(1) Town Board - Regular Meeting

Welcome. This is the Red Hook Town Board meeting of Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. Would you be kind enough to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? 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. Thank you very much. Suzanne, if you'd be kind enough to pan to the screen and I can show everybody at home what we'll be discussing tonight. It's the first meeting of the month. We start out, as always, with the supervisors and clerk's report. They're the reports of the financial standing of the municipality at any given moment. We have some announcements. I think tonight we can take some public comments in the beginning on agenda items, and then we'll do some public comments on open items at the end as well. The first item we have for the agenda is discussion grant opportunities. So if you've been following along, we had Brandy Nelson with us about a month ago to lay out some potential grant possibilities. This was before the budget was passed up in Albany. The budget was passed. It's not one budget bill. It's a series of bills. I think it was 10 or 11 bills this year. They have passed, so they are rolling out the programs, and we'll be continuing that discussion. I don't anticipate we'll make any decisions tonight. Grant opportunities, many of the grants are due as part of the consolidated funding application, and that deadline is the end of July, July 31st. And so we will try to narrow down tonight some of the grants that we'll be applying for. And then second up, we have some continuing discussion about water district number two. That's the TND. If you recall, we formed a sewer district for the benefit of the landowners, property owners, and the commercial businesses in the traditional neighborhood district as part of a joint venture with the village of Red Hook to extend the sewer system down here and to upgrade the treatment plant and so we have a continuing discussion now about the equivalent which is the water district number two obviously you need central water to go along with your central sewer what's different about that for the folks at home if this is your first meeting joining us on this discussion is that some of the properties are already served by Village Water down in this TMD area. We have one of the actionable items we have tonight is a resolution to consider to award the bid on the water storage tank electrical. If you recall at our last meeting, we awarded both the rehab project for the storage tank and also the swapping out of the water, the meter, right? I think it was the meter. We were doing the flush on that one. Fourth item is a resolution approving tie and bond task order. This is their role and the subcontractor role for the storage tank. I think you've heard Bill, who's not going to be joining us tonight, unfortunately. talk about how there are certified individuals who actually watch the paint dry and a lot more than that on premises to ensure that the work is done properly. And so this task order will cover both our engineer's work and the subcontractor's work along with that. We have some correspondence, and then we'll take some more public comments, other public comments.

I'd like to propose that we move the public comments to the beginning of the meeting.

Well, I think we probably can accommodate that tonight. We've had difficulty the last couple of meetings getting started with business. We had our engineer here until 10 of 9 before getting started, I think, at the last meeting. So I think tonight we can probably do that, put all comments in the beginning. Thank you, Christine. All right, so let's start out with the supervisor's report. Folks, we have, this is for the period ending May 31st. We started out with an opening balance of $11,715,000, receipts of $490,000, disbursements of $522,000, with an ending balance of $11,683,363. You also have the budget adjustments prepared for you by Anne Conley, our budget officer, and you have your variance report as well. We did have some, we received our first six months of the mortgage tax coming in. That's tracking, I think, pretty nicely towards budget. We received a cannabis sales tax. check as well and then our quarterly sales tax has come in so from a budgetary standpoint things are looking good the first two months of the second half of mortgage tax sales that's April and May have come in rather strong so there's some indication that maybe real estate activity has picked up

Can we discuss the correspondence from Teresa Barton?

We can, but that's not on the agenda now. Correspondence is at the end. So let's work on the order, please, of the agenda item. We have the supervisor's report and any variance questions.

I had a quick question. Sure. On the CPF. Community Preservation, what was 160,000 receipts?

Yes. That was, we received in one month, $159,000. Oh, okay. In Community Preservation Fund monies. It was a rather large check for last, well, it's technically, the check we received was in the beginning of May. It was for April transactions, and so there must have been some high price transactions there, and I'm anticipating we'll have a couple of good months like that as well. Which, not to steal some thunder on announcements, but want to thank both our State Senator and our Assemblyperson. So that's Senator Hinchey and Assemblyperson Sarahana Strechka. for the passage of the CPF bill of the Albany. That's an extension of this very important tool that has been transformative for the community and that extension will go until 2051. Okay, if there are no other questions on the supervisor's report, would anybody like to entertain, make a motion to accept it? So moved. Thank you, Jacob. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Christina. All in favor? Kenny? Aye. Myself, aye. Jacob? Aye. Christina? Aye. Thank you very much.

Deanna? The town clerk's report for the period of May 1st to May 31st, 2026. Total local shares remitted, $7,343.44. Amount paid to New York State Agriculture and Markets for the Spay-Neuter Program, $46.00. Amount paid to New York State Department of Health for marriage licenses, $135.00. And the amount paid to New York State Environmental Conservation, $349.56. Total state, county, and local revenues, $7,874. Thank you very much, Deanna. And also you have vouchers? Yes. These are, I hereby certify vouchers for, these are for April 2026. 34877 to 34998, processed in the month of April 26, are an accurate reporting of the abstracts approved for payment by the town board. Okay, we'll do that next month.

Okay, is there any questions? If not, a motion to accept the first report? So moved. Thank you, Christina. Second. Thank you, Jacob. All in favor of Kenny? Aye. Myself, aye. Jacob? Aye. Christina?

Aye.

Thank you very much. Just a couple of quick announcements. First of all, thank you to all the volunteers that helped out with the many events that we had this weekend, whether it was Rogers Rock, great turnout over by St. Chris and Benner School. We also had an event at the Elmendorf, historic Red Hook did, very nice presentation, pop-up tent presentation out on their green space there about the 250th. What else did we have? Getting one thing. Oh, the Pride, Red Hook Youth Pride Parade. I can't believe I forgot that. Three teens in our community took over since the Beck Hook Pride Parade was not happening this year and they did a wonderful job and a great turnout. So I want to thank everyone who turned out and helped, the Brego Village Events Committee, their crew for working the event, and Andy Smith, and certainly the three organizers of it. We have more coming up. So Flag Day is Sunday, June 14th, from 3 to 5 p.m. We have an open house at the Red Church in Tivoli, and you have an opportunity to see the very first church that existed in this area. The Old Reading Church dates back pre-revolutionary times and we have a wonderful open house. You get to see just how beautiful and primitive the Red Church is. We have at least 13 revolutionary era grave sites, maybe perhaps a 14th one. You'll hear from a couple of the individuals who have been instrumental in maintaining the cemetery before we took it over years ago. And you'll hear from our town historian, who was also the village mayor, Emily Major. We also have, on Sunday before that event, the Trails Committee.

Jacob, do you want to mention this one? Sure. So it's the Tour de Red Hook, which has happened in the past, previously hosted by the library. The Trails Committee is taking it over for this year. It's going to be happening at Mill Road Elementary. from 10 to noon on Sunday. There's a one-kilometer cycling route. There's going to be a repair station, a rodeo for littles, balance bikes to try, snacks, water, goodies, city accessible. We'd love to have people come out and enjoy the event. Very good. Thank you very much.

Last thing is another announcement. You've heard a lot about what's coming up in the summer and that we're proud to continue our free summer camp here at Brent Park. It's five weeks. Sign up started on Saturday the 6th and continue this Saturday the 13th. It's for kids in the Red Hook Central School District. The county, you may have read recently, the county acquired a couple years back Camp Newtini in Pleasant Valley and they offer scholarships for income eligible kids to attend that camp as well and you can link on. I don't know if the hyperlink is on the website, but just if you would Google Camp New Teening Scholarship Application, and you can see if that's something that you and your family are interested in. And I think that's all I have for announcements.

Before we move on, my packet has 69 pages, and this one has 71 pages. It has these two announcements.

Oh, I think just two announcements were added. These two. It's exactly the same as before, just it was this camp one and toward a retina.

So what it's confusing to me because I try to prepare for these meetings well in advance. So is there a way that we can establish when the packets are final?

We do our best, but they are living documents, and so we get as much as we can get ready and in advance as much as we can, and oftentimes we'll find that something, you know, there's a mistake or something gets updated or we don't get... you know, information to the last, you know, earlier part of the day. So our announcements, so in terms of like making sure we're compliant with open meetings call, our announcements No, we're not taking action. Chris can comment on it, but we're not taking action on announcements. We're just letting people know what's coming. So we're compliant in open meetings. Again, you're supposed to have what's available up 24 hours in advance, what you plan to take action on.

But my packet is different than your packet, and I don't know where those two pages are other than to... take your word for it that you just added two pages to the packet.

It's the same with the print packet too. You can scroll along with us. I don't know. You can scroll along.

Well, I got a packet today at 3.42. So that's what I'm going off of.

Okay, it's these two announcements then, right? Okay. All right. It is 10 of 8. We can take public comments for no more than 15 minutes. A friendly reminder, please, as has been the case for nearly two decades, please limit your comments to three minutes, please. Who would like to go first? Roxanne, would you like to go first? Sure. Okay. Thank you.

Roxanne Fisher, Barrytown, New York. Can you hear me? Yes. So good evening. I want to begin by thanking the supervisor and the board for responding to the community's concerns and restoring public comment to its rightful place at the start of the meeting. Acknowledging the public voice before votes are cast and future grant opportunities are discussed, is not a procedural courtesy. It is the bedrock of open government. It allows the taxpayers of Red Hook to provide meaningful oversight when it can actually impact legislative decisions rather than after the facts are finalized. Real oversight is particularly critical right now because of the extraordinary bleeding of public funds over the Red Hook Boat Club eminent domain case. Just one member of this board who originally voted for that acquisition has the power, Jacob, to change his mind. Any single member can move to rescind his vote tonight and bring an end to these ongoing, exorbitant legal proceedings and stop the drain on our tax pace before the costs continue to climb higher. While we welcome the return to transparent governance tonight, Real transparency also requires timely information. Moving forward, the community needs meeting packets released well before the absolute last permissible second. Dumping massive municipal records on residents with less than two days' notice still creates an unfair barrier to informed public input. Thank you for taking this necessary first step tonight. And I urge the board to make this structural agenda layout a permanent practice for all future meetings. Thank you. Thank you.

Somebody else like to make some comments? Let's dive in. We have Francis. Please, would you be kind enough to?

Yes, of course I will. First town board meeting. Hello. Good evening, town board. My name is Francis . You may know me as the perennial object of obsession of the press. but hopefully also as a fellow elected official in the village of Red Hook, where I've served for just over a year. I wanted to share some thoughts with you. Firstly, I should state that I am here in my own capacity as a town constituent, not in my capacity as a village trustee. So I do not speak for the board tonight. But I wanted to share some thoughts with you. In April, town supervisor, hello, Robert, gave some comments to the Daily Catch in which he expressed, he pointed out some imbalances in tax rates. So in the village, which is a separate municipality, as you know, from the town, although the village is nested in the town, He pointed out that a village taxpayer pays four times as much as a town resident outside the village. And this struck me as wild. So I went in. As it happened, we were working on the village budget, 26-27 budget. And so I looked at it, and it's absolutely the case. And the biggest driver of this imbalance is police. And as everyone knows, we have a phenomenal, we are blessed to have the police department that we have, especially as most will know, given the recent incident at the high school, just anywhere you look, Sergeant Patrick Hildebrand, I have to give a shout out also to Lieutenant Travis Derrett because our kids play soccer together. But we're very blessed to have this force. But policing, the town police covers all of Red Hook. It happens to be hosted at the moment at the village. But we are inextricably linked. So when you pass the farm stand, come on 9, which we call South Broadway in the village. But policing doesn't change. When you call dispatch, County Dispatch 911, they don't ask what tax base do you pay into. It's just Red Hook. So I wanted to share some statistics with you. In Red Hook, the median assessed value of a home is $430,000. In the village, a taxpayer with that home, so if you take a home that's $430,000, a village taxpayer on that home pays $730 per year towards police. In the town, same house, a town taxpayer on that same home in the town outside of the village pays $41,000. So it's $7.30 and $41. Almost 20 times the amount. And this is not sustainable. The village currently cannot carry the town. So what I wanted to propose tonight, and I don't want to make this, I want to be very clear that this is not a, the town should pay more or the village to...

