go on 172 or 117, It's packed many, many mornings. And when the school starts, it's difficult to get around. That, in fact, emergency responses. People have to go to doctors' offices and people have to go to work. So there's always the quality of life can get impacted in a negative way by too much housing. So I think plans have to really take that into consideration. My old boss said you can't fit 10 pounds of potatoes in a five town back. But we're trying to make something work for that that protects property owners, and also advances our comprehensive plan.

Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Is there anyone online? No. Anyone else like to speak so I would like to propose that we update the moratorium to involve to add development of properties over 20 acres in size, which involve the development of 5 or more residential homes or units. I think that really shows that. Um. we are really targeting those large subdivision properties that may hold off until we have a chance to look at the committee's work that that I described previously. Any comments or questions from the board? I'm glad we caught that issue and I'm.

But otherwise, I think this is a good plan and a good way for us to proceed as we consider all the moving parts.

Okay, that's enough. If there are no other comments, I would like to move that. We close public hearing.

I would I would not I'll leave the public hearing.

We have to repost this and we'll repost a new public hearing.

We can we can do it that way. We can we can either adjourn this public hearing and make the revisions to the law. If you want to re, publicize it, we could do that as repost it. But I suggest adjourning it to the date in August that we want to hear it. not close the public hearing it'll be this will be part of the same public hearing with the amended um of the record and then we'll we can republish notice and make sure the new local laws presented to the town board and presented to then it'll be presented to the public as well but it's better to adjourn keep this as part of the same record on the local law okay so i'll make a motion that we adjourn the public hearing to august 11th at 6 p.m second any comments

With the changes, obviously. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Okay. And Peter, thank you for your comments. I do, I hear you. I mean, I hate going lower Westchester against sex traffic. We definitely have, you know, those are all very important considerations in any development of anything new. And, you know, this is not necessarily related to that. But we did have a good meeting in Bedford Village about traffic and talking about the concerns of the community and opportunities and that may present themselves if there is change how to deal with making sure that traffic is not it's not terrible and that infrastructure is available. I mean, all of that has to be all those boxes have to be checked. And there are processes and public input along the way.

So

Okay, we will move on to our 1st presentation of our 2025 financials by auditor. Alan can say from Connor Davies. And our controller, Brian, thanks for coming. Nice to see you.

How is everyone? Tonight, I'm going to go over the results of the 2025 audit. And I prepared a handout for all of you. Okay, this is the agenda we're going to cover tonight.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Better. Okay. Is that better? That's better. Very good. Okay. So this is the results of the audit. This is a synopsis of the independent auditors report, which is contained in the financial statements, which is this, which you have all received. So the audit results, we completed the audit of the 2025 financial statements of the town of Bedford in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America. The objective was to obtain reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free of material misstatement. In addition to that, we reviewed management's accounting estimates, which were all deemed to be reasonable, and the accounting treatment afforded all of the significant accounting matters. Our approach was directed at the evaluation and overall approach. It was a risk-based approach, and rather than focus on individual transactions, we focused on the whole of various items within the financial statements. And as a result of that, we were able to issue an unmodified opinion that is a clean opinion. It's the best opinion you can receive.

So, no, good Peter, we turn up the volume. Thank you. Thank you. Clean opinion. I heard. Thank you.

This is a look back at the general fund, fund balance, going back three years, 2023, four and five. And the last column on the left is the variance from 24 to 25. These are the various categories within your fund balance, the first one being non-spendable. It includes prepaid expenditures. of 695,000. Included in that is 673,000 of prepaid expenditures for your employee's retirement system and your police retirement system. Below that, you have your restricted or your reserve funds. The money put into these categories can only be used for the purpose indicated. So for 2025, you have the unemployment benefits. It went down slightly, 5,000. The dare remained the same. The open space went down about 200,000. You had $520,000 from property taxes. You had some interest income, which was the increase. And then you transferred out about $725,000 for capital and other contractual expenditures. Then you have your reserve for debt service of $110,000. Below that, you have your assigned fund balance, which is your purchase orders of 72,000, which are encumbrances. What that is, those are purchases made prior to the end of the year for which you haven't received the goods and services as of December 31st, so the money is encumbered and it'll roll forward into your 26 budget. And again, you've appropriated 600,000 of the fund balance to balance the 26 budget, similar to the last year at 200,000 more than 2023. Then you have your unassigned fund balance at 25 is 15,000, 15,537,000. It's up about 1.4 million from the prior year. and it represents about 51% of your 2026 budget, which is up slightly from last year, which was about 49%. Okay, any questions? This is the general fund budget to actual summary. Going left to right, you have the original budget, the final budget, the actual results, and then the variance with the final budget, both positive and negative. The original budget for the revenues, $28,113,000 is up about 4% from the prior year. And the total expenditures of $26,712,000 is also up about 4% from your original budget in the prior year. In the actual column, the total revenues came in at $30,691,000, generating a positive budgetary variance of $1,304,000. On the expenditure side, the actual came in at $26,228,000, generating a positive budgetary variance of $1,802,000. That $1,802,000 is about 7% of your budget. And that's important because whenever you appropriate fund balance, the theory is, or the general consensus is that you have to at least generate a surplus of 6% to restore the appropriated fund balance that they used in the prior year to avoid running out of your unassigned fund balance. So this is about 7% of the original budget. Then you have your excess of revenues over expenditures of $4.4 million. You have your other financing sources and uses, which your transfers in, transfers out. And that was $3,240,000. So the net change in fund balance for the year basically surplus your profit. is $1,222,000. And if you add that to the fund balance at the beginning of the year of $17,278,000, you ended the year with a total fund balance of $18,500,000. This is a more detailed schedule for the general fund revenues. These are all your revenue categories. Again, the same format with the original budget, the final budget, and the actual. I just wanted to point out some of the categories. The real property taxes shows a negative variance, and that's because we do a calculation for the taxes receivable and the tax liens, and there's an allowance applied against the taxes. And it's just a matter of timing each year. It changes based upon the taxes receivable and the means and so forth. Below that, the non-property taxes, you had a surplus of $226,000, and that's from the sales tax. That increased in the current year by $207,000. The departmental income had a surplus or a positive variance of $475,000, and that was mostly from inspection fees to the tune of $381,000. Then you have your use of money and property at a surplus of 225,000. And that was from the earnings on investments. They actually decreased from the prior year by 358,000. But because your budget is prepared conservatively, which is highly recommended, which you do, which is the proper thing to do, because aside from your property taxes, you have no control over the other revenues. This being an example, and if the state decides to cut their budget, then you have less state aid and so forth. So it's always recommended that you prepare your budget on a conservative basis, which you have done. And thereby, even though you had a decrease in the actual revenue, you still able to generate a surplus or positive variance. Below that you have your state aid, which had a positive variance of 165,000. And that's mostly from the mortgage tax. And that was up about 459,000. And here you have the same thing for the general fund budget tax expenditures. Again, I'll just go over some of the categories. The general government support had a positive variance of 386,000. And if you look in the financial statement in the detail, you'll see there's about 25 different functions within general government support, and this amount was spread evenly throughout them. So there's not one particular line item that generated this variance. The public safety had a positive variance of 342,000. That was in the police department. And if you look at the third number up from the bottom, the net change in fund balance, If you look in the original budget column, you see the bracket is $728,000. That includes the $600,000 that you appropriated from the prior year plus encumbrances of $128,000, which means that if your revenues came in exactly as you budgeted them and your expenditures came in exactly as you budgeted them, you would have utilized all of that $728,000. but we know that didn't happen. Your net change in fund balance in the actual column is a surplus of 1,222,000, give you a total positive budgetary variance of 3,165,000. These are the other funds within the town. Just wanted to go over some of them. The highway fund, the revenues and the expenditures are comparable to the prior year. And you had a surplus or net change in fund balance positive of almost 500,000. And you ended the year with a fund balance of 8,125,000 in the highway fund. The special districts, you had a shortfall in fund balance of 251,000. And if you look at the bottom left is a schedule of all these special districts and their actual fund balances at the end of the year that make up the total fund balance of 5246,000. In the capital projects fund, the other financing sources, the 7570,000. You issued 5,735,000,000 dollars worth of bonds at 4%, but because the town has a AAA rating, and because you received a premium when you issued the bonds, your effective interest rate is not going to be 4%. It's actually 3.24%. Okay. In the debt service fund, the other financing sources, that $5,392,000 includes the premium that was received on the bonds, and that money could only be used to pay off the interest on this particular bond issue. So you have $430,000, which is basically taking your interest rates from 4% down to 3.24% when you utilize this premium.

