Committees - Regular Meeting

meeting for capital planning grants um there are minutes at your place setting okay maybe there weren't minutes at your place setting that's what from my own minutes okay um do you have corrections no oh okay yeah then you're fine yeah um and just chose to sit down in a place that didn't have minutes If they had just doesn't know where everybody sits, like, Christine, and since she's covering, I'm not blaming it on Jess.

It's all good. Yeah, we're just rising because it's just got on. Perfect.

Okay. All right. So I'll make a motion to accept the minutes. 2nd, all in favor. and just waiting for Bob to turn in this video and unmute.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone.

Hey, how are you, Bob?

I'm good. Thank you for asking.

Between you and Joe, updates.

Perfect. So yeah, I know last month, Joe, we had touched base via email, had mentioned that the comments for the North Ferry were due by July 10th. No more comments expected for the South Ferry and then BCA efforts to follow up on that. And so that's where we had left off last time we had coordinated. In terms of dishes updates, the Q3 quarterly progress report, was timely submitted. So thank you to the town for that. And if there are any follow-up from FEMA, I'll let you know. In terms of the DR4567 POP extension, period performance extension, that has been expired since March 31st. That still remains under FEMA headquarter review. I continue to escalate that biweekly through district leadership. They continue to follow up. But unfortunately, I do not have an anticipated time frame Or decision on the current time extension request. Any questions or. Follow up items on anything that just mentioned. No, no hearing none with that. I'll kind of hand it off to Joe for for any further updates.

We got the comments by July 10th, as we had discussed, and there's a few minor items that we still want to address with the design at North Ferry. So we've scheduled a meeting between North Ferry and uh the design team for either next week or the week after we're just confirming some availability and the goal of that meeting is to have uh the design finally finalized and then we can be begin the bca uh task of the contract and that'll be the final that'll be the final task

Thank you for that update. So early August, there's a meeting being scheduled between the design team and the North Ferry team. And then once those final refinements are agreed upon, that will begin the final task, the BCA task and working through that effort. Exactly. Perfect. Yeah, as always, you know, dishes remains available to support anything on the PCA. And if there are any questions or any follow up items, we're happy to support on that end. Perfect. I don't think there's any additional reimbursements. I believe all the invoices up until March 31st were submitted to DHS, but if there's anything else that was pending, please feel free to submit forward. I can process it. Anything beyond the March 31st date, we're going to have to wait for FEMA's extension approval.

Sounds good. Ashley and I will check in together on that one.

Perfect.

um so joe once we get the bac then we can go to the town board and present the reports yeah okay so maybe by the end of august or is that too optimistic i think the design work will be done by then so we can talk with the board and update them at that at that point uh and um i don't know probably best to just take it as it goes then i guess through through august and see how how we do

All right, any other questions or support needs from dishes?

Nope, thank you. Sounds good. Thank you.

Awesome. Thanks so much. Have a great day.

Everyone.

Looking forward to it.

Bye. Next item agenda was done as the honors report. She had something that came up and she wasn't able to break away. So she gave me her update via text. Okay, so they're preparing to submit the top lot grant for 227,000. That was the plan B. So we'd already submitted to New York Plays. And so this was the other New York State grant. And we had passed the resolution at the town board level at the last town board meeting. We're counting the community fundraising in the application, which was currently at 12,675 dollars and that included the pancake breakfast and I think some online fundraising that was taking place. Okay. So it doesn't take into account anything that the Lions would want to do post the event that they had this last last weekend. She's also going to be working with PD to submit an application for the police department body worn cameras, which is due September 2nd. I know that's also in the CVS brand as well. This is sort of the backup too. And then finally, she's going to be working with Ken to submit an application for 50% of the cost for the payloader.

Yep, yeah, I've given her the specs on the loader and the price there. And use usage, etc.

Did we, we pass the deadline for those?

