Town Board - Regular Meeting

yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah.

Okay. Good evening, everyone. I'm calling the Town of Rochester Town Board August business meeting to order. It's August 13, 2026. If you could all stand for 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.

Thank you. I am here.

So our first item on the agenda is the acceptance of the

Um, so just before I make that motion, um, I just want to announce that unfortunately I have to cancel the public hearings that we had scheduled on today's agenda due to a technical legal error in the notice. So we will be, um, re noticing that public hearing tonight, but I just wanted to announce that for anyone that came to speak at that public hearing, one of my agenda HAB-Masyn Moyer- amendment that's going to be to strike the public hearings from the agenda so i'll make the motion that the town board accepts the agenda as prepared by the town supervisor, with the following amendments that we are not having the public hearings tonight. We will be adding a resolution to amend the Accord Speedway Rating Schedule. We are adding a discussion item. Let me back up. Sorry, let me back up. We are going to delete the resolutions to authorize the grant application for the EV charging. We don't need to do an authorizing resolution of sale for the bond anticipation notes, so we won't be doing that. And I'm moving the taser item to a discussion item. And we're striking the appointment of an alternate dog control officer. We'll be adding a discussion item regarding the park refund policy and the dog legislation. And we're adding a resolution to amend the Toshiba contract but we'll just get that. Oh, and we're adding an executive session for the purposes of discussion of matters relating to the litigation of the town of Rochester versus Five Ridgeview and matters regarding a potential litigation. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. opposed abstain motion carries i apologize for all of those amendments to everyone um so first we have a um we're doing a recognition tonight um so that is going to be myself and our emergency services director jerry fanino jeremy you want to introduce yeah if i may um

Just a few short paragraphs. I'd like to introduce Dan Agnes, who is our invited guest. And Dan has been so gracious as to help us in our thanks to our fire department personnel. And Dan, as you all know, or your firefighters, lost his son, Dave, on July 3rd, preceding what took place with our storm-related damage. And it comes to mind how precious all of your service is and how quickly things can get out of hand. And I want to just thank Dan, as I did previously, for just coming here. And I do appreciate that, Dan. And we have a final presentation to go to the Cotterkill Fire Department in memory of David. That is the last presentation. What I'd like to simply say is good evening to the town board members and all the residents down in Rochester. Again, I just mentioned our special guest, Dan Gagnon. who I invited for the presentation to all members of the Eckerd Fire District. As we recall this past July 4th, 5th weekend weather events, Dan and his family were experiencing firsthand the loss of Dan's son, David, on July 3rd, the Friday before. After Dave, who was the chief of the Cuyahoga Fire Department, responded, to a weather-related incident. He was, in fact, killed. This incident jolted my memory as to exactly one Friday before the 3rd. I actually witnessed something in my 52 years of being here. I've not ever seen, and I hope I don't ever see it again, when a tree came down in the middle of Rose Hill Road, down in Marble Town, while I was actually heading to town here on my motorcycle. And a gust of wind had just come by and took that tree down. And it really shook me up to, wow, I'm glad I missed that by a couple minutes. But it just goes to show what all of you, and thank all of you guys for coming here tonight for these presentations. During the weekend of July 4th and 5th, our fire personnel responded to almost seven With less than 25% of our available personnel or personnel available due to it being a holiday weekend and with the widespread weather damage, all of the departments were overwhelmed. So having mutual aid was not something that would be easily gotten over that weekend. Without further ado, we'd like to present to our fire district and the members who continually responded for the calls over 24 hours straight, these certificates of appreciation. And included there is an anonymous donation to those members who were helpful on that weekend. I'll let it go with that. If the first person would please come up. Dan, would you mind? Tim? Yates? Where are you, Tim? You know I was going to thank you first. All right. And oh, let me, while you're up here, Tim, I'll show you what we have here. Yeah. And this is a certificate of appreciation. This certificate is presented to firefighters and youths in recognition for outstanding service. Signed by myself and Eric. I picked up, and you'll see this one, the man in the arena, which is attached to this jacket. And at the bottom is a card that I carried for many years while I was a federal investigator. And it simply says, do what you can with what you have, where you are, by Theodore Roosevelt. It was 1923. He did those words. And in fact, sorry, it was April 23rd, excuse my age, 1910. So, but Dan, if you'd be so kind, is to go. Thank you.

I'm sorry.

Here you go, Tim. Thank you, everybody. That's why you're here, Dan. Thank you, Dan. Next up, Brian Thiel. Brian. That's good.

Right, I feel like I grow. I think Mike is right here.

Tim, you said, I thought you had to do more. That I should

That Josh Gibson. Yes. I just want to make sure.

And Mike, like neither on justice.

Mike Nigro and Josh Gibson.

Okay. They're not able to attend. Anybody else? AJ Alimo. Not here. Those three.

That should be it. I know.

We'll take care of that. We'll take care of that.

All right.

So we'll do a round of applause for those three.

So John out there somewhere, John. Looking for a green shirt. Great. So. Thank you. It's just a little bit like our fire department.

You know, we don't care what political party you are, what color you are, race, creed, color. It matters nothing to us. When an emergency calls, we come. And we proved that on July 4th. I mean, I think when we do 113 calls. For the month. For the month. 65. So, you know, we don't care. We just want to do our job and help the town. So, thank you. Appreciate it.

The two Tom and Walt now.

Oh,

Thank you.

I'll finally give it to you.

That's me.

That's you. There we go. Peter, back in there.

And we've got two for Peter, because we've got one actually to do this for him, right? All right. And last but not least here, we have one writer. In fact, if we could, How many people can you get in?

I can get a fair amount, yeah.

Okay. If you guys could, I'd like to actually give this to officially do this in memory of David. Sure. You guys come up and... Yeah. Super. Thank you.

So I just first, Dan, I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you. And we, the entire community has been touched by very deeply by the loss of your son. So thank you so much for being here. And it's also with that spirit that we have a certificate of appreciation for the entire district. And we just, we know we're recognizing you all, but we know it takes the entire team. So just on behalf of the town and of Jerry, this is a thank you to the entire district. Thank you. Appreciation and service. We value what you bring to our community beyond words.

That's much appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you.

And I just want to give a round of applause for Jerry, who has the heart to want to do this.

He has the heart and the drive to really want to recognize the service that people have to our community. So Jerry, thank you so much. This wouldn't have happened without you. And I'm really, really glad that we did it.

I retired 21 years ago. And this has been my pleasure to work. And now having Tim actually there is just a tremendous help. And I know he is a tremendous help to the fire department. And that makes me proud because I'll tell you what, the work that we did 25 years ago could not have been accomplished without volunteer fire departments from Long Island, New Jersey, and some from the Hudson Valley and Orange County. And that had helped us out. And that was really important to us to be able to get that job done. And we did that very tough job. So with that coming up, in fact, Gary was in here. There's some flyers here. There'll be some going over to the firehouse and so forth. So we will get those up. Erin and I spoke about this. This is a great function. We're going to do whatever ceremony we will do over there. And I hope it'll be a good, bring the community together. I would much rather something there than go down. I have no desire to go to the city. So I thank you guys because it helps me to know that all of you doing what you're doing and i'm just some part just a little part of it then i've never going to forget they did i agree that thank you so much because this is probably very tough for you thank you thank you so much thank you

Great. Well, thank you. That was a really great way to start a meeting. And I thank everyone for being here. So we're going to move on with the most boring part, which is reviewing the financial reports. So in front of goodbye. Thank you.

