Town Board - Regular Meeting

We skipped our executive session because there's only two of us here. So, we didn't need to um start Yeah, we didn't need to go into executive session. We did conduct interviews, but there were only two of us. So, welcome to the town board meeting of December 2nd, 2025. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Please stand if you are able to say the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We will start by um continuing our reopening our public hearing regarding the 2026 town budget. Um do we need a motion to reopen? Uh no no it's it was adjourned with the last meeting. We left it open. I think we left it open. So we are

Wait, we can welcome comments from the public or the board. Questions or comments regarding the budget. Any changes since the last? No, I think we got the insurance rates came in and we guessed right. Um we estimated right on the increase. So that is um they came in at like a 9% increase and we budgeted for a 10% increase. So, we're right on target there for um covering the health benefits. Um any comments, questions, questions from the board, other concerns? There being no further public comments on the 2026 proposed budget, I'd like to move that we close the public hearing.

All in favor? I. Motion carries. Um and I would like to make a motion that we adopt the 2026 uh preliminary budget and make it a final budget. Second. Um um any discussion? Just wanted to say something about Sure. Please.

Um you I think this is a really strong and responsible budget uh that delivers tax relief at a time, you know, when costs are skyrocketing and I think our residents will really appreciate this. And at the same time, I think we're protecting um the essential services that our residents rely on. Uh just, you know, I think some people have been or haven't been attending these budget hearings. Um overall, you know, our spending is essentially uh we're holding it flat. Uh I think, correct me if I'm wrong, we are reducing the townwide tax levy and tax rate, and we remain comfortably below um the New York State tax cap. Um I think we also avoid uh dependence on onetime revenues. um we use the full fund balance conservatively and we maintain healthy reserves. So I think this ref reflects very healthy and careful planning across all of our departments and I want to thank uh our wonderful comproller for putting this together and to our department heads for um for their diligence, transparency and hard work throughout this process. We know it's not easy and um really just thankful to the board as well for getting this through.

Thank you. Uh if I could just council member Castillo and just quickly to thank our comproller, the finance office, um all of our department heads, but when neighboring towns are busting the tax cap and for us to come well below it, I think everybody here is doing a phenomenal job. So, thank you. Okay, any comments? Um I don't think I can add anything.

Fantastic. Great. I think um it's been well said here that this is a solid budget with um mostly remaining flat in our spending while costs are going up. So in a sense we are tightening our belts and um able to reduce the levy because of the library um tax being moved over to a different line. So, um, thank you, Comproller Connealy, and your department and all of the department heads for, um, I think what's going to be a budget that enables us to accomplish, um, a lot of the goals that we have for next year and continue strong services for the residents. Um, all in favor? I

I motion carries. Fantastic. On the consent agenda, uh we have a request by controller connealy to approve the abstract of claims and paid priors in the amount of $900,443. Uh a request by controller cany for approval of the updated financial advisory services agreement with fiscal adviserss and marketing inc. And an approval of the Thrive DFC consultant agreement renewal um with Ellen Mhouse for consulting services in the amount of $15,000. Do we have a motion to approve those three items on the consent agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor? I.

And now we welcome a presentation by our energy and sustainability director, Mark Tilking. So, thanks for joining us, Mark. Yes. Lovely snowy evening. Yes.

Um, it's Yeah, it's fine. And just to go back, the Thrive contract is covered by the um the DFC grant that we received. We've we've been approved for a second year of that grant. And um Ellen Morehouse is the person at the county um office of student services. Correct. that um is really helping who's overseen a lot of these grants in the past and is helping ensure that Thrive gets all the right paperwork done and gets all the reporting done to the federal government so that we continue to receive that grant funding and helps advise the Thrive committee. So we're hoping to roll off of their depend depend being dependent on that organization for those services but they've been tremendously helpful this year and so I think it's a wise thing to continue to um engage them for to work with thrive in the year to come. So just to um fill space and explain something on the consent agenda. So thanks Mark. Now you're ready.

