Town Board - Regular Meeting

Oh, that's not important enough for me to know. I'm just curious. Okay.

Is that there we go? Thank you. Welcome to the town board meeting of the town of Bedford August 11th, 2026. I'd like to make a motion that the town board come out of the executive session 2nd. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. And we will move on to our meeting agenda. We have, oh, I do want to make the announcement that Thomas Cataliado, town board member, is not in the state. I think he's on vacation, but he was potentially going to join in online. So I don't know if he is on the webinar, but if he is, we could bring him in as a panelist. And I don't think he will be able to vote because it's not meeting our video conferencing criteria, but he could participate in comments. Oh, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. We are starting our meeting with a public hearing that is extended from our last meeting to consider a local law to adopt a six-month moratorium for new developments on parcels over 20 acres that involve five or more housing units. I'd like to move that we reopen that public hearing.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Do we have anyone who'd like to make a comment on this proposed moratorium?

Just introduced the local law. We added a, we expanded the or reduce the scope of the moratorium, which was on properties of 20 acres. So that is any property with 5 or more residential units that it would be applicable as well. So it wouldn't apply to a property with just 1 unit that's seeking to expand its expand or add a dwelling unit or something like that.

Right it was the way it was drafted before it was going to prevent anyone who wanted to apply for the pool, put a pool in or something, you know, it was something beyond the scope of what we, what we intended since this really the intention is to hear from our conservation board at our next meeting regarding the proposed changes that they'd like to make to the town code. um to protect wildlife corridors that may affect large parcels that are considering using like a conservation subdivision or conservation development tool uh it also gives us time to get a report back from our town housing task force which is considering amendments to um how you know town uh the town law treats um middle income housing uh or uh affordable housing which also could impact um Development, so that's why the, um, the pause on those types of applications. Are there is there anyone on, um. Online that would like to make a comment. Do we have access to that? I might have to log in. We have deputy clerk here taking minutes. Um, and I think usually Ali's on zoom to see. If there's anyone on, I think. Sorry. Oh, you're waiting Stephanie. You pass the test.

Sorry, thank you.

Thank you.

Let's see if I can log in as her.

He's walking off some technical difficulties.

Thank you.

I'm going to be them.

Don't want to take that out of context.

Okay.

Okay, I have logged in as the clerk link, so I, I've got it and there are a few people in the on the zoom. If anybody would like to Sally Slater. There we go. Hi, Sally.

sally i have you up can you hear me yes i can would you like to make a public comment sorry for the delay so i wrote a letter um with all my uh thoughts and objections is that going to be distributed or read anywhere um um Is this meeting, do I need to sort of repeat what I wrote?

It was forwarded to the town board. I didn't intend on reading it, but so if you'd like to make a public statement that other people hear, we would welcome that at this time. Or if you'd like to read the letter, you're more than welcome to.

I don't have the letter right in hand, but I can make a few comments about this. Okay. I feel that it's targeting the one big property across from the Chico's. And that property has been held up from any kind of development for, I mean, it could be, I know it's over 20 years. It's probably 30 years starting when it was, there were plans to make it into the ripple on Cisco campus. And It's just been prevented from any kind of development. And yet the owner pays full taxes as if they would have the rights to do whatever they want. And I just think that this bill is targeting that. And I believe that people have rights when they own property and It takes long enough to get any kind of subdivisions done anyway, and now this is just prolonging it. As far as a wildlife corridor, I think that it's unfair to target large properties without looking at smaller properties where people mow their lawns and spray chemicals and all of that. What happens to smaller properties adjacent? Is wildlife only supposed to be kept on large properties? I just don't understand that. And I do believe that people have rights of ownership. And I think the process should be easier. You have my letter and I hope that people on the board and in the town of Bedford read it. And so I've stated my feelings.

Thank you.

I've lived in Bedford for 43 years and it's beautiful. And it was beautiful when I moved here and it's beautiful now. And I believe it's gonna stay that way because people choose Bedford for what it is. So anyway, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your comments and I will make sure the town board has received your letter.

Thank you.

You all saw it, right? any other comments is if anyone who is on online would like to speak if you could just raise your hand okay okay there being no further public comments I'd like to move to close the public hearing 2nd, all in favor and I'd like to make a motion or I'd like to request if anyone likes to make a motion to adopt the moratorium.

So, oops.

2nd, so I'd like to hear from the board if there's any discussion.

I mean, I, I agree that that this really does make sense and I wouldn't be in favor of it if I thought it was trying to prohibit development of any parcel in that 1 in particular. And I, I think it's a kind of, it's fortuitous that some of the recommendations of our comprehensive plan have. You know, 2 groups working towards potential recommendations, having to do with housing zoning that that could really make a difference. So I think this makes a lot of sense.

Okay.