Thank you again. Thank you.

I have in front of the board. I have our year to date budget versus actual for highway and for general fund. The full suite of financial reports is in our meeting backup folder and I have it online in the public accessible documents. But these are the ones that are worth looking at. Right now, there is nothing in highway. There is nothing of note that I think should be alarming. We are sticking to our budget. The only thing I'm going to be looking at is our salt and sand and overtime, because those are the three categories that we've spent at a higher rate than usual. The revenue streams are pretty straightforward for highway. And we are, as of this set of vouchers, well on our way to expending most of our road work funds for the year.

Yes, that's the full year budget. Thank you.

and in- Yes, these reports, I do all budget modifications in the month that they were done in. So they should be, they should reflect everything that's done up through July 31st. The profit, the budget for general fund We do have some revenue streams that we are waiting on. As I've spoken to in the past, you won't necessarily see that our revenues are 70% or we're going to be 60% on the year. Yeah, so they're not necessarily going to be right there. Also, these numbers don't include the July numbers that comes from the town clerk's office. So department income permitting, those things are included in the monthly town clerk report, but they won't be reflected in our revenue numbers. So that's all the department income. Okay. The only thing, we have two budget modifications tonight that are coming from adding additional fund balance. If I subtract out the fund balance that we've allocated so far, we have about $900,000 of fund balance left, but we're not through the year yet, so we still have to see how this fund balance appropriation shakes out, but I'm assuming in my calculations that we're going to spend all of it. But that's where we're at. If we spend all of that and everything is awash and even, we have about 900,000 in fund balance.

Sure. Is 900,000 what we've left at the end of the year?

I am doing a budget mod, but it's not a significant amount of money. So Then we do have some expenditures that we are a little over, a little under. In all budget categories, we are holding the percentage of expenditures that we should see. So I've been doing budget modifications as we've been going. Um, you might, there's a couple that are like over by a very insignificant amount, but in those instances, those, those budget codes are exactly like the insurance gets paid at the beginning of the year. So it's not like we're going to see any more of that. So typically if you see a hundred percent of something in this report, it's a one-time expenditure, unless I missed something. Any questions so far? Because we're seven months in, we're more than halfway through the year. This is also the time that we are starting to look at budget projections. I don't Like to do full formal budget projections until we have our August numbers. So those are the August numbers are what will be included in the tentative budget, but we will use these numbers to get us our department requests and get started on the tentative budget. I have a, I'm going to try to do a quick supervisor report. So just some updates on some ongoing projects for the band that is planned for this year. Those are the bonds that are planned for this year. We are planning on taking out between eight and $900,000 to cover our cash flow gaps for the infrastructure work being done on highway projects, but through the capital fund. If we need the issuance of a bond of over a million dollars, that triggers a threshold of review of our finances that is a lot more rigorous. And I've spoken with our financial advisor, and they feel, given the information that I've provided, that the range of $800,000 to $900,000 should be a good to pad to make sure that we have the cash flow that we need to cover those expenditures. As a reminder, the majority of those expenditures are going to be reimbursed to the town. So the output, we do have $3.4 million of expenditures planned, but that is 95% coming back to us. It's just, we want to make sure that we're not, we don't, we want to make sure that we have what we need to pay those claims. I wanted to announce that project 32, the bridge on project 32 road is being closed tomorrow. That affects eight households. In terms of the residences, however, there's deliveries, emergency services, visiting your friends. The detour for that is actually pretty big in terms of where the driving is. The bridge is being closed. A new road has been built that connects from the end of Project 32 to Stonykill. So that will be a dead end road servicing those households. And then project 32 will be open from granite road until where the bridge starts, but then it'll be closed so. We have notified emergency services Ulster county dispatch and they confirmed receipt of that, but that'll be a big change and the bridge will be closed for at least. A year and a half, so that'll be a big adjustment that everyone will make but it's a longer term than a than a closure, so this is the Department of Transportation is requiring the bridge be closed. The bridge replacement project just got started. So we're in the preliminary design phase of that. And you'll see we signed off on a lot of the preliminary work. We have the main design and an alternate design. So our consultant is working on the sketch plan for that. the bridge replacement, but we're not projected to start that project until the second quarter of 2027. I don't have significant updates on the other bridges. It does look like Voicemail road that was closed at 209 by the county is projected to open by the end of the month. So that will be very nice for the 75 households that have had to change their driving patterns because of that tour. This past weekend, I attended the Barracuda swim team annual celebration. I was very happy to see all the swimmers get recognized at the Kerr-Hongson pool, which is supported by the town. I got some insight into where the funds go for both the support of the pool and the support of the Barracuda swim team. So I just want to thank them for extending the invitation. for that and it was really good to see swimmers. In the month of July, I also met with some property owners regarding storm damage to their properties, touring the properties and seeing what kind of impact it had and the costs associated with tree cleanup. There is not any municipal, state, there's no assistance for the type of damage that we got from the July 4th storm. So a lot of that cost of cleaning up trees, especially is just placed on the property owner. So I'm thinking about and trying to research ways that there could be some way of offsetting some of those costs through, you know, firewood production or something like that, because it's, it is, there's, I went to one property that's only 14 acres and there were over 100 trees all clustered in one area. It was very, it was shocking actually. In the month of July, we onboarded two new employees. So we have a new employee at the transfer station and a new employee in the assessor's office. So I just wanted to welcome them and they're getting oriented and started. At the end of July, I attended the Rooted in Rochester final event. That was the culmination of the year-long listening campaign where the discussions were oriented around how to bring some of the community ideas into a reality. That was a really wonderful event. And I wanted to thank Heather Eckert for all of her work doing that listening campaign, sharing what she'd learned, and continuing to be a resource to the town in terms of outreach to the community. Labor negotiations for the collective bargaining agreement are scheduled for September, so I will keep the board posted on that and what is coming out of it. As a reminder, the collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of the year, but we would like to have a good working draft of that in budget season, so we know what we're dealing with going into our preliminary budget. We also started, I started having my first sort of small group meetings regarding the health insurance plan. And what our staff that are on the health insurance plan would like to see in terms of our plan selection and any other ideas or creative thinking they have around the cost sharing that we do. As our health insurance plans are going up 17%. This year, and I just got the notice that in the following year, they're going up 12.5%. So this is a incredible cost. I don't know how it's even possible that this is the situation, but it's very challenging for any budget, but especially a municipal budget to know how to deal with those increased costs. So I'm wanting to work with our staff, the board, our broker to see what we can do in terms of lessening those costs. I did get the actual health insurance plans yesterday. So I will be sharing those with the board as soon as possible. So I have the numbers, the exact numbers for what the premium costs are going to be for the our renewal plan, and then any alternate plans that we might want to look at. I'll be synthesizing the input from the staff into a non-personal generalized input showing where people are at in terms of what's the most important thing for them when dealing with health insurance. I've been conducting annual performance reviews with my internal staff using that a little bit as a test for how we might go about that for town-wide staff. It went really well. I really like the template that I used and just really like the open, clear, direct, and transparent communication that can come out of a performance review. And I'm looking forward to implementing that as a regular process for the town. Last week, we had our monthly department meeting. That's where all supervisors, department heads meet together. We hear updates from each department, and then we discuss things that sort of touch on all of the staff, like policy changes, building issues. It's one of my favorite meetings of the month, honestly. I get a lot out of it. And I want to thank all the departments for coming and showing up and really giving good input. We invited our buildings and grounds person, Harry, to our last meeting. And that was great. We came up with a new communication flow for some of those issues. And I'm We talked about establishing schedules for town maintenance and annual sort of check-ins and service that needs to be done. So I think everyone's really happy to see the progress on that. I don't have a formal assessment report, but I did want to share that July 31st was the deadline to file the small claims assessment review. And I think August 10th was the last day to receive the Article 7 filings, which are the tax certiorari cases. So those go to the court. We have 41 small claims assessment reviews. Four of those so far have been settled. So those are those can be settled outside of I don't know that it's court, a hearing. Yeah, they can be settled outside of the hearing before the hearing date. And then we have six certioraries. And those are official court cases. And now I will do the, read the recreation department report. And this comes from our Recreation Director, Ashley Sweeney. The Recreation Department has been very busy with Summer Program. We've had so much fun in taking many wonderful field trips this summer. Some memorable trips include Medieval Times, Clover Brook, Alpaca Llama Farm, the Ulster County Fair, the Rosendale Theatre, and Zoom Flume Water Park. The Recreation Department would like to thank the staff of the Summer Program for another successful season. They work very hard and make sure the kids have the best summer ever while making sure they are safe at all times. Thank you to Marianne Gates, Sheila Brown, Veronica Schwenk, Jen Weinkoop, Samantha Reddyick. Brody Baker, Aiden Lasher-Boughton, Lacey Freer, Brooke Makowski, and Italia DeGroat. The program would not be what it is without these wonderful counselors. The last day of the program will be Friday, August 21st. After-school program registration will begin on Monday, August 24th. Please call or stop by the Recreation Department office for more information or to register. Program will begin on Monday, September 14th. Heritage Day will take place on Saturday, October 3rd this year. The Rec Department will be hosting its annual pie contest. Anyone interested in registering for the competition should contact the department. And that is it. it for me. Kate, do you have a Town Clerk tax collector report? Sure.

