Mayor and Board of Trustees - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

All right. I'd like to make a motion to open the September 17th work session of Village Board. Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please be seated. The first item on the agenda this evening is a public hearing that was going to be held regarding a wetlands permit application submitted by the Ozinski family on behalf of Widows Hole Oyster Company, LLC, for the property located at 307 Flint Street, Greenport, New York, 11944. Suffolk County tax map number 1001-06-08-06. Please be advised that this hearing is being held in abeyance. There were some missing items in the application, so it will be rescheduled at a further date to be determined. The next item on the agenda is Chief Wayne Miller to speak on behalf of the fire department. You're welcome to join us at the table, Chief. First off, I want to make a point to thank you and everybody for, I know it was quite a bit of effort over the Driftwood Cove complex today, which is one of many things you guys are dealing with. We have a number of Village employees who live in Driftwood Cove. I am very sad to report that one of them lost his home today. We don't yet know the severity of it. But obviously a tough situation and we appreciate all your work on it.

I was at work. I came late, but Chief Man Warren handled everything. The outcome was not as bad as it could have been. They were displaced. The Red Cross was called, and so they're going to look into getting these people accommodations.

Yep, they're already on it, which is good news.

Thank you. So we've been talking a lot about the rescue squad and the billing to recoup some monies. Yep. So we had a conference call with the company that does that. They explained it to the board of wardens. We want you as a board to speak with them and do a Zoom meeting or however you want to handle it. But this is, I don't know if she gave you the information, but that's the information. So like any of the drugs and stuff that we have to buy, any equipment is going to be billed out to insurance companies. And then it would have no effect on people's insurance. It would have no effect. They would never get bills. But that guy will explain it all to you. I'm not going to go into it right now.

Great, we'll set something up. Thank you.

Right. The other thing was the boat. Your email, thank you for that.

Yeah, we'll have a resolution on next week to approve moving forward on that.

Okay, and then one other thing that came up was that speed bump off history. So that's a bit of an issue for one of our fire trucks, and they had an issue with that motor rescue call the other day with the gator pulling the inflatable. The 834 cannot get over that hump without ripping the bottom of the truck apart. So I don't know if you guys want to do something about that, and... Something needs to be done.

Okay. Well, we can schedule a separate conversation to review that. It was built within normal standards of speed.

All right. But A34 is a special truck that fit in the building, so it's a lower profile than all the other trucks here. So that's an issue for that truck if we have to respond down there.

i mean we can go down sixth street right and come around but i mean it could delay response it's just it's kind of a problem for us so okay well we've we've had a lot i mean the reason it's there is because there were a significant amount of issues with speeding down that area that the police were unfortunately not able to handle you know they did their best but we can't position somebody down there all the time we ended up with a car driving into a neighbor's car down there and some issues with kids nearly getting hit But we can schedule it. Pardon me? That happens all over the city. It was particular.

This guy's been speeding up 4th Avenue every day. I mean, they don't stop at a stop. Sometimes I see it constantly.

Well, if you do, I would encourage you to call the police department and request they place an officer over there and set a speed trap for him because we've done that a number of other times. It's had results.

Wayne, can I just take it one step further? I mean, you mentioned two pieces of equipment. Are there any other equipment? How do the ambulances handle that speed trap?

I haven't gotten any complaints about that. Especially the new one sits a little bit higher, so I don't think that's an issue.

I think maybe it would be a good idea to maybe check with all of them and see if there are issues that just haven't come to your attention. Because I can't see moving forward fixing something and then all of a sudden something crops up.

We had so much discussion here on that speed bump. I kind of thought the whole world knew about it, but apparently my fire department was not really... No, I had no idea until they brought it to my attention.

One day they came up and they said A3-4 came to go with that hump. They don't want to drop it. They're afraid they're going to rip the whole bottom of the truck. So we already replaced one oil pan, so that was the truck that got damaged.

This is the one that was taken up to a fair or whatever it was that got damaged?

Yeah, that's the same thing.

Because it's cut lower definitively under the garage door at...

Does it not keep normal driving standards? Is it that low? I mean, it sounds like it.

It's a custom-built truck, so it fits in the building. It sits a little lower. But there should be, like, a legal clearance. It's a legal truck. just sits a little bit lower, that's all.

I mean, if it was widened, wouldn't that wear the hump? Because now it's kind of a short hump. Right, you can just flatten it out. Because that's how I remember speed humps being made. It might be that the fire truck doesn't meet normal specifications. In any event, we can take a look at this.

offline instead of a time review with you patrick just one other thing is uh thank you for uh what happened with 409 on south street um but i will tell you that there are still people in the house you should call the police immediately if you see i've been documented and uh okay but i know council said if there's anybody witnessing you need to call the police because there's a no entry order on the house so the south of town police aware of that yes Okay. They've been working side by side with the village on it.

So my understanding was if they're on the property, they're allowed to be on the property, and they can go in and out of the house, but they're not supposed to be sleeping there?

They cannot be in the house.

Not at all? Nope.

Okay. That was not my understanding. And I asked council to clarify that.

There's no entry order. They were able to move their things out. So council's not here right now.

If I see them on the property, I'll call the police.

Absolutely. No problem. And you have council's phone number. They're not here yet. You're welcome to talk to them about it separately.

Okay.

Anything else? No, that's it. How are we doing on recruitment? it's tough man we got a few we got a few new applications we got a few new members we had had some conversations with the last team before you were elevated to chief i'd love to get those started again and see what we can do to help get the word out i mean we've got a brand new village website we could easily create a link and a page with information on it we can translate it into spanish as well We could include some things in the Village Newsletter.

We're hoping to do a little bit more with fire prevention this year. So I asked Mattituck and Cudgell if they have a fire prevention trail. Yeah. They own it together. So I had Sue draft a letter. I signed it. We sent it out to them. We'll wait for a response to see if we can possibly borrow it, bring it here. And then we can put the kids through. We used to do that years ago. And so we'd smoke out the room in the back and the kids would crawl through. Right. So we're looking to do that. Sue set up a... a CPR class up there to show the kids how to do CPR, but they're not going to get certified, but she's just going to demonstrate and just give them an idea how that works.

Well, Halloween is coming also, and you have the opportunity with being in the center. Hopefully, they'll chuckle me like it's been in the past where the kids can decorate and they were giving out stuff. Maybe you could expand upon it for adults.

We've got a month and a half to Halloween. It'd be great if there's something that could be done as a handout that we can certainly help create a graphic and have you guys hand it out there to folks that are attending. I know it's a big issue for you guys, and I want to do whatever we can to help because as the department continues to age and you've got others that are on the list, I look at it every month, you don't attend calls for whatever reason.

And it's not just Greenville, by the way.

No, no, I realize this. I'm just saying I want to do whatever we can to help And spread the word, because I think there's a lot of folks who don't realize the opportunity exists to serve.

Maybe this weekend, not this weekend, I don't know if I'm going to be here this week, but when we go to put the poster out from the bid, puts out the advertisement for Halloween, maybe we can put some kind of work in there for recruitment or something. Come see something, if we could get something together. Okay. Maybe Monday or Tuesday, you know, you talk. If I do go away, I'll be back on Monday. So, okay. All right. The captain decided he needed to get his wife out of here.

And then the only other thing was we spoke last night, and I think you got me followed up in Sioux Falls with the LOSAP. Yeah. And expanding that to 50 years.

Yeah, so the department has approved an initial study, right? Right. That PENFLEX is going to do it, I think. So it's a multi-step process. I emailed you about this yesterday and today. So that's just the beginning. i need to get information from sue i think i saw that proposal at awards meeting but yes i think i need to bring it to the board yeah so ultimately

The study needs to be done. You guys need to approve and make a recommendation to the village board. And then what has to happen is there has to be a referendum by the voters. And that's not something we can do overnight. Obviously, if you're able to get the study and get all this teed up in time for our next election, which is late March, we could conceivably get it on that schedule. Otherwise, they would have to wait a year, or we'd have to fund having a special election for it.

So whatever you guys can do to- I think that she got a PO from Adam today. Did she get a PO for you? Yes. For $900 or something? Yes. So that's the first part of it.

Was there any indication in there how long it was going to take for the study?

There was not. I did reach out to Penflex directly. I left a message I haven't heard back yet. Okay.

Chief, does this involve the investment portion of it, or it just involves the actual reporting and the age and whatever?

Yeah, so it would raise the amount of years for eligibility of 50, and then it would also raise for you another $20.

Okay, because the investment points on our end, that's why I'm asking, because the Village Treasury needs to kind of know what that's going on, because we made the contribution.

I think the study that Penn Fudge is going to do is going to cover all that.

Yeah, it's going to cover all that. It's going to be all the perspectives, and then we're going to bring that to you, and you guys can review it. So we're at the first step with the appeal that was cut today.

Okay, because the last time we did it, the village board had knowledge of the investment portion of it, but if there's a study coming in, that's fine.

Yeah, they're doing all that. They're taking care of all that.

How many years ago was this? When was the last update?

Five, six, maybe ten. You're saying it's a referendum of all village voters?

Yes. Yes. Because we had to hold a special election and it was in August, if I remember correctly.

I think it's about- Three years, yeah, so it doesn't have to be in this next election cycle.

We're going to try to get it together.

Yeah, I mean, if we're able to do it this election cycle, that'd be great. Otherwise, if there's no immediate urgency, we wouldn't need to expend for a special election, and it could be done in the 2028 election.

Thank you. Great turnout from the group. Yeah, you guys did a good job today. Yeah, a lot of people.

It was nice. Sabo came and helped out. He's married. Yeah, it could have been worse, but thank God it worked out.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you. All right, with that, I will turn it over to Ms. Hall for our clerk's report. Feels like you're further away over there.

It does, a little distant tonight. Good evening, everyone. So I will start my report with some announcements. Village Hall will be closed. I know this feels a little far out, but the next work session is after this date. So Village Hall will be closed on Monday, October 12th, in observance of Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day. The fire department will conduct the annual hydrant testing on October 25th, 2026. So this is usually the last Sunday in October between 9 and noon. There will be a legal notice for this. As much as we notify the public, it still gives people a little bit of unease when this happens because obviously the discoloration of the water, so just something for the community to be aware of. Our deer management program is actively, we are actively taking applications through September 25th. The lottery will be conducted probably on September 25th so that we can hand out permits. We will be issuing 15 permits for the 2026-2027 season, which runs from October 1st, 2026 through January 31st, 2027. Applications are on the website or you can pick them up at Village Hall to apply. My first resolution is for our annual tree and stump removal bid. So this is, again, this is an annual bid that we do in the fall. There are a series of annual bids that will be going out for various services in the village. This is, again, the first of that batch. Next up, our public assembly applications. So we got a public assembly application from Greenport Union Free School District for the annual homecoming parade, which they would like to host on October 16th. The parade begins at 6 PM. The next public assembly application was submitted by Rich Vandenberg on behalf of Greenport Harbor Brewing Company. for the annual Oyster Festival. So the desired event date is October 11th from noon to 6 p.m. So as like prior years, they are asking for a road closure on Carpenter Street. Between Bay Avenue and where the Village Jailhouse is, it's often pushed out a little further just because it's an awkward location for the road closure. But this is the same request as prior years. The applicant is also requesting a waiver of the alcohol prohibition during the hours of the Oyster Festival. On carpenter street, and then the final request regarding public assembly applications is a request from Warren butter chuck on behalf of the women. Women men's softball league, they would like to extend their season Monday. September 21st. Tuesday, September 22nd, Monday, September 28th and Tuesday, September 29th. There was some rainy days in their season, so they are looking to just continue on for a few more weeks. And the last of my report is just a list of public notices or legal notices that have gone out. That concludes my report. Are there any questions?

So for the softball league, we need to approve this tonight.

That would be good. Yes, sir.

Okay.

I did not add that. There are a batch of resolutions that Jenna asked to have included in tonight's meeting. So this will need to be an additional one. Okay.

Any other questions for Canvas?

with my resolutions tonight. My first one being the board authorizing myself to sign the incremental power supply agreement between the village of Greenport and New York Power Authority for a period of January 1st, 2027 through December 31st, 2029. This is a renewal of an existing contract with the New York Power Authority for incremental electric. The village has had this agreement since 2007 and it allows us to purchase electricity from NYPA beyond our regular hydro allocation. The current agreement expires at the end of this year, so the renewal will extend for another 3 years. There are no other changes to this agreement. This is simply a renewal of the existing agreement. So we can continue purchasing incremental power from. My 2nd resolution is the ratification of the attached memorandum of agreement between the village and local 1000 regarding the payout of additional accrued vacation time due to staff shortages. The following is a resolution to purchase one new pickup truck for the village light plant at a purchase price not to exceed $40,000. The light plant is in need of another small utility vehicle for day-to-day operations, including responding to service calls, transporting goods and equipment, and general maintenance work. This will ultimately be a budget modification when the time comes. The fourth reason.

Before you go on, so you've shopped this and you can get a truck, a new truck of this style? Need for that price. Yes. Yes.

So we're looking at a truck similar to the ones that the likely already has. Um, we have reached out, um, to a couple of dealerships, some on state contracts. I'm not just for quotes. Um, ideally we hope to be able to get this off of state contracts. Um, but they are, this price should, should hold.

Okay. I just want to make sure if we're going to approve something, we don't have to come back.

If it's going to be, no, it should be fine. My next resolution is to schedule a public hearing for 6 PM on October 15th at 2026 regarding the potential. Cdbg community development block brand opportunities for the village of Greenport. Some of you may recall from last year each year in advance of submitting our community development block grant funding requests to the county. We asked the community to share ideas that they may have for next year's funding. Past funding has been for ADA-compliant sidewalks, sidewalk repairs, funding towards new playground equipment like you've seen at Fifth Street Beach, and we are currently working on the Third Street playground right now using last year's CDBG fundings. And we are just interested to hear what the community would like to see these funds used for in 2027. Feel free to share, and the community's input will be considered when we pick a project. Examples, again, sidewalks, playgrounds, ADA compliance, street lighting, parking infrastructure, tree planting, graffiti removal, etc.

Moving on. Adam, those are some of the examples of things. Those are examples. But for the benefit of the public, is there a list that describes the The scope or limitations on the type of appropriate project?