I do completely understand the, the rights of property owners. I think that's a hard thing for residents who don't want development to happen to understand that zoning does give people certain rights. They own properties and they have expectations to use that property. So I do completely hear that that comment and. I don't intend this to hold up any particular development if we come to a place where we have heard the recommendations of the conservation board and the housing task force and it. You know, there is any changes to be made. The intention isn't, you know, the intention is to put a pause on the larger application so that a lot of work isn't done towards putting in an application that would have to be amended or changed. So we would move quickly to consider whatever recommendations are made. If there are local laws to be passed to pass them, and then to end the moratorium, and we could end it early if we get through that in shorter than 6 months. And the conservation board is bringing recommendations for town laws that would affect wildlife corridors. Beyond just large properties, but I think. They're not going to affect a lot of applications that would take a lot of time or effort to to change if we change the law. So it doesn't make sense to put a more time on all development. that would be too onerous at this time. But I do believe six months is a good amount of time. To get anything done takes several months anyway, because you have to have drafting a law. If you hear from the conservation board, draft a law, have a public hearing, it could take a few months, even if there's just a few changes that they recommend. Okay, anyone else?

I mean, I agree that, you know, creating clarity for what an applicant would need to present that is in alignment with our larger plans will would be beneficial to an applicant. I think taking a minute to. Regroup and think about the objectives that we hope to achieve with development and balancing it in a way that works for the property owner and the community at large. Is always a good step to take so I, I'm. It's supportive of the moratorium for those reasons.

Okay, okay. Any other comments. All right, we can move it to a vote all in favor. Motion carries. Okay. We have a presentation this evening by sustainable Westchester's Dan Welsh regarding green energy for residents. If you want to. It should be on the computer. Yes. Thank you for joining us password.

Or is there no, oh, this is the password. It's on. It's on the machine here. Let's try that.

Yes. Okay.

Do you have to take the Zoom? Oh, no. Okay.

It's kind of cold in here. So good to see everybody again. I'm here to introduce a new green energy initiative. As, as Alan said, and it's a pretty straightforward and simple 1 and yet there are elements that may. Take some thinking about, so let's go through it.

Um, yeah.

Sustainable Westchester for anybody who doesn't know is a inner municipal consortium. Our job is to create and administer programs that are participating municipalities can join in to help forward their sustainability goals and. clean energy goals and for this program we are collaborating with power market which is a technology platform provider who some of you may be familiar with because they are the provider technology provider for the community solar program so if you subscribe to community solar then then you may have been in on their on their portal what they've done is taken and extended it to support this program so Basically, the goal here was to modestly plug the gap that we felt with the end of the Community Choice Aggregation Program. It's a voluntary program, so it's scale-wise and impacts, you know, it doesn't prepare in that regard, but it is a simple way for people to get back on the renewable energy horse and help us continue towards our climate goals. and you know give people an easy way to do that so basically what it what it is is a monthly purchase of renewable energy certificates so that's where it's both simple and complex so simple monthly subscription but we're gonna have to explain renewable energy certificates here uh a renewable energy certificate is basically the uh official way of accounting for the the the injection of clean energy into the grid by a clean energy generator you need to be able to record that and know that somebody did it right so that you can basically buy that Well, I have another side here, which will help to explain that a little more. But 11 rack equals 1000 kilowatt hours. 1000 kilowatt hours is more or less kind of like a decent size house monthly. Monthly usage so. When we record the injection of power and register that, we register it with a recognized registry. So in this case, we're working with the Green E Registry, which is nationally recognized. And so that's the underpinning in that respect. And we've also tried to simplify it by providing sort of different levels of participation rather than having to deal with your bill and submitting your bills and matching it exactly. We've come up with numbers which approximate sort of the typical usage for an apartment dweller, modest midsize home or a larger home to make it easy to just jump in that way. But here we go on the RECs piece. The thing about the RECs is that when we were doing the CCA, we were buying RECs too. You just didn't see it because we were buying green power from a supplier, and they, underneath the hood, were buying the RECs. The RECs are what give you the ownership rights to the environmental benefits. the power when you when you're selling power there's two components one is just the electrons which you're selling out you know electron is an electron and there's the wholesale markets and the retail markets and that doesn't change so the there's you know they sell uh the clean energy generator selling into those markets as well but that extra piece which recognizes the clean energy benefits is captured in in the wreck so the generators putting energy into the grid, as they always do, you're drawing it off on the other side, but you don't know that a given electron made its way to your house, but by, through the financial transaction and paying the generator, it all bounces out. You're paying them to put it in, you're taking it out on the other end. So, again, the REC is an accounting method that says that that 1,000 kilowatt hours that gets put in there is only counted once, and then it becomes a tradable liquid thing. You can buy it, and then the claims to the clean energy are yours. again we we never had to really get into the weeds on this with the with the cca because uh with when you're buying the supply you basically buy the whole packaging and it's all green energy you know but what we've done here in the interest of separating from the supplies. You don't have to deal with the markets. Are they going up and down? Are we doing well against the utility, you know, against Con Ed or NYSEG or not? We're just buying the REC portion and then you're staying with your utility. Another important point is we are buying national RECs. With the CCA, we're buying New York State RECs. So New York State has its own registry. And if you're going to buy a green power product from an ESCO in New York, it has to be through the New York State registry. But since we're not limited by that, we're not buying the power in that way, we can buy the national RECs. These are actually the same RECs that we bought when we started the CCA back in 2016 and 17 and 18. And then at that point, New York said that for an ESCO product, you had to buy New York State registered RECs. we're not limited to that anymore but we did consult with the DPS didn't want to run afoul of anything and they asked us to make sure that we have this disclaimer here which which makes it clear that we're buying these things they're National Rex they can't be used to uh within the the New York State compliance uh system as part of the clean energy standard where where it is accounted for there That's the weedy part. But otherwise, it's actually a pretty simple program. People sign up, they're buying RECs, don't need anything special to do that they just go online and it's a simple simple form they do get a access to the the portal where they'll have a record month by month and they'll actually get the uh the rec registration numbers and uh information about the impact and and all that so everybody will have access to the portal PowerMarket is also making a large tranche of community solar capacity available directly to people who participate in this program. This program, Green My Power, is overtly a premium program. You're going to pay basically a penny a kilowatt hour for the racks. Again, the difference between this and the CCA is we were booking the power and the RECs for a couple of years, and we might be in a good place or a bad place versus where the market goes. In this case, you're going to stay with the utility. There'll be no difference there, but there is about a one cent difference equivalent per kilowatt hour by buying the RECs separately like this. Uh, but if you sign up for community solar in parallel, you're pretty much canceling that out and you're. Doubling your impact, you know, you're having impact on both both sides. So they're making available a big trench of community solar here in the kind of district and they have them for a nice thing as well. And then Sustainable Westchester will stay in the middle in terms of the interface with the public and outreach and customer service and things like that. We don't expect that the customer service will be anywhere near as As, uh, you know, complex as it as it got at times with the CCA, because this is all say opt in voluntary. Program, so none of the, you know, I got the letter and I didn't, I didn't receive the letter. I don't know about it or things like that. this is just a quick scan of of you know as you you go to log into the platform what's involved it's no different than any other sort of online form that you've ever signed up for but you notice you do see the um the different levels where you can indicate yeah i live in an apartment so this is probably a good level for me to me to be out to sort of compensate for my electricity usage and so forth So that's really easy. And as far as the community is concerned, we'll also have a landing page just for each community that's participating. So when somebody signs up with their address, they'll be able to parse that into the respective municipality. And then as we get more and more signups, we'll have this kind of, you know, a central map with the Westchester and more bubbles As you've seen in other similar type of reporting with, you know, the number of folks that have signed up and in a drill down into, you know, a Bedford report. And all that would be, as I said, documented and at the individual level that have done the actual certificate numbers, and the municipality will have a record of how the campaign is going as well. And we're ready to support in any way that makes sense relative to the local realities in terms of outreach. You know, in places like Bedford and Ossining, you know, Ossining, it's Green Ossining, here it's Bedford 2030. You may have a preference to route through your local sustainability organization. We're ready to issue a letter, which we can customize and put more context in that relative to what's going on locally and frame it out so that the context is all there. Help with draft social postings and things like that. So we're ready to go to support that as well. And it's pretty simple to get started. We basically put the link on our page just yesterday. And so it's up and ready to go. People could sign up today if they wanted to. But once the municipality gives us the but not we're ready to work with you to again on the money outreach drafting the letter and and working together for a sort of a more more explicit launch so that's that's basically it