For the month of July, $44,434.19 were collected for Town Clerk. Hunting licenses are now on sale and deer management permits will be available till October 1st. I'm currently working on an internal audit review of our daily work in my office. Once I hit my summer season, we go back and review all the transactions for the year to look for any mistakes that we may have missed. Records management, we are continuing to review files for the records retention schedule and destroying documents as needed. I have to thank Harry, a huge thank you. Thank you to Harry Warden for all his help with helping me retrieve files. It's a very dirty job, requiring heavy lifting and maneuvering in small places. I am working on a records compliance questionnaire to get out to departments to start working on a spreadsheet of records that we have on file.

Great. I gave some updates for the Highway Department, but I didn't get a formal Highway Department report. Do you have anything to report from Justice Court? Okay, so liaison reports, Kate.

So HPC held a successful pre-revolutionary Stonehouse tour with guest speaker Bill DeGraw. They are planning for the Whitfield Hamlet Talk series to take place October 18th at the Ackport Speedway. I put the HPC and the Ag Committee in contact with each other because they're going to try to build off the farm data inventory that was selected in June. And Erin, as you mentioned, Heritage Day is October 3rd at 12 p.m. on Main Street. We are now accepting obligations for vendors. And if there's anyone interested in volunteering in the day in any capacity, please feel free to reach out to me. You'll get a shirt and a food voucher for the day. And then just briefly, September 11th is the 25th anniversary of 9-11, and there will be a memorial held at the Accord Speedway starting at six. And I was just going to update the board that hopefully before Veterans Day this November, I have completed a hometown hero banner process. And we will be recognizing 24 veterans in the town of Rochester. And three of those 24 are killed in action military men. And I just wanna mention who each are because they all were killed in different timeframes. Milford Mayer who died in World War II, Alan Pegleroni, who was the first Ulster County resident to die in Vietnam, was a town resident. And Sean Farrell died on the Boulder Warren Terrace. So those will be three of our killed in action, along with another 22, or 21 disabilities at the time.

Is he a town resident? I don't know.

He was a dispatcher.

Yeah. She donates every year. So hopefully we'll have those up by...

Okay. Councilwoman Sneezebeth is absent tonight. So I have Climate Smart and we're just, we are working on, we're awaiting notice of bronze certification. So that should be coming this month. So if we get bronze certification, we will definitely be issuing a press release about that, but we're just waiting to hear. And otherwise we have been working on this grant application concept that I have on the agenda, and I have nothing to report for the Agricultural Advisory Committee or the Environmental Conservation Commission. Councilman Coleman.

Planning board continues to be busy. I think there were three meetings between our last regular meeting and this meeting. A lot of lot line adjustments and kind of normal stuff, and then they have 3 major projects that have been ongoing for a long time. They continue to work on. So there's the. Horizon project, uh, the, uh, project. And the 1st student project, so there's been a lot of public hearings, public input. about that. I'm here at the last meeting. They were very nice and it was a short meeting for them. So they got out of here in like two hours. They did have a discussion about the proposed food truck law. So I think the general sentiment and I believe we're going to get comments from them if we haven't already was that they're supportive of those types of operations in town. Was there anything else? There have been some questions and concerns expressed about finding code and helping people find the current version of the zoning code. I know Aaron, your office, Stacy have been making adjustments to the actual town website to help people navigate. So I think that's that's helpful. And I know some additional links from putting it there. So people are trying to find zoning code. One easy way to do that is to go to town website. And I think now the zoning board appeals, the planning board, Billing department all have links that go to the current zoning code subdivision. Some of the other main documents. Until we can finish certification process and. Get the code site updated. Nothing on the CDA. In terms of the ambulance committees, I need to follow up with Marble Town First Aid Unit because I haven't seen any reports. I don't know if you've received any, but I haven't seen reports for the most recent quarter. I think last time I had mentioned that we were trying to set up a meeting to pay FAS to get some additional documentation from them. They requested a two-week delay, so we're trying to schedule something for next week so that they can get some of those documents together. So we didn't end up having that meeting. And in terms of the exchange. So we did get the new shirt. I think I mentioned that last time they had the clothes for pre That happened here this past Sunday I stopped him or tons of people tons of volunteers, a lot of people changing clothes and fantastic and my understanding is they moved everything out of the pod into the new shed so That's finally look at getting getting that returned.

