(1) Town Board - Regular Meeting

Very good everyone. [clears throat] Happy new year. Happy new year. Welcome to the Red Hook Town Lord meeting of Tuesday, January 13, 2026. Would you kindly join me in the pledge of allegiance, please? I pledge algiance 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.

Thank you all very much. I hope that you had a happy and healthy, probably the most challenging part of that uh holiday season. And for the folks at home uh wanting to know what we'll be discussing uh this evening, we have two uh public hearings. Uh one is related to um or actually both are related to the rehab of the water district number one uh storage tank. And um we actually have a couple of our water board members with us this evening. Um and we'll start the evening off with that. We then will move on to our annual reorganization meeting uh rather resolution. We'll then um address two highway related uh matters. We approve the annual expenditures for capital uh improvements, road improvements. We have our highway superintendent here somewhere. I thought I saw her right. Teresa. Oh, there you are. Okay. Very good. Um and uh we'll then move on to a discussion and approval of a new EV cargo van for the highway department. Um we'll then take up those uh issues related to the storage tank. Um we have a resolution approving an amendment to the fire protection district agreement with the village of Tivoli. Um, if you've been following along on many of these issues in previous meetings, um, the village of Tivoli and the Tivoli Fire Department met with us, um, and said that they needed additional help. We had initially

allocated $250,000 towards the firehouse expansion project. They needed additional help. Um, we explained our time constraints with the ARPA funds that they needed to be expended this year. And so, uh, we put our heads together and came up with a plan to provide, um, additional capital line funding to, uh, double the support, first of all, $500,000, but to do it, uh, pay the debt associated with the borrowing that they're going to ensue. And this way uh both the the fire department village and [clears throat] also the town wouldn't be under the gun if you will uh with time constraints. So um it's our hope that uh we can be moving that forward because I know that they do want to go out uh to bid and that of course is a critical uh step that they need to take in order to know whether they're whether or not they're going to uh move forward with that project. Um we're going to discuss but uh not likely decide on um this year's health insurancey uh health insurance policy uh for the employees. Um we have a ministerial act um to do with assigning a delegate to uh the association of towns annual conference. um you uh see your representatives and by the way congratulations to our new Ken Miglorelli and Christine. [applause] [applause] We also didn't get a chance because of the meeting schedule to thank um our outgoing uh Julia Solomon and Christine Kaine for all of their work over the years and we'll be seeing and I'm sure hearing from both of them uh in the future. So thank you all to them. Uh but

the point I was getting to uh is that we do um continuing education um each and every year uh whether it's remote courses or this annual conference where representatives from all the towns 900 plus in New York State uh convene and uh we get up to speed on what the latest and greatest and share our thoughts and ideas with each other. Um we have a couple of resolutions related to assessments and then uh we'll discuss correspondence as it relates to where we are on um engineering study and uh reducing speed limits townwide. With that being said, why don't we very quickly um go and do uh supervisor's report for this month. Uh folks, all I have is the cash portion as you know. Um we uh continue to acrewue um expenses throughout January. So you'll get this uh updated um later on in January. But from a cash position, we do this the first meeting of each month. Um I'll report to uh the folks. We started with an opening balance of 9,32,000. We had receipts of 3,971 dispersements of 2,444,000 with an ending balance of 10,828,000. I won't ask you to accept the supervisor's report because this is the only portion of it that we have uh for tonight. Um Diana, could we uh quickly do the clerk's report, please?

No. I didn't I didn't do a vote. Oh, okay. It's just the the brief portion of it.

Oh, okay. Um, town clerk's report for the period of December 1st, 2025 to December 31st, 2025. Total local shares remitted remitted, $8,37,947. Amount paid to New York State Agriculture Markets for the spayneuter program, $36. Amount paid to New York State Department of Health for marriage licenses, $45. Amount paid to New York State controller for games of chance bell jar license $15. Amount paid to New York State Environmental Conservation for hunting and fishing licenses $68.3. Total state, county, and local revenues $8,543.50. And there are there vouchers or

there are vouchers. I hereby certify vouchers numbered 3236 34236 to 34386 totaling 77 757,1944 processed in the month of December 2025 are an accurate reporting of the abstracts approved for payment by the town board. Very good. Thank you very much Diana. Is there a motion to accept a parks report? I I have a few questions. Okay. So looking at this, so we're charging trailer park fees.

Oh, it's um the the license is their licenses for a year. $15 a year to have a trailer park. It's like a license. Yeah. So we it looks like it's $75 a year to have a a trailer. Where? Oh, I'm sorry. There's five. online. There are that's only um there's actually um I think there's six parks, but we um we only we got paid I think we did one last month, too. Like in November, we had a payment for one. Can you just explain what that is?

Yeah, I I think Diana just did. There are five trailer park fees. There's a $15 annual fee associated and there's five total of 75 for for for a park a park of collective any amount of Yes. So so the like for instance the trailer park up on Mountain View um they pay $15 a year for a license to have the park and what and why do we charge trailer parks? That's a New York state. Comes from the state. There's a state mandated fee for trailer.

I believe it. I believe it's um I'd have to look that up, but it's definitely a mandated fee to have. It's $15. It's like a registration. Yeah. Every year annually. So, I just send out a quick letter and then send them a license with a seal on it once they pay the $15. Um, yeah, it seems strange to me that we'd be that we would be allocating fees towards trailer parks. I'd like to understand more about that.

I'll look into it and give it give you more information on it. And then the other the other thing that stuck out to me was the dog licensing fees. Yes. Um I mean obviously this is a minority of people that choose to participate in licensing their dogs, but we've got we've we've we've got pure breads or discounted fees. Like where where do these fees come from?

Um so the fees are are set by New York State. Um, it's the law to license your dog. People should be licensing their dogs in town of Red Hook. Um, if we only have one purebred license or I think the purebred license was literally I think we have one in the whole that we have in our whole

there's one that I think we've just done that. That's the one. Um, but usually if it's unneutered, the dogs um are $22 a year and for uh spay and neutered dogs it's $15 a year. And um New York State I think it's um 14 and then a dollar goes to New York State. So 14 for the town, a dollar for the state. It's gets split that way but by New York State. I I'd just like to understand where these where where these fees come from. um looking at the report and trying Oh, I can definitely I'll put something together for you. Thank you.

Okay. Hearing no other questions. Um is there a motion to accept the corpse report? Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank [snorts] you, Jacob. All in favor? [clears throat] I

Okay. Uh, a couple of quick announcements and then we'll get to our public hearing. Um, very good news. Uh, the town was, uh, awarded a grant that we applied for for, uh, central sewer. It was the intermunicipal grant. Um it's a program that the governor uh to her credit uh created um to uh help support uh sewer projects that uh involve more than one uh municipality. Um when we created the TND sewer district, the extension of which is um from town hall is TND all the way down to the parcel south of Hannifford. Um we told the the residents and property owners there that we would not uh move forward likely until we receive some grant funding. We applied for the full amount, 40% of the estimated project cost, and that's these businesses up and down Route 9 on both sides. Um, we've been uh notified that we're awarded uh 2.563 million um towards what was estimated a couple of years ago as 6.5 6.6 million project. Um if you've been following along in previous meetings, we took some of our ARPA allocation uh 3 four years ago, we felt so strongly about um helping out the businesses up and down Route 9 that we allocated over a half a million dollars as well towards that.

um together that adds up to nearly $3.1 million towards again what was at the time estimated to be 6.56.6 million. Uh obviously when when and if we decide [clears throat] to go out to bid that number uh could change. [cough] So at this point we've asked the village to take a look at um the demand um for expansion on their portion uh because the sewer plant which is modular in nature um to understand whether or not they could begin to uh design a system short of the full 300,000 gallons a day um in order to help us out and start on this process and uh try to get the construction done before uh the project costs um continue to go up. So, uh really good news there uh folks for uh 2026 um events. So, it's a new year. We'll be having our usual seven or eight spring events here in the town. Uh we start off uh not this upcoming weekend but the following weekend with our quarterly Red Hook Repair Cafe um hosted uh as has been now for some time by the community center 10 to 1. There are lot lots of items that you uh can bring and lots of terrific uh volunteers to help uh repair these types of uh items that you have in your house. and other things 10 to 1. That's Saturday, January 24th. We thank everybody coming here. Um we I

think we have a few folks from Barrytown here this evening. Um you and others may in particular be interested. Next Wednesday night, I've arranged for Duchess County DPW to come and make a presentation related to the bridge replacement project which will be in Anandale. That's just south of uh the triangle um on River Road and uh that's 6:30 here at town hall. You'll hear about um some of the thoughts um changes that they're proposing to make. I believe there's a three-foot sidewalk on the one side of the the bridge. They're talking about potentially having a 5-ft sidewalk um on both sides of the bridge there. But you'll find out more. It's here Wednesday night, January 21st at 6:30. And lastly, uh, everybody wants to survey you and Duchess County wants to survey you as it were, uh, as it pertains to transportation in, uh, the county. And it looks like you get a $25 gift card if you do so. And here is the survey itself. You'll need to go online in order to do that. But as we are soliciting your thoughts and ideas townwide for the comprehensive plan, it would be great to also get your input as it relates to getting around the county. Um, and in particular, Northern Duchess.

Where do you get that? It's online, Duchess County. Um you can Google moving duchess forward and this will be uh on our website and you can link directly there from our website. This is the hyperlink here. Moving duchess forward is the name of the effort. Okay. With that being said, thanks for your patience. Um we have our first public hearing and that is related uh to uh the increase and improvement of water district facilities for revenue water district number one. [clears throat] Diana, would you be kind enough to read the public hearing notice?

Notice of public hearing on proposal for an increase and improvement of water district facilities for Red Hook Water District number one. Notice is hereby given that the town board of the town of Red Hook, Duchess County, will meet on the 13th day of January, 2026 at 7:35 o'clock PM prevailing time for the purpose of conducting a public hearing upon a proposal by said town board to undertake proposed improvements to the facilities of the town of Red Hook Water District number one pursuant to section 202-B of the town law as here after described at which time and place said town board will meet to consider such proposition. ition and hear all persons interested in the subject thereof and concerning the same. The town board is considering a recommended work plan for improvements to to Red Hook Water District number one [clears throat] as described in the preliminary engineering report dated August 2022 as amended June 17, 2023 as further supplemented March 10th, 2025 prepared by Tyenbond Engineering and Landscape Architecture PC including the rehabilitation of the existing standpipe at the Kelly Road Water Storage site and including original furnishings, equipment, machinery and apparatus required therefore the project at an estimated maximum cost of $1,6721,672,600 a portion of such cost in the estimated amount of $400,000 is proposed to be paid from the water district's existing SW reserve fund and the remaining project cost is proposed to be financed pursuant to the local finance law. Such engineers preliminary report is on file in the town clerk's office for public inspection. The town board hasn't has determined that such project as described in the engineers report constitutes a type 2 action as defined under the state state environmental quality review regulations 6 NYCRR part

617 which has been determined under secret not to have a significant impact on the environment. All interested persons will be given an opportunity to be heard. All reasonable accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. In such a case, please notify the town clerk in advance at the above address or by phone so that arrangements can be made by order of the town board of the town of Red Hook dated December 9th, 2025. Deanna Cochran, town clerk, town of Red Hook.

Thank you, Deanna. And for folks before we open the public hearing, if you've been following, uh, this agenda item has been, uh, discussed now for actually a few years. The water board has been back and forth trying to analyze the pros and cons of either replacement or rehabilitation and has settled, that's my plan for this evening, has settled on uh, rehab uh, as the preferred option. uh under these circumstances, the cost of which is approximately um $1.7 million. They proposed to take $400,000 out of the reserves. Um they have also we have also made a request to our college to contribute towards um the system since they on rare occasions, but they do [clears throat] use it as a backup. And uh so that's sort of the 302 version of it. I won't ask the water board to revisit it, but they are here to answer any question. So, with that being said, um may we uh entertain a motion to open the public hearing?

So moved. Thank you, Christina. Second. Second. Thank you, Bill. All in favor? I. Would [clears throat] somebody like to uh speak on this matter? Um I have a question. What is it that you're going to rehab on the water tower? It's the tank itself. The whole thing. But what are you going to do? Are you going to paint it? It's going to be It's going to be repainted. Exactly. Did Did you want to address that question? I know you have previously. Well, you don't have to stand up.

That's right. Anyway, um like anything else that we own, equipment, whatever. It deteriorates. Okay. I was thinking about maybe it's like your automobile. Every once in a while, you have to either fix it up or replace it. And that's what we're going to do with this tank. We have to fix it up. It's really held up very, very well since 1989 when it went online. Um the paint um surfaces are still good, but uh if we don't repaint it soon, [snorts and clears throat] it'll become very very difficult. And you know, like anything else, the longer you let things go, the worse the problem. So we decided that given the likelihood of additional major expenses for the water district in the next 15 20 years that we preferred to go with the expense of rehabilitating this tank rather than replacing it. The cost of a new tank was uh over twice as much. It's just the the decision that we recommendation that we came to that we're better off rehabilitating this tank with a loan with a cost ofund or a million6 or seven or whatever it's going to be versus probably a total cost of close to 4 million for a new tech. So that was our recommendation. And that is our recommendation and it's just something that has to be done sooner or later. So,

do you paint the inside of the tank? Yes. Okay.

So, uh we'll have to drain the tank and they clean up the interior of the tank and uh you know clean up all rust spots and little damages and then re put primers on. Anyway, they repaint it. And while they do that, um, and probably before they they paint, we'll inspect to make sure that the tank is properly cleaned and ready for paint. And then we'll inspect again once or twice during the painting process. So, um, we hope for good weather because that's important and that's the way we plan to go.

Okay. Other questions or comments? Rich Rinders,

Red Hook on the tank. I get it. The money you're saying 1.7 million now uh versus 4 million. So, if you possibly get 8 5 8 10 years out of this refurbished tank with what you're calling paint. I'm not sure when you say paint, what you mean by paint. However, in 10 years, what would the cost be then? 15 million. Would it be better off today to pay the 4 million, put a new tank in for something that's already approximately 30 years old, right? Or you said 1989 89 it went online. Yeah. Okay. So,

thing is, so what I'm saying is moneywise, pay now. put a new tank in now because 10 years down the road you might be at 12 million for this tank the way our economy is going. I mean that's something to think about. I don't know if it's been tossed around. It's just a suggestion. That's all it is. And while I'm on it, when you say paint, what is this paint? It's a coating. I know it's a coating, but a real high-end coating that we So obviously since ' 89 it's worn off and is that getting to our water system? This so-called paint? No. So since 1989, we haven't had to code it at all, which is, you know, so when they tell us 10 years for a coating. Yeah.

You know, it took we're 30 years and change and and we haven't had to code it. Um, so we've actually typically a good coating is 15 years you can get out of a really good coating. [clears throat] So that's what we're hope hoping for. That's what we pushed. We we were back and forth for about four years on this decision whether to get No, I understand that's a big decision. I get it. I'm just I'm just putting it out there. Costwise now versus 10 years down the road, what will the cost be? If it was 4 million today is going to be 12 million 10 years down the road. That's that's all that's all I'm putting out there.