There are lists, yes. Not everything, the village wouldn't qualify for everything on the list. Mostly this village, a village of this size, is geared mostly towards the sidewalks and ADA compliance. Some of the other stuff that we would be able to use these funds for, the village just doesn't offer. But I'm happy to put together a more comprehensive list if the board or the public would like to see it.

It would be great to get in our next newsletter.

Perfect. We can do that. Thank you. The next two resolutions are to schedule more public hearings for the proposed increase to water and sewer rates. These proposed increases are still following last year's rate study, or I'm sorry, our last rate study, and call for a 12% increase to water and an 18% increase to sewer. Next month when the actual rate increase resolutions are presented, I'll be speaking more high level. These resolutions are just to schedule the public hearings. Utility billing is on time. Moving on to my talking points. The first one being the Moody's credit rating. I would like to share some good financial news for the village. Moody's, which is an independent credit rating agency, reviews the village's financial position. And assigns us with a credit rating based on things like our finances, our debts, reserves and overall financial management. I'm pleased to report that the village has maintained its AA2 rating. This is considered a very strong rating and it shows that Moody's continues to view the village as financially stable. Another talking point I didn't have on here, but I did want to mention the paid parking. Just give an update on that. As of earlier this week, paid parking has netted $245,996. Original projections called for approximately $165,000. So we're about 33% above projections right now. This $245,000 collected to date. Can you back up just a second?

Yeah. The original projections, that was for the full season, correct?

Correct, yes. So we're 33% over projections to date, but it's only going to go up. Of this $245,000 collected to date, it represents approximately 16.7% of the total property tax revenue and is equivalent to approximately $200 per residence and potential property tax increases that were avoided for having this program. Say that again. The $245,000 represents 16.7% of the total property tax revenue. And it's equivalent to approximately $200 per residence in potential savings that were avoided due to having this program. Thank you. Moving along significant collections rent collected in August 80,169 dollars and 19 cents and property taxes collected through August 2026 1,350,157 dollars and 41 cents. This represents about 92% of all tax receivables. As I mentioned last month, letters are being sent out on a monthly basis for those who have not yet paid. Significant collections, I'm sorry, significant payments, JRH Consulting, $19,950, which were for engineering services for our wastewater treatment plant for the screw pump installation. And we also made a payment to LI Telecommunications for $12,777, and that is to replace the siren controller here at the firehouse. That concludes my report.

I have some questions going back to the revenue that's generated from some of our other, the carousel I see for 2026 has not quite recovered itself to 2024. Is that due to the limited, you know, limiting the number of days?

I'm sorry, Trustee Phillips, I can't hear you.

I'm sorry about that. I can't talk any louder. On the carousel, I see that our income, up to right now for 2026 is not quite where we were in 2024. part of it i realize is 2025 we lost because of the repair but i believe have we reduced the number of days for the carousel operating this year I don't- Hours. Hours? Not days, but hours.

I believe there was altercations to the hours, but not the days.

But that was during the summertime, correct?

That was during the summertime, yes. And we are now on winter hours, I suppose, which is weekends and holidays while school is open.

Okay, and a campground is still open, or is it getting ready to close for this year?

The campground is still open through October?

Yeah, through October 31st. Okay.

And are we still full?

Yes, the campground has been full much of the year.

How about the marina?

The marina, we've definitely seen a decrease in revenues at the marina. I do know that Rick over at the marina office had mentioned that he has some yachts that are still staying or still booking actually for this season for what's left of it. But overall, we do see a decrease in revenue at the marina.

You mean a decrease this time of year or you mean a decrease from last year?

But fuel's a big item that affects a lot of them as well, obviously. Less so for a multi-million dollar yacht, but certainly a big item for the smaller boats.

Correct. I think, in speaking with Rick, I think that's where we're seeing Some of our drop off is in the smaller. Yes, correct.

Yeah, the yachts are still able to come, but we've definitely seen a reduction in smaller vessels.

Personal 1 thing to mention in regards to the yacht. Oftentimes people will look at the yacht here and they will see a number of spaces that. Are empty and doesn't look like anybody's there. They've actually been booked for the vast majority of the summer. What happens is these folks have come in on these mega yachts, book for whether it's a week or a month, and then they take it and they go other places, but they keep the space in order to keep it secure. There was one point where we were able to put an overflow yacht over on the railroad pier, which made a significant amount of money for the village for a matter of, I think it was three or four days when we had some space over there. But there's plenty of demand for yacht space. In fact, Um, we aren't able to satisfy the demand for that. The bigger issue is the deputy mayor mentioned. Is a smaller boats and the rest of the Marina.

Many railroad many railroad is doing very well. Obviously, it's hard to project that since we really only had 1 good season, but we've definitely seen an uptick in many railroad sales, which is great.

And the moorings.

Moorings, same. I mean obviously we have a finite amount of moorings with reoccurring customers every year, so it's about the same revenue every year.

I would like to have an opportunity for us to kind of reexamine the mooring situation because years past we did have a fair amount of them being transient and we did gather a bigger income And what I'm seeing now from looking at past paperwork that I have, so I'm just wondering if maybe over the winter, the village treasurer should take a look at this and maybe we should take a look. And how the operation is going at the present moment to see if there is some other ways of generating income.

Yes, of course. I have spoken to Rick about this recently, in fact. Specifically, we were looking at the rates, being that I believe residential rates are at $1,200 for the season, with non-residents being $1,800. But it's been that way for many years now. So we were looking to revisit the rates, but if the board would like to restructure differently, we can look at that too.

I just think it behooves us, whether it stays the same or not, it behooves us to take a look at it and see what's best.

for the village. Are you saying that some of the moorings were used for transient in the past? I don't know that any are now.

No, they're not any longer. I don't know exactly when that changed. Can't answer that one. I do know that two previous harbor masters were quite active in collecting the fee and bringing it back to the marine office for transient boaters. I think it's kind of morphed into being a full-time spot, I guess you'd call it. But I think it behooves us, and I know it hasn't been looked at in the last 10, if not 15 years. So I think as a board, we should just take a look at it. It may stay the same, but we need to take a look at it.

It would be helpful if Adam and Rick could do a study on the comparative rates for moorings like you did when you were looking at the railroad dock?

It's actually already underway. We have begun to look at some comparables.

You know, I had given them some information a while ago.

Yeah, I'm guessing that must have been significantly more than a decade ago that there might have been train team ones, because as I understand from Rick since he came in they've always been no that's what i'm saying it goes back to it goes back 10 years remember i've been around for a while and if memory serves me correctly i think the number of moorings we've replaced in the last three years have been close to 16 because we were short the number of moorings when our administration came in we made a plan to fund for them for the first 36 months and we're now completely full with the allowable moorings in there and i know there's a significant wait list as well one of the most often asked questions i get by people is how long am i going to be on the list for but you know putting that all aside i mean it's we need to take a look at it no definitely we did make some adjustments in the mitchell park marina as we did on the railroad dock and we should take a look at this again perfect yeah

I think the wait list indicates that the market will bear higher rates.

Yeah, and, you know, the problem, of course, is that you have the privatization of – I don't say privatization, but – diversification of many other marinas, whether it be Safe Harbor at the back of Sterling Creek or Port of Egypt or the marinas in the Kutchog and Suffolk area. There's a lot of locals that are losing spaces. I'd very much like to see what we can do to balance all that.

I have put my thoughts together over the last couple of years about that. One of them, of course, is the size limit to make sure that the navigational channel stays free. That's one problem. We all know Sandy Beach, the mouth of Stone Harbor is another issue that we know that whole area we kind of need to take a look at and perhaps really seriously find some type of a solution so that we're not having to beg to dredge or to get that opening dredged all the time. Okay.

it's uh it's it's part of our waterfront and it's part of our working waterfront so we need to keep it going yeah i think on in regards to some of your questions on the recreational amenities um and revenues carousel by example and mini train you know we don't have a sophisticated point of sale system. And there's a lot of them that are available now. We had priced them out a couple of years ago. I think it's worth taking a look at it again because all of those now also, and, you know, they can be done on very small devices, manage credit card processing. You can also link them up with weather. So then you're able to do a really true comparison because you're able to log You know, was there a weather event? Were you out of operation? Because comparing one year over another, we don't have all the facts to do it other than just looking for revenue. So weather and your downtime due to maintenance, et cetera, would be important to take a look at.

Any other questions for Adam? Adam, you said you were going to speak more high-level next year. On the water rates? Next month. Next month. Prior to the public hearing. I just, I recall that this. The rate increase that you spoke about was anticipated, right? Because I think we talked about this.

That's part of the study that was done. Yes, so we had a rate study conducted three years ago, which was a five year, year over year increase. So these figures that I'm presenting were recommended by the rate study. And I will be speaking about them prior to the public hearing next month. Thank you.

Adam, just to the point, because I know that I haven't been able to catch up with you, but you and I had a discussion the other day about anticipating some of the PPA increases that could happen over the winter or customers received on their... Trying to educate our village electric company, I mean electric customers to understand that that's how we get our electric. Were you able to find out if there was any type of stuff through NYPA for information to put into the newsletter or to get out in electric bills for Conserving electricity?

Sure. I did review, when we spoke about this a week or so ago, I did review the NYPA guidelines to see if there was anything that they offered. I couldn't find anything. I'm happy to prepare our own, though. We can put it in the newsletter. I know when we did have those high PPAs over the winter months, I did prepare some blurbs that were dispersed amongst the electric customers. So I could do something like that or something a little more formal regarding saving electric for the residents.

Yeah, I just think that the front office, the clerk's office, and I'm sure your office took a lot of phone calls from people who didn't quite understand why their electric bill went from one amount to another amount.

Correct.

And I think for us to educate the community would kind of alleviate some of that. Whether they read it or not, that's not- That's up to them, but we should make it at least available for them to see where we are with that type of thing. Also with the conservation of electricity.

i agree and perhaps even on our new website we could even do like an faq regarding electric rates and what your bill actually breaks down to be if the board's interested in that yeah that'd be that'd be great i know i know in the newsletter we did you know due to these rate issues over the winter and then people not clearing not not clearing as to whether they were able or not able to snow and so meter readings sometimes were taking up to a couple of months and they would have to true up We did put a number of those things in the newsletter, but it's certainly time to do that again. Yes. Especially as we go into a fall and winter season that is likely to be even more difficult than last winter with expected weather. And also taking a look at the utility costs and certainly cost of fuel. I know a lot of us, and myself included, use fuel oil and that's going up exponentially by the day. There are gas stations across the country running out of fuel now. So that's going to be an even bigger issue for people.

The commercial fishing fleet is at a standstill at the moment because it's $7 a gallon to the boat. And they take 3,000, 4,000 gallons at a time. So it's going to eventually trickle down to not only- The industry that my family is in, but it's also going to start affecting the trucking industry. It's going to start affecting deliveries. And you're going to start seeing things getting tighter and tighter because things cannot move around at that fuel price.

you know this obviously is a challenge for the village because when one thinks about all the different services we provide just putting fuel into all of our vehicles let alone dealing with the cost of health benefits buying new tires materials etc it's all going up exponentially the parking revenue we achieved this summer has been enormously helpful as you just heard That's something I hope that next village board will also budget for next year because it will certainly be needed because I think we're going to be facing a budget crisis next year for certain with all these things. The other thing that's important, which we put in the village newsletter recently, is the village had made a request of our state assemblyman, Tommy John Schiavone, and Senator Palumbo to allow for the village to Implement a tax on lodging. This would be on short term rentals and also on hotel rooms. So that when you're paying $700 for your hotel room or renting out a house over a weekend, that the village would be able to collect a small tax on that. This is legal by state law. Over 50 communities throughout New York have done this. Assemblyman Sponsored the legislation in the state assembly, but he needs a co-sponsor. I would encourage everybody to please reach out to Senator Palumbo and encourage him to allow for the village board to do this. This will help us defray what's going to be even more tax increases due to all these things. It's important.

Adam, I just had one more question on the electric. When was the last time did we have a rate increase review?

We haven't had a rate increase review on electric in quite some time, definitely over ten years. If you recall, the board actually passed a resolution authorizing myself to speak with NYPA to conduct a rate study specific for our electric utility. While NYPA will do the rate study for us, free of charge, it's also recommended that we have a second rate study done through an independent third party. So that'll be coming down the line to the board soon as well.

Okay.

But I have been in talks with NYPA about it and really just at the early stages just providing them documentation so they can get a footing on where we are right now.

Thanks.

All right. Thank you, Adam. No problem. Jenna?

Hi, everyone. So this work session, there are a number of resolutions on this work session for work to move forward that was previously on last month's work session and regular session for discussion. There is a resolution for the WSHU radio tower contract. There is a resolution to resolve the quote with West Tech for helical gill motors and BFDs for the wastewater treatment plant. There is a resolution for concrete work at the wastewater treatment plant. And there is a resolution to proceed with our engineers, J.H.R. Holzmacher, to continue surveying and GIS mapping of our MS4 system, which we need for permit compliance. There is a resolution to work with our engineers, J.H.R. Holzmacher, as well as that will be in coordination with our village highway team for work to be completed on 3rd Street. And there is a resolution for an engineering proposal with J.H.R. Holzmarker to work on developing the movement of the 12-inch force main to Monsanto Trail so we can apply for DEC permitting. And there is a resolution to work with the surveyor, hopefully the same surveyor from the GIS mapping, to look at Mooreswood Parcel to identify utility zones and then park zones. for regular session, there is a resolution to give addresses to locations we have in and around the village that previously have not had addresses or have not had coordinated addresses. This was a dive that happened after we started onboarding our new work order system and to be able to dispatch people, so we've been working with PD and FD. PD actually had some things they've been using, so once we move forward with this, We can move forward with the work order system and Adam and I will GIS these locations as well. So they will be available to everyone. Updates and things, the building department, all of the regular attachments are there. Complaints, violations, CCCOC's rental permits and permits. The HPC is undergoing a code 76 review, and that has been ongoing at Preservation Studios. And we are still demoing possible software for the building department, but South Hold has been picking up all recent paperwork, and they have until 2037 been uploading it to the LaserFiche portion of the South Hold Town website, publicly available as it gets uploaded.

I think fair to say we are happy with the assessor's department in South Holden. There's been increased communication and work with the new folks there.

Yeah, Ken Pollywatt is our assessor. He's an extraordinarily kind man and he's been working with the building department to pick up boxes as everything's ready and uploading it, so that's great.