That is so it is now the public comment portion of the meeting, where we allow the public to address the board. We are listening comments to three minutes per person. Is there anyone here who would like to address support?

And sure, since you don't like interruptions when you are thinking motion to both second session. When you said that you have an executive session. the town is considering rent. It makes a difference.

Okay, so we have another comment. I just have two questions. I don't know if there are numbers in the answers. To this day, how is the rain situation moving to Manhattan? Is there a rain day? Is it rain or shine? Question number two is And this is probably a phone call. So according to this office, but I'm here and I'm thinking about it now. Um, is there an ordinance for plastic placard signs on wire frames that go like political signs, but lately, it's been other things that are all over the place. I'm curious if the town has any sort of regulations around. Great.

Is there anyone else who would like to address the board? All right, with that, we will close the public comment portion of the meeting. And now it's town board member time where board members can answer questions or bring up anything else you'd like to top it off.

um attended the opening of the food pantries a community fridge on friday a week ago um very well attended and a very great resource for the community it's across the parking lot and open from nine to seven seven seven to nine every day that's it

Yeah, and there's frozen stuff, refrigerated stuff, produce, everything, so it's really amazing. Amazing thing to have, and I'm sure it was a great event. I did want to just comment again and thank the fire district, all the volunteers that were here today, that were recognized, and everyone within the district that gives so much of their time to the community, and I apologize for my failure on the camera. I did hand over eventually. I thought Peter, you know, Peter's got experience with that. Thank them all for coming here.

Great. As for the potential litigation, it is something the town would be taking out.

Thank you.

And Heritage Day is rain or shine. Oh, yeah. I was going to say that you could answer that. The fireworks break. No, the fireworks are not rainers.

It's not going to rain, Michael.

I know. You've got to go hold that one here.

Okay. Moving on to... Oops, sorry. That was my time.

Time is up, Erin.

Time is up for Public Com. We just get three minutes total. Just kidding. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Okay, so acceptance of the minutes so i'll make the motion that the town board accepts the minutes as of the July 9 2026 business meeting and the July 23 2026 workshop meeting as prepared and presented by the town. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And discussion. HAB-Masyn Moyer- All in favor. HAB-Masyn Moyer- I opposed abstain motion carries. Acceptance of donations. I'll make the motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board accepts the following donations. $167.08 from St. Poly Textile. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. And I apologize, I did not put the numbers in my notes for the abstract. So I'm going to slowly read this resolution. So I'll make the motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board accepts the 8A-2026 abstract and approves payments in the following amounts from general fund. 62,902 dollars and 61 cents. Highway fund is a whopping 226,000 dollars $226,941.45. There's nothing from Ambulance Fund. Capital Fund. We have $32,183.22. Street lighting fund is $195.71. And escrow is $8,774.36. Do you have a second? discussion. I want to thank Charlotte, who was not able to join us tonight, but did come in and audit the vouchers, and Michael for doing that this week. So thank you. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. So I have budget modifications to the general fund. So I'll make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board approves budget modifications to the 2026 general fund as presented, or I'm sorry, as follows. So we are going to appropriate $21,400 from fund balance as revenue. And we are going to expend, so we're gonna increase the expenditures for The code enforcement 8664.4. We're going to increase that by $19,400 for software. And in public safety budget code 3010.2 equipment. we are going to appropriate $3,000, or we're going to increase that expenditure by $3,000, making that budget code have $5,500 in it. Do you have a second? Thank you. Any discussion?

That's for the best?

Best, yep. That's for the best. And the other one is for the GovWell software.

The GovWell is?

19,400 to be.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- This will also be yeah initial implementation.

HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Part of it. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, All in favor. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, I. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Opposed. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Abstain motion carries. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Do you read you get those. Yeah. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, So, HAB-Charlotte Pitts, I will make the motion for Resolution E as presented on the agenda. HAB-Charlotte Pitts, Any discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Abstained?

Motion carries. So as a reminder, the most we're going to get out of this aid, if it's available, is like $22,000. But it's not that much. $22,000. Oh, thereabouts. I will make a motion for Resolution F as presented on the agenda. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Motion carries. Next motion. I'll make a motion that the town board authorizes the town supervisor to execute the technical assistance to grow pro-housing communities grant agreement with New York State Homes and Community Renewal as presented. Any discussion? I met with Mary Lou about our concerns. We had two meetings with Homes and Community Renewal. Basically, they said they won't change anything in the contract, but they also said, allayed fears about, they talked about what some of the language meant and that they're not going to be requiring complicated reports. They're going to be like email, phone call type reports, and there'll be one sort of deliverable report due at the end of the one year term. But they said, because it's only one year, they're only going to have quarterly kind of verbal check-ins and the statement about them owning the property is has to do with when the grant is supporting plans that go with a specific property. They want that to go with the property so that if property changes hands, the project can still happen and isn't the ownership of the owner. So they won't change anything.

And if they were going to provide any of the information to another municipality?

They will ask. They said that they will. Oh, yeah, you were there for that. So, yeah, they said that they usually don't just do that. They usually check it. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carried. So I do have a kickoff call in September for that. I will be... That is more... That kickoff call... I'm going to be talking to the Housing Advisory Committee about this project in the process, but that'll just be the initial call about how the grant is going to be administered on their end. I wanted to strike the next resolution because I don't think that letter of intent ready. Councilman Smith was going to prepare it, and I didn't have a chance to check in with her about it, but I wonder if maybe we should just go ahead and...

I don't have anything to show you.

I'm talking about H. I don't have anything to show you guys, so I don't know if you're comfortable.

You need to be charging where he's going, right?

I did in the agenda, but I'm kind of rolling for that. But I don't have anything to show you on that.

I think we can authorize you to submit it. Yeah.

That's okay, I'll get back in? Okay. Will you make the motion?

Yeah, I'll make the motion. The Town Board hereby authorizes the Town Supervisor to submit a letter of intent to Ulster County to apply for a grant award TV charging station.

Is that a second?