It's true. Uh what we're thinking of is not just this loan paying off this loan, but we have a 60 70 year old system. Water manes don't last forever. We're going to have to be replacing repairing and then replacing water manes. Uh we're having some well work done soon. I hope one of the wells has uh the output has deteriorated significantly. So we're going to try to rehab it. If that works, fine. Otherwise, they can drill a new well and whatever. So these extra expenses coming along, we just wanted to keep our current, you know. I understand. Yeah, that's all. I was just putting it out there in a different way so that I agree.

It could be tossed around in the salad that we're up here. Very good. Um, any anyone else uh for the public hearing? Any comments or question? Yeah. Do we have a public hearing? I mean, are we can we talk about something else? Just like this. This is a public hearing on this matter and then you'll have we'll have public comments later. Okay. All right. Good. I mean, Robert, I don't know how you want to conduct the meeting. I have questions that are I I think are relevant to what the public is saying. I don't know how you want to conduct your meeting, but like

we're here. We're here to hear from the public. It's a public hearing [clears throat] on this matter. The agenda item is related to the water tank rehab. How long will the bond be for? The bond will be for 15 years. She's sitting up there. The ber that's the maximum that we can borrow for this length of term for this type of project. And and you need to borrow for this even though the town has lots of money.

This is only funded by the users. Just um again uh folks um and I realize not everybody's been here for all these other meetings. This is a water district cost. The only folks that pay for this are the users, the ones it's it's referred to as a special benefit assessment district, which means that there is a benefit that occurs to those who get to use the water and they're the ones who pay for the cost. It's it's not the town life who pay for this additional.

But but I think that related to the questions that I've heard and I've listened to the previous discussions on this topic. So there was an analysis in in 2017 and in 2022. Mhm.

So what I would like to understand is what was the decision was made after both of those reviews as to why it wasn't maintained at those periods. Well, first of all, there was no immediate need in at those times. Um, we uh looked ahead and knew we're going to do have to refurbish or replace sometime in the future, but there was no real target time. And I we reached a point last year. Wow. I think I think we reached a point where we realize that we really have to rehabilitate now or forget about it because if we let it go, the repainting, the rehab is just going to be too difficult and probably not as uh longlasting. So we chose to go with the rehab now and uh try to uh avoid the uh accumulation of multiple large debts for the other work that's going to have to be done. And when you look at a rehab versus a replacement, um there's there's um there's there's first costs, there's second cost, and there's third costs that that are evaluated, right? So

So [snorts] your your your second cost are your maintenance, and your third costs are your replacement. And so was it looked at as to like where that crossed over into where it it it crossed over into validating. We looked out about 40 years. Okay. And in that 40 years, we would have to rehab probably twice and be ready for another rehab. At that time with the the cost of a new tank appeared to be better than the cost of the multiple rehabs.

Okay. Um so then why we we'll have a sorry [clears throat] Carrie did you have a question? You just said the cost of the new one would be more cost effective if you look out 40 years and that's just a guess you know. Okay. So that a new tank in 40 years would be [clears throat] a better deal than a couple of rehabs. You just said that, but yet we were going to go for a rehab, right? That we're concern we were concerned. Yeah, we were at a bare minimum of a 40-year payback, a 40-year payback on a system. And we know we're going to have additional

have other costs of if we if we were to spend the money now on on on a new tank. We would have no money to do any other repairs in the system. So we'd be very vulnerable in our water district. So that was part of why we Okay. And so so the so the new tank eaked out two rehabs, but it gives you it's more cash friendly now to do a rehab. Yes, it definitely is. And it's better loan repayments for all of us. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So, even though if you had the money, you'd get a new tank right now because the 40-year payback is better.

Not necessarily. Oh, I thought you [snorts] just said that. I'm not sure. You know, it's Oh, you did say that, but you're not sure. Okay. I was just I heard that said, so scary. One thing you didn't that hasn't been said here is that the [snorts] mains it cost about a million dollars right now for a mile to replace a main. 80 [clears throat] years is about as far as you can go. He he explained that there. Yeah. But we're going to have those those are coming. I get it.

And so you need to have asyn said you need to have that the cash ability to replace. don't have the cash then. But you know, you did say that a 40-year payback was better with a new tank, but because of these other expenses, you don't have the cash on hand to do it, even though it would be better to do. Well, that's our guess. The 40 year the 40-year payback we're talking about is like a worst case scenario. means we have to paint it every 10 years and we've already gone 40 years for 30 something years without painting it one time. So we may not paint it again for 30 years. It might really be a 100 years. Everyone's guessing

exactly when you decide on your car deal. My car is 21 years old. You just don't know. Anyway, that's the way it is. We we made our recommendation. We thought we were making the the best recommendation. [snorts] Yeah. Yeah. Who knows? Uh, another question, Emily. Um, how many people does, uh, does the border district serve? Uh, is it village of Red Hook or Red Hook? The town of Red Hook. It's basically the old Lynden Acres and College Park subdivisions. That's is that's it. So, how many residents? How many residents? 488 connections and five of those are to the town park.

Yeah. So, 500 connections. Two people, three people per home per guest. Okay. And can you explain the connection to Bart?

Oh, that's um when we uh built the tank, this current tank, Bart College was in trouble with water. They had uh inadequate supply. They had no storage. And they suggested that they would contribute half the cost of this new of a new tank. given that we could connect to them and they would use that storage tank as they needed it. And for the first 20 years,

they uh they did use our water a lot in 2000 I think 2016. [clears throat] They redid their water supply. Okay. So since then they use us on an emergency basis rather than on a regular basis. But they they contributed because they needed the additional water, the storage and the water. [cough] And so is [snorts] somebody currently negotiating with Bard about their contribution to this? Somebody say your table here.

An ask has been made of Bart College. they are going to uh take that up at their uh meeting at later in the month um to get approval for a contribution. We hope that they would consider something substantive at least 25%. Now granted they barely use the the water but still as a backup that's important [clears throat] thing to that and I understand the village is also is also a backup. There's portion of the village or part of the village that's connected with this water supply. Yes. Did you want to talk about the interconnect?

The village and the town water district have a connection [clears throat] on Willowbrook U Lane just north of the village. Um the problem is that our storage tank the the height is not high enough to provide adequate pressure for the village. The village can provide water to us, but it doesn't work. It should have, but it wasn't adequately planned, I guess. So, we cannot provide the village with water unless we pump. We'd have to install pumps. Okay. Go.

Any more questions related? Again, once to the rehabbing of the tank. Hey, [clears throat] I got one question. Yeah. Um, by no means am I a water expert, paint expert, or a steel expert. I know you've had divers in there, you've done assessments from the exterior. Um, the question I have, do you feel that the company or, you know, the outfit that's going to be addressing this situation? Uh, let me say this. Sometimes you get into things, it's more advanced than what you anticipated. Is there a a point where they'll be honest with you and say, "You know what? Maybe we can't rehab this tower because we got into it and it's too far." What do you think, Evelyn Glenn? I don't think we're going to have a problem with it. I don't think so either.

It's hard to know. The tank has been inspected every 5 years. Okay. Interior and exterior. And the most recent inspection showed that we're in pretty good shape. There was very little damage inside the tank. So, it's it's relatively clean in terms of redoing it, repainting it. Typically, they would have to do like you've even got pretty extreme pitting. We'd have to do a resurfacing on it before we would do a coating, which they plan to do some of that. Um, but there isn't an extreme amount of pitting in this case. We're in good shape.

Worst, even if it gets past pitting, you can still weld in new new steel plates. But we're we're not in a situation where we need any of that. At least that's what the last divers report showed. The the last two or three, you know, the last report was barely worse. You know, didn't show much additional deterioration from the previous one. We're in good shape. Lisa,

what is the anticipated assessment rate for users in the district with or with with and without a bar contribution? We we haven't run the analysis and again I want to remind folks what we are entertaining tonight is the authorization um to approve going out to bid and the financing. So every bond resolution you'll see uh in any municipality your resolution has to state the total cost for the project maximum and the total maximum borrowing. And so, uh, when and if we're we're discussing Tiboli Firehouse, uh, again tonight, and we're also talking about water storage tank. When and if you go out to bid, you get those bids, then you really truly understand what that cost is and you contract with that entity to deliver that service or that construction project for that price. Um, the water board has recommended that we once we understand the difference uh between um what we will have from both our college and the $400,000 coming out of the reserves because the water uh district has approved reserves that we look at a combination of raising rates and um an assessment so that it's not a large hit but it's also not a large increase to the water rates.

And who's talking to Bard College? Like what does that look like? Um the request has I've made a request to Bard College to make a contribution. We have an agreement by the [clears throat] way with Bard College to provide water. So we're not happy with the contribution. We don't necessarily have to continue to serve uh Bard College as a backup source. Um we've had no issue. They don't seem to have a problem with making a contribution. Let's see what that is. But we don't we don't at this date we don't know what that looks like.

We don't at this date know what that looks like. That's correct. The good thing is they really need us. Okay? They don't need us often, but when they need us, they need us. And for example, last January, they were hooked into our system for 3 or 4 weeks using us full-time. Luckily, their student population was low at that time. But they do need us. Okay? They have fire protection for one thing. you know when if they need fire protection they don't have adequate storage to provide water they need us so they will contribute

okay um folks if there are no other comments at this time I'd like to make a motion to close the public hearing I'd like to continue the public hearing if we don't know what Bard is contributing okay well uh with or without the contribution We do need to uh move forward with the project. We have um some time uh time issues. Uh hey, do you want to address that because we need the project conducted you've advised?

We really need to get going. We want to submit put out a request for proposals [clears throat] soon, early this year. We'd like to get the painting the project done in the summer, early summer, not late summer. Um, weather is a concern. Okay. So, the sooner we get it done, the better [clears throat] and we'll just do what we can. Well, I I strongly recommend that we we go for the new tank. For what I've done for a living for the last 40 years, I suggest a new tank. If the town fishes for some more money, go for the new tank because what you're doing is a great idea, but it's a short-term fix. Vote for the new tank. That's my suggestion.

[clears throat] We've been we've agreed with that anyway. Okay. Um can you can you uh speak to just the timing of because we've got several steps that we have to have when So try to do this this year with or without Bard. We need we need the water tank, right? We people who live there,

Bard doesn't want to do it. We still we still have to have drinking water and take showers whether Bard wants to contribute or not. So, the bar thing I understand is important to us all from a cost savings standpoint, but we still need the water. Um, that's that's one thing. Um, as far as the timing goes, we still have to, you know, we get an agreement here. We still have to get bid documents put together for this, get a bid bid out on the street. Takes a month to bid. We would be lucky to get this out by uh, you know, the June time frame to try and get them into construction. Um, you ideally you don't want to paint when it's super humid. So, you sort of want to try to get in there before the humid season or after the humid season. So, either way, we're we're sort of, you know, running up against it to to get out to bid and move forward with the project. I I understand wanting to know all the all the details, costs, and so on and so forth, but we're not going to know until we go out to bed. And I don't want to um the inspection seems to suggest that the tank's in good shape. But I don't think we should lose a year, which is really what it would mean if we delay um to wait to find out what a contribution is, which is

What do you mean a year? But how do we wait a year? We meet every two weeks. We do meet every two weeks, but if we don't have an answer until February and we lose the bidding process, that was why I asked the question was who who is so BART is a big for for me looking at this and looking at the the financials, Bart is a big piece of it and that's an unknown and so before I'm ready to take a vote on this, I would like to know what that looks like and I think that that's part of the public process. So, I I don't I don't feel comfortable closing the public hearing until we know what BR is contributing. How come we don't know how much Bard is contributing already?

Because BART has not met with their board and made the request and done the appropriation. I will I would please let me finish answer your question. The decision to move forward happened only a few months ago. Bard appropriates its money on a on a different calendar year than we do. So, it's not in the budget because they haven't been asked for a contribution yet because the water board was still determining how it wanted to proceed.

So, how do so, how do we find a solution to making sure that this is I mean that the the points that were made were were were valid. I mean, you you can only tank in certain uh months of the year. So there's if if it needs to be fixed this calendar year, there's a time clock that we're in we're in January and we meet twice twice a month. So I don't I don't see a rush in in coming to a decision. I see a rush in getting information so that we have completeness and we can make a decision as soon as possible.

So a question I would ask is like like BR is clearly a a part of this. How do how do we get that done? Well, I I you know, I don't have an answer for you because I don't know how BART works and appropriates their monies. All I know is that we have an agreement with BART that will have to be renegotiated and [clears throat] it will be B for to service them with water and it'll be based on upon what type of contribution they make as they did historically. Um

what happened? Excuse me, please. I think that was answered. Um, they made a capital contribution 39 years ago when the tank was built of 50%. How much percent? I just didn't hear you, Robert, cuz you never talk into your mic. No,

I think Hank uh reiterated as he has in previous meetings that Bart College contributed 50% of the capital cost of construction because back then they were using the water a lot and that was part of the agreement is that they would pay for half of the cost of this storage tank. Um, they've been asked to contribute $400,000 towards this rehabilitation of the tank and they will have to meet with their board and appropriate those monies and figure out how they're going to do it because they've already done conducted their budget for the year. So, they will need to figure out how to make whatever contribution they feel is appropriate. they could alternative alternatively just upgrade their facilities and not need to rely on us as a backup. It has been a mutually beneficial arrangement from what I'm told by the water department because we do receive a revenue based upon uh usage from bar

and I to me that sounds beautiful but critical path would be understanding what bar's contributing before we close a public hearing and allocate funds towards those that are taxpayer funded. Okay, I understand that balance. That's a difficult uh balance to to uh make but I also don't want to wait. I think we also heard about waiting. So, so my question to you, Robert, is is who is who is communicating with Bard and how how did we bring that to

I think I've answered that that the request has been made at Bard and I made the request came out of my office $400,000 or 25% contribution and BART has said that they are meeting with their board to discuss um what contribution and it may not happen for weeks. we may not have here for a couple of months. I mean, I don't know the answer to um when we would hear back from Barn because I'm not uh privy to those things. I do know what the water department

it sounds like that we that we need to repair a relationship with Bard if we don't if this is this is critical and that they're they're part of this this water tank and if if that's critical to them then then we need to establish a relationship with them that that offers a solution we have in a time frame that works for for our con constituents.

Okay, Christina, we have a very good relationship with Barb College. They've offered to make a contribution and they need to go through the proper process like we do to allocate and so um that is what they are doing. We'll hear back from them. We've heard from the water department. Regardless of what that amount of contribution is, we need to move forward. Again, the resolutions in front of us have maximum numbers. They don't have minimum numbers associated with it. And so we're hearing that there's a timing issue. I don't want to lose a year. As we've heard from other people in the audience, as time marches on, sometimes the costs march on. We have spent four years. Uh the water board has and we have in public meetings discussing this. And so I understand I too would prefer to have that number. I can assure you, but I don't want the people of the water district to have to wait. um and pay more in an ensuing year because we didn't have a contribution figure. We also don't have the the actual amount once we go out to bid, but yet here we are looking at and hopefully entertaining resolutions to move forward because we need to maintain the the tank. So

I do want I do want to make sure we get all the public comments. Linda, please. You have a barred employee right sitting on the board. So why doesn't he become the spokesperson? He's there every single day working. Yeah. Um if there's a matter involving my employer, I would recuse myself from that matter. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Um and then we're going to take a couple couple more comments and then we're going to entertain. Go ahead. So, um I mean say we we you say, "Okay, let's move forward with bids." And then say you find out that Bard says, "You know what? We're going to we don't want to do 400,000." And the bids come in more. Is there another public comment hearing before you vote to move ahead with this?