Okay?

And then you have your non major governmental funds, which consists of the joint activity fund and the special purpose fund. And below that, you'll see the fund balances of each 1 of those 31,191 and 284,000. Okay. So once again, we issued a unmodified opinion, a clean opinion, and the town has maintained its AAA bond rating. I think it's been at least 20, 25 years that you've maintained that rating, which, you know, for a small town to be able to do that is pretty good. So, we used to report to those charged with governance, the management letter. There were no material deficiencies or significant findings. They were control deficiencies. Basically, just things that need to be cleaned up. Nothing excessive or extreme. In addition to that, you implemented GASB statement number 102 for this year, certain risk disclosures, it had no impact on the financial statements. And then next year, there's going to be two more GASB statements, the government accounting standards board statement 103 has to do with the management's discussion and analysis, and basically what it's going to do in this In this page here, what they're going to do is there's going to be the original budget, the final budget, then a variance between the original and the final, then the actual, and then the final budget again compared to the final budget, the actual compared to the final. So there's going to be another column that's going to be required in there. In addition to that, we're preparing a template because there's certain verbiage that has to be discussed in the new MD&A management's discussion and analysis, which Brian prepares. And we're preparing a template to make every, all our clients uniform. Thank you. Okay. And that'll be for next year. Other than that, if there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. thank you very much i'd also like to thank brian and the finance department it's really a pleasure when you come to an audit and they're as prepared as they are it makes my life very easy and i just want to thank him and the rest of the finance department

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's another strong financial management year and a lot of thanks goes to Brian, our comptroller and his staff. We really appreciate all the work that they do to keep everybody else to their budgets and to the processes. So, thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian. Any questions from the board or.

okay uh comptroller brian keneally good evening everyone good evening how are you um first i want to thank the town board uh the tono starts at the top uh for your fiscal oversight um i want to thank alan dennis team for for a good order this year and i want to thank um the controller's office and all the employees of the town for a great job It's always easier to come here when things are good and operations are good. So it makes a lot more fun. The auditor's presentation is more directed at the board, those charge of governance. So you're a little more like educated on the specifics. It could be like a little esoteric, the language. So I just wanted to come up and kind of give some more high level points as opposed to specific numbers on a financial that may be a little more meaningful to the residents that don't like follow along with all the specifics of local government finance.

Thank you.

No problem. So I just wrote down a couple of points. Some of it may be repeating what Alan said, but just in a different like format. So first thing I want to mention is Connor Davies issued a non-modified opinion. There were no material weaknesses, as Alan mentioned. There was no significant deficiencies. This is the highest level of assurance they're allowed to give us. So I just wanted to point that out, you know, where there's no concerns with the financials. We're timely. Everything is where it should be in terms of that and compliance. You know, we also, I don't know if it was mentioned, we had the federal single audit this year on top of that because we had the American Rescue Plan funds. So we had a, you know, clean audit on the ARPA funds, as they call it. 2025, just in overview in the aggregate, We ended again with very strong reserves. So it's another year where we're building our reserves up. We've been continuously building our reserves up. There's obviously components of your fund balance of your equity that I won't get into. I'll just talk about the total. You know, the restricted for capital is not a huge difference. I'll just talk about the total number. We increased from about 35.8 million last year to 39.5 million so we're we're in a very strong fiscal position with strong reserves uh if we want to talk specifically about the general fund um we we finished 1.2 million dollars over last year so we have approximately 18.5 million dollars of fund balance um So the town maintains a very strong level of fund balance. Just to put in perspective, a lot of people look at your fund balance compared to your overall operating budget every year. We have a fund balance policy that exists where we want to maintain at least 15%. If we start dropping below that, we have a problem, right? We're about 53 percent of our 25 budget, so we're well above that figure. In addition, because we finished well, the 25 actual results significantly outperformed the budget. Alan went into a lot of reasons why, but I just want to mention as an overall concept, the two reasons is, of course, there is some luck in that that we don't control, right? So if sales tax comes in good or mortgage tax, That's not in our control, but there's also good fiscal oversight by the board, by the department, where we're beating revenues, but we're also underspending our appropriation budget. So it's a combination of both. So it's strong fiscal control. It's not runaway spending where we just keep amending the budget. And it's a little bit of luck in revenues coming well. In terms of the luck side, you can not always count on that in the future. And that's why it's important to build up a strong reserve. So when things do decrease and get bad, you don't have to cut services because you have an adequate fund balance. Another point just even from that is West Chester is a little unique because we actually make the county whole and the schools whole in terms of tax collections. We're the only county that operates in this format. We don't do our tax bills until April, and we do a lot of cash outlays in the beginning of the year. So we pay, we have the option to pay our insurance upfront. You know, a lot of big bills we pay initially for the year. So the first quarter of the year, we're not getting our big revenue source until the second quarter. We're making everyone else whole. We're carrying all the tax receivables. So we need an adequate fund balance to not have to borrow and cost people more money. so you know there's a complaint we want to have strong reserves but not too much reserves that we're not holding on to residents tax dollars but we're also lowering taxes by having the right amount of reserves built up that we don't have to borrow we can get the aaa rating you know on 40 million dollars debt with that AAA rating, if we're getting a half percent cheaper, a percent cheaper on $40 million, that's a huge annual savings on our debt service expense. So just want to kind of like unpack that a little bit. Another big fund is the Highway Fund, another major operating fund. We also, as Alan mentioned, we did very good in that fund. Just for an idea, we increased fund balance $490,000 in that fund. We have about $8.1 million in fund balance in the highway fund. That's a very strong fund balance. That's about 84 percent of the budget. For 25, I didn't do the ensuing year's budget. So we're in very good shape and highway. Because of this, our DPW commissioner is in the audience, him in conjunction with the board. It allowed him to, without having to bond or incur future costs, we made some more significant investments with the money we have into the community. SOME OF THOSE ARE, TONIGHT HE HAS SOMETHING ON FOR THE SIDEWALK CLEARING EQUIPMENT. YOU KNOW, RECENTLY PURCHASED A ROAD CREATOR FROM FUND BALANCE, AND IT ALLOWED US TO DO, ALONG WITH SMARPA FUNDING, MORE FUNDING, MORE PAVING IN 25 BY A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT. SO, YOU KNOW, WE'RE USING SOME OF THIS TO FURTHER INVEST BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY, WHICH IS A GOOD THING. Yeah, and I think just the last two things, as Alan mentioned, the AAA rating, obviously, that's a huge thing for credit rating agencies. It helps us a lot with bonding and also just where the community is perceived. For 26, I think we budgeted a little bit more breakeven because of the amount of adequate reserves we have to not accumulate too much of the taxpayer dollars. So I'm personally anticipating a little bit more of a breakeven year for 26. So we adjusted a couple things to be a little more close to that. But we have very strong reserves. So if things fall out from under us, such as think interest earnings it looks like now we're here is going to probably continue to be very good um for at least for the next year that that's what people are projecting but if things start falling out like interest earnings mortgage tax uh you know sales tax building permits stuff like that we we can weather the storm and it gives us time to adjust we don't have to make an immediate correction because of um the reserves we can fall back on so i just kind of wanted to give a different perspective of a more objective audit report and how that kind of ties into our community. And that's one I thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you so much. So, you know, I know we're increasingly digitizing things. I don't know if AI was at all used in the reporting, you know, in the report, or if we're going to be seeing AI used in the software that we're using, you know, on our end. But what are some of the concerns or some of the things that we can do to head off any risks involved, any potential privacy breaches or AI poisoning or anything? You know, are we Thinking about those kinds of things. I know we are requiring cyber training, cyber security training for all of our employees. But is there anything else that we can do to just make sure that our financial information and assets are safe given the digital world?