Yeah, we, it was passed. Shelby sent me the information. I've submitted the PO to the. Did the equipment company, so I think I started. It might be here as soon as a week or so.

Read. Since we're getting an abbreviated report from Jen going on to the next item, the AI training. Just reading for. I'll wait for him just to go over what we have on the list. The car from senior center is just off the list. We've got that taken care of this year. Kelly was going to talk to you about ordering off the state contract, I believe.

Yes, I pointed in the direction of the Oh, yes, and also I pointed towards, uh. Sergeant Randall, because he helps with a lot of vehicle purchases minor more truck related, but I gave her 2 locations to look.

I told her, you know, I told Ken, because he was work, whether that, you know, state, their website is good. Most most of the state. bid vehicles are on there, but we could also use a county bid vehicle if they needed something like that. But she should be good. Sergeant Randall's on days tomorrow, so if you need to help her, you can help her.

I gave her the info yesterday and she seems to be navigating so far.

Okay, great. Yeah, so as far as funding for that goes, she's got commitments from the Lions Club. She's got commitment from the Senior Citizen Foundation and then we did a budget transfer at the board level to cover the remainder. So once she has the purchase order in hand, then she can reach out to the 2 not-for-profits to get their funding, you know, that funding requested and then we can pick up the phone line from there.

The total commitment equal 30,000 between the town and the 2 foundations.

Yes. So now we just have to see what the vehicle cost is to make sure we don't have any overages, but she thought it was going to be a little bit under. So, we have Karen here, we had skipped over last month, the AI training for the building department. I still want to say from my perspective, I feel like this is a operating budget asking not a capital budget, but that's that's my take. There was a little bit of. Disagreement among the ranks last month, but.

I just don't want to fall through the cracks and get lost.

Right? Exactly. At least here. It's on the list. Paying attention.

Is it a recurring?

No, it's 1 time. Well.

I have a feeling it will be ongoing. And it's not just for us, ultimately. It's for the town.

Yeah, we met with the consultant last week. Was it last week?

Yes, last Thursday.

And it was very interesting and very helpful. We just talked about how the different departments, things that could be useful switching over like generally it is repetitive tasks that nobody likes to do that can be programmed he suggests that we get a hub i guess is the right word for um for doing anything ai so it's we've been instructed to use copilot because it's copilot is our it's within our suite of microsoft products and therefore it doesn't our data doesn't go out into the world, especially if we've got sensitive stuff.

But to have a hub that would start to learn everybody's... We'd have a hub and we'd have our own server, so that if we were putting town information on a server in the cloud, that the AI had access to it. It came up because as a result of the chaos in East Hampton, I was talking to a couple of architects who were saying they started using it for plant refueling.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in the chaos in East Hampton.

They had a lot of turnover in there.

Yeah, no, I don't know if you didn't know it. Two of their buildings.

No, that I knew, but operational chaos from that?

They're now six months together. adopted it from the architect's positions, some problems. But I started looking into it. My wife's been using it at work for research and things. And for certain things, like if you've got a large code that you have to scour on a regular basis, it's enormously time-saving. So I spoke to him about it just to see what the story was. And he said, yeah, no, we could talk about it. So he came in, and it seemed like a very good meeting today.

What I like about it is that it's not just, he wasn't just talking about using AI, but he's also talking about basic automation for some of our tasks, like making our website more user-friendly so people could submit applications online instead of having everything be a hard copy PDF that they're printing and then filling out and then If you're doing it online, then there'd be checkboxes. If something's not attached, it gets rejected before it even gets to us. So you're not wasting the time at the desk going through to make sure that you have all the bits and pieces. So a lot of what he was talking about is making everybody's job more efficient and helping kind of streamline the process. Also, really take into account FOIL requests. And if we can get our archive digital, make it so that FOIL requests can be easily responded to. taking so long to go through all the hard files and everything. So what I found interesting is that what he was talking about was kind of making a hub that's specific to our town and our town's needs, instead of trying to buy something that pre-exists and then modify it to fit us, which doesn't always happen or work. This would be designed specifically for us, for our needs and what we're doing. So, it just, it makes a lot of sense what he's been talking about and then. You know, it'll be helpful, especially getting the building department, the town clerk's office and the assessors to communicate without. So much literally running back and forth and pulling files and losing, like, you know, just. I think it'll help with efficiency.