Thank you. Great. Well, congrats on developing a new program. It's a little dense.

Questions? I just had a quick question about whether there is any limit to how many participants you can have.

Oh, no, not practically to start with. They have a facility out in South Dakota, big wind farm out there and we're not going to buck up against the limits any too soon that I'm aware of.

All right.

Yeah.

So just to make sure I'm understanding it, so it's about a one cent premium to the utility power supply, but if you sign up, you have access to community solar, so you could actually pretty much break even?

Yeah.

That's a pretty good deal. Yeah.

Okay. It's kind of a unique little design, the way the program is. As I say, it's not going to scale like the CCA or anything like that, but I think the way they've structured it, it offers a good opportunity to sort of campaign on it and get people back. And it's so critical now that everything else has kind of been run up against so many obstacles.

And this would account for your whole power supply industry? your whole electric power supply?

So as I said, they do have different levels to make it easier, but you can also check a box and say, I want to match my power supply exactly. Then then then you've got to put your kind of number in. They bounce off of kind of they get your history. And then they, they plot it out so that you get exactly to match your usage. So that's available too. Yeah.

And then you can cancel any time.

Yes.

So that's compared to other sources. If you wanted to go out on the market and go to and buy green energy, that's a. That's a very nice not to have a completely flexible.

No, it's not like a 1 year term. I think the, the, the price of the Rex after a year. We'll come back and, you know, see where that is and people would get a notice if it's going to change. But, um, you know, you can leave at any time.

Thank you. So an average household, let's say you don't do the community solar, what would the cost be, you know, to, you know, that your bill, and is it, it just appears on your bill with NYSEG or Con Ed?

Right so up here in northern Westchester, I think it's fair to say it's probably closer to the, the large house. Uh, which I think they have that, um, well, what did I say? Well, 12 dollars, I think, or 10, 10 or 12 dollars a month. Yeah. Okay. I mean, at a at a penny, a kilowatt hour. Basically, say, a 1000 kilowatt hours is 10 bucks. And a typical house, unless you are really heavy electric user, because you've got electric resistance heat or something like that, then it could be more.

So you sign up to buy some green energy to offset your energy use. You could buy the full amount to offset your whole amount, or you could just say, I only want to spend $5 a month on green energy and use less. But it's all going towards sort of A town wide goal of if people want to participate in that, they don't have an option. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. You're you're right. That does give people an option to like. Well, it's almost like the equivalent of the 50% option we had before writing away. Like, well, yeah, I want to watch my budget, but but I want to participate also at some level. So, yeah.