So uh so thanks for inviting me today. Uh this is the annual update for energy and sustainability initiatives that we've been taking over the over the last 12 months. But honestly, this presentation is a um I'd say a a sum up of many many people's work. This is not just me. In fact, I feel like I'm just a messenger because you know, even though I'm the director of energy sustainability, it's a pro bono position. I pick my spots very clearly about where I'm really involved. A lot of this is a reflection of the town's team working on sustainability initiatives. Certainly Bedford 2030. I want to call out Mitch Aorio as well as um Olivia Hemlin who's on the Zoom helped do this presentation. Also Bedford 2030 and clearly the department heads and all the town staff. So you'll see as I go through there's just a lot that's going on and I could literally talk for 40 minutes on this. So I paired it down to about 15 minutes. So hopefully that's uh I I hold to that. Um so we're going to review 2025 start with town government actions and then move to community a community uh initiatives as well. Hopefully this sparks a discussion around what our priorities for 2026 are as well. So this is because a lot of these things are ongoing. Um so as we all know we um thanks to Ellen, you passed this green purchasing program. This is a a New York state sponsored process to really streamline and systematize the purchasing of products that are safer, healthier, and more sustainable. So, that's a big town initiative that I think uh you deserve most of the credit for that.

Well, I I brought it up, but I think really controller Connealy has has now taken the reigns and is trying to make sure that everyone understands what it is and how to use it and um rolling it out among the staff. So the thanks goes to him because that's where the real implementation comes in

and you know my peers in this space find this to be uh very helpful. So hopefully it's it's working as well. So congratulations on that. Uh and I was here last month talking about the unified solar permit and uh this now allows for solar installations up to 25KW to be streamlined and permitted much more quickly. very timely given that the federal tax credits are running out at the end of the month. So, um this has really helped out and again kudos to the building department to again allow that streamlining to happen in a very very timely way. Um we're working on battery energy storage system permitting as well. As we all know, batteries are a very important part of the transition to clean energy for our community, but also for the state. Uh we also need to make sure that these this permitting uh ordinance also includes all the latest safety rules that have been released by the fire code and New York State Department of State. So this we hopeful will hoping that this will be um released to the public in Q1 of 2026. Um but just another example of again in encouraging the the development of renewable energy here in the town. very important policy piece that we're working on and you want to make any comments on that?

Yeah, we have a great working group of stakeholders that, you know, continue to learn more and um I believe there's a tour that our fire um our building inspector and fire code um inspector went on maybe today. There's one um this month. I know um that's it's around now that they were going to go tour some facilities and learn more about it. And then I believe we have an opportunity coming up um with sprocket power to tour some of the smaller systems, less of the, you know, the larger ones, but the smaller ones that are more likely to come into like commercial areas um in the new year. I think we're talking about figuring that out. So, the working group continues to plug go forward. So, we we need another meeting on the calendar for January, I believe.

Yeah. It's

fantastic. Again, congratulations to the town on moving this forward. It's very important. Um again, town electric fleet vehicles with Chief Madilla leading the way. We have four new EVs in the fleet. Um just on Sunday uh at the Christmas tree lighting at in Kona, the Ford F150 Lightning, which is pictured up here, was blocking traffic so that no one would get injured. Wasn't idling, no pollution, and was ready to go. I mean this was this car was ready to go any emergency. So tremendous uh again kudos to Chief Badilla. Um this though adds to our six hybrid electric vehicles. We also have an electric leaf. So just again leading by example town showing that these vehicles work for not only the police but for many other departments and why shouldn't the rest of the community adopt these. So again, tremendous example of sustainability initiatives happening at the town. Similarly, uh kudos to um Reckon Parks uh where they're slowly but surely rolling out more and more use of electric blowers, electric snowblowers. These are again showing the community that these work for the community and work for the town. And again leading by example on how the replacement of very high polluting, very high emissions uh gaspowered equipment can be replaced with very effective equipment. So again, congratulations to the town on moving this forward as another great example of um the town leading the way. So something near and dear to my heart is benchmarking our town buildings where we can again adopt a policy or we have adopted a policy where we categorize the