We could have the ideas too that we could have if we digitize our records. And there are grants for that, and there are a lot of grants available for municipalities to do it. We could allow access to certain files from the public directly so that they weren't even bothering us. Other things we would have to vet, but that it could become an automated process.

can also make it so that it tracks deadlines records retention dates and um like expiration dates so if we issue a building permit it would track the expiration dates and can give you notifications as permits expiring in two weeks um you know or you know if you could actually send out a notification and alert us to the fact that it's fire So, so we don't end up in these pickles where it's like, oh, it expired 3 weeks ago, but you just started the work and we all miss the fact that the dates, you know, we're off. It just, I think it could be very helpful.

I do think we have yet to get like, a quote for, like, different projects and that's why I'm also thinking, like, some of it might be building department. Some of it might be. The clerk's department, some of it might just be general training for town police who are interested. Ashley and I, after he left, we worked on the 27 budget template. And we have to see how long the review takes, because obviously it wasn't perfect. But something that took four days, we might get it down to two days or one day. There's some good things that can help free up snap time.

Did you present the formal request in writing to ? I did send some. I didn't see it.

Yes, it was in the shared folder. It was a dollar amount on it. We were waiting to see. I do feel like this is something like it's not a piece of equipment. It's not a physical asset.

I know we sometimes... Yeah, we talked about it, and I wasn't sure if it was appropriate, but... Is there a range? Is it a $20,000 item?

Is it a $100,000 item?

Closer to 20,000, I would think. Yeah.

The thing I would say is, too, I talked to him about it, and he's a very principled guy. And he was saying, he said, realistically, the most efficient way to do it is for him to bill his time. So I wonder is one way to handle it to make it a supply side thing. This is the budget. This is what we have budgeted for it. See how it works for now. I think it's largely front-loaded and a lot of it is set-up time. He's a technology teacher and communications teacher at New York Institute of Technology who started this as a side job. He actually wrote a book about it which we're going to order.

To me, it sounds like a department or computer side. You fall on Kevin's side, go in our IT budget or the building department side. And town clerical. Town clerical, whatever. Honestly, I'm not... Great idea, whatever makes you more efficient.

Yeah. I think you also, you might talk to him about things that it might... And his father was a cop.

Good. You trust him.

So anyway, so I think we'll take it up, like, as we work through.

Yeah, I don't quite know how to approach it. I think he's, you know, he's also, I think he's very reasonable about digging and talk to him about it. He's already kind of thrown me some free time just to advise. I was messing with it over the weekend on my own. I have my own account.

that I got and I was messing around with some stuff that involves technical stuff and it ran all this engineering stuff that I am in no way capable of assessing. I mean, that's one of the problems is that it does, when he emphasized, is that you can't just ask it to do things that you don't know anything about because it will make stuff up. You need someone who's experienced in the field to oversee it, especially at first.

But it does learn from the way you want it done. And, you know, in theory, you can let it go a little bit. But the security is a relation.

Yeah. So I think our, yeah, and I think just in general, our next steps are how to do file naming. Like, he's going to give us some guidance on that so that the building department, the assessor's office, the clerk's office all get into a similar process.

hopefully identical naming methodology for documents.

Yes, that you're all in the same place so that when they start finishing any digitization and renaming things, then we've got a good database with which to do it.

To me, it sounds a lot like Laserfiche. So I like to, I don't know that because that was an IT project that really gained no traction or didn't follow through. And so I just, to me, it sounds like digitizing all files is a great idea and, and gaining access through technologies is another great idea, but.