I'm sorry, you have to wrap it up because we have to be fair to everybody. Everybody has to wrap it up. Let it finish. Let it finish. It doesn't work that way, folks.

I will wrap up. I just want to be clear that I'm not attempting, and I don't speak for the mayor, I don't speak for the board, but I just wanted to propose to you, especially as we're working on the visioning, on the visioning of the town comprehensive plan, I wanted to plant a seed that you consider whether as a town we might want to have a town-wide force. Currently, the village is carrying police, and the village covers all, the village and the town, In Socrates, they consolidated the town and the village police into one force. The village currently is serving a tax base of the same, or rather, is serving a police force the size of Socrates. They're a town. We are a village. I will wrap it up, but basically my proposal to you is to think about this as you make your decisions. The village, it is not sustainable for the village to carry the town, but the town can choose to carry us all. Village, Tivoli, Barrytown, all of us. Thank you very much for your time and your service.

Anyone else want to make some comments before we have our engineer?

Good evening. I'd like to speak about the importance of providing complete agenda information to the public well before the town board meeting. Transparency is one of the foundations of good local government. Residents cannot meaningfully participate in the process if important agenda items are disclosed only a few hours before a meeting. When information is released just three hours beforehand, many citizens do not have a reasonable opportunity to review the materials and ask questions to prepare comments. In this case, the announcement regarding the summer camp was added to the agenda at the last minute. Whether intended or not, that creates the appearance that the camp is not being given the attention the support deserves. A program that serves our children and families should be highlighted and communicated openly, not appear to be afterthought and just before a meeting begins. When agenda items are disclosed so late, the public is left wondering why the information was not made available sooner. That can undermine confidence in the process and create unnecessary concerns about the transparency. Providing complete agendas well in advance promotes public trust, encourages community involvement, and demonstrates respect for residents' right to know what their government is discussing. I respectfully ask the board to make every effort to provide agenda information earlier so the public can remain informed, engaged, and so important community programs like our summer camp receive the visibility and support they deserve. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Could you say your name for the record, please? Vincent DeCicco.

Thank you, Vincent. And just for clarification, that is not our camp flyer. It was a camp flyer that the county sent that we were just helping them out by disseminating the information.

Well, it's a good point, though. Can we agree on a time frame when the formal packet is going to be released?

Okay. Right now, we're moving into the first item on the agenda. We can have discussions about this. Well, you change the agenda around all the time.

I mean, it's... We have our consultant with us.

We're talking about grants. That's the next item on the agenda. Christine, if you want to take up discussions about packets, I've already explained to you, we do our best to get it ready. We disseminate it. We've created a website that disseminates all the information for everybody. That was our doing.

I'm happy to talk about it later in the meeting, but it's... The Supreme Supervisor.

All right, we're moving on to the next item. Brandy Nelson is with us. Brandy, thank you very much. We're following up on our grants. I appreciate your being here. What we're trying to do tonight is maybe narrow down so that we can focus on the grant applications. I've explained prior to when you arrived that most of the grants are CFA, not all of them are, but they will be due July 31st. There are a couple, one or two, that are before that that we might wanna take a look at, especially in concert with the Village of Red Hook, if there's some interest there to do something together. Okay, very good, and we did talk about Going out and getting a grant to study the delivery of services because we heard about that just a couple of minutes ago, how one entity is paying a lot for police while another entity is paying almost everything for fire and how we might want to look at that. We know that grant is not due until February, local government efficiency. Do we know if we have another possibility for that to study the delivery of services in the three municipalities.

I'm not aware at this point that there is another program. Typically shared services has been covered by Department of State grant funding under the local government efficiency program. That is not currently part of the CFA. So we can keep an eye out for it for sure. You guys have been successful as a town in getting that and evaluating shared services in the past. Certainly you've got a track record for that grant program itself.

So I wonder tonight if we can start with some of the grant opportunities that might include several projects. We have previously, and I've distributed to the board in the past, Albany has these programs, downtown revitalization, New York Forward where you can receive either $10 million or $4.5 million in the case of New York Forward to do several projects, something we might consider doing either on our own or with the village of Red Hook. And so as we go through this list, maybe you could give us sort of your opinion about what you think may or may not work in that type of an application. The most recent awardee that I saw and distributed in this part of this packet is the village of Catskill, received downtown revitalization money. We had kind of been thinking that maybe we weren't big enough to get a DRI, but then when you look at the village of Catskill,

So if I understand the program right, there's two different programs. There's one for smaller communities, that's the New York Board, and then there's the DRI, which is intended for larger communities. We worked a number of years ago with the city of Hudson to help them put their DRI together and the application process itself is pretty extensive and requires engagement of public and private partners to envision, you go through this process of envisioning a number of projects and then the project entities, be they not-for-profits or local employers or government service organizations, come together under the umbrella of the DRI or New York Forward application And basically what you're communicating is that there's a collective vision to re-enliven the economy of a community through a mix of public and private investment. And so you're really showing how you can leverage public investment with private dollars to bring a number of key projects forward. The application can be 5, 7, 10, 15 different projects, just depending on how expansive your area is. You usually try and apply within kind of a cohesive territory so that you're telling a story about how all these projects are interconnected and how they work together. If you're selected, you will need the support of the Regional Economic Development Council, so you guys are in the mid-Hudson region. If you're selected as the community, then you've you are sort of brought under the program consultant team and they like lead you through a more specific project development process for a set number of the projects that were originally envisioned. So, you know, sometimes when I envision a project, you've got an idea, you maybe can't get all the way there, so some projects that are less viable will fall away and some key projects will remain and move forward. It's a complicated process and it's one that does take some time, but it's a great one for building community consensus and for Thinking about economic development, so if Red Hook were to do it, if you could have maybe a working group would be my suggestion that would start to talk about what is the area that you would envision? How do we really drive the TND? There's been some momentum there, but there's still a ton of opportunity there, and the town's made some targeted investments in that area. Or is it a more expansive, multi-municipal endeavor collaboratively with the village? Is it the Route 9 corridor with the village? I think even I mentioned to a supervisor yesterday, I don't know, but it might be worth asking, could it be something as expansive as both villages and the town, and sort of the connectivity between the two, because we've done a lot of work over the years with the V2V trail system and trying to connect the different resources that each of the village and the town have together through a multimodal network. You guys have a lot of good, I think, bones to pull together an application. It's just, you know, you would need to have a discussion around what's that vision. Do you want to do something targeted to the T&D or do you want to be more expansive?

Can you explain the CFA? Is that like a broad... Are we applying for a specific grant? It's more like a...

There's like buckets now. So it's fun to be in this industry for as long as I have because you see ebbs and flows of things. So under the previous governor, there was a huge drive to consolidate all the state's grant programs into one funding cycle. and then to create an online application where you'd fill in all the basic information, and then depending on what your projects were, you would drill down into the separate program information. So that's how it became consolidated funding. What's happened over the years is different agencies have pulled their programs back out, so we're starting to get a little bit more diffuse in the programs that are available under CFA. This year, in the summary that I sent over to you guys, there are fewer agencies represented than there have been in years past, and they're running on parallel or separate schedules for grant cycling. Last week, the state put out the consolidated funding round. It's a little bit more targeted. There's maybe five or six agencies, and the programmatic requirements are available to us. Those are different than the DRI New York Forward. That's the Department of State. That's their program. They pulled that out, and they're running it on a separate level.

But it's similar in that it's like there's multiple opportunities under one umbrella for the DRI.

What the DRI does is it says, community, do you have a big vision for growing economic development or driving economic development and revitalization in your community? Tell us what all those projects are. So maybe you have 20 projects. I think in the case of Hudson, they had 20 projects. They will fund $10 million towards those projects. You have to go through a process and figure out which ones are viable. Those that are not funded under the DRI or given seed funding under the DRI, can say, hey, we're in a DRI community, and you get extra points in the scoring under CFA, and so you can expand how much funding your community can get under CFA if you are also DRI. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. It's like you get bonus points if you're a DRI community. That DRI designation stays with you for multiple years. So in year one, you might just fund a subset of projects that were in your DRI application. In year two, you might go back under the CFA and say, we're a DRI community, we're trying to continue our vision, and you would get prioritization on projects that were in your DRI application. So you can kind of use it as a building block to seek additional funds.

A few weeks ago, after having been at a press conference with the governor, one of her reps came down and wanted to tour. brought somebody also from Senator Schumer's office and wanted to pick my brain on, you know, projects that we were either contemplating or already working on. That's everything from, you know, the T&D, as Brandy mentioned, upgrade of the sewer plant. We discussed the potential hotel project south of Hannaford. The rec park connection to Cookingham. Also the idea of trying to find a developer to redevelop the fourth corner in our village if that is something that seems to be something at least the community seems to be favorably disposed towards. And obviously the village of Red Hook would have to be on board with something like that, but those are the types of projects that you would put all together. Also, discussing what Todd may write on his properties, and we all know that his properties are up for sale and he may in fact have a buyer, but looking at maybe restoring some of those other corners to a little bit more historically correct, remove some of the vinyl. He and I spoke about which buildings might be you know, good to include in an application. So that kind of thing where you're really looking at your downtown and trying to figure out, you know, what...

So you're talking about within the village?

Within the village and in the town. So it might be something, you know, a DRI or New York Forward might be, once again, something that we apply for. We could be the lead or the village, but we would do it in tandem. And so, you know, the idea of having a committee both with the village and the town, you know, taking a look at these because you do want to have a lot of projects because you do want to tell that story. And I think Catskill is a good example of they show the things that they are working on and why they believe that will help them economically. So that's sort of the multi-project grant opportunities for us at DRI and New York Forward. Shall we start with some of these other ones?

I didn't bring the information. I don't remember off the top of my head when that one is due.

Oh, I do.

Is it July or is it September? November. Oh, it's November. Okay. So you have some time for that.

I do have some time.

That wouldn't be one I'd want to slam through. That needs some thoughtfulness.

No, there has to be a lot of thought in that one. But, you know, the sooner we get started and see if the village is interested in joining together with us on something like that, the better. And maybe even Tivoli, as you mentioned. I know they want to do some work on their village hall. They need to do what was just on the phone with the mayor today. And that historic building, and I think that's...

Yeah, I was going to say, a number of years ago, we had talked to Office of Parks for a grant opportunity on trails to try and have a stronger connection from Tivoli to the village of Red Hook along the V2V trail and close some of the linkage gaps that there are there across 9G and across the Sock Hill and tie it to the Empire Trail as like a... tourism and economic development and there was huge demand for that so the town unfortunately wasn't successful that year but that idea still exists and I think I've got eight or nine years worth of grant applications so we could just like pull them all out and put them on the table as a starting point and that's that's just the public things I think there's private projects that would also be interesting to talk about okay so where shall we begin on your matrix here First of all, does anyone have any questions? I had just taken a stab from a couple of weeks ago when I was here just talking generically about projects that you guys had flagged for possible funding. In the matrix, the column that has yellow correlates to a row associated with a grant application that I thought was potentially worth discussing at the town level. towards a variety of different projects. So that first one is the RADC Empire State Development grant funds. That is specifically related to infrastructure improvements that are installed to help drive economic development. That program is sort of consistently well funded. It's historically given to communities that are trying to extend water or sewer to different reaches. it seemed to align fairly well with what you are all thinking in terms of the TND. So I thought that might be one worth having further discussion on.