I'd say if I could just interject for a second, too, on the building departments, as folks may or may not remember, I think it's been just maybe just less than a year. The village did a study and looked at rates for building department permits. And we made some changes to that as well. If you're just doing a simple renovation on your bathroom or your kitchen, it's not significantly increased. But for folks who are tearing a house apart and doing significant renovations, the price for a permit has gone up significantly on that. but certainly well within reason of what's needed this has also created a great revenue stream for the village to help us try and keep taxes down for residents and all you need to do is drive around to see how much construction there is everywhere it's pretty incredible

For the marina in Mitchell Park, we're still working together on finalizing the SOP. For the carousel, in terms of the quotes for the upcoming service, we have the option to have WRF come in for a few days as well. I've been working with Freddie at North Fork Welding for the horses that we currently have out of service. And we are probably looking at a combination of those two of those things to move the work forward at the carousel. LWRP, we are still awaiting our contract to sign and then we'll have our initial kickoff meeting. Wastewater treatment plant, we are currently underway with the manufacturing of three new air loaders for Basin 1. Additionally, there's other resolutions on here for the other parts and components that need to be purchased and manufactured to be further set up. There is a synopsis here of bringing both basins one and two up to condition. Would you like me to read through that? Or it's on last month as well. And then The screw pump installation is on time. It has a slight delay at this juncture, but nothing substantial. And as you can see from the resolution, we are going to continue to work with Holzmacher and the DC about moving the 12-inch foresane that runs behind Kaplan over to Monson Trail, which is a utility road, so we can get it out of the wetlands in place. We are working with Holzmacher and the company for different studies that may or may not work in basement one or two to possibly run a pilot program. That research will continue through this year that we would then see if anything is compatible for a pilot program and then we would look at grant funding for that. for the power plant.

Before you go to the power plant, if I can just interject quickly. One of the other things that the village has been working on this administration for the last three plus years is working with the town to try and get the town to implement a water quality program as part of cpf i do see town board member brian mealy who i thank for being here i'm not putting you on the spot but just for the benefit of the public this has been something that we've held numerous meetings on joint meetings and we also establish a special committee a smaller group which has been meeting for a good amount of time the town is in the process of updating their land use plan, but has not yet started work on a water quality plan. If you were to read the CPF plan from 2017, was it? It does state in there that they need to create a water quality plan. This is very important for village residents. All of us pay taxes, we're trying to manage costs, and of course, any sales transaction goes to the CPF fund, which the town manages. This is over 30 years now. the adoption of a water quality plan is needed for our community, especially as you look at all of these items and the increasing issues with infrastructure. Water quality plan would allow the village to apply for funding for any of these sewer improvements that you're hearing about right now. Maintenance costs as well as changing things at 5th and 6th Street Park where there's significant road runoff and flooding down there too. The village is drafting a letter to send to the town which should be going out tomorrow we will also you know share this publicly when that goes out too i know we've all tried hard and it's it's frustrating because we haven't made the progress any of us wanted well i also have to say that um there was a press release that went out that upset me extremely

After being here for 20 some odd years and dealing with the sewer since I was first elected in 2007, I forgot. I lost two years. There was a comment made in this press release dealing with our affluent project that was back in 2022. And to be honest with you, if the town of Southfold, and I'm sorry, Councilman Mealy, you can take my words back. If the town of Salfold under the previous administration had done the water quality program, we would have been able to continue this program and work towards some of the issues that the supervisor mentions that in his last paragraph of this press release. I found it very discouraging. I found it very upsetting to being here and having worked as long as I have worked with the sewer plant. and with the village of Greenport to see something that, first of all, is old news, and they should have done their homework first. Sorry, I have to say that.

I had a slightly different reaction to the press release, which was that it's an opportunity for Southwell Town to use that CPF money for Greenport Sewer. As part of a water quality plan. But I mean, yes, the frustration, I also understand.

Well, we also went to them for the central pump station. And that's another issue that we got. And I'm not being negative. It's been on the record. I have said it for years that if they had moved forward under a previous supervisor's administration to do the water quality, it should have been the first thing that this new administration in the town of Southville should have moved forward with. And I agree with the mayor. And I think I have the correct attitude for that at the moment.

I'm not disagreeing. I'm just saying it's an opportunity to move forward now. We can't go back. No, we can't go back. I mean, we can move forward.

But let's not point fingers or say that we as a village, we're not trying to do something because we will. Yeah, agreed.

Patrick, do you have an idea?

No, it's incredibly frustrating, but I'm going to save my criticism for the town of Southville for the next time.

Oh, I'm planning to do it. I think it needed to be put on the record for me. Having been here the longest out of all of you.

It's sad. I mean, it's, it's really sad. The village of Greenport is a state certified disadvantaged community and. I'll reserve further comment for when we are in front of Southwood Town Board and also the letter that's going to be going to them.

Jenna? Okay, electric plant. So we have finalized our plans with Roundtable and they've been submitted to DOH and they have been revised again and are resubmitted. We are entering the stage where we will be needing to prepare an RFP for bid. So that's pretty exciting to get new stuff in there. We have completed the review of electrical service and superintendent candidates, and we are moving forward with that process. We have been reviewing the EV station in the easternmost portion of Adams Law. It is operational. It requires service. Our electrical superintendent, Doug, and I continue to be back and forth with the company trying to get them out here to repair. This is something we need to look further into. future and the review of our engines coming this fall and early winter. We would like to have an engineering group come up and review those and give us a current state of the course on their status.

Just a question going back to the EV stations. Those were originally provided to the village under a NYSERDA grant. Have we looked in to see if there's any more funding to put some more of those stations around the village?

Yeah, there likely is and we need to. I'm trying to see, we currently have a contract with that company where we don't pay them to do any of this. So we're trying to see if we can make them make good on their contract and then move forward from there when we, I don't feel like we've fully hit the wall yet. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, that's understandable. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome.

Roads are as up-to-date as they can be. They continue to work and catch up on painting, which will keep going throughout the fall. They did a big cleanup at Fifth Street Beach Landscape last week. They remediated the softball field. They're continuing to finalize the tree trimming for Maritime Festival, as well as currently in the process of reviewing the tree committees, final trees, or bid that they think the village can do, so we can finalize that list. The board requested when we did the bags at brush pickup last week, which thank you to everyone who complied and did that. It was a huge help to our crew. There were residents who asked about using receptacles that they owned instead of bags. The board asked me to talk to the highway crew, which I did. And what they said is doable if it's 35 gallons or smaller, labeled as grass, and it must have a lid on it so it doesn't accumulate water or trash inside of it. As you know, anything that is picked up for breath pickup goes in the compost, so it cannot have absolutely anything that cannot be composted. So that can be helpful for the residents, because there are some residents who have traditionally had their own receptacles. So again, smaller than 35 gallons, needs to have a lid on it and needs to say grass on it so they know that's what it is and it's not the trash can.

Jenna, do you think it'll work just to require those specifications or do you think we need a standard receptacle?

I don't think there's that many people that do it yet. I think we can give people a moment of grace. But that is up to you guys with the board. It has... They haven't considered it a problem, so to speak. And it doesn't mean that it won't become one, but. Rain garden drainage, currently working on that. We do have one rain garden being worked on right now in front of what used to be the Duke Pot, but is now part of American Beach, I believe. So that should start draining better. right over there. We've been working on an SOP manual for landscaping and road safety. I've been meeting with the department about road safety and doing trainings throughout the summer. So that will take a little while to finish, but I feel like we're getting there and meeting as a team and working through it is extraordinarily helpful, I think, as well. As you know, we submitted WQIP for a super backtrack, which everybody cross your fingers. Reviewing resident sidewalk replacement guidelines and parameters has come up and that is being interviewed with the board and council and hopefully we'll have something in the coming months. We've been also working on sidewalk zones for remediation throughout the village. You guys know we just completed the big precision work downtown. Now we need to move into the concrete repairs that Precision couldn't repair and then we need to continue to move our way around the village. So in the coming months I will hopefully have an outline of what that can look like. There's a proposal to streamline brush pickup, which I believe is on the board's agenda to discuss tonight. The mini train has, I say the mini train met ridership expectations for August, but really it overshot them. We're very happy with the mini train right now. Third street basketball court has the backboard installed. Next up will be the fencing around the courts. And we're now focusing on 3rd Street Park for the 2024 CBDC, B, GB, and HUD funds. The bid went up for that and we're currently working with them to get it into the HUD funds available. And then it's your paid parking. So Adam and I have been reviewing all of our possible permitting enforcement options since this started in May. FBS is able to offer us a permitting and enforcement and connect to several tech courts option for the best price across all of the software we have looked at, and we did meet with South Old Town Courts and Chief Gratton to discuss it with him. I'll have a full proposal on October work session, likely, because by then we will have all our final funds for the year made from paid parking, and we can begin the discussion of permitting again, like we did at special meeting, because this would be a full course solution for us, which would be great.

The KVS program and the software for it, could you perhaps in October kind of give us an update as to where you are along with the amount of... Finance that make financing that may need to be with that along with its maintenance fees.

Yeah, we can when they get it to us So the answer is if we have it in time for October work session Absolutely, and like I said, that'll be teared out over a number of years because it and I feel someone to look at a few other modules as well is one of the goals to

Perhaps let's say the fire department upload their own invoices and maybe other departments instead of it all falling on the treasurer's department at the last minute.

Yes, and the other is, and also to move through digital approvals, right? We're not in a world where we should be photocopying and photocopying POs three times to go through a process. The man hours and things people in Billichal could be working on, that they're making photocopies and stapling checks and reentering information three times is a lot. I am coming from a system of multi-tiered approvals and digital approvals. So it is something that's very doable for us because we're much smaller than other places. We just have to find the right software that matches all of our municipal thresholds and can do vouchers as well. So we have to look at municipality-specific software, but it would allow everyone to integrate and move more quickly and probably feel better at the end of the day.

Thank you. You're welcome.

These we already talked about. We're still waiting on the comptroller's tech audit to return. The radio tower, as we discussed tonight, the resolution for the WSHU contract is on the table. We are awaiting the contractor who maintains the property for us. Dish has filed for bankruptcy, so after they move through that, we'll need a tenant in that spot. And I did put on here, at that special meeting, there was a discussion of if we wanted to put out RFPs for the site or not, but there wasn't a specific task involved, so I bring that back up to you guys if that's something you would like me to investigate and write up. The drainage subs behind the American Legion require remediation. There is a belief they belong to the New York City OT, and while they do, there is an agreement with the Village of Greenford for maintenance that dates back A long time, so I have reached out to remediation, landscaping, remediation companies to give us a multi year plan to try and repeat those sums. We'll follow up with quotes when we have them.

I think these are important things to mention, because I don't know if the public understands. There are a number of items that. Long ago, the village made agreements with different entities that the village would maintain things who belong to others. Biggest one being the jet knee and Long Island Railroad parking lots. Uh, the ferry queue over there, and, um, even the, uh, seaport museum. Uh, you know, village expended a good amount of money on that and continues to do so and maintaining it all owned by the county. These 2 basins, which are owned by the state, all of these things fall on. village taxpayers to maintain but in many ways their benefits to a lot of folks outside of the community up to and including transient visitors where this potential lodging tax could be a huge assistance to the village.

Jenna, could you go back to number 13? You were asking, I think you were asking the board if you want to proceed with another RFP, but I wasn't really following.

Yeah, at the special meeting, we had the special meeting about the radio tower, and there was a discussion of perhaps thinking of the site as something to be maintained overall by somebody, which is a little bit of a tricky concept, because we have a building that has to be remediated, we have wires that need to be removed, so there is concept discussed at the special meeting of putting it out there to see if anybody would be interested in kind of doing all of that all encompassing work. But we didn't take any steps forward after that discussion. So I just putting it back on the table if that's something the board wished to have reviewed and proceed further.

This is above and beyond what our maintenance contract with Curt could accomplish. So it's a one-time kind of project?

No, this would be to run the site for you almost. Find your leases, run the site. Do you have excess wires on the tower that need to be removed? Do you have a vacant building that can only be occupied if fully remediated? So it's sort of to see if there's anyone out there that wants to help you get the most out of that site.

So this was a suggestion I had made because I'm aware in talking to some other town supervisors and village mayors on the East End where they've created even more revenue by leasing out the facility and through an RFP process potentially could find somebody to come in who might make XYZ improvements on the facility, manage long-term maintenance on it, and then potentially be able to add more service contracts as well. I personally believe it's worth exploring. You don't know what you don't know until you put something out there and would be worth taking a look at. It generates revenue, of course, but it also requires a significant amount of maintenance. As you'll recall, when our administration came in, we had to expend quite a bit of money on the facility because there were issues with emergency communications and equipment that was failing over there. I don't remember the dollars. Do you, Adam? I want to say this. Definitely six figures. Yeah, I don't recall what it was. I think it would be worth exploring. Trustee Phillips and Trustee Donahue.

I fully believe that in order to make a decision, we have to have facts. That's one of the things we need to go out and get the information. So whether we do it or not, that would be up to us, but we have to have the information. Yeah, I agree.

I don't think it hurts to know.

Okay, we can draw something up. Great.

And then, you know, the water department has been talking to me about hydrogen flushing. I know the village hasn't had a full hydrogen flushing schedule, which, you know, it goes hand in hand here, right? Because we have an MS4 system. So what I asked the water department when they brought this up to do was to identify... where they would want to do it. So I can then talk to our engineers about it. And we are about to have all this MS4 mapping and surveying going on across a long period of time. So I need to discuss with them the potential water outfall and the right times of year to do that and bring that back to you. But I wanted to bring this up to you guys and let you know this is a topic of conversation. And if you have any thoughts, feelings on it.

This is distinct from the hydro testing.

Bingo. Distinct from hydrogen testing, because flushing, what flushing does is it completely clears the system. And many municipalities across the United States complete annual flushing. Because what it does is it pushes everything out of the line. If there's built-up sediment, if there's everything. And obviously, yes, there's discolored water. We'd have to have a lot of coordination. There'd have to be notices when we were doing it. We'd have to make sure we street sweep to completely clear the roads before we do it. A lot of prep, but in the end, it could improve resident water quality, could expand the size of the valves, right? Because if we have never done this before, the sediment buildup could be up to two inches in some places. And it could be an overall value. We have to measure that against what we're putting into MS4, which is why it's super important that i work with the engineers and also if we are going to move forward that have a strategic plan and mapping of how we're doing it so we know we're completely lessening what we would be pushing out into the system so in addition to improving water quality it could also improve firefighting capability it could um can i ask a question and and i'm sure trustee brandon will remind me that um we have hydrants that are on private property correct

Yes. And we do not test those, correct? Yes. Are they going to be part of this flushing system?