And sustainable Westchester is doing this with lots of communities in our county. Is there a benefit to doing it as a group? Are we getting a better deal than if we, if someone just went to an escrow? I guess Mitch said, you don't have to get signed into a contract, but is there also a benefit to participating in this county wide effort?

I don't think it's going to bring the price down just like the didn't shave a lot. It was like, you know, people expected. Oh, if we go from 10,000 people to 20,000, the market's kind of the market. But what it did in this case is it made it possible at all, I think, which is to say, like, an individual. Can't easily just go out and buy reps or not a lot of ways to do that. So it's a facilitation more than like, some kind of discount. Okay.

Great and it's, um. Has the billing for, I guess community solar there was like a lag and getting the credits at some point is that smoothed out more. Um.

Yeah, this doesn't have to go through all that. Okay. Like, it's not connected to the utility. Okay. So it's in that respect and it's going to be pretty rock solid.

Okay.

Okay. Great. Any other questions comments. Okay, well, great. We look forward to sharing the information with the community that this is available.

Great. So I'll connect with you all about just about how to, you know, details of how to deploy, but, you know, now everybody knows about it.

Okay, well, much easier than CCA. There's no contract.

There's no, you can just share it with people. Yeah, other than that wreck description can. You know, I, I totally understand, but. Once we get out of that, we're in good shape.

Well, we do I miss the because the, our, our electricity rates would have stayed flat as opposed to being subject to a lot of utility this year.

But, yeah, we, we are still in morning and, uh, and this is not the, the end. We are continue to work with a lot of people to. See how we can go further than this, because we, we obviously there's a lot of work to be done still. So we're talking to, you know, Senator park and. All the municipalities and everything about those, those next steps.

So, well, we, we look for it. We also, I assume we could get reports on how many people are participating or how other communities are. Doing with this, and try to encourage people to participate and see how well Bedford can do with buying green power. Great.

Great. Thanks a lot, Dan. Appreciate your time. Thanks, Dan. Okay.

Okay, we move to the consent agenda. We have request by controller nearly to approve abstract claims and paid priors in the amount of 1,138,650 dollars and 19 cents. We have a number 2, the acceptance of monthly reports request by. W, commissioner, when to extend the concrete sidewalk and curb contract with contracting through December 14th, 2026 request by the town board to consider. Request that the town for consider resolution, approving a stormwater access and maintenance agreement with about of Bedford for their property at 220 South Bedford road in Bedford. Number 5, we have requested by the town clerk for a retroactive approval of block party on lakeside road on August 8th, 2026. We have a request by the town clerk to approve and co-sponsor Bedford Historical Society's flannel and fire event on the village screen on September 26th, 2026. Number 7, we have a request by the town clerk to approve and co-sponsor the Katona Chamber holiday lighting on November 29th, 2026. And number 8, we have a request to consider authorizing the use of Bedford Hills lots 4 and 7 and Woodbridge Katona lot number 3 parking lots for An organization called events to remember that is helping with the rev fest to 50. it's the county's rev fest on October 24th and 25th award pound rich. This is to provide shuttles and parking to that event and word pound rich. It's subject to receipt and approval of required insurance documentation and execution of the hold harmless agreement. Do we have a motion to approve those 8 items on the consent agenda? So moved 2nd, any discussion. All in favor? Aye. So moved. I don't know if the new executive director of the Bedford Historical Society is here to comment on flannel and fire, but we are looking forward to that event. We do have a pretty strict Bedford Village green policy on approving events on the green that was discussed and approved a few years ago. It's You know, big events like that are reserved for not for profit organizations that are raising money to support the organizations. And so plan on fire is 1 of those events to support that for historical society.

And it's a lot of fun and tickets are on sale now.

Okay. Moving to new business, we have a request from DPW Commissioner Kevin Wynn to modify previous approval to purchase three dump trucks to allow the purchase of a second under scraper truck for a net increase of $45,345.69. Hi, Kevin. Thank you for joining us.

Good evening, everyone.

We'd love to hear more about this.

Happy to tell you.

Thank you.

So the previous approval, and thank you for that, was for three trucks, one of which was an underscraper, which is the truck with a blade below it that creates the dirt roads. Unfortunately, we had a second underscraper truck fail recently, so we need to replace a second one. The lead time on these trucks is about 15 to 18 months. So my request is that instead of purchasing one underscraper truck and one kind of regular dump truck, That we switch the 2nd, 1 to an under scraper truck that those trucks also perform a full dump truck function, but they also scrape the roads. So, the net increase is 45,345 dollars and 69 cents. And I noted in here that that would be funded from 2 different accounts 1 from capital and the other from expense. So we have adequate funds for it and the truck will be obviously useful in maintaining our dirt roads.

Okay, fantastic. So we have a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Any discussion, questions? So I have a question. So if the other underscraper truck is now disabled, are we going to be able to keep up with maintenance of the dirt roads while we wait for these to come in?

We will. We have a road grader and three underscraper trucks that we can continue to use. So we typically have five with four sections that we scrape in and one being a spare. Okay. So yes, we're good, but the other ones are also old. Kind of as a side story, with COVID, the length of time it takes to get equipment has really gone up significantly. You would think that supply chain would have kind of figured it out by now, but it seems like first it was the trucks, then it was the bodies. So it used to be seven or eight months. Now it's double that. The prices have gone up drastically. So it's really been a bit of a change to our capital planning and approval process. So frankly, we're a little bit behind. Okay, so this is this is catch up and this will put us in a better place as far as our fleet status. Great.