So are you thinking infrastructure here?

Yeah, infrastructure. Okay.

Sewer, water?

It's open to both. And so, you know, we've been talking for a while about what funds can we need sort of put together as a patchwork quilt, you're further along on the sewer discussion. So I would think you'd maybe prioritize sewer over water. So potentially additional funds towards sewer extension through the TND corridor.

Well, we can come back to this, but I think we've... We have, and it's agenda item number two, but we've sort of identified we're gonna have a longer conversation about the water district and some of the challenges, try to get that number down. We said we would get, you know, go out trying to get some grants to get the sewer number down. We were successful in doing that with the IMG grant. But I'm wondering, are we too early with water? And maybe because we have to get it done.

I think you are, yeah, because you don't have a district yet. So that's why I think sewer is further along. You have the district formed. It's been through opposite state controllers. So we are in that mode of trying to start to stitch together funding.

But with water, we still have all of our... existing conditions information, right? Like you're still waiting for the maps from... From...

Didn't I give that to you at the two meetings we had?

I don't think you had it finished, right?

You were waiting for the... Yeah, we just had gotten it from them, so... that I brought that to you guys and sent it separately so let me double check that but yeah so we have we have the water information the the stop point for water I'm sorry we're deviating here the stop point for water right now is a conversation with the village around ownership of pipes and rates and things like that there's some nuts and bolts in terms of the district formation that still need to be ironed out in the form of an inter-municipal agreement for water service.

Because I thought where we landed on water was that you had given us kind of a snapshot of what information you were able to gather, but that we were still waiting to understand where all the different connecting districts were, and that map wasn't finalized yet.

There's two separate things that are happening in parallel here. One is called the Preliminary Engineering Report. That is an engineering document that is a snapshot in time of what water systems are where and what their Service areas are how many people they're serving, how much water they're using, what sort of assets, pipes, pump stations, tanks, wells, whatever. And so it's a description of the existing condition of water services. When we had put the preliminary engineering report together initially, it was for town proper, so town water district and village water systems. And then your request was, what other public water systems are there in the area? That's the sort of open question. So Dutchess County Water and Waste Water has now provided us information on where their systems are in relationship. That's one thing. At that same meeting where we discussed the preliminary engineering report, I believe this board voted because we took action related to that vote to focus on forming a second water district. coincident with the sewer district on the Route 9 corridor. So that is a map plan and report specific to the creation of the district formation. That is on hold at the moment. We have drafted it, but there are details related to the costs that I have presented that need some input jointly between the village and the town in the form of an inter-municipal agreement that would sort of sort of work out the operation and maintenance and the rates and things like that. So that process, I believe, is in progress, right?

I was on the phone with the mayor last week and mentioned that we need to get together and discuss the IMA because there's some particular challenges. It's more complicated than the sewer. Because, as I mentioned earlier, some of the properties are already served. Some of the properties are not yet served but have special rates because they put in some of the infrastructure. A lot of this was done without written agreements decades ago and makes it really challenging. And so, you know, looking at the rates as well because there's not a lot of flow that's coming through 29,000 gallons a day throughout the district right now. And so in order to get support from these property owners, we'll have to look at a reduced rate than 2.0, I think, in order to make it both financially attractive and also to get their support in the T&D. And there's an incentive for the village as well, because that's where the growth is. It's volumetric. They will have some cost savings because they'll have more users and more EDUs. So that is part of the challenge and so also one of the things that the mayor brought up their meeting because I went to their meeting to see if I could address some of their questions and also to help get them up to speed on CPF and how it works and what's eligible and so on and so forth. And the Mayor had mentioned that we had not yet transferred over the property, that we had set aside a cooking ham for a future well. This would be a good time during these IMA negotiations to discuss that as well. Pun intended, I guess. So, yeah, there's lots there, but we need to keep this moving because it's complicated. And to your questions, Christina, and to Granny's, without knowing some of these agreements and who owns the infrastructure, like who put in the pipes back in the 60s or 80s to this building and who owns it, it's a real challenge. We have some thoughts on how we can handle it and No offense to anybody, but to clean up the mess that's been created over the decades because it's really a challenge from a legal perspective.

Well, the logic was we were mapping the water district to what was previously approved as a sewer district because that makes sense to combine those two things. So that was the decision that we made. But we know that there's at least one property within that district that's connected to another water district. So to my knowledge, we haven't seen all of the information and I know it's been difficult for you to get that because it comes from multiple sources.

So let me ask you, so We have where the DCWWA has ditchers, and the thing we got hung up on was we wanted personal information so we could show you exactly where those properties are, but we cannot seem to get that information. So we can put like dots, like there's water systems here, but it's not the same as like, here is the extent of their piping, so we know we have to run 500 feet to connect these dots, right? So like that's, so I guess, In terms of the preliminary engineering report, we can wrap it up with the information and it will be like this is a snapshot in time of existing conditions. What we do with it, I think we probably want to fold into separately. There's a discussion around the drinking water source protection plan. So a couple years ago, three years ago, the town got a grant from the Department of Health and the DEC, where they actually provide, as a service to communities, this assessment of drinking water quality in the town. They identify potential sources of contamination, and they take you through a state process to put in place this plan. Your plan was just accepted. You shouldn't have it. I believe it's posted on your website now. So it took a really long time to get approved through the state, but now it's approved. And the state just called maybe two or three weeks ago to set up a meeting to start implementing it. And I think that the information in that snapshot in time from the PER, along with the implementation of the drinking water source protection plan, is probably the place to have those conversations about larger water supply and drinking water protection issues that are town-wide. So that may be like one avenue for water discussion. I think that is separate and distinct from your district formation of the TND area for water.

I mean, maybe, but it's, you know, I think it's all related. It's like when you're forming a new water district, understanding what the adjacencies are is pretty important.

The challenge there in this specific instance...

Especially when you have properties that are choosing to connect to another district. So there's all these sort of like competing water systems that are adjacent to each other. And it's, I mean, I don't know how you would look at it without having all that information.

So this is, again, we can't do this by ourselves because the T&D water district is going to receive water from the village. We can't just unilaterally say we can connect another water district to it, right? There would have to be a... an inter-municipal discussion around connectivity. And I'm not saying that's not a great idea. I think it's wonderful to think of it globally. There's a lot to be said for resilience and reliability and all sorts of things like that. But it's just a conversation that would need to involve a larger group of people. And the town isn't necessarily the one who can start the conversation, but you can't finish it without a lot of collaborative partners.

Yeah, we can accommodate that property that you're speaking about, Christina. And with water, I'm no engineer, but I know with water it's a lot easier to swap out who you, you know, the piping, where you're getting the water from.

I just have a hard time swallowing the, like, I understand the logic of, like, the village is the larger provider of water and the logical connection for many reasons for the T&D, and I don't dispute that, but looking at finalizing all of this without understanding that there are other public water systems that are immediately adjacent to the district that we're considering. I couldn't move forward without understanding how all of that works, especially when you know that that there's at least one property that's connected to a different public water system. So how could you move forward without, and I know you've been trying to get this information for a long time and the county's not cooperating or whatever that looks like, but like,

We don't have all of the information. So what we can tell you is there is a water service that is adjacent. I mean, that's all I can tell you. I can tell you what is available in the public domain. That's what we are able to bring to the town board in terms of wrapping up the PER so that you can say, oh, yeah, there is a water system there. any further conversation as far as potential to connect, things like that. That's really beyond the scope of the PER and would want to involve a larger inter-municipal task force, maybe.

That's when we do the survey work.

And maybe that's another shared service discussion, right?

Right, exactly. That's when we do the survey work and so on and so forth. And I will tell you, the first capital project I did 11 years ago was the sidewalk here. And so we had the plans, our engineers did, for where the water service, the village water service was. And in some cases it was within inches of the map. And in one instance it was 12 feet off. So you don't know. You don't need to know exactly where things are to form the district. We have to form the district and then continue to do the work.

We're talking about two different things, though. If there's a district, a water district adjacent to another water district, what is the capacity of that district? Does that have an ability to expand? I haven't seen any of that information.

And that information, I unfortunately won't be able to get to. All that we can get is a public...

So we can get information about other water districts? You know why?

Because some of it's considered sensitive, right? So we could potentially, as a design consultant... Does that make sense to you? Yes, it does, right? Because in the modern day and age, with security being an issue, protecting water resource assets is a thing now. And so what you can get publicly available is that there is a public water supply at a particular location, sort of generic, it's not like the GPS coordinates for it, and then it's how many users it serves.

That would be helpful to know. We don't need to know where the pipes are in the ground.

We do know that.

That's what I can add to the PER. That would be helpful to understand in however much detail you can describe that, where these other public water supplies exist and what their capacity is. who they're serving and the same way that we're looking at the village to say we're gonna connect potentially to that system because the engineering makes sense, because they have the capacity to serve these additional properties. What other systems are in the immediate area and is there another way of looking at it? I don't have that information right now.

I think what you're leaning towards though is doing a shared services analysis What you're describing is a shared services analysis where you would bring all those partners to the table because some of them are private.

I feel like that's a couple steps ahead of what I'm describing. We know that the village has been struggling on many aspects of their system. I mean, that's one bucket. But even if that wasn't the case, I wouldn't start building a new water system unless I understood what was adjacent to me. Because maybe it makes sense to do it a different way.

Hang on, hang on. We're getting so far off the mark here.

I really don't think so, because this is all related to if we're going to look at a grant for... for anything. I mean, this is something that we've spent multiple meetings discussing. I think I asked for this information in like February.

Christine, you can ask a hundred times for something we can't get. If we can't get it, we can't get it. We have mapped out and Brandi has provided us the map with all the service lines coming into that district. We have to create the district and start moving and we'll gather as much information as we DCWWA or the property owner that you're referencing can provide us. And so we'll continue to work on that.

But we're not doing anything tonight. I'm not obstructing anything. I'm just trying to understand information because we're having a discussion about grants and opportunities and this is a big piece of it.

Right. And again, to remind you, A lot of this TND is already being serviced by the village and their water lines. What we are doing is essentially like with the sewer, an extension down further, but it's already here and well past Town Hall.

But you saying that is confusing because that's not addressing anything that I just said.

I understand. I'm just saying that the option to go and create our own water system is less likely under this scenario because existing infrastructure is here and those property owners are not likely to go ahead and support creating a whole new water system. So what we're looking at is how we can create the water district, get funding, make it affordable so that these landowners that now have a sewer district have central water and they can easily swap out from the not so desirable, from what I understand, water district, the only one around here besides the village, and they can swap out into the village water system, and we can talk about transferring that well so that if and when it exceeds their capacity, and Brandy has already, with the help of Delaware Engineering, the engineers from the village, identified that there's plenty of capacity for our existing and our anticipated expansion up to 15,000.

So you're going to put together another map that has additional information about the other water systems?

To wrap up the PER, we can identify the location of the other water systems and how many users they serve. That's what's available to us publicly. If there's other public information related to capacity, I don't know that there is, but I can check to see that. Usually it's users. So Bard College says 3,000 users. I happen to know where Bard College's infrastructure is, but we don't have that accurately mapped. So we'll use more of a pin drop for those.

OK. So we kind of migrated to discussion of water district number two, which is good. But it sounds like you haven't identified a grant that we could get now for planning. I mean, we've appropriated enough money for the MPR, right?

Nothing right now for the water district at the moment, yeah. The next things that would be available would be like we have, but that's running outside of CFA. That would be on a separate timeline.

What about funding for sewage?

