Town Board - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good evening everyone. I would like to call the town of Rochester uh town board April workshop meeting to order. If you could all stand and I'll lead us the pledge to the flag. 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. Hey, can you do the roll call? Counciloman Alba is absent. Councilman Coleman here. Councilman Smeith is absent. Councilman W here. Supervisor and Allen.

I am here. Uh the first item on our agenda is the acceptance of the agenda. I'd like to make a motion that the town board accepts the agenda as prepared by the town supervisor with the following amendment that we will strike the adoption of a body camera policy. Do I have a second? Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Abstain. Motion carries. Right now, there's only three of us present. So just a reminder, all votes have to be uh unanimous unless a fourth board member joins us. Um so I am very uh happy to um hand the floor over to our uh superintendent Dr. Fedaro and um assistant superintendent um for a presentation of the 20 uh 26 uh school year budget. Thank you so much for doing this. I think it's really wonderful that you are coming to the towns to present the budget because um it does have an impact on all of us in in so many ways. So with that I would like to um offer you the floor um and I will page through your um presentation which is up on the screen. We do have a microphone here and a microphone in the ceiling there. So if you could speak loudly so that the people watching us as well.

Oh perfect. Thank you. So uh thank you town supervisor Nan. Thank you town board. Thank you to the members of the town of Rochester community for being here today. Uh if you don't know me, my name is Paul Spado. It's a privilege honor to serve as a superintendent of schools around our Valley Central School District.

Uh and I am Tala Beain. I'm the assistant superintendent for business services at the school. I work very closely with Dr. Scodaro to develop budget. Our theme uh what we want our our vision to be is we want to be a world premier school district moving forward where our students are future ready and productive citizens and that we create a a community that fosters you know a collaboration and innovation and our hashtag is premier Rondow Valley because we want to be a premier school district not only this year but in years to come and this is what the budget funds this is all the things we offer our students uh we have an innovative math curriculum, our amplify ELA curriculum which is aligned to the state standards. We have a fast print data screener that gives us real time data on student performance, see where kids are are struggling and what skills that they need and it gives us some interventions on how to fill those gaps. We got special ed programs, our BoseCTE offerings. We never we never um turn a student away if they want to go to Boseies to be an electrician, a plumber or or study welding. um they get to experience those programs. That's what the budget uh offers and funds. We have AP classes, dual enrollment classes, small gas engines to repair. We have FFA, future farmers of America. So, second year of that innovative program. We have fishing and wildlife that we offer as elective classes for our students. Uh the writing revolution program that the the budget funds as well. uh not only we focus on academics, we focus on the whole child as as well too with student well-being. We have a digital hall pass system that we can monitor students uh in the hallways through their Chromebooks. We we monitor their online safety as well with our GoG Guardian software. We have a social emotional learning curriculum that we're going to be uh rolling out next year to work on student soft skills moving forward. Again, you know about our award-winning music programs. Uh that's

what the budget funds as well. We have psychologist related services, social workers, athletics, over 24 athletic uh events, sports that kids can participate in, unified sports, PE, after school clubs, school counselors. So that is what our budget funds all of these innovative uh and creative programs. So our students are on the college uh and career ready pathway. And our goals of multi-year uh financial planning is we want to minimize impact on student programs. And so if the budget is passed, uh the budget vote is May 19th. So please come out and vote. Uh but we want to minimize impact on student programs. We want to minimize staff reductions. We always look at people who uh are resigning, who are retiring. We try to uh transfer uh teachers in the right places so we can minimize um reductions and continue reducing expenses to minimize the gap. And then of course the third biggest part is why we're here. We want to be fiscally responsible. uh to our taxpayers. Uh we're asking this year uh to go to the tax cap which is at 3.82%. That is a decrease from last year, a.3 34% decrease from 2025 and our budget is only increasing 2% this year. So of all the innovative and creative programs that we offer, our budget is only going up 2% uh in 2026 and that's a 32% decrease from 2025. That should be telling you all of you that we're really trying to be um really fiscally responsible and making sure we have a right tight budget that we've put out to the community to approve.

So all that to say, what is the actual figures? So this is a comparison year-over-year of our expenditures on the top graph on the bottom graph is our revenues because our revenues minus our expenditures gives us what's left which should be zero. Uh we always net to zero. We're not a profit-making district. Um, so last year our budget was $80,470,116. We are increasing it by that 2% or 1.6 million. So that'll be a new uh budget of 82,93,525. You'll notice on the bottom there was a decrease in our revenues. This is uh a two-part reason. Um, one of the reasons is that we didn't see much of an increase to our um state aid numbers. So, our state aid numbers came in at just 1% increase, which equals to be about $300,000 extra in state aid. State aid is things um such as foundation aid. You'll hear that out in the news. Um aid for expense based um programs such as BOSIES. So, those BOSCTE programs that Dr. Spar was talking about, the state actually reimbures us a portion of the cost of that. So, it's not a full cost to the district. So, it's actually a very smart way to go. Um and then some other things as well. So all in all, you'll see our revenues are going down by almost $3 million. Set a different way like I was talking about with the state aid numbers, we have um on the top of this graph is our expenditures from the prior page. Uh what we're preliminarily um pro proposing for asking the tax centers to approve in May is that $82 million. To support that expenditure budget, we're looking at the property tax levy increase of about 3.82% which works out to be a million.8 about um increase year-over-year in our levy amount. So that brings the levy to 48,54,813.

As I said before, our state aid number remained pretty flat. $300,000 is not a lot when you're looking at a $1.6 million increase in your expenditures. So, we we were outpacing um our aid generation. U miscellaneous items are going to be things such as our interest earnings. Uh we charge tuition for some of our special education programs. So, we have such a viable and uh vibrant special education program that other school districts actually send their students to our school and we're able to charge them a rate to educate those students. So, we generate revenue for those to help offset some of the expenditures to educate them. Um, all in all, we have a a budget shortfall of about $4.4 million. In order to net to zero, we are proposing to use fund balance. What fund balance is is our savings. So, we generate we have expenditures that we propose every year, but they're always um estimates. As we get through the year, we start recognizing areas where we weren't going to spend as much as we thought. That money that we have savings wise, we can apply to the next year's budget to decrease the amount of impact on our taxpayers. So, we are using 3.1 almost 3.2 to million dollars and fund dollars were savings. And then we also in years past took those savings and filled them into reserves. There are reserves that were allowed to um open to cover specific expenditures for specific reasons. Uh we'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes, but uh we're going to use about $1.2 million out of our reserves.

Again, to have the taxpayers in mind, you know, with that $4.4 million gap, we could easily say to the board, "Hey, we need to exceed the cap. We want to get more money uh out of out of our community, but we know that we have you in mind. So, how can we be creative and strategic and instead of asking more money from the community, how can we be to fill that gap? You know, can we use our reserves? Can we use our fund balance? Can we look at grants? Can we look at right sizing the district and looking at our enrollment? And like I said, being strategic and with our with our human capital.

So, set a different way. Our expenditures are broken up by uh New York State education department into three different categories. Program, capital, administrator. Program is, as you would expect, what it takes to educate a student. And you'll notice in this pie, it is the largest part of our expenditures. It is the healthy and correct way for a budget to look. All of our funds should be going to support students, their growth, and our future. So 75% of our expenditure budget does that. It supports student education. Then there's the other parts, right? How do we keep those everything running? Capital is going to be a part of that. That is not just our debt. That is to maintain our facilities. That's all the employees that come and clean the school floors and uh mow the lawns and remove snow. And then administrative is going to be not just uh Dr. Sparo and myself and other administrators. also our legal counsel, our auditors, uh things like that to support and make sure that we have people watching what we're doing. So you look at our uh historical levels of declining enrollment. This is what when we when we showed you kind of we have a revenue concern uh with Rhonda. When you know you have expenses going up and you have revenue going here, well, you create a gap, right? And that's where that $4.6 million comes into play. And part of that gap is our declining enrollment. And oh, from the last 10 years, from 2018-19 uh to 20627, we've lost about 342 students. That's a school that's bigger than Khansen. Uh that's bigger than that's bigger than Marble Town and that's bigger than our junior high school. So we really lost a school in the last 10 years. So, we're trying to rightsize the district to make sure our student enrollment declining also matches our staff enrollment and to be, you know, fiscally responsible. Those those things should even out a

little bit. And myself and Miss Beame, we're trying to do a really good job of right sizing the district. This is our second year together, our second budget together. And as you can see over time, you know, we had uh 250 staff members uh with with an enrollment of 1679 students and 19 administrators. uh we decreased that last year from 250 to 235 because we had a declining student enrollment. So therefore we should probably match that with a declining staff enrollment. So we did that last year along with going from 19 administrators to 17 administrators. And now what we're proposing this year is going from 235 to 215 staff members because again we're going from 1624 students to 1586 and we're going from 17 administrators down to 15 administrators. So that's how it should look and as the years go by that gap and gap should be going getting smaller uh and smaller. Again, the strategies for easing burden to all of you, the taxpayers. We did a teacher retirement incentive which uh saved us almost $900,000. We did a paraprofessional retirement incentive. Uh saved us about 242,000. We shifted to a higher co-pay plan structure with our health insurance, $650,000 savings there. We're going after an extended date in school violence grant. could we could possibly be awarded $450,000 over five years for that. Uh we're exploring an energy performance contract project uh to for energy savings. Again, that could be a possible $2.1 million in savings. And then we're going uh we have an EPA grant with our EV bus mandate. It's a $10 million grant we got awarded from the EPA to put EV buses uh in in our in our area because that is a mandate uh slated to take effect in

2035. So again, we're trying to be very strategic. We're trying to be um creative because again, if we didn't get these grants, we'd be asking you to be funding these projects. But myself, Miss Beay, the district, the board of education, we're trying to be really creative and strategic to get this funding so we don't put the burden on the taxpayers. So now we're going to talk about tax cap versus tax levy. So the tax cap is the calculation of what we're allowed to levy. That's all to say every year, this is a historical um graphic. The lighter blue or the column on the left is what was the cap and the column on the right which is the dark blue is what the levy was. So what we were allowed to generate in revenue and what we actually utilized to generate revenue. So back in 2223 the levy was uh or the cap was 5.26% 26% increase which would have generated $2.1 million in revenue for the district. Additional revenue from the year prior. The levy ended up being exactly that. So we we levied the exact amount of the tax cap going forward to 2324. The district during that time 2324 and 2425 if you'll remember there was something going on in this country. Uh maybe you remember the pandemic during that time everything was tight for everybody. So they did not go to the cap. They went below the cap to 3%. They kept it at 3%. Said we understand what our community needs at this time and we want to recognize that they were getting a lot of grants from the federal government to cover costs at school district for technology, PPE, all those things. So they didn't need as much revenue that in those years. Dr. Spar and I's first year was 2526 and we did

recommend to go to the levy cap or levy to the cap and again this year we're asking the same um of the taxpayers because as you saw we have a $4 million budget gap and there's not a lot of ways for the district to generate revenue except through taxpayer dollars and state aid and then we try to look at grants. We are also looking at a company called 3+ 1 to help us invest some of our savings to grow better interest. So those things we're doing out behind the scenes to try to help lessen the burden of taxpayers. What does the tax levy mean? And this is something that's really difficult to explain. So the levy, the total amount of the levy was 48,54,813. We take that lump sum of money and that's the maximum amount the district can generate. We cannot get a dollar more than that. So that is spread out among the townships that are serviced by the district. So we are a toxic jurisdiction for the town of Warsync, the town of Marbletown, the town of Rosenale and the town of Rochester. The proportionate share by each town is listed up here. That is how much the town itself generates in revenue. So of the $48 million ro town of Rochester generates 30% of that figure that is also then distributed to all the taxpayers evenly based on your home's value. All the things right so this is how we distribute but just um I want just want to say assessed values and all those things don't impact our levy. This is it. We can only generate this much money in revenue and it's split as evenly as possible across all the townships.

We ask the question is that at the end. Okay. Thank you.

So we're aware that everybody has their own situations that may be out there. So the district has also been working very hard over the years prior to Dr. But we're not getting here to adopt tax exemptions for individuals within our townships. So, two new tax exemptions that have occurred is our senior citizen tax exemption. You're going to go to your town assessor. You're going to ask them for the form RP467. You're going to fill out the application, submit all the information, and send it. Then they send it to Olter County. Then that will be a deduction on your tax bill when you receive it. Same for volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers. We adopted that tax exemption as well. So, if you're a volunteer firefighter in the town of Rochester, fill out form RP466-8. Send it to your assessor's office. They'll submit it to Olter County and it'll appear on your tax bill. These are all ways to reduce the amount of taxes that an individual has to pay based on those different categories.