Second.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- All in favor opposed abstain motion carries the next one, I just wanted to share I in your backup there's a one of these the. HAB-Masyn Moyer- stapled paper that has the Gray sidebar is the draft funding futures around to game plan, so I just wanted to read part of that to the board is aware of what we're applying for and. And I shared this in the backup, but I did it kind of late. So the purpose statement. So basically, this is Funding Futures, which is a private, non-public grant funding that funded the Rooted in Rochester project. The idea is that there would be community ideas that would come out of that that could be eligible for future funding of seeing those projects happen. So there's a $25,000 grants available to anyone that was part of the funding futures round one, which is six municipalities in the Hudson Valley. And the way to apply is to submit a letter of intent that they have some requirements for, and then they interview the group that's bringing that project forward. So the applicant would be the town, it would be Climate Smart, and then we have a few people that are part of the Funding Futures project who had these ideas that will sign off on the letter of interest. I'm sorry, I keep saying letter of intent. but I believe it's letter of interest, so I should edit that. So what this is called is funding futures round two, they're calling it game plan. So I just wanted to share that what we're applying for is a capacity building grant that would enable the town of Rochester to retain an architectural or engineering firm that would work with the town to prepare a plan for a new town hall campus. The existing town hall and highway garage, as well as the town park, pavilion, dog kennel, restroom facilities, veterans park, and the ONW rail trailhead on that parcel. Oh, I'm sorry. The town hall campus would integrate the entire 14 acre parcel that is home, To the existing town hall highway garage, as well as the town park pavilion dog kennel restaurant facilities veterans park and window w rail trail had. A new building would replace the existing outdated and energy inefficient building currently used for for town offices with a carbon neutral and climate resilient new structure. Providing an energy efficient and non toxic workspace for employees, a welcoming space for constituents, I would include Community meeting spaces enhanced outdoor recreation spaces. and community gardens. We would draw upon the existing value of the location as a hub of town operations and a beloved outdoor public recreation space in a way that lays the foundation for greater utilization of the entire area. A new energy efficient building would serve as a model for local architects, contractors, and residents of how modern state-of-the-art resilient buildings can serve the needs of the people, the climate, and can save communities money. It goes on to talk about That this is basically to prepare us for grant application, so we just need the planning to go so far as to be in a position to apply for more grant funding. And just so you know, I have done a little bit of research and I believe this. Of new town hall kind of no matter what we do is going to be in the neighborhood of like three to $5 million so. We really need to get started on the planning work so that it can be part of our capital improvement.

Is the courthouse included?

Yes. So in this plan, the courthouse would move. So the letter of intent is the draft here. And I'm just asking the letter of interest. Letter of interest. I'm sorry.

I move that the town supervisor be authorized letter of interest to apply for funding through Funding Futures Round 2 that's presented to support the preliminary design process design plans for a potential town campus project located in 50th City. Second.

Any more discussion?

So we're submitting a letter of intent that we're going to apply for this funding. So this is not the application

This is how they're managing the application process.

Usually, yeah, usually what we would do is ask for a moment of intent and they will invite people to submit applications.

So, right, so this is just a letter and then we would be invited, we would provide, there'd be a second, like an actual application. If we, so if we get the funding, we obviously haven't solicited any bids for people to do this work. What would happen if the funding didn't cover it? It's not going to cover it.

It's a very large scope. I mean, it's not going to cover it. There's also... Um, so that's, I'm pulling together, basically we'll do the interview with them. And at the same time, I'm going to, I'm pulling together a budget and I have two firms that I'm talking to about how far this amount of money would get us and like what they would need to be able to position us to apply. So we have hired engineering firms to do grant applications for us in the past and And it actually didn't cost that much money. So I'm kind of more thinking about getting us to the grant application benchmark. So we would have like a budget, a feasibility kind of scope, some siting, like, is this possible? Is this building possible? The size of it. And then they would also, we would also, with this group of people, they want it to be a group of people applying. we would be also doing community listening sessions with staff and the public to help shape those plans.

So the two concerns I would have is, one, making sure that we're competitive in our grant application to actually get the funding, and two, that we're aware of any impacts of additional funding. Yes. So we scope it. So it sounds like that's...

I mean, I'm aware. I think it's... you know, it's important that we do this. So I think it's worth budgeting for that. Even if it's coming out of fund balance, there's a few other funding pools that we can pursue, but I do think getting, I do think it's important to get this letter in so that we can have the interview. I will say it is my understanding that this is a very attractive idea.

To be clear, the $3 to $5 million total estimated cost of the project, we're anticipating that substantially, a large portion of that would be covered by the additional grants.

Yeah, there are two grants that I want to apply for next year that would cover $3 million of a facility.

And wasn't there another grant that would cover the actual architectural design plans and

That's the same, the timing of that one didn't work out. But I think also part of the interview that we have might be them, part of the second round is actually funding technical assistance. Like there's some technical assistance that comes with not just them giving us money to do it, but like implementation, how to get to the implementation stage.

I mean, I think that the project conceptually is a tremendous investment for the town. Yes. One that's long overdue and has been pushed forward, kicked down the road by various town boards since I've been involved in town 25 years ago. So the need is there. It's just a matter of how do we make forward. Yeah. That's one thing that I would like to pay particular attention to.

Yeah. I do think that if we were to be able to get to a place where we at least knew how much it would cost and what it would take, then we could also start looking at other options. Because there are other options. There's using existing buildings. There's that sort of thing. But I think we definitely should keep all of our options open. I think I'm seeing these two funding pools that will probably still be available next year. And if we want to position ourselves to take advantage of those, you know, just kind of taking a risk.

I think this long-term financial planning is beneficial for the town. If you look at the capital replacement schedule for every department, just so that we know what

uh costs we need to anticipate rather than and planning for them proactively rather than right on an emergency basis and it's not even capital it's like we're gonna have over a hundred thousand dollar increase for workers comp and health insurance next year alone just a hundred thousand dollars um can i call the phone Okay. All in favor. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. I was notified today that I do not need you guys to approve this notice of sale that was in the resolutions that we passed already. So I'll make a motion for Resolution K as presented on the agenda.

Second.

Any discussion?

So what is... What is the change order? Is this just adding another year of money?

Oh, yeah. It's just adding another year. We've done this like three times. But because it's a contract, this is change order number four. And we have this budget. We have the funds out. How many more years are in stock? None. So we're changing the contract again.

And how many years do we need to monitor?

I'll have to get back to you on that.

But it is like it's a fixed amount. It's not like.

I have to get back to you on that. Does it change the way you're going to vote on the resolution? Okay. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. I also actually don't need you guys to authorize. L because it is under our threshold, our purchase threshold. All I really need to do is that budget modification because it's going to be under our . And then I'm moving the taser to a conversation. The next one, this is just a technicality. So I'd like to make a motion to appoint And DeWitt to the town of Rochester Board of Ethics, her term expiring December 31st, 2026, subject to filing the required oath of office with the town clerk. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries.

My only question was that December 31st, 2026 is based on FAPA. That's what our big term is. Yes.

Yep. Yeah. Um, all right. The next one was a request from the department. Um, so this is, um, a request to increase hours for their part-time clerk through the end of the month.

Um, Yes.

Yep.

I moved that we as presented.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. I'll make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board appoints Pat Davis to the position of Seasonal Motor Equipment Operator, MEO, for the Highway Department effective August 14, 2026 through December 31, 2026 at an hourly rate established in the Town Wage Schedule. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. And then we are not doing Q.

So we have another public comment portion.

Thank you. Thank you. I told you. Right before the meeting, I told Michael he's going to have to nudge me and tell me things because I've had a really long week. Um, so we, uh, so Gary from the awkward speedway came to me. He wants to do the September 11th, um, recognition evening, and there will not be racing, but he wants to use one of his racing dates because he doesn't have, he wants to use a racing date, but he doesn't have September 11th as a racing date. So he wanted to swap, uh, HAB-Masyn Moyer- October 24 HAB-Masyn Moyer- So I'll make a motion that the town of Rochester town board amends resolution 319 of 2025 HAB-Masyn Moyer- To remove the Saturday, October 24th, 2026 racing date and add Friday, September 11th.