So for sewer, the first row there is one that I identified. That's Empire State Development Fund. So that may be an option. And then you already do have a grant from EFC. And then under EFC, the town is also eligible for low interest financing for closing the gap on anything we can't get grant funding for.

Is that in collaboration with the village? because we're talking about expanding the sewage line. So what I heard at one of the village meetings is that they want to get to 300,000 gallons a day.

That's correct. That's my understanding.

Are they going to be able to accomplish that?

How are they going to be able to accomplish that?

Are they going to be able to accomplish that?

From conversations with their consultant, my understanding is yes. They're in design right now for that 300,000 gallon per day plant.

So would that funding or grants help the village out also? It would be a collaboration between the town and the village?

Well, just to interject, we already have that grant.

Yes.

That's the IMG grant. We applied for a grant, IMG, it's different municipal. It was a new two years old, right? Two years, three years old opportunity under EFC. When you're working with another municipality, because we are, upgrading the system and it's for, you know, both the plant and for the continuation of the distribution line. So I don't know necessarily whether ESD, you know, will give us money for a joint application given that we've already applied and received some money from it, you know, maybe.

It's worth looking at, I think. Yeah.

The important thing about this program, you have to be pro-housing.

Yes, and you are a pro-housing community.

First, a New York State grant. We don't forget it. I have 900 and something units now. So that makes us eligible.

So would the village have to acquire their own grant?

Yeah, so the town and the village are working in parallel but also collaboratively on funding and trying to get all the funding together. So we have almost every six-week call with the village's engineer just to check in and see do they need anything from us, do we need anything from them, just to make sure the information is flowing back and forth. And we have shared what grant opportunities we're looking at. And similarly, they share information with us.

And is there a limit on what they could receive? It seems like it's going to be a major expenditure.

I'm focused more on the town, so I haven't really spent time. I do know they are actively pursuing a variety of different funding applications. They've done the federal funding, the earmark funding. a number of applications. So they share that information with us so that we have a whole picture.

Yeah, there's a couple of other opportunities. $19 million.

Yeah, there's a couple of applications. And we provide back and forth letters of support for each other's applications just to show that there's that collaboration.

All right, so let's put under ESD possibility of more sewer funds.

And we'll do some checking to see if there's any sort of restriction related to previous funding under the IMG program.

We don't know anything about the owner of the hotel property, whether or not he's ready to start doing it.

I have not heard recently about the status of that development.

Because whatever we could get that would help energize that, I think would be attractive for the Regional Economic Council.

Yeah, absolutely.

Again, sewer. Look at that entrance. Strategic planning. I know we didn't highlight this, but I do want to mention Julia reached out to me, Julia Solomon, who's heading up the comp plan effort with our consultants, and she inquired whether or not we wanted to go out and get a grant for implementation, whether that's zoning and so on and so forth.

Are they ready? That's the question.

So they're not ready yet, but as you know, or at least as I know, anytime you apply for DOS, you know, planning money, we're talking by the time we have a signed contract and do the application, we're looking at a year. So they think they will be ready. You know, it was supposed to be an 18-month project, so they're supposed to be wrapping up at the end of the year.

I'll double check, but the last time we did the comp plan grant and then an implementation grant, we couldn't apply for implementation until the comp plan was adopted. So that's the trigger. I think they gave them a tiny window. It was adopted within two months of making the application, but it needs to be near adoption.

Yeah, and if we had a developer for the gas station property, if the owners were interested in selling it, there was a redevelopment, ESD might be interested in that, since that's a key property in the village, and obviously the village would need to be supportive of that. Okay. New York Kicks, so just for background for folks, maybe you want to mention that the governor, like the county, sometimes focuses on different areas. Last year it was New York Swim, so two years ago. Now with FIFA, the World Cup being here, it's New York Kicks, right?

Right, right. So yeah, there's program priorities every single year. This year they have a special pot of funds available for ball fields, specifically soccer fields. I know the town has, with the rec park, you do have fields. You also have a master plan that has plans for future additional fields on Rec Park West. So this is a relatively small grant. It's about $200,000 and it's intended to be for actual construction. But yeah, highlighted it just to make sure it was on your radar to think about. I actually don't have much visibility into the status of the soccer program right now.

So will I do a little bit? My understanding is the soccer club has a lease through 2027 on the lands on Rockefeller Lane. That property is up for sale. So I don't know, nor do they apparently, whether or not they'll get an extension on the lease there because there potentially could be new owners. I can't imagine. that while they're marketing the property they would sign a new lease that could, you know, make it even harder. It may already be to sell that property. So, and that's 2027. And, you know, our comprehensive plan for Rec Park West called for the remainder of the south side to be rectangular fields for sports life. Again, all part of trying to incorporate these activities into the public space and have them available as part of our recreation department. And so, you know, 200,000 isn't a ton. But it might help. And I think last time we looked at this, we were looking at high six figures for doing all those things, right?

Yeah. I would need to pull up the information. And if you all wanted us to, we can go back to the old plan that was put together and the needs assessment and the costs, because we had broken it out in phases. Costs are probably a little bit on the dusty side, because it was a few years ago. You do have the information you do already have a plan so you can show that you've already Yeah, that you have You don't have shovel ready plans, but you've got plants in place and there's costs associated with it So it wouldn't be a heavy lift for us to put a grant application for that time on the narrative You have a great narrative you have a lot of soccer playing in the in the town and Yeah, if the soccer club is going to potentially lose its field, that's something worth checking into.

Right. And we would need to get on this because it's, you know, you're manipulating the land. You need to seed it. You need to let it grow, you know, and let it sit.

So the thing I will just say, just in terms of these grants, so the cycle is, you know, they put the applications out. This year they're putting them out in June, so it's going to shorten the time frame. They're due the end of July. The state typically announces them like a Christmas present sometime in late December and then they don't enter into contracts with you until sometime in the first or second quarter of the following year and then the funds become available. So this is like you apply this year for something like late next year.

So different than moving right along to the next yellow box. But New York kick sounds like something that we should at the very least explore since we have both the need and a temporary opportunity with this program. Because I'm sure next year it will be something else. New York Main Street program.

Just in discussion about, you know, like DRI. the New York Main Street program is one that can also be available for revitalization efforts and infrastructure supporting efforts. It tends to be more sidewalk streetscape focused. And I think the discussion around the four corners in the village was really what made me think this one might be one you wanted to talk with the mayor about. Um, think if there's any, um, place in the town, in the T and D where it would make sense. Um, you do have a little bit of a sidewalk gap. Um, we've been trying to close it for a couple of years to Hannaford. Um, there used to be a gravel path that went from the Holy cow back. Um, it's kind of gotten overgrown and we had put a little sketch plan and we've made a grant application to the county.

Twice.

Twice to put in a proper sidewalk that would allow continuity there and provide some lighting and make it a safer, more accessible route to the supermarket that would close that gap to that kind of really important asset in the town. So that was the other place I was thinking it might be worth looking at whether or not that program would match to that project you guys have already envisioned.

Yeah, we need to get that done. And we have the sketch and everything, right? Do we need to update anything?

I know we kind of just need to refresh the cost estimate, but I think you've got everything.

And that one has to be shovel ready, right? Yes. So the plans are so simple, right?

It's pretty simple. Yeah, this one's easy.

I was going to say working towards the affordable housing.

Right, that's harder. I think there's a subset of that program, though, that is also facade renovations that we were talking about just in terms of restoring historic facades or dilapidated facades.

Again, for the new owner, right? And then we'll see how soon that closing is. It might be something I'm interested in, whether this year or next year. All right, so parks, OPR, HP.

We perennially applied for parks grants. We haven't historically been successful. I always think it's good to look at the program priorities and just see if there's something that fits the town's various needs for parks and improvements. So again, we always think about the rec park. We think about the trail network. Again, can we close gaps? Would something like this make sense for the Sauk Hill trail link? Because we have not yet pursued construction funds for that. So that was why I had flagged the OPRHP grant for discussion.

Yeah, so we had previously, when we applied, five years ago, four years in a row, somewhere around that?

I could go back and check. I don't know exactly, but there is an application for OPRHP.

So we did, we were looking for infrastructure for Park West. We were looking at pavilion, did we include pavilion?

Pavilion, yeah, snack bar, restroom facilities, all changing rooms, that kind of stuff. and parking improvements, driveway improvements, because it's pretty rustic on that side.

Yeah. I mean, we're going to have to take grants to finish rent park-wise.

Is this something where, with New York Kicks, we could sort of put these two in tandem because they're sort of like geographically?

That's a good question, Jacob. I'm not sure.

Because that's what I was saying for New York Kicks. I don't know that we have the parking to support fields over there currently, but it is something I think we would need to mess up.

Yeah.

We have a plan for the expansion of the parking. And this is just the temporary gravel parking lot. Right. But the rec park connector bridge, that's key too. Now that seemed to catch the ear of the Schumer staff. Schumer likes to do those types of projects.

Well, why don't I check to see if the programs have, like, compatibility, if you're excluded one over the other? I think typically you can't use one to match another, so if there was a match obligation, you...

But in combination for a larger...

Right, right, yeah. So, and I'll get back to you on that one.

Anything else on parks?

I was going to ask you if I'm missing anything. I wasn't sure if any of the other trailhead areas in the town needed. I don't have as much visibility into those.

No, I mean, where we are is just those two links, the connection from Cookingham to Rec Park, and then a safe crossing at 9G. Other than that, we're good to go from Abraham's Park all the way to the village of Tittle.

Okay. Let us dig into the program priorities and we can get back to you on it.

Okay, brownfields. We don't really have brownfields here, so we'll skip that. So nice. We're a little early for this. We've gotten almost everything accomplished there. I'm not sure that we have a building that we can do anything with there, unfortunately. You know, maybe that's something that... Villagers, maybe let the villagers know about, oh, maybe that's something a mayor, a manager might be interested in if she's doing some stuff.

Envelope improvements or something, yeah. I mean, this one, I believe this one is more towards envelopes and green infrastructure and electrification. I think you guys have done a lot of that town-wide, so I don't know that there's many opportunities, but There are still funds available in that program.

I mean, the only thing I can think about is, although we just put in a new boiler in the highway garage, so that's kind of wasted. I think we had hoped to do something cleaner there, but... Okay. Yeah, I don't have anything. Unless anybody else does.

Well, I mean, in terms of the highway, last year you were awarded a grant for a brine.

Mm-hmm.

operation so is there anything we've talked about salt shed and and improvements to to the campus plan. I mean, is there anything that intersects with that?

Fortunately, no. Yeah. The brine equipment is under the water quality improvement program. That same program also funds salt sheds, but they only have a tiny, like last year was $600,000 that they made available statewide for salt sheds. And that's only going to fund like two or three of those pop-up style. salt sheds, so salt sheds have not really been something that's fundable through grants from what we've seen so far. We're definitely looking, but that's just not one that the state has been funding as a priority.

And any of the other improvements that we talked about that are sort of linked with that? It's like that one, the brine grant is great, but that pulls the thread on a bunch of other improvements that make sense to look at comprehensively. So one of those that was discussed was whether it made sense to install a charger in the highway garage because there's electric vehicles. Is there any other intersection with anything else that we should think about kind of globally like that.

That's a separate program. That's the ZEV program. That's the electric vehicle infrastructure program. And there are grant dollars.

There are still grants there.

One of the things, like we had a request from the village for a police car. And we're waiting to see. We're hearing that there may be some money coming into some of those funding programs to see if we can get some grants towards that. Right. But just for the ZEV, there's money to pay for that.

I don't think we can do something like a solar canopy that turns into a building for brine storage, right? I think that's probably a bridge too far, but I mean.