And uh again, budget vote is coming up. budget vote for eligible voters. Again, it's it's it's it's Tuesday, May 19th from 7:00 a.m. until 900 pm at the Denver office, uh 122 Kaiser Road in Ekard. Uh you can if you can't make it in person, uh you can do an early mail-in ballot or absentee ballot. Applications are available on our district website. Just go to our district website and you'll see how to um fill out a mail in absentee ballot. or if you if you don't have access to the internet or technology, you can come in to the district office and get an early mailin or absentee ballot and complete it there. And again, if you need any assistance, please call us. Our phone number is right there and we're going to Amy to walk you through the process, but if any message is um this is your opportunity for your voice to be heard, so please please come vote.

So, thank you so much. Um what we're we have time for question and answers and I'd like to um allow the public to ask questions and receive answers first and then we'll take questions from any board members. So um would anyone like to Yeah. would you show the uh tax levy uh by Yes. And you said that each town has a certain percentage. How was that determined that Rochester only has 33 in that? Yeah. How was that? Where do you how was that determined?

So that's determined by the number of parcels or properties that exist within our taxing area. So there's lines, right, for the town of Marbletown and the town of Rochester, right? All those determines where your zip code is and things like that. The same for school districts. We follow the same tax map and we have a taxing jurisdiction map. So we can only tax the number of parcels that are within our taxing jurisdiction. So the town of Rochester has less parcels taxable by the district than the town of Marbletown. Thank you. You're welcome. I have a follow up on that one. Is it number of parcels or is it assessed value?

Number of parcels. Number of homes. I have in class of 1990 by the way. Um long and short of it is what's the actual percentage increase for the residents of the town of Rochester based on assessed value? What's that mill rate portion going to be? What's that percentage?

So that's a difficult number to give you right now because the town of Rochester just went through a full reassessment. In order for me to give you a true figure, I have to have what the entire assessed values of the entire town will be once you've gone through the grievance process and all those things. I usually don't have until June. So once the town has completed, the assessor has completed evaluating those people who have uh felt that the assessment wasn't fair or not what they wanted, they will generate all of that information, send it to the Olter County, and then Olter County will send us what we are expected to be able to levy by parcels. So that it'll give us a total for the town of Rochester. So for example, right now in 2526, the value of the homes in the town of Rochester was 1 billion66 million and change. Okay, of all the pieces of property, that's how much they were worth. That's how we determine where to how to separate this pie, right? The number of parcels. It could whether or not your bu your total values of all the properties within your township go to a billion one a billion two will determine what the tax rate is because the other part that comes into this is equalization rate. So equalization rate helps everybody pay their equal share depending on how long ago they've been assessed.

Right? I won't have that figure until we have those final numbers. Now were there any calcations done if the further positions were eliminated or calculated to say that you reserved keeping the positions that you eliminated. Were any of those numbers were and was it determined at that point it would exceed that tax cap? You're saying for the budgeted expenditures?

Yes. For the budget itself. So if you were to retain the the same level of administration, let's say hypothetically, would that have eclipsed the tax cap, which is why they were eliminated? We we that could have been an option for the board of education to pursue or again or we how we're funding that is using our reserves and our fund balance. And it's not a really good um budgetary practice to continue using your fund balance in reserve because it can only go to the well. so many times.

There you go. The well is going to eventually going to run dry if we continue using four or$5 million each year to uh balance our our budget. So, uh yes, if we took if we because we have more expenses. So, if we took on those more expenses, we could have said, "Hey, listen, we may have to go exceed the cap, but we want to keep all these all these necessary staff." And then the other direction would be if you eliminated one or two more positions somewhere else, could it have lowered that tax revenue need by the town of Rochester?

That would be an option. That would be an option if we didn't have to go to the cap because we and we only two ways to generate revenue to, you know, fund this district is is the community is the tax the tax levy and we're we're cap so much we can get from the community uh and our state aid. So there's options. We could like like like Main showed before, we didn't some some years the district didn't go to the CAP is because we had an extra revenue coming in from the federal government. But since we don't have that extra revenue coming in, that's why we're recommending to go with the cap. But this this year's cap is only a 3.82%, you know, increase. So that's why we felt like it was, you know, it was it was a good decision to it wasn't at an astronomical level. was at a level that we needed that revenue to, you know, to make sure our

I appreciate your time coming out to explain all this stuff. It's also important to note that the 3.82 is not like that's not your tax increase on an individual. That's just the levy increase. I just want to make sure I say that. I didn't say that. Um, so I have a couple things. I um attended the meeting last month that went on for about five hours and I wanted to speak but I didn't know there was a list and I was there for four and a half hours and then I had to go home. Um, I am the tax collector in the town of Rochester. So, nobody hears from the taxpayer more than myself when it comes to paying taxes. So, a couple concerns. Um, state aid, you didn't mention it today, but I thought the last meeting you said they use the census from 2008 data. Is that correct? That's part of the foundation aid formula. Yes.

Okay. Is there any way that there could be push back from your level that they get that more accurate than going with the 2008 census data? Um that is something I think is really important on your end if that is something that it actually helps us because our enrollment was a lot more back in 2008. So this benefits you it does benefit us because because our enrollment in 2008 as you saw was over you know four or 500 students more. So we're getting more funding from the state. If they used our current data right now with our declined enrollment we wouldn't get as much as much aid from the state.

Okay. My next thing is, and you actually said it, our enrollment is down to the point that that's actually a school. Are you have you really considered maybe closing one of the elementary schools? Because that is where you're going to see significant impact for the taxpayer, not trying to find little 4 million here and there. You talk 15% of the budget is the capital. That's a huge portion of the budget, and I would like to see more of that agenda being driven.

Great. Great. I'll segue into that. So we are going through reconfiguration right now at our intermediate and junior high school, right? It's two schools with with two principles, two beds codes. So for we had to apply to the state and we're still waiting to hear back. But for the for the 26 27th school year that will be uh called Rondout Valley Middle School. So we're going to one school, one principal, one beds code. Okay. So we've already started that process of consol of consolidation and then we've actually brought in a consultant who's looking at is it a good looking at all of our our birth rates our our enrollment trends is it

fiscally responsible in the next 10 years to possibly you know move everyone to one campus kind of like what Antiora has done so those studies uh and analysises are are taking place. Okay. Um, one final thing, I don't think the taxpayers have 10 years. So, that's what I just want to this is like really important that this is stuff that needs to be done now. Um, and just know that we are looking into those options and we're once we get the data and the studies uh and we we get those assessments. Y it will definitely be a definitely a financial decision. Welcome.

So, the tax assessments affecting you guys also. So why don't you join us help get your school reassessed for value. So that drops 1.2 million you said right? The what what you said increase went 1.2 million increase for your taxes. The school tax school doesn't the school doesn't pay taxes. That's our we generate taxes. But you said the school reassess for value. You said the school reassess for value for zoning, right? The school reassess. We we reassess as far as the as enrollment goes and our budget goes, but we don't get we don't the school district doesn't pay tax. It's a government it's considered a government entity.

The school district doesn't pay anymore. Our problem is our problem is different expenditures go up. We pay for health insurance. What's the revenue coming from the school you guys are renting? Where that money go? We're renting a school. The one that's in Rosendale. You got to sell that. We sold it. Yeah. That's not our property. That went to the town. All right. Where' that money go to that you sold it? What the profits got forward? Back when they closed it, it would have gone into the budget at the time, but it has to go towards capital expenditures. So, when you sell a building, it in theory I I've been a part of selling buildings in other districts. How much did that build sell for? I I would have to look into that. I don't know that now. It was years ago. I mean, a dollar. I think it was only a dollar. It may have been a dollar.

I think it was I think it was gifted to the town. So then how come that town can't help you if you gifted it to that town? Let that town help the increase of this town. And there's options like for example if we were to close a school there's options to sell it that could be like gave it to them for a dollar. So they that town should help out more than coming after us. You very big building it Rosenale Elementary wasn't it? It was Rosendale Elementary. Well, here here's the issue and the court has it now. All that's there. So, they should help take a big portion of paying this increase you guys want from us.

Yeah. Unfortunately, the way we the way the taxing goes though, we don't we don't get a say how much we tax everybody. The district is it's set by the department of tax and finance. So, how much we tax everybody is well takes donations, right? They can somehow do a donation somehow. Certainly. I think you should ask a question to them for that. It's definitely they have a gourd. They can help out somehow. They have a lot more financial money out in that town. Rich people with movie stars, they can donate. Absolutely. Something worth exploring. Uh let's We've got somebody who hasn't asked questions yet.

So you talked about how you got the budget on like basic uh teachers or say staff and then you said also that the enrollment's down too. So then why would we get an increase towards say you know towards funding when you're cutting back on things already and you know there's less enrollment. So why why would there be that increase?

That's a great question. Every year we have contractual obligations like usually every year your your your contractual obligations go up like you know four, five, six%. You know this year with health insurance we budgeted for 8%. Our health insurance across the district went up 16%. Uh so that was a big heavy hit to us. Um, and that's why you're that's why our our expenditures are going up year year after year after year. Now, our overall budget only went up 2%. The previous year, it only went up 2, you know, um, 6%. So, we're we're really trying to do a really trying to be really fiscally responsible and really keep that year-to-year budget, you know, around those numbers as much as we can, even though we're seeing eight 16 4% increases in our contractual obligations. Um going back to you mentioned about taking a look at the middle school potentially enrolling all those students like taking it to the high school or from high school to the middle school. So that could potentially open up that vacant land or that vacant building or a series of buildings. Is there a potential at that point then to deed that back to the township similar to Rosenale or would that remain mothball like other state agencies for future use? I mean we haven't gotten that far ahead of where we are. We're still Yeah, absolutely. We're still in research mode. I mean, the reason the consultant was brought in was to potentially move the fourth grade back to the elementary schools because that's something the community was asking for is, you know, is is fourth grade a developmentally appropriate place to be with, you know, sixth, seven, eighth graders uh with with transportation and with with them being uh at, you know, an intermediate because it's kind of it's not a really a good clean feeder pattern. you know what we have right now with K through three and then all of the kids from rising fourth graders go to

the school that's that's serve that services 4 through 8. Uh so we're really we're still we're still looking at that and uh the the plan was was to move the four potentially move the fourth grade back to the elementary schools but other options could come about um from this from this research that we're doing this studying that we're doing right because I know something similar to Rosenale happened here in Award New York when the high school or the the elementary school was back here it was eventually heated back so I was just curious about that for future thought.

Any other questions for the public department? Oh, I just have a comment that when I read in the paper your enrollment in your elementary classes, it was like, whoa. I was a former elementary school teacher and I didn't know anything less than 25 and when we got to 20, but either it was through contract with the union or the district, they had to close down the class and then divide those kids between other and when he was you were mentioned about bringing fourth grade, I would definitely highly recommend developmental age back there. And if you made those classes bigger by cutting and think, you've got classes now for those fourth graders.

Yeah. And and that's when when we you saw the teacher retirement incentive, we about a $900,000 savings. Part of that is we're not we're not rehiring some teachers at the elementary level because our our class sizes are very healthy right now. And even with uh not filling those positions due to attrition, we're still going to have some some good class sizes at the elementary levels. I would have loved to have that number. Yeah. Have you looked into changing the insurance? You said it went up to what, 16%.

Yeah. So, uh, in collaboration with the unions, uh, we did shift to a higher health insurance co-pay structure. That that was on the slide earlier. This is $650,000 savings. So, instead of it going up to 16%, we got it down to 9.8%. So again, insurance, they have we have MVP and um, orange olsteries. They have options between the two. We are exploring other health insurance plans through an insurance broker though. That is something that is on our radar.

So again, anything that's an obstacle that's thrown our way or our problem, we think we try to be problem solvers. The easy way out was let's just, you know, let's just continue out taxing the community. We don't want to do that. We know how everyone feels about taxes, property taxes, school taxes. We're trying to keep those levels as as minimal as possible. But at the same time there's only two revenue sources for a school district in New York and and that is from the state and that is from you know the bill levy. I just had one more question. No question. I saw in the paper that the reason that the state aid I know the state aid was so low was because they stated that they you we don't need it. We're wealthy here. Yeah.

We are land rich. We are land. This is one of the problems we have with our assessed property values and the reason we're we get minimum state aid is on paper we are considered a very rich county because of our assessed property values.