Good to know.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Sure. All in favor. Hi motion carries and we also have requests from Christian to award a contract for water supply improvements to the farms and old posts road water districts to American veteran construction. The amount is 1Million, 361 dollars. I mean, 361,020 dollars. So we'd love to hear about the contract award. I think on the attachment, there's a pretty wide range of bids that came in.

Sure. So perhaps more exciting than dump trucks, I guess, depends on your perspective. We're moving forward with the Bedford Village water supply project. So far, we've obtained easements from both property owners that we need to implement the project. We've installed three wells, tested them, and had them approved through the county health department. And this project is now to install the necessary water mains and electrical to power the wells and bring the water into the system from the wells as well as a small treatment building. And as you mentioned, there was a big range in the bids. The low bid from American Veterans Construction, the contractor is qualified. Most of their work will be done by a subcontractor who we've worked with before, does quality work, and is comfortable with their price. So we've talked to them about that and actually worked with them to negotiate that price down to $1,361.20. Able to start the work in the next few months, we're finalizing approval of the county health department. We still need their permit to build the facility. We've been back and forth with comments and that's moving along, but wanted to get this contract awarded. So we can start with submittals and look to have this completed by the 1st quarter of next year. At which point we then be able to no longer utilize the existing farms water supply, which has contamination and switch to this supply, which has been tested and. Is not in the status of having that concern as far as high levels of.

Fantastic. Okay. Do we have a motion to approve? I'll make motion to approve 2nd questions. No. Okay, and the treatment building is on David Lapsley. The wells are at the end of David Lapsley?

Correct. The treatment building is on David Lapsley. The wells are in the Guard Hill Preserve, which is owned by the Westchester Land Trust, about 500 to 1000 feet off of the end of David Lapsley.

So, once the treatment building is installed, the pipes that connect, am I saying the right word? Pipes? would go basically to where the wells are now, or there's already existing? I think I've asked this before, but I can't remember.

So there's already a water main that runs from Well, part of the system basically is David Lapsley. So there's already a water main there. It actually runs up to the tank that's on at the top of David Lapsley adjacent to Sunnyfield property further up the hill. So there's already a water main in the road. This is connecting the new wells to that. And then those wells would either pump up to the tank or out to the system, depending on system demands.

So, it's not a lot of road disturbance.

No, the disturbance is only in the cul-de-sac to cross the cul-de-sac basically. There's also a new NYSEG service, but that's above ground. So NYSEG will need to make some enhancements on the road for the electrical system.

Okay, great. Any other questions?

Great to see this move forward.

Yeah, exactly. And great that you've got to negotiate the price down and that it's coming closer to what we have in grant funding to accomplish.

Yeah, unfortunately, the budget is very tight on this, but we'll make it work.

Okay, all in favor motion carries. Thank you very much. Thanks everyone. Great. Thank you. Okay. We have a request by thrive alliance to approve the coordinator agreement with Jessica new felt for a period of 6 months subject to find attorney review and approval and it can be renewed after that time by the town supervisor. And we have Sally corporate Turco here with Jessica to just say a couple of words.

thank you for joining us thank you for having us good evening everyone i am the town i'm one of the three town of bedford appointees to the thrive board also joined by susan ferris rights and sharon kennedy null um and i currently am the board chair for thrive bedford louisborough pound ridge drug abuse prevention and mental health alliance and we want to thank particularly supervisor calvez because she's provided constant support and encouragement to thrive And also we're very excited to have town board member, Bobby Bittker joining as the liaison for the town of Bedford and attending our meetings. She's already helped significantly with some outreach that we're trying to do. So we appreciate that. And we also want to thank Brian Keneally, because the town is our fiscal sponsor and he as town controller has worked hand in hand with us and we, with regard to the federal grant reporting, and we really appreciate him and his staff. In time for the school year, and as we complete our second year of what we hope will be a five year federal drug free communities grant, we're happy to introduce our new coalition coordinator, Jessica Neufeld. She will focus on evidence-based activities to combat misuse of alcohol, marijuana, and other substances. She's a town resident with over 10 years of experience in public health, project management, research, and grants. Her activities for Thrive will include such things as working with our youth ambassador program, which is in the two high schools and also middle school students can participate. Generating activity with our sector partners, which range from members of law enforcement to people in the business community. We're planning a social media campaign focused on reinforcing positive behaviors. We also look to advance parent organization and school leadership engagement this fall. We hope to recruit more members and volunteers to thrive, embark on additional research, and at some of the local festivals, present Hidden in Plain Sight, or sometimes known as Hidden Mischief, which is a parents-only tent, including a fake teen bedroom where drug paraphernalia is hidden in plain sight. I don't want to say more because I don't want to give teens tips on hiding stuff. Okay. Back to Jessica. We're very, very excited about her being appointed tonight as a 1099 consulting Coalition Coordinator to Thrive who will work 20 to 40 hours a week. She has worked for West Chester Medical Center as a clinical research and graduate medical program coordinator. Prior to that, she was program manager for the social intervention group at Columbia University School of Social Work for their healing community study funded by NIDA and NIH. In that role, she worked with 16 New York County's prevention coalitions. Before that, she was with New York City Health and Hospitals as a public health advisor. She served CUNY School of Public Health as implementation specialist in their Center for Innovation in Mental Health. For the Institute for Family Health New York, she was special projects coordinator for behavioral health. She holds an MPH from Emory in policy and management, and a graduate certificate in gender leadership and public policy from UMass Boston. So she's obviously well qualified. Thank you to her for coming on board. Thank you tonight to the board for appointing her. And we also want to recognize Isabella Pechtel, our first ever coalition coordinator who has moved on to a job with the town. I give you Jessica to just say a few words. Thanks again.