No. They're not our hydrants. They would not be on our sequenced flush.

And most of those are actually in the town. I think the only ones we have are still. They work with us very well, but the condominiums down Bay Street.

I think maybe the ship yard. There's some private hydrants back there. And there's the school, which is not in the village.

But as far as the east west fire zone, there's a significant amount there.

Well, sorry, would this just be the village or would this be every, because we give water service outside of the village, correct? So it would be within an hour.

Yes, and I think something to understand too is that this isn't every hydrant. This is hydrants at the end of runs. So what I had Steve, our water department, do was spend time identifying which hydrants at the end of runs would make the most sense to do this on.

I was just trying to identify what would benefit our firefighters who cover a much larger zone than just the village. And it would potentially, we'd want to see if the town and our private properties outside of the village would want to cooperate. i think it's definitely worth exploring obviously it all needs to be timed very carefully we certainly would need to work with suffolk county water authority you know as we all heard from earlier this year in the drought conditions we're in um there's you know significant risk during the peak summer periods of not having enough water so

On that note, you'll notice in my water department, water purchase, water sold, I actually wanted to give everyone a pat on the back and made Adam double check the numbers. Because the numbers dropped so significantly, which means people were respecting the drought parameters, which is really a wonderful thing to see. I literally made Adam look again because I couldn't believe how much they had dropped.

I do have one question returning to the private hydrants. And I think this was a discussion and I don't know if it ever moved forward as to what is our fire department's liability if a private hydrant is not tested and they go to take care of a fire and it doesn't work.

i agree i don't think it has really been advanced i think we need to have come up with a system whereby hydrants that are outside of our domain need to be tested and certified and then they have to submit that to the village somehow to demonstrate that they're doing

I know it was talked at a lot of the warden's meetings, but a lot of it also centered about the village starting to maintain our own hydrants and getting them. And I know that there was a large purchase of them, and I see here that it says the hydrants that need replacement are going to be the work will be scoped for late fall or early spring. I was hoping it would be sooner than that, but the private ones do make me nervous because the light bulb went off as to what our liability, the fire department's liability is.

Jared, have you seen anything at any other municipalities in regards to?

No, I remember that this issue came up previously.

It's the same question. Can you guys look into that, please, and make a recommendation to the village board on how we can handle it? It certainly sounds like we should consider some sort of- resolution if we're able to force private property under his hands to take care of it on a similar schedule to what we do. Absolutely. I guess the biggest issue would be not just in the village, but how to do it in the east-west fire district that the village fire department manages, but is outside the village and within the town of Southhold. That's the Suffolk County Water Authority. Right.

Yeah, but they would also have to work in conjunction with our fire department to come up with the same language for getting it down on paper, which would probably help everybody knowing where the private ones are, because I don't think everybody knows. And who knows? I know there's been some development up at the old KOA campground. I don't know if new hydrants were put in there in the back. It was concerned about that. I just think it's time that we really help the fire department get a true picture on it so they feel comfortable.

Yeah, agreed. I do know that the fire department is planning a visit to the campground to get a date on that situation. I also know that Assistant Chief Nice has made some headway

doing a more thorough or more detailed analysis of the hydrants yeah he and i had worked on it back when i was involved with the wardens other than that um doug jacobs is here in the audience and this is he wrote his last work session report um and he retired and he wrote a beautiful note in here And I just want to thank Doug because he's been immensely kind to me since I started, and he's done a great deal of service to this village. And you wrote a beautiful note in his workstation report that I hope everybody was able to read and share. And thank you, Doug.

Hope you come back next week. We were looking to present you with something. I know we have your retirement party next week as well. You're not quite off yet. This is a bit premature.

Now he's wondering why he came.

He was trying to get you. And I think that's all.

All right, if you want to come up and sit down and state your name and address for the record, please.

We were talking about, you were talking about addresses for buildings for the village. You have to get the address corrected for the power plant because 400 Morris Lane does not come up right in Google, Apple, TomTom, or any of the GPS systems. You put 400 Morris Lane in, it goes to 400 Morris Lane north. So we need to get this straightened out journey's moving next door is 170 more is laying so we've got we're going to get something straight down at this she's working on all that if you want to talk about it you can talk to her tomorrow about it that'd be great um fire hydrants there's three fighters i know that are not being serviced on village property because they're private and no village they're village village property two are at the power plant and one is at the old holy yard okay Sorry, where is it? The third? At the pole yard.

Okay.

So, either we decommission them or we have to have them serviced. A lot of people don't realize that there were three of those there. There's two on the plant property itself.

That's what the fire department is doing now. I'll be real honest with you. Sorry about that.

I don't think the fire department has even acknowledged or been aware of that.

Okay. Well, this speaks to making sure there's a better inventory with the fire department on the testing.

Yours I mean to be serviced, which is different than just testing. They need to be tested to see if they're functional. If they're not, they need to be taken out of service completely or we repair them. Because there's one hydra on the front of the plant, and there's two behind the plant.

Okay, well, if you could mark them down with Jenna, and she could follow with the fire department.

I just want to make that a record of those that are there. And that's it.

All right. Thank you.

Thanks, Doug. Thank you, Doug. Anything else, Jenna?

No, that's all I got. All right. The next item we have on the agenda is a discussion with the Business Improvement District. Rich, are you here representing the bid? Yes. Yes, thank you.

Richard Vandenberg, President of the Green Fork Business District, 234 Carpenter Street.

On the subject of the fire department, I know you joined the fire department a few years ago when we were both running for office. It'd be great maybe if the business improvement district could help with disseminating some of this information about recruiting folks. 100%. Because I know there's a lot of employees that everybody has, and it'd be great to see what we might be able to find. It would be great.

I've been inactive in a large measure because of my knee replacement, but Yes, I agree. We'd be happy to help coordinate with the fire department in any way to get the word out more and amplify that message.

That would be very helpful. Thank you. Well, thank you for being here this evening.

Pleasure. I sent along the report. I don't know if you've had an opportunity to review it. It was yesterday before the end of the day. It answered some of the questions that I know that you, Mr. Mayor, had posed. I don't want to, you know, for the sake of Repeating everything I've already said, but I provided some information relative to our current financial status. We are continuing to try to engage our membership relative to our proposed budget. It's coming up following our annual meeting where we approve change of the time of the budget approval process. The idea being to give our membership a much broader or longer period of time to understand what the proposed budget would be. And we are anticipating having another opportunity to share that information and receive questions. We had one meeting back in July. We had a fairly smaller crowd of folks that showed up for that. But we hope to hold another meeting with the idea of getting to a point where ultimately there's whatever questions that may be in the minds of our membership would be answered. And they can understand what our budget encompasses for purposes of getting that approved and then submitted to the village board for inclusion in the process of discussion of the village budget. not to go over all of the specifics and granular details, but that is our plan. We conducted our annual meeting back in June. We had a forum of the appropriate number of folks, owners and tenants and residents. Ultimately, we tabulated the votes. There was a report that was rendered relative to the election results there. Once again, I think the ongoing challenge that the bid has is continuing to solicit active engagement of our membership. But we had a result where I was re-elected, as was Linda Kessler and Katy Perry and Kina Mudasir were both our tenant and resident candidates. And we also passed that resolution relative to the change of the budget approval consideration and approval process to align more closely with the village calendar. We continue to try to hope to engage more active responses from our membership. I'll see what else we had.

And just in regards quickly to your point on your elected members, I know Katie stepped down because she moved out of the village last month, right?

Yeah, she's actually scheduled to officially retire from her board position as of September 30th. So we will have, because she was moving out of the village district maybe any day now.

Yeah, she's gone. She left several weeks ago.

She told us that it was as of the end of the month. So we have Mark Carlos, who was, I think, a trustee.

Yeah, he was a trustee.

He stepped down. Mark is still actually actively engaged in our SOBO committee. So we have a trustee appointment. We have Katie, who's now, as you say, has stepped away. And we have Mike Rose, who stepped away. So we really have three current open seats. We've had discussions with various people in the village who would be interested, potentially, we haven't quite finalized those discussions, about offering up their name for a potential consideration for the trustees to appoint a new person or to fill the open seats that will exist as a result of Katie and Mike Rose's absence. Again, we have one of the things that we ask members who run for election for the big board is to pledge that they will be actively engaged. Um, maybe 1 or 2 other folks that. We continue to try to remind them that they need to be actively engaged. Um, so, but, you know, we are trying to make sure that we have, um. As much engagement as possible by some by those folks who sit on the big board.

Do you.

Do a new election for your open seats, or do you appoint people? Yep, you can appoint people. The bylaws provide a provision to appoint someone who is willing to fill that seat for the balance of their term. In Katie's situation, it was like she just barely got started. Right. The opportunity for a much better living arrangement apparently came up. They moved into the sample jurisdiction, but yeah, we have the ability to appoint someone to fill that seat for the balance of that term. I think in the end, if there was a. Significant departure of people probably would make more sense to hold up another election. But at the same time, we are. You know, trying to speak to others that understand what the, what the role. What the role kind of acquires and getting them to step up.

Yeah. And in Katie's case, it's sort of a similar situation to trustee Robbins, although trustee Robin served the village for. Many, many years, she moved outside of the village, so she had to step down and step down effective of her moving date last month. The village is going there's going to be an appointment to somebody next week to fill the. I was curious about that to fill to fill the term up until the next election in March. And then that person can choose or not to run along with the others. But residency, of course, is a requirement for both the village board and. I mean, being a volunteer. Within the district. Volunteering, which I hear she told me directly she wants to still help out.

Yes, she does. That's great. And she's a wonderful person. I've known her for many, many years. Incredibly bright. And this board being a volunteer board and the many kind of dynamics that are present in the village, requiring you to have commitment, and I have to say the balance of our board, because we should be a board of an active 11 people, we're really more a board of about six to seven active people, and the commitment and effort of our remaining seven people is commendable, because having to share the load amongst seven versus 11 takes even more effort and commitment, so I really applaud all of our board members who are continuing to try to move the bid Mission forward, do a tremendous job and I think the village is fortunate to have them on board.

Now it's one of the great things about the village is we have so many volunteers in the village.

Wish we had a few more, but yeah.

Bid or Greenport Business Owners Alliance or the planning and ZBA and tree committee and many different folks who give a lot of time in the village.

Absolutely.

Did you have executive elections yet for those roles?

We did, we did. I, we spent a long time, I spent a long time looking around the room saying who we'd like to take over as president. Unfortunately, there was no one that raised their hand. I was reelected as president for the term, and we actually, we still have Linda Kessler as our secretary, David Surer as our treasurer, and Ryan Farrell as our vice president, and we are hopeful that Ryan will be with us for as long as possible. I'm not sure how long that will be, but Ryan is very committed as a young person who I completely understood and appreciated when I came into the role as president, that it's important for us to recruit younger people to take on the role of engagement in the village. And I have to say, Ryan Farrell is one of those unique people that recognizes that and has done an amazing job in supporting and helping us through the big mission. He's one of the, if you haven't seen it yet, but he's been the lead person on creating a lot of these informational slides that the big has now created. to continue to try and convey a clear, concise, but yet succinct explanation of how the bid operates, how the bid engages with the village, how the process of our budget approval and voting and everything else occurs. There are tremendous slides, if you haven't seen that yet in the email that went out, please, I encourage you to take a look at that. Ryan has been instrumental in that and in many other ways. You know, I had to maybe bend his arm a little bit to step into the role as vice president. And I hope he sticks around as long as he possibly can. But, you know, that's one of the, you know, one of the mission objectives that the bid has is to hopefully encourage other younger residents, business tenants, whatever, to engage in the bid because I turn 64 in a month and, you know,

You got a new knee, though. You got to have a couple more decades, didn't you?

So anyway, I can't tell you how much I appreciate having an active board of the folks that are still engaged. Because we really take very seriously the responsibility of trying to work through the issues and you know, the things that come before us in trying to think about what's best for the business district. And they do a great job, so we're very fortunate.

Well, I also see Gustavo out there, who of course owns Encanto with his wife, Yuli. It's been a great addition to the bid. 100%. Yuli joined me for a Latino entrepreneurial summit a few weeks ago that was held over a little creek, which was really wonderful. It looks like you're going up three floors now. Is that what all that construction is over there? Well, it's good to see how successful you've been with the move over there.

So as far as that, we've talked about the open seats. We are... Continuing to build a part of the report and the attachments that I provided our smile committee, which is our social media and engagement marketing committee has done, which is part of that as well. And leads that with Hina. I have done a tremendous job of, um. continuing to build awareness and engagement with not only our local community but beyond. We've now achieved that benchmark of over 10,000 followers for the bid website. When I had stepped away from the bid before, unfortunately the website had gotten hacked and the Facebook page had gotten hacked. And so there was a kind of a reset of that whole online social media engagement. But with the work of our current Smile Committee and our social media contractor, we are making great progress rebuilding that awareness beyond the boundaries of not only Greenport and North Fork, but farther out. So they've done great work with that. And as I say, with Ryan and his work as part of that committee offering up these informational slides, which will be going up, I think, probably next week, if not the week after, very shortly. We're hoping that we continue to build that thread of clear communication and you know, answering questions and uncertainty or how does it work or why do you do this, trying to do what we can to make it as simple as possible because in the world of social media and 10 second, you know, Instagram bites, you know, you really have to try to get to the point as quickly as possible and I think they've done a great job in moving in that direction relative to that information. We are, as far as upcoming events and activities, we have recently been in communication with the GBOA group, who is our steering committee of the Maritime Festival. We are the big, spent, considered time, effort, and focus to try and figure out how to respond and help support their recent request for additional funding. And I'm glad to say that we found a path to offering up to a $10,000 additional sponsorship for the maritime operations. We're balancing that, quite frankly, with the limited operational funds that we have. We have a capital fund that we're working through and I think we're close with trying to figure out some trash cans with the village administrator and doing a partnership on that. And the next thing on the docket, I think without speaking out of turn, but is what else we can do to help the visitor dock. We'd love to, and I've had conversations with the historical society, what we can do to help perhaps support a renovation of the old jail or a path towards a program to renovate the old jail and make that a more of a premier asset for the village that people can enjoy and attract and continue to build that interest. As well as any other programs that perhaps our membership are willing to provide. It's not a large capital budget, but we have those funds. We're reallocating some of those funds to help support maritime with the idea that while it's not a capital project, we're hoping that the success of the reimagined maritime. And the funding that we are willing to provide will make it everything that we all want it to be. And kind of build towards an even greater event next year and beyond. So we've been in communication with, as I say, GDOI on that. We're also very, though, sensitive to the fact that these are taxpayer funds. We've tried to minimize any kind of conditions that we're putting on these funds, but we're also very conscious and respectful of the concerns that our members would have with how those funds are spent. So we're trying to balance both concerns and both objectives. along that line and that was all kind of relatively recently because there's been a lot of discussion and really honest, sincere focus by our board in terms of that request that we got on September 8th to respond to that. And beyond that, we are excited about the Halloween parade festivities that we're gonna support and get engaged on that as that annual great event. And more recently, and a press release is shortly to go out, and probably I'm maybe getting in front of the news, but we are working hard to try to offer an alternative to the Shellabration event that historically we all know is the first weekend of December. That unfortunately looks like Cornell is not necessarily going to be in a position, they've decided to run that event again this year. So we have developed a plan to reach out to all of our businesses in the district to get input and feedback from them as to what they would like to see. Whether it would really be a traditional celebration event or something similar. But we want to 100% invest in supporting an event that will celebrate our business district, recognize all the aquaculture connections, working waterfront connections. So we're actively pursuing that now.