Second. As a non-racing event.

Right.

Yeah.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. There will be lots of emergency services vehicles. So there will be lots of vehicles. But they won't be kicking up dirt.

We also have the Toshiba.

Yes. And then the, let's see. We have, I'm going to... HAB-Masyn Moyer- He and I were talking about how we actually should have done this as a resolution, but I just stuck it in the founders so. HAB-Masyn Moyer- So. I'll make a motion that the town of Rochester town board accepts an amendment to our Toshiba agreement or docuware to add an additional user. At the cost of $92 a month. And in our agreement. Expires. March 31st, 2029.

We'll pay a user fee for a free user. Yep. Second motion. Second. To me, the five-year, we did it in five years.

So that's the end of the five years. And this account expires. It's prorated, or we don't pay it beyond the five years.

It's just monthly.

All right. Sorry, I forgot. Was that a capital purchase lease or was it just?

This is our record storage program for all of the records.

Oh, it's storage.

Yeah. So it's the cloud storage. It's cloud storage, but it's also the organizing program. So yeah, it is very costly compared to other storage, but there's the way that things get logged is like a file system. All right. And the funds are appropriated. So this is basically, if this weren't part of an agreement, Kate could just make this purchase out of her budget. All in favor? All opposed? Abstain? Motion carries.

And do we have any other?

Yeah. Do you want to use them as discussions, the refund for the public comment?

Yeah, I thought so. Is that okay? So we have a public comment at the end of our business meeting. So is there anyone who would like to address the board at this time? So I'll close the public comment portion of the meeting. discussion items. We have, we do have quite a few discussion items. Some of them are just very quick updates. Some of them are real discussions. So the first one is, I just wanted to check in with the board. We have a great relationship with the Alcord Fire District. We, every year in our organizational meeting, Do we agree to do their plowing as a shared service?

At all three stations?

Yeah.

Is it the driveway or the parking lot?

It's the parking lot.

Everything.

But I don't, when do we do that?

I don't think we've done it. Okay.

So that's what I'm saying. Okay. So here's my point. I don't know. There are these things that we do that aren't, I don't know that they're documented. So I wanted to talk to the board about it. One of them is that we pay, I didn't know. This is the reason why I have it as a discussion item. we have we apparently have a shared services agreement that the highway department takes care of the mowing at the firehouses and i did not know this so i was like i didn't know so um i wanted to i think it you know if the highway department is doing grounds and they're Like, I don't have an issue with that at all. Like, but it's a little, it just wasn't something that I knew was happening at all, that we're paying for someone's time. The equipment that's being used is not the town's mower because they're not driving the mower around, but it's the work hours to do the mowing.

So they use the fire department's equipment?

Yes.

I mean, I'm all in favor of being a supporter of those who came to the fire district, but they are in their own taxing with the one moving more money. And I don't know how much the estimated cost of this service would be.

Yeah, I basically wanted to have a discussion with the board and then kind of pull something together. And then I think there is a resolution somewhere for the plowing.

Mm-hmm.

Um, if not, there should be, we do have that. We have that in our contract with the first date. Yeah. So that to me, you know, I think is a definite, um, I mean, that's true.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I don't, I mean, I don't know.

The whole mowing thing. It really took me by surprise.

Maybe what you could do is get in touch with the highway department people and find out everything they're doing and all these types of services for not only the fire district, but for others.

Get a list. So that we can quantify what that cost is and what resources are needed. dedicated or allocated to that yeah because i think the other it's there's something very neighborly that happens like when i was talking to the third district they were like oh well we do this for you guys we do this for you guys i'm like okay no one's trying to like

Trying to nickel and dime. We just quantify and make sure that town resources are properly documented.

Right. So I think that's the other thing. There is sort of those types of things are going on.

I think they utilize the fire companies' water when we're doing sweeping.

Yeah.

I would say it's four hours a week. Yes. every week during the most season. Yeah, what's that, four months? Five months of the year? Yeah.

But the sense I'm getting is that it would be an MOU to memorialize this, not saying that this should be shifted over to the fire district budget.

Well, I mean, I think we need to figure out what exactly. Yeah, we have been doing what we are committing to estimate the cost of that instance and see how material it is.

And I mean, there's been times when there's a fire, they've asked the highway department to come assist them with a loader or an excavator. I don't know if those are things you'd want included in there as well.

I think that should be a general catch off for emergency service assistance.

Yeah. And it doesn't have to be necessarily a nibble, but okay. I've got my homework for them.

I think we just have to have some sort of resolution authorizing that expenditure for not useful purposes.

And I think it's been happening, so it's budgeted, but I just didn't know.

I didn't know. What I don't want to happen is because we actually have staff and their volunteer organization that like they they would have to go to an outside they would have to contract externally yes that's why this whole thing happened so yeah

OK, I will let you know, though, I have said it's OK to hold the status quo for now just because that's what we've been doing. And I just I did say I'm going to bring it to the board and we just want to make everything official because that's what I feel comfortable with. So our next one, speaking of. OK, did you look at this? All right. OK. I need to get some guidance from the board on this, because this is going to impact our budget and the Stonebridge Library budget. Let me try to quickly walk you through what the issue is. And I have seen the preliminary. I had a meeting with them and saw all the preliminary numbers. So basically, we had an agreement with the Stone Ridge Library a long time ago that set a 2% cap on the contribution to the service that they provide. And under that agreement, we would receive $238,000. memberships. And every year I get calls and people being like, could you guys get more? And so I had kind of gone to them to be like, what?

And the 2% cap was 2% of what?

Of the initial annual, what are we going to give to the library?

So I don't... So like right now we're paying $15,000.

The year before it was... 2% less than that.

And we also contribute to Ellenville. So it's about $30,000 in the budget between the two libraries.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, it's $30,000 for one? Between the two libraries.

Between the two. Yeah. And so they started to do a review and found out that for some reason, these memberships some of them are treated like household memberships, but they don't offer household memberships. It's like everyone gets a membership. So they're saying that in total, they're basically servicing, you know, more than 238 people. It's more like, did they put this? Did they not put this? Yeah, it's 500.

Yeah.

So it's more like 500 library cards associated with the town of Rochester. People.

People and cards.

People and cards. And then they did a breakdown.

I'm sorry, are they issuing 500 cards or are they just 230, 500 people use 238 cards?

They're issuing the cards. But for people who are in the same household, they're like counting them as one of the 238. And I don't... Don't think they fully knew what was happening with them until they took a look at the numbers. Some of those are students. So like students get a free membership no matter what. So wherever you live, if you're part of the Rondout school system, regardless of whether you're in Marble Town or not, you get a free library membership. So what they're saying is they, you know, town of Rochester does not have a library. So we don't have a library taxing district. Marble Town has a taxing district. So everybody pays for the library. So it's part of the tax bill. So it's a taxpayer funded community service. And it doesn't matter if you're a taxpayer. It doesn't matter if you're a property owner, if you live in the town of Marble Town. you get a free library card because it's funded by taxes. Because we don't... Outside district. Yeah, right. So we don't do that. So the idea being we contribute and then our residents can get library cards.