Thank you, Sally. Thank you for your leadership.

On the steering committee, thank you Sally and I'm excited for this opportunity to be the new coordinator for thrive. I hope I could follow in Isabella's footsteps and I'm looking forward to working with Bedford as well as the other towns. So thank you so much for this appointment and I look forward to working with you in the fall and the rest of the year.

Well, welcome. Thank you. We're so happy to have you in this position. We look forward to helping to share the information, the events and the opportunities that Thrive is going, especially going into the school year. So please let us know how we can help in any way that we can. Thank you. Thank you. So I'll make a motion that we approve the agreement. Second. All in favor? Any discussion? All in favor. All right. Okay. Next on the agenda. We have a resolution approving 1, a lease of homeland power subject to an easement agreement with New York City Department of environmental protection. Both of these are with respect to a large wireless facility at the property located at 1 maple Avenue, which is on basically 135 near the reservoir. Do we have a motion to approve motion to approve? 2nd, any discussion. We've been working on this for quite some time has not done a lot of these types of easement agreements before. So it was a slow process to get them to, um. Work with all of us on an easement agreement on a certain just small portion of their parcel to enable homeland towers to enter into a lease agreement with the town to then build a facility on that property. If you'll recall, I don't remember. Maybe it was like a year ago. We had the Wireless Facilities Working Group worked with Homeland. There was a proposal to put a big cell tower at the American Legion. Our Wireless Facility said, wait, maybe we can find something better than that. That's not exactly a great spot for that. It's in a low area, and it's also kind of right when you enter Katona. It's right next to the Art Museum. It's right next to the Veterans Legion. And so we started trying to see if DEP would Come to the table and let us lease their property and they've been phenomenal. They've been really great. And now there's still a process with approvals through New York City. But it sounds like we've done all the hard work that hopefully now it will just get approved and this can move forward. I also have to say, I, I hear from people. almost every week about the lack of cell service in our town so this is certainly not going to solve all the problems but uh you always see people pulled over on the side of the road on 35 um because they get off 684 and they don't want to lose their call and they're heading down 35 there it's because of there's no cell service there so um that will you know be a good location to fill that gap um so comments

And Madam Supervisor, just to clarify for the public, the Planning Board back in February of 2025 did do the analysis under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, issued a negative determination, which is part of the record here. And the Planning Board also issued a site plan approval with respect to the wireless facility. So that has been undertaken and then just to clarify only the lease agreement with Homeland Towers is subject to the permissive referendum. The easement agreement itself with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection is not subject to a permissive referendum, but we will, there'll be publication of the permissive referendum by the town clerk's office following if the town board adopts the resolution approving the lease agreement.

Thank you. Okay, any questions or comments from the board?

No, this is good. We're excited.

We need the service.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's people forget we don't. People are always mad at me that they don't sell service and it is not I am not on the. I'm not in the corporate world, um, providing the service. There are provider, there are carriers that are providers who do this and it's certainly a business decision. We can't force these companies to do this. Um, what we can do is help try to make sure that they are going in the places in our town that are least intrusive to our residents that don't destroy the. The character in some way, which I think a lot of people feel is is, um. you know, unavoidable with these things, but there's a balance and we think there's a good way to do it. We've been happy to be able to work with these companies so that we can try to help them. They have, you know, they have a very strong case to be made that they are allowed to do this and the federal law says they're allowed to do this, but they have to work with us on a good spot to do it in. So we've really worked hard to try to find the right locations and they've been really cooperative and helpful in understanding our needs as well. We're not just saying put one here. It's a big collaboration. They have a lot of property rights to do it and we have some ability to help move it to where we want it to be. This has been a great partnership with DEP to get it in this location. It's already very disturbed. Up in that area, it didn't doesn't require a lot of trees to come down and I think it's going to. Not really be seen from a lot of homes locations. I don't even think I don't even know if you'll see it from 35 that gets really kind of hidden there. Okay. All in favor motion carries. All right. Okay. We have a request to adopt a resolution to engage a real estate attorney on complex real estate matters. Um, we're, if we do move forward with any negotiations with respect to, um, the train station and getting a tenant in the train station, modifying our lease or potentially even trying to, um. gain ownership of that property uh we've are teeing up a real estate attorney who has worked with the mta before in giving us some advice on how to move forward with that so we're not at a point where we're doing that yet but we are trying to engage the mta in some of those conversations so that we can Make some improvements to the building and get a tenant in there and there's several paths forward. So I'll make a motion to approve the professional services agreement with this attorney case. We want to use their services. 2nd questions. All in favor?

Aye. Motion carries.