One of the things that he was talking about is that if we do it.

Laserfiche has an AI component, I'm pretty sure too.

Uh, yeah, he's I think he, um, like that laser is on hold right now. So once like, once we get some better guidance. Someone's going to look at a little bit more closely for us, then they can move forward.

And 1 of the things that he brought up. Is that, um, you know, when these products like laser, laser fish that are sold to municipalities.

They're very expensive for a town our size.

And if we had it ourselves, we set it up ourselves, we wouldn't have to pay this yearly cost to the software company. And Laserfiche is what about, is it seven grand a year or is it seven grand the first year?

No, it's like 15,000 the first year and seven in sales for years. Yeah.

Yeah. things like that. But he was saying that, you know, if we control it ourselves, we come up with a filing and a naming system that all the different sections of the town are using. Like, you know, we do a lot of things differently than the assessor's office because it's kind of, you know, we figured out our system, they figured out theirs. If we made it coherent and did that before they upload it all, you know, digitize it all, then we would have a searchable system that everybody would understand. It would be suited to our needs. It's interesting.

So I think we'll kick this to the operating portion of the budget.

OK. Yeah. Sounds good. We can work further on that.

Thank you. Sure. Okay, so going down the list. So we've got AI training, not for this year. HR software, we were tabling to this month, but not realizing that focus on vacation this week, but I also feel like that that's probably an operating item as well. So I'll deal with that with her and me operating, you know, supervisor tentative budget gets worked on. So we have body-worn cameras. And we had my notes say 250,000 over five years. And now we've got it in the CDS grant and- Law Enforcement Tech Grant. So just because I didn't write clear notes, 250 over five years, that was 50,000 a year?

Does that just cover the equipment or the equipment and the storage of the information? Is everything that?

And I believe the CDS grants are 80-20. Do you know what the?

Law enforcement tech grant is that right? There's no contribution. There's no town contribution.

Okay. But if we're going to, like, just for consideration purposes, if we want to put it in the budget grant money. 50,000 for the 2027 budget. Crescent beach cameras that was 80,000.

That would be all at once.

The condom road boat ramp we talked about that, but that would come out of the waterways fund.

Yeah, I would think so.

I would hope with the waterways fund, but. And the work boat was also 300,000 out of the waterways fund. So from the regular fund, it looks like we've got 130,000 potentially or 80,000. And in the 2026 budget, we just had 50,000 in For the radios last year that came out of operating funds right now, the radios are done.

Those are right.

So, do we want to make a recommendation to. Both of those up to the town board for discussion. 1, versus the other, so none of them.

To bump the body cams and the beach cameras?

Yeah. I mean, I would rather for the body worn cams just wait to see what happens with the two grants. Yeah.

And there's no grants for the camera at the beach. That's just.

No, I would say it's a technology-based. We're capped at our law enforcement tech grant to, I think it's 125 this year. So we were going to do a portion of the body-worn cameras out to a certain point with that. So if that's the case, then we would use it for that purpose as opposed to trying to do the... Because that's our priority, one over the other, right? So... I don't know, the other two items are really would come out of existing funds, right? The other two items on the list, the Congdon boat ramp.

Yeah, waterways, although I don't know if there's enough in waterways to handle both of those.

All right, so maybe one this year.

Yeah.

I'd like to see the, if that's the case, I'd like to see the Congdon boat ramp. Because we just we just repaired the work boat I mean again short-term fix but good probably for a couple of years the boat ramp is something People have been clamoring for and it would also allow us to finally complete the project with the bulkhead and aving and everything so And it's a capital project but not looking for funds from the cut from this group.

I

We're going to try and do that without touching the bulkheads and doing the whole thing, which is treated like a boat, just a road.

Just like a road to a boat. Yeah, I mean, that's what Jack, I consulted Jack on Stella about it. I remember we discussed there's two options that we can do there, whether it be concrete or wood, but they're both about the same cost.