Up to.

Up to. But part of the problem is all of our taxpayers are chipping in like a little tiny amount, but only... to these people. And apparently there's a line like July or January 1st of every year, they get snapped up because the people line up for them.

Do a couple of questions. Do they have an estimate of how many, they said there were 500 natural users. Do they know what the family breakdown is and how many of those are students who qualify outside of.

Yeah. Yep.

And how many people are turned down? How many Rochester residents are turned down? And of those people who are turned down, how many of them do we think are students who would be otherwise eligible versus... Students are always eligible. So there's 604... What I'm saying is a lot of students are... just getting family cards through being a resident of Rochester, right?

So they did a screen. I had a meeting with them. I looked at their preliminary numbers. I told them what I thought they needed to do because I was getting a little confused about. So total town of Rochester residents who have cards, 604. Student, people who are students in the Rondout school system, when they're subtracted out of 604, it's 529. And the town of Rochester pays, pays for these memberships for 238. Then we have 33 residents that buy them. So they have a chart of how much it costs and it's, the same, it's like $75 or something, and they prorate it throughout the year. So 33 residents bought those. And then the library cards issued to family members of that pool of memberships is 119.

Included in the 500?

So this all comes, that total to what I was just rattling off is I think what comes to the 529. And what do they think? So the total cost of the total library, the average tax bill, which I don't actually think that this is relevant information, the average tax bill, so this is like per property is $90. If you take the taxes levied from Marble Town and divide the Marble Town memberships, it comes out to $96.65 per membership.

But not intelligible user.

What do you mean? It's moot at that point. Because it's paid for by the taxing district, so you can have as many accounts.

Right. But the cost, so then they're bringing up the fact that things are digital now and the digital subscriptions that come with library cards are actually more expensive than buying books. So it isn't a one-to-one ratio. It's not like going to a restaurant where you add one more person and it costs $50 more. So there is like, you know, I don't know what that graph looks like, but there is the more people that use the library, the more costs there are. But they are, there is a cost involved with these digital subscriptions. So their average, the digital collection, The average cost of an ebook is $40 and an audio book is 73. They operate on a cost per circulation model, meaning they pay for every item borrowed. Our current average cost per checkout is $1.80.

For the whole district or for the library?

Yeah. So like every time someone checks one of those out, that's how much it costs. And our residents, because... these are people seeking out a membership, are the highest utilizers of the Stone Ridge Library out of anybody. So our residents utilize the library like 45% more with Hoopla. Libby is 33% more and the physical collection is 22%. So those are the numbers. So basically what I was... asking them is to give us some options. Like my first question is like, what would it cost for us to just give you money? And then whoever wants to get a library card just goes to the Stonebridge library, gets a card. So that was my first question. And then I said that like, you know, bare minimum, we should take a look at how much the costs are. Cause right now we're paying like $75 per membership is how it breaks down. And I think that's why they started thinking of it in that sense is because that's how the numbers were. They came up with those numbers. So I think I wanted to get a sense from the board is like, what are we willing to do for Stone Ridge library memberships? What they're proposing is if we, if it's $40,000 per year, then anyone who's a town of Rochester resident would be able to go to the library and get a library card.

Do we have comparable usage figures for Illinois?

I have not had a chance to reach out to them. They don't cap our membership. So we pay them $13,000 and anybody can join this Illinois library.

And do you know why residents would... what the factors are that would cause a resident to choose so much.

There's two, there are two different library systems and then their, their community programming is different.

Typically libraries, just a part of like an inter library agreement system. Are they not affiliated with one another then?

I, um, it's the mid Hudson library network. And then, Ellenville is part of another network. Okay.

So you can borrow from Stone Ridge. You can borrow from Stone Ridge.

You can do inter. I think you can. There is a way of kind of linking all of that together.

Okay. I'd be curious about that. Is Ellenville a taxable district also?

No.

so I think that's their their proposal and that was a question that I asked to them it wasn't like they were coming to us I said how much would it if we didn't because I people are being turned away but we're it's like everybody's paying for it in a way um so like what would it cost for you to not turn anyone away so that that's their number

And you can buy an additional one, like kind of Rochester residents can buy their own membership for $75.

Yeah. I need to look up the chart. It goes up a little bit every year. So we can come up with our own proposal. I wanted to get the temperature of the board for like, should we try to keep the amount we're paying for them around the same amount and be like,

I mean, if the thoughts went through my mind, our libraries are an incredibly important resource. Yes. Especially in a recessionary environment. And it's, again, a matter of balance and cost. And are we getting, what if they were doing Rochester and the Stoners Library District and What is the cost that they're looking for? But I mean, and how will we pay for it in a environment where our budget is becoming more and more constrained? And is it something that we would prefer one library over like Gallup or like Marble Down or Gallup or Gallup? I mean, I think the need is very acute, but I think the cost is also a major consideration. We would have to find a way of optimizing usage with cost.

Yeah, like we're talking.

But, you know, I mean, I see an airport, which is their costs are rising significantly. And they're looking for funding short term. Yeah. Which is perfectly clear.

Yeah, I mean, I just want to say philosophically, I think we should fund libraries as much as they need and different kinds of institutions. I think with the interlibrary agreements, like it's very easy to meet between them and to get books and material that's like essential to the need of the community. I don't really care for the current structure of it because it seems like it's like these accounts that the town is paying for are not space. I prefer if they were like, you know, there were a certain amount being allocated to people that might not be able to afford them. I'm worried that it's like people that have the privilege of being able to show up and line up. I would love a system where we could pay a fee and make sure that anybody who needs an account is going to get an account. I'm, I'm obviously concerned about the number this is $25,000 increase potentially to do that. Yep. I don't know, are we prioritizing Stone Ridge Library and then Ellenville is going to say, oh, yeah, we might open.

This is what happened with the first dates.

Yeah. And to Sally's point, you know, we're talking about a hundred thousand dollar increase in retirement medical. Uh, so it's, we're already in a budget constraint environment. In fact, we lowered the amount that we contributed to other. Community resources last year, because we were so constrained. I, I kind of want to see and understand what their budget looks like. I think I, you know, I, I assume you can't have a. Cross intra municipal taxing district. But I don't know. I guess they do it for fire districts.

It's not a municipal district. It's a library district. Yeah.

But I'd be curious to know if we could set that up, what that would look like.

Probably require a referendum.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it would. But I think it'd be good to have a better sense of their budget. I think it'd be nice for the board to talk to them as well. And I don't know, figure out some more details before we try to commit to something like this. You know, I think if it were phased in, it might be more realistic, but it's also, you know, it's not in the town, so it's To say we're comparable to the taxpayers in Marble Town. Well, it's much more accessible for some people in town. They have to drive a lot farther to be able to utilize it. I know there's a lot of time. Some people might have an easier time. I think we should fund libraries. I just think this is going to require some more.