This is only an authorization to allow us to possibly move forward so that we can develop the bids. go we can develop the specs go out the bid if we don't like the bids or we don't like where the money stands or if it exceeds the authorization and we have put those two figures that I've told you we do in every resolution then we can just reject them and we can go back and and do it again. Okay. Okay. So

but you didn't answer my question. My question is once all of this information, how much Bard is paying, blah blah blah, will there be another period for the public to say, "Hey, we like this or we don't like this." Is there another like we could close this public comment period as long as there's another one when the facts come in. So, would there be will there be

there? Yes, there will be because there are uh other um uh stages along the way where we have to award and so you can come back and say I don't think you should be awarding because you don't have enough funding the implications of awarding. I don't think you should move forward. I think you should go and you should do a new tank. You can say all of those things but until we take these steps we can't get one of those key data points. which I want to be assured that there is another period down the road before money is allocated in which [clears throat] the public can comment when there's more information that will happen. Yeah.

No, I think that's a great point and that so so we understand what the total cost is because we've had consulting engineers estimate what the total cost of the situation is and the unknown is how much Bard is contributing which could be significant. So the question is should the should the public comment period be be closed and and Robert I'm looking at you for affirmation like should the public comment be closed while this is while this is an open item and I think everyone is trying to understand what the what the metrics are of what that looks like. So

So I I do think if you're asking me a question I do think it's important that we move forward. We're hearing from our waterboard that we move forward in part because we need to get perhaps the most important number which is going out to bid [clears throat] how much is somebody or a firm willing to conduct the work for. We can't answer your net question until we have the gross question. And what would be the benefit of closing the public hearing tonight is that we don't we will not be authorizing them to go ahead and move forward. And so there'll be a delay. We don't know how long that delay will be. We don't know when we're going to hear back from Bart. We

So they can't authorize until So we can't we can't move forward and get the information and and but but on the contrary, if we do close the public hearing tonight, then we restrict ourselves to we don't restrict ourselves to anything because we don't have to accept we don't have a time frame in which we're supposed to act. we don't close the public if if we close a public hearing tonight are are does that start a time clock in which the matter has to be closed

uh you know it's I can only speak for myself it's my desire that we not only close the public hearing but we start to move forward with this project so we can get the information and then we can take a look once the No that's that's not my question my question is my question my question is if you if we If we choose to close the public hearing tonight without knowing what Bard is going to contribute, does that or does that not start a time clock in which the [clears throat] matter has to be closed? No, it does not. It's not like a zoning. It's not like a zoning matter. It's unlimited. Yeah, it's not. Good question. Okay. Um, anything else in the public hearing before?

One quick question. Will you be getting estimates for a new tank and the refurbishing? We have already done that and I'm sorry I apologize. I know you're all asking uh these questions. Again, I just want to remind you this has been on the agenda for nearly four years. We have had broad discussions putting this out. Are you putting it out to bid for both? And we are not putting it out to both. We have had estimates. Uh did you want to address uh let me just let me just mention yeah um I bond put together an estimate cost for both approaches rehabbing and replacing. Yes. So we've had those numbers. Okay.

Yes. Numbers for replacing just as good as the numbers for rehab. They're best guess educated guesses. So we've had numbers and sir. Yes. I I reviewed them, but but part of part of my issue is that if Bart isn't involved, then the tank would be smaller, then the circumstances would be different, then the engineering would shift. So, it's it's all kind of kind of one movement. That That's true. It's all tied together. The tank height is kind of determined by a pressure zone in the district that's outside of Bard. So, the height of the tank wouldn't matter. I suppose you could make an a narrower tank. Yes.

Of some sort, but yes, our original plans back in the 1980s were to have a tank the height of the current tanks but smaller in diameter. We could still do that if Bard did not join us. But that would that

we estimated that tank too and it was still more quite a bit more money than uh paying the tank. I think Robert Robert is correct that uh this is an authorization to proceed to the next step and if the next step is not appropriate we just have to change our plans we would have to decide probably to use this tank and run it into the ground and then replace it because the longer we wait the less feasible is the rehab approach. So, we want to proceed step by step and um I think that's where we are. Emily, uh

I just have a question. you you've been saying and you've repeated it that you have worked on this project for four years and it sounds like Robert you just contacted Fars last week and asked for 400,000 like have they have that's the feeling I'm getting anyway because you it sounds like you sent a letter you're like hey they already finished their fiscal year so we're kind of hoping on Hail Mary here for 400k um I I'm it's I'm surprised that they wouldn't have said we are going to pledge x amount towards this project, especially if it's something that you all have been very concerned with for four years. Like has bar been contacted about this within the last four years or is it just been recently that they are on the

I haven't had a specific plan. Okay. We knew we were going to have to do something but we hadn't really decided. We hadn't made a solid recommendation to the town board. They hadn't decided. It was last year that we decided we it's time to go and then it was time to talk to fire. So, it's been a little about a year that B has known that we need

it's been it's more than that. As I said, um the water department only a few months ago um decided which approach that they thought would be better given and I think you all know this in Tivoli anticipation of other infrastructure expenses coming down the pike. They're looking to incorporate their thinking uh with that distribution system that may need substantial [clears throat] uh repairs. But I I mean I'm trying but to Emily's point, I'm trying to understand why we're looking at four-year-old engineering and trying to make a decision before a meeting in two weeks and close a public hearing. Like let's My suggestion would be leave the public hearing open. Let's negotiate with Bard. Let's get all the information and then we'll make a decision in appropriate manner. Um, I'm just thinking that people don't understand the process of the bidding process and needing to have an authorization to go out to bids to understand how much money you have to spend. You have to know how much money you have to spend in order to ask for money.

So, I think people don't quite understand that this is only an authorization to go out for bids. That's it. It's not to do the project. And it can be changed later. Yes, I can all change later. Yes, he's trying to pressure authorization. Authorization.

This does not Yes. We have no We have no ability to move forward with rehabbing the tank until we take these steps. And I think we've heard from the water department. We need to take these steps regardless of whether Bard contributes a dollar or a million dollars. We need to go ahead and do that. how that affects the contract moving forward with BARD to provide water to them in a backup uh situation or not. Um obviously there'll be impact uh on on that. So there's not a contract uh renewal in front of us um to understand uh what the implication on their uh per gallon fees are. So, with that being said, if there are no other comments, I would like to make a motion to close the public hearing understanding your concerns about it. Christina, thank you for your contribution uh to that. Um, but also understanding the time constraints and the desire of the water department and that we have been discussing these alternatives for uh quite some time. [snorts] So, who would like to make a motion to close the public hearing? Bill.

Okay. I will second that motion. Is there further discussion? My vote is nay. Okay. All in favor? There's a nay. Jacob I. Myself. Jacob must concluse himself. He already said that earlier. Please. This is not a bar. This is not a bar related matter. Please don't interrupt. I generally I'm going to ask you to please not interrupt. we don't interrupt the meeting with Bill. Your vote. Thank you very much.

Okay. Uh we have and I apologize for those of you waiting for the village of uh Tivoli, the amendment to the contract. Um Diana, would you be kind enough to read that public hearing notice?

Notice of public hearing. Town of Red Hook. Please take notice that a concurrent public hearing will be held by the town board of the town of Red Hook on January 13th, 2026 at 7:40 p.m. local time at the town hall, 7340 South Broadway, Red Hook, New York to hear all interested persons regarding a proposed amendment to fire protection district fire service agreement between the town of Red Hook and the village of Tivoli for 2025 and 2026. Such agreement relates to the existing Red Hook Fire Protection District embracing the territory outside the villages of Red Hook and Tivoli. All interested persons will be given an opportunity to be heard. All reasonable accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. In such a case, please notify the town clerk. Please take notice, further notice that copies of said proposed agreement are available for review at the town hall, Red Hook, New York. By order, the town board of the town of Red Hook dated December 9th, 2025. Deanna Cochran, town clerk, town of Red Hook.

Very good. And the uh what the amendment is is to change the capital line of the Tivoli uh uh fire service agreement with the town um to 60,748. I'll get to that in a moment. Um we did in the budget initially have this as the tent in the tentative budget. We then, if you recall, uh, Jacob and Bill who were here, we then changed it to 53,000 and and put the, uh, additional 7,000 in the operations line because we assumed given the time frame that the village would not be going out to do borrowing until probably second quarter of 2026. Um, so that you would only have approval of debt associated with the half million dollars starting on on or about April. And it it looks like you're tracking at the very least April and maybe even late later for for your borrowing. You you have not yet gone out to to do bids yet. Um, from what I understand, but you're waiting, from what I understand, you're waiting for us.

Yes. to change this contract so that your uh funders, your other funders um can see our commitment um in order to do that. And so I will get there. I know I will get there. Okay. Um, at this time, and I'll get it up on the screen, I'd like to make a motion that we open uh that public hearing to make the amendment. We also would have to then approve a budget adjustment to take that 7,000 and put it back in the capital line so that their funding partners can see that we are committing at that level uh ongoing. And then if for some reason you don't move forward with the project, you would still have the $60,000 in there. there's no shortage from what I understand of capital needs for the village civically fire department equipment and so on and so forth. Um moving forward you'll be able to use it for that for for 2026. It's a reimburseable amount folks. Um just so you know. Okay. Um and there it is. And I apologize. Motion to open the public hearing. Is there a second?

Second. All in favor? Hi. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. Um, who would like to speak on this matter? Yeah, I would just go I'll go to the mic. Okay. Go to the mic. Bill, if you'd be kind enough to come to the mic and just state your name, please.

Bill Schilling, Deputy [snorts] Mayor Tiboli. And uh this is a very important piece of Tibble's ability to get a [clears throat] new firehouse and to serve the uh the town and the village. So uh it's very important that you guys are able to move this forward and I want to thank you on behalf of the village. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I appreciate it. And uh as I say to the fire departments each year, this is the easy part. It's not always easy finding the money, but it's the easy part because you all answer the calls at 2:00 in the morning when most of us are asleep and doing what is really an incredible service for this community. Um, without local volunteer fire departments, the finances of your small municipality would look very different. So to all of you who serve, for all of you that help um in these efforts, [cough] getting grants, for um supporting the fire departments in any way. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else want to speak about it? I think you'll all join me and Oh, Sarah, thank you.

Hey, Sarah [clears throat] Bowden. I'm also a village trustee in Tivoli. Um, and I want to thank you for um, bringing this matter before your board. Um, you know, you've you've said before, uh, that you, you know, it sounded like you didn't really want to go over some of the details of the previous project. But the thing about public meetings that is both a, you know, a tiresome thing, but also a really important thing is that because we serve the public and the public doesn't always come to every meeting or watch every meeting on campus, sometimes you have to go over some pretty obvious things. So, I'm just going to state for the record a couple things. So, um, I want to say the mayor would have been here, but she had to be away on family travel. Um, [clears throat] so I'm bringing, you know, Emily's, uh, thanks as well as mine and the rest of the boards. Um, and I want to say, you know, the thing about Tibble's fire department that's special is that our department is a is a municipal, it's a village fire department, which means that it's very closely entwined with the village um, government. um compared to the Red Hook Fire Company which is a private company. It's a different contract process. Um because of that it means that a lot of our fire company is supported or one might think it was supported because it's a Tiboli fire company by the village of Tivoli. But our our fire department and maybe some of you will speak to this I don't know is very it's it's small but mighty, right? And it's actually not very small. It's one of the largest and most vibrant in the area. Um and so it makes a lot of sense that the town is going to support through a contract um um you know as you've as you've laid out here not just our expansion but also just the the fire service in general that's provided because it's provided way beyond the borders of the village of Tivi. So, I just want to point those things out because I think it's important to state it for the record. [snorts] And um I just want to say thank you to all the Tibet fire uh department volunteers that are here tonight and who aren't here

tonight. Um and to Mark for his Mark Hildenbrand for his um leadership. U Thank you. Thank you, sir comments to this public hearing. Okay, very good. Um, at this time I would like to entertain a motion to close this public hearing. In fact, I'll make the motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Bill. Any further discussion? If not, all in favor? I I Thank you very much. Okay.

Um, and I imagine we'll be back next year talking about the operating budget line because there's probably some needs there as well. Um, and probably talking about the RER Fire Department and their capital needs because there will be some needs there as well. Okay. Uh, very good. Why don't we do we think we can uh take the water board action? Can we do that? Jump around the agenda a little bit, folks. Is that something we can let Hank go home at a reasonable hour? Would that be all right? Jump back to public comments after that.

Sure. Is that okay? Okay. So, I would like to go ahead and uh go to agenda item number four. Okay, this is a resolution. What number would that be on? Number one. True.

Capt. Um, approving. Sorry. Um the first resolution related to this is resolution order after public hearing approving the water facilities improvement project for the water district number one pursuant to section 202B of the town law. Whereas the town board of the town of Red Hook, the county of Duchess on behalf of the water district requested that TB and and TMB engineering duly licensed in the state of New York prepare report. The report um dates back uh to 2022 and updated in 2023. There was a tank in inspection in 2024 and a sediment removal project in 2024. And a further report update was made in March of 2025 describing the rehab project and providing an opinion of probable cost which is uh deemed to be approximately 1,672,600. Um the engineer uh completed such report and filed the same with the town board and the town board thereafter adopted an order describing in general the terms [snorts] of the proposed improvement of facilities specifying the estimated total cost thereof and stating that the town board would meet to hear all persons which we have today. Um, under seeker, we've deemed it a type two action and the town board and the town have complied in every respect with all applicable federal, state, and local laws under seeker comprising article 8

of the environmental conservation law. Now therefore be resolved by the town board of the town of Red Hook on the basis of the information given at such hearing. It is hereby determined that it is in the public interest to improve the facilities of the district as here and above described and referred to at the estimated total cost of $1.672 million. It is hereby ordered that the facilities of the district shall be so improved. Definite plans, specifications, and a careful estimate of the expense of the improvement are hereby directed to be prepared, and the attorneys for the town are hereby directed to assist in the preparation of a proposed contract and to submit the same to this town board for examination and approval. This resolution shall take place immediately. Um, who would like to move this resolution? Well, as the leaison to the water board, I would

Okay, very good. Bill, um, who would like to second that? Well, could we talk about it for a second? So, just to just to understand what what the mechanics of what we're doing here, Christina, if I may, just and you you'll get this with the newly elected train. Um, it's a motion and then a second and then there's discussion in between the second and the and the vote. Okay. Thank you. No worries. Um, is there a second? Second. Thank you, [clears throat] Jacob. Okay. Um, now, uh, further discussion on the matter, Christina.