Or like, what about like, so with the brine that was connected to like, Well, the water service is probably inadequate. So in order to get the brine up and running, we have to upgrade. We have to maybe put in a hydrant. I know you're looking into this. But we talked about, OK, well, there's only a one-inch line going to that building right now. So that's not going to work.

Yeah, that W-QUIP grant is for the brine equipment and the water and electric upgrades that need to happen. The nature of the water and electric upgrades has changed, which you and I have talked about, and we look like we're probably going to need to extend a water line from a different location, but it was included. So those two elements will be covered, but as far as a structure, I haven't been able to identify...

So the water upgrade was included? I mean, is that going to cover... Is the grant going to cover what's really needed to upgrade the water?

It will make a contribution towards the improvement. Yeah, will it cover? It depends on how big the line is. Christina, I don't know that yet. But we were planning on having an additional water line of a couple hundred feet, whether it was coming off of Firehouse Lane. But I think now we've been talking about it may come off Route 9 instead.

Or the need of a hydrant added to that.

I mean, that would be... Yeah, but that's not something that's going to be grant fundable as a discrete element.

At all. Okay. This is, yeah, well, at least this program is all about all electric, carbon, neutral, and net zero energy. Resilient new construction, deep retrofit, adaptive reuse, good rehab projects. And I don't know, maybe Bill legitimately wants to look at both in and out. They're going, they're doing some work. something to mention to them, but I don't know that we have anything. We've already retrofitted everything from St. Martin's to this to, you know.

It does say EV charging, so that's something you do mention about, like, appeals. Is that something you're thinking about, like, in reviewing this, or are you thinking more about for the other projects?

Well, no, it's just that we, like, recently we, the highway department purchased a EV vehicle, but they don't have a charger within their facility. So, I mean.

Yeah, we can get that. We can also just get them a portable. In fact, we thought we had one. Somebody brought one in on E-Waste that he had an extra charge point cable. They have a 240 outlet there.

Okay.

So.

Yeah, that's a.

Yeah, that's really all they need. They don't even need a separate, at least not now. Maybe they will when they have more than one or two.

The recharged New Yorker, which I didn't highlight, it's row 16. That is for electrification upgrades, vehicular electrification upgrades of all sorts. And that is... pool of funds that the application period is rolling, so it doesn't terminate on July 31st. And until the funds are gone, the application period will stay open. And I believe as of last week, it was still open. So that's an option if there was some place that needed electrification. That would be the place to apply. And the town has gotten several of those grants over the years. you already know an entity to the agency.

Okay, Climate Smart Communities grant program. We're getting our research edition of that as we speak, I think. So by being a bronze community or whatever they are.

And that's one, again, like the place where I focus with the town has been about flood risk reduction That may be one that is a source of funds for some of the Willits culverts. But more broadly speaking, if the Climate Smart Committee has other project priorities that they are working towards implementation of, this would be the place that would be best aligned to seek funds to implement climate smart projects.

All right, so we should reach out to them and see what they're thinking about. Otherwise, we could look at some of the flood risk studies we had done years ago, the bus in O'Neill and the other one. And what about more work?

In Forest Park?

Forest Park. Yeah.

Right now, the Highway Department has been working on implementation of drainage improvements in Forest Park, I think, since they did that initial project. I haven't heard much about ongoing flooding there. I think that has been a fairly successful project. So we can certainly speak with the highway superintendent and see if there's other areas where there's regular flooding that's occurring. So this is the program that the Bryan equipment was funded under, but it has several subcategories in it, which is in that fourth column, sort of the middle of the screen. And the ones that typically come to mind for you guys that I have been focused on are, you've been successful in this program with source water protections, you know, if there's any conversations with some of the land conservation organizations about tracks that require protection that would benefit water quality. And then aquatic connectivity is also available as culvert replacement dollars and you do have a culvert asset management plan and we've highlighted which culverts are the ones that would be most eligible for aquatic connectivity funding. potentially that location. And then we may want to talk with the CAC and see if there's any other habitat restoration or invasive species management on town-owned property or anything like that would potentially be fundable under the W-EQUIP program. You're not an MS4, so you're not eligible for that. You don't own your own wastewater treatment plant, so you're not eligible for that section. The salt storage is like this big, so there's very little money in it. You don't own any dams.

Yeah. I mean, the culvert, when did we do that inventory? How many years ago? Eight years ago? Nine years ago?

I think it might be ten now. I think it might have been over... so and people don't realize just how expensive it is to replace some of these culverts yeah the highway department does a nice job with a lot of culverts but there are a few bigger ones that are in tricky locations that they just don't have the right equipment for and so those are the ones that they would prefer to see grants for um for the replacement um so yeah so i have not had a conversation with the highway superintendent about that i'm happy to do so that's the direction the board wants me to take

And you or Ryan, I think Ryan was the one who gave us that highest priority list of like three or four culverts. We could look at that. Yeah, absolutely. That would be another budget update on there. I notice, you know, you mentioned wastewater treatment. So maybe the bill is just looking at this one as well.

I can add that to the list of things we talked with the towns or the religious engineer about.

So let's, just going back to your slides from a previous meeting, you had a brief mention of the salt shed reconstruction. Is there any program you can think of that would

No, we've looked for a couple of years now.

We tried with WQIP.

We tried with WQIP. The only other monies that might, but I don't know that there's an opportunity open right now, but the SAM grants, which are, I cannot remember what that is. State asset something? Yeah. But because it's a... You got one of those years ago.

You did, yeah. That's $50,000. I mean, you don't...

It's not usually a ton of money, but that's like a shared asset funding program. But, yeah, in the current round of CFAs, I don't see anything that the Salt Shed would be eligible for funding under. We look for that one specifically because we recognize that needs to be done.

Now, outside of...

No, that's the same thing.

Outside of CFA, so one of the things that we applied for and people continue to ask for and I know that would require at least the village for a small portion of is some type of sidewalk or multi-modal from the high school over to that the Trout Meadow area there. And so we applied a decade ago with the CMAQ application. Now I know that the Dutchess County Transportation Council, Mark Debalt and those guys, and actually the village mayor sits on that council. She's one of our two rural representatives there. They are, they just opened up for some funding. Did you see that?

I haven't seen that one yet, no. Okay. So that's DOT funds for multimodal?

Well, it's separate from CMAQ. This is all part of the safety action plan.

Okay.

Okay. And that is due, if I'm not mistaken, So we would need to look at, and I know the Village, I did speak to the Mayor briefly about this, and we're responsible, so we're looking into it. So I'm not sure what they're looking into, but the identification in the plan looks like 199 West. Mm-hm. As a safety action measure. Okay. We might want to consider a design. How much? I'll look right there, but maybe design monies for...

Under that program?

Well, no. Well, yeah. Yes, design monies under that program so that we're in a better position for CMAT.

Yeah. um let me i i don't know that program off the top of my head i do remember that project um and that was to provide improved safety on 199 from the developments and closer to bard and um and uh so should i follow up with mark or emily i i would follow up with emily okay yeah i think she's the one who released the announcement

Or MARC, they're both great. And then we'll follow up with the board and see what kind of thing they're interested in doing. And we do hear from people also on 199 East looking for a more formalized way. You know, they have that dirt bath that comes off of Blue Echo and all of that, but they're looking for something more of that way as well. But if we can get design monies and then be ready to do another CMAC or a TAP grant,

Those are tied to federal funding priorities, so we need to just check and see what those are right now.

So I always reach out to DOT from time to time because I think we want to synchronize that with 199 on their five-year capital plan. Because obviously they would need to repay. Yeah. So far, it's not on their five-year capital plan, much to the chagrin of many of our constituents.

Okay, we can talk to Emily about that.

So that one we would need to take action for if we wanted to do a brand for the... I think I sent that around or had the link to them months ago, so at the beginning of the year that they announced that they had adopted the plan. So let's take a look at that. I'll send it around again tomorrow so we can take a look and see. And we'll try to coordinate with the Village on that. Anybody else for project ideas that we haven't covered tonight? No? That's a lot. So the goal would be if we could try and get some more information and maybe try and narrow it down by the next meeting because we have three meetings left for CFA applications, one meeting left for the Transportation Council State Reemption Plan and then we have some rolling grants.

Yeah, I think we want to confirm project eligibility against the application materials. We'll also check to see which applications need resolutions of municipal endorsement. Not all of them do, but if they do, you need to have that on your agenda for a meeting. In some instances, if we've done an application in the past, the program will allow us to clone and update the application, and so I'll flag those two and just let you know which ones could potentially build off an older application. I'm not sure how far back the cloning goes, but there may be OPRHP ones in there for ball fields and related recreation improvements.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. I wish I could say that's it, but you're up for the next three items, unfortunately. Oh, excellent. Well, we sort of covered water district number two, formation, and that's more from the village is what we need.

I didn't see any documentation in the packet on that. Is that?

No, that's... By design, we just wanted to talk with Frankie about sort of where we are. That's all. Continue updates, that's all. OK. And then we do have, I'm sorry, I should scroll to it. Did we miss any of these? We didn't discuss any of these after the Resilient Watershed Grants, did we?

Yeah, those are federal ones.

These are the federal ones. This is from the previous meeting?

Yeah.

Okay. What about New York Place? Did we want to talk about that? Unfortunately, we've done our playgrounds already.

Right, and June 15th being the deadline, I don't think we could reasonably make that.

Let's go on to electrical. So we've had four minutes, well, five. Two were a little confusing. Those really high ones that you see at the bottom there, people looked at it incorrectly. They had put the total in both the... storage tank rehab and in the electrical side. I thought the instructions were pretty clear.

So last meeting when we talked about this, it was explicitly said that electric was separate.

Yeah.

And so we made a decision to approve painting without understanding that some of the bidders had electrical also in the beds.

All of them had, all of them submitted, either filled in the storage tank rehab or the electrical or both.

No, but it was said at the last meeting. I mean, am I... Am I correct in that? It was said that the painting was a specialist and the electrical was separate. And I mean, there's a certain amount of logic that made sense to me that we're hiring a specialist to paint the inside of the tank. And then there was an electrical component and that was going to be separate. And that's the reason why we didn't review electrical components. at the last meeting because you were still waiting for bids.

No, we had received the bids. But because some of the electric, so let me back up one step. So the reason there were separate bids for electrical and painting is Wick's Law, which is public works projects with an element of multiple trades that have a value more than $500,000 have to be broken out into bids per trade. Okay, so painting falls under general, and so that was one bid. Electrical fell under general. They were due the same date. What we had, two of the bidders, rather than calling out their electrical part of the bid, they put their whole bid, like for both painting and electrical, in to their bid form. They filled out their bid form incorrectly. So they essentially bid the electrical work for the prices shown there. And when you see it compared to the other three, you're like, what's going on? But because there's such a huge spread there, we wanted to do more diligence following up with the vendor's reference or the bidder's references. And we hadn't gotten all of that information back at the time of the last meeting because we weren't ready to make a recommendation.

No, you had said that. You had said that because at the last meeting we talked about how important the painting was and how... It didn't seem right that the lowest bidder that we were selecting had a really low number for the painting and you said you validated that contractor, and you talked to references, and that was the way to go. But it was not clear to me. Now, does it move the needle on the decision that we're going to make? Probably not, because you've eliminated Elm Electrical. They're not qualified. That's the lowest bidder. And you're suggesting the Hewitt Young Electric at $64,500. It's very confusing to me why we didn't discuss at the last meeting that at least two of the bedders were combined electrical and painting.

That was their error and that does not allow them to move forward in the process.

But how did you not know that when you were reviewing all of the beds? I don't understand what you mean.

How did you not know that electrical was part of that? Would you scroll down, because this is described in the bid review. It's a simple question.

At the last meeting when we went over painting, how did you not know that two of the bidders also had electric in their numbers?