Okay. We have request by the tax receiver Melanie Krebs to grant an extension for up to 5 business days for payment of taxes by seniors who receive a senior exemption or enhanced our exemption. That would extend their payment of the school tax bill until October 7th and the. For the 1st installment and to February 8th for the 2nd, 2027 for the 2nd installment. Do you have a motion to approve?

Any questions? Comments?

It's a nice thing that we generally do.

Yeah, we always do this. And we have for years, but we have to do it each time individually. And it can't be just a standing. Okay, yeah, right.

Okay, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. We have request by building inspector to set a public hearing on a local law to amend the town code chapter 52.1 article 1, the Bedford energy code. This is just a set of public hearing for September 8th, 2026 at 6 PM. Do we have a motion to approve?

So moved 2nd.

So, this is really the, we had the bed for the energy stretch code, which was more restrictive or more onerous than the state code. The state code has now caught up to the stretch code. So we are now just going to follow the state code. Um, and the only thing that is different about our code, which is what we've been doing since 2012, which is to require for a residential, uh, full renovation, um, a hers reader there there in this energy code. There are 3 different paths for getting certified that you are in compliance with the code and, um, our building department. Uh, would like to see only 1 path used, which is that the hers Raider comes in and does that analysis and provides the report. So our code has had that for a long time and, um, we'll continue to have that. We also have an affidavit that goes along with our code that, uh. Applicants certify that they've done all the things they're supposed to do to meet the code and that they have also followed our rules on being solar ready and charging ready. I think and that they're using hers Raiders. So, which is the standing this, the affidavit we've had under the stretch code will continue under the. Current New York state code, I miss anything.

We've just the, the affidavit requirement has been added to the local law just to clarify for anybody who's applying if they ever question having to submit the affidavit. It's now part of it will be part of our local law. And then the supervisor is correct. The only aspect of the law that's more restrictive than the state is dealing with the residential compliance path. And so once the local laws adopted, we'll have to apply to the state to get the more restrictive compliance path for the residential approved, which we, which is what we did last time. And we adopted the stretch code as well. So we don't expect any issues with the state and being more restrictive in that aspect of the, the energy covered.

So thank you. Okay. Do we have motion to approve?

So moved 2nd questions, so I suggest I make sure I make sure I'm understanding it. So it's, it would be for, like, 100% renovation of a residence or I think it's a new or a new. Would it be also be for a new construction? It's for new and substantial. Okay.

I'm not sure how substantial is calculated, but I don't think it's only 100%. Okay. Right. I don't believe it's I don't believe it's only 100%.

Okay. I just was trying to clarify that it was a substantial plus new construction. Right.

Substantial maybe substantial renovation. Right.

We can clarify that it's 100% of the existing thermal envelope. So, I know I would have whatever that.

Okay. Okay.

And the thermal envelope components of a home that separate the condition spaces from unconditioned spaces, ambient conditions or outdoors. So I don't think it includes. Certain certain things like basements and that kind of thing. But, um, so.

Okay, but that there's a calculation for all that.

Okay. But you're you're correct. Um.

Okay, any other questions and the new. State law has been in effect for a while.

We just went into December 31st, 2025. so we're catching up. It's being applied now, but we need to get this done.

We have the law saying what we're actually doing. Yes. Okay. All in favor. All right motion carries. Okay, we have a request to set a public hearing on the local outstandingly moratorium on battery energy storage systems over 81 kilowatt hours for September 8th, 2026 at 605 PM. Do we have a motion to approve? So, 2nd. This is to keep this extending this moratorium as our working group is still working on a draft model ordinance or draft ordinance. We had a good meeting with, um. Uh. Consultant who used to be a and has hazardous materials experts in New York City. He met with a lot of the members of our fire departments as well as those who own the battery at the GMC dealer. It's a. A battery that would be subject to, you know, if any future developments would be subject to our ordinance, and they trained the fire department on how they would respond to an emergency. If there were 1 at that battery location, they had a lot of good questions. It was a lot. And then they went back to the Bedford Hills fire department and had a training with. The and also the hazardous materials. Expert for Orange County, New York, which is where they've had some battery fires. And so he talked about what that was like, and how those were handled. And I think answered a lot of questions and put a lot of people's minds at ease about how those things, those went. It's highly unlikely that batteries fires occur with these types of installations, but From a fire department perspective, they need to think that way that something could happen. So that was a good session. The working group will be meeting again with other stakeholders in September. The Westchester business council is asked to meet with the group about their interest in battery energy storage. And then I think. This hopefully will be the last extension of this so that the working group can present something to the town board. A draft law to be considered for adoption that would regulate our zone, you know, these currently restrictively, but in a way that avoids. Being sued by a battery energy storage company, which just happened in Yorktown, I guess they propose, you know, they banned them and then a court said, you can't ban them. This is like a public utility. You have to figure out another way to do this. So.

But there's a, there's a pot, you can get a use variance as a public utility. It's a different standard than the, than the usual use variance standards. So they applied the public utility use variance standard to battery energy storage systems. So that opens up if even if you restrict it, there, there can be an application for that use variance, but it's helpful to have. other you know to be able to um have other areas of the municipality where they can be located to rebut that they need to have it in another in an area where it's restricted so right right it's similar to the cell towers right there they have certain rights that you know if we are reasonable with some restrictions that work for our town um

you know, we might be able to work together. So we will continue working on that. And we will have a public hearing, I guess. Did we vote? All in favor? Time.