Yes. So um we actually saw a decline in our aid ratio. So the things that we spend money on and we get money back we get a ratio of money back. So for example transportation we get about 45% back on the dollar. Capital expenditures improvements we get about 65 cents back on the dollar. And then for Boseies um we hit probably about 50%. So for every dollar we spend we get about 50 cents back right in 2014 or 2526 we saw a decline um in our Boseies aid specifically because on paper the assessed values and the entirety of our taxing jurisdiction not just in Rochester not just in Marble Town in all of the townships that we tax went up the largest in New York State. So it went up 35% in 2122 and that is now affecting the district's ability to generate aid because the district looks to be wealthy based on assessed property values in the entirety not just in one town in all.

So we're we're seeing the same negative impact of assessed values in that based on the equalized value for the parcels. It's just straight they take it from census data that's submitted. So they take it from just the assessed values in its entirety in all of the towns that we tax. But I would assume at 100% equalization. Yes. To get the pull down. Correct. So it's driven by market conditions, not necessarily the assessment. Correct. Yes.

I got one more. So why don't we go back in the old assessments, keep our assessments where they were, then drop the value, and then you got to get more state. Why don't we go back to that question? I wish we had the power to do that. WE DON'T HAVE anything to do with the assessed values. We don't That's where I was coming from. We our values were back where they were. Should be. You guys keep our state aid. You wouldn't come for us. They act more money. But that that was my question. If it's based off 100% equalization, the state already knows what properties are selling for compared to what they're assessed at. And they calculate that number and if they're applying that back in, they're going to know what the value of the town is based on what people have bought.

So it's the market town provides. So if we get the numbers corrected where the stroke would be, they won't have to ask you increase the state would give them the grants and funding. I see everybody through Troy done. I just want to say this is fantastic. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think this is unprecedented. I never remember in my time the school district coming down to a town board meeting. Has this happened before?

Okay. Okay. to go back. I am very appreciative of you coming out because anybody who knows me taking a test do for sure. I love communication. Communication is great. So you folks coming out to relay, I think that makes me feel better, makes my family feel better and I think about everyone here. I wish there were more people here and perhaps if we communicated it better, we would get more people. So thank you. That's number one. Fund balance the fund. Correct me if I'm wrong. the I may be I'm wrong a lot but uh I like being corrected because I like to learn the fund balance always intrigued me because we talk about fund balance and you say yeah dip into the fund balance I don't even understand why there is a fund balance because in a perfect world if you budgeted correctly there wouldn't be a fund balance correct me if I'm wrong the fund balance comes from overbudgeting so we bring in more and I'm not saying intentionally I'm not accusing any any of that. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying we ended up with more money because we overbudgeted. Overbudgeted, my definition is we spent less than what we asked for. So, we therefore have money left over. So, we say, "Let's squirrel it aside." That's our little savings spot. That's our slush fund. The fund balance is the technical term. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's our money. It's taxpayer money. So, I find it humorous almost that we say, "Hey, we're the good guys. We're going to pay the budget down. We're going to take $2 million and pay it down. Well, that's $2 million of our money in the first place. So, the fund balance has always been an interesting thing to me. Does anybody here recall back? It was when I I'm retired military. So, when I first came home in 2010, the first place I went was Valley Central School District, which I'm a graduate of because that's the largest impact to the member of the community. It's not the municipality. We all know that. It's the school district.

So I put my emphasis there. That's the develop the relationship I had with Ro Ros Ros Rosario. That's where that came from going down there and participating. Unfortunately at that time my information is dated and I will give you that. I haven't gone back because I can only ask the question so many times and never receive an answer. The only I only got the answer from three people down there. It was either Rosario Agustino, it was David O'Halerin, or it was James Blair. Probably the other two people, you have no idea who they were. They were on the school board at the time. Dave O'Haler was the budget guy. But my point is is that the budgeting process is really important of budgeting appropriately. And back in that day, I do know for a fact, does anybody else recall this? The school district was in violation of state law because the fund balance was so large. It was larger than what the state allowed. So, it had to be thrown back at the budget, which was a good thing. So, sorry, it wasn't so much of a question as a diet tribe on the fund balance, but am I wrong?

Well, I'd like to answer a little bit of that. I just wanted to give you a chance to say what you had to say. I'm I'm done with fun with the fund balance, so I'm all ears.

All right. So, in theory, you're correct that fund balance does mean that you overbudget. However, when we budget, we're budgeting based on an estimate. There's a lot of unknowns. For example, a a family with students with special needs can move into the district at any point, and we have to educate them just the same. Special education costs can vary from $10 to hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate a student in the least restrictive environment for them. Right? There's one variable. utility costs just like in your home. We cannot truly predict utility costs because we don't get a set rate. We get the same rate that everybody gets out in their homes. And as you know, there's uh some issues going on with our petroleum, right? So, we're probably going to see an increase. I didn't change the amount of money that I budgeted for for the oil. Those are just two examples. Health insurance. uh we could have a person that was getting a buyout, which means they were refusing our health insurance, decide to take our health insurance. That's a swing from $1,500 to $30,000. So, we don't have a full view to get those things right. But what Dr. Sparrow and I really work hard to do is to not increase the budget as much as we should. So, for example, a contract, a a teacher's contract, an administrator's contract, anybody's contract has specific requirements for salary increases every year. On average, all of our contracts, probably about four to 5%. We also see health insurance increases. Those we don't get until we're halfway through the budget cycle. We didn't know the health insurance was going to go up, and actually the first time they came to us, they said 25% increase. We negotiated and worked it out to the 15% 16% and then we had to move to different plants. All these things. Um you may have noticed that we had to have a plumber down at the town of Marbletown. Our sewage line backed up

during this really cold winter at the high school. We had a water pump just died. We had to replace it in order to be give water to students. So there's all kinds of things that could happen in a school year. So we base our budget on estimates. Not every year are we going to have a surplus. Sometimes we will, sometimes we won't. So far, we've been very lucky to have one. I will tell you that we will have less of a fund balance next year because we keep using fund balance and because we keep cutting budget lines. So, we are trying to rightsize in all the different ways that we can, but for right now, yes, we do have a surplus, but we're using that money to offset the costs for the taxpayers really. So, we're that $4 million budget gap is being filled by $3 million. If we didn't do that, we would have to ask for more money.

And that's exactly great explanation. I appreciate that. That right. That's all we ask is that the fund balance comes back. And and don't get me wrong, it wasn't disparagingly of not budgeting correctly. I get it. There's a million variables. All I was saying is if you do end up with a surplus, hey, feed it back to the taxpayers instead of saying, hey, that's our money. We'll we'll we can do a hire with it. That that was my only point. Sure. No, that would we are not of that mindset. Got it. Perfect. We're on the same page. The other piece I'd like to ask is

is there is the appropriate word metric out there? How do we rate for lack of a better word? How do where do we stand if you're trying to sell something? Because let's face it, the end of the day, this is good. I mean this in a good way. You're out here to sell the budget. Hey, we're doing these. You started out with great stuff. This is what we're giving you. We're giving you a good value, folks. A good bang for the buck. There's one piece of information that I need that I think the public would really like that's not in your brief and it's where do we stand? Because I know how much we pay per pupil. It's very simple. We can do the math because I was I went to Rhond math teacher. So, I can do math. So, I know how much per pupil spending is, but where's the value? I know where I am in the nation per p per with per pupil spending. My question is where do we rank academically? And I want to know specifically in mathematics and reading. Those are the two metrics I'm asking for because when a little paper I'll call it that's put out be typically before the budget, correct me if I'm wrong, it comes out probably twice a year. You know the

budget newsletter.

The newsletter. Thank you. I'm always looking in there. I I love reading about the programs and seeing the good things that we're doing, but I think one of the most important pieces is what am I getting for my money? What am I getting? Where's the value? And I think that would be appropriate. And even if it's not where you want it, at least tell us where it is. And then into your objectives because again, dated. Correct me if I'm wrong. Once again, I believe we were sitting about 32 in the nation at one point in time. And to tell you how dated is that was from Cuomo, I believe. So it's dated. I get it. But my point was is that we were sitting in the top five in spending but um below the 50 percentile in performance. So that's my question is do we have a metric and what is it?

Sure. Yeah. We use state testing as our metric state testing data. So the New York State uh gives state testing in reading and math grades three through eight and they also give end of year assessments to the regions which if I'm sure if you graduated from Rhonda you took the regions exams and I'm proud to say that on this year's we just took the ELA regions in January we had 89% passage rate that's 6% higher than last year that's in the top in Olster County uh with our grades three through eight math testing we're taking the test this week so we're taking reading this week we take math math in a couple weeks. I can tell you from last year's data that we had doubledigit increases in ELA and math on the state test grades three through eight. And we also had an increase in our ELA in physics regions test last year, but we take the regions this spring. So, um, all of this data is available on the New York State Department of Education website. You can look at our trend data over the last few years and see how we're performing and how we perform against other districts in Olster County and how our what our percentile is in um schools and districts across the state. So, also our graduation rate is always the top in in Olter County. We're we're always in the in the top tier with that, too. Uh I think last year we had a 90 95% graduation rate and this year we're looking at at a 93% graduation rate. So to answer your question, I think you're getting a good return on your investment. Uh you can see students that graduate Rondout or on the college and career readiness path. You can see if if you go to, you know, anywhere in the community if Ronda, if they went to Rondout, uh you can see crime rate is really low down here because we have a lot of educated um people in our community that I went to Rondout or went to college or went to the military or went into a trade. So, we feel like we're not only giving you a return on investment, we feel like once they enter our school system and leave our school system, they're not only ready that year, but I think they're ready for for

the future and beyond. So, just look at what we're doing in the community. Look at look at all the metrics that are taking place. You can see I feel like everyone has a very well educated community and I think everyone's going to happy with the product um that we're that we're creating for you.

How about ranking nationally though? Where do we stand in comparison to other states? I don't know that off the top of my head, but again, every states have different metrics. I mean, you have to look at like SAT, ACT, NATE testing that's given to like all of this, but like our state test doesn't align with Florida's or doesn't align with California, but that's you want to look at I I always look at regionally how we how are we how we how do we rank with Olter County districts and then I would start branching out. How do we rank with districts in New York State? And you know, you look at those metrics, regions test, state testing, and our graduation rate. Thank you. Um are you do you have a few minutes to just take a couple questions from the town board? Sure, absolutely. Um any questions?

I have I have a few. Um what are the demograph population demographics for school age for pupil age students going forward? Does that trend into them? So in Ronda right now our demographics that that we currently serve student demographics we're about 85% white caucasian. know I mean what populationwise what what do the projections look like for pupils enrollment next year enrollment oh what's enrollment next year you mean numbers or dem what do the demographic trends look like you know the decline is it flattening is it increasing

it's it's the same that you talk about like like a like race like you're talking about like Hispanics population talking about enrollment. Okay. Enrollment. Okay. Great. Okay. See, when I when you say demographics, I'm thinking white, Hispanic, African-American. I was thinking the same.

Yeah. That's what demographics are. Okay. Good. Thank you. I was think I'm hearing it right. Okay. So, um we are our enrollment is projected to is declining. Uh I showed you that visual and we're projected to have maybe possibly 100 students enter enter kindergarten next year. Uh in years past if you guys went to Rhonda back you had a graduating class of what 240 250 now we have kids coming in at at about 100 students per grade level and then um you're looks like you're using up 4.4 million of your fund balance this year. What is the remaining balance for that? For the fund balance our reserves will uh be about $6 million.

Does that include reserves or is that just fund balance? That's just reserves. fund balance. We won't we're basically using all of it uh that we were going to have left over. We may have a little bit left over at the end, but I we won't have you're allowed by state regulation to have 4% remaining at the end of the year. We're using a good amount of it. I'm hopeful that we'll have 4% because that's how we keep generating that reinvestment every year. And that means that we're actually being fiscally responsible when it comes to our spending choices. But for right now, I'm going to say we're using it all.

We're breaking even. And when I asked about uh parcel numbers um in terms of the allocation of the um tax levy amount of towns in the district um what when you said parcel numbers rather than valuation the number of parcels does that mean that um a town with 100 acre parcels um has a lower percentage of the levy than a town that might be the exact same size that has a thousand that has one acre verses.

I guess that's a two-part question, right? So, back to you. It depends on like so for example, the town of Warsing I would consider probably pretty rural, right? The town of Warsing um plays only 4% of the levy, but we only have so many parcels within there. So, it's a number of parcels that we tax within each town. So, if it's densely populated, we tax more because there's more people. So it is more about the number of parcels not the size of the parcels or the value of the parcels. But I think it's tied to total value of those. Yes. Exactly. Um it's just

right. So Barnable Town is 100 million $100 million value and we're $50 million value. They would pay more because the total value of their parcels is actually theoretically you said that's actually what takes place tomorrow. So then it's value it's not number it's value but I mean you generate more value with more properties but it's value it's not number of purchases I I well the chart combination

the chart was the 30% versus like I guess the question that the board was having is how did those p are those percentages the same every year or do those percentages get set with um the the final role.