In the painting bid, that was just their painting. In the electric bid, they bid the same number. Yeah, they didn't break out their bids. They have to break out their bids or they're disqualified. They have to break out their bids. And we submitted an addendum in the process and reminded them that they had to complete two separate bids. And the two bidders that have the $1.2 million...

So you're saying in the bid form that you didn't know at the last meeting... that they had electrical in their painting numbers. Because those numbers are the same.

We know all of that. We had all of those bids in front of us, Kristen, and you received the bid recommendation for the tank in reference to the fact that we have two different types of bids. We held back on this one because we were waiting for the engineer's recommendation on the electrical bids because it's a separate Wix bid and because, from a timing perspective, It did not hold the project up to wait to award the electrical and allow the engineer to do further evaluation of the bid results because we had one bidder who appeared to be the low bidder at the time who, it turns out, was not a qualified bidder because they didn't meet DOL mandatory requirements.

That I understand. That I understand, Chris. But the bid, so can you scroll back up to those numbers, Robert?

I feel like I'm missing the point you're trying to make. I'm just trying to make a point.

I don't understand. What's the point? So M. Cole bid 1.2 and whatever brothers bid 1.4. Those are the same numbers, the same totals that we looked at at the last meeting when we talked about painting. So I'm just saying, and maybe I missed this, and that's possible, but it wasn't clear to me that... M. Cole at 1.2 was bidding painting and electrical.

I think we covered that.

We did because we looked at even taking out the electrical, the low bidder we recommended for painting was still the low bidder. But they are not qualified to have their bid considered because they didn't meet the Wix law requirement. We can't move forward with them. So it's like a double whammy. We checked to make sure that we weren't penalizing the town, and then we also said they didn't fill out the bid correctly. We can't accept their bid. So in terms of has the town done their diligence to find the lowest responsible bidder for the painting and the electric, I would say yes, we did because we looked at all the painting bids and we said even if we were to just to not consider the electric, is the low bidder still the low bidder? The answer is yes.

And they are if you're considering that the 64.5 plus what we approved last time is like 900 and something.

Right.

So it's still lower. Correct. It just wasn't clear to me that we were reviewing some mixed bids. The information that I received was electrical.

We weren't really focused on those guys because they weren't eligible. We were looking down at, okay, is the low bidder the qualified low bidder?

I guess it just would have been more helpful in terms of clarity of apples to apples, what we're looking at. Not that it would have changed the outcome, because we're still under what our poll is at 1.2, because we're in 900 and change. That was a point of confusion to me going, I thought, yeah.

But again, those would not be valid bids for this purpose. It doesn't matter if we considered it thoroughly or not because we cannot consider them. That's the point. But yes, I'm pretty sure I brought it up at the last meeting that a couple of bidders mistakenly repeated their number on both forms when they should have broken them out.

It was also in the bid review documents being considered at the last meeting. It talks about that.

That electrical was in the numbers of those two? Yes.

Fair enough. That's okay. All right. So the low bidder was not eligible to bid at the time, was not registered with the Department of Labor. And so therefore, it has to be rejected. That's the requirement in law. One of the things that you'll learn is all the rules that we have to work around and that are important protections, and sometimes they seem to work in our favor and sometimes not. You know, here's somebody who did register with the Department of Labor or had been registered with the Department of Labor but was not at the moment that they were bidding, and unfortunately the law does not provide us with the flexibility in order to accept that list.

And I'll say this is a relatively a couple of years old law that probably contractors are still worrying about. It was a requirement in the bid specifications, but it's absolutely a requirement of law. And obviously it's designed by DOL to ensure compliance with the DOL statutory requirements for workers' comp and prevailing wage and those kinds of registrations. So the requirement is advanced registration. It's just something to be aware of.

Okay. Go ahead. All right. So we do have a recommendation letter from Dan Valentine at Valentine Bond. It would be good to go ahead and award if we feel comfortable, which at least I do. I can always speak for myself so that we can. you know, address the other, the task order and try to now really get a full picture for the cost of the project or estimated cost of the project. Those things could change that, but, so the recommendation is for you would, you know, at a cost of, I'll go back up here, sorry. This is resolution, I'm sorry, 28.

Thank you.

Authorizing the electrical contract award for water district number one water storage tank. rehabilitation project whereas the town issued a notice of public bids dated april 30th 2026 for the acceptance of sealed bids for the water district number one water storage tank rehab project general contract and electrical contract in the town the project to be opened at 2 p.m on may 21st 2026 at town hall and whereas specifications for the project were prepared by tb engineering Sealed bids were publicly opened on the 21st of May. They were set forth in the tabulation included. The engineer's recommendation letter is now in the file of the town clerk. The lowest eligible bid for the electrical contract for the project was determined to be in the amount of 64,500. And who would like to move resolution number 28? No, I'll jump in once. All right, I'll move for Resolution 28. Is there? I'll second. Thank you, Kristina. Further discussion? Okay, all in favor? Kenney? Aye. Ms. Salfa? Aye. Jay Pett? Aye. Kristina? Aye. Thank you. That's resolution number 28. And then lastly, I think we have water everywhere. Lastly is your firm's task order, which includes not only your work. When I say your, I really mean Dan Dona.

tie-and-bonds work so the scope of work includes the task order for consideration for the board right now is for construction phase services related to the the repairs and rehabilitation work at the This is a task order for hourly services for an estimated five month construction project and then we've enumerated the tasks that will be completed during that point in time. You have meetings with the contractor on pre-construction and construction. I see it says village in there, so I apologize for that.

Yeah, I noticed that typo as well, yeah.

And then review of submittals. We estimate there's about 30 submittals per review, requests for information, pay applications we're anticipating for pay applications that we review and process. change order, and then construction observations. So there's an estimated number of hours of construction observation. The most significant element in here is not just our time, it's actually the time associated with the certified sub-consultant from PORTEC, which does the specific observation on the painting system and the tank preparation materials, and that's really the most critical. piece for them to be there on a very regular basis. And so we have a total of an estimated 160 hours of regular time and 80 hours of overtime. And I just want to talk to you real quickly about those hours. So that's based on the estimated duration of time it will take to sandblast and paint the interior and exterior. And the overtime is there specifically for two reasons. one we like to have some flexibility to allow the subcontractor to work overtime because sometimes weather conditions are not right during the week but they'll stay and they'll work through the weekend and that will keep the project on schedule overall so what we're trying to get it done is like the shortest continuous duration as opposed to like having them start and stop and move and demobilize because these folks are not local they are going to come in for this job they usually will work four or five days, and then they'll go home for two days. And we want to try and minimize that as much as possible. So by approving a little budgeting and some overtime hours, that gives us flexibility to run the project more continuously and work around weather.

Can you talk about, so you're bringing in a consultant that's going to review?

It's a certified subcontractor who will do things like make the confined space entry into the tank and check the coating thicknesses and do all that monitoring.

Right, because I think the entire project obviously depends on the success of the coating and that's understood that that's important. In terms of like, you know, when... As a professional, when we do construction observation, it's essentially an observation of compliance with the specs and the construction documents. It's really like you're observing what you can observe, but it's not your fault. Can you describe a little bit about what... what the qualifications are, or what this looks like, because I was surprised to see it described as an observation, more of like, more than, you know, perhaps like an inspection, or I don't know what the term would be. Like, does this person qualify to know that

I will tell you what I know. And if there are still questions, I'll have Dan send you some additional information, because it's more his area of expertise than mine. But I had asked him sort of similarly. So there is a specific coding certification observation training and certification that these inspectors maintain so that they are not only like observing to see that the standout blasting is completed but that if there are any irregularities in the steel that that's fixed before they do the coating but I think one of the more important things I've been told that they do is that they monitor temperature and humidity which are really essential for the necessary adhesion on the metal and And that's something that they do on a semi-continuous basis. And so this task order represents trying to strike the right balance between having them there, um, um, enough, not too little, not too much. Um, they, they originally gave us a proposal to do, you know, sort of full time around the clock. And that was a very substantial fee. And we said, well, what can we do? that is kind of more like right-sizing for this tank and for this location. And so that's what we've got in front of you now. But they're doing not only observation, but they're also checking conditions and making sure that the contractor is meeting the requirements of the coating company for those conditions to have the right adhesion of those coatings. What else do you need to know that I can follow up on?

I mean, I... When do you anticipate that this is going to start?

I don't know.

My understanding was summer. We're making a decision right now of who is the person that's going to be the quality control of this paint job. I don't feel like I have enough information in what is presented here to make that decision. I think we should have the most qualified person, and I want to trust that you've done that, I just don't see that represented.

There are only a very small handful of contractors that have these qualifications, and you can imagine why, right? There are just a finite number of these tanks, and so you have to travel around. um there we we are aware of two companies that our firm has used we have used this company um the most frequently and the most recently so we have worked with them a number of times and they know how to work with us and we know how to work with them and so that is the reason that we've gone with them the rate is pretty standard in the industry because there's such a limited amount of competition in in the field because it's such a niche area of inspection.

I just think it's an important part. I mean, I think it's not, if we didn't take a vote on it tonight and just had a little bit more backup about who these people were. What can I get you?

I mean, the... Do you want, like, their statement of qualifications or something?

Yeah, and their... I mean, it could be even a redacted proposal if, you know, there's... I'm sure your company is...

Wasn't it attached? Didn't we not attach the proposal? No, we didn't. I may have that. Oh, maybe not. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we have that. But, Christina, we can get that for you. That's fine.

But I want to be careful. We have to separate the two things. This is a task order for the engineering and the We need to have this budget because we need to have the financing in place in a couple weeks so that the project can proceed on schedule. If we don't pass this now, we don't have a budget, I won't be able to arrange for the financing. Can you, can the two of you and Dan, you know, work on the whole subcontractor thing and then whatever reason it doesn't sound like there are a lot of options and it sounds like you didn't necessarily say it brandy but i'm assuming you've had good experiences with the subcontractor we have yeah you know if there's any concerns but the task order is really so that we can allocate and finish up on the budget so that i can arrange for the financing so that this project can like yesterday almost in order to capture the weather. Is there arrangements that need to be made, whether it's the bladder, right?

Right. The existing tank has to come offline, and so we want to do that during the warm-ups. Right.

resolution and task bar tonight to finalize the budget.

So what would be a way of finalizing the budget that you need but still being able to validate what And what we're actually doing here.

The task order is for hourly services, so all it does is set a budget.

So it's a not to exceed number that you're going to bill hourly against.

And if you want to at the next meeting, because you've heard something, you would like us to entertain a change task order with a different firm in there instead of that one, that's all fine.

So would we need to amend the language at all in the resolution then to not be tied to... I don't know how to do that.

There's a reference just to the task order number. The task order describes that we've got Cortec as a subcontractor.

Yes, but the resolution does not reference that.

The resolution does not.

And I think we can just go ahead at the next meeting and amend it if you feel that necessary, Christina, and others on the board.

But the dominoes are in effect free to... And we don't have two weeks to gather complete information?

Christina, we don't. We don't. We don't have the funds from the sales of those properties. I appreciate that you want to take additional time and get more comfortable. That's all fine. But the calendar is what the calendar is. And we have to, you've heard, we have to do this project during certain weather times. Just to explain to you how complicated it is, you have to go out and you have to get bids from the local banks for the $500,000 or $600,000 that you're borrowing towards the project. Those bids also have an expiration date. So then you have to go out and then you're subject to market moves. And so these delays oftentimes end up, I don't need to tell you, you're in the business, so you know very much about delays and how delays can often cost more money. All I'm suggesting to you, and I think the board will be comfortable with that, if there's something that comes to your attention that you would like to amend the task order, I'm completely comfortable with. We do it all the time. we discover a problem or a mistake, we've already identified a typo or it's a village or I should say town, we can do that. I'm completely comfortable with that. But I don't want to then cause this project because the domino is not to take place.