um yeah so in terms of like you're saying just cyber risk in general cyber risk yeah so i i would say for cyber risk we've done a lot of things we we increased our training so one one specific comes to mind is we initially did like the phishing testing that comes out and we didn't do as good as we should have the first time around so we did a lot of education the second time around we did very good so you know we um created a future strength to improve that um another big thing we we went to is like um the multi-factor authentication so obviously as all municipalities we have significant money in our in our banks right so we have to make sure that that's well protected um any access to our accounts it requires multiple approvals not just one person approving and on top of multiple approvals we have multi-factor authentication and tokens to make sure if something's compromised, there's still a check to prevent that. You know, we really, we started doing training for people, employees on the town. We did an in-person training. We did the training remotely as well, the classes. Our personnel director sends out regular emails on training. Yeah, I think we did a lot to address IT security, protecting our assets, protecting from the more secure in financial institutions, and also protecting against risk of social engineering where people trick our employees. So I think we've done a lot to protect the town's assets going forward.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Does Alan have anything to add? He stood up, so I thought.

I think the cybersecurity is probably the biggest thing. It's very easy for, I mean, we go through cybersecurity training like twice a year at the firm, and it's very easy to click on a link or something. And that's why the employees really need to be diligent whenever they receive an email that I'm sure of and so forth. But that's probably the key to protecting your assets.

Is there anything in our contracts with our software providers we should maybe be asking them to make sure that those systems are secure from data mining or hacks that might change our data or steal our data? Something to look into.

Are you referring to the ERPs that we use, like the Tyler Munis and Municity and things like that? um so sometimes we ask for like stock reports for internal control reports to make sure they're doing the proper testing to make sure the stuff they're selling us is is um you know secure um a lot of it is also checking the background resources like if we're going to use an erp for example we're looking for something that many people regionally use um because like i guess there's like protection in numbers to make sure everyone has already done it and then they've added it um i guess it's also just evaluating the software before we buy new software we also some specific stuff which we talked about um when we make things more publicly available like Unicity, we're making sure that we're buying third-party software where we're properly redacting sensitive information because our residents have been targets of external social engineering scams. I could talk a lot about this.

No, but I just wanted to be sort of top of mind as we head into any new upgrades to our software contracts and things to be having these conversations, I think is important and figuring out if there's any best practices, that would be good to know.

Yeah, and I think we also sent out internal memo for the best practices that the town supervisor and I worked on, and we circulated it to all the departments. For example, things like any payment links have to direct back to the town website. So, you know, if anybody in the town gets a payment link, where it's not pointing back to the town of bedford website it probably is a scam or any checks are made out to us and not third-party vendors so that you know there's a lot we're doing to make sure that we're uh just being secure in what we do great thank you questions i just wanted to comment on that it sounds great and it sounds like we're doing a lot on the user and people side but i'm also wondering if we have any systems that are

you know, inventorying the risks so that we know what we should be thinking about and when, as well as like an assessment of how we're doing, like, you know, I'm sorry. So what are the risks? There are different layers. There's the infrastructure between the systems, there are people, there's exactly that. What are the vendors doing? I'm just wondering how we're tracking the risks that we need to be mindful of and then thinking about how we are, are we doing all the things in all the areas to support making sure we're addressing the risk?

Does that cyber risk is huge, right? So that that's like, yeah, that's the biggest.

And we didn't prepare you for this question. Yeah, I'm sorry. It was my own. Sorry. Yeah, I was going there. I think we I think you've done a phenomenal job at and the town clerk to have teeing up a lot of the best practices for cybersecurity. And we also had to do we did have to react when some residents You know, about some phishing emails that tied them back to something they put on our agenda and we immediately acted to create new policies for that. So I think there are probably lots of things that haven't even been invented yet. And we just need to stay vigilant to make sure that our residents information, our assets, you know, it's all protected. And so we will stay vigilant in that way.

Completely agree. I think to, to counsel women's McCain point, we so our third party IT provider also has done testing internally. So we have metrics on things we need to work on. And we actually worked on that. And in the metrics, future rounds of testing had improved and dropped in terms of like, like deviations. So I think we do have some metric data to address things that we got to work on.

Sounds great. I don't think you're not doing a good job. I was just curious. Thank you. Great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Okay, we have a presentation on water watch Westchester. Yes.

So, just a quick cyber comment.

Please.

But also, our utility infrastructure is potential risk. So we have audits of our practices there, including how our facilities communicate. We work with the health department on that as well as our it consult just to kind of. A different thank you picture of cybersecurity.

Yes. I imagine those willing wanting to do harm could poison the water, but.

Reprogram the system to say the water's fine or something, you know, both water and store have telemetry that we use, but they're protected and best practices in accordance with the federal and state requirements and what our vendor recommends.

Great. Thank you. That's good to know. Bobby, do you want to introduce?

Yes. Wow. So today we have a presentation originally. I saw this way back in December when originally was just. showing with many, many other people who were part of the Greenlight Award presentations. And there were, I don't even know how many, 40, 50 presentations being done. And Parvati was one of the people who was presenting when I was in, you know, one of the stages as the judges. So I only saw about three projects, but hers was one of them. And I was extremely impressed. And she ended up... Were you the actual winner of the whole...? Yeah. Yeah. So... She did an amazing job. She was just very well versed in her topic. I threw questions at her. And even when she didn't know something, she knew where to go for answers. And she just seemed very, very prepared, enthusiastic, and ended up coming up with a project that is going to help people in real life, which is something that you know, Bedford 2030 really wanted to get out of the Greenlight Awards. So I'm going to turn this over to Parvati. And you know, you can learn more about how Waterwatch Westchester is going to help people with PFAS possibly, which is something that we've talked about at past meetings.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Parvati. I'm a rising senior at Horace Greeley in Chappaqua, and this is my project, Water Watch Westchester. So obviously, to start off with the problem, PFAS contamination in Westchester has been a rising issue in the past few years. I remember there was an incident with the firefighting foam at the Westchester County Airport. That was a huge thing. And I noticed that there was really no... Well, first of all, PFAS exposure is extremely harmful. PFAS, which stands for per- or polyfluoroalkyl substances, are dubbed as forever chemicals because they never naturally break down in the environment and just accumulate over time into people's bodies. which can cause cancer and other development to harm when put in increased exposure. However, any logical homeowner would think I should probably test my water for this. However, professional testing, which is the only proper way to do it, can cost anywhere from $300 to $600, which is just not affordable for many families. So when I was researching into this issue, I realized there was no kind of easy, free way to kind of get a baseline assessment of should I proceed with more action on this? Should I proceed with testing or not for any homeowner in Westchester? So what I did was I created WaterWatch Westchester. And this is a free web tool that would essentially predict a PFAS contamination risk for a certain address in Westchester. So it uses historical data, which I gathered, which are openly available online. So I didn't have to get access or pay for any of it usually the state provides this kind of data and then by putting it together and creating an algorithm i was able to create this tool which the resident would enter their address and it would it would give them a full breakdown of like an estimation of where they're standing in terms of should you proceed with more testing or should you just lay it low Kind of just a quick run through, I used all different types of public data, including where PFAS has originally contaminated places in Westchester, where the airports are located, how the groundwater flows, because those are all key factors in PFAS contamination. Then using different softwares, I was able to create an algorithm that would take all these factors into consideration and then create a risk score. This is just some photos of how I did it. And essentially the model would, so these are two sample addresses that I put in, one is a place in Chappaqua and one is a place in Pound Ridge, which has had known to have higher concentrations. And as you can see, the model would provide a full breakdown of why you received the score you received, including so you were this close to this far from the airport. So I'm not very close to the Westchester County Airport, but someone who lives in Purchase might say that might say otherwise. So they would be placed at a higher risk than I would be. And on top of this, I would also link directly to the rebate program, which is something I discussed with legislator Pierce. I know rebate program is relatively new and we need more users and it's a very good resource. So for anyone that is at moderate or high risk, they would be directly they would be directly directly to the site where they can investigate more of whether they should proceed or not. And it's a free program. The way, kind of just a background of how I was able to understand the feedback for Waterwatch, when I was preparing this project for Greenlight, I had a button at the bottom that said, if you use this website, could you please complete the survey and say, I tested my water, how did it turn out? Now, the survey was completely anonymous. I didn't ask for names or information of any kind. it would just say what was your calculated risk score and what did you do afterwards did you proceed with professional testing did you just lay it low what did you do and then i actually found out that so through google analytics i was able to see that 127 users had used the website um in april when i looked at the stats and i received 55 responses and looking at all the responses 60 of the people surveyed invested in cheaper testing and filtration While 23.6% of people surveyed proceeded to professional testing, kind of proving water washers effectiveness and seeing how much change it can cause when put with more citizens. So in the future, what I'm hoping to do is this originally started as a green light project, kind of just a way for me to get to the competition. But then as I worked more and more with it and I realized how impactful this actually could be, I'm really hoping to scale it up for future work. make it beyond Westchester, Waterwatch Eastchester. It could go on to many different counties. So essentially, with more outreach to more residents, especially in towns like Bedford, where there are many private well owners, which is a very high risk for PFAS, we can receive more feedback and more users for Waterwatch, essentially impacting their water quality and hopefully mitigating it overall. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Very good.