They may fluctuate by a percent here or there, but they they do not change much at all. Every year we Marble Town has always been the most the the largest paying tax uh entity in our but we have the most number of property of land. I guess that you know like the the the taxing map is the largest for Marble Town. It's not just the values of the houses in Marble Town. It's it's also the number of houses.

Um I appreciate you guys coming down here and walking us through this. I'm curious in terms of your your pie chart and your breakdown of the budget. How does this compare how you're allocating administrative capital program compared to other districts in Olster County? Is that reasonable? 75% on program, 10% administrative. Are we high on administrative and

um I think we're on par with our neighboring districts for certain. uh program is always going to be the largest part of your budget because it should be right. We're an education uh entity. We should be spending the most amount of money to educate kids. So our students and and the like. So um you may see uh maybe 70% in another district, but it's always going to be much larger than half of their budget goes to program. We're in the range of we're in the same range as our our neighboring districts. Yes. And then as Mr. Dun uh suggested, you know, we can calculate the cost per student. I'm curious if you have a target cost per student where we stand.

Yeah, we definitely you see with our cost per expenditure, it's up there. It's worth second in Olter County. So, we definitely want to get that cost per pupil down at least in the median of Olter County. I mean that's something that we're doing when you saw that chart when we start continuing to with the declining enrollment the declining staff you know the two biggest um ex expenditures in a district is is the salaries and and and francees and insurance right staff that's your biggest expenditures in a district is the human capital and uh our last two years you can see we are trying to match our staff enrollment um with our student enrollment in in decline and that should be a a better ratio than what we have now. Uh we said we've been here two years and we're continue to we're we're continuing to chip away in it. We're hoping that cost per pupil, you know, gets gets within the median range inst.

You know what median is? It's probably 35. No, about 30,000, I would say. 30. We're at like 38. We have a chart we did in the big presentation that they probably saw. We just didn't want to take up too much time. And it's online. That budget presentation is is online with our with our standard costbook. I just got one more. your sports. How how many um teach you have in sports? Your sports. All your sports. How many sports do we have? Sports directors. How many? We have one athletic one athletic director coaches. How many co all that are paid? Yeah. Uh they get stipens. I think if you're a head head like varsity coach, it's a $5,500 stipend. And then if they're also teachers, also practice, right?

Yeah. Some are teachers, some are community members. Just depends who who applies for the position. I mean, they built the football field. The school was ranked oh one two back in 2000 and he went steadily down. It never came back. It was gone back. That was a big waste of money build that field. Yeah, that was part of the $60 million capital project. Yes. Way over budget. And the cost of maintenance of that field is waste of money. It's cheaper to maintain grass than that field. I built them. It's way over money. That's way over budget to build that place. That's cold. We don't have an athletic department and running school. It's not that good.

It isn't. I mean, it is a beautiful facility. We do host a lot of lot of when Kinks was not running. We they're using our field. Did we get any donations to keep it up, maintain it? We do charge for people to use a facility. They rent they rent the football field off us, right? We do charge. Yes. So does that help with the tax on it? Like anytime we get revenue, it always always will help the taxpayers. Yeah. Okay. So, but those things those are numbers got to be watched where if this doesn't work for the sports and stuff, it can't go to the budget. It's a waste of money.

Um, so I'll close out with the questions. Thank you for coming here. Um, I have uh two questions for you. One very practical. Can I share your PowerPoint on the town website? Absolutely.

Okay. And my second question, um, because everyone asked such good questions and, um, many of which I had sort of had on my list for you, so I won't repeat them again. Um, on the topic of taxing assessments, revenue, I'm curious to hear whether or not you'd be willing to discuss ways that we can together go to the county to discuss the way the IDA is um issuing pilots because I know I for one feel that we should have more say, especially given how much. I sympathize with the budgetary constraints that you have and the revenue that we have to raise through tax dollars and how difficult it is to constantly be making decisions between um a rock and a hard place it feels and the burden that that puts on our residents. I understand the concept behind pilots, but it does really impact what like how the taxes are distributed. So, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. I know that you came to the public hearing on one of them and whether or not we could talk about ways that we could um maybe see if we could have a voice together on that.

Absolutely. We love the collaboration because I know we we would all benefit from it, you know, with with having, you know, industry come in. Uh it it'll help us out. You know, it helps us out in some ways, in some ways it doesn't, but I think it's a good it's a good talking point to say, you know, is this going to if these businesses and pilots come in, is it going to help the town of Rochester and how will it also benefit, you know, the school district?

Yeah, I we're I'm very much a proponent to talking about things other than pilots. like pilots can exist but at a smaller level if they want to invest in the community or in the school. So that's I always like to have a discussion with the business if we can and that's why we came that can you invest in the school because what they get on a pilot actually comes out of the tax levy. So we don't levy for the piloted amount. Um and that can be uh hurtful for our ability to keep maintain but they can do an education contribution instead of a pilot and that you know benefits them because they're not have to pay know all their taxes up front but also benefits us because we're we're getting that revenue the revenue. Yeah. So I definitely would be a willing partnering. Okay, for I'd love to follow up you maybe after the budget. Please do. Yes, reach out. We love

collaboration. But yeah. Okay. Thank you

and thank you for having us and again moving forward. We hope to be here for a long time. We would love to come here every year or have us whenever you need us to talk about things. Uh because we probably will be going out to the community in December to approve that EPC. That's it'll be a 2.1 million savings and won't have a tax impact uh on the community. But we always have two focuses when we develop a budget. First, we have to protect student programs. We got to make sure that students, you're getting a good return on your investment. I know I'm sure some of you may have grandkids or or kids that have gone to the school district. We'll make sure they have creative innovative programs that we offer. And the second point, we always focus on when we develop the budget. We got to be fiscally responsible to to our taxpayers.

One question, one one thing, the school budget's going up, but now we don't have school books to pay for it. We got these computers. Where where did that money go from? Well, we have no more books at school, so that's cheaper. We have the book, the little computers. We actually purchase them through Boseies and get a return on those purchases. And we have a schedule just like I know used to buy books. Yeah. Paper. Now we don't spend money on that stuff, believe it or not. Question. Where's that savings on that? We still do buy books. There is some textbooks. There's actually new programs. We have new questions about that. I know they do a lot of Chromebooks now. Thank you. You You definitely said more than

No, we're happy to have these conversations. Thank you, Pam. All right. So, moving on to our next agenda item. We have the public comment uh portion of our meeting where we allow members of the public to address the board. Um so uh this is not a question and answer session. It was really nice to have a question and answer session but this period of the meeting is not a question and answer session. So um we do ask that if you want to hear any board responses that just stick around for town board member time where we may address some of the comments made. Um do did we have a sign sheet?

I do have. Okay. There's nobody on it. Okay. All right. So, is is anyone here who would like to address the board? I would. Okay.

I just want to say thank you very much. Whoever if it was the entire board, Erin, if it was you, Michael, Kate, whoever it was, I think this was a grand idea. I'd like to see more of it. This is fantastic because no good can come without communication. And this honestly is the first communication I've had besides with Deb Barbarino. I know her as Debbie Troying because we went to school together. Just small side issues with the district. But to have the superintendent and the assistant superintendent to come out, I think this is fantastic. We certainly need to continue this dialogue and I'm going to throw you a huge kudo of what you just closed with. absolutely correct. Getting them on board for issues like this IDA is spot on. So I appreciate that as a taxpayer and a resident. I I believe in giving credit where credit is due. So I applaud you for that and thank you very much for doing that. With that um I haven't been seeing enough of my wife, so I could usually consider it rude not to stay for the entire meeting, but please excuse me because I need to go home and spend some family time. So, um, again, I apologize for that, but, uh, maybe some of you will say, "Thank God." Thank you. Thank you very much and thanks for doing this this evening. Thanks, T.

Would anyone else like to address the board?

Yeah. Have one thing I've noticed. Um, I'm going off topic here with the the school budget. Um all of our a lot of our committees especially qualitative judicial committees have a spot that has an alternate there available to step in in the event of something happening somebody not making a meeting somebody not qualified or has to recuse themselves from some type of application. Um, was there ever any consideration for and I know it's a question for considering an alternate position for the board of assessment review because I don't see anything available for that in the event that somebody comes down sick for that one day and I think it would be imperative to have something like that because we could end up with the one day of B and that one person can't make it and now we're stuck between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go with. So I just want to present that board as an option, something to think about.

Okay. Yes.

Um yeah, first of all, thanks for the presentation about the school. Um appreciate that and the question and answer session. Um I'm here to talk about the assessment. Um so yeah, a couple things. Partly because there my understanding is there's a deadline coming up for the tenative assessment to be filed. Um and uh so I wanted to make sure to yeah go on the record before that kind of gets locked in. Um and first of all as you well I also want to mention that um which I forgot to mention the last time that you all have mentioned before about like you know there's nobody here when all the sort of general grunt work is going on the often unglamorous work of doing these meetings and then when there's an issue then people come and they participate. Um I totally understand that. I've been on boards and committees before and you know it's all invisible until there's an issue and then suddenly everybody has an opinion. So I understand that and I appreciate that. Um that being said there really is as you know an issue with this assessment um in terms of we've talked ad nauseium or you've heard ad nauseium about the issues with GAR but most notably with the assessor arbitrary and comprecious um the whole let's make a deal system of giving assessments no written methodology no standardized methodology which um I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before but there is the possibility of corruption there's no possible way of knowing what these assessments are based on. Are is there any favor trading or influence? Um, so those are some real serious issues. Um, and I guess from my perspective, like I think about when I've, you know, done service before or like why somebody would be on a town board and I guess I can think of like two reasons. One is maybe to do good and to do something for the community. And in terms of doing something good, I mean there really is an issue here. There's like a real this

is a crisis basically. And so there's a crisis is opportunity. And so if if you are on the board to do something good, then this is a chance to do some real good and address it. I mean, and the board does have authority to take actions. Based on my research, the board could even remove the assessor, at least hold a hearing, talk to OTPS, appoint an alternate assessor. I don't know all the options but my understanding is that the board could take action because as the hiring of the person that appointed the assessor um it does have the ultimate authority. The second thing for what reason I can think of why somebody would be on a board and of course it could be a mixture of both is you know for personal interest you know political career or to have power or something like that. So if it were me, I would also think, hey, this is a real crisis. This is an opportunity for me or the board as part of my brand or our brand to really own something, to really have something that we could solve and get ahead of and own. I mean, the campaign materials basically write themselves. Um, you know, there've been numerous articles in the newspaper about all the issues with the town of Rochester assessment. Instead of it being something that could be like a source of embarrassment or problems or litigation or whatever it might be, it could be an opportunity to have something that's really positive and responsive, you know, and so then that would be something to run on in the future, maybe even a springboard to other office or even, you know, along whatever it might be, whatever those reasons might be. So I guess from my perspective I if it were me and there were this deadline coming up and I understood about these these uh the challenges and things like that or you know even was mentioned before like personal liability and things. If it were me I would take a lot of action try to get ahead of it. I mean we know the problem is the assessor. Uh if it were me I would really investigate what could

be done to solve this problem. um and then use it to my advantage and also feel good about the good I have done for the community. So that's that's what I would do. Um and you know, as we've heard for the last several weeks, people have come and they've talked about what the issues are and the response from the board has for the most part been, "You're confused. You don't understand. You're confused. You just don't understand." And I just want to say that I'm not confused about the assessment process, but I am truly confused about why the board is responding the way it is and why it isn't solving the problem. I'm truly confused as to why there isn't. We heard what you said. We did all the research. Here's what the plan is. Here's how we are going to address this. I truly do not understand that. So yes, I am confused about that. And again, as I mentioned, my understanding is there's a deadline of the tenative role being filed. So, I would again request the board to respond differently while there's still time.