So you're putting the professional services in Can you explain what you mean by that?

Right, so the project costs that I have at the moment, totaling, if this were to pass, approximate $1.05 million in any ancillary extras. That's $871 for the storage tank that we approved. And then we have this one and the electrical bed.

And the professional services. So you're taking that total?

I'm taking that total, which... is about 1.045. And I'm using 1.5. We have $400,000 that we have previously, and I don't think it was this board, I think it was the previous board, had assigned to the capital from the reserves. We have $100,000 coming in the summer from BART. And so we have half a million dollars coming off of that. So 1.05, let's say, half a million dollars, $550,000 need to be borrowed now and be available and be ready. Well, the closing won't take place, but we have to agree to the interest rate and the closing will take place in a few weeks. So that's where we are with the project. It's pretty straightforward what we have now. I don't think this should be an issue. We've heard that there's a couple that you know of, and maybe you could, you know... Yeah, and I did find their proposal.

I mean, I can describe in more detail if you're interested what their scope of services includes.

I'm comfortable moving forward, understanding that involvement of a professional is needed, and the painting is incredibly important. So I'm comfortable approving the not to exceed number, but I would like to have more clarity on the qualifications and the detail of what that looks like.

Do you want me to just send it to you separately?

Or send it to the whole board, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Thank you for listening. We're not allowed to talk during this, right? I'm sorry? We're not allowed to talk during this? No, unfortunately not. That's a shame. I'm going to leave. I don't know what a coating construction observation entails, but it's a $728,000 a year job to observe a coating of a tank, as far as what I can understand from this. Okay. That's $200 an hour, $300 an hour in overtime you're paying for someone to observe a coat, a tank coat. Thank you.

Thank you for your thought. I just want to throw that out there. Okay, Dana, we're on resolution, I'm sorry, about 30? 29. 29. Dated June 9th, approving the task order number 202601 for time bond engineering services regarding water district number one storage tank rehabilitation project. Whereas the town of Red Hook and TNB engineering landscape architecture into an agreement for professional services dated as of January 2021. agreement copies of which are on file whereas pursuant to the agreement time bond has provided a task for services for the town of connection with water district number one water storage tank rehabilitation project now therefore be resolved by the top where the town of redmond that acceptance and execution by the supervisor of the tie tie and bond task order for the above Project in an aggregate amount not to exceed $108,000 is hereby approved as amended with the word village being changed to town. That's okay. What happens when we use templates? And it is understood that should the need arise for the investigation of the subcontractor, that we might amend that. Okay. Resolution number 29 and I so move. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Chair. Further conversation, discussion on it? If not, all in favor? Kristina?

Aye.

Jacob? Aye. Myself, aye. Kenney? Aye. Thank you very much. Okay, are we on correspondence? If we're on correspondence, do we... Did I say 108,000? 200. 200. I think I may have. Deanna? What? You said 108,000, but you know that it's 108,200. And I misspoke. Thank you. And then we have a memo from now the whole water board. I think we had a memo a while back in Paris about the sale of the parcels, the surplus parcels. This is dated June 4th. We don't have Bill Hamel here with us. I'm sorry to say I was not able to attend this. He is the liaison to the water board. It's their unanimous resolution to authorize the sale of surplus district parcels. Running to request the town board authorize the sale of the land currently owned by the district that are no longer operational and necessary to the water utility. The district represents 480 Great Pink households, background on the properties. The five parcels were originally acquired in connection with the early district infrastructure, including pump equipment, water wells, and related facilities decades ago due to poor water. For source water quality at that location, the infrastructure was relocated to another site. Surface equipment was decommissioned. There were tanks out of barrel. And the properties were mediated. The parcels have served no operational purpose since they contain substantial white lines that are consistent in character with the open space and environmental preservation priorities the town has historically pursued. The water tower capital project, the district is facing its largest capital expenditure. Repainting the water tower total project cost will exceed $1 million. The district has accumulated $400,000 in reserves towards this expense. and secure a $200,000 contribution from Clark College, which uses the tower for backup service. The remaining balance will need to be financed with debt service borne by district ratepayers. Proceeds from the sale of the service parcels would offset a meaningful portion of that financing burden. The timing of this request is directly connected to the capital need. And the request is for the authorization, just like when the highway super comes to us for an authorization to dispense with surplus trucks and so on and so forth. The Water District Board does not have independent authority. We've come to that to convey real property. Authorization is required. We respectfully request that the town board take up this matter and act to enable the sale of these surplus parcels to perform in terms of any conveyance remaining within town board's discretion, and we welcome the opportunity to discuss the next steps at the board's convenience. Respectfully, Senator Henry Farris. I know we've heard from the public that they would like us to consider acquiring them. We've highlighted the sections of the CPF fund that are very relevant that talk about environmental attributes and passive recreation opportunities under that code.

So if and when... Is this going in front of the CPF committee?

And if they say no to it?

It's just advice. They're just an advisory board. Okay. You know, as I said at the last meeting, it's just, you can't compare it to the purchasing of the truck when you have a piece of property that's already in the town board's name. You know, all five properties. So, whatever. It's just a think it's a poor use of transfer you know it's not how you go about transferring funds from one entity to but they need the money and this is well this is an opportunity and again you know this is this is not this is not uncommon getting i know this is you know but i don't like that you're changing the you're mending the cpf law or no no no

All we did, and that's already done, all we did is correct, and we often find ourselves correcting, an oversight that from previous years or iterations, and the oversight was that that CPF board, you know your circle, went and looked at hundreds of parcels that had water resources and looked at these five and said, oh, town already owns it. You would also look at a document that said, town already owns the street lights on Echo Valley Road. Actually, the town doesn't own it. It's in our name, but we own it on behalf of the street lighting district, same as the water infrastructure

But your point is that you don't think it's a good use of CPF funds to buy land that we already own, Gabe?

Correct. It's not really conserving it. And I don't appreciate that you went to all the neighbors around those properties and gave them basically a scare tactic, saying that some private entity would purchase these properties and clear them and try to develop them. Because that could never happen.

have to we have to serve two entities at the same time and be responsible fiduciary for both of them we only own this in name on their behalf it belongs to them much like the disagree with well you can but Robert it would have been more clear if you had come in the additional meeting instead of saying I have a great idea for a pocket part it would have been it would have been more

like transparent if you would have said, oh, we need to buy these properties with CPF funds because the water board hasn't charged enough for 40 years or whatever. And so now we need to use this money in order to balance the project that needs to happen for the 488 families that live in that area.

I am not going to. how you feel about how something transpired. We've been talking about this for years, in meetings prior to when you all joined, talking about how Hank asked storage tank was needed to be addressed. He wanted them sold. There was no need to sell them at the time. And you've heard me say that they thought, and so did I, that this would be the right time to sell them because they could actually monetize and use the proceeds.

Okay, so after the sale, how will the deeds change?

Well, they'll be entrusted as park lands. So, to your point, because you said these can't be sold, right? You made this declaration. You're absolutely wrong. This board or a future board could do their fiduciary and have them sold. But if we go ahead and we entrust them with the CPF, they can't be sold without an act from the state legislature. So if you are being declaratory and saying they can't be sold, well, then I don't understand why you're not supportive of the measure that would ensure or at least make them much more difficult. Right, I understand.

So they can only be sold if this board allowed it to be sold.

If any board allowed it. And we have to. We have a fiduciary.

We have to. Just like when the streetlights go out. We can't say, hey, we don't feel like we're replacing the streetlights. Right? We have to do that. And so when they have surplus trucks or surplus... I get it.

But the way you related to the neighbors was a scare tactic.

I'm sorry. You're absolutely wrong about that. Okay. In fact, if anything, I referred to our engineer and I said, can you help me understand what potentially might be? So that, first of all, from a planning perspective, there is nothing scary about having Two more houses in a suburban residential. Planners will tell you that's actually probably what you should do is infill development, right? That is a very rational. I'm looking at our engineer because what people don't know is when she's not a practicing engineer, she is the chair of the planning board in the community that she lives in and has been for many years now. And so it would be a very reasonable thing to say, hey, you have these five lots. At least two houses and three houses can be constructed there. It's a residential neighborhood. Go for it. On the other hand, you could also rationalize, hey, there should be green spaces, little green spaces that people can have where they are not feeling the pavement all the time and they can go sit on a bench. We're not putting a bench.

We just filled out the seeker saying we weren't doing benches. We're not putting a bench. It's not a pocket park. And we talked about that last time. And I will not vote for another seeker that I feel is not indicating what we're doing. We're not doing anything with the land. There's no benches and it's not a pocket park.

The good news is there's no seeker that's going to be involved.

We already passed the seeker.

You passed a secret for including it in the plan.

Yes.

In the plan.

With no disturbance and no activity and no anything.

That's what we've done. That's what we've done. It's already passed the CPR.

Why are you talking about benches?

I'm saying because it still is a possibility to do something like that in the future. That is allowed in the CPF. So when it gets entrusted as park lands, which I will, of course, recommend that it get entrusted as such, so that it's protected. So that the state legislature needs to concur.

I get it. I understand the angle. I understand the angle.

Okay.

Okay.

All right. All right. So shall we bring it back for the next meeting when we're all here, hopefully? Shall we bring it back and then authorize it to be sent to the CPF advisory committee?

We can't authorize that now?

We can't. That's why I'm asking you. Oh, no, because we don't have the application. We would need to bring back the application documents and all of that stuff. So we can bring all that back. I didn't want to continue to bring it back when we weren't sure that we wanted to move it forward. So would we like to bring that back and consider that? Yeah, I think the committee should look at it. Okay. Okay. So we'll bring that back for the next meeting. And then we'll see if we've got any more information. Correspondence. So we had Jacob, did you want to cover this? I know we're not taking any action, but could you maybe just prepare us for the next meeting? Sure. Yeah.

So the housing committee submitted a letter or report to the board about establishing a pilot home share program. I don't want to get into the details of it because we're hopefully going to invite the housing committee to be at the next meeting to have some dialogue about why they're proposing this, what it consists of, what they're asking the board to do. There's a lot of details in this letter. I think it would be good to take the time to read through it and then come prepared to have that conversation with the committee.

Can you just take a moment to tell us what this is?