So, so um, so this is a a 1.7, um, contract. We have 400,000 and we're looking for a $1.3 million loan. I want to make sure that I I'm understanding correctly. That's that's uh in rough terms. In rough terms correctly. Correctly. Yes. And then and then do we have do we have reserves if it's more than 1.7?

The $400,000 is moved from the reserves and has been allocated and was uh so at a previous meeting um just a couple of meetings ago. we appropriated uh those monies from the reserves. So that's how it gets down to $1.3 million. Um yeah, and so [snorts] once we develop the specs, we go out to bid, we get the amount of the project that um we will contract. At that point, we we should know hopefully from Bard College what their contribution is. But as far as assessing the water district, the budget has already been determined whether it's the fire district or the water district or the townwide taxes or a town uh village uh tax uh portion as well that has already been determined for 2026. So when uh the finances are finalized on this project and a determination determination is made on how much will be an assessment versus how much will be recouped by the increase in the water rates that will be done for 2027. When you borrow in a particular year you don't actually make payments whether it's a bond anticipation note or a bond on the same year that you borrow. It's very different than when you get a mortgage for your house and you do that in in a month. [clears throat] You borrow, it's a 12 month bond anticipation note or a multi-year bond, serial bonds, and you pay the following year. So, we will know all the numbers.

Well, I I no that I mean to me that's understood. I actually do this every day. So, this is the engineers probable cost. So, their total came out at 1.2 1.207. they added a a 20% contingency which is reasonable for construction costs. So that came out at at 1.449 and [snorts] then on top of that we had we have soft costs engineering costs and that's getting us to 1.7.

That's correct. Yeah. [snorts] Any anything more? Any others? Any additional discussion? Okay. If not, I would like to uh have a roll call on the vote, please. Um, all in favor? Kenny. I. William. Hi. Myself. I. Jacob. Hi. Hi. Christina. Thank you very much.

Uh we have the uh followup uh resolution to that which would be resolution number two authorizing the increase and improvement of water district facilities for water district number one at an estimated maximum cost 1.672 672 million with the uh a borrowing uh aggregate principal amount not to exceed 1.272,600 and um this is the bond authorization resolution. Who would like to move this number two of 2026

as the lead to the water district? I will move this to you.

Okay. And I'd be happy to second it. And I want to thank you all on the water board for the folks at home. Um we have a lot of dedicated volunteers and a lot of committees and they really make things happen for this community. We are very fortunate. We have a lot of people with a lot of expertise on our water board. I think it's really unusual their background. if you knew what they did um for a living and their their history and their expertise, you really benefit from from that even when it's a difficult weighing of the rehab versus replace. Um and if anybody has that crystal ball, please let us know. We'd like to borrow it. Um all right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any uh discussion further discussion on that resolution number two? If not, it's a bond resolution like that. A roll call. Uh all in favor of Kenny

I. William. Myself. I Jacob. Hi. Christina. I. Thank you very much. Okay. And thank you all. Is Tiffy still here that they were? Yeah, we're all here. You're welcome. The bill is left.

Okay. Well, look, can we quickly do that so that the fire department I already heard a little bit of something there. Um, can we do that quickly and let's get to public comments. I also don't want the public to have to wait um much longer, but we do have resolution number can we call it three on the fire department, please? And folks, I want to just um ask you to please, you'll notice in your packet there is that $7,000. Now, that needs to move back from operating to capital um so that we can show their funding partners that the capital line is 60,748. Could I ask you to please entertain that uh budget approval, please?

Are you making a motion? I'm making a motion, please. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Jacob. Um, any [clears throat] discussion? If not, all in favor? I I

I thank you very much. Okay. Resolution number three, approving amendment number one to the town of Redook Fire Protection District Fire Service Agreement between the town of Red and the V Village village of Tivoli for 2025 and 2026. Whereas proposed terms of an amendment entitled Town of Red Fire Protection District amendment number one to the fire service agreement. We do two-year fire agreements by the way. We contract for fire services the town. Um this is the second year 2026. Um the town of Red Hook Fire Protection District amendment one to the fire service agreement village of Tivoli. A public hearing has been duly called and held this evening. The amendment between the town of Reik and the village of Tivoli regarding the fire ser service agreement for 2025 and six for fire protection is hereby approved. That's what the resolution says. Can I move this one? Would you mind? Is there a second? Who would like to to second this? Anybody who's had the need of the Tivoli Fire Department in the last 5 [clears throat] years, would he or she like to solot? [clears throat]

Okay. I think you'll find a lot of us have had the need of one fire department or another in this community. and you don't know, you will find out who these dedicated volunteers are when you do have a situation and they are there for you uh day in and day out leaving their jobs in order to come to do their volunteer. With that being said and with uh endless gratitude a vote, I think there's a motion. There's a second by Kenny. Thank you, Kenny. Any further discussion? If not, all in favor? William, hi Jacob.

Hi. Three of us eyes. Yes. Christina, Robert, and Kenny, thank you very much. And thank you all. You fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. We'll be doing the paper next month. Yeah, next month. We'll see what that comes in and you'll let us know. Yep. You keep us informed. Okay. Thank you very much again. That's the easiest part. Thanks for getting us out of here. All right. Thanks guys. Water department. Thank you. All right. We have a very patient highway superintendent. But we do need to do what?

We need to do public comments though. Um Teresa, if you can hang in, you'll be next. I know. It's a loose loose. Uh folks, um we have 15 minutes for public comment tonight. We still have uh a few items to get to. Is there somebody who would like to [snorts] speak for public comment? Okay. Roxan, if you'd be kind enough to just say your name for the record, please. As always.

Roxan Fischer from Barrytown, New York. First, I want to extend a warm welcome to our new council members, Christina and Ken. You both ran on platforms opposing the use of eminent domain against the Red Hook Boat Club, emphasizing the need for greater transparency and genuine dialogue to the community. Your election reflects the clear voice of the voters on this issue and many of us are hopeful that your presence on the board will bring fresh perspective, accountability, and a commitment to listening to residents. Second, I want to inform everyone here in the room and those watching on Zoom that on January 6th, 2026, I filed a third supplemental submission to my ongoing complaint with the New York State Controllers Office regarding fiscal concerns in the town's eminent domain proceedings against the boat club property. This update highlights expenditures approaching a4 billion dollars with no results, improper use of the B fund to shift the tax burden, and the complete absence of any funding details for the 1.25 million plus project which should have incur been included in the 2026 budget. The controllers's office is already reviewing this matter and costs continue to rise amid a growing docket of pending litigation. Finally, a reminder to the board. The original eminent domain resolution passed on a 3-2 vote. Any member who voted yes can still move to resin that

vote. Doing so would immediately halt this extremely expensive process and end the wasteful drain on taxpayer money. Money that could be better spent on true community priorities. I hope the board will choose fiscal responsibility and the unity of the community moving forward. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Roxan. Thank you, Roxan. Yeah, it might do toward a new water tank 100%. Yeah.

Hi, Carrie Kitner, Merrytown, New York. Um, I also want to welcome Kenny and Christina and uh the main thing I wanted to say was that it was so nice to actually have a conversation. Um, I got a a email from Christopher Man about that meeting next Wednesday and it was like, "Oh, you can come and ask questions and people will give you answers." And I'm going to just say it every time I come to these meetings, I say, "Can we please have a forum about the boat club?" Okay? like like we would love to have that same kind of questions and answers um for a topic that's like been roing in this community. So that's my request. Maybe our two new members could push towards having a forum. We had a public comment period in which supposedly we were listened to, but uh what we said didn't seem to move any of the board members. Well, none of two of them silently said no, but it was silently. And I just really appreciate if Christina is speaking up tonight because um you know, I think these water guys know what they're doing, but it's really nice to be able to ask questions and really understand what's happening. As a citizen, I I really like to understand. Um, and in that on that note, um, you closed the public comment period on the water tank thing and then there were two motions and the first motion seemed to be to move forward with bidding, but the second motion seemed to be to approve the bond as long as it didn't go over this certain amount. So, I had asked earlier if the bids came in whether there would be another public

comment period, but it sounds like if the bids come in below this maximum amount, then you're just moving ahead with that. That's a question and I'd really like an answer right now on that.

Okay, Cara, we need to get Don't answer questions. I'm going to give you an answer. going to give you an answer. Just like we told the folks in the newly created TND sewer district that we would not move forward until we got some grant funding, we have told you that we will not move forward with the water tank till we get those other two key questions. What what is the acceptable bit and what if any contribution will be coming from Mark Holl? So, but we had to do a bond resolution for the TND sewer district a couple of years ago in order to move forward so that we could apply for grants and so on and so forth. So we have those grants because we approve the authorization and again I think somebody in the audience said it well until you get authorization to begin the process you can't ever

but wasn't that the first resolution was to authorize to begin the process. The second thing of approving the bond, we do have to approve. We would never go ahead and expend substantial funds to develop specs if we Okay. So, it's not the full amount of the money that you're approving. It's the amount of money to find out how much it's

and Carrie and my objection to closing the public hearing was that it it's not that I disagree that the total amount is going to be what it is. I just think that there needs to be public input and how do we get to that place? It's going to cost what it costs and my my personal opinion is I I do agree with the total number, but we're in a negotiation with the village and with Bard and so who's going to pay for this? And I think that the public is part of that process. And that was my objection to closing the public hearing, right? Not to agreeing to the to the final amount of of what that looks like.

And as long as there'll be more public comment, no matter what the bids come in at, then I'm going to just go sit down and and hope that we can have a forum that questions are answered on this really divisive topic of the book club. So putting another any anybody else like to make public comments. We have about eight more minutes for public comments.

I'm going to be very quick. Susan Quasha, Darytown, New York. And I just want to say that this is 2026 now. And I'm really hoping that you will all follow good governance, which means being clear about things, understanding them, letting the public understand them, and that there is less divisiveness and more bringing everybody together. That's what good governance is. Thank you, sir. Thank you. We have time for another another speaker or two.

Lisa Polo, town of Red Hook. Uh, Robert McKeon continues to assert without evidence that the eminent domain action has widespread support and Jacob, you concurred with that on July 15th and also stated that the opposition would be a short-term discomfort. Almost a quarter of a million dollars has been spent through October. That's not a mere discomfort. We don't yet have the invoices for November and December in which there were continued court hearings in an attempt to circumvent the court ruling with new zoning laws. In December, we received the letter from the supervisor warning of fiscal challenges on the horizon. And tonight's board packet includes the amendment for the Tiboly fire service agreement discussion on rising health care costs and the notification that the town's grant application for the Red Hook Trail Link was not selected for funding. Um, and yesterday the Daily Catch reported on the Red Hook Fire Chief and the financial challenges facing the department. If you were to open those window shades in the back, you'd see across the street the graphic showing the amount spent so far. An amount that could have been used for any of those real needs that I mentioned, not wants. But the closed shades are symbolic because like your eyes and ears, if you don't open them, you don't have to face the truth. The fees will acrew at a similar pace this year. And for those interested, go online and search for Red Hook Boat Club versus Town of Red Hook and find the link to PACE monitor. That provides a publicly available summary of the most recent federal court proceedings. And you'll see that there are motions, depositions, discovery, and conferences scheduled through July of 2026. At minimum, seven more months of unnecessary wasteful spending. What will the total be by then? This level of discomfort far exceeds short-term. Ken and Christina, involve yourselves in the planning and conversations with the attorneys. Don't allow one person to call the shots and make binding,

expensive decisions. Ask the questions we cannot get answered. Request and review the legal proceedings to learn what has been proposed and what has been declined. And I think you'll learn a great deal. Each January presents an opportunity to reflect, recalibrate, and if necessary, redirect. We began that process with the swearing in of two new board members. Bill and Jacob, you both have an opportunity to rewrite your part in what is arguably the most unpopular and now most fiscally wasteful decision ever made by three people but impacting so many. Either of you can move to resin the eminent domain action and if you do, you will have the votes to pass it. Every additional dollar spent on legal fees is now your choice to prolong this mess. So, please re-evaluate and redirect the taxpayer dollars to the more critical issues that have come up tonight. And it's time for you to open the shades and confront the truth. [applause] We'll take one more speaker, Linda Stoddard.

Linda Stoddard. Thank you, Linda. I Robert, I just have a question about um Linda, we Yeah. Go ahead. Make your remarks. We have to get to our agenda items tonight. [cough] Don't let her speak.

Yeah. Um I'm wondering when you do reorg are you going to be um redistributing or reassigning liaison because there are five board members and right now there is a great imbalance um on the liaison and a majority of the liaison of the committees is you and it should be distributed equally amongst the board. So, I was just wondering if that's going to be done in New York. Thank you, Linda. Yes, that's all all of the ones that were previously Christine or Julia have been whited out so that we

Okay. But even with them, you are still the liaison for more than anybody else. Thank you for your your thoughts on that. And that's not the way it's supposed to be. Okay. Uh, anybody else? If not, okay. Uh, we're going to move on to our next item. I do think we should open a window shades. It's actually been bothering me cuz it's like traffic moving forward and distractions.

We need to we need to get on with our meeting. All right. Um, let's please go to the highway uh department issues. Uh, Teresa has been very patient not only this meeting but the previous meetings. Um there we are.

Number item number three. Oh yeah. I'm going to start marking the stage. 33. Yeah.

All right. Uh folks, so we have the 284 agreement. Um for the folks at home, each year uh or previous to the year, the highway superintendent proposes roads for capital improvements, which are to be repaved. what material is going to be used, whether or not it's asphalt or whether or not um it's chip sealed. Um you should know um that the roads that are proposed for this year 2026 are Starbar for paving, Bosper, and uh Chipsilio for uh the Tivoli area. Stony Brook Road, Middle Road down here, Sankst Stack and Kid Lane, and the chip ceiling is to preserve the roads to get uh uh longevity out of them. And so the budget uh this conforms with what we have budgeted for 2026. Estimated cost for Starbucks and Vosberg is 320,000. Um for the chip ceiling project um 2026 budget is $90,000. There's currently a balance of 82,000 in the 25 chips fund which will roll over to the calendar year. We don't find out um funding until the state's budget is passed. Most of the funding that goes towards these capital improvements comes from the state. Okay. Um, any questions on which roads, the amounts, uh, anything or

I don't have any issues with it. I don't have any issues with it. It as long as it confirmed conforms with the budget. I'm I'm interested though in in how in terms of like what like what that overall plan looks like. Um I'm sure you you have metrics and how you figure um and so the first thing to understand is this agreement. It's a living document. So um we are asked to designate which roads based on our observations before the winter um we would like to pave. Uh many things can change in between. So once we sign this 284 agreement, if we find that there are roads that need more attention or if something, [cough] you know, catastrophic happens,

and what time of year, like what time of year do you do you [snorts] look at it versus

So we look at it all year and we keep a record of how old the roads are, when they were last paved. Um there's two parts to this. The resurfacing is the major expenditure and then the uh um chip seal is the maintenance part of it. So you want to chip seal your good roads within 5 years of paving to keep them good. It extends the life past the average 15 years. If you do it every so often, it's a lot less expensive. And then you take the bulk of the um ship's money and put it into major repair. So, this is kind of a guess

because we don't know what roads will look like after what type of winter we may have. There may be a flooding issue and one of the roads gets blown apart. So, we come back and say, "Okay, we can't spend the money on this road because we have to spend on that road." It's an amendment to this document. It comes back to the town board. We put the reasons in there and then we ask for the expenditure again. Same point, the state doesn't pass its budget till April. So, we don't know until we go out to bid for these roads and the state passes its budget if it's all going to fit. So, we may have to dial back or we may get more money from the state if we go up and lobby for it and then we can add. So, it's a living document. It's sort of this is what we plan on doing. If everything works out, this is what we will do. Um, but if it doesn't, we'll let you know ahead of time and it has to come to a town board meeting again.