You have to vote.

I think the time is, it's on September 8th at 6.05, right? At 6.05, yes. Okay, yeah.

Okay, we have a request from Comptroller Ryan Camilli for approval to enter into an agreement with Elisa Alamo, the former senior bookkeeper, to come back and train a new employee in the Comptroller's office. Do we have a motion to approve?

So moved. Second.

Any comments? All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. We have a request to approve a license agreement with Oh, the property owner at 1, Adam street to enable the installation of an art mural on their property located in Bedford Hills and I will make a motion to approve 2nd. The, this will be funded through some of our remaining funding funding. It's economic vibrancy efforts to beautify and in live in downtown Bedford Hills to attract businesses and visitors and neighbors. Um, to community gathering spaces, so this has been done in a lot of communities to paint art murals. Um, so it's a concept we're going to try and bedford Hills on this wall that faces the train station. That's. Does know what going on could be more interesting and we have negotiated with the owner of the building to allow us to do this under the terms of this agreement.

Any questions comments.

All in favor I motion carries and now we have a request to point the following residents to the bedford hills mural selection committee. Anthony Becker Ellen, Cohen, Rosemary, Lee, Dave liberty, Terry, paladina, Lisa, Spano, Fran, Tucker and Jennifer reach. I'll make the motion to approve second. Any comments questions.

So, I just, I know that there's, there's been people have been submitting as a proposals or just curious to hear an update on that.

Yeah, we publicized a request for information for artists to submit a letter of interest, their experience, what they, their costs would be and where they're from and some examples of their work. so there's no hard and fast sort of here's what we would do but more like the vibe that they are giving we had 40 we've had 47 uh wow submissions um from like all over the world so there are this is uh i think now this committee will develop a rubric for how to think about this um i think we've we've put forward in the in that that we would pay an artist a stipend um of about five thousand dollars to do the work and we have um roughly you know 2500 to put towards supplies although we you know so we're not going to hire someone from portugal and fly them over to do the mural so we can probably um Put their application aside, you know, pretty quickly, but, um. I think we'll the committee will work to. Narrow this down to 3 and is the goal and then speak with those 3 about. what, you know, sort of what Bedford Hills wants to see in terms of a placemaking mural that speaks to the spirit of Bedford Hills. And then those three artists will produce some sketches and more concretely what they would want to do on that space. And then there will be a selection of one of those and the The property owner does want to have a say in what goes on the wall as well. So they will have a review of the final 3. So, it's not an easy task with 47 applications, but we look forward to, you know, this is a good group that represents a lot of different sort of stakeholders in Bedford Hills. And I think they will do a good job of communicating the right thing for Bedford Hills. right okay all in favor aye motion carries okay we have a request um By the board chairs of these various committees to accept the resignations of committee members who have notified them that they can no longer serve both due to busy schedules and work commitments. Lynn Becker is resigning from the conservation board and Bill O'Neill from the housing committee and we are moving forward to recruit to fill their vacancies. So, I guess the motion to accept these resignations.

Did you make I made 1? I made the most 2nd.

Okay. All in favor. And then I would like to make a request to set a work session with the town board on September 15th, 2026 at 6. P. M. Yeah, with no meeting that day, just a work session where we can sit down and. Look at the draft sign code as well as we're anticipating getting the recommendations for new local laws from the conservation board on September 8th. So this would give us an opportunity to look through that and determine how we might want to move forward with any potential changes that they've recommended so that we can stay on the timeline 6 month moratorium. So I'll make a motion to approve 2nd. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Okay, we have an opportunity for comments. If anyone who is on the Zoom would like to make a comment, please raise your hand, your little yellow hand, or whatever hand you've chosen for yourself. I will let you in. Okay. okay um we have uh board member announcements i mean i just want to say thank you to the police department for national night out it was a fabulous event it was very well attended it was um so many police officers were there interacting with the community uh lots of people came you know walked road scooters lots of kids and families They had the school of rock and the bed for Hills fire department was there. It was a really and the weather was great. So it was, it turned out to be a really nice evening and great effort to connect with the community, which is part of being a safe community is having people have trust in and communication lines open with the police. So, thank you for that. And also camps wrapped up the end of last week. We had tiny tots team travel camp. Camps at all 3 parks, state camps at all 3 parks and really a great season a little bit of rain. But the DJ Goldman, who was coordinating that with did a great job really good at communicating with parents when things changed or instance happened. So that was a really great and really great experience for the kids who come to work. At the camps as well, we have 250 seasonal staff and over 500 campers. So really a great effort by them and the pools are still open to labor day. And that's those have been really running smoothly this year with Greg. Why am I blanking on Greg's last name? Greg. Greg. From the Recreation Works Department. So they've done a great job. Okay. Any other announcements?

Food Truck Friday is next Friday night. And just so exciting that today our community center opened in its totally renovated new home. Yes. Yeah, beautiful new renovation. Can't wait to go donate some clothes and see that beautiful new facility that's going to make such a bigger difference.

Awesome. Okay, and the boat program has been expanded to 7 days a week, Monday through Friday. It's now available on the afternoons 3 to 6 PM through the end. I think just through the end of summer, but we'll have to see how it goes. But while people are home with their kids, they want to go out in a boat and go fishing that is now available. Okay, there being no further business. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.