energy use of of all of our buildings and then we can compare performance across building classes. So what I've done here is highlighted the building classes that are most energy intensive. The items in green are pool houses. The items in blue are community gathering spaces and our offices. Items in orange are our garages. And I've ordered this list again by assembling all the data of energy use within the the town's buildings. I've assembled this list and ordered it by energy cost intensity, which means which buildings are more expensive to operate, which buildings are less expensive to operate. Buildings at the top are the least expensive to operate per square foot. And this allows for a comparison of say why are the three pool houses so different where you have Bedford Village pool house much lower energy use relative to Kona and Katona's significantly lower than Bedford Hills. It's just an interesting comparison what's going on there. We've done that with our uh community gathering spaces where the Bedford Hills Community House, which went through a major renovation, major energy efficiency improvements a couple years ago, is the lowest cost per square foot of any building in that class of building. And same thing with um the garages. You know, you can see two of the garages are relatively low. And then you have Crusher Road, which we know is an obsolete building. it's built from a different era and it's costing the town a ton of money to operate that building and that's we're all well aware that that's a building that needs to be replaced. So, this is a great comparative tool. I've been using it to inform the town on where improvements are needed and u think it's really key from the perspective of you making decisions on how to allocate resources to to uh lower costs and also lower emissions.

This is another chart showing um the relative use of electricity versus direct fuels. Orange is electricity based emissions or pollution. Blue is the direct burning of fuels in our buildings. You can see how the opportunity is if we decided to move towards renewable electricity sources, we reduce a lot of pollution, especially in the buildings that rely on electricity for most of their energy use, which is clearly the water pumping facilities, but also buildings like the Bedford Hills Community House, which is pretty much off of all burning fuels, and 425 Tur Street, which is also moving that way. So, just another comparison tool to inform decision makers like yourself. Moving to the townhouse, which we've identified as a big opportunity for improvements. Um, the townhouse, this building's HVAC equipment is at the end of use of life. It's actually some parts of it already failed. So we conducted an energy study that was released early last early this year which showed that with improvements uh to our envelope and to our insulation we could reduce emissions 78% and reduce energy costs 30%. So again that's that was done this year. We're now moving to getting a scope of work from an architect to identify where that insulation air sealing would happen before we decide to move forward with replacing heating and cooling equipment. So this is a big sustainability initiative in the sense that if we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions that much and reduce costs at the same time and again improve the environment of this building which HBAC is not great. This is a big opportunity and part of the why we identified this opportunity is through the benchmarking process that I talked about earlier. So this is an

exciting project that will take up a lot of 2026 but we started it in 2025. Um great news about the landlord registry which uh that law was passed at the end of 2024 where um we revised our existing landlord registry law to be constitutional but also to increase the amount of health and safety tests that are done on rental building units. Um, the buildings will be inspected now for the things that we were inspecting before, health and safety issues, but we've added air quality and energy costs as a criteria so that tenants have a better idea when they're signing a lease what this building's performance is like and how much they're going to be on the hook for for energy costs. We just launched phase one. Inspectors are now out there uh ready to inspect the buildings that are that are required to be inspected under this law. Um, we're excited about these inspections because they're free to the uh building owners and this will get them on a path potentially to receiving lots of free services from New York State as it relates to improving the performance of their building, lowering energy costs and improving air quality. So, huge win-win on this long timeline and we have more work to do. But um this is an exciting uh development and Andre, you know, you were part of this from the very beginning. So I'm glad that you are able to see the launch of the program because certainly had a big part of getting this off the ground. Um yeah, fast car chargers in Katona. Um I rode my bike past it on Saturday and every single charger was used. What's really interesting about the data from from NIPA and again these are behind uh Bank America and behind um the other