Thank you. Seems to be a recurring theme about we have estimates we need to authorize to move forward. We then finalize the amounts and then we can go ahead with we'll go out to big for the contracts and bring them back to the board for approval. Yeah. Right. I'm And so there's no sort of like master document of all town roads and you're grading them a through whatever. Well, we we do, but anything can change at any time. Sure. And the winner the winner comes through and then it's all it's all changes. You just never know. Yeah,

you never know. But we have um each road is uh supposed to have a 15-year life before resurfacing. um we don't have the budget to do that on a regular basis. So we choose the best roads that we think the worst roads that we think will benefit highly traveled roads over lower traveled roads. It's all [snorts] kind of put all the information in and see what comes out at the end. So this is what we propose for this year. Um and again it can change depending on funding and road conditions after the winter. Thank you. I I appreciate the explanation. You're welcome.

Thanks, Teresa. Any uh further questions, the board members? Okay. Um I'd like to make a motion. Um to approve the 2026 284 agreement for highway expenditures. So moved. Well, I have the two copies. Yeah. Um, Christina, would you be the second to that motion? Okay. Uh, any further discussion? If not, all in favor? Thank you very much. Okay.

So, Diana has the copies and they're signed at the meeting and then at the end I'll sign them. Thanks. We'll we'll tackle that. Um, next up is the electric van. Um the highway department has requested a replacement of the how old van 20 40 22 years something like that two decade old van right Teresa um they had it written in the document it's pretty old yeah um we are uh it's it's been it's a 2008 van

2008 okay so almost two decades old um it's a cargo van to move equipment when they go and do uh work on the roads. Um it has been the desire of uh at least the previous board for all vehicles when possible to be electric for both environmental and for uh financial sustainability. Um there's uh very little maintenance on electric vehicles and we have the infrastructure here because of all the work that we've done and the grant funding we've received. We also have on our highway department, we have a solar system that produces more electricity than the highway department uses. And so we're able to have this van plugged in um and uh excess energy can be allocated towards the charging stations for these purposes. So there's savings associated with that. Um Teresa has looked into different makes and models and come up with the recommendation for um the Dodge Ram truck uh or EV cargo van that's recommended here. Um and we've worked together on identifying that there is uh still some funding. We could at least get about 10% um grant funding for the purchase of the van. So what you have is a resolution that includes um sort of the gross amount of $78,000. Um we would hope to receive at least the $7,500 rebate for the acquisition then. So, what would the what would it cost for the same van and and gas?

Um 58,000 but no rebate. 58,000 but no rebate. And so we're at Sorry, the number was So we're about 70 with the rebate. 70 with a

with a rebate. Yeah. And then [clears throat] you have to do the savings versus the electric which is in theory free because it's it's being remote and metered from the highway garage and the maintenance. Um and there's also um our policy of when we can to continue our electrification. Any further questions? The uh the current ban, how many miles a year do you put on that? I don't know off the top of my head, Ken.

But I can tell you what we use it for. Oh, okay. Um, we use it for sign installation. So, it has like a um uh equipment inside and all the nuts and bolts and it can carry the signs and the poles. And we also use it for carrying stuff that has to be undercover because the rest of our equipment is pickup trucks that are open to the weather. So, if we have to go pick up parts or something, we can use the van. Um, if you have to drop off a vehicle like one of the big uh dump trucks up to Hudson or or anywhere else, Albany, uh, the van can follow and then take a person back. So, it's like a multi-purpose um, vehicle. It's very handy,

right? But it sits idle quite a bit, it sounds like. Well, I guess if you look at it that way, a lot of them sit idle quite a bit. It just depends on what you're doing, right, at that particular time. But uh well my concern is there's been some issues with electric vehicles. So if it was something that was really we really dependent on you know and obviously we are but it's not going to No it's not an emergency response vehicle right and with this particular vehicle um we have to go out to bid. So so far I've seen 2025s. I haven't seen 2026s to build yet. But if there's going to be any issues, the manufacturer will let us know.

Right. Okay. So, um this is the first step in the process just like the other items. We have to follow a protocol set by New York State in order to go out for a mini bid. So, this bid will go all over the state and if people have them, they'll give us a price and if they don't, they'll let us know why. So, again, we'll come back with the bid results and say, "Do you want to buy this or not? So, it's just we have to get approval to go forward in order to use the state bid system. Right. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Teresa. Anything else you'd like us to know before we entertain motion to approve that resolution?

Nope. Okay. Uh this is now resolution four. here. Five.

Authorizing procurement of bids for EV cargo van for the highway department purposes. Whereas the town of Red Hook and this also has been discussed in previous meetings. Just for the folks at home, uh has recommended the purchase of a utility van for highway department purposes. Uh the town board requested the consideration of an electric vehicle in accordance with the town's purchasing and procurement policy which was updated to reflect our desire to uh OE um uh investigate um environmentally friendly uh products. Um whereas the highway superintendent has identified a type of vehicle with the specs determined to be necessary for the department's use being a Dodge Ram ProMaster electric cargo van the equipment available through New York State OS state contract number 231 166 to be acquired through the mini bid procedure in accordance with the terms and conditions of such contra uh contract and our purchasing policy. Highway superintendent is hereby authorized to proceed with procurement of bids for the equipment in accordance with the contract terms and conditions with an estimated cost not to exceed 78,000. The town supervisor and town's other officers are hereby authorized and directed for a name to do all acts and things necessary in convenient in furtherance of this resolution. Number five, who might be a liaison to the highway department? Who would want to move that?

So moved. Thanks, Jac. Uh, is there a second? Electric. May I second that resolution? Further uh discussion? Thank you, Teresa. Thank you. Very good. All in favor? Hi, Christina Kenny. I Bill. Hi.

Thank you very much. Okay, that was number five. Resolution number five. Agenda item number three um gun water district. Uh we did fire district. Let's go to the first item on the agenda which is the resolution [clears throat] organizing resolution. Don't look at the screen. You'll get dizzy.

The annual reward. There we go. Um, we do this annually where we state where when our meetings are. This will serve as the public notice for all our town board meetings by the way um for 2026. any changes then nor uh necessitate a change in the uh public meeting notice be it resolve the town board of the town of Breok as follows meeting dates regular meetings of the board will take place throughout the year 2026 and the following days in each month 7:30 at town hall second Tuesday and fourth Wednesday it has been such for many years now additional special meetings may be scheduled and announced by posting the announce announcement at town hall as required by chapter 22 of the vote with notification to the press as required by public officers law. Number two, the official newspaper of the town for 2026 shall be the Gypsy Journal depositories. Uh these are the banks that um we have uh funds with. In addition, the town is a member of a of New York class pursuant to New York class mean cooperation agreement amended and restated. That's where we have our funds that we are not using immediately. If you think of it in terms of a money market fund where we get um better interest and uh keeping it in the bank. Um this is a cooperative of many municipalities. The following officers are authorized to maintain a pettic cash to conduct um day-to-day business. The following amounts not to exceed $500 per officer or $1,000 for the receiver. Salaries, the salaries uh below are the

salaries that were adopted uh the budget for 2026. mileage reimbursement rate for town business uh the IRS rate of 72 cents per mile who incur official mileage when they are obligated to drive their own vehicles on town business or when a town vehicle is not available and then as a reimbursement undertaking the town board of the town of hereby authorized the execution of a blanket bond in lie of individual undertaking pursuant to section 112 of the public officers law for the purpose of covering all officers and employees who collect money including in the list of these positions here in town hall. The town board hereby authorized the following to sign bank checks for all town business. That would be the town supervisor in his absence or her absence, deputy supervisor William Hamill. And three, in the absence of the supervisor and deputy supervisor, any of the town board members, Christina Duchar, Ken Migerelli, or Jacob Taup, the annual financial report, the town board of the town of Red Hook, hereby authorizes and directs the supervisor to submit to the town clerk within 60 days after the closing of the fiscal year or such later date as may be required for such filing with the state controller, a copy of the supervisor's report to the state controller and the town clerk shall cause a summary of such report to be published within 10 days of that filing in the official newspaper procurement. Um, and that's uh uh for Penny and for Christina. Uh, we'll, if you have not had a chance, we'll send along to you. Um, those various policies you'll want to review them um in the

future should we decide to u make any changes to them. Procurement investment policy, ethics policy. I know that the ethics board I think is looking to do another training session. Is that right? Yeah. There will be um we're working to schedule an inperson training next Friday here in Pon Hall for all town employees and next Friday and then not this upcoming but next the 23rd 23rd um and then there will be an a second one that'll be held virtually the following Tuesday in the evening for those who can't attend the first Friday. I have a number of comments. I thought we were we had to get through it and then make a motion before we discuss it but apparently that's not true.

Sure. Okay. before we we can get through it. Did you want to make Well, so I mean I mean if we're going to talk about it, let's let's talk about it as we're as we're going because I think it's I think it's more relevant. I think I think we're finished. Did you have comments?

I I do. So So the the meetings the 7:30 meeting time and the and the Tuesday and the fourth Wednesday. Um I I would propose an earlier meeting time and a consistent day. I think that's very confusing for the public and um honestly for ourselves to to have have that kind of a schedule. So I I would propose we meet at at 6:00 instead of 7:30.

Okay. Um uh my understanding these times are predate uh boy they predate not only my being town supervisor but when I was on the town board way back in 2009 my understanding was the times were set so that uh folks could have dinner with their family and come here and the uh choice of having two separate days. My understanding, Christina, was that if you chose, say, a Tuesday and a Wednesday, that if somebody had a standing Tuesday thing that um they could at least come to one meeting a month, they could come on the Wednesday or vice versa. That was the rationale. I'm not saying that has to continue that way, but

I mean, I'm I'm putting it out there as a as a um as a discussion item. I think that I think that it's rather late and I think that that historically there's been there's been a lot of interest and that's a positive thing for for the board. Um and um you know I think I think families are flexible and there's 7:30 is is rather late in the evening as a start time. Um, so I I I we've I've had this discussion on other other committees that we've been on that historically have met later in the evening and the consensus has been to move it earlier and and that's I've seen that overall to be a positive change.

Okay. Um, anyone else? Yeah, I like to agree with that. [laughter] Okay.

Uh, yeah, I go to bed kind of early. I wake up early uh and I do and I mentioned this to you Robert um I'm on a two three four other committees and the t this Tuesday is the uh committee which I've been on down in New York City for green market so it is a conflict uh especially with with what's going on with green market I need to be involved in that committee so it would be nice if they were the second and fourth Wednesday Uh that would be good for me and I understand. I don't know what I'm going to do if if I can't and uh the I would like to see the meetings earlier also. Uh

but I think if he would be earlier on Tuesday, that'd be worse for you, not better. Is that right? Y' worse for me. But then I only uh uh the those meetings go exactly three hours. They don't go over. So, um, when do they start? Six. So, I would only be able to sit in on it for an hour and a half. Okay. So, is there you're saying Wednesday would be a conflict for other people?

Well, second Wednesday here town hall is taken up by both the ZBA. We would have to if we were to move to Wednesday, we'd have to move the ZBA out of there. Second Wednesday, that's this room. And then the CAC takes the conference room. So, it wouldn't just be us having to change our schedule to accommodate that. It [clears throat] would we would have to move other boards and then we, you know, we don't have the ability tonight certainly to know that whether or not they could or would want to

change early, one late, one late. Um, Jacob, I'm sorry you started to say Tuesdays, um, Thursdays, I have a commitment earlier in the evening that I wouldn't be able to get here until after like 7:30 is about the earliest we can get over here. So you can't do earlier if it's Tuesdays and Thursdays. We can't do a second Wednesday right now because of ZBA um and CAC here.

Well, I think that's an overall discussion. I think there's there's there's a flexibility amongst amongst many committees. I mean, when other committees I've been on, we've talked about it. And it's not to say that there maybe this is something that can't be resolved right now, but we should we should we should we should have an open discussion. And 7:30 is very late. Um and and you know, we've had we've had meetings that have gone on until until midnight, and that certainly affects people. Um and that's that's really not an accessible time um for the public in general. So yeah, um

we've also had many meetings that were over in an hour, but I hear your point that it does we we run that risk when we start a meeting that if we want to accommodate or get all the work conducted that evening. We did stop one meeting. It was the first time in my 10 years we stopped a meeting before we finished all the all the work. And maybe that's what we need to consider if we are stuck um meeting at 7:30.

And I also think the switching of the days is confusing. I think that it's that, you know, town board is is is a a commit, you know, an entity that that should take precedent and and consistency of meeting on the same time, the same one day a week at an earlier time um would be what I would press for. Yeah, I hear you ZBA switch on uh Well, I'll not I we we'll need to approach the ZBA if that's what but I I do uh I do think we need to give it some consideration. Uh Christine and Kenny.

Okay. Um I think we do um uh and and I do agree we're not going to solve it tonight, right? Um, so we'll we'll take a look uh at this and see what uh what options exist and look at the pros and cons of of switching one or time or or or what have you. We have to all look in our schedules because we all have different hats that we wear

um in addition to to these roles. So I appreciate that and maybe we can um try to get our calendars together and see what the holes are. maybe start with what you absolutely can't do and then we'll work from there and see how the puzzle comes together. We will have to at least for now stick with what we've got um so that we can have our meeting uh on January 28. That would be the fourth meeting if you want to make a you know subsequently we can make amendments to the meeting schedule but we do need to publish on the notice. Okay. So there's that. Anything else on this? Uh

I I did have another comment on item number five was confusing to me. Um so the the salaries that were laid out for um for town board. Uh is this all inclusive? Because reviewing the budget, there were other line items that seem to be allocated to certain members. These are for these positions and that's the way that the resolution must read the position. Um yes there are other budgetary lines but the these are the ones that need to be um put in the uh what do you mean what do you mean this is the way it must read doesn't you explain

you need to state the salary for the supervisor role you need to state the salary for the town uh council member role you need to state the salary for the town clerk role and the town justices these are um and you're not able to so there there's other there's other um supplementary roles that this is elected officials.

Yeah, I'm trying to give you I'm trying to give you the answer that to your question. You need to state the salary figure for the elected officials. These are are the elected official lines. Okay. So if there's if the supervisor is also the budget uh officer as statutoily he or she is unless they declare someone else to be that role that is not included because that is not the elected official salary. But wouldn't it be clear wouldn't it be clear to state in in there even if even if those roles weren't assigned like what

there are other other supplementary um salaries that are no applied to no certain people within these roles. No no Christina it is the following salaries for elected officials. That's it. So it must read that one. Okay, the budget spells out all the various lines. Okay, so that's the reorg resolution. It's number are we lucky? Number seven, six. We're at six.