Are you working with Ian at Little Creek and the Greenport Business Owners Alliance? because he did such a wonderful job with that placeholder last year.

We met only a couple weeks ago with Cornell. And Ian explained to us that he did not intend to do any formal event. We're happy to work with anybody within the district that is willing to engage and support an idea that will bring greater animation to the overall district. And whether that's Ian or anybody else, we're 100% behind working with anybody. And we hope to get more response and maybe some input from our businesses, understanding that everybody has that. pick up a stick, so to speak, to be part of the process. And it can't just be delivered to them, they all have to be part of the process. And the bid is 100% standing behind. Whatever those ideas are, our plan is to kind of say, look, we're here to do whatever membership tells us they're interested in. And then we will advocate on behalf of that collective majority idea. to move forward and support, whether it's road closures, whether it's additional promotion, specific events, whatever it may be. We're 100% ready to support that from the big board and the bids point of view. But we need to make sure that we're hearing engagement from the businesses and our members to say what they want.

Rich, just because Cornell asked me to be involved in that meeting. Their goal is to come back in 2027 with a reinvented event. So I think that the business community is, the bid is looking for the business community to create that placeholder. Similar to what they've done in the past, but Cornell may come back and say, maybe this isn't, maybe you wanted it at a different time of the year. But I think it's something that I hopefully, I was excited to see all parties having a discussion. As you know, 25 years of me being on CCE's board, I am very much in favor of them becoming more active in the village. But I also know that the celebration for And I was excited to hear them come to the realization they couldn't pull it together for this year because it just wasn't going to work for them. So I do hope that the businesses in the district do similar to what Ian did, come up to the plate among themselves with the bid, taking the lead, and saying, let's put something together.

I hope so too. I mean, honestly, that was, to speak frankly, That's what we heard last year. I had been communicating with Cornell since January, trying to get ahead of the planning for this year. So it was disappointing, I have to say frankly, to get to an August 27th meeting where they say they're not prepared to return. No, but you're not the only one, because I've been after them since then. So I think the key is I'm 100% supportive, and there's so many businesses, Ian being one of them, that they're going to be lifelong supporters of Cornell and everything that the aquaculture working waterfront has to offer. The brewery specifically has been involved in eelgrass restoration projects for 15 years and everything else. I mean, it's an incredibly interwoven kind of relationship we have with all that Cornell does. The questions, and these were some of the questions when I was president previously was, you know, it was a shoulder season thing and maybe it was, you know, something that was, maybe a different date might work better or how that works. So we don't want to lose the branding of what Celebration has been after 13, 14 years. So we want to try to preserve that, but it is a real question as to, you know, what it takes to pull it off. And here we are with whatever, you know, eight weeks left to try to pull something together. And to Ian's credit and what they did with less than eight weeks was remarkable. So it's one of those things where in some respect we have to keep one half a step back and reevaluate when is the right time and what is the thing that we do and how do we do it well.

Well, I think it's important for the community to hear this discussion because there has been a lot of angst, not even among the business community, but among the residents themselves who enjoyed that type of activity at that time of year because it's also at the same time as the tree lighting.

And there's a lot going on that particular weekend. So it's changed. And a lot of, I mean, anecdotally we've heard from a number of businesses that just the model was difficult for them to navigate relative to the kind of a I won't say a glorified bar crawl, but it was a lot of moving around the village where there was a lot of effort put in for a small check, quote unquote, at the end of the day. So I think there's definitely the root of what it is isn't gone. It's just how we construct a better model around that root of what it is.

Well, as I said, the community needs to hear that because the root is where they're going at.

Mm-hmm.

And I know I've heard a lot, but then I'm in the industry, so I would hear a lot of it. But I just think that it's important for our village residents to realize that until there is a new model created, there's going to be some angst.

We anticipate that disappointment for sure. So we're actively going to push it this hard to get, hopefully, motivated enough to respond and kind of tell us what they want to see. And then, as I was saying, the bid is 100% engaged to commit funding to the extent that we have the funding to support whatever that new adjusted model will be. Just on vacancies, we're continuing to Look at ways to try to promote the district. We're excited about the four new businesses most recently that have opened from the East End Meat Market and on First Street, the 2D shop, which really looks fascinating to me. We have a new architect, Powers Hancock Design on Front Street and the Home and Loft on Main Street. So we're excited about those four new businesses coming back into the village and Trend will continue to build and we have already began. I've reached out to those businesses to make sure that there's if there's anything that we can do to support their inclusion and engagement in the in the business district that we're there to help them. And as I mentioned briefly on the garbage can replacement initiative, it's the one initiative out of our other than the street lighting holiday lighting. It's the one initiative that we, with the help of Mark Carlos and working with Janet, the village administrator, we've gotten to a very close thing. I don't know if there's a survey going around amongst the board in terms of what you guys want to see, but we are ready to commit funding to kind of make those trash cans more uniform, more operational. We also have engaged with Everett Nichols, who is our contractor related to helping us focus on that main street, front street corridor. I've received the, you know, numerous kind of communications from people saying, what do we need to do to make sure that the streets look more clean, the weeds are taken care of, and every, you know, hopefully is gonna work out relative to keeping us, or helping us kind of keep that appearance better for all the reasons that clean streets So yeah, and then the holiday lighting, I've already had communication with several of our prior sponsors. We have gone through the process of the procurement. We think we have a slightly better number for our holiday lighting. I've already spoken with several of our prior sponsors last year. We were able to raise over $15,000 through sponsorship last year to offset the cost of that lighting project. Mr. Jacobs, who's going to be retiring in the not too distant future, has, I think, agreed to be on our committee to help us with that, which we're very excited to have his expertise and support in that regard. So we're hoping for another great holiday season where the bid with the cooperation and support of the village will animate our streets for a productive holiday season along with the holiday stroll. Everything else is going on.

Certainly one of the things we're most famous for is having the best holiday lights on the entire east end and it's a great partnership between the two on it.

Absolutely.

I was very happy to hear you say you want to bring back looking at the visitor dock. I know this is something the deputy mayor and I have talked to you and other bid members about a number of times. we unfortunately you know you guys there was business lost in the village because the village paid for half of it and we were hoping to get the other half paid for i heard from a lot of folks believing we take a lot of complaints on it and it's just not an issue you know when we're talking about village taxpayer funds it's not something they benefit from the businesses do and so if that's something you're able to advance that would be wonderful i think it would be enormously helpful to business district obviously timing considerations if we're going to get it in place for next summer.

Yep, we hope to get the endorsement of our membership to, you know, with the ice skating rink kind of moving in the direction that it's moving in, you know, we basically have offered that opportunity for the heightened security thing that membership is not, you know, willing to endorse either.

Yeah, vlog cameras are not popular these days.

But, you know, we're trying to offer options for responses and complaints. So those, you know, those initiatives are sunsetting from what the bid is involved with or included on. So we are, you know, now we're relooking at the next level of those initiatives that, you know, We have, as I say, $100,000 in our capital fund. It's not the largest capital fund in the scheme of things, maybe in other organizations. Um, we would hope to be able to put some of that work or some of that money to work on things that, you know, hopefully we can help move the needle.

Well, and as we've all discussed many times, the village board is very supportive. If the business district wants to come to us to look at raising the assessment, that's something that you guys have the ability to do and. And we can support and hold a vote on it if it's something the group wants to do to raise more funds.

And that's part of our budget process that we hope will allow us to do that.

Great. Any questions or comments from anybody on the board?

I just have a comment. Congratulations and thank you to you and Linda and Hina for continuing these board roles. It's a lot of work. It's important to remember that you guys are volunteers, and you're all running your own businesses. So I can only imagine how much you're putting into this. I did read the packet that you sent on Tuesday. I appreciate what you're trying to do with the improving and realigning the budgeting process. I think that's going to be good for the village and bid. And I hope Adam is on board with the way you've kind of repositioned that. I was curious about the slides, and I was wondering, is Rich doing all these slides at night? And he's doing a great job.

I take no credit for those. As I say, that's all Ryan. Ryan, you know, I'm just going to say it's all Ryan. I have no idea what chat GPT or anything else is involved, but it's all Ryan. It's all Ryan.

They're effective. The visitor's doc, I'd be pleased to get together with you sometime after this meeting, and we can talk about what the bid's interest is and what kind of my view is on that, if you don't mind.

Not at all. Yeah, happy to. Happy to. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Yeah. Any time.

I just have a comment, which, yes, I acknowledge you guys are volunteers, and I appreciate it, and I know I sometimes jump into your meetings, but I am at work, so I miss things. But I know that Mary Beth had followed up with an email from yours, and I wanted to bring up the transparency and communication part, because I feel like, the more you can do that and like not have, and I don't know all the details, but like having some discussions in executive session, which may like, I'm not sure if there are reasons to be, and then there's sort of missing information. I think that would help with the communication and the transparency in some regards. And I know that's like a struggle, I mean, I think.

And it's a struggle because everybody has really varying opinions. That's the hardest part.

Right. I mean, but to be fair, like, I was the only member of the public on your meeting today. Actually, there was two.

There was two.

So, I mean, you know, and I know also that you have minutes. But, you know, I don't think there's, like, you don't have so much scrutiny, like, as much scrutiny as we do. But I still think it's important to get the, you know, just for the information to be able to get out.

Completely. You know, I think that the hardest part, Matt, and I don't know what the, other than the work session and the regular meetings, how much... communication you have beyond these meetings. That's the hardest part, I think, from a volunteer board where there's emails that go out, and I won't call them rabbit holes, but there are things where the conversation goes this way or that way. And so it's rare that we have an opportunity and maybe we should have the executive session before the actual meeting. Maybe that would be a better structure because we don't really get to completely coalesce or hash through all of the individual opinions, and I worry, I mean, I worry that if we're doing that in the, if you're doing that, and I understand the whole idea behind a public meeting, open meeting, all that stuff, but if you're doing that, people tend to clam up and not necessarily express their, really what they think, because they are afraid of the, scrutiny that the public meeting presents right but it is important to be able to hash through that as a board and then to the extent because I will say you know recently with the whole maritime you know thing we spent two hours talking about maritime funding and that was on top of the I don't know how many emails circulated, and email communication is tough, but getting everybody essentially in the same, whatever, Zoom room or whatever, to kind of go through it was difficult, but very productive, I think, in the end. So I understand what you're saying. And it's not like we want to be... secretive about anything but it's just being able to make sure that every board member feels comfortable enough in the small village that we are to be able to express their opinion about things is really productive because in the end, I feel like we eventually get to a point where there were people that weren't happy with what we decided and there were people that were satisfied but maybe not happy with what we decided But in the end, we got to a point where we all said yes, we agree.

Totally understand. As you brought up, they are public funds. And then there also are legal parameters around executive session and public.

But I do hope you took my email as a compliment that you waded through that whole.

Yeah, believe me. All I want to do is I want to keep things moving forward.

No, I think you did a tremendous job in getting it to the decision that came. Considering a lot of, as you say, emails, emotions, and sometimes being on a board, you have to remember that you're there for the organization. You're not there for the emotion. So I think you waded through it very well, and I complimented you on that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Okay. So looking forward to a very successful weekend next weekend.

Yeah, that'd be great if we could get you guys to help out with spreading the word on volunteers for the fire department.

Yes, if there's any communication.

You bringing the fire truck to Maritime with a beer? It'll be there. Same spot? Same spot. That's a good space to recruit some firefighters.

100%. All right. And if there's any one sheet or any kind of recruitment material that... Yeah, we'll talk through it.

See if we can get something together with the fire department if they don't have something already. Thank you. It's a big issue. Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much.

Jenna, do you want to join us to discuss brush pickup? Sure. Please.

So I believe in July work session I first brought up a proposal to streamline village brush pickup. As we know brush pickup right now we have alternating every other week between the high season of the year which is around equal to November. We have 18 brush pickups this year and it takes up an inordinate amount of time of our highway crew. Our highway crew is not everyone knows is tasked with a lot more than just roads they're tasked with brush pickup and highway and caring for our parks and landscaping and painting and filling potholes and every myriad of random thing that we have go on in this village our highway crew is who really is tasked with doing that our highway crew is seven people strong but that's for seven days a week and for a full shift trash pickup as well as emergencies. So that doesn't mean seven people work every day. It takes optimally five, optimally six, sometimes four because of trash pickup to run brush pickup, which means it puts the entire department at a standstill for those periods of time. And brush pickup, as it gets larger and when we are in the high season, can last anywhere from two to four, and our worst days were six days rotation to do that. it really takes them away from doing the main parts of their job that they are supposed to be doing. Additionally, when we leave all of this in the street and when brush pickup is so enormous that it takes that many days to pick up, we have lingering piles in the street, which one creates a hazard for multiple reasons, but also for MS4 system. When we have these piles of brush in the street, it is continually just pushing and rummaging more leaves, more sticks, more runoff, more debris into our storm drains. So I do have a proposal in here that has been on this work session for a number of months for the board to discuss to streamline brush pickup, to mitigate the circumstance and bring us to a place. Not saying my proposal is perfect, maybe not optimal. It means everybody where they need to go, but it's just for the board to discuss and think about as we move forward.