building there. It's like kind of behind Cold War Banker. Uh we've had 8,000 charging sessions since January. What's really interesting is each charging session is lasting an average of 31 minutes, which is plenty of time for people to start walking around community getting a cup of coffee because they're just charging there. they get out of their car and they walk to Taza, they walk to who knows where else, but I think it's a big boost to the local economy. Um, huge win because this didn't cost anything for the town and now we're bringing in new uh shoppers into Katona. So, and it's it offers an outdoor choice for people to charge up. So, tremendous uh opportunity here and I'm glad that we were able to jump on it. Community solar is another huge win for people that want to save money on electricity bill. They should sign up today. It's a way for building owners to uh get solar power without putting solar on your roof and you get 5% off your electric bill. So, very simply, we've been marketing this as a total no-brainer. Um, go to Sustainable Westchester's website, sign up for community solar if you haven't done it already, and you get 5% off your utility bill every single month. It's a no-brainer. And then you're supporting solar for the rest of the state.

And where is the current project? Um do you know where it is? I don't know. But it's in Nice Lake territory. So nice upstate some upstate. Yeah. Okay.

Um and this is really about New York State saying that not everyone puts solar on their roof. So here's a way to participate and we're going to give you a guaranteed 5% off your bill. So it's a no-brainer. Um, and then if you do have the opportunity to put solar on your roof, solar eyes is a way to simplify accessing quotes to getting that basically understanding how much it would cost. It simplifies it. It streamlines that process. Um, we are participating this for the last nine months. We've had 13 projects. I think we're number three out of the 16 communities participating in this Westchester wide program. So, it's working. It's just the name of a campaign, Solariz. It's not a company or anything. It's just a sustain Westchester like that's just what they call like their program to help people understand this this opportunity to get solar.

Yes. To be clear, this is a program of sustainable westers to allow for a simplified way of accessing quotes from third-party providers of solar panels on your roof or in your in your yard. So, yes, it's not a not a company, right? Um, so people interested in solar should again go to Sustainable Westchester's website, get quotes, and you've got about four weeks left before the tax credits are gone, which may not be enough time. Probably not.

But, uh, solar is a good idea for any time. So, even without the tax credits, um, very excited to see composting, uh, expanding. And in fact, I just heard that we need to add more bins at our locations because there's just so many people participating. So, which is really exciting. Great. Um, yes, and um, DPW did budget for additional bins. So, we will be adding those.

Great. So, just to be clear, that the Bedford Recycling Center has a location, the Bedford Hills parking lot number eight has a location, and the Bedford Village Memorial Park. I've used the one in parking lot 8 a couple times. It's great. It's very easy to drop off. And every pound that is not put into the garbage waist stream is one pound that's not burned because all of our garbage goes to an incinerator and it creates a lot of pollution. This is diverting a lot of um it's basically avoiding a lot of air pollution. So keep this up. Um yeah, we've had a lot of um partnership with the town, particularly the um Tom Maggna on improving the ability to ramp up native species and planting more and more um uh sustainable landscaping. This is a tremendous partnership and we're hopeful that this continues on and expands. I think uh we have access to another Chris. So I we have access to another year of free plants, right?

So yes, so we're talking to Chris about um last year I think like shrubs and we're looking at doing more there. So yeah, can you repeat it Mark just for the recording? Yeah, just Yeah. Did you catch all that? I did not. How is it being? So, thank you for um I guess Bedford 2030 has been able to work with recreation and parks department to get additional 17 trees and shrubs in Bedford Village Park. Is that what you said? In in Bedford Hills. In Bedford Hills Park, right? Yeah. And we're and we're looking at doing it again this year and repeating that this year or right for Bedford Hills or Katona. So, fantastic native plants and shrubs. Yeah.