And then we can get to the liaison roles. um try to tackle some of those tonight. So, a resolution number six, it's relating to annual reor. Who would like to move that? So, moved. Thank you, Jacob. Is there a second? A second. Thank you, William. Uh any further discussion? If not, sorry. Annual reorg. So, so I I need to understand what we're voting on in this. The what we just reviewed, we had a number of revisions to it. I'm sorry. What?

I don't think we have any revisions. What were the revisions to it? We're just voting on this resolution on on this resolution. So we're saying that the meeting dates are are set understood for the next meeting but we we discussed that that might be like what what would be the mechanism of of revising that if if we chose that in the future amendment

yes we would need to create a new resolution to set the town board meetings for a new date and time we would then need to publish that we have to publish all our meetings. This is the mechanism for publishing them to say as of now they are still second Tuesday and fourth Wednesday.

So would we be able to say that they're second uh Tuesday and fourth Wednesday for the next for for January and then and then we'll revisit this for February and beyond. Um, I'm not sure that that would be prudent of us to do that because we can make the change right now. Once we approve this, we don't have to republish each and every meeting. If we go to make a change, then we will do a new publishing. If we go ahead and say it's only good for January, then we're looking at additional costs and time and expenditure to do the republishing of the notices. We are also um not laying out the meeting schedule for um you know a significant period of time and right now I don't hear that we have any consensus on any changes yet. So

well can that's fair. Can we can we agree that we'll discuss it at the at the next meeting and we'll we'll commit to to sure potentially reorganizing with other other um committees and boards. Sure. Okay. Okay. All right. So, uh seeing no changes. Sorry, Kenny. Did you want to say No, I just voted I. That's [laughter] I is good. Um, so we have a motion, a second. We have an I at this end. Williams an I. I'm an I. Jacob's an I. Christina I.

Um, very good. Why don't we jumping around a lot tonight? I apologize.

We have to go. Let's do uh Sorry. amount on the registar to appoint so that I can submit that uh what registar as a register I need to be appointed I I think you're still a hold over though yeah you still are the registar I'm sorry I don't I I didn't we weren't going to make any specific appointments yeah but you signed it I just want to get that to the county and get that to the city okay um park has been register register of vital statistics.

This time I'd like to make a motion that for 2026 that we appoint and continue uh our town clerk Diana Cochran has the register finals. Second that. Thank you. Any discussion? If not, all in favor? I I Thank you. Okay. Thanks. All right. Uh let's go to number eight. Jumping around. I apologize. Um just assigning the delegate to the Association of Towns meeting.

What What happened to the um town board appointments? Yeah, we're going to get to that. Okay. We're going to get to that. That that maybe be just a longer conversation. We want to get to a couple of items. Um, somebody's trying to pair their phone to the TV. Yeah, let's not do that. Okay, we would um All right.

Okay. I think I mentioned there's an annual conference that happens every February. There are uh votes that are conducted at the Association of Towns. There are over 900 towns in New York State. I think it's Red House. I believe it's Red House that is the smallest town in state of New York. [clears throat] Something like 3740 people. I believe I have that right. And then you have towns like Brook Haven which are several hundred thousand. They all convene and they have policy uh positions. They do a fair amount of lobbying on our behalf, the Association of Towns. They also have some uh recommendations for changes to their bylaws that they would like us to look at. Um, we're looking for no action tonight or discussion on the policy positions, but they are here. Many of them are either repeat um asks of Albany or [snorts] related to previous asks. Uh, oftentimes they are funding related. So for the new board members, if you would kindly take a look between now and our next meeting,

I'd be happy to volunteer to go in February. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. If you'd like to go um to do the training, that's great. Um typically the supervisor is the one who does the voting on behalf of the town. Um, I do intend to be there in order to uh do that and to convey um any thoughts at the annual meeting on behalf of the town board. So, you can look at the registration information, Christina, and we can take a look at the budget and make some uh budget adjustments to accommodate u you to go get that training.

Sounds great. Okay. Um, that's it. So, we [clears throat] just need a motion uh to designate and I'll offer myself up as I have previously as the uh person to conduct the voting on behalf of the town. Who would like to make that motion to designate the town supervisor? Bill, you've been down there. Yep, I'll do it. It's a ministerial process. Okay. So, you're making the motion to designate me. Okay. And would you be available in my absence then?

Not for this meeting. Okay. Who else would be available? I'm available in your absence. Great. Great. Excellent. Okay. Um, good training. So, that's a motion to appoint the town supervisor as the designate and we'll uh say Christina as the alter. The alter. Very good. Bill's made the motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Jacob. Any further discussion? If not, all in favor? Christina? I

All right. health insurance policy options. Not looking for action tonight, but I'm just continuing this because we do need to pick a policy uh preferably at our next meeting because enrollment starts in February, the plan year is March. What's different this year uh although they did try to come into the uh in the area is United Healthc Care is making um progressive proposals to provide um health insurance. This is sort of the menu of various options.

Can you can you just clarify who this applies to? This is this is to whom in our Yeah. Anybody who is eligible for health care, any full-time workers,

would the health care come under a union negotiation um thing because the guys have health care through the union and it has to be a a comparable product? Does the union have to get involved with this? I I have the understanding that it has to be negotiated before it can be changed and you're operating on a really short window. Um there is there are comparable plans here for us to look at and so that's what we're taking a look at is what are the options. We haven't made any decisions. But does the union have to take a look at what the plans are in order to determine that they're comparable.

Um the union can look at whatever plans. We haven't even proposed any plans yet. Well, we have the base plan right now. So you're proposing that you may be changing the plan and if you do propose to change that I had understood that the union had to be involved in order to make sure that it was a comparable plan for the guys. the the union is always welcome to be involved um in in the determination of the plan, but the town board needs to go ahead and assign um a healthcare plan for 2026.

So, you can assign health care plan before taking the options to the union that you want to do. We haven't chosen any options yet. We're not at that point very soon. Right. I understand. But we have a healthcare plan. You're proposing perhaps a different plan. It should be reviewed by the union in order to make sure that we haven't reached that point, Teresa. You're making assumptions. We haven't reached that point where we're even contemplating other plans.

Okay. I just want to make sure that if there's a proposed change for the level of funding or the um amount that they're going to pay um that the union be brought in before you make that decision to compare the plans and make sure that it um meets with what the contract says. Yes, it will meet what the contract says. We will make sure of that. But will you make sure that the union will be able to review it before you change it? We we we will send to the union what we are contemplating if we make a change. Yes. What what what's the time frame that we're looking at?

Well, March 1st ideally. Yes. March 1st. They need to be enrolled and enrollment period actually starts. The coverage is March 1st. Enrollment period starts beginning of February. So tonight, what I was hoping is we could narrow down three plans, four plans, and then we can take a look at them, including our existing one, try to get more information, share with the union, understand because if we are able to find a comparable plan that does save the taxpayer money, but gives the same type of coverage to the employees that that also could be in a benefit to the employees because they pay into that plan as Well,

has this been shared with the union yet?

Not yet. This is there are hundreds of This is what our our healthcare uh uh broker provides us with is sort of a a sampling for this Hudson Valley region, what's available, knowing that the type of coverage um that we're interested in having for our employees and trying to keep the same level of coverage for them. And each of the various uh companies offer, you know, their version of that type of coverage. We're looking at silver plans and bronze plans. Um but we're looking at, you know, uh ideally we want the same type of coverage where they get 100% coverage on just about everything. Um what what's different about each uh plan is often times what the deductible amounts are. There's a slight difference. Like for example, we'll go to the first page here. If you notice our existing plan, which is the MVP silver 8, and then the next column is what our plan would be [clears throat] if we were to stick with it. Um the premium increase is just under 16. It's rounded up to 16. I think it's 15.8%. We pay for 100% of uh the HRA. So when we think in terms of the deductibles and um any payment that the employee would make know that we pay as the town 100% of that um up until those uh limits. So right now the employees pay a percentage of the um premium.

That's correct. They pay 21% for 2025. As part of the contract they would pay 22%. So any savings that we could derive from a comparable plan that gave them comparable coverage could also extend to them if we were to um want to entertain changing of the plans. So everything that we're looking at, are there plans on here that that aren't comparable to what the union employees are currently getting? Yes, there are some that I don't believe are comparable. So So why are we even looking at this before we eliminate Obviously, we're going to pick a plan that that is comparable. We have a union,

right? Exactly. That's what what we're going to do tonight is isolate all of those out that we shouldn't consider and see what's left. But but that but that's like a that's like a like like the insurance agent could have done that for and and presented four plans that that seems like a waste of time to me.

So I just wanted to clarify um before you go into the deeper discussion is that the plan that they have now they pay 21% and it will be 22% of um the premium. They don't pay any of the deductible and they don't have co-pays. So, they have a fixed amount out of their paycheck that they can count on each pay period and it stays that way. A lot of times when you go to um a lower premium, which they may benefit from bi-weekly, it may not benefit them in the long run because with a lower premium, you often have to then pay an out-of pocket deductible. So the town takes care of the high deductible 100%. But the employees pay 21 now 22% and if the plan changes where they have to pay then a co-ay also takes more money out of their pocket. One of our guys who has had his raise and the um higher uh percentage his net this coming year is $154. So any change that affects beyond what they're paying will then affect their bottom line. So my question would be why wouldn't since we have a union, why wouldn't we forward this document to the union the second we receive it have and and receive the feedback and then and then narrow it down and then take a vote.

Okay. We're not going to take a vote um tonight. And again, we can narrow it down. There's no reason to present the union with a menu template of all these choices when we can clearly look at a whole bunch of these and know that they're not comparable. And so all we're doing tonight is just trying to narrow it down and then we can forward the three or four that are even uh looking at and get questions from the broker. And so let's do that exercise if we could tonight and you'll understand why it's valuable first step so we can get to where we can assign. So hearing about the coverage and the 100%. You can take a look on the first page here. There's a whole bunch of silver three which used to be something we did here. The second one here has a whole bunch of co-pays. This is not something that we would deem to be comparable um to the kind of coverage that employees currently have. The same is true with the next column which is uh exchange certified silver. You see the co-pays, some of them are insignificant, some of them are significant. That would not be comparable to what the employees have. um HDHP, Silver 3, HSA, and again I'm sticking with MVP for a time. Um you see they have in many cases small co-pays, but then you look at inpatient, there's a $500 co-pay after uh the deductible is exhausted. It's a real question whether or not that be comparable coverage. Then you go to this next one, the bronze six. Okay. So, this has very similar, if not um even better coverage than the uh silver 8. The

tradeoff, however, is the annual deductible limits, which are higher. Again, remember that the town is paying for um those deductibles. It's 100%. So, on the one hand, the coverage is terrific. It's 100% all down the line here. You see, I don't know if you can see my cursor for the folks in the audience. The premium is less.

There's another big issue though is that is that the coverage between carriers has been very volatile. I personally experienced this with with um with my firm that we were on a premium plan, it just got cancelled by major carrier locally which is like the conglomerate that does everything. So like it's it's it's hard to say even between like MVP and United and CDPHP like what I I don't feel like this is a decision that we that we should make. I mean the the chart is already narrowed down. It's only three pages and the people that are on these plans are already know what their comps are and who their doctors are. [clears throat]

Yeah. That's a big thing too is that um the their MVP is very local. So I I hear that United Healthc Care is not taking on um like Optum and different places. So they may have to travel further to and change their doctors and go through you know reenrollment with other health care facilities and at this point um I don't see that as being fair especially since now they are going to pay another percent. Okay, Teresa, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we need to get through to do do our work. You know, I appreciate these contributions, but we're talking about MVP plans now. And so, I I'm trying to get the board to focus on the plans that are comparable so that we can ask more questions so that we can make a more educated decision. I understand the concern.

I'm just giving the background and knowledge for the bulk of the people who use these plants. I appreciate that. But right now, we are talking about an MVP plan. So, there'll be no change in the network and who they could um go to see. It's just a change between this MVP plan versus that MVP plan. And if that's something that we want to get more questions about and would there be a benefit not only to the town, the taxpayer, but also to the employees. The premium on this brown bronze six, okay, is a 7% increase. Where they make it up, and they always do find a way to get it, is in the higher deductible. So, if we were to try to project what the utilization is, right? And here, um, they always run for us 100% [snorts] or 60%. Okay? If we were to use a more typical 60% utilization that we would end up with a 6% increase and then we'd want to understand what if any changes or differences in the coverage between these two plans because the basics that are put on this menu plate look like it's just as good if not better coverage for them. So, we could ask of our our health uh broker to compare and contrast these two and to dive deeper into it.

Well, if we're if we originally said we're trying to narrow it down to four, why don't we just give them the p this this page that has all of the MVPs compared to the current

because there may and get union there may be other options. It's important for us to understand the pros and cons also of different characters. My point is I don't think we can understand the pros and cons because I think it's dependent on the families that are involved and who their doctors are. So e like either give them all three pages or or if we're going to narrow it down to four are we saying we're narrowing it down to four MVPs or we're narrowing it down to four of different choices. What I'm saying is that if we could narrow down to a handful instead of the three pages worth and then we can inquire from our health insurance brokers to contrast the plans including our existing plan. Then we could have a better idea. Some of this we can do ourselves. We can simply look at the ones that have these larger co-pays and we can throw them out, narrow it down. We can make a better educated decision. We could ask about the other providers including United Healthcare, CDPHP. We used to be with CDPHP and contrast um what's what's available right now on page one unless anyone else sees uh another option. I don't think that we should explore any other option except for our existing one and this bronze 6 HSA and uh because it does give the level of coverage that they have. The risk is that if there were to be 100% utilization, it could conceivably be perhaps a little bit more expensive, but it's rare that the entire covered employee pool uses 100% of the HR. That make sense?

Okay, that's the first page. So maybe we could ask for a verb to contrast bronze six with silver eight. [clears throat] Okay. Agree. Yes. I I I don't agree. I don't I don't I don't feel like I have enough information to to make this decision and and I feel like it's only three pages. I I think I would rather get feedback from the employees that are using this rather than narrow it down for them.

Okay, we can do that, too. All right. On the second page, we have a United Healthcare, their silver choice uh option has lower uh deductibles, 8% increase, but there are um some co-pays. Some are low. Don't that doesn't look like comparable to me. The next column, HD, HP, EPO, a little higher on the deductibles. coverage looks somewhat comparable. Uh the specialist visit need some clarification on that.

I mean that's a good point. These are also summaries. Yeah. These are not like all the details. So, so in a particular family, if you have a certain need and you need to research it and come back with feedback, it's like this is a small community. This is like Well, that's what I'm saying. If we can narrow it down, we can get greater details and we can it's already narrowed down. It's only three pages, but we don't want the employees to have to go through 20 options. we can trim it down to the things we know that are comparable and then ask for more information then present.

I mean in my opinion in my opinion the chart is very is is is presented in a very reasonable way. It's understood what the current plan is and what the other options are and it would be good to get feedback and then make a decision knowing the feedback of who it's affecting.