Yeah. So part of the idea is to match people who have effectively an excess of housing in their home. They can have, basically have a renter. People who are looking for housing and matching them together in sort of a effort to increase affordability. So this is modeled off of a program that already exists in Ulster County. And the idea is to have a program here, mirroring that, to coordinate matching people who are looking for housing, people who have access to housing. So sharing effectively instead of having an apartment that you rent out, it's renting out a room. Having a room that's shared with some benefits between the person who's living in that space and the person who owns the home. So that's probably not the best in-depth description of what that consists of, but the idea is to find that excess housing, find the people who are looking for it, and match them through this program. So looking to have a coordinator position, looking to have the framework in place to have this program. There's more information here. I don't want to go into the details of it. But that's the basics. Like I said, the committee's asked to be at our next meeting to talk about this. I would look to them to present it. It's something we've been talking about for months. And I think it's pretty well thought out in this letter. So yeah. I don't want to read the whole thing, like, even for the water board thing, but, yeah, I think that's an overview. It's a matchmaker type of program. Yes, yeah, so basically coordinating, I think that the idea, right, is we have people in the community, especially graduate students might be one example, people who are well situated to be sharing a home, right? It's a home share program. People who might be able to help out with things around the house or, you know, and it's to increase affordability by offsetting what might otherwise be the cost of living in a place but providing, you know,

some benefit to living in that space so one of the things we haven't seen as frequently as we normally see it during the generational cycles is the turnover of the houses so we find ourselves with so A better example of aging and having a house that's bigger than we need. But you have this golden handcuff situation where your mortgage is low from six or ten years ago, and you can't possibly downsize because that new mortgage is twice as much, even though the cost of that home may be half of what you might get for selling. So this is an opportunity like the short-term rental, like Rent Out of Rome. This is kind of a similar situation, but more of a long-term matching up. And we may need to have more of this moving forward as people try to come here, learn, work, get a footing. OK, we'll get to you there. We also had, Christina mentioned, we also had notice of our highway superintendent forwarded to us. We just found out that one of the crew has been offered a previous job back home and has taken it. rather short notice, so we'll be down one crew member. And so there was initial discussion about whether or not our starting rate would be competitive. We've heard this not only about highway, but also about police, or our power, or their power and wages. We don't have a police department. their hourly starting wages competitive enough and that's something that i think we should take a look at um we have a union so we can't discuss that really that has to be discussed with the union but it's something that we should take a look at because we want to make sure that we're properly stacked we have been sort of all over the map over the years um covet pre-covered Even during COVID, I think we were three on and three off, and so on and so forth. So we should try to address that sooner rather than later. And we have had inter-contract increases that we proposed to try to stay competitive. So anything more on that?

Yeah, the other one that I was looking at was Teresa's email about the sand and salt budget.

Oh, the sand and salt, yeah. And she made a suggestion. I think that's in your budget adjustments that we just passed, a suggestion to move it over, move over the temporary line. There was some overtime. Is that what you're referring to?

I don't think so. So the salt budget was $60,000?

So we've had over the years, we've been stockpiling those giant piles that you see both in and out of the salt shed are the materials that typically we run. with large stocks. This winter, as we've all mentioned, was a very unusual winter where we ended up going through a lot of stockpiling. So if we need to adjust, and we have adjusted, we just, throughout the years, the budget is a living document. And so if we need to put more money into that, That line, we will. We'll see what the winter is. Typically, your sand and your salt, you expend in the beginning of the year and not at the end of the year because the storms don't generally get going until the New Year's Eve.

I remember them being usual winters.

I know, Kenny. But the cycle's a little off, as you know. It was the one year we had snow only in October. And on May 2nd, we had nothing in between. And that was during my time. I don't know if you all remember that. So, yeah, we adjust accordingly. That's why those reserves. You hear about those reserves. And some may be tempted to keep pulling from those reserves, but we don't. We try not to because we want to always have them handy for the times when we have a really abnormal type of warranty or so. all right um it's after 10 and i would like to entertain the motion and wish you all good night and thank you all for coming to close the meeting is there a second second thank you kenny Oh, thank you. Thank you for paying attention. We have to visit a requirement. You've heard Kenny and Christina because it's all new to you, but it won't be soon enough. All the rules and regs. And one of the rules and regs is that you have to... Thank you, Jacob, for the money. You have to announce bids that you've received on various projects. And so we did get a memo today from our engineers. This is the Aspen Wall Bridge project. We got New York bridge funding, bridge New York funding rather, money from the county and so on and so forth. We had bid opening for that project back on May 29th. We had only two bids, but we have to report them. Mid-Hudson Construction Management, $3,041,223.13. OCS Industries, $3,519,649.03. That is the corrected amount they put in their bid documents, an incorrect amount. You have a memo here. We're not going to take any action tonight, but we do need to announce those bids because we're required to do it at the first meeting after the bid open. And so they scramble to get us as much information as they can just to give us a sense. Spoiler alert, their memo is that because there are mistakes on one of the two bids and they have some questions about the first bid, they are recommending that we re-bid the project. The timing was off. They want us to go out and re-bid in the fall. We've done this once before. Randy, what are we doing for the parks, right? I think there we weren't happy with our bids. So there's only one bid that's even acceptable. They are not comfortable with recommending now. They have to check with DOT. So we're not going to take action tonight, just so you know. But we do have to, it's a requirement that we report out on, it's it. So I feel I've done that, but I'm having the feeling that they're going to continue with our recommendation of DOT.

DOT gets involved with this?

Oh yeah, DOT. This is a federally funded program. So, and you'll see a lot of times, very few federal dollars come directly to local municipalities. They run through the state. And so this is a state bridge to New York program, federally funded. Also the county got some money as well. We applied for another grant. We have about 2.4-ish money. We're kind of hoping the project will come in around two and a half. So DOT, any bridge, DOT is there, right?

That is correct.

So who pays the full three plus million? That's kind of what you're talking about. That much to replace a bridge. It's like inconceivable.

Yeah.

Well, welcome to the 21st century. Unfortunately, it's... It's crazy, right? It's crazy. It seems like it is. Well, one of the things...

I'm in the wrong business.

Yeah. So one of the things we could look at, I'm sorry, I think I'm interrupting. One of the things we could look at, but I don't think the neighbor's gonna be happy, is some alternative to the stone. Do you all remember what? What they, maybe you don't. This is before your time. So we had neighborhood info sessions to talk with people around that area about the bridge because it's an old stone bridge, wonderfully charming, terrible for its utility because the water smacks at the stone and erodes everything around it because it can't pass through. So what it has is a nice stone facade at both entrances and then you have the steel in the middle so you get the sense of the historic and the texture from the bridge. I mean, it's a one-lane bridge.

No, no, no, two lanes.

Yeah, I mean, that was the other concern is because it will be widened because the stream didn't have enough room to pass underneath the bridge because things aren't what they used to be. But, you know, that was also part of the, you know, the character that people wanted to retain as much as possible. Right. see in the next set if we go out to rebid and we see that the numbers are still unfavorable or when we go to rebid we could consider having an alternate something you know christina maybe you want to get involved in this like some of the not stamped concrete but something Better than that, you know, where we could save because that was a real sort of cost add-on was the stone facade. On the other hand, the neighbors felt very strongly about it. So here we go again trying to strike a balance between the cost.

Can you send those bid documents?

So this is not us? It's not them. No, it's just your bridge engineer.

Yes, this is HVEA. We've worked with them previously. They're the engineers that we worked with. The Sidewalk, which was also a federally funded project. So yes, we can send you all those documents. But do keep that in mind between now and then. If we do take their initial recommendations while we've been in the fall, maybe we can look at some alternatives and do an alternate, and then consider that. It's going to be a challenge, but we'll see what those numbers come in at. And we'll have more bidders. I think that's their, because of the DOT review, whatever we got at a bad place in the cycle to only have two companies bid on a project is not what you want in this situation. How about a tunnel? All right.

With that being said... Before we end, can we just address, can we agree on a time when the final packet can be sent around? No. Why?

We can't because... is the real world, and the real world is, and unfortunately, just so folks understand what the requirement is, the requirement is we must be at least 24 hours in advance of everything that's practical. So what we have available that will be discussed and acted upon put up. It does not mean that you can't continue to put things up. That's not what OML says. It says what you have available. We unfortunately, you know, we're staffing like everybody else for a small municipality. We don't have full-timers just hanging out available. I have a secretary who works you know 12 hours a week let's say it's not available on Fridays I do try to see if I can get her here on Thursdays oftentimes brandy will let you know you know Chris is on on online here oftentimes we're not ready with that stuff and so we're faced with a choice of

It's very difficult to prepare for, if we can't have a cutoff time and say, all right, we're going to do the meetings at 7.30 by 2 o'clock, that'll be the final packet.

Yeah. No, I understand.

I think we need to do that. I don't know how you guys feel. I don't feel comfortable when there's extra pages added and I haven't reviewed it. I take at least... four hours before every meeting and set and go through all of it and make sure that I'm that I'm prepared and so I've you know I block out my afternoons and so if it's like if it's you start at three o'clock and the packet comes in at 3 42 and it's a different packet it's it's frustrating I understand so do we need to get more staff to have a packet ready by by two or three o'clock rather than four o'clock?

No, I think you're doing exactly what I think I had mentioned to you months ago before you all started, which is to block out right before a meeting the day before and the weekend before some time. So as you see, I do forward you portions, you know, the agenda.

You do, but I don't find it effective to review it if it's not the final because I need to look at it and know what exactly were, like, the agendas finalized, that the information's finalized, and it throws, I'm just saying, it throws me off in my process of how I prepare for a meeting when there's a new packet issued.

Would it help to have, like, a preliminary, like, five days or a week before that? Well, I try to do that. I would have, like, 80, 90% of it thought out. Not really.

I mean, yes, but it's more about like, I break it all out and I look at all the parts of it and I really try to do my best, but it's very difficult. Even when a few pages change, it throws it off. So what is the reason why I even would have to add announcements in late in the day before a meeting?

Okay, so let me suggest that from one part packet to another. In that case, it was sent around not by me, but I think, but I'll try to do either a red line version. what the changes are from one to another so that can streamline your focus.

I mean, it's helpful and she's done that. She has done that because I've asked multiple times and now she's really doing that more regularly. But it's really, I think we need to have a cut off. Like, I need to know when I can start preparing with the final packet. It doesn't work otherwise.

Unfortunately, that is illusory to think We've made changes here tonight and discussed. It's a continuation. All I can say is I can try to get you. Oftentimes I'm waiting on somebody else. I can offer a solution.

If there's a final packet by time, say 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, agree on a time, that's the final packet. Anything else that comes in like this wasn't in the packet, make that extras. So bring in all the extras. If there's stuff that's missing, we could do it that way.

Sure, but I think we are. I think we are. I mean, Alex is on two.

No, because today there was two extra pages in the packet from you and what we got at 4 o'clock. So make those pages explicitly separate.

I'm not getting a chance to do this. It included these two announcements.

No, it didn't. It was 69 pages and this one's 71.

That was the one that went around. This one did not go around.

I have it right here.

It came around and it was 69 pages.

There was only two packets. One is all the work we're doing and then the other was all the work we're doing plus the two flyers.

Then put the flyers separate. That's what I'm saying. Make a deadline of the packet. Say 3 o'clock. We're done packets. Okay.

Christina, I appreciate that. And we often do put addendums. So I'll try to put addendums there. But this is how the office works. And I appreciate it. I will try to make it as specific as possible so that it's easy for all of us to understand what's been added, whether it's red lines or add-ons. I'll put addendums. I'll make these addendums so that when you go on the website, you know that that's an addendum. I'll try and do that.

I want to throw another curveball in. I think the meeting should start at 6.

Yeah, I think you threw that one in there. And I think that was explained why you can't because one of our Oh, you can't get here? Tuesday meetings should not start at 6. We did cover that.

If we move them to Wednesday, then... We covered that.

Yes, and you wanted two committees and boards to move their schedules.

Well, the zoning board only meets a few times a year.

Right, so the CAC meets all the time. Anyway, all right. With that being said, I hear you all trying to do my, you know, my darndest to... I'd like to make a motion to close tonight's meeting. Wishing you all health and happiness. Don't forget, history is important. Pop quiz, we heard the city of Hudson. Brandi, you did work for the city of Hudson. What is the interesting fact about the city of Hudson? Which one?

They were big in the whaling industry? I don't know.

That's a good question. They did a lot of garment during World War II. Mrs. Gregg worked in factories up there for uniforms for the soldiers.

That's not it, but I like that. See, that's the kind of history we need more and more. I think extra points is the city of Hudson was the first incorporated city in the United States. I didn't know that myself. It was on Senator Gillibrand.

I'm going to second the motion.

You didn't want to know? No, I'm happy to.

It seems like maybe less of an origin. Good night. Thanks for being here.

Thank you very much. Stay healthy, everyone. We'll be voting.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.