Thank you. That looks very helpful. So PFAS stays in plumes around certain areas. It doesn't travel in great quantities.

Yeah, because of its structure, it doesn't break down like other chemicals might, which makes it even harmful, especially as if we don't take action like this, people will just be increase and increase. And eventually at one point, maybe not my generation, but in the future, it will become a pressing issue. Great.

And have you made it available? I mean, have you publicized it? Do you know if more and more people are using it?

Yeah. So it's actually just waterwatchwestchester.com. I publicized it, and that's how I was able to get the data of how many people had used it. But as I do more work, like over the summer, I'm hoping to publicize it even

Okay. And the more people who use it, the better the data will be. Yes.

Yeah. And one, I'm sorry, just one of the things that I wanted to mention was when we had talked a few weeks ago, I was actually impressed because we were talking about how it could be used and what could be helpful to people specifically in Bedford as opposed to other communities. And Parvati was actually really good about saying, you know what, maybe I could adapt it this way or that way or add a certain question that would filter out

you know answers that would be more helpful to people in certain communities so i think this is an ever adapting project and and i think it is going to be able to be tailored to people in specific communities so that was really great thank you okay yeah i think the thing about water watch it's very scalable so because i use data specifically westchester but if someone in putnam county used their specific data just use the same exact way that i did it it would be tailored just to them which is what makes water watch really easily usable Right.

So it's great to see you again. And, um, it's really especially great to see that you're, that you're passionate enough about it to keep going with it. Do you have like a specific goal for the year to come for this year to come for the project? And like, is there a barrier that's in your way that you need support to get the goal done?

I wouldn't say I have a specific goal. I mean, I'm really just seeing where, where this takes me by presenting to town boards like Bedford. I think that, um, kind of just publicizing it more and also just seeing where it goes is really my next goal. And I think one of the barriers is obviously you can't confirm its accuracy completely, but I think that is a situation with different types of testing. Like when you test your water, there's always like maybe you touch the test or maybe there was other contaminants that it's not 100% accurate. So WaterWatch is just meant to get a baseline assessment, but it can't provide obviously 100% accurate results. But I think with more and more outreach and more and more improvement, it can eventually get to a good level of accuracy.

And you said that the state still has funding available for people to get the free kits for testing?

I think, yeah, I think that's what the rebate program is into. I have to speak more with Legislator Pierce about that, but she essentially discussed with making that also more accessible because it is a free resource that all residents should know about.

So we could share the link to Water Watch Westchester on our website and let people know there's a rebate program out there to look into. Yeah, definitely.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for letting me.

Congratulations. Great job. Okay, we will move on to the consent agenda. Uh, number 1, we have acceptance of monthly reports at number 2, we have request by comptroller community to approve abstract claims and pay priors in the amount of 1,741,833 dollars and 89 cents. Number 3, we have request by controller to acknowledge the 2025 bed for justice port audit report. Number 4, we have requested by Bedford central school district to approve the 20262027 reciprocal use agreement between the district and the town of Bedford. Number 5, we have requested by bed for central school district and please take chief Melvin to renew the contract with the district for the school resource officers for 20262027. NUMBER SIX, WE HAVE A REQUEST FROM CHIEF PADILLA TO APPROVE THE CONDITIONAL APPOINTMENT OF MAX CARDENOV FOR THE POSITION OF POLICE OFFICER, FOURTH GRADE. NUMBER SEVEN, WE HAVE A REQUEST BY H.R. DIRECTOR ORR AND COMMUNITY TO APPROVE THE APPOINTMENT OF ALEXANDER PEREZ FOR THE POSITION OF SENIOR BOOKKEEPER IN THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT. Number 8, we have a request by the building inspector to authorize agreement with Mariah and Hutch for the landlord registry and inspection program. And we're 9, we have a request by assessor Harold girdle stone to approve the proposed tax or settlement lake over national golf club. The town refunds approximately 47,198 dollars and 76 cents in that settlement. number 10 um we have requests to consider approval of a stormwater maintenance and access agreement for 50 old corner road number 11 a request by dbw commissioner win to award the water plant liquid waste hauling contract to um water plant waste hauling oh no i'm sorry to the entity um listed in the packet i don't have the name here but it's our current waste hauler i think we won the bid the lowest bid sorry fred cooking red cooking thank you you're welcome and we are requested by dpw commissioner win to award uh water materials and chemical bids um do we have a motion to approve the 12 items on the agenda So moved. And for discussion, Mariah O'Crungley consultant is the same Mariah O'Crungley who worked for Bedford 2030 and helped institute the landlord registry and helps the building department roll out that program. She is that contract with Bedford 2030 has expired. And Mariah is actually leaving Bedford 2030. So she's doing her own consulting and in speaking with the building department, they have decided to hire her separately to continue to roll out the next phase of that program. So it is not the same existing contract that we had a grant to pay that has expired. But for 2030 is not working on that program anymore. Mariah is going to do that on her own as a contractor to the building department. So that request came in from the building department.

I just would add she's really she's awesome. She's an expert on the law and the implementation and it's great that she's going to support the town and the building department.

Yeah, I think we're really lucky that she's she is interested in doing it and because it's a big lift and the building department is very busy and there's she knows technology. She understands she's been working on communicating with the landlords and explaining that program. And that would be very good to have her.

On board, we'll need a final final agreement with the consultant as well subject to town attorney approval. Just so.

Okay, for that 1, so the agreement that's on here is subject to it's that's a proposal.

It's not a final agreement.

We'll get a contractor agreement. Any other questions about the consent agenda items? There are a lot. All right all in favor. So move on those 12 items. Okay, Under New Business, we have a notification of retirement. Kevin Wynn is here to speak. Jim Arena is retiring after 34 years down at Bedford. Thank you for being here.

You're welcome. That's pretty impressive, 34 years of doing anything, right?

Yes.

And Jimmy definitely did it well, known for his strong work ethic. He's been through many regular days and lots of emergency days of cutting up down trees, dealing with the utilities, spending a lot of time away from family at snowstorms and tree storms and all the things that go along with DPW when we prove ourselves. So Jimmy's been a great asset. In addition to the regular DPW things, he's currently an assistant foreman managing crews with various tasks. He's a master plumber and has done a lot of plumbing work for the town, both highway and water, which has been a great asset to us. He's a Katona fireman, ex-chief, really well respected in the organization. And again, we will miss him and appreciate him and thank him for all the years of service.

Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. yeah people do forget how much uh the dpw and and the parks department are out in all of those storms and making the road safe and plowing and um a big part of our public safety efforts and that's um it isn't just a day job it's a lot of extra time to help keep everyone safe so that's really important to note thank you All right, so we have a motion to I'll make the motion to recognize. Jim arena's retirement 2nd.

All in favor he will be missed.

All right. We also have a request from commissioner when to submit a 400,000 dollar grant request to New York state for vacuum truck replacement.

Sure. So the state has a grant for reimbursement for purchase of a vacuum truck. Our current unit is 2012. It's about 14 years old. It's out probably 200 plus days a year and does a lot of work on the dirt roads, all the catch basins, and is a big part of our stormwater MS4 compliance, which is a DEC regulatory requirement. So basically this grant will allow us to get a truck if we're successful at about half price, which would be a nice deal for sure. Actually, the truck we just bought was half funded through New York City back 14 years ago for the Eastern Hudson program. Unfortunately, the numbers have gone up, but the grant pays for up to 400,000. The current going raise about 750. so the town would need to outlay up to 350, which would do from budgeted. Funds for equipment, so assuming the board is interested in moving forward, I would ask 2 things that we determine that the project is a type 2 action under secret, which means no further action is required. AND AUTHORIZED SUPERVISOR CALVEZ AND MYSELF TO SIGN ALL DOCUMENTS REQUIRED TO SUBMIT THE APPLICATION TO THE STATE DEC FOR A GRANT OF UP TO $400,000. NEW SPEAKER OKAY.

DO WE HAVE A MOTION ON THAT? NEW SPEAKER SO MOVED. NEW SPEAKER ANY QUESTIONS? comments thank you for applying for the grant I think that's um super important to keep up with all of those grants that are out there and make sure that we're getting our share and um do we need letters of support from our local um we're currently working on that it's a knock is taking the lead on the grant it's due the end of the month and yes we'll be talking to you

WE'VE REACHED OUT TO EAST OF HUDSON, OBVIOUSLY THEY'RE A BIG PART OF THIS, BUT I THINK SOME OF OUR STATE ELECTED OFFICIALS WOULD BE HELPFUL AS WELL. SO I'M NOT GOING TO BE REACHING OUT TO ELISA ABOUT THAT. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS.

NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. Okay, thanks, Kevin. Oh, we have another one. Number three under new business request by DPW because you're going to purchase one Avent sidewalk machine for $123,653.

So they're barely done talking about our fund balance, and I'm asking you to spend some.

You're trying to spend it.

But it's for a good cause. Last winter reminded us of how that goes and how much we have to clear. We have a machine that is a purpose-built sidewalk machine, but it's getting older, required a lot of repairs, and 13 miles of sidewalk is a lot when it breaks down because it really becomes a scramble. so this is a different type but a similar machine purpose built for sidewalk it has a plow and snowblower it's narrow to fit on the sidewalks it's made by a company called devant we've test driven it and talked to other users of it and they've been quite satisfied with it so i would recommend that the board authorized the purchase from westchester tractor for 123 653 dollars and four cents from highway fund balance, and the fund balance will be significantly greater than the 15% requirement after the purchase.

Okay. Do we have a motion to approve? So moved. Saku, any questions? I know that getting those sidewalks cleared is really important to a lot of people. I get a lot of phone calls about that if they're not, especially if people walk to the train.

Absolutely.

That's great new equipment. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we request to approve professional services agreement with a public sector HR consultants LLC to advise the town with respect to human resources as needed. I would like to make motion that we approve this scope of work pending attorney review and approval of the standard contractor agreement, which would require insurance and indemnification information. I'll make the motion to approve. Second, and I'll just this is just to supplement our personnel director services with respect to employment issues. We have been. You know, looking at some of our. efficiencies and opportunities to consider different hiring and different structures and having someone who really understands civil service and potentially helping us write job descriptions that could get approved through civil service, doing different reviews and things. Could be helpful to enter a scope of work on that and also just going forward any investigations or anything that we need, it's good to have an external person on staff. It's not even a retainer, it's just to have an agreement in place so we can call him. Could also save us on attorney fees because usually when we have any issues like that, we work with our labor attorney, which is more expensive than an HR consultant. Any other questions?

I just think it's really smart and I agree. It's great to have an outside expert consulting to help us make our hiring and HR as great as it can be. Thank you.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. We have a request for the board to approve hiring a consultant Labella Associates. This is a request from the town building department to assist with code plan reviews. Do we have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second, so building department has still a pretty good weight for permits. They are doing their best to stay on top of their. Their load, but they have requested additional support of consultants who could help review some plans when they're overloaded. So it's not all the time, but to have someone on. A contract that they can reach out to to review plans could hopefully help provide better customer service and speedier permit reviews for everyone coming in through the building department. Do we have a motion to approve?

That contract is still being reviewed by council also. We sent comments to the Bella and we're waiting for comments back from them.

Okay. So it would be subject to attorney review and approvals with the terms and conditions and insurance requirements.

So moved 2nd, any discussion.

All in favor aye motion carries. Um, we are undergoing review of the workflow processes in the building department and making recommendations as to how to improve internally. And so hopefully this is a temporary solution. Um, we, uh. You know, believe that we have enough staff to do the work and we just, we've just launched city squared and are moving to online permitting. So it takes time to figure out the technology and the workflows and all of that. So, as they transition to some of those more efficient operations, having a, this contractor should help. Okay, we have requests to approve event and co-sponsorship for the 2026 Turkey Trot on November 28th, 2026. Annual event, Bedford Village, do you have a motion to approve?

So moved.

2nd, all in favor motion carries. We also request to approve event and co-sponsorship for the bed for playhouse gala next May, May 8th, 2027. this is an application on the bed for village green. We do not on the bed for village green application. It's a very specific use has to be for a not for profit has to be approved by the parks department and the town board. And the Bedford Playhouse is 1 of the organizations that we've approved because they are directly in the historic village and. We also require deposit in case there is damage to the green. So, and another fee, if the tent stays up too long, there's a lot of modifications to this. So we've had some requests to use the green for some other things, commercial events and other things and we've. We've pulled out the policy and reminded people as to what we do allow the green to be used for and what we don't. We also get a lot of requests for weddings and things which we have to say no. So this is in line with what we approve and there's a co-sponsorship element as well, which would be in next year's co-sponsorship line, I believe. So do we have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Any questions, comments?

I just would say, you know, the Playhouse, we sometimes forget that it's that is a nonprofit organization and they have to raise money and, you know, they bring so much to this community, the events and the films and the vibrancy. And I do think this is a very appropriate thing for us to co-sponsor.

Thank you. But I'm also glad they don't do it every year.

It's a lot. It's a lot of wear and tear on the green, but it's at the time of year where it can recover.

Oh, no, I skipped that. Okay. Thank you. All right. We had a motion. We have a second. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Sorry, Chris, one more. I skipped the request to postpone energy benchmarking requirement on Chapter 76 for 18 months to enable technology updates and energy company compliance with the PSC order. There's a resolution in the packet. I'll make a motion to approve. Second. With respect to the Landlord Registry Law, there is an energy benchmarking component that the landlords are asked to provide information. The PSC has ordered that Conetic and NYSEG make that Um, information flow readily to the platform that we have that we are using the portfolio manager to have that information and to use it in a calculation to provide a rating on the building. People can't see we wouldn't provide the actual data to the public, but there was in the landlord registry sort of a grade for a building on its energy efficiency and that. Those utilities have not done that yet. And so the technology is not easy. It is hard to explain. It is an added layer that isn't working as well as when we first put it in the law that we would have liked. So the resolution lays out some of those reasons and requests that we put an 18 month postponement on that requirement for giving the technology and the utilities time to catch up. Any questions? All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Autonomous Memorial Park Project. Chris Soy is here, Superintendent of Recreation and Parks. Thank you for waiting. It's like the grand finale, the fest for last. There we go. Well, there's still day. Thank you.