Okay. So why don't we do both of those things then we can send this entire thing to the employees and to the union to get their feedback and perhaps we can narrow down for our own thinking and get from our health insurance broker um some more specifics. You know what I think would be reasonable to your point, Robert, is to say to to have a an an intro when you send this to say, "Here is our opinion that this looks like the same coverage that you're getting, but here are the options that are available. What do you think?" Okay. Um, so on United Healthcare, the uh one the only one that I see that looks comparable would be the silver EP3Z, but we'd want to get more information from our healthcare broker. Um, I did discuss with her. She mentioned that United Health Care is making an aggressive play for the region and is coming in with um some really good rates. Um but yes, we would want to understand who covers United Healthcare before we were going to go ahead and make that switch. Okay. So, uh, on this page, um, others there are smaller co-pays, but it doesn't look comparable to me. So, so far, unless you all disagree, the only ones that I see worthy of further explanation uh exploration of the bronze six and the uh silver choice open access we'd want to get more information on or comparable. And then on our third page

would be the CDPHP which was the one we did have previously 100% coverage. So are we agreeing that we could send this these three pages and highlight those plans that you just mentioned and say well I don't think we're finished going over them yet Christine that's fine but I want to agree on what we're doing. Okay, let's get through this and then we'll agree on what we're doing. Okay. Um, this will be the third one.

Oh, shoot. Is the CDPH plan EPO, right? 100% coverage, higher annual deductible. So, but there I'm not sure there's a lot of savings to be had. But these things, Robert, these things are these are summaries and these depend on like you got to really go through the details of what's of what's covered. It it's very complicated and and and it can't be simplified in a chart. And I think that our best move is to highlight a few of them and say this is this is our best assessment based on the summary that we're looking at.

Christina, I think you've made that point. I I I think you've already made that point and and we can entertain that to send it and highlight the three. I think I've reiterated that that would be advisable. If we want to send all all of the plans to them to look at even though many of them aren't comparable coverage, we can do that. But I think we need to narrow down for our benefit what we want to get additional information on because I don't want to get additional information on you know whatever this is 20 different plans or 15 different plans. It's too much wasted time. I don't need to know the details of a plan that doesn't provide them the appropriate coverage. So with that being said, can we uh is do those three make sense for further exploration or compare our existing?

So you're saying so you're saying the silvery so the existing is the highlighted blue which is which you're saying next to that the renewal plan cuz the current plan doesn't exist anymore. The the one that's highlighted in blue. So we're saying the comparable renewal plan is the one to the directly to the right of that. That is the existing plan. Each year you find that there are changes like the deductible amount has gone up um as it often does each year. That is the same plan. The most comparable plan, but it's not the same plan. That is it has the same name silver eight but it's not it's not the same right. So you're saying you're saying

this year's iteration this year's silver eight. Yes. You said this year's bronze six and what was the third one? Uh the bronze 6 and then the only one with United Healthcare that looked somewhat comparable is the EP3Z. Silver. Uh, sorry. No. Was the silver choice open access? Yeah. Also highlighted dark flow. It's EP3Z, right?

Open access. And and and why that one versus versus the uh the other United? It's the only one that's comparable that has the coverage after deduction. It has the 100% after. Got it. Okay. Right, that makes sense. Okay, so we would do um that one, that one, and then the last one would be the CDPHP one. Also highlighted blue. I imagine that's why they highlighted that dark photos. They wanted to highlight for us that these look comparable. So you're So you're So primarily what you're after is 100% after deductible because the town covers the deductible.

That's right. So we would like to provide them with that important cover, take away some of the surprises. They would know and I I I think that makes sense. I I I still would present them with the whole chart because I I think it's important. I think we can do that.

Okay. Um, any others that we should ask for more drill down on? No, I don't think so.

Okay. So, I'd like to make a motion that we go ahead and uh ask of our insurance broker to contrast those four plans to pass on the uh uh menu that they initially provided to both uh the union and the employees to take a look at. And then once we get the information on the contract back from our uh health insurance brokers that we could also then provide that to both the union and the employees so they can take a look at and then we should be prepared on our January 28th meeting. you know, if we can to make a decision. Um, we'll receive that input on which plan, maybe we could run some scenarios so that, uh, folks can get a sense of what the implications are because I think as Teresa alluded to, we want to make sure that they're not just running in place, um, when they get an increase in their salary. Um and then the health insurance increase eats most if not all of that up. Um that said that um certain employees that have overtime in 2025 and and uh ongoing um have benefited from that uh provision in the tax code that does not tax uh over time. So, um there is thankfully um that to help offset as well.

Okay. Um sound like the plan. Yes. Okay. Yep. [cough and clears throat] All right. Let's go on. You made a motion. Well, I I made a motion. Yeah. Let's go ahead and move to do so. But we're not actually It's not actually a motion. We're We're not deciding anything. We're just We're just sort of being clear with the public that we're doing. That's all. Sure. Okay. Should we do an all in favor of that? All in favor?

I thank you. Um got a couple of article seven resolutions. Um let's go back to annual reorgarch. So tonight what I would hope we could accomplish is to assign um the le liaison roles [clears throat] uh for the various board members to the departments of the committees. And then the next step is for uh that liaison to reach out to the committee chairs and ask them to reach out to their members to see who's interested in staying on um in the committee and then we can publish once we get those findings we can publish the vacancies and then people can send their email of interest to the town clerk's office and uh typically what happens is an interested an individual meets then with the chairperson of that committee and they discuss what you know what the committees are like and whether they're interested and we get a recommendation from the chair of that uh board or committee to include them um as a member

I'm going to just interrupt for a moment I'm going to be leaving Thank you everyone I left two copies of the 284 agreement with Deanna and if you sign tonight then I'll come into the office tomorrow and get it and sign it and do what we need to do with the copies. But thank you very much Teresa.

Okay. Um so town board appointments. This is a draft dated on the 9th. Um this draft includes the previous council members um emergency interim successors. Uh typically the supervisor, highway superintendent. [clears throat] Um and then it was three uh town board members. Uh Bill as deputy supervisor be appropriate that you be there. Jacob, anybody else want to be an emergency inter room successor? So, you know, Kenny.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, let's uh put Kenny in that space if that works. All right. Um All right. The date we have for Cheryl Cheryl has been reappointed probably should reflect 2031 on this draft.

Yeah. Got it. Okay. Um, animal control, dog control officer. We had Patricia who's our dog control officer. Now we had two in that role. We now have one. That's a change from previously. [clears throat] Um, the supervisor's appointment. So, there are appointments that only count clerks make and appointments that only supervisors make. Um, the deputy supervisor is Bill Hamill. It says budget officer and myself, but it's not really appointment. I don't appoint myself. I I am the budget officer unless I appoint somebody else, but that doesn't stay there. It makes no matter. Um secretary part-time Kathleen Flood, town historian, or as I like to tease her, town hertorian, Emily Major, who um is also the village of Tivoli Mayor.

Um town clerk's appointments. Any changes there? Deanna. Okay. um highway superintendent appointments. I asked the Teresa I know she's left but um she's uh appointing again for 2026 John Gardner as deputy. Um other town employees are listed [clears throat] here. Uh we made uh changes to the strap just based upon the maintenance and grounds for crew contracts and consultants. Um, there's a new name. I think it's official. Uh, Professional Computer Associates will want to make the change. Uh, Deanna, maybe on this list at our next meeting. I think it's in

Yeah, I don't know how to spell it. GX or something like that. Yeah, I don't know how to spell it. I'll have to Did PCA change believe so they bought it? The name of it. It's a new company name. Oh, okay.

I think had or had or having or had a replic um town CPA, custodial services, police and court attendants, that's all the same. Um there's a notation from 2014. A lot of the protocols are based upon historic. Um we have the meetings. We've discussed that and uh we'll continue to discuss that monthly and annual reports to the town board, heads and committee chairs, minutes report. Um like to get them the noon before Friday so we can put them in the packet doesn't always happen. Um there's annual reports by recognition and the CAC town board organizational responsibility that's the uh chain If you will stop me if uh you have any questions mileage that's the IRS rate town department head deputy supervisor town board.

So here we go to our alias on roles. Um wasn't Christine on planning board or was that you Bill? We both were. Okay. So when she dropped off I I took it. I see. Okay. Um, can can we just go in in the order that it's on the list, please? Um, animal control uh, Bill, uh, you you've been very kind to do animal control all these for six years. Is that how long? Six years. Okay. Um, are you willing to stay on doing that? I would prefer not to. Okay. Yeah. What kind of animals? Just dogs. So, just it's just dogs. by law they call animal control.

Occasionally there's something else in the report. It's mostly dogs. And and when the contract was with the SPCA, it truly was all animals. But by law, we only are responsible for dogs because we licensed them. Okay.

Um but the issue was when the SPCA about two and a half years ago decided they were no longer going to do animal control for anybody in Duchess County. A lot of a lot of towns got uh were left flatfooted. We all had to figure out a way to stand up the dog control situation. So, we partnered with Reinbeck to not just have animal control officers, but they actually have a kennel at their highway department. And so, we partnering isn't technically legally the right way to describe it, but we because we share the same animal control officer or dog control. It's a DC, a dog control officer. And the dog control officer actually resides in Rankliffe. Things have been and it's taken a while to get up to speed, but we finally have a um something in place that seems to be working. There's still some things to work out, but um it was a lot of work getting it stood up and I'm

So you do a lot of you do a lot of coordinating with the the village police, right? Because a lot of times they get the first call. Yeah. Often often Pat's um staff are the first ones on the scene and they pick up the dog and they actually have the key, the code to get into the kennel. So sometimes they actually just bring the dog to the kennel and then notify the dog control officer who then goes and right does what needs to be done. So you whoever does this would be coordinating with that or at least be in touch with that. So how much time does this take? Well in the past there's a lot sounded like a lot but

but now it's it's it's more under control and the only time that there's a situation um the dog control officers getting up to speed I mean these are people that never did it for a living before but now they are. And so they're learning all the rules is we had an unusual circumstance um that happened recently in which there was a number of dogs that all belong to one person that got loose. Um but we worked it out and and the village PD did a great job of helping get them getting them coralled and taken to the kennel, right?

And then we worked on a project to find a way to get them adopted out. So that was an anomaly. Um, you know, the issue that you get calls on is we're only authorized to pay a vet a certain amount of money and say a dog was hit by a car and abandoned, right? You know, we still have an obligation to pick up the dog and then make a decision what we're going to do, right? It doesn't happen very often. So, Patricia Wayne is the dog is the dog control officer. So, you're in contact with her?

Yeah. She calls me when there's an unusual circumstance and I can tell you she has a lot more business south here in Rinbeck than they than they do have here. But but you occasionally get a call um saying you know what do you think about this? Okay. And then there are some things that have to go to the supervisor um you know it's an [snorts] emergency and you know do we take the dog to the hospital in Kingston or does it have to be euthanized? I mean, I had to make that decision once, right? So, um, but that it's infrequent. Um, and I'm I feel I'm setting up myself.

Kenny, you you would be making a phone call to Pat. Maybe you have his number. Yeah. [laughter] This may be an easy one. Yeah, I'll I'll take it on. Okay. Thank you, Kenny. But I wanted to be on some other ones. Thank you. I'd end up adopting all of them, so that's better. Um, and the like I got to tell you, the only animals that I I'd like to have are the ones you eat. Okay. I don't want any. Not at this time. Maybe you want I don't drive anymore. Anyway, all right. I appreciate that, Kenny, very much. Yeah. Next. And and I listen, I'm more than happy to help you. Okay.

Get acquainted to how this process works. Okay. Thank you. think you can um uh assessor um you'll notice that the town supervisor typically is the less on to a lot of the positions that are in town hall for obvious logistical reasons. Um so was I have assessor attorney um I am the leaders on the bark college um I have you know been for many years now um bookkeeper is a is actually a position that is for the town supervisor um building inspector um to build

I'm I'm happy to keep it or if somebody else is interested I'm happy to take I mean that's that's in my wheelhouse So, Bill, I'm happy to take it on if you if if you want. Yeah, it's actually a very um there's no heavy lifting uh to be that liaison. You get a the only the only heavy lifting is the report is the biggest report every month that we get. It's like a half an inch thick. Okay.

Um but there's really [clears throat] um not much. So, if you want, it's important for the public to know and certainly for our new town board members as well. There's a wall. There's a wall between the boards. There's a wall between the independent offices. That's the assessor. That's the building department. There's the planning board. There's the town clerk's office. There's the highway superintendent. They're all independent uh offices. and um they have a role to play Korean uh fear of influence of of decision making. That's that's their their job to do. Um so, you know, when it comes to building inspector, when when you're liazing with it, it's not you're not really [clears throat] um influencing anything that building inspector does. You're getting reports and seeing if they you know, you'll hear and you'll hear from the building department. We actually are now trying to figure out a bigger space and reconfiguring the town hall for example. Those are the kind of liaison things. They're not related to

but if you have questions if you have questions just send an email or call and they'll be happy to happy to do it. So we'll make that change. Building inspector Christine Duch uh fire companies. I have been doing the fire companies. Um I'm happy to do it. um would like to do it, continue to do it. Um it's been a passion of mine. I think I started out as a citizen campaigning for the LOSA program in 2007 doing mailings because I felt so strongly about our fire companies and I' I'd be happy to continue that work. Um highway Jacob happy to continue doing it.

Okay. Recycling uh who could or could not continue with that. What? Whatever. Anybody have a strong passion for that? Well, you were there a lot. I'm there twice a week. You want this? You want to change it? Yeah, I can take that. Um, you know, TJ has traditionally come to me anyway. Yeah, cuz you're there. Cuz I'm there if there are issues, you know. So, not on an operational basis. That's you like if they have to close for weather or whatever, but um on other issues. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Red Hook Central School District. No, I've already forgotten who was the le if it was Julie or Christine.

I have a question on that one. And the village of Red Hook, are those do the liaison need to go to each meeting? Um, so for these, no, but for the board and committee ones, yes. But for these, no. This is who's the person who is going to help communicate between the various uh entities in the community. So um in answer to your question, no, but there's no point of being the liaison if you're if you're not engaging on some level, right? Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay.

I mean, if we're splitting this up, I I I would prefer to do the village, but I'll do either. Um, I mean there's like I mean I'm looking at the list. We're Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, anybody else wanted to develop? Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. Uh, sure. Right. [snorts] You want to do both? I mean, I I'll do both. Well, careful what you wish. I mean, [laughter] the one thing I would say I will do both. I will do both. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I would say, Christine, I don't I don't want to fight you for this the the school district. Um, but I am in monthly meetings with them. Yeah.

I'm happy. Is that something you can do? Um, if you're in monthly meetings with them, then then you should probably do it. Okay. I was more looking at Kenny and saying if like I don't want to I don't want to cut him out, but I think the village we want to make sure Penny gets lots. [clears throat] Well, I've got three four on the bottom, right? Okay. Yep. So, all right. So, I think we've established Robert will do school district. Christina will do village of Red Hook. Yes. Okay. And you have a business in village. That's great. Um, agriculture and open space advisory board. Yeah.

