Town Board - Regular Meeting

Go on, Mike. Super fast.

Okay, we're live. Okay, we are back online. For anyone who was watching the previous live stream, I apologize. our account was hacked and we removed that as quickly as possible and had to restart the meeting. We've also temporarily pulled that video off of the account page until we can uh purge that. So, we will continue the meeting.

Fine. Remember what we were doing? We're just finishing up the vacancy. Just finishing up the vacancy. Okay. Anything additional on vacancy discussion? Okay. Um, moving on. Any Did anyone see anything in the comp and benefits manual that they wanted to possibly address or have ready for discussion in the next uh in the organizational meeting. No. No.

I know there were a few things that needed to be clarified. I think it was in this. Well, first off, one thing I I we should think about in the paid leave section. So, we do have designated holidays. In the past, we've been thinking it by resolutions. uh we've been adding certain holidays, so Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, uh Junth. So, they're not formalized in our benefits manual. I don't know if that's something that we want to formalize or if you want to continue doing that by resolution, but I just think we should think through that. There's been a few other things we've talked about looking at in terms of

resolutions. Okay. Because we we we do it's always done at the at the organization. Well, we have the there's the set. Well, we do all the holidays are part of that resolution, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um trying to think there was anything else specific.

I don't think she needs to. I think we have three. Sorry, I'm just a little bit here. Okay. Well, uh, please take a look at that for the organization. See if there's anything that jumps out to you that you would like to add. Then uh last and and Zali I think this kind of speaks to well one possible way when we talk about um committee members and having a process where adjustments can be made to committees uh employment practices manual may be something where we look at that because right now Mary Lou is this correct are people serving on committees are not covered under the employment practices manual

that's correct Yeah. So I I don't that's not the only way we can we can do that. We can have a separate standalone policy specific to committees or we can just I think make some adjustments to the language here and essentially have volunteers and committee members covered the practices and codes of conduct and put so I don't know if you have a preference or any thoughts on that either way but

um I think that that would be applicable able to newly appointed members of boards and commissions. Um, and I think that what we discussed with Mary Lou is that existing members of boards and commissions other than the um three uh decision-making bodies um have fixed terms. Some of them have fixed terms, others do not. um the ones that have fixed terms have no um provision for removal for cause and we need to probably adopt a local law to adopt uh to to amend that. Mhm.

Um which is separate from a future training requirement and future new appointees being appointed to being required to adhere to the standards and practices. But I think that what we need to do is is make sure that we have a consistent policy regarding things like sexual harassment, discrimination, etc. Yeah, Mary, does that need to be a local law or can that just be a policy amendment? I think I think that I think that when we did the research, we did say it should be by we should have local law or policy. I can go back to my notes to check. Um, but they're two separate issues. One is training and the other is removal.

Right. But but a removal could be included as a in the policy document. Okay. Yeah. So if you want to look into it and see if there's a better way or what the best practice is for that. Uh I think the investment policy was something that you were saying.

I did. I I drafted an investment policy at Erin's request that basically says that uh that gives her the power to invest funds um in things other than a bank account at 10 basis points per year. Uh what we're envisioning was something like a uh highly rated money market fund, but no uh maybe short-term treasuries of 90 days or less, but nothing speculative at all. Um but uh in order for us to do that so that we can get higher a higher rate of return on cash balances uh a policy has to be adopted

and my recommendation is that that policy be as conservative as possible in terms of investment selection. Um and then that sort of begs the question of a minimum size and capital requirements of banks we use. Uh because um the banks that we use don't necessarily meet um highest tier of of capital requirements. Okay. So you have a draft of that or you're working a draft? I sent Aaron a draft. I can send it to you too.

Yeah, that'd be great. And then we can put it with the documents for the organizational meeting. Any additional amendments or are there any other documents that people are looking at that they think we really need to revisit this? If not at the organizational meeting, then put together a schedule of how we want to look at it. Kate, is there anything that you think the board it's just

feedback? Okay. So, encourage people to look at those documents and see if there's anything we want to add, anything we want to modify. I know it's it's a lot, but I think it's important to keep those update every now and again. Uh, next item. So wage schedule for the organizational meeting. I don't know if anybody had specific things that they wanted to look at. This is part of the budget process where we establish these. There's there's nothing new in the schedule that has beenos been appointed. I mean posted versus what was approved in the budget process. That's my understanding.

Okay. So fair enough. And so obviously we're going to be adopting this maybe not obviously we adopt this as part so just make sure you take a look at that and then fee schedules I don't know if anyone had any thoughts when looking at the fee schedules for building department transfer station uh anything related to that that I think we should consider changing Okay. The departments didn't make requests for change. Correct.

I'm not aware of them. I haven't seen any. I just wanted to make sure I didn't see this. Um the only thing and I'm trying to remember. The transfer station. Well, the fluorescent bulbs she was talking about. Yeah, I saw that [clears throat] increasing.