I don't know. Okay. Thank you. Uh, good evening. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here to provide an update on our, our playground, our more park playground renovation project. Um. And then also request approval of our proposal from our, from our vendor. Um. I'd just like to acknowledge that our chair of our Recreation and Parks Advisory Committee is here, Nancy Bellini. Nancy wouldn't need to say this of herself, but she is an expert in therapeutic recreation, working with special needs populations for over 30 years. And she's been on the Rec and Parks Advisory Committee for many years and also was part of our working group. IN OUR RESEARCH ON PLAYGROUNDS AS PART OF THIS PROJECT. AND THEN I ALSO WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ZOOMING IN IS DANICA RUSSO WHO IS OUR REP FROM COMPAN, OUR PLAYGROUND VENDOR. Get started, so our memorial park renovation project, the project overview, we're looking to replace a current playground, which is over 30 years old. The equipment is showing agent has required repairs and replacement in recent years. A new playground provides the opportunity to incorporate updated concepts, ideas and playground design developed from years of research. This project is the focus on accessibility of playground and installation of inclusive features, and also the opportunity to improving safety and accessibility with new playground surfacing. That was the big picture. The existing playground assessment at Katona, the Katona Motor Playground is 30 plus years old. Our 2025 playground safety inspection conducted by Playground Medic, Did recommend replacement of our 5 to 12 year old unit due to condition issues. We just have some photos there of the playground along with some of those condition issues again. Just not natural, long term exposure and deterioration of the equipment certainly points to the need for replacement. And as part of that. We move forward with the idea of a capital project this year for a new playground. So, in developing our ideas for the playground and our project design goals, we created a memorial park memorial park playground renovation project, working group with members of our recreation parks advisory committee. We discussed general ideas improvements must have accessibility issues, community needs, et cetera in our meetings. The working group also, we did a little fun site, visit area of area playgrounds, see different designs, playground components, safety services, and to actually play on the on the units that we went and looked at. So we did that earlier, I believe was in March that we took this little tour and again, thank the working group for. for being good sports and getting out there and testing the equipment. Coming out of that time, we established project goals to include inclusive play, accessibility, creativity and challenge, nature-based and utilization of existing terrain and landscape. Uh, through this process, we also had a community engagement. We wanted obviously to hear from the residents and have their thoughts and input on our playground design. We did. Share a survey that was posted on our social on our website or social media and through our email distribution list, which was sent down in April. We had 217 responses. The top responses were swings if folks don't know the memorial park. main playground that we're renovating does not have swings. So it was a rousing voice from the community that we need to have swings. So clearly number one response was that we also the frequency of NEW SAFETY SERVICING AND REMOVING THE WOOD CHIPS WAS NUMBER TWO. A LARGER PLAYGROUND, SO A BIGGER FOOTPRINT AND SOME MORE COMPONENTS. FENCE AND BENCHES WERE ALSO TOP RESPONSES IN TERMS OF WHAT THE COMMUNITY FELT THIS PLAYGROUND NEEDS TO HAVE. And another step in our engagement with the community we had, we tabled out a couple of events where we presented different types of playground equipment and we asked for input from the community. And these, these events also. had quite a few children in attendance. So we were definitely wanting to hear from them. So we were able to gather feedback from those tabling events. And again, there was opportunity to select specific pieces of equipment and also choose from four different designs. So we took all that information and processed it and helped inform us as we worked towards our playground design. And then a final review we did just recently, a couple weeks ago, post the renderings that we currently have as we've been working with our Playground vendor. So we shared those to kind of have a real good visual of where we currently were at and asked for responses. received a few in the depictions and the renderings we have. An adaptive swing wasn't included, but we will be including an adaptive swing. And also there were some questions on orientation, exactly kind of where the playground sat and if we were losing the wall for the rebound wall, which we're not. So it's pretty much the orientation is the existing playground footprint with a slight expansion. more towards the kind of the woods side of the of the playground we're able to uh gain some more square footage there to allow us to move forward with uh to to have swings as part of the design So the proposed playground design of where we're at, some highlights, obviously all new equipment, all new and unique play equipment, new safety surfacing, which it will be turf playground, synthetic turf specifically designed for playgrounds. And the design with the mindset and the approach of a balance between energetic activity and inclusive sensory rich play. This is the overhead and schematic of the design. At this time, I'd like to just throw it to Danica, if she is able and prepared, just to talk about the layout and the selection of some of the components. And when we share some of these renderings, there is a... You know, when you look at it, you might say, oh, there's a bunch of open space. Oh, you know, let's get something else in there and get something else. But all of these play structures have a safety zone around it that is required and mandated by the design. And also by, you know, we do have our playgrounds inspected by certified playground inspectors to make sure we're in compliance with all that. So Danica, if you wouldn't mind just speaking a little bit towards the playground design.

Yeah, of course, Chris. And thank you everyone for having me. I hope you're not just seeing my big face right now. Thank you for waiting through the long presentation. My pleasure. So I love that this design is like a direct result of community feedback. When I first met with the Parks and Rec Department, it was emphasized to me that this would be derived from community input, and this is a direct result of that. So what we have is swings. There was a massive request for swings, which are really inclusive. And yeah, this site plan isn't showing an ADA seat that you would typically see, but we'll be adding one. And then you also have a basket suite that is very therapeutic, multi-user, great for families. I have four kids and I will go on it with all four of them. So it's a great addition to any park. the other thing that was really important is that this park is stunning like it's a beautiful setting it's naturally lined with trees it has natural shade and some different topography throughout so we use the existing embankment or a hill that kind of abuts the pool fence and incorporated some play elements there. So you see there's two embankment slides that are different from each other. One is a tube slide and one is a more straight and open slide and hill climb rule. And it gives the children the experience of, you know, like a risky play and like a circular path that they're choosing on their own. And so we're incorporating the natural topography, which is really lovely. And then the Explorer dome is suited for kids 5 to 12, but I've seen up to like, 16 year olds and 17 year olds playing on it. I've seen parent and child where the parent is using it for exercise and the child is climbing up. Both of the domes, the Explorer and mini dome are designed to have graduated challenge. So there are low. Entry points on either 1 of those. So, if a child is using a wheelchair or. Mobility device, they can access the play in a meaningful way rather than just being able to go up to it. There's ways to interact at the ground level on both structures and both structures have kind of an easy path up and more challenging path up. But what makes the mini dome different is that it has more traditional play that is recognizable by two to five year olds. So there's a double slide so the kids can race. There's a crawl through tunnel for kids. They're still working on establishing their kind of space. So I see young kids bumping into things all the time. So this gives them the opportunity to experiment, crawl, climb, slide, socialize. There are some membranes for the kids to hang out, especially if you're a little timid and you don't want to go any further. Same thing on the Explore Dome. They don't resemble each other, but there's a large coconut rope and other seats that are age appropriate for kids to interact with their friends who are playing above them. This also gives parents sight lines if they do have multiple kids. It's a very transparent design. We have a sensory hut is what we call it, and it's designed for when children get overstimulated and need a little bit of a break. So particularly where there's opportunities for active play, it's important to couple that with an opportunity for quiet and passive play because it can be overstimulating for adults and it can be overstimulating equally for children. We have an inclusive seesaw, which is accessible for a child who's using a wheelchair. It's a very simple transfer because there's open sides. There's a back support. There's hand holes. The hand holds are bright color. If there are any visual impairments, they're easy to identify. by sight, feel, and it's ergonomically friendly. And if you have a caregiver or a parent that wants to go in, it is sized appropriately to fit an adult as well. The universal carousel is an exceptionally thrilling piece of equipment. Every time it's installed, it's amazing to watch. The ability of kids to get on it and pile on it and maximize the capacity it's at the ground level level. So I can say it's thrilling, but exceptionally safe. There's nowhere for child to fall. And if a child is using a wheelchair Walker or crutches, they can get onto it without any assistance, which is. oftentimes a unique experience for that child. Ms. Swayali to work on their cross-body coordination, balance, and then you'll see there are some freestanding play panels and those are music. It's not going to be very loud, but it gives the opportunity to experiment with creating sounds. Each tube on that xylophone has different tone to it so that kids can play from either side with each other and see what noises that they can create. And there's a make and trade panel where kids can pass elements through. And often if you watch closely, a child will set up a shop in the middle of a playground if there's a bench or desk or chair, so this stimulates their imagination and allows them to interact with each other. And a sound creator, that's another You can turn it and it generates multiple sounds. So overall, it's a really robust design with multiple play types, sliding, swinging, spinning, balance, music, sensory experiences with high capacity and high visual sight lines for, you know, many kids to come and have fun.