Kenny, do you have a background in agriculture and open space? Okay. Uh, board of assessment review. Again, that has been me. Uh, board of ethics. Jacob, you'll continue with that. You haven't continued with that. CPF PDR advisory committee. Okay. Anybody else want that? Okay. Kenny, thank you. Um, CAC, Jacob, you're doing that. Design review is from time to time. Bill, you've been doing I've been doing it. They don't meet I don't think I've they've had a meeting since I've been a while. They get referred. They get an occasional referral. Be nice if they meet, you know, once a year.

I mean, I'll just say when we're going down this list, the two that I would I would have the most interested in would be Design Review and LWRP. But I'm happy to fill in as needed. Okay. Well, why don't we uh Well, if you want design review, I I don't have a problem. Okay. Okay. Um but because I'm the liazison for the planning board, which is the LWRP. True. It it makes sense. That does make sense that I would do that. So, if you want if you want design review. Okay. Um Right. Okay. So can we make that interesting for design review disaster preparedness committee? Is that

we need to get that up and running again? Is that in case like an EMP hits and uh you know we lose we lose power for like two months. We have issues with anybody read the book one second after. Yeah. So something to think about. Well, we're talking about we're going to be talking about battery storage best battery energy, although it's not not been a fun topic over in Nolster right now and it's, you know, again very sight specific. Um, right. So, uh, disaster preparedness, we need to get that back up and running. I'll think about

You'll think about Okay. Yeah. We don't have to do this right this second. Okay. As leaison. So, yeah, as liaison. Yeah. Um, energy committee. I want to stick with that. We're still the only town I know that has the energy one when I started. Um, Greenway and Trails. Who was that? Was that Julia? So, it was Christine. Okay. Although I think the committee always emailed me because they thought that I was the and I'm happy to take it on. Um, okay. You know, I've attended a meeting before and Okay. You guys work well with that. I I attended a few meetings also.

Okay. Um, well, what? Uh, Jacob, can we can we scissors? Yeah. You guys want to rock, paper, scissors, Jacob? And Kenny, do you feel really strongly that you want to do it? You're welcome. About trails, screaming trails. Okay. Yeah, [laughter] I'm happy to do it as well, but I might I might go to those. Yeah, and I think that's a good point. We're all welcome to I mean, it's nice to attend these meetings even if you're not the leazison just to get to know what they're working on. I just want to remind you some of you mentioned good nights and bad nights. There's a lot of nights on your calendar that are filling up right now with with your yes uh indications.

Um housing checkup, you going to stick with that? Okay, Bill, you've already asked for LWRP and your rationale for that. Fine. Planning board bill. Uh, recreation committee. Yes, I'm here with the rec director every day. Uh, Red Church Cemetery Committee, that's sort of a once in a blue moon, although we will be hopefully um doing some events. Uh, it's uh Rev 250, 250th anniversary. There is no more um struggling for words but primitive church in our immediate area than the beautiful red church. We have civil

revolutionary war and we have warrior I think what did they identify 13 I think it was 14 was it [clears throat] they're still identified um okay uh who's going to take I'm going to take that cuz I'm going to have to coordinate events and all that stuff and the schedules with John and whatever that's okay I take that all right Jacob still speak for the trees. Sure. Okay. And then water and ZBA bill you are existing here. I know there's one um that's not on this list that is below I think

um for the comp plan revision or the comp plan uh okay committee and I talked to um Julia who was the chair of that committee and I've worked as leazison for the housing committee for the past few years. Okay. Um and she expressed interest in having me as leazison for that committee. Okay. Um, so I just wanted to put that out there. It's something I'd be happy to do. Um, yeah. Okay. Um, I'm fine with that. Anybody else? Bill, are you okay with that? Yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine. I mean, I was sitting in on those some of those meetings also. You still can.

I will. Christina. Yeah, I'm I making a a deliberate point not to participate or sit in any of those meetings. I don't want to

I don't want to in any way, shape, or form have any kind of, you know, influence over how the recommendations is. The whole point of it is to get the public's input and to have that plan to be shaped because if you're an implementtor, the last thing uh you want to do is be involved in the developing of the plan. Um [clears throat] we often say to people occasionally when they come here and they say why are you doing something? We say well because it was in the adopted plan and so want to be able to say that that plan is you know free and influence of the [cough and clears throat] implementation board and represents the public's desire. Okay,

I'm not going to go through them all, but anybody anybody [snorts] that's 26, they're still on. Okay. Um, to those members and asking

the last thing we could get to, I I don't want to be here too too late tonight. We've heard about saying too late, but can we do the layers on for um the committees, excuse me, so that you can then reach out to the chair of those committees and ask the chair to reach out to the members, right, as we discussed and find out where when vacancies exist. What we'll do is in my office, we'll put together a master list and we'll put a notice out to the public. Here are the for the vacancies if you're interested in joining. Send your letter of interest which can be in the email for Okay. Uh we did we already figured out agriculture and open space system review climate smart. Well, that's a task force, right? Um, so I don't think we need that CAC.

That's a subset of the CAC because it's comp conservation design review. Is there anything we haven't covered here? No, I think that's it. Okay. So that's what we have for annual reorg. Thank you all very much. Um we have uh let me do other business uh which is really correspondent. Um I mentioned this earlier if you've been following along the last three or four years the town and the uh other municipalities. Uh we're a member of the supervisors mayors association. And we've lobbyed Albany uh and our colleagues in Austin County and other counties to have home rule uh ability to lower speed limits in our own municipality. Somehow in this home rule state DOT decides the speed limit on roads, small town roads. Um unless of course you live within 15 miles of a municipality with 50,000 time. It's it's rather convoluted. But uh needless to say, we were successful uh less than two years ago in getting the legislature to allow town road speed limits to go down to 25. Um and again, I apologize if I'm repeating myself. Um but back in the 1980s, the folks who sat at this table said, "Let's raise the town speed limit to 35." And that's why the townwide speed limit is 35 miles an hour. Um and so um we have endeavored to try to lower the speed limits in certain suburban subdivision neighborhoods. College Park, Forest Park. We were successful. We made

some speed changes uh speed limit reductions with DOT's approval. Everything is DOT approval. River Road 9G, a portion of that um Buds Corners. We had the help of our county legislature in that uh effort to slow those speeds down there. That's a county road. Um so uh we uh positioned ourselves um to go ahead and do a townwide engineering study. um they are in the middle of that and they will um uh send us a list of classifications once they get the data collected from the various roadways. They won't do it during the winter because of snow for obvious reasons and then they will make a presentation to us on a draft application which goes to DOT. Then their engineers review it um after we've seen it and approved it and then they make it a decision um on that town lights application all to say to manage expectations. You should look for us to have a document summertime. you should look for us to perhaps submit something to the state late summer, early fall, and then the state, which is probably understaffed as it historically has been, would then render a decision sometime in 2027. So, I feel hopeful. I always do. We have had enormous success in efforts to reduce where people said Bui never would. Um and so I maintain that optimism, but it will take time.

And is there a study available for what happened in Forest Park? Yeah. So I'll send you what what documentation we have. It's been a a few years. I think we got approval for that. A verbal approval. I got written approval. It literally took 6 months just to get a piece of paper that says we aford cuz in the in the inter room I'd be interested in looking at at what that looked like what we submitted to lower in Forest Park and I was there another was there another neighborhood park we did it as a joint application

because they were similar you know there's uh neighborhoods with a lot of study short roads um so it wasn't it didn't require the kind of analysis necar that this will because you've got connector roads, collector roads, you've got that that type of Isn't the issue of this something like AOT? It's the kind of thing AOT we we continue to lobby for each if you see your state representatives just ask them please to give us home rule authority. We know our roads

um and we want our roads to be safe but we also want them to be used. For example, Forest Park is a is a great example of a place where kids should be able to ride their bike on a road. It's a suburban subdivision, and it's ideal for that. And so, there's no reason why anybody needs to go 35 on the tiny little road. So, we need a four-way stop on uh Wells and Rockefeller and Bud Corners. You know what I'm talking about? At the Steiner Farm. Yes.

Yes. I've been in touch with uh I've been with in touch with the county for years on that intersection. They are going to make improvements, what they call improvements to that intersection, I'm told. Right. Um and I will let you know when they're doing the install. Okay. Yep.

Okay. Uh last but not least, we have um uh we discussed uh in attorney client session proposed settlements of oh uh all this to say I never got to the actual point of the correspondence. We received correspondence from a gentleman on uh who lives on Elm Street requesting that we lower the speed limit. I both wrote to him and spoke with him at length on the phone. um is very happy to hear that we're already on it and um uh he provided rationale um in his argument. He in his profession must know something about these and consulted apparently with uh New York State on these types of matters in a previous life. Um so all right uh in attorney client session we discussed proposed settlements as it relates to assessments on two properties. We have those properties

172 sorry 172. Thank you J. So we have to approve those. Yeah. Yes we have to approve those. Penny and I appreciate you uh weren't involved in the discussions or the whatever. I mean, was this approved by the assessors also? Yes, this is the Yes, this is in consultation with the with the assessor. It is the town board's role to approve or disapprove of these. So, it's it's a a conversation or discussion that Which page is that on? 172. 172. Thank you. Um discussion with of the final final.

Yes. 02 um one property initially assess more than one 172 is a resolution author authorizing the settlement it's a small difference between what was the assessment level 560 and um 515 and this is settlement of article 7 proceeding Susan Kirchoff and Helen uh property. The parcel number is indicated here. Um it's a settlement as discussed.

So what so so what is separating these two properties? What what's the precedent here? All right, president. Um, folks, you you should know if you have a property that you feel is over assessed or unequally assessed, unfairly assessed, you are encouraged to first reach out to the assessor's office. The assessor, as I've mentioned before, is an independently appointed office. Um, and the assessor will uh take your information and and make uh in this case her determination whether or not a change in assessment is warranted and why it would be. If you don't feel um [clears throat] that you are happy with that, you should come to grievance day. That's in May. And so that is typically the fourth uh Tuesday in May. And uh you will then present your hopefully your rationale and your comparables um to the assessment for review board and then our next meeting we'll be hopefully reappointing one of them and entertaining um you know additional members to the assessment review board. And if you are not satisfied what they make a determination then you can take a legal action which is called uh somebody mentioned legal fees here. Um the town of Red Hook spends funds um on legal matters and so you can take a legal matter um

and that's what they that's what they did and that's what they did and the other ones did. And so, um, often times you are deciding on, um, you're doing your best to work with the assessor and with the attorneys and the comparables to understand whether or not um, any adjustment is appropriate and there's a negotiation that ensues. And so in this case, we have resolution number seven. So we've reduced one. So, one is is being reduced by 45,000 and one is being reduced by by 200,000. But is there like is this does this potentially apply to other properties? Like what like what was

it does not what was the justification? Um I'm trying to understand what why we why we assessed them for more than they than they were ultimately valued for.

Well, Um you asking a rather broad question um about uh the the assessor um anytime a property for example transacts um anytime a property is enhanced anytime the uh community values um uh trend upward um an assessment uh level uh can change and so they're various reasons why a property is assessed for what it is. um a discussion and uh happens with the attorneys and with the input of the assessor on the property and why it should or should not be adjusted and then in a negotiation ensues and in this case looking at comparables um they felt that this was a fair settlement right

and so that's why we have um in this case it's a reduction of about 8% and I think in the other one it's it's perhaps similar It's about 10% on the other one. A lot of Yeah, it's about 10% in the other one. Um

Christina, when it comes to values, uh there's a it's not black and white. It's a gray area. I mean, I've dealt with a lot of appraisals, you know, with uh conservation easements, and there's always a gray area. So, it's uh you know, and I'm sure they got comps to look at other homes or, you know, size of, you know, lots and that's what they had to do. I mean, they paid money to they had to pay somebody to do this.

Um, and I'll I'll just tell you on the second one, um, just to give you an example, Christina, is on the second one, the settlement level is essentially what that property was purchased for. um during the period of time where it's to be valued. And that's kind of that's that's the basis of my of my question is is not why these two folks argued to have their assessment lowered, but more like why did we get it wrong? Why why were we 10% over? Is this is this is this something that because I mean that's that's significant. That's a significant amount of money and [clears throat]

It's that gray It's that gray area speaking. I wouldn't necessarily make the assumption that it's wrong.

Yes. I think that's a a really that's bad to even suggest that when you are trying to value a property. This is a good example of the property. This was owned by Mary Gadeski for decades and decades and decades. So you have no idea what for example the condition even though it's in the property card of the house like how much work does that the house need. So you you go and you look at this large uh property with you know over a 100 acres of unprotected land and so you think it's just it's got to be worth tons of money. But then if you're if you gets put on the market as you know because you're involved in real estate heavily the market is what the market is. It's not what the assessor says the value is. The assessment does its best to look at comparable situations and place that assessment level on. often times when either townwide uh reevaluations for when a property transacts, you get a better sense of right a better sense of another example is a house that I think you were involved in a project over on Garden Street there. A nice beautiful extension, right, for Will and Katie, right? That property was purchased like 300 something thousand just five or six, right? Course

big improvement, right? So how does an assessor you figure out you go the square foot, you look at the condition of that improvement on I I would bet that that house was not assessed for the $1.4 million that it got when it sold this year. That little red bird house on street with that. How many of these do we get in a year? We do get them every year. We do. We get them every year. We get more than more than one and less than 10. What? Less than 50. Less than 50. That's fair. Yeah. So, um, but anybody anybody can file one for sure.

And it's something it's a it's a part of the process of what we have to do. Yeah. And in this case, it's a really good, you know, in that second one, that larger one, it's a good example, the purchasers reported, you know, being surprised at how much work the condition of the house. And I can attest, and I'm sure you've been involved in in this business. Um, I feel if Cheryl is okay with this, I make a motion. It's not it's not it's not always the case that theor, but you know, you have

I would make a motion to accept these. All right. Well, let's uh Penny, I uh embrace that. But we have resolution number seven authorizing article 7 settlement reducing property with the 767017 from 56500 to 515,000. And can we move that resolution? I'll second. [clears throat] Any further discussion? If not, all in favor?

I I five eyes. Okay. Um this other property um which is parcel number ending in 215250 uh currently assessed for 2,185,100 reduced to 1,965,000. The names on both of those are the same. Oh, there was a typo. Should have been corrected. Um, correct. I think my copy is fine. It's correct. That has been that has been corrected. Thank you, Rich. That was in yesterday's. It's different on on what I'm looking at. Yeah, it corrected.

Yeah, there was a typo there and that that typo was corrected. Yep. The resolution we use as a template. We use templates, don't we all? because it makes it easier until we do something like forget to change the name. Um okay. Uh I make a motion. I'll second. Okay. This is uh eight. Your your motion is to prove approve a resolution. Okay. Thank you. I like it. Um further discussion. If not, all in favor? I I

Thank you very much. Thank you folks. It's almost 11:00. I want to thank you for sticking with us again. Um and once again to wish you a very healthy and a happy 2026. There's a lot of stuff going on around many many uh many places near and far. Um there are viruses going around. I hope you get to dodge them. Some of them have not been pretty. Um, but also that you get a chance to take a minute to enjoy where you do live because it's a very special place.

With that being said, good night everyone. Make a motion. A motion to adjourn the meeting. Second. All in favor? I thank you.