Would anyone else like to press the board? Um, Barbara. Yep. I totally disagree with that that gentleman. This is not a crisis. This is something that's been in the making for 35 years that I've lived here. As far as the assessor, the assessor is doing what he's supposed to do. Like every other town does assessments. As it was stated in the paper, we have not done assessment in this town in years. So, uh to say it's a crisis, the town put out information last year about the assessments coming up. Now, why am I coming to every meeting? Because I realize that it is my personal responsibility to be informed, to be involved. Because if I don't, then I have nothing to say is the way I look at it. Like you said, how many people are here? Hardly any. Why aren't they packing every single meeting like they did that last meeting that I was at where you put it with standing room only? So, I totally disagree. I totally agree. This is not a crisis. I knew this was going to happen someday in this path. When you have people not bu you're building with no building permit, you're putting structures on your thing, not reporting it. You're what do you think? You're not going to get caught at some point. So, I totally disagree. This is not a crisis. This was a long time in the making

and I don't feel this is the assessor at all. He's only doing what you're supposed to do in a New York State recess assessment that they do in every single other town. So, I totally totally disagree with that. And I'm sorry that I had to like I didn't think I was going to say anything, but it's like no. It's like this has gotten so out of hand. There's things in the paper that people are lying about saying there's only 30 properties that were reduced when it was not. You have people saying that the assessors going and lowering their taxes when they go in to buy just an appointment. They're not. I've lived in this town for 35 years. When they're going to tell people in an election that they're going to tell you how many kids you can have, you can't burn firewood, and how many, you know, you can't do this and that, and Pam Duke loses an election because people in the town believe that. There is so much gossip and crazy stuff that goes on in this town. So, I'm going to be here at every meeting. I think people need to get involved. And if you want to have something to say, then you need to be here listening, involved, and knowing what's going on.

Jerry, thank you. We'll go past that.

Couple matters, one of which I already brought up to the board before involving my official position as um emergency management director and assisting or trying to assist our firefighters, our volunteer firefighters. a couple issues has come or been brought forth to me that I'm requesting that the board possibly inquire of our attorney to find out that if we're able to in fact supplement by way of fuel with the excessive amounts of fuel we're paying cost right now for our firefighters because it was brought to my attention that if somebody in fact claims under the New York State IT201 form the $200 deduction then and again I'm asking this because I'm not an attorney but our attorney should know that and if she doesn't know that she should be able to find that out. So I'd like to know if spinning my wheels because this is now the third meeting I'm going to but this is of importance because I'd like to see this through and help our firefighters but I also want to make sure what we are doing is on the up and up and totally legal to do. So it was just brought up that there might be a conflict there. Um, so I would request anybody from the board or any all of you to possibly look into that. So that enough said for that. Um, and you can get back to me whenever. The other thing I'd like to just bring up as a as a private issue here is this circular that came through residential customers from rooted in Rochester.

And it is interesting because I believe the date in which they're looking for a vote for the three priorities of of which I'm not going to go through every one of them, but I found issues with a number of them if not every one of them because it's basically a duplication of what we already have um existing and and especially one of the ones number five involving town code comprehensive plan. Well, you're looking at one of the persons who spent two and a half years working back in 2009 and again 2011 in doing a town plan and zoning and things of such. So, we're constantly updating that. So, I don't know why that would even be put into this matter. But the thing that first stuck out was, again, this might be a legal issue that I would like to bring to our attorney. Um, and that is all of Rochester, this is directly off of this ballot, all of town of Rochester residents 13 years of age or older are eligible to vote. I don't know where they got that, but that is not legal in the United States of America that you can vote. And being as this is money, this is how we will there's going to be funds coming out of this. I understand and I did discuss some of this with Kate that this may be part of that um uh what do you call it? Grant or something that came through. So that's money. That's state money. That's tax money. That's tax dollars. And putting something like that here that you are permitted to vote if you're 13 years of age. Uh, I don't think so. And again, I'm speaking not as an attorney, but I would

wish that this be determined before the 15th of May because um, there might be some legal issues and I might be one that would bring legal issue to that. Um, a number of the other things in here are are interesting to include. I don't know where the people who are so rooted in the community um that are using places like for arts and music festivals and they're saying hosted at venues like teders or skate time. Teders is in the town of olive. So, we're not even talking about something within our town, but this is a this money has been put forth to be utilized from what I understand for our town use. So, there's an issue there. And skate time was already brought to a real head a few years back in which it was pulled from being voted on because that was going to be the purchase of that building and so forth, which of course it since has been purchased and whatever they're doing there, I assume by seeing the vehicles in a parking lot, it's doing well. It's doing well as a business. And the last thing as far as that one that number one question or or thing to look for to vote, we also had a local business owner come here to know and there was a lot of different comments being brought up, but one of those persons uh was the owner of At Speedway in which that person put forth and I can remember myself, my wife and daughter were here and we all spoke that if they were looking to do some different or he I should say was looking to do some different music venues and things like that and this was all knocked down but

excuse me now I see it right here and I'm going this is a local person with a business with a large piece of property has nothing to do with so you don't have to like racing cars or other things like that or noise or such because it's asking for the different types and I found this interesting um a music festival based on be well raise hell. It's exactly what it says here. I don't think Mr. Palmer was talking about raising any kind of hell at a country music type festival or otherwise. Um so I am simply asking the board and I'll let it go at that. Would you please whoever put this thing together, they need to do a little bit more homework I think on that. And I trust this board that you will find out. And again, I'd like to know who came up with 13 years of age is a legal age to vote for something in which our funds are being spent.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to address the board? Yes. Thanks. Well,

I just have to note I'm not a great public speaker, but um so last week I spoke also and uh I'm kind of open with basically that I don't think any of you guys are trying to do like something bad here. Like I think that you want to do good. This is my impression. Um I I don't think that you want people to be negatively impacted by this uh rebound. Um, and when I left last week, I was just thinking I was like what I saw, I felt sort of uh in in um like uh endorsed that uh perspective. What I saw was you were like very excited about this toilet that had gotten installed in the park. I was like, that's not something that is super glorious, but you know, that's if you care about people, that's something that you would be happy about. And then I saw this other board member who's not here offering her time to write grants. If anybody has written grants, they're a huge pain. It's like a lot of work. And so I was thinking about those things and I was like, you know, I'm seeing like competing things here. One is evidence that like you guys are invested and trying to do good, but then also sort of being kind of deaf, I guess, to to what people are saying. There are a lot of people saying things to you um about the assessment. Um so, uh anyway, a lot of people with concerns is what I'm trying to say. So, um, like this guy just said, um, I understand that there is a week before

the tentative role is filed. At that point, something something. It's on the official record, but until that point, you guys have some ability. There is some action that you can take to withhold that or stop that from being uh put on the record officially. um after after that happens there there's nothing you can do. Um so I guess that's one week away and what I'm saying is as people who care about the people that you represent. Um I I this seems like a great opportunity to demonstrate to your community that uh you care and similarly to what Devon said in a way that is really impactful to to the community like the people are here the people are here I mean not that many today but people are showing up and they are speaking um about something that is really important when it's important people show up right So, I don't know how many people are as excited about the toilet, but anyway, I digress. Um, one thing slightly slightly separate but related. One thing that um was highlighted as um like a an advantage or a a big positive for hiring GAR was that um my understanding is that they were able to do like a huge um they were able to get a lot of data in a short amount of time. And the the advantage of that is that it's like a snapshot, right, in time as opposed to the assessor going out to like every different house, you know, um, you know, over the course of like two years at which point the

data in the rebal would be some of it old, some of it new. Okay. Um, so I understand that that is one of the advantage. What I'm wondering though is like what was he doing up until Gar did all the work, all the heavy lifting like was he doing any assessments? I that is something I am confused about. Um, another thing is I heard him say, this is a quote, uh, my job as the assessor is to treat all owners fairly and to ensure all assessments are up to date. But one of the reasons that this is such a big rebal is that um again, as I understand, we're at an equalization rate of 53% and we're supposed to be at 100%. The whole aim of this is to get to 100%. Um again, I'm just sort of like, what has he been doing? Like if he his stated goal is to make sure that everything is up to date, how has it gotten to 53%. You know what I mean? Um I'm confused about that. So um those are kind of like these two things. Not only am I confused about them, but I'm also just like what what has he done? And have you as as the people who are responsible for maybe not resp I don't know exactly but you guys are in charge. Um like how are you evaluating his performance you know? Um so let me see.

Um I guess yeah just to kind of close um well just follow up on that is that he kind of you know sherked his duties perhaps um for years pawned off the responsibilities to another entity that was expensive um and now he's you know giving giving people $100,000 off, $14,000 off without even like looking at things um or maybe looking at things, who knows? I'm I'm like if I speak out, is he going to give me like a worse deal? You know, that's like a legitimate fear. Um but uh so so now he's doing something that is not treating people fairly which is as I said his own stated goal is that his his view of what his job is right which I imagine is what you also feel that he should be doing. So anyway, um I guess just to kind of wrap it up, um I just want to come back to this like May 1st date and just ask that you do something about that. That's one week away, right? You have seven days to do something and I would really like to see something happen basically. Thank you. Yes. Yeah.

Can we use this grant to help our town like in an audit over top of this assessor to not do his job? Hire an accountant to go through the books where everything's going. Where's the tax money coming from? What' you say? Where's the money to pay for that person? Everything. Well, this this saying, can we use that grant money to help us instead of coming with more tax money, take this grant to hire the accountant to go through the books? I I'll address that when we get to the town board time. That's all I'm asking. Would anyone else like to address the board? I we'll go with someone who hasn't spoken. Um Sarah Dylan.

Yeah. So, I totally agree with Devon and some other people that spoke. I totally disagree with what she said. It is a crisis. The fact that the reassessment was done is not a problem. It's the results and the number of errors. That's what the huge problem is. It's obvious the assessor didn't do any sanity checking. There is crazy numbers which he should have if he just did a check of the 10 most expensive properties and the 10 least expensive properties, he would have seen errors. But obviously he couldn't have done that. um the assessor is making deals and he's and again I say he's not doing his job. I've had two different offers of assessment reduction before he even hears my questions or concerns. Um but he won't fix errors on my property cards and in fact I have three different property cards and I have no idea which one is being used. The one online is a handwritten card from the year 2000 when I bought my property. I had to go into the assessor's office and ask him for the official property card. He printed it out for me. Then on Monday and I found more errors than I saw on the online stuff that was did because there's more information on your property card than they post on Progar or Beac. Monday, I looked at my link, and there was a third property card up there, which I saved and printed out, which is a good thing that I did because today that one has disappeared and it's gone back to the handwritten product from 2000. What is he doing? He, you know, he's not doing his job. He's not giving the information to the taxpayers. He's he's changing things left and right. You know, I had a question about neighborhoods. One property card says I'm neighborhood 4. One property card

says I'm neighborhood one. I have no clue. Like, it's just like the data isn't there. I don't know if the one he printed out his office was one that he was going to do to make a deal with me and the one that appeared online might have been the real one and then he took that down because I also noticed that my neighbor had a new one and today that one's gone as well. Like they're switching back and forth. Um, you know, and I have not remotely even considered accepting any of his deals because I'm really worried about giving up my rights to fight as I find more errors on what they base my assessment on. I have spent the last two weeks I have read the New York State Assessor's Manual. I've learned all the different codes. I have found more errors that I wouldn't have known of about unless I read the assessor's manual. I've read the board of assessment review manual to know what I should expect and and you know it's the burden is on us. But if we're if they're hiding all the data, how are we supposed to fight anything? We don't even know what was used to do this assessment. Um, yeah. So, that's my rant for now.

Let me clarify. Different property cars. Is that on the GAR site or is that on the Beacon site? I don't see any property card on the GAR site. I just see some data when you said something was changing. So, it's on the Beacon site. Okay.

When there's a link that says your property card. I clicked on that link previously and it was this handwritten card from 2000 that just basically has maybe the deed and has the number of acres. It has no other information. And so I went into the assessor's office. He printed out the fancier one, the modern one. And then Monday there was the modern one in that link. And luckily I saved it and printed it out because today it was gone and it's back to the 2000 handwritten card on the beacon site. On the beacon site. Thank you.

And same thing with my neighbor. I showed him that there was a new property card. I printed it out his and saved his and emailed it to him. And today that's gone as well. It's back to his original. I think he purchased his property in 2000 as well and I think it's back to that one as well. Someone had their hand up back here maybe. No. Uh, has every Clayton?