Awesome. And this is a this is a truly like this is not just one entity. This is like three or four entities, right? Watershed agricultural council has worked on it and the the trees for tribes program is DEEC, I think. Yeah. Hundreds of community members, right? Lots of community members. So, that's great. And a big tree planting effort. It's it's uh again, I could keep going on and on. Um and we are we also had the um conservation board uh report on the monarch pledge and there were 28 actions or something that were completed this year towards the you know protecting pollinators efforts.

Yeah. I mean it's it's we are leading by example. It's the bottom line and it's it's creating opportunities even beyond just creating a more sustainable community. We're actually winning a lot of money because of this. the clean energy communities program which is on hold right now um up until the point where it became on hold. We've earned almost $600,000 worth of grants because of these actions that we're taking. Every little action adds up to getting points which allows us to win more money. So tremendous initiative over the last five years and bet for 2030 again has really helped in getting us up to speed on making sure that these points are allocated and that we win um this money. So just for example over the last four years we've installed new bike racks, bus shelters, we've uh provided funding for the landlord registry program. We did a lawn equipment buyback and we've allocated almost $450,000 to this project here in the townhouse to get this building much more efficient. So again, sustainability is obviously great for everybody, but if we can win money doing it as well, this this is like a no-brainer, right? and having the help on the applications and the reporting and the tracking um of these opportunities, climate smart communities and clean energy communities, having Bedford 2030 um you know be the consultant on some of that work. Um there's no one else to do that at the town. It's a tremendous amount of work and it's been incredibly helpful to have sort of that reporting and tracking um component because it's complicated and

it's extremely complicated. Even today we're like submitting grant like milestones on some of these grants which then they sort has to approve and then we get a milestone payment. It's it's super complex. It's very helpful. Yeah. You know the grant the grant forms are complicated enough. I can't imagine having to comply with the forms. Yeah. Yeah. But the money is there. So the fact that we have but for 2030 that's helping is just it's leveraging very helpful all this into more money.

So looking forward to 2026. Um one of the big things is that New York State just passed or has passed a new energy conservation code. So this is a building code that um has been updated. The last time they did it was in 2020. And they've also passed an overlay that requires all buildings to be all new buildings to be all electric. So no more burning equipment in the buildings. So our question is well first of all in how is the building department adjusting to this new code. Um our town stretch code which we've had in existence for the last 15 years has now become obsolete. So the question is what do we do about that? And is there an additional stretch code that we might overlay this new state code which is required for us to adopt anyway? And some of the things we might want to consider around the stretch code is requiring charging infrastructure into the building. We already require that the panels have the capacity for charging. One of the options is to require that these new buildings have actually a plug. Um, again, it's one thing that the New York State has recommended. If you want to do a stretch code, that would be one thing. There's other things to talk about. Um, another thing, obviously, we talked about this, the battery energy storage permitting law. Um, from the standpoint of clean electricity with the demise of the the um community choice aggregation program from sustainable Westchester, we need to and we are ramping up uh resources to allow our community to source clean electricity going forward. It used to be automatic. Now we actually have to choose. And those choices are extremely complex. That was the beauty of the CCA. They did a full RFP. They streamlined all that process and they picked one provider that was the cheapest. Now this is on us as community members to do it individually. So between Bedford 2030, myself, other folks in the community,

we're going to try and figure out a way to streamline this process so that we can recover from this big loss of the CCA. Then other ongoing projects are, as I talked about, 321 Bedford Road. This project is a big one. Crusher Road Garage is on the agenda. We have a new clean energy communities program coming online in 2026. So all of our initiatives will be again a refresh and hopefully we'll do just as well in that program. Uh we're talking about expanding composting to a certain extent. And then obviously the opportunity to have more solar in the community is always welcome with electricity prices so high even without tax credits. This makes sense for our community. So these are all ongoing projects. All the stuff before is probably mostly ongoing as well. So there's a lot going on. a lot going on.

Thank God we have a big team and I'm thankful for that team. Yes, thank you. I am too. This is um it's great to see it like sort of wrapped up at the end of the year um because it's it's been a lot.