Would you walk through at high level for the benefit of the public briefly? High level. So the board can opine? Yep, yep.

High level, right now we have 18 pickups this year. We just made paper bags required as of last pickup. And again, just kudos to everyone who did that and thank you. And so we wanna take for 2027 and move from the every other week model to one scheduled brush pickup a month and maintain our paper bags required for all leaves and brush.

Each month being April to December.

Yes, November. It's sometimes it spills into December. It's usually done by within the first week of December. It just depends on how the calendar falls.

Exactly. Makes sense. Twenty twenty four scheduled brush pickups during key seasonal periods. Paper bags remain mandatory. And then in 2029, transition to two annual collections, a spring and a fall, which is also what South Old Town does. And this would put us in a three-year timeline for everyone to adjust and review the operational impacts over that time about how much more our highway crew could be accomplishing if we relinquish that time back to them to do the tasks they need to be completing.

Just a point of clarification, South Old Town does not pick up leaves and grass, they just do brush pickup.

Twice a year, yeah.

i think one of the things that we've talked about before which is very challenging and the reason the village board uh you know made the decision to move forward with requiring paper bags for leaves and grass is all of this debris which ends up in our storm water system which is highly problematic and you know you see it just over the last couple of weeks on the folks who you know didn't put their debris in bags and we have these major storms again Every single rainstorm we have now is much worse than it has been in the past, where you get a couple of days or a week's worth of rain in a matter of three or four hours, which creates a lot of problems. And this is only intensifying. One of the other things, of course, to consider, putting aside the financial issue with the village and taking work away is the damage to the curbs and the streets with all of this heavy equipment moving around so frequently. All you need to do is look at all of them and you'll see it. Additionally, I would add that it was originally, as I understand, intended to benefit village residents who take care of their own yards. and now we are finding more and more often this has increased exponentially over the last few years that certain residents are hiring landscapers and landscapers dumping on the streets but you know we don't have the ability to catch them in the act that's that's a you know would be a nightmare to try and track and so that's been a big increase throughout the village with that i'll turn it over to any board member for thoughts comments uh you know i think there's a

sort of a disagreement here whether or not brush pickup is central to the highway department's work or as you described it, something that's kind of additional and it's not core. I think a lot of residents do expect this pickup. I'm concerned about the reduction in timing and that there may be some consequences. For example, what do you do with your brush if it's gonna be picked up twice a year or four times a year in 2018?

People, well, every, Everybody that doesn't live in the village of Greenport, we do have our, we transport our brush ourselves, or we compost, or we bring it to the dump. We can, you know, I can't tell everyone how they want to run their own household. Personally, we have both, we bring things to the dump and we compost. But some people have landscapers, some people do monthly transport, some people, don't prune that regularly and just do two major prunings a year because of what it takes to bring it to the dump.

I think one of the differences between the rest of South Old Town and the village is the village is a lot for small lots that are closer together. We don't have the land. Most of South Old, people have a lot more land. I hear your point about What people, you know, and people are very used to this, I think is the other thing. And that's, it's the visible thing. Like I, you know, I hear you when you say the road department does all these things, but to most residents, a lot of those things are kind of invisible and that's not like they, you know, it's not, the lines on the streets aren't like in front of their house. So, you know, they are, people are passionate about brush paint, yeah. I'm open to going to the one month. I do think if we do that next year, we should do, like, into December. Like, I would give people more. I mean, you even saw it this year. Like, getting people to use bags, like, everything's going to be a gradual shift for people. So I would give people a little, like, a little bit more leeway and transition than not. Because I just don't think they won't comply. You know what I mean? Like, there will be... piles on the street in December that, to your point, you're going to pick up anyway because you can't leave them there. So having a more transitional and explaining over and over again over many years. I would be hesitant. I wouldn't be like, let's do the 2029 to 2 right away. But I'm open to next year putting them down. Or contemplating it. Yeah, once a month. I mean, that's like you're having it. You're not taking it away completely. I think to the point, I guess the people that I hear from, they are the people taking care of their lawns themselves. They're older. They don't have disposable income. So for them, that's like a real struggle of like, I'm used to doing this thing. What am I supposed to do? It's either extra money they're going to spend or extra effort, that it's going to be hard for them. So I do understand that point.

I think one of the consequences could be that this contributes to gentrification in the community because it's easier to overcome this change if you hire a private landscaper, for example. So I think it more acutely impacts people who do their own law care.

Well, that has been the issue from the beginning. It's been going on for... 20 years. Originally when this program started many decades ago, we actually used to mulch our own leaves.

You mean the village?

The village, yeah. We used to have a machine that actually mulched. Once the machine broke, It never was fixed to redo it again, because I'm not sure whether it was rules, regulations, finance, whatever. Well, there were some DEC issues with how it was being done as well, as I recall from- I don't know if it was the mulching, it might be, but it was also because we were putting it up in one spot where, in Moore's Woods, that we weren't behind the King Tower. But I do know that it took us at least five, if not six years, to continue to get the idea of using bags i mean i'm glad that we're to this point because i think it's much easier on the road department yes the big equipment being used is a little disconcerting because there are safety factors involved in it and i was hoping that the bags would make it easier to just kind of flip up into a truck although i think the type of truck that was purchased at the time It was not a positive truck to do leaf pickup. Okay, we should have bought a truck that was lower to the ground than what they're using now. But in the meantime, this has been, and I've heard it from many, a village resident who has lived here for decades, that this is why we have a village, because this is a service that they, as their taxpayer dollars, want. So that's another, I mean, I've already heard Texas from two of my son's neighbors down on 4th Street that are not happy about what they read in the work session report. So I think that's something that I think you're going to have a lot of resistance to it. I think we as a board need to decide how fast and how quickly we do it. We used to have it once a week, and when we went to biweekly, That was contentious. So this is all history that I've gone over the years of listening to and dealing with. So I get everybody's point, and I get it's expensive for us to be at the landfill at the moment. But I'm just wondering if we're going to be causing some people to have to do an expense of a landscaper when they've been doing it on their own for years.

How do you suggest we balance all those residents who are hiring people who then don't take it away?

Well, I've always said that we should have a licensing program within the village, that if you're going to do a landscaping job, you should have to get a permit from us so that we have an enforcement key. But that always got poo-pooed down the door, too.

Well, what if it was just education? Because, honestly, I have seen landscaping companies who I think they know this, and they think it's fine, and they don't. Like, I don't think they're trying to take advantage. I think they, I don't know. I just wonder if some education just generally of local landscapers wouldn't hurt.

Yeah, I agree. Is it an enforcement issue, or is our code not totally clear?

The code's not clear, and it's a communication thing as well.

But I think it would also be very hard to enforce. It would be impossible to enforce. Unless you have a camera or a person seen who leaves it.

Even when we know and have people seen them leave it, it doesn't matter because the neighbors will just keep complaining every day until we come and pick it up. Even when it's no, like completely obvious that we're physically watching the landscaper put it there. We end up having to get it.

But I think the other thing to consider, too, is how much work and how much money we spend on this. And it'd be good if, Adam, for our next meeting, you can put together a simple report. Because I want to say it's close to like a quarter of a million dollars a year if you look at total wages. I believe it's more than that. I mean, and that's time and money that we can't spend the same day. neighbors, you're saying on 4th Street, your old house where your son lives. I'm hearing like, why can't you maintain the parks better? Well, because our guys don't have enough time. I mean, literally.

But not to, and I'm sorry, I should let you finish, but maybe we're also not looking at it as perhaps we need to have a separate parks department and a road department. One that actually deals with all the parks and the brush pickups. And it doesn't have to be that big. I have no idea. That's something that we'd have to look into. And then the road department is actually maintaining the roads, dealing with the sidewalks. Maybe there needs to be a separation or a review of the road department and what it actually performs as services for the village. I mean, I have an idea in my mind, but I'm not into it every day. You're seeing it, but it doesn't hurt us to take a look at that department. and say, okay, well, maybe we need a separate, I mean, because I believe Rick, the marina manager, I believe he takes care of all of Mitchell Park, I believe, most of it, or he has some.

No, all the mowing is done by the road.

They do some lighter maintenance. Yeah, Jay does what you call finish work. But in the meantime, I'm not quite sure what the road department does anymore. I mean, I know what it may have done in the past when I've had experience dealing in these discussions. But right now, it's probably changed a lot. And perhaps that's something we as a board need to understand exactly what they do every day or what they do during the whole month. Yeah, a lot.

They're doing... For lack of a better word, everything, right? Because every other department is very finite in their duties and responsibilities, and the highway crew is doing the work of what a highway crew would do plus the work of what a parks crew would do while being kind of understaffed.

That's what I'm saying. I think we need to also take a look at that as well as the funding.

just i mean it's money alone and to be a significant amount it should be keep in mind that every single employee we add cost of benefits alone is forty thousand dollars a year yes but but do we need seven people to deal with the road department do we need to you know well no matter what brush pickup will take a minimum of five people because you have to follow traffic safety regulations right yeah right

No matter what, your brush pickup crew will never be smaller than that in order to keep them safe and follow all safety precautions.

I will just say that for me, I want to make sure that we check all of the boxes because, as I said years ago when we tried to change this, the biggest comment that came from a room full of people. Are you pointing at Karen or Brian Mealy? Brian doesn't live in the village. A room full of people. And I believe whenever there's a controversial issue in the village of Greenport, we all know how many of those seats are occupied. And it was, this is a service that we expect. So I think we have to keep that in mind too.

Trash pickup and recycling pickup doesn't require road closures.

Trash pickup and recycling pickup doesn't require road closures. They're not operating in the street. They're supposed to be operating and picking up one bucket. They have to take multiple crew members that are using heavy machinery in the street and loading dump truck.

Yeah, so- But I think that begs the question. We're talking about receptacles instead of bags. Is there a way to make the pickup more like the way you trash pick up the stuff?

It doesn't require five people. Well, we did just review this with the Department of Labor, so we have pretty stringent requirements.

You're telling me to shut up. I mean, if you were to eliminate... No, no, but this is an interesting point. If you were to eliminate the pickup of branches, which doesn't require... Tractor, you know, bulldozers on the road, and you were just doing leaves in bags and or cans. It'd be a different thing. To her point, New York State Department of Transportation was all over us on this issue because we need to make sure that, you know, you have safety monitors, streets are blocked. And as we heard, I forget who it was, the fire chief was complaining about how fast people drive through the village. This is a huge issue for employee safety.

I'm just wondering if we can adjust our process or our method to make it less labor intensive.

The way to do that would be to only have bags and to eliminate brush to just do grass and leaves.

But that goes to the code. And that's where we're talking about. The code does allow it. brush for a certain time period.

No, we pick up brush every two weeks.

Well, what I'm saying is the code allows it for a certain number of months and then it's not allowed any longer. But to Patrick's point, is it clear, so perhaps we should just be picking up grass and bags and eliminate the brush.

Or do the brush twice a year.

Because brush twice, yeah, or work or something that direction. That's what I'm saying is, for me, In order to make a decision, I kind of need to know what they're doing, how it's working, how it does. Because I'm going back on experience of over the years of Bobby Peterson, Dougie Peterson, Pete Manwaring, all the previous guys that worked in the road department that I knew and observed over the last. since 1977, living in the village. So, you know, that's my experience in brush pickup. We also have, at Christmas time, we have the Christmas tree pickup that you could put your live Christmas tree that you're discarding out in front of your house, and it's taken to Orient State Park? Is that where I went to? Yeah, that's not even in the code. So that's, you know, that's...

Can we back up to your idea? You have a standard container and it's filled with leaves that could get picked up. Why could it not be filled with brush? Because it's heavier? Because it doesn't fit? I'm just saying, technically the brush is supposed to be also, which I don't think we enforce, but I think in the code it's supposed to be a certain length.

They only were supposed to pick up a certain length.

So it could also fit in some kind of standard container that could then be dumped into a truck. Possibly even mechanical.

But that could not have a lid on it. The issue, that would be the lid in water. That's the problem.

It would all have to fit in there, too, is your point.

Right. I mean, it would be like garbage. I mean, like in Madagascar, the sanitation, they give you the container and you fill it up and then they empty it.

I'm not afraid of discussing it. I'm not afraid of looking at it. After all, I lived through the parking meter situation. As the mayor wanted to blame me in the beginning, if you all remember the comment. But I just think in order for us to make an informed decision, because this will be a major change, I think we need to kind of look at not only just what the road crew does, but what the code says. and some of the ideas that are attached to it.

But I do think, similar to a parking, if we're going to do something next year, we do it soon and we communicate it out in a very timely manner over and over again. And over and over and over. To be discussed, I mean to be continued. Well, should we give ourselves a deadline? Yeah, because it's been on three work sessions.

I think you should... take a look at this issue of looking at the containers and cans and come back to us with a recommendation on looking at the pickup separately of potentially an option of brush in my opinion less often and then doing the revised schedule on the leaves meaning instead of doing brush every two weeks or once a month that maybe that's less and then we look at a revised schedule of leaves and leaves and grass Which would eliminate the bulldozers on the road.

Yeah.

Which completely changes, as you know better than anybody, the whole schedule and frees them up quite a bit.

And it saves our roads and curbs a little bit because the curbs kind of get chunked. Yeah.

We're doing a lot of damage to our roads and curbs.

I like the bags and I use the bags, but.

out more in a couple of days.

Well, you see on what it is, it's in the code. It doesn't always get picked up on Tuesday, to Jenna's point, because it takes a while.

But it could rain on Sunday.

It could rain on Sunday, and you could be a Friday.

Yeah, and so it's still, even the bags are challenging, because they have to push all the junk into the loader, right? Once the bag disintegrates.

So it's not so much... And inevitably it always rains once it's put out there, too. Okay. And most folks aren't waiting to put it out.

Well, if I was going to give us a deadline, I would give us next month to make some kind of decision about the coming year. Or at least try to meet that deadline. I think you know I support Lily in that. I mean, I feel like maybe that's like overly, but I feel like we should try to do it.