Yeah, everybody else is gone. Um, I'm trying to sit here. I wanted to ask it originally. Trying to figure out how do I how do I put this in form of a statement rather than a question. I can't come up with one. So, I'm just going to ask it. Um, in August of 2025, the assessor was appointed by the board. What was the term he was appointed for? What was the length? So, I guess it goes back to how long are we going to have to deal with this with a slated assessment also happening in I believe 2029. Will the board take action so that we don't have to face this in the for in the future? I I don't really know how to present that without it being the question. So,

all right. Has everyone had a chance to address the board? Okay. So, I'll go ahead and close um the public comment portion of the meeting. Um now it's town board member time. I do have a lot of clarifying information that I'd like to share. My general um practice is to let the town board go first, but I would like to start by clarifying what the rooted in Rochester um mailer was just because it sounds like there's a lot of misunderstanding about what that was and what it represents

and I I think I probably know the most about that than anyone at the table. Um so that campaign um is a communityoriented project that is the project itself is a community organizing project with the goal of engaging the community and consensus building and generating ideas and thinking about community projects and solutions. It was started last year. Um, it's funded by not a taxpayer funded grant. It's funded by a private grant that was meant for this type of work that is meant to teach non uh officials but community members how to do um some organizing work. So that survey is for that project. It is not tied to the town budget. It is not tied to taxpayer dollars. The vote is not a promise to make any purchases. There was an email that went out that was forwarded to me that made it sound like this the Reval and this Ruden of Rochester survey are connected and this is voting on the budget. It's absolutely false um information. This is uh the the town has a statemandated budget process that we go through that's 100% public and as people have brought up uh we have these very public open discussions about everything that we want to do in town for um August, September, October and November of every year and this is not part of that. So, um there were months of uh community meetings and open um

events that um the organizer um put together. And it culminated in an event where people submitted ideas that were going to go on this ballot and that the town could vote for to see what are the things that the whole town is interested in seeing in their community. not what is what are people interested in seeing taxpayer dollars be spent on? So, it's not tied to any of that. Now, some if we if they came back and said, "Hey, 500 people voted for a new comprehensive plan." Well, that would be some really nice feedback for the town board to get, but it's not a decision or it's not there's no decisions, budgetary decisions being made by this mailer. So, um I thought I feel personally like it was very irresponsible and um uh upsetting that the word was uh that the messaging got out that this was um connected to the Reval when there was absolutely no information uh to make anyone believe that that was the case. that those two concepts got put together and um I I feel for the people who have been organizing this project who were sent um who are forwarded those emails but just know that we no budgetary decisions are ever made in this way and nor can they be made in this way. Um and there's no nothing in that literature about even about spending taxpayer dollars. So um it's more about uh what we see even now community organizing people coming together and this group is organizing around you know um positive community solutions that can

bring people together. That's what that's what they're doing and that's what that represents. And maybe they'll come to the board and they're probably going to share the results of that with us but it's not a binding decision. um to raise the um the tax levy or to spend money. So the vote that is mentioned on that page is just about who they're saying should can vote on that ballot. it. That's a non-binding, non-legal um just, you know, more informative um not not an official vote of of anything um that has any legal um or budgetary um results. So, with that, um I have other things that if you guys don't get to for clarifying, um but is there anything that you would like to share?

Just keep going. You want me to keep going? Um, well, I think one thing that I just uh I wanted to address um I I'll try to lump these things by category. Um the uh our assessor was appointed to a full term in um starting October 1st, I believe, 2025, and it's a six-year term. Um assessors are public officials that are certified by New York State, and can only be removed for just cause. So just like other workers um there are uh rights and laws that um there are protections put in place. So there the we these are not the assessor is not an atill employee. Um before this term our assessor had been appointed in 2021 and was a part-time assessor. He was uh we had a shared services agreement between the town of Rochester, the town of Rosentale, and the town of Marbletown. So, we had a part-time assessor um and uh one other position in the assessor's office. And um so he was in the office 20 hours roughly a week or less depending on what he was doing in the different towns. um and came to the board every year and asked to um increase staff so that he could um continue to work on doing the work of assessment in the town. Um and what was he doing while Gar was doing all the

work? Well, um the GAR was hired to assist the assessor in the process. So every thing that was um happening all of last year in terms of uh the property data cards that are on record that are physical cards in the assessor's office were all um organized and processed and sent to GAR. So everything that they started with was the physical card for each property. Um that's what that first mailing was based on. um you know just being in the office uh you know the the assess he was working there's a lot of other things that go into assessment um I also wanted to say that if any anything that's happening on the beacon site has nothing to do right now the assessor is has no control over what's going on on the beacon site that is Olter County so Olter County has their own um staff that oversee that site. When the tenative when the final role is filed, that site gets updated, but I don't know what we can I can ask them what's going on, but um that doesn't right now that doesn't have anything to do with the process we're going through because the beacon site does not get updated until the until after grievance day. Um so that reflects final numbers, not tentative or preliminary numbers. So, I don't know what's going on. They It is a new site. And I also know that there have been a lot of frustrations with um state and county agencies in terms of how they're receiving our information and this how they're um getting back to towns on on doing some of this work because we do have to coordinate with them. But there

shouldn't be any changes to that site based on what's happening here. Um, so I just wanted to clarify that. Um, I also, you know, I think there are a lot of claims that the assessor is quote unquote cutting deals. Um, and I am not sitting in on every single conversation, but I have a very good understanding of what's happening. And um I think using language like cutting deals or accusing someone of um corruption based on people's perception of a deal being cut is not something that I can sign on to or um make any decisions off of in the position that I'm in. I've sat there and watched some of these conversations and there are very it's a data model and when you put an adjustment in there is a very quick determination of how that impacts the uh valuation of a property. So, um saying I can I can lower that by $20,000 maybe that's the language that the assessor is using but he's not just um making a choice based on who's walking in the door. that has been what I have seen. So I just want to clarify that that we also have a lot I've heard from a lot of people that have had very positive experiences that they are positively impacted by this process that they have a better understanding of what assessments are and what this means. So I think there are different perspectives that we see. Um and I just wanted to share that I also hear the perspectives that everyone is sharing and um that you know we do watch and listen to everything and we consider and we look

into everything um that everything basically we're going back and we're doing research. That doesn't mean though this claim that the town board can do something about filing the tenative role is that it's not something that um this isn't something that a town board can do. So there's a lot of um statutory decisions that um really show that um that only is basically something that the state can interfere with. Um, so I just I wanted to try to clarify some of the the some of the information that's being shared because I you know, everyone talks about wanting to know facts and I think that there are, you know, when we I' we've been getting accused at the last couple meetings of talking down to people by saying that this is complicated. And I just want to say that I'm not saying that to talk down to anyone because I think it's complicated. I think this is complicated. I think it's hard to understand. And to me, that's not an insult. That's just to recognize that like this is a town of 5,000 parcels with lots of varying everything. And there's a lot of factors that go into this. There's a lot of factors that go into the tax levy, the school tax, the assessments, multiple towns in a single taxing district to so to say that when we say this is complicated, I don't think I've heard anyone at this table look into the audience and say you don't understand. I don't think I've heard anyone say that. So, but you may have heard us say, well, yeah, this is really complicated because from where I'm sitting, I think it's complicated. Um, and that's not I'm not

trying to insult or belittle anyone when I say that because that's how I feel about this topic for myself. Um, so I wanted to clarify those things and I also wanted to share that I have reached out to our state legislators and there is some um really positive state legislation about um volunteer uh firefighters and increasing the tax credit they get. Um, and I'm hoping to have conversations with both Oberacer and mayor's office in the next couple weeks. I told them that this was a priority for our community and um, Oberacer in particular, this is one of his um, this is one of his priorities also. So, I think we can really um, capitalize on that um, as well. So, Did you have anything you wanted to share?

Well, you covered for me covered a lot of it. Um, I'm not in town hall uh every day. I'm probably there more than some people would like, but I I can echo what Erin was saying. I've the experience I've had when I've talked to people uh who have met with the assessor is that it was informative. It was a good conversation. I know some people haven't been happy, but for the most part, and this includes when we had sessions and and people were coming in with questions and not understanding things and then having met with the assessor, their questions were clarified. So, um I know there are always things that people can improve on. I think uh I know that Aaron is con is constantly having conversations with staff looking at different ways to improve communications um looking at ways to make staff more accessible to people. Uh I have not seen any evidence of corruption. Uh I think it's it's a hard job. I think they're doing a good job of it. And I want to emphasize again, you know, this is an ongoing process. This is something that's not May 1st is not a terminal date. Um that is a tenative role. As a board we file a tenative budget and that's one phase in a budget. It's not the final budget. It has to go through multiple reviews and gets modified beyond that. Same is true for the tenative role. Yes, it gets published. Yes. Yes. It's a document that is is publicly available. Uh but the purpose of that is so that people can go in look at the role and uh have conversations and prepare if necessary for grievance day. Um, I mean to me this is this is a a process with a lot of checks and balances and I think we're in one initial phase right now. When the tenant enroll comes out, we'll be in another phase where you can have conversations with the assessor directly. You can uh potentially sign I can't remember stipulation. Um, if you do get changes to your property, if that doesn't work, you go in front of a board of five

members of community. You can ask them uh provi you know provide your data to them and they can potentially um make a change. If you disagree with them, you can go through the SCAR process and go in front of an arbitrator and actually present the case to them and they can make a decision. If you don't like their decision, you can go and you can actually file the word that I can't say soiori blah blah blah and and try and talk to a judge about it. So um there are multiple opportunities beyond May 1st to actually ensure that the data is correct and you could do the whole thing again next year. So I I think you know I've been highlighting to people the role that gets file filed this year this happens every year. So if somebody isn't able to get a change this year or if something changes in their property a structure is no longer there um they can come back in and talk to the assessor next year and make a change to that. So this is just a continuous process and I think you know as a board we're all very invested as people have mentioned and I appreciate them saying that in ensuring that this is done properly that we're listening to people that we're making ourselves available to people. When I look at things that I can do that's those are the kinds of things that I focus on. We've been having sessions on the weekends. I wish they were better attended. Sometimes we have a lot of people here. Sometimes it's it's one or two like our our board meetings. Um I tell people to call me. I've had a few people call me. I've talked to them directly. I've had emails. Uh and so we're we're trying to make sure that we're communicating as much as possible uh with people. And if there are things that I could be doing better, I'll take that feedback uh as well. So I'm always looking for ideas on on how to talk to more people. Except for Jerry. It's pretty reliable that Jerry and I get to talk. Um, which I always appreciate. Uh, one last thing in terms of the

question about equalization and it is confusing and I I every time I try to explain it to people, I confuse myself even more. But the reason why we are at 53% is because you're constantly chasing the market. And so equalization is something the state calculates. They calculate it based off of sale prices of homes compared to what they're assessed at. So if a home is assessed at $200,000 and it sells for $400,000 and that is the average across the board, your equalization is 50%. So the state is automatically going to add 50% to everybody's school bill across the board based off of that. If it goes up to 800,000 and it's a 200,000 house, they're going to tell you you're at 25% and force you to raise your entire town up. And that's part of why you want to be equalized at 100%. Because when the state does that, that applies to everyone. If you're at 100%, you can change individual parcels based off of a value and make sure that you're not impacting everybody with the same flat percentage that the state is forcing on. So that's why they say you have to continuously do reassessments because the state is going to tell us what our equalization rate is and the school automatically adds that into everybody's school build regardless. So that's um it it's not for lack of trying. It's they get every time a house sells they get information about that. They look at the assessed value. They look at the home value and they have to try and adjust based off of that. So you're always chasing the market when we do that. So, I know it's not what people want to hear, but that's the crazy real estate market that's going on, and that's what's making it really hard for people to afford to live in this town. And those are separate issues that we as a board want to address, but we can't have we can't affect how the state is telling us to apply that to people's parcels. So, I just want to go clarify.

And I remember the I had one more thing that I wanted to say. Um and I hear there are two there's the the feedback we get about the the reval itself and the methodology behind the reval and I understand that is one issue that people are coming to us and the other is affordability and taxation and I'm going to disagree with a little bit with the whole room and find what I think is the perspective that I have by saying I do think we're in a crisis. I do think we're in a crisis. My what the cause of the crisis is might be different from what people in the room are saying, but I do think we're in a crisis. People, if you don't live here, you're not going to be able to get a house here. I mean it the the affordability what we're facing is everyone is getting squeezed from all sides and it's not just the town it this pressure this problem these issues are culminating from everywhere and so I just that is we have we're going to maybe be talking about a little bit tonight like what can we do? But I just I just that was something that I wanted to say that I I do think we're in a crisis, but for me the source of that and the cause of it is um is much deeper than um one single thing. and that I I see that when we see that what you're saying about chasing those market values that that is a symptom of a much bigger

problem and I think we as a board would really want want to steer this ship in a different direction. Um so with that you can end town board member nine one last comment. Um the alternate on the board of assessment review that's uh governed by state law right? Uh we I believe I'm not sure but I think okay that you cannot have one. Yeah I think you can but it has to be in the local law maybe. What were you going to say? I thought you can use a bounding towns board of assessment review. Oh, okay.