It's it's great to see um how much how we've moved forward so much. Um I I think we would add to this. Um I know you mentioned the inspections phase of the landlord registry. Once we start getting um the data about energy and how those inspections go, you know, I think the next step is developing however we're reporting that information about the um the grades or um for each building, the health of the buildings. um we'll need to roll out how we present that information to tenants or um on our website and then also we've got um you know the the benchmarking information that you showed is on our website continuing to keep that maintained is something else I would add to our ongoing list.

Um and then you know we've talked about updating our vehicle inventory. Um, yes. So, I know that's Yeah, that's a biggie, but Yes. Yeah. And cataloging all the um improvements to that fleet over the years and showing measurable impact like we have with buildings like we can really see before and after with Bedford's community house. We're probably going to see similar bet before and after with 425 Cherry once that data comes in and this building. So, if we could do that with the fleet that would be really helpful, right? just getting cost down and getting right emissions down. It's great. Um

I just had a quick clarifying question. Um well, first of all, thank you so much. I mean, it's always wonderful to know we're in the top three clean energy communities. I'm very competitive, so I love seeing us up there out of 548. I I know it's very impressive. U just a quick clarifying question about the landlord registry. So phase one and I know we talked about this in the committee. Remind me which buildings are prioritized or where we start is a part one to the question and part two uh what is the timeline specifically phase one and what does a phase two mean? I don't know if I missed that in the

Yeah. So we we decided to split the building stock into the two to four family class that's phase one and then the five unit or larger class of buildings. So, we're starting with two to four families. Um, that's the reason why we split it that way is that a lot of the New York State programs that pay for improvements break out the building stock that way.

Okay. And so the programs that are being um will be hopefully leveraged for I mean one program offers $10,000 per unit of free energy improvements for buildings that go through this energy audit process which again our inspectors are qualified energy auditors. So that building stock is going first. They have nine months to complete the um the inspections under the law. um that kicked off in mid- November. So they have nine months from mid November through till you know nine months from now to finish that process. Um and what was your second question?

Um no well you kind of answered this and then a phase two would be focusing and then on on the five unit plus buildings. We're still assembling who would be the anointed inspectors for that because it's a different class of building needs slightly different skill sets. Right. So that's still underway. That's why that's a second phase.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I it's great that we're piloting it that way and yeah, we'll just, you know, reaffirm what you said about just really wanting to make sure also that we collect feedback from uh from tenants as well. Um just making sure that, you know, there's always troubleshooting here and there and I don't anticipate too many issues, but at least when I was interviewing uh some tenants, there was some hesitation like what, you know, what's going on? Why is this happening? There may be more questions and comments, but be curious to know what they say and how that informs a phase two. Well, it's important to understand that this has been a law that's been on the books for 15 years. So, inspections were happening every two or three years anyway.

What's going on now, though, is that we're actually going to disclose information that helps tenants in making good decisions on where they're living. So, the building's high performing, if it's low cost to live there, they're going to know that. If it's not, they're going to know that, too. So, that's the big difference. It's not that inspections are really changed. It's just that the data that's coming out will probably better inform our community. That's why this is such a great law. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. We really appreciate all of your guidance and um support for all of this and uh we look forward to continuing to work with you in 2026. We have some continue our our goals um that you've identified and maybe we can come up with a few more. I'm sure we will see what those CEC um objectives are once that new program is released. Yeah, it'll be interesting. We can do it. All right. Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you.

Okay. Um, our Bedford promoter, business promoter, Jen Ouij has had a child care issue, I think related to the weather. So, we will postpone her until December 16th um for her to talk a little bit about um what she's been doing to enhance economic and community vibrancy in in town. Um, under new business, we have a request to appoint the following u members to the harassment committee. Bobby Bitker, um, David Freriedman, Mark Grero, Brian Connealy, and Gregory Pittz. Effective December 1st, 2025. Do you have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. All in favor? I

I guess we could talk about that. It's um this is the committee that if an employee I think or a community member hears a has a complaint about um harassment, sexual harassment or other kinds of harassment um they can file a form with the personnel director who will convene the harassment committee to review the complaint or investigate um and make recommendations. So that's what that is. I get that right? Um okay. Any other um public comments, questions?