We should discuss it again next month. Right, but I'm saying not just discuss it, like figure out maybe what we're doing.

Well, I think we've discussed some of the options, and I think Jenna can bring them back to us so that we can get to that point. Because the code will need to be changed, and that's not going to be an instantaneous, because you have to have public hearings, and we have to write the code. And once again, it's... We make a decision next month, but it might not be till December before it ever gets done.

Yeah. Anybody else?

As far as all the reasons that this doesn't work financially, You as the administrator and the mayor have more insight into that. So you've been telling us that this is too time and it's too much time. The other three of us don't really have that.

I would encourage any one of you or all three of you to spend a day with them on brush pickup. I've done it. She's done it. It is eye-opening.

Yeah, we determined we can.

And, I mean, this crew worked really hard throughout the course of the week, and things may have been done differently in the past before the New York State Department of Transportation got involved, even before our administration. Sure. Paul Palace had told me, I think it was about a year and a half before we came in, they had to make significant changes without the staff because there were complaints made about the lack of safety protocol being followed. Yeah. The old days of having one person with a bulldozer and another person with a broom, it just doesn't exist. Yeah, I get that. And frankly, more than anything, we owe it to our employees to keep them safe.

Of course. Putting aside the rest. I don't think anyone's arguing for.

No, it's not arguing for that. I think we just need to have information to make an informed decision because we are making a change to something that people are used to. And I think that's where we're headed.

I mean, the other thing to consider would be if there is a way to legally do it, is there a place where you can drop your own brush off once a month and it's accumulated and then taken over and keep it off the streets? That's another option.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I would suggest it was compost in worse woods, but you pointed out the DEC wouldn't like that.

I don't know what the history of that was. We can easily have a conversation.

The history was it wasn't done correctly. It wasn't, there had to be, you did one spot first, and then you would mix that up, then you have to create a new spot, and what happened is it just kept growing and growing and growing, and Part of the issue was those piles, and Patrick, you probably know better than I do, sometimes when they get ignited by lightning or ignited by some incident.

Right, it just...

I think maybe what you're referring to is if we did an annual dumps roll-off or something that we could bring somewhere. Because we've already removed, to my knowledge, I obviously did not work here, the concept of mulching and composting ourselves, which we know we don't have the staff or facilities to do. But perhaps you're thinking of a roll-off in that area where people could bring and put things into a roll-off for it to then be taken away.

Yeah, the worry, of course, is going to be is you're going to turn around and there's going to be a dishwasher in there or a sofa or a household garden and everything else, which is already a big issue every single week. I don't know that people appreciate how often trash is placed in all these piles. let alone invasive species and we cannot take any pile of brush leaves or grass if it has invasive species in it correct not allowed all the landfills all right all right october it is for the recommendations The next item we had on our list briefly, and I don't know, Jared, if you're able to address it. I believe Brian had sent some language. There was going to be a recommendation on a code change for building permits to clarify an expiration date.

Right. Brian circulated earlier today a wholesale amendment to Chapter 65 of the village code relating to building permits for two reasons. Number one, to ensure that the current village code is in compliance with state law. Village code, as it stands now references, New York state building codes for 2020, it can be updated. So that references the current building codes that are from 2025. In addition to that, the building permits. As it stands now, a building permit is essentially issued in perpetuity. It doesn't expire. So we recommend that the building permits have an expiration date. That building permits must be acted upon within. uh what i mean by acted upon is construction commenced with a certain period of the issuance of the building so that the construction site doesn't sit idle uh and that's those are the changes that have been recommended by council great i know george our building inspector talked to brian about this as well does anybody have any questions on that go ahead jared um i believe the zba though the zba um

Amendments, if I remember correctly, already establishes a timeframe for the zoning amendment. We start with the building permit. Is that going to be updated along with this?

I don't know that 1 necessarily impacts the other that says that, you know, the building permit, you must. work has to commence within six months of the issuance of the building. And then if you need, then permits expire 12 months after the issuance, and then there are two extensions that you get for each first six months.

Right, but I know with the DBA, when we passed an amendment, we changed the code years ago that, to me, that you had to start, you had to apply for the permit within an X number of months

Of the issuance of the CBA approval. Of the issuance of the CBA approval. So this would be yet another deadline that they'd have to abide by.

Okay, but I just want to make sure that's not going to get lost in the.

I'll confirm that.

Okay. Because I was involved in that.

When the code is changed to reference the 2022 building code. 2025. 2025. Do we need to have a policy in place then on how we deal with projects that are in the pipeline?

I don't know with respect to the applicability of the building code. I mean, I imagine that you probably know this better than anybody in the room by virtue of your profession as an architect.

Well, I would be concerned if I had advanced a project and then the code changed. And so we have to think about how the building department's going to deal with that.

Yeah, there is some consideration with existing permits. They expire. August 1st of 2027, 20 permits that are currently in the pipeline, but it doesn't talk to which building code would apply for those existing permits. But I'll talk with Brian about that question.

Jared, was that the main change in that chapter 65? Yes. Thank you. Does that also affect the historic problem?

certificate of appropriateness is when they do that because they have to get a building permit for that too once they receive it for the historic commission this would apply to universally to all all building permits you know the building department's issuing the permit hpc just issues the

appropriateness but i think and then the actual work is tied to the building permit right but i think they have a time lag on that one too i have to check the code or i believe they're they're in the process of reviewing chapter 76 anyway are they not yes yeah okay so if the permit has a sunset so between issuance and start of construction there's going to be a limit like six months is what you're saying right six months

will there also be a timeline from start of construction to at some point 12 months plus you need an extension and then you're eligible for two six month extensions before we get to maintenance just very briefly in regards to the housing code updates um i know village council has distributed a copy of draft housing code To the village board, which everybody will be reviewing, we're going to be setting advice, a council call to review that this is a result of a tremendous amount of work. It's been done. By each, the village board, the village housing. committee affordable housing committee as well as the planning board specifically it relates to eliminating the r1 district to r2 adopting a code which would allow for the conversion of existing accessory dwellings into dwellable units as adus and then allowing for third floor residential within the village obviously there's a lot it's pre-existing but this would allow future ones um I know, obviously, we've all been talking about this a lot. Everybody hasn't had a chance to review the updated draft language. We're going to have an advice council call on it. Is there anything anybody wanted to say or comment now? I know it's a little bit premature.

no no this is slightly unrelated but i did want to just bring them because i went to the housing meeting that they would really like an official liaison and i'm not necessarily volunteering or putting myself sounded like they tried to draft you in the last meeting and that they would also like an update on the pro housing and the one mile forward status of the beach yeah i talked to denny about that but we can address it when we do this public hearing as well but you attend the meetings

I went to your first one, right?

But we're going to have a new trustee soon, right?

Yes. All right, well, we can talk amongst ourselves and our new trustee about who might want to volunteer for that role. I think that would be great to have. And then I also want to recognize the housing committee for doing a tremendous amount of work um in particular there was a whole exhaustive exercise with significant volunteer labor from local architects on envisioning some potential build-out scenarios denny and i had a discussion with them relative to the long island forward program and we need to fold their information in because a lot of what they were going to fund for us was done by these architects and so we can then look at getting additional work from them as part of it last item before we go to public comment and resolutions is some maintenance items which we've touched on briefly before we heard mr vandenberg rich the big president mentioned the jailhouse i know this is something that's near and dear to a lot of folks i actually had reached out to rich and his business partner there to see if they might want to help out with a special beer or something at one point long ago but the village did spend a good amount of money recently doing some brick work on the building to make sure that it was safe the most amount of work that needs to be done is on the interior as folks know We also had an unsolicited interest in somebody wanting to potentially purchase it. I think the board needs to advance some discussions. I am going to be having a meeting here in the next week or two with the private foundation which is interested in possibly funding restoration work there. Ultimately though, if we were to try and reopen it to the public, assuming that it gets restored, we would need somebody to manage it, which is the biggest issue to find a group that would be prepared to do that when we know everybody's very much stressed with what they're doing, whether it's the historical society trying to maintain the Ireland House. what they do, the Seaport Museum, which is doing wonderful work over at their building. I mention the Seaport Museum because, as we've talked about before, the village does, while we don't own the building, the county owns the building, the village owns the responsibility of maintaining the entire exterior envelope of the building. um the seaport museum as i mentioned prior has interest in potentially taking ownership of that if it's possible jenna and i are going to be having a meeting with the county here coming up to advance the conversation and see you know what their long-term uh desires are on it if there is something to come out of this it may potentially help the village because if the seaport museum were to take ownership potentially of the building if it made sense to the village board they would be able to much better fundraise on it because of course the biggest issue is getting money for something that you don't have any long-term use on because as the as the lease is structured right now the long island railroad could come in tomorrow and say we want the building back and

they can take the building back the last item we have is a cemetery trustee phillips i know you had spent a lot of time on a committee in the past on this and well we did a lot of research in trying to get it into the historic district yeah um i believe there was some resolutions passed i don't know whether paperwork proceeded on it or not but i was going to suggest that there are a great number of people who are interested in the cemetery and it would be great to have a committee come together and put some thoughts into it. I know that the church I attend, the Presbyterian Church in Southwell, has done a lot with their historic cemetery. I think that working perhaps even with the Seaport or the Sterling Historical Society, there are a lot of people who are interested in the history of the people who were actually buried there. So that's something I would like to see happen. I'd like to be involved in it.

Would you want to be board liaison to that committee?

Yeah, I could do that. I know Jane Williams is very involved in it because she and I did a lot of research on it. I think there are others that are involved. There are past people who used to take care of it before the village took ownership of it. I know that Gail Horton, and I would have to ask her sons if there's any paperwork that she did on it that they still have possession of. But I think it's part of our village history that could benefit being another another piece of our maritime history because there are a lot of sea captains buried in there absolutely and that'd be wonderful including some of my husband's family members so it would be interesting yeah well that would be great for you to take that on and we can solicit any interest in the village newsletter of lily and the communications yeah i know when we did that cleanup and one of the neighbors had pointed out that like there's some graves that are being like there's trees it was on my list it's a significant weather related issue to settling and these storms and stuff and it's also the history of some unmarked graves that were from the slaves that were owned by some residents here in the village so they're unmarked so I believe they're marked but there's no

tombstones or you know official tombstones on but there's a lot of history there that is the village and um i'd be more than happy to do that that would be great well and one of the things that we have the added benefit of is the tremendous work that the clerk's office did on organizing village hall and removing all of the old information and garbage and things that were in the basement we now have very organized records and so anything we need we can certainly find very easily and there's a good amount of all that there

I would like to comment on the jailhouse. Clearly, we own the jailhouse. We have to maintain it so we can't let the bricks fall off and we can't let the building crumble. But beyond maintaining the roof and the envelope, I can't really see spending any money on it unless we have a real goal for what we're trying to do with that thing.

I think, and please, this is... There's a lot of history that goes back to when the police department was here. It still exists when people come to the village. They go to take the pictures in front of the infamous jailhouse and the reason why the police department was disbanded. I know that there's been several people who want to connect with the Suffolk County PBA to try and work together on creating it so that there used to be some paraphernalia down in the basement that was from the police department that could go on display. It could be another attraction. I think that was for some people. I mean, Nancy from Blue Dog was very interested in it. So I think that's part of our discussion of where do we want to go with it. But the mayor is right. It comes down to having someone who can actively man it. But if we reach out to some of the PBAs, even South Old Town PBAs, there may be some opportunity of discussion. Discussions always bring something out. But as I said, our disbanded police department is very much part of our colorful history, and that's why it draws people to the jail, to be honest with you.

I know that when we entered, when our administration started, both Mayor Hubbard and Deputy Mayor Martellotta both said that they wanted to see the jailhouse. That was their outgoing priority. It surprised me because I just, I don't get it. It's part of the history. It seems like there's so many things that we have to spend our time on.

I'll be honest with you, the disbanding of our village police department was extremely emotional. It was family against family, friends against friends. It was a vote that, it was a referendum vote to disband it in hindsight. I wish we still had it a little bit, because I think it would alleviate some of the issues that we have, and they'd be working with the town of Southhold. But at this point, it's more of a historical portion of the village and the Wild West days of the fishing boats, and the bunker boats, and the sea scallopers, and the rope running days, and high school students including. of her in a vendetta, not me. But it's, I get where Mayor Hubbard, former Mayor Hubbard, and Jack Martellotta come from, because it's, for George Hubbard, it's part of the history. I would like to see the fire department have a museum that, or a spot to honor all of those over the how many years have serviced the community too. A lot of people have said, what is it, the Flint station number two? Some have threatened and wanted to make that into a museum, but don't think that's going to happen too fast.

Is there any opportunity to use CDBG on a seaport museum, like the outdoor area where it's not paved? Or is that not applicable because it's not our property? It's not ours.

It's not our property. If it was, though, I believe it would qualify for funding.

But, okay. Making the jail ADA accessible?

Well, but again, the bigger issue is the novelty of spending money to reinvest on the interior of it.

requires somebody who's going to take on operating well it's similar to the red school house when the grant was when i first was elected mayor nice at the time asked me to take over the grant because we were going to lose it and get it get the schoolhouse done and be inside it was supposed to be an interpretive center where the bid could actually man somebody there to explain the history of the village, guide them to the local places or whatever. But once again, it needed manpower. I did it one summer for about five weeks. I would go on the weekend and do it just because I wanted to see what the interaction was. Once again, if we're going to do something, we need to plan it out where it's always similar to the railroad, the mini railroad. that it's always going to have a future plan of action and not this, oh, great, we did it, and now nothing's getting done to it. Am I making sense?

Probably not tonight because I'm starting to get tired. I know this is like a pipe dream, but it makes me think, did we think about CPF and historic preservation of the jailhouse? I don't remember. Or is it because it's village-owned?

No, it's eligible.

It's eligible. Absolutely eligible.

We should put that on our list, our long list.

And hold your breath.

Yes. I already made my comment for one night. I'm just saying. I mean, you know, in a future future, maybe one day, hopefully.

It should be on the list.

It should be on the list.

That's what we're saying. Because we're trying to get our village properties onto that list.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. I feel like we did talk about the seaport museums.

All right. With that, we'll turn it over to public comments. Is there anybody from the public that wishes to speak this evening? Yeah. Sorry. Can we take a five-minute break quickly then?