So, we'll look into that. But I we t we tend to have alternates for all the ones that we are allowed to by state law. So, um but yeah, we should look at that. We'll look at it. Um I am not presenting my annual financial report. I don't have it in full. It's a it's in a draft. Um I just wanted to share a few things um that there's a lot of discussion about fund balance. Um so we had planned last year to use $300,000 of fund balance. We'd also planned to take on $250,000 of debt. Um and that was revenue. Uh we did not take on the debt. So that was a revenue loss for us. But one of the questions that came up with the school board was about well um this might this is probably more true for the school but would you do you all would doesn't a fund balance only occur when you've overbudgeted for the town? Sometimes we have more revenue than we thought we were going to have. So that actually happened in 2025. we did have more revenue than we planned and we um made up for that $250,000 ban that um which I knew at the time that we once when I was watching the numbers that we didn't need to take that debt on, but it also meant that we only spent $168,000 of fund balance where we had budgeted 300,000. So, um, that makes me feel even better about what we budgeted this year because we did budget to use $250,000 of fund balance. Highway fund um was uh also has had a zero fund balance for a couple of years. Last year, we built it

up um by a little under $100,000 and it looks like we built it up uh a little bit more. So, um I think that that I hear what people are saying about tight budgeting, but it's also not great to have zero in your bank account at the end of the year. Um because there's always unplanned expenditures and sometimes those can bankrupt a town. So, if you don't have enough fund balance, you are at risk of going bankrupt and we really don't want to end up there. So, those are some um some positives that I wanted to share. But um overall, our fund balance level is going down because we appropriated and spent all of our ARPA funding. Um and we have been utilizing fund balance to um to balance our budget. Um so that means that we're not adding to our fund balance every year because we are we are using it in our actual revenue stream. Um the other project I've been working on which you know if I weren't so incredibly busy I think I would find it a little fun. Um the our capital asset um the way we should be doing them is based on actual cost and what I have a record of is replacement cost. So, I've been I've been going through every single capital asset that was more than $2,500 and finding what the town paid for them. Um and so it's it is like very interesting but it means that when I file the annual financial report we will have an explanation for this for the state comproller but our capital assets are going to be really low compared to

what they've been before but that is because it's a methodology change that we're doing it the way the state comproller has um asked for in that report. Um, so I also wanted to share that that that'll be a big question about depreciation. Yes.

Yeah. And there's a schedule that's provided by the state that we use and also how I'm filling in the blanks because I can use current day costs and then depreciate the value and use that to save what the cost would have been. Um, and that also touches on like we the um as the chief fiscal officer of the town, I oversee all the um the town budgeting. I oversee the town taxpayer funding and um every month we have a public report that is posted publicly um and that I give to the board um and then we must submit a f financial report to the state annually that has to be certified by an outside um accountant. So everything we do has multiple sets of eyes looking at it. Um and so there is, you know, there is oversight over our finances. Um and the annual financial report is one really big part of that that's going to get filed by the 30th. So I will share that with the board and we can do a more formal presentation at the May meeting. Um, I'm gonna let the beeping that's been happening is our attorney and I'm gonna let her know that she can Oh, there she is. So, she's going to join us now. Um, so discussion items. Um, see 8:35. Okay. What I for number a we have community preservation advisory um board committee interviews. Um, I wanted to ask the town board how you would like to do those. I think we talked about

scheduling a special meeting for those. So, I wanted to get some um a rough time frame from you so that I can try to schedule that um or we can schedule something. But that way we get it. I want to get something on the calendar in May. um well I think we decided I it's up I let's talk about it

I mean I I don't think that they have um it's not one of those quasi judiciary judicial bodies I think that I don't see any interviews or we did decide we wanted the full board to do the interviews um I mean I I think that since it's the first time that uh this board is in place on the role. Yeah, I agree with that.

I see I like the idea of doing this public. Um I know they're I know they're not the same as the zoning board of appeals or planning board or board of assessment review, but they will be advising future town boards on expenditures of funds. Um I think there's, you know, It's it's good to understand people's backgrounds and their familiarity with open space um you know agriculture of the town itself. I I think that would be valuable to have that be a public process. Um I know it's not necessarily something we do for every board, but I think this is going to be kind of an important board in terms of shaping how the town develops. I don't know the injection like

um we so we got four official um applications for for that committee. So we can put a plug for that committee. So, this committee is the committee that oversees the community preservation plan and makes recommendations to the town board about how to use funds from the um community preservation fund, which is funded by a real estate transfer tax that is on um the upper portion of real estate transactions that are above the median. Um, so we did get our first report of what our first the first month of sales um is a little over $25,000 that will be going into that fund. Um and so it it it will be generating uh revenue um by you know so we there's not not anything in there that we would want to uh we don't need to spend it right away but I think since that is a tax it's not the same as property tax but it is a taxfunded fund and we're um uh going this ad I'm sorry this advisory committee is the one that is going to be making those recommendations to the board on how we should spend that money

in accordance with the plan. So, um that I think it's a very interesting role and we do want um I think we do want a committee that is really representative of the town. Um and we a lot of our neighboring towns did this a couple years before us and we're seeing some of the things that they're doing with their funding. I know that when we did our plan document, we really focused a lot on agriculture. So, I'm hopeful that we can find those with an agricultural background um interested in the committee, but we haven't had anyone with that um applying yet. So, one thing I wanted to do is we did leave we did put take an ad out and we've advertised um a request for applicants. We have a pool of people that have applied or other um boards and commissions and I wanted to do outreach to that pool and see if anyone is interested in applying and you know we can use their resume and maybe they can update their letter of interest um so that we can have I'd like to have at least a full board going into it. Are there are there any ways I mean I don't know have we talked directly to the ad committee and are there any ways to to directly get in touch with farmers and make sure that's they're aware postings?

Yeah, I have two two ways to do that. Okay. Yeah, I was thinking that I would definitely do that. Yeah. Um, okay. Farmer bat signal.

Yeah, farmer bat signal. It's uh you flick your tractor lights. Um, so with that, knowing that we only have four for for that committee um for applicants, when would we want to schedule that special meeting? We have three weeks in between this meeting and our next meeting. second week of May. Might want to do it April 30th. No, I don't want to do it April 30th. Well, that's you're saying a different day that because that's our meeting is the 14th, right? You're saying that same week? No, I mean have a calendar.

May 7th would be the Thursday before. I can't do that. But the week before starts on the fourth week of our meeting is the week of it would be the first Well, we could do it that week. uh the second week of May, we have a meeting that week, but we can schedule a special meeting that week. Um I'm pretty flexible. I could do it either of those weeks, but I can't do it on August 7. Okay. So, we'll look at May and I will see what I can schedule and then I'll call I'll do a supervisor calling a special meeting for that. Perfect. Okay. Anything else on that? I'm sorry I got a little rambly there with that but

nope.

Nope. Okay. Um I did, you know, there's a lot we have a lot of public participation, a lot of public discourse right now. Um I wanted to just open the conversation up to town affordability policy planning. Um this is something that I feel this is the time for us to really um discuss what we've done, what we can do, what we can't do, what we'd like to do. Um I have done a lot of research on like what the best policy initiatives that we can do to um really focus on affordability. We've done a lot of the things that are at our disposal. So like I was really happy to hear that the school increased the income based tax exemptions that are available to us. The town also did that. So we have the senior tax exemption, the persons living with disabilities on a limited income, we have the veterans exemption. So we have all of those. Those are basically the only incomebased exemptions that the town has the ability to implement. STAR and Enhanced Star are state exemption programs. Um, we have special legislation before the state legislature that would allow us to do the same thing that we're doing with the community preservation plan, but with a housing real estate transfer tax. And, you know, when I saw that first report came in, I definitely felt like I would love to see this go to housing. um that the vote on that would be in the June session. So they are going to be convening um next month. So if anything's

happening in committee or in the session, the representatives from both our legislators will get in touch with me. But hopefully the edits we did are all set and it'll move through. But um that vote would pass in June. Then I just want to talk to the board about if that passes and we're able to make moves on that, do we want to try and get um that on the ballot in November?

I think absolutely. Um it doesn't have the same requirement of having like a defined plan for it, right? So it's just mandatory reference. Yeah.

Okay. We we have a bare bones board tonight. But um so the next thing that we've done is we did secure a grant to do a um community housing plan. Um I uh we have there was a delay in getting the agreement moving but that is happening now. So I'll have more information on the timeline for that funding. They have put a very a very short timeline on that. So we have a year to do that project. So once the that contract is executed, we'll really want to be in place to move forward with that

in your post execution.

Yeah. So those two things that community housing plan and the real estate transfer tax I think are really huge projects that um we are very like we're at the forefront of being a municipality that's taking advantage of these tools. Um so I think that's one good thing. Anything that comes of any of this though is probably a couple years out. So, um, I just wanted to open it up to the board and see if there's anything that you've thought of over the last few weeks that you would like to see us focus on to try to address our um, affordability issues in the ways that we can as the town. I mean, one one thing that has or concerned me is while being in town hall, I've heard multiple people come in and say, "I didn't know I was eligible for STAR. I don't know what STAR is." Um, which is it can be a significant amount of money, which we also found out some people get as an exemption. Some people actually get a check

uh depending on when you register for it. So, if you register now, it's it's an actual check that shows up. um in September based off your school budget. And so figuring out outreach particularly for seniors on fixed incomes because they are eligible for enhanced start. Um I I don't know. We just have to make more people aware of that. Yeah, that would be a bigger communications effort than that. Yeah, it could probably be helped when we get our email list back. Yeah. There are people who like I've been eligible for 10 15 years and I didn't know

I have I think that goes to all the exemptions because people weren't aware that other types of property tax exemptions uh existed and I think that the town could be more proactive in in publicizing those. Yeah. And describing what the programs are and eligibility. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I've been I've met a lot of people that um when we look when we're looking at their data and you know I notice they don't have exemptions we like you might be available for these and then to know that the deadline is March 1st. There's that

right but then there's so much time between now and the deadline that I think it gets lost. Like I've talked to a few people that are like, "Yeah, I keep thinking that I'm going to get that in and I keep not getting it in." So I think a really welltimed campaign um that um because now is the time that people really notice it, but the actual application time frame is closer to I think time would be right after they get their school tax bill. Um but then also understanding like when the forms can be filed because I think timing it with that is also um

well also the weekend session model of come down and we'll fill out star application if you don't have it. We'll help you find it fill it out if you have questions and that so this is I'm I'm just adding gonna be adding these to our priority list. So any other thoughts?

I mean the only thing the I mean the housing problem is driven by a lot of things but it's really expensive to build and because it's expensive to build people are building higherend homes and selling them to you know for top dollar. Um, I keep thinking about our economic enterprise overlay law, which I don't like in its current form necessarily, but I wonder if there's a way in which we could have something more like an overlay district that would have would enable higher density along 209 or in certain districts or in the overlay. um if there's a way in which we can encourage developers to build something through incentives that would have a requirement for more affordable housing units or something. I don't know if we can repurpose that law or if that needs to be any longer or if there's any examples in the county that have done that. Okay. Uh, that reminds me. Sullivan County has a exemption that I haven't I don't think we have here where you get like the one that we just passed for the ADU you get for um property your own improvements on your own home which I think I mean I would love to see something like that um because it encourages renovation and use of existing structures and then you get that 10year you get a full exemption on the improvement for 5 years and then it

um so that's something we could maybe like lobby for. Um is it only for the county or is it for the municipalities? The well in Sullivan County and the municipalities have it but I haven't seen that anywhere around here. So I was gonna it's really impactful if the school does it. So you know we have to see what we are able to do and then we have to see if the school will pass it also. Uh that reminded me

the other thing I mean I think the this um the community housing plan technical assistance grant that we're getting is going to address overlay district and also the thing I'm about to talk about which is that it's very difficult to do things in our town. And I think there's some things that I think that's very good. I think that that's we want to preserve our rural uh resources and our town. But then there's other things that I think don't have that kind of impact and impede our ability to have to reuse some of the um the vacant structures and to um you know that sort of thing or to like even do like a lot line deletion or a simple um

you know be simplified. It should be simplified. The things that really affect like everyday people and their ability to do things in the town, I think those need to be made a lot easier in terms of process. Um, but I don't know. We cannot tax second homes at a higher tax rate. I just wanted to say that. Did look into it. Under New York State constitutional law, we are not allowed to do that. New York City can do that because they're allowed to under the New York State Constitution, but we're not. So, that reminds me too, the planning board, I think, is interested if the board has specific priorities that they would want Dave to review to know if like what that fire advice list would look like. Specific zoning,

right? Yep. I know I've talked about conservation subdivision. Yeah. Having gray areas, but

not gray areas, areas that could be that. Um well I think you know I really want to take a lot of what is coming up and in terms of affordability and really focus on results driven solutions. So this is going to be something I want to talk about at every meeting. So, um, and we do have, like I said, these two really big projects that are really aimed at that that we will be spending a lot of time on. And I think we're going to be hoping that we have a lot of community engagement on these projects because we want them to really fit the needs of the community. Um, so I know it's getting late. Um, we for local law D of 2026, replacing chapter 132, the vehicle and traffic law, we closed the public hearing. Um, I did not put it on to class because we had not had a discussion at all about whether or not we wanted to see any changes to that draft. So, um, do you guys want to take the time between now and our next meeting to to think about that? Any changes that I make, if we want to adopt it, they have to be in your hands 10 days before the meeting. If it's substantial, we'll have to open a new public hearing. So, I'll send um a deadline reminder around. So, if you have anything You have to get it to me before like you have to get it to me like 11 days before our next meeting.