Just a quick question on the last item. So, uh totally on board, just clarifying. So, the personnel director is involved but is not on the committee itself. Um I believe the complaints are filed with the personnel director um to pass along to the committee, but I'm not sure if they're an active member of the committee. Okay. Um or just bringing the information to them. Okay. Um I think it's outlined in the employee handbook of the process. Okay. Um yeah, I just wanted clarity. Um it makes sense. Um you know, having an independent body and just wanted to clarify that.

All right. And I think a person could go to any one of these members with the complaint. They don't have to go to the personnel director. Could just bring the complaint to a member of the committee. That was more familiar. Um okay. Are there any board member announcements?

I will. Yeah, go. Do you want to go first? Um, go ahead.

I can go first. Um, so I'll be meeting um with our housing committee next Wednesday uh to move forward on um advancing some kind of policy around housing coming out of our um affordable housing um info session uh with Blue Mountain Housing. Again, sorry to clarify that was not a town sponsored event, but we were making sure that our residents were participating. um was trying to meet with them sooner, but of course with the holidays a little difficult to convene and um just really excited about that. I I think we can certainly get some um a good policy going. Uh it's it's a very urgent issue. Um and I anticipate that we'll you know have a policy ready to at least discuss by the next meeting and then um you know discussing whether we move forward, you'd probably look more at January. Um but I think it would be a great start to 2026 to get some common sense um legislation going around housing um specifically uh around ADUs. Um and just wanted to let the public know that that's in the works. So

great. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. Um and we hope you'll stay engaged and advocate for um Oh yeah. for those things. Yeah. I I really uh enjoy uh supporting and working with the housing committee and seems like they could use someone um that's focused a little more on the community engagement piece and um really excited to to work with them in in any capacity.

Great. Thank you. Um this week there's lots of holiday events going on. Um thanks to DPW and police and Reckon Parks for all their involvement and the clerk who's also helped um with a lot of these events. uh the Kona tree lighting and the turkey trap or this past weekend we have Shine Bright Bedford is in Bedford Village Friday Peppermint Parade on Saturday in Kona the M the um Bedford Hills market is Saturday holiday market with I think 20 vendors um that's sort of an organiz that's been organized by Wreck and Parks with help from the Bedford promoter and then the Bedford Hills will do their Christmas tree lighting um Saturday. So the Habad is doing the Manura lighting next Sunday. So lots of um co-sponsored events that um we have approved to have town resources there to help with traffic and safety and use of the parks and things like that. So that's a lot of fun. Um we are working on our wayfinding um signage in Bedford Hills as part of our dig grant. So a bid has um proposal for for bid bid documents have been um posted online if there's anyone wants to bid on that um to design and produce the wayfinding signage for Bedford Hills which is like directional signage like parking this way shops that way library that way um which will go around Bedford Hills and um we're also working on a gateway uh sign. There's a there's a little train sign at the beginning of Bedford Hills Hamlet that I think was put up by a chamber long ago and so um part of the dig grant will be to upgrade that sign. So we're looking at that this week and then um wrapping up some of the dig opportunities for facade improvements with some of the property owners and working on some improvements to the station area. So that is ongoing. The

winter recreation and parks brochure is out and that has it's a small one. They took out a lot of the photos, so it's a little easier to print, but it has um a good amount of programs and registration begins on December 10th at 9:00 a.m. And um next meeting is December 16th. We are planning to have brief reports from department heads on the the past year. It'll be a little speed updates, like one or two minutes each, um just to give us a sense of um where they've been and where they're headed. Um, I don't know. I think those are the big the big items. Um, anything else? Okay. There being no further business, this meeting is adjourned.