Awesome. Thanks so much. So yeah, so I just I just wanted to acknowledge that with Danica representing Compan, we did bring in multiple playground companies earlier this year, made site visits, asked for design ideas, and some layouts. Compan and Danica really seemed to kind of knock it out of the park out of the gate. The company is on Sourcewell, which is a pre-vetted purchasing cooperative. And so, you know, we were able to, you know, really work directly with Danica and Hashout. We've had numerous iterations of this and kept kind of tweaking and, again, bringing in the community input. But Compan has a company. It's a Danish company, international. for I think 30 plus years. They operate 90 countries. They're known for their unique design and environmentally friendly practices. So it seemed like just a really good fit out of the gate. So we're excited to be working with them.

Any questions from the board while Danik is here and Chris and Nancy who've worked on this? Stephanie, I think has been involved.

I have no question. Well, my 1 question is, where was this playground 50 years ago? That's a separate conversation, but I think this is amazing and I really appreciate all the thought and care that was put into it. Not only from the public engagement and feedback, but also just from that institutional knowledge about what works and what doesn't in different kinds of spaces and communities. it's so clear Danica that like you really put a lot of effort into this and I for one I'm especially appreciative

Thank you so much.

I was thinking that while you were talking.

And again, we also realized that the tone of the location is unique too. We recently did a Bedford Hills playground design, our playground renovation, and we certainly wanted something different purposefully and also something that really fit that natural kind of environment there. So it was all put in. through Danica's interpretation and help came up with this design. So just some additional project highlights, ADA compliant design and play opportunities for all children. Danica mentioned the embankment slides using existing terrain, again, unique to that location. Strong mix of play types that encourages children to engage in different ways depending on their age, confidence, ability, and mood. So there's a lot of room for challenge and growth and experience. So hopefully, you know, get there when they're two years old and enjoy it all the way through In other later years, so, so remaining project timeline again, we're looking for move forward with approval. We were going to look tour and that would get us started with ordering of the equipment and materials. We'd be scheduled to look to late September, probably the 3rd week of September to look to remove the existing playground. begin site preparation work in early october installation of equipment mid-october carrying through mid-november and uh reopening in november would be you know the goal hopefully uh you know don't want to oversell but uh it could be a little bit earlier than that if things go go well but um and uh but that would be the timeline uh that would be that would be looking at as we sit here today um the budget and funding uh we had a 500 000 capital project approved for this year i also received the award of a hundred thousand dollars from senator harkins office uh for accessibility features um the total project budget of six hundred thousand dollars And that's all I have. Thank you. Any questions? I just want to acknowledge the working group. Kim O'Brien, our assistant superintendent, has done a ton of work on this as well. Nancy, Steve Lancia, Margaret Browning, and Nick Tomizawa, who Steve was on the slide, Nick was on the fireman's pole. And then obviously Danica for all her work.

Great. Thank you. Questions? Comments? Anything? I'm curious about that. This turf surface, how is that maintained? Just I guess, blow it off with an electric leaf blower like, and yeah, nothing above and beyond.

I mean, it is again a unique surfacing. Maybe I don't know that I can speak more directly towards that in terms of maintenance and upkeep, but it's an increasingly popular. But it's a.

like you have to clean it yeah yeah because you know the maintenance stuff the turf itself has microbial like antimicrobial properties so in a in a way it's like self-peening but as far as maintenance go the only thing that's required is to brush it up twice a year um that could be with a leaf blower or like Like an actual deck brush, um, depending on like the brush. Yeah.

Yeah. We'll do some mechanical brushing.

Yeah. Okay. So just keep big debris off of it once a couple of times a year. Okay.

Yeah. And it's tolerant to debris. It's just, you know, for, for everyone's sake of tripping and just keeping it clean. Yeah. Just the brush up.

yeah well it's just a very wooded area i imagine you know leaves and dirt and you know stuff piles up and stuff okay okay great and then um and then in terms of all the other equipment i guess this there may i mean it I guess it just gets cleaned once in a while.

Yeah. Look for any maintenance issues that happen from wear and tear replacement where needed. My experience a lot of times it's usually pretty minor stuff, but bolts and edges that get worn. But, you know, again, our practice of just regular eyeballs on it and responding to any issues, you know, helps obviously keep it in good shape in the long term. So, you know, IFL playgrounds in general, you know, they – for what you're getting out of it in terms of level of maintenance, you get quite a bit out of it. But as is always, over time things do need to get replaced and they're a little expensive to replace at times. But yeah, we did be part of our regular maintenance routine.

love it i i'm so excited about how it feels like it'll fit in the katona um wooded area and low to the ground i like the sight line thing yeah and it is so different from the bedford hills one just seems like it'll be different but they're two miles apart like i think it's great to have all of these different types of equipment for the kids to enjoy um

And I'm sure you've realized, I mean, the Bedford Hills one is just, you know, it is such a popular destination. And so, you know, there's room for that design for sure. And people love it. But it's a little bit of a different experience.

Right. It's just different. Yeah. And that's great. And so many things I never even thought about playgrounds before. It's like what they offer. Yeah.

And really, it is like doing the deep dive in terms of the amount of research that has gone on and the professionals they have on staff that have really informed evolving play and all that stuff. So it's really great.

All right. Any other questions? Okay. So we need a motion to approve the Motion to propose the sales proposal pending. I think final contractor attorney review not to exceed the 600,000 dollars that's been budgeted for the project.

Motion so moved 2nd.

All in favor I motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who provided their input. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, now we have Christina Warner, who is here to give us an update on the downtown improvement grant from the county. Christine's been managing submissions to the county and the budget for this along with controllers. Really? It's ARPA funding that that the county used and so. We really have had to give them every receipt and invoice and great details so that they can do their reporting by and we have to spend the money by the end of the year. So we have our own ARPA that we're keeping track of, but then this is also reporting to the county so they can keep track of ARPA, which is the American Rescue Plan Act. that was a post-pandemic recovery effort. Bedford Hills, how are we doing?

Thank you, Christina. We were awarded $250,000 with a $50,000 matching. We had a total of $300,000. So, we divided into 3 distinct categories facade improvements, which was for landlords and store owners. To get signage or get that exterior painted. The money there, you can really see if you go to Bedford Hills, Spano, plumbing, those lovely channel letters. Thank you, Dig Grant money. The Depot Plaza, the main was painted and repointed the bricks and some of the parapet work came from the Dig Grants. The nail salon, she had a sign that we did, we worked with her. So there's one that's still out for one other landlord, and he's still performing the work at his premises. So stay tuned for that. Then there was the wayfinding program, which I don't know if you guys have gotten a chance to see the wayfinding signs. Some are on 117, and then some are in the village, good for walking and for vehicle traffic to let you know where everything is. I think it gives a really village charm to it. Katona has those wonderful bracket signs and it's kind of our attempt to give Bedford Hills an equivalent like village feel. so then there are included in that are the um parking signs yeah and the parking signs are um maybe a little tiny bit less exciting but much more useful bigger better placed easier to see do you know where what lot you're in and um where you're parking to find your car when you get back all the things you need um For that, and so at the entrance to Bedford Hills, there's the new Bedford Hills gateway sign. Welcome to Bedford Hills.