Erin, it's eight days. Oh, wait. Eight days if it's digital. Okay. I had 10 in my head, but All right. You know, it's seven, but it doesn't include Sunday, so it's easy.

Oh, okay. You know, I'm a procrastinator, so 10 days is probably a good thing for me, but uh Okay, eight days. So, get it to me 10 days ahead. How about that? Um, in these little packets that I have with the paper clip, um, we have that copy of that law, but um, we'll move on from that. The, um, moratorium. So, I wanted to talk about this a little bit. Um, we got advisory comment back from the Olter County Planning Board and the Town of Rochester Town Planning Board. Um, and I wanted to review the Olter County Planning Board's um, comment. I just got it at the end of the day yesterday. So, I gave it I did upload it for you guys, but I brought the print out so that we could look at it together. Um, so they're giving us a required modification that um, I'll just read this. The town should refrain from imposing a blanket moratorum on all battery energy storage systems. While it is appropriate to evaluate land use safety and emergency response considerations, a universal prohibition would unnecessarily restrict low impact systems that are already widely deployed and safely regulated under state and national standards. Instead, the town should adopt a tiered regulatory framework that distinguishes between system sizes and associated risk profiles consistent with the NAERTA model law. The town's primary regulatory and review efforts should be directed towards tier three best installations which warrant greater scrutiny due to fire safety considerations, site design and separation distances, emergency response planning and coordination,

potential visual noise and land use impacts. Larger systems include commercial scale and utility scale systems with a threshold of 600 kilowatt hours and up, consistent with the adopted updated New York State fire code, which triggers specific requirements for those size facilities, front of the meter installations, systems with larger battery capacities, and potential offsite imp. Yeah, I think this is something we all realized was an unintended consequence. We didn't want to prevent homeations for small sales. So, yep, I agree with them.

Okay, I did actually ask for clarification and I haven't heard back. I believe what they're saying is the required mod is move forward with the moratorum but model model your regulatory efforts on what nice the naerta model law calls tier three it's okay the other way I was like are they telling us not to pass the mortorium and just pass regulatory requirements but I don't I read it is that they want us to something you've been talking about to to add something to the moratorum so that it does the mortorium is not going to affect the homeowners

right so I think they they're asking for you to add some language to make this so it's only the large scale mortoriium only for these large scale projects and then these are things to look at when you're actually drafting a law yeah okay yeah because a home system is going to be different so Marylu, can I I ask if we make this required modification, do we need to do a public hearing again or Actually, because we didn't have the Oster County Planning Board um recommendation back, I think you kept the public hearing open because we we needed to have that before we could make a decision.

We kept it open for written comments. Yeah. Until the 13th, right? Okay. Well, you should reopen it then. Okay. Because this will be a major change to the moratorum. Okay. So, so do you want I can should we reopen it and I'll issue the new draft that will be considered right before the Yeah. If I I would um reopen and continue the public hearing at your meeting if that works for you. Okay. For the board.

I can introduce a new draft. Right. And have that draft ready beforehand. Put it on the website. And if you have that new draft to the board eight days in advance, you could pass it that night. Okay. So, we'll do that with the resolution. Okay.

Okay. Um so then the town of Rochester planning board um agre they had a similar they wanted to make sure home devices were not part of the moratorum. Um they may are making uh suggestions I think for what after that the safety standards location and code neighboring towns that has more to do with a zoning statute that would regulate these systems. But I think the main feedback they're giving is to make sure that home systems are not part of the moratorium.

That's that's what I read. Okay, great. So, we will take care of that. Any other changes that you guys would like to see in that? Okay, not ready for you guys and Um, anything new with the lease agreement with the food pantry? Uh, no. Oh, right. So, we want to wait until they're back and they we'll get their feedback. Okay, perfect.

Um, we were going to discuss theou with the close for free. Um, I think we maybe had a little misunderstanding of who was the point person on that. Um, I have a draft. I can send back to everyone. Like I have a basic draft.

You have a basic draft. Okay. You Okay. So, I did um meet with them about the timing of when they want to have the a new shed delivered. I talked to all of our supervisors and department heads about the location and order of operations. So, um, we're moving forward like internally on that. Um, and I think that the timing is fine. Um, so, you know, we might have the pod there for more than the two months that we discussed, but that wasn't a binding. Um, but we're we're moving forward. Are you coordinating with Tina? Okay.

Yep. Yeah. I had a meeting with them last week. um and they did have some input. They had listened to the discussion that we had and wanted to make it clear that they um really wanted to invite board members to come and see how they operate it. But they um one of the things they brought up that they asked that I share with the board is that a a benefit of of the clothes for free that is unseen is that they fill the St. Paul's textile bin every single month that they a day after. So, they're rotating their inventory and sorting it out and um that the town benefits from that additional little bump that we get. So, um, but they do have a whole system for, um, maintaining their inventory and making sure that they are cycling through and, um, encourage the town board to come visit at their next

How much do we get in revenue from the donation box or something? Bucks a month. It's probably like $85 a month. Sometimes it's might be a little over. Yeah. I have point is they're not going to upgrow the shed space here. They're keeping it.

Yes. Yep. Yeah. And they they feel very confident about that. Um so, oh, I should have taken that off the discussion items. So, we're going to skip over the court security camera policy. body camera policy I put on because I thought we were gonna get um feedback in time from our labor attorney on that, but um that is still forthcoming. And then I wanted to review the town board calendar. Um, we talked a little bit about the timing of the legislative session and our special home rule authority um, request to have the real estate transfer tax in our community housing fund. So, we need to be prepared for when that passes to introduce a local law those local laws so that we have enough time to engage with the community. We did do a lot of community engagement last year, but a lot has happened in between. So, um, we'll want to do make sure that there's time for that. Even it's going to be squished regardless because that's usually mid June is when they vote on stuff.

Can you remind me when to get it on the ballot? What's realistic? Like August, fourth, fifth, somewhere. It's like that first week in August that has to be two. And we can still do outreach after that. Yeah. Referendum. But

yes. Yeah. Um but we did, you know, this is something that the community like asked us for when we were doing the community preservation plan. They said, "Do you need to do this for housing?" So that was something we got a lot of feedback from the comm directly from the community. Um so there's that. So that um and then basically um right around that time is when budget season starts. So June and July is internal and then um it really starts to pick up September and October. Um we have some events coming up um which don't really take much town board me at all. I think the the biggest thing is the biggest is this um technical assistance grant and as soon as that gets executed there's going to have to be a lot of action taken on that. So, um, that's probably going to overlay pretty heavily with budget season. So, we'll have to figure out how to, um, you know, have other um others, uh, really step in for that. Um, and the other thing I was going to bring up is Oh, um, we've got the, um, bid for the voicemail bridge construction is going to be very tight because I haven't gotten it yet. Um, and they want the letting to happen in June. So hopefully I'll have it at our next

meeting. It is possible that I will need to call a special meeting when I get that to have you guys look at it and approve it so that we can publish it. Um, and we have a minimum of 3 weeks for that. And that is a big um that is a big contract. Also, once that happens, I will be taking that's when I will start to take out the larger ban to help with the cash flow for that project. So that is reimburseable but we have to front the funding for that. Um so I think whichever is less using fund balance from our highinterest account or the ban I think that's how we have to look at the financing for that. Um so it kind

yeah it kind of depends on the interest rates but I think whatever

we net better it's what we should go with. Um so then for May um again we have three weeks so that feels like a long time but we might be meeting in between with a special meeting. Um we will be potentially adopting our vehicle and traffic law potentially adopting the moratorum. Um we will also probably be um moving forward on um the the grant project. Um if with that I'll have to have that on the agenda, the agreement for the acceptance of the award and all that. Um was there anything else? Oh, theus. um and potentially appointments at that meeting as well. So that's

I I have a question. Yep. Okay. Um speaking of moratoriums, Charlotte had asked about the moratorum. I don't know what you call it. High-tech farms because I don't have it in front of me. It just came data came the data centers. Yes, the data centers. Um, right now there is a bill that they're looking at in Albany to do a state moratorium.

Oh, you still want me to to prepare this or if you want to wait and see what the state does? Well, what's the likelihood the state will have done something this year? You never know. But it it would be by June. I mean, we're talking it would be in front of I think if they're going to have progress on that or action on that in June, I think we can right. We can determine in July if they

60 days, but if it's going to last until next year, I would. Right. Should we wait until the end of session and see whether they've done anything? Yeah. And I I've got these open correspondences. I can also ask and see I can get the temperature of our representatives.

Okay. Um, oh, and that reminds me just on the I forgot to tell you guys on the town affordability policy planning, I invited them to do town halls because I think it's really important, too, that we engage with our state representatives on these issues. So, um, we'll see if they take me up on the those requests. It's an election year, so maybe they will. Um, but I think it would be really good to not not have a political event, have a town hall where we are are the public comes and engages with our representatives. We are really out there in the district. So, I feel like having them come here would be really valuable. Um, and so we're going to wait on that. Um, okay. We'll probably have a pretty full agenda at our next meeting. Um, so acceptance of the minutes. We tabled this at our last meeting. Um, so I will make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board accepts the minutes for um our Thursday, March 12th, 2026 meeting and our Thursday, March 26, 2026 meeting as prepared um by town our town clerk and thank our clerk or her work, including all of the public comments uh for the record.

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed? Abstain. Motion carries. Um Oh, shoot. Sorry, I forgot to write these numbers down. I'm going to do another slow motion for the abstract. So, I'm going to make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board accepts um abstract 4B of 2026 and approves the payments in the following amounts. 600 Oh, 68,956.77 for general fund. Uh capital fund $9,463.34 ambulance fund $54,91750 street lighting fund $123.96 escrow is $11,76910 10 cents and highway is $66,457.17.

I have a second. Any discussion? All in favor?

I opposed. Abstain. Motion carries. So um per our policy, the housing advisory committee received um an uh an applicant that is that their uh application to the housing advisory committee has been shared with the board. They did the interview and are recommending that individual be um appointed. And my notes, my computer is spinny, so I'm going to pull that up from my phone real quick.

Do you know how many candidates they interview? They just have the one. They have a So, we increased the membership to 10. They currently have seven members. They know one is leaving. So they wanted to get um and this so there's still vacancies.

Yeah. So we have um two more and then possibly a third after. But um so I would like to make a motion that the town of Rochester Town Board appoints Brandon Hicks to the housing advisory committee upon the recommendation of the housing advisory committee appointment committee um in a term to a two-year term that expires December 31st, 2027.

Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Abstain. Motion carries. Um, so the resol I I'm going to make a motion that the town of Rochester Town Board um continues the public hearing for local law E of 2026 reopens and continues.

Okay. That that the town of Rochester Town Board reopens and continues the public hearing for local law e of 2026. um uh local laws ena enacting a moratorum of battery battery energy storage systems for um our regular business meeting Thursday, May 14th, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. at the Herald Lipton Community Center. And do we notice this? Yes. And request the clerk circulate notice. Do I have to also send it out to agencies again with changes? No.

Because the changes that are being made are at the recommendation of the county and um Okay. Planning boards. Okay. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Abstain. Motion carries. And uh now we've got an executive session. I move that the town of Rochester Town Board enters into executive session at 9:20 for the purposes of discussing matters that lead to the appointment of particular persons and matters regarding hospital litigation. Second.

All in favor? I opposed abstain. Motion carries. Thank you. Yeah. From the board of education. Yes, correct.