Maybe uh we should we should find out about that. I think the other thing was tires because I'm pretty sure what the passenger light truck tires is what we get charged by which is fine. We also don't want tires ending up at the side of the road. So I think that was the thing came just a pass there basically but I um I don't know that there's anything else and we just we just relooked at like the bag pricing last year. I kind of better define that because it was a little

squishy but like we actually put the gallon equivalents in there. That was something Aaron had pushed for. So the one comment I have about the transfer station is that we have no idea what the unu what the liability that we would have on our balance sheet is for punch tickets sold but not used. And I don't know whether I mean from an accounting looking at it from an accounting standpoint is different from looking at it from a practical standpoint and from a practical standpoint doesn't matter. Yeah, I know I have a lot in my car

and a lot of people have them in their car and have sold the cars and you know don't um and is that liability something that's important for us to know about? Um, and I guess we don't really have an idea of what the magnitude of that is. Um, because from a pure accounting standpoint, that should be shown as as um u a contract to revenue or unearned unearned income. But we have earned that income. We have the cash, but we haven't fulfilled we haven't filled the service.

Yeah, we have the cash. So we are paying for we're not there's no garbage for us to pay for it. So we're making a profit at the end of the year if people aren't using all their punch cards from a cash flow standpoint. But if you run that through the end of time um we will have if those people ring their banks we don't have any revenue in that year to offset the expense that we have to the money that we have to pay out for it because we're not reserving for the unused punches. That's true. bought a punch card 10 years ago. So see, you know, with how much we prices aren't going to go down issue. I mean, not that I know of.

Well, it's interesting data to have. We know how many cards we sell and I we count the punches. Well, I know we keep records of the punches group. be interesting just I mean under the old system with actual tickets we had an idea of what that liability was.

Yeah. Um, it would be interesting to see what the revenue is versus what the what the how many we sell versus how many are used every day to see if we're building up that that that pot or because at some point it's possible some that someone's going to dump all these bags and we're not going to have any revenue to cover it and we're going to have to dip into general fund to to pay that expense. just the timing. Yeah, I'll I'll talk to Aaron about that and see. But I think might not be that big of a deal. I mean, just start counting.

We're roughly selling what we're taking in the liability is not growing or shrinking is not really a very high magnet. The the probability of a problem is not a

first of all, the probability of problem is pretty low because I don't think the town of Rochester is going to go bankrupt anytime soon. Hope not cheating. Not when I'm acting supervisor. That's right. Uh I don't know. I designed a whole bunch of goals. They all look good. Uh I didn't see anything else in the uh planning board ZBA. These I know we just we did a major adjustment to those last year based off some feedback. So, uh, again, take a look at that. I think we can talk to the individual employees, see if there's something that they're missing that will need to change. But other than that, I think we are good. Don't don't know that there's anything to discuss about the consultant agreement for the sundown culbert. So we did have some documents that we sent back related to that but I can't I don't recall anything that we had to discuss about it. So, I think we're just waiting to finalize those agreements and communicating with the one of my many alarms need to do something you don't need to do. Uh, all right. Any other matters, other items that we didn't cover? Did I say I was going to talk about something? Oh, I missed. your nails. Okay. Well, the last order of business,

Mary Lou, anything else from you?

Just I'm going to send you guys a memo before the regular January meeting. Um back in the spring when we did the the road abandonment and we were selling a little triangle of property to another to a a neighboring property owner. We passed a resolution. Their title company from Long Island didn't like the way it was um set forth. So, they wouldn't ensure the entitle that insure the title. So, I've talked to the title company attorney and the buyer and seller attorney there, and we've come up with a another way to do it that will work fine with for the town. So, I'll get another resolution together and explain what's going on in that. It's easier to to write it out than explain it.

That's our That's our title. That's our title company. No, no, it's for the people who are purchasing it. Okay. Yeah. No, it's people who are purchasing it, not us. All right. Okay. So, yeah, I guess the last thing we're going to do is the auditing of the bills and the approval of abstract 12B for 2025. Um, we're going to stop the stream for that because we're just sitting around paying bills and then we'll do the resolutions to authorize the approval of those abstracts. Bills have been signed. Sorry. The bills have all been signed.

The bills have all been signed. We sign them all while you're working on the video. Oh, [laughter] I'm gonna go, guys. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, Mary. Thank you, Mary. Uh, okay. So, we just need to we can just we can do it second. I want to look at it

because I'm nervous about it. Uh oh, last thing last thing I just wanted to say I have a little note here. Uh and I'll say this this is on uh behalf of the supervisor whole board. First off, I thank Supervisor Analy for all the work uh that's been done this year. This was eye opening to sit in this seat and and also to be in the office and see all of the different things that are going on. And so just want to thank you the community uh staff which our staff is phenomenal boards and commission members all the volunteers in town for for their continued dedication throughout the year. I wish everyone a happy holiday season, healthy new year and uh we will see everyone next year. So thank you all.

Thank you.