Are you? Okay. Please carry on.

Good evening, Karen Rivara, 628 Carpenter Street. First of all, I'd like to thank you for putting a reminder in the newsletter for us to contact Senator Palumbo about the lodging tax. I think that, especially hearing about all the revenue we got from the parking, I'm guessing that that would be another good source of revenue for the village. So hopefully, Residents took that to heart and sent in some letter or email asking for the lodging tax or the opportunity to have that. So thank you for reminding us. I think the newsletter is important. I think also with brush pickup, I don't think that a lot of people know that they're supposed to be using bags for grass clippings and leaves, just judging from what I see in my neighborhood. So I don't know if a flyer of some sort, maybe in with our electric bill, I don't know if we can do that. But something that people get physically that will tell them what the rules are and the reason for it. 100% support not having the leaves and waste go into our storm drains and create an issue with MS4 or even just clogging it up and flooding the streets. So I understand that piece of it. I do understand wanting to save money. I don't think that if we go to eventually twice a year with brush pickup, my guess is that people are just going to put the brush out on the street anyway. I've seen people put brush out on the street December 15th and it sits there all winter. Again, I think you're going to need to communicate with people why you're looking at this. What the benefit is to the village, how people need to sort of handle their brush and leaf and grass clippings differently. But I just am not sure that we're going to be able to get to twice a year. You guys were talking about basically picking up the leaves and the grass clippings and maybe weeds that you can put in a container and do that. I think most people could live with once a month and then do the larger brush maybe twice a year or have some way to do that. But I think if we just curtail the brush pickup, it's either going to sit on the street or it's going to end up on Montsail Trail with a lot of other stuff. And I just think people are going to be upset losing a service when, you know, I'll take my street, for instance. There are quite a few Airbnbs that I would love to see them pay lodging tax because they clog up the street with their cars. They have no opportunity cost, whereas our bed and breakfast basically went out of business because they had to – You know, adhere to certain criteria like parking other expenses that the airbnbs don't have. So if they have to collect lodging tax that might help. Maybe fund more of the services that that full time residents benefit from.

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Airbnb. I mean, we use Airbnb like a word like Kleenex short term rentals.

Yes.

Since the village adopted the new code, which allows for. You know, short rentals if you right, I think it's if you meet the standards and the code, have you seen any increase or decrease? In this on your street, I have seen, um.

An increase or, yeah, I would say an increase or no change. I know there's one property that is a two-family, and they're renting out the whole thing short-term. There's nobody living there full-time. I live close by, and I know that for a fact. So that's not being done as per the new code.

and so please feel free to file a complaint directly the complaints have been filed online and i know you know they're following up on things the difficulty of course is having the right evidence for something like that yeah yeah but um

Yeah, so that I haven't really. Our street's pretty busy. I'd have to say that if a house is sold on our street, on a Carpenter Street, it's going to be converted to short-term rental property. That's just the way it seems to unfold. I don't think I've seen anybody buy a house that is on Carpenter Street or the property that's on Carpenter Street that they've sold. bought it and had it as a home. So that's the change because of where it is. It's so close to the center of the village. And then with brush pickup, I think if we don't have a frequent enough brush pickup and people are going to start using landscapers, that's also going to create a much more noisy environment. So hopefully we can come up with some kind of a solution that addresses the cost problem, addresses the MS4 problem, because those are significant, but still give residents the services they need. So that's my two cents on rush.

You should join Lilly's communications committee and help out.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you. Yep.

Anybody else?

Hi, Frank Backen, 138 Sterling Avenue and the Housing Committee. For the Housing Committee I just had, I was just wondering... Is there going to be a vote on holding a hearing?

We have a follow-up with legal counsel, and the goal is to hopefully have a resolution ready for next week. But that all depends on where we are with the board reviewing the draft language and if there's anything that's problematic. It should be in very good shape because there's been a lot of effort put into it.

Got it. And then the Long Island Forward housing program, that thing has been going on for a while. I know there was a question of getting information that had to be compiled between the village and the town as regards permits and so on and so forth. And then there are the other issues that you mentioned in terms of... coordinating with you know of of incorporating the uh some of the work that we've been doing with the architects and stuff um but is there like a realistic timeline about that about when that if we the sooner we get that information from the architects we can set up a conference call with them in order to move forward right um you know that that's about getting the uh Because then there's a whole process of waiting for the state to appoint.

They're ready to move forward. Oh, they are? We need that information. Then we need to make the determination on what we change some of the applications to. Okay. Because by some of the examples, the architects have already done the work for what we had originally submitted for. Okay. But happy to follow up with you and Denny on that together when she's back in the village.

Great. And then as regards the... The leaves and grass thing, most people either take their own trash to the dump or have somebody pick it up. So why don't we just do, make it so that everybody has to take, either take their bags with the leaves and grass to the dump with their regular garbage or have their regular, you know, Norfolk Sanitation or whoever picks up their garbage pick up the bags with their regular garbage. And then it would just be the brush. And the thing about the brush is that if you have a lot of foliage, let's say, or trees or something on your lot, especially for older people, like just cutting up the branches, the branches come down or... It's a lot of extra to cut those up into small enough pieces that they would go in. I don't mind because I have a larger car still, but a lot of people just have... small cars that they can't possibly put the brush in. So I think maybe a more limited but specifically brushed thing within just the spring and the fall. And then outside of that, you take care of everything yourself. That's just a suggestion.

Frank, can I comment on part of that? It's just that if a garbage company is going to pick it up, it would have to go in a yellow bag and that it would not go to like the compost facility at Southwelltown dump. It would go to the, it would be garbage.

Well, not if you use, what is it? Is it Magia? What's it called? Mattituck environment.

I don't think Mattituck, I mean they take yellow bags.

You don't have to use yellow bags.

Yes, you do. I use them. And they told me that they pick up garbage in a yellow bag and they pick up recycling either in a container or in a clear bag. if you were gonna do your leaves, they would have to be in a yellow bag, and it would be considered garbage, not considered, like right now, brush goes to the compost area, and it's made into compost at Southwelltown. So I mean, I appreciate it, it's a good idea. But unless we suddenly have card income, I mean, it maybe is a business opportunity for someone. to create that kind of facility. It happens other places. There's actually compost companies that come pick up your stuff, make compost, and sell it back. But again, to Karen's point, then it's not a service the village is providing. It's something extra we're paying for.

Yeah, it's complicated. You can't put it in a compactor truck.

Frank, thanks for the comments. I just wanted to question, you started off by saying most people

Well, I'm just saying that people are either doing one or the other. They have somebody pick it up for them, or else they're bringing it to the dump themselves. You're saying trash. Trash, yeah. Trash and recycling.

You're talking about trash and recycling.

Yeah, not leaves. Yeah, he was saying half of whatever the number is, a percentage are taking their own trash in the dump and recycling. Others have somebody pick it up.

I thought you were saying most people in the village were taking their own leaves.

No, that they could if there was some way of, but as Larry said, they'd have to be separated.

But I don't think, I understand it.

An additional service or something.

Only take garbage.

Or maybe the village could actually.

The garbage company will take whatever's in your bag or in your can. But it ends up in the garbage. But it ends up in the garbage.

And it has to be in a yellow bag. That's the South Pole Town Code.

But maybe the village could. No, no, no. That's only to go to the town dump. If you use Matatuck Environmental and you have the container, you don't have to use yellow bags.

South Pole Town Code says that to transport it in South Pole Town, garbage has to be in a yellow bag. Unless it's coming out of a dumpster.

Because I used to use Matatuck Environmental, and I did not have to use the yellow bags. I was told the yellow bags were only to fund the expenses of managing a town dump. They had their own facility.

I became a customer last year, and I was told to put my garbage in a yellow bag. And I've read Southwell Town Code, which I'm pretty sure says to be transported in Southwell Town, it's supposed to be in a yellow bag.

I misunderstood what you were saying when you said most people, but it raises an interesting point about how many residents are using the brush pickup. I feel like it's a lot. Anecdotally, I feel like it's quite popular.

Well, there's a lot out there. The question is what percentage... do it themselves, and what percentage have landscapers who are putting it out there.

Right, but I think there's also a fair amount of landscapers who are taking it away. Because there's definitely on my street, there's definitely not piles in front of every house.

On our block, it's three or four houses out of all of them that do that.

And of those three or four houses, do you know each of them to do their own landscape work or do you see others? Mostly, yeah.

Well, I mean, actually what we did this year was we got a guy, there's a guy who came with his machine and he cut the hedges in like an hour flat, which would be a lot more work for us. And then he just, he hauled everything out to the, all the cuttings out to the street. Nice. So that was kind of a combination.

The landscaper should be taking it with him.

Well, he's just like an individual guy.

Well, that's the other issue is there are a lot of people who have individuals who are doing lawn cutting on the side where they do it because... Did the family member hire them because of the senior citizens living in the house?

Or he works for a regular landscape company and just does his own extra work on the weekend. But he doesn't have... I was just wondering, but in terms of separating, maybe here's an idea that the village could actually... contract with somebody like Madison Sanitation or whoever, somebody with an open truck who would just come around and pick up all the brown bags and bring it to the town dump. That might be a way of like freeing, that would free up the highway department.

A different expense.

Yeah, but maybe not that much. It might be more cost competitive.

Yeah, if it was just one day.

Department of Labor. Yeah.

Anything else, Frank? No, that's it. Thank you. Oh, no. Yeah, because traffic. Okay. All right. Thanks.

Anybody else? All right. With that, we will move over to resolutions. Lily, do you want to start?

Resolution 9-2026-1, resolved that the village board hereby authorizes the village administrator to execute on behalf of the village the lease agreement with WSHU for the use of space at the radio tower. So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Resolution 09-2026-2, resolve that the village board hereby authorizes the village administrator to execute on behalf of the village the West Tech quote for antilogical gear motors and VFDs. So moved. Second. Second. All in favor?

Aye. Resolution 09-2026-3, resolve that the village board hereby authorizes the village administrator to execute on behalf of the village the laser concrete quote. for remediation work at the wastewater treatment plant.

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye.

Aye. Resolution 9-2026-4, resolved to the Village Board hereby authorizes the Village Administrator to execute on behalf of the Village the engineering proposal with J.R.H. Holzmacher Engineers for surveying and GIS mapping of the MS4 system for permit compliance.

So moved. Second in discussion. So we have three... resolutions for work with Holtzmacher, and I think they combined, they total maybe $200,000. Yes. And that's at the base cost, and there's hourly things. Yes. So are you able to negotiate a rate with them that's a special rate for us? Because we're doing a lot of work with them.

We're going to be parsing it out over time. We're not going to be paying those proposals up front. We pay them on a monthly basis, and we're still going to pay them on a monthly basis. And Bob and I are working on parsing this work out over time, as in working through Adam to make sure nothing is overly accumulating. The biggest one, which we haven't gotten to yet, which is the engineering for the forestry is part of our EFC funds. So that is deposited separately and aside from the other two.

But I think what you're talking about is trying to mitigate cash flow problems by spreading the payments out. But what about the actual rates? Do you feel like we're getting... at an appropriate rate, given how much work we're doing on?

Yeah, we have a standard rate with them. We're going to move into next fiscal with talking about working off appeal for them, but right now their rates have been standardized for, I think, the last few years. I think they have not changed.

I guess what I'm asking is can you lean on them to give us special rates?

I lean on them for discounts in how we go through our invoices and the hours they attribute. And each person that does work actually has a different hourly rate. So when a lower hourly rated employee can be performing the work, I'll always make sure that's what's happening.

She's been good on checking some things and following up with them. I was in her office the other day when she was doing it.

Yes, I believe you told me you thought they were fair on the bill.

I do think they're fair. Okay. Adam, I have a question. They're under professional services in our procurement policy?

They would be under professional services in our procurement policy, yes.

Okay, so the cumulative amount that the Deputy Mayor just mentioned, we're okay with that? Yes.

It's in compliance with the policy, because it's professional.

Yeah, and the totals don't, we don't pay them out in lumps. We're not paying them out in lump sums. We pay out hourly rates on a monthly basis.

I don't think that matters as far as procurement policy. I mean, they're in compliance with the policy because they are professional services. Professional services, go ahead. There's no threshold.

Right, okay. That's what I asked about the sewer report.

We have a follow up with the advice of council on that.

Okay. So we had a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye. I guess it's me.

Yeah.

Resolution 09-2026-5, resolve that the village board hereby authorizes the village administrator to execute on behalf of the village the engineering proposal with JRH Holtzmacher Engineers for engineering services related to work to be completed on 3rd Street. So move.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Resolution 9-2026-6, resolved that the Village Board hereby authorizes the Village Administrator to execute on behalf of the Village the engineering proposal with J.R.H. Holtzmacher Engineers for engineering services related to the 12-inch force main on Mansel Trail for the purpose of submitting the project for DEC permitting. So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Resolution 09-2026-7. Resolved that the village board hereby authorizes the village administrator to secure a qualified surveyor and arrange for the Moore's Woods parcel to be surveyed to identify utility and park zones. So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Resolution 09-2026-8. Motion to appoint John Robbins as a member of the Village of Greenport Historic Preservation Commission for the remainder of a four-year term to expire. On April 1st, 2030. Second and discussion.

Did somebody leave?

Yeah, I appreciate you saying discussion. Roselle Morelli resigned from the board, who's been with us for a very long time and done wonderful work on the HPC. she's getting busier between work and family commitments john robbins is an incredible individual who moved to the village a few years ago when he retired he was with the national park service in based in washington dc did a lot of historic work at a national level he's been working with janice and the board on a number of different initiatives including he's been volunteering time on code updates. He also assisted with some work on the big survey that was done by our outside consultants, Preservation Studios, that we had the grant for. So we're very happy to be able to have him join us. All in favor?

Aye. We have to do one more resolution, Candace?

Yes, I wrote it if you want me to read it. Please. Okay, resolution 09-2026-9. Resolution to approve the request from Warren Bundarchuk on behalf of the men's softball league to extend their season at the Morris Lane ball field to the following dates. Monday, September 21st, Tuesday, September 22nd, Monday, September 28th, and Tuesday, September 29th.

So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries.

So moved. Okay, sorry, never mind.

What's that? You didn't move it. You can't move it because you're not on the floor. I know, that's why it- You read it, so I said so move.

Okay, it threw me off.