Yeah. Well, we can streamline the permitting process, so we don't if the money's available that we can go off. We can do it to design and house and put it out to bid. Right away.

Right. I don't mind tabling the body 1 canvas for another month and just see how some of these things play out a little bit. I don't know better from. Sergeant Randall and Jen.

yeah because i think um it seems i think we'll get the tech grant i think it's okay yeah because i think with the um The CBS, I thought that those presentations that made recently for sample was from the prior year's submission. It was so. It seems like we're a year.

It would be we would find out in 27 if we were going to get the monies requested and we did them in 2 parts. We separated the parts of the project from that. So that if you only approved 1, at least approve that body 1 cameras. So there's no other capital projects we're looking at for action. I definitely don't want to lose that 50,000 that we have in the line.

Well, my suggestion was, if we were, like, when I was looking at this, I was like, all right, that's out of waterway. You know, present be traps out of waterways, work boats out of waterways in a future year. Somebody want him. So, we got grant applications out there. So then Crescent beach would be sort of the only thing I was going to make the recommendation that if we choose to push the Crescent beach cameras off that we keep that 50,000 in the budget. So, similar to, we put money into the highway equipment fund. We've been talking about creating a better capital fund. And that, like, you take that 50,000 and roll it over. Yeah, I feel like if we're going to wait, we're going to have bigger things coming down the pipe. And so we need to start to accumulate something. So how do you feel about the Crescent Beach? I mean, push it further.

Look, if there's nothing else, then I would say the Crescent Beach Camel Project. And we'll do a portion of it because it's, you know, it's a license plate reader. I'll have to re-look at how we pitched that because I thought it was supposed to be 80,000. Do you remember the number?

I had 80,000 written down.

Yeah. So maybe we could do like we do with the radios, do a portion of it. In the following year, we get the authority to do possibly another portion of it that would remain. So. Are you proposing the flock? So it's not necessarily flock because we have Motorola cameras and we have Motorola network, but we got pricing from multiple vendors.

They're rather controversial. I was just about to say, I think I saw something in the news this morning.

A lot of it's because they're one of the larger vendors out there, so there's some controversy with it. We have policy. A lot of the things that are in controversy are not the way we use the application. And so all those features are removed from the system we're talking about. We're talking about license plate readers from a DMV file, and we can add to that if we have something going on. For instance, if we had someone, that could be an easy one, like an Alzheimer patient that they may have thought left the island, we can check our cameras at both ferry terminals and determine, no, they haven't left the island, so a search pattern becomes within the community based on entering a license plate in there. the county has something where someone committed some heinous crime and they're wanted for homicide and they have a plate leaving a thing, they put that into our camera system. That's what we're using it for. There's no facial recognition on it. It's not picking up ski racks and other things that they're talking about. That's not the way we utilize our system. It's strictly license plate read technology based on police information or DMV data. But even if, even if, no, and that's why Joe, it's a great question. Even if, even if we were to go with a flock product, the product that we would use would only use it in those areas. So.

So we'll put forward the Hudson Beach Hammer Readers in this year. We'll also put forward the Compton Program. Great. Yeah, so, um, I'll talk to each 1 of you when I'm looking at agendas. To see when you want to do the, like, I think it makes the most sense for you to do the reason. I mean. Well, Joe, and I probably, I guess I mean, putting it forward planning, but just presentation to the board.

I'll come with on that. If you do it on the capital. Depends on when you do it, if it's on a PD side, then I can discuss it then or, and I'll bring Sergeant Randall, maybe just because we have camera and plate readers already at both ferry tunnels. The community knows that. We've discussed it many times.

I'll work with you both to get them scheduled over the next few weeks.

And then body cams will just wait and see how the grants unroll.

Yeah. Play out.

Yeah.

And then workbook gets pushed to 2028. All right. okay that was all that i had so if there's other business i'll make a motion to close me second thank you everybody