Yeah.

Also part of your dig money, but the big investment is in what we call station green. And so there you go there's your sign. Very pretty. Yeah. Oh, and the greenery around it. So the big investment we're making is in the Bedford Hills train station. And you probably know that we put out an RFP to try to find a restaurant or a coffee shop. But in that process, we ran into a whole bunch of problems. And we're working through some of those with MTA, and we're working through some of those with the grant money. So we're replacing the heating and the cooling. We're putting in ADA compliant ramps, wheelchair accessible from the platform side. And we've done some smaller stuff. I mean, we've certainly put out chairs. We put what Lisa Burke loves to call the piazza where they put the trees and the area for people to sit. And Jen, our business promoter, has been doing a fantastic job with farmers markets and art crawls and salsa nights. And so in an attempt to activate the space as kind of the heart of the village, it's probably the most important building in the Hamlet to do that. So we're working on that right now. And then we'll reissue the RFP for still really high hopes of getting you a restaurant and coffee shop gathering place watering hole.

Yeah.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Christina. We also saw the park, the recreation parks department. I don't know if it's our money or dig money, but kind of goes towards our contribution, redid all the landscaping and cleaned up the war memorial. That is correct. To the Bedford Hills fire department. It looks gorgeous. John Goodman did a great job there and the. White building was repainted also, which was part of the facade improvement. That's that's people Plaza. That's the one I was talking about. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of the main retail element to all the flowers with the grab up banners. It's really looking very nice. The sidewalk got extended to lot 5. So now you can see the sign for public parking and walk all the way from lot 5 to into the Hamlet area. We did put with Brian's help the park vantage. You can pay to park there and stay for, I think about 4 or 6 hours. So that's a good option for people who want to be in the Hamlet. So, so many great things happening there and obviously the train station is a real. thing that we find is an important thing to invest in and get a handle on so that we can see a tenant in there that really serves

community as well as the commuters um in that area picture it in the evening lit up with people and you know you go to pleasantville or places where it's really um a going place and there's people eating out in the street and that's you know what we're hoping for but the other thing that ellen and lisa have been working on is um a mural on the side of grab and go because you come off the train and you literally walk into a brick wall

But they're working on that right now. We've been talking to a group of community members who've been helping inform on what a mural might offer in terms of placemaking and welcoming. And we've been talking to the property owner about an agreement so that the town can acquire a license agreement to use that wall for a mural. I was hoping to have that on this agenda, but we haven't kind of come to a final agreement yet. And what we'll do is put out a request for information from artists that will submit information about what their work looks like and what they might do to answer sort of the prompt that goes out about this. We'll have a meeting the property owners going to want to weigh in on what does go on the side of that building. And we'll need to discuss that and approve that as a leader, a later date, hopefully August. So I believe it's going to happen though. Very excited about it. Because it would be great to spend some of this money also on if we can get the final agreement in place and get a mural up there. I think that would really liven up the street there even more.

Well, we were very good stewards of the money in using it for infrastructure in the train station. The boiler was long past its useful age, and the air conditioning undersized, hard to keep it cool in the summer. So we feel really good about taking the money and making that commitment to the space, but it's not as much fun as a mural, just sizing the load of the air conditioning. It'd be nice to have something, you know,

cool to look at right yeah awesome all right well thank you so much for keeping on this and we will continue to um spending that dig money and i'm working on bedford hills um with that grant um okay if there are there any um public comments at this time do we have something else oh did i forget something

I just wanted to briefly talk about, I think it was a good segment for Christina's project with the dig. I just wanted to mention also, so when we did the signage for the commuter lots, I wanted to add something to that with what you went over. Before the commuter lots, when you went in there, there was a ton of instructional signage and you would enter. Which you're pulling into a lot, you're reading a ton of signs. So, part of this project, which we did a little bit additional was we, the concept was to, like, have the actual. The lot recognize the more aesthetic sign. Yeah. And then take some of the instructional information, put it towards the. Back of the computer lot, so once you go in, you could actually more understand the rules. I think we have a little more complexity with the different computer lots. We haven't that for as opposed to other communities with unique rules in the lots. So, I just kind of want to add on to what Christina said, and we also replaced the sheet metal signs. um not not through the dig funding but as part of you know an add-on once we get some more aesthetic signs so we got rid of a lot of the old signage in the commuter lots replace it with nicer newer signs try to make it more clear and put it in the lot so once you get it you could actually more understand what's going on there are some other improvements that were done to the lots to just kind of um improve the overall aesthetic feels just want to mention that as well thank you thank you and is the

i know that we repaved and re fixed up the katona lot one and we also added those parking signs to katona um as part of we didn't use dig money for that but um we have hamlet improvement funding to put those signs as well in katona is the where the old kiosks were in lot three is that coming down they're already removed so right yeah so

If you 2 minutes, I'll just talk about some of the overall improvements and the lots. I know I mentioned it some of them last time. So it might be an overlap, but. So, we went to the completely pay by phone in all the commuter lots. The kiosk are removed now in all the lots, the structure is still there in 3, which we may remove, but there's garbage cans in there. So that's why we left that 1. We also put wireless networks in all the lots, so people cannot connect through cellular data. There's free wireless in lots 1, 3, and 4 to pay by phone. Our DPW commissioners also paved the last here um lots one uh four and seven so those lots were done they also put up um a lot of new guard rails that were kind of getting pulled and beat up so um and the lighting between um four and seven between four and seven so you know yeah that's a good point so people that park in seven just has a little more of a safe feel if they're if they're below to have that properly lit

It's been cleaned up. Lot 7 has really been cleaned up in terms of Um, vines and overgrowth and things like that. So trying to sell, I don't know, it's been raining and growing, but I think we were on top of it at some point, you know, so 7, 5 and 3.

So, a lot of the, the parameters that we're going to love grown. That was completely trimmed back. So, just wanted to talk about some of the money that was used with the date program to make more static signs in Bedford Hills. This is also done in Katona. On top of that, there's been some significant investments in improving the overall aesthetic appeal of the lots.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Great. Okay. Any board announcements? That's where we are. Quiet. quiet at summer yeah um the camps are full of camps they're great street ball is having their their finals tonight and monday night um that's a great program there's um aqua zumba at the pool it's not sleepy tom there's so much going on um fourth of july was great we did the reading of the declaration and that was um really cool and all three hamlets we haven't watched the video on our website it's really cool montage of of that activity. That was a lot of fun. Food Truck Friday was great. Thank you to Recreation and Parks for that event. And there'll be another one in August, the August 14th, I think. Katona Sidewalk Sale is this weekend. And Police National Night Out is August 4th at Bedford Hills Elementary School again. So lots of community events, opportunities to come out, free entertainment, and gathering with neighbors. So the boat program is going well. People are renting the boats and fishing. And town clerk has been helping when anything has gone wrong. She's rushing around helping people find the key or do what they need to do. So thank you, Allie, for that. and hot weather, it's here again. So everyone stay cool, stay hydrated and check on your neighbors.

Have we met since the play? I just also wanted to congratulate Stephanie and everyone who put on and Bobby. It was just, I just think the whole, and everyone who was part of the rub up, I think July 4th, it was, That's really great and that sold out and I was telling Stephanie at the beginning of the night that I loved the play and I learned so much and then I read part of the declaration and it was moving because of what the bravery of what our country did. But that play really shows you what we weren't able to do and it was also moving to have that knowledge and to really be thinking about that when I read those words, so thank you to everyone. It was really great community patriotic weekend. Yes. Thank you.

Yes, I just want to say thank you to everyone who participated, joined in, came and supported. It really was a community effort. community theater out of you know just a bunch of people came together and said let's do 1776. um and so what i was going to say earlier was like for the first time in three months we don't have to talk about 1776 coming i'm pretty excited about that great job great job it really was very nice um okay there being no further business this meeting is adjourned thanks everybody