Where's Andrew Carnegie when we meet again?

I mean, that's 100% where I was coming from. I... feel that anytime you have a system where it relies on people lining up at a certain time, that that is definitely only available to the people that can do that for whatever reason. And it's definitely a privilege to do that. And I do get outreach from people every year that they like, they're like, I was in the hospital and I didn't get a library card. You know, it feels like they're missing out on something. So a hundred percent, that is what I was, why I was curious to hear what, what it would mean for us to be able to accommodate all residents. But I think what I'm hearing from the board is that we want to see numbers with Ellenville, which could potentially open this conversation up with Ellenville and the Gabriella, who's the director of the library, had offered to come tonight, but I was too swamped to get her on the schedule. So I'll see if she's available for our next meeting. And we'll let her know that we, I think, you know, what I said is I don't think the board is opposed to changing the structure, but we just have to see what we can do financially. Yeah. so i mean it's a tremendous resource yes and they're great they i mean i did a um community conversation event with them they went to every they made had all these meetings and they came here because of the engagement they get from our community and had some really a really really wonderful conversation about libraries do they have users from other dance yeah but i didn't get those numbers So I think what we're seeing, I think they can have users maybe we're the only town that actually has this type of agreement. I'm getting confused because of the Rondout School District. I was asking them, I was like, well, don't you have students? That's why I'm getting confused. Yeah, I was like, don't you have students from other municipalities? They were like, yes. And I was like, so it's free for them. And they were like, yes.

But they're students.

But they're students.

And they don't have those agreements with other municipalities.

Okay, so I know what the next step on that one is. Okay.

Michael. Okay, so just I guess a little bit of. background. On this, so what i'm proposing is a local law that would amend our current zoning code to clarify current. what's the word. Permissibility of home boarding. Yes. Yeah. But it's unclear in our definition of kennels currently. There's no distinction between people that are doing like taking care of other people's pets in their homes and like a full on kennel that requires special use permit and going to planning board review and obviously is a much more intensive use. So because that's not defined, I think the code enforcement office doesn't have any ability to make determinations about or distinguish between the kennel and these other less intensive uses like watching people's pets in their home. And so I spoke with them briefly about some specific instances that had come up and they said, yeah, it seems like something that should be clarified have people do it in town. So we're trying to think about how we could leverage some of the existing code, or not leverage, but make it clearer in the code without having to make it too Involved at this point, and so I think the easiest thing and talking with Aaron about this. The easiest thing might be to just define. Limits in terms of the number of animals. And then to have, I think I ultimately called it was residential. Animal care defined in our definition section. With a number of. an animal limit, a maximum animal limit, and then to specifically say in the kennel section that those operations are exempt from the requirements of kennels, which is special.

So I read your draft. It looks good. I had a couple of questions. One, is it six? You say non-owned, but if somebody's fostering dogs, while they have shelters and whatever, but not boarding in the traditional sense where someone's going to go away for a few days and continue care. I would want to make sure that a provision is made that allows for postures like that. And also, you had something about 100 foot setback from property lines. What if the dogs are in a residence, in the home? um and that home is within a feet of a property so that was the actual kennel law that's so that's existing language in kennel law so i would clarify that that would be for special purpose boarding facility or

Yeah, so that part is the kennel law. And then what Michael added at the end is that this residential dog boarding is not a kenneling.

But it does say that there's, I thought it did say that.

That's in the kennel law. Okay, so so there's 2 changes. There's the addition of the definition for residential. Animal, which is exempted from the catalog. And then there was an additional item 7 in the catalog to say. These are not panels. Aaron raised 1 point, which is. So it's a use that's created, but it's not necessarily specified where it's allowed. So my thinking on that was, and if we made it an accessory use, that still requires a zoning permit, correct? So the idea is that this does not require a zoning permit. This is just babysitting and pets at home. So I think you suggested adding language to say it's incidental to the residential use.

Only if the board-

I think that's a good clarification.

I mean, I think that it's very rare that you're going to have somebody who's taking 6 dogs in. Yeah, 6 non-resident dogs in. So I think that's on a practical matter. It's 1, 2, 3. And I will consider that going back to that.

So my thought is, because we have this kind of gap currently in the code, and so people who are doing these types of things are not covered, I'd like to schedule this for a public hearing if you could.

Yeah, because we don't have the law. No, you don't. If you're going to add that it's incidental to residential use.

So if we make that change, we have to.

Yes. The law has to be in front of you.

Right. But in principle, I think that it's something we should do.

All right. So I'll schedule. If we think that language is important clarification.

You can schedule it and then we can make the amendment. But I don't know if we would have to reschedule the plan for that change.

Because you think it's significant enough.

I mean, I think right now what you did is you created a use. You said it's not considered an animal, a kennel. But then you didn't say where it's allowed. So there's still...

I mean, isn't what he did exempting care of fewer than, of six or fewer animals, non-resident animals, as being exempt from killing?

But he made a definition. I mean, you could put in the law, see, this is what I'm saying why we can't go to the public hearing. You could put in the law Care in your home of $6 or fewer shall not be considered a kennel and is not subject to da-da-da-da. But instead, you created a use.

Where is the use being created?

You defined it.

So just by virtue of having a definition, it's creating a use.

Right. Yes. I'm just saying you said residential.

You're creating a new category as opposed to accepting.

Something smaller from. Hmm.

So I did, Mary Lou looked at this and said it was the current language was fine. So I guess the question is, do we want to add the, do we feel strongly to add the residential use or do we want to schedule public hearing as it's presented? And then if she comes back and says, yeah, that is a good idea. We can change. I'm fine with that.

Maybe, I don't know. It might not be simple. you have we're gonna i'd rather sort it out you want to sort it out first yeah of course yeah because i don't want it i mean you have to continue it and do it twice so that's right i'll talk to her about it okay great all three of us have to vote together fantastic so good pressure on zali you're gonna start lobbying at the table um okay I think we can skip the best next steps. Dave and I are working on it. We finally got the updated map. He put together a preliminary review. Then he emailed me after I put this on the agenda that he wanted to update it. So we can look at that at our next meeting. But we made really good progress. And I need to figure out when this moratorium ends. Yeah. Um, my emergency preparedness community meeting update is we are actively looking at dates at the end of September. Also the three day training that I talked about in our last meeting, we are registered for. So we will be bringing a top Rochester contingent to that, uh, traffic study follow-up, I had a resident reach out to me about Clay Hill, which I feel like was maybe a blind spot that we talked, but I think you should add Clay Hill to the list.

Yeah, the section from Carr-Humson.

Yeah. The... There was another discussion I had. Okay, yes. Okay, so Kate, can you... Yeah, tasers... um so kate the donation the the refund of the park pavilion that was we talked about we should have a refund policy you said you would take that on and i think you sent us a draft and i just didn't what i told kate is i didn't have a um time to actually take a look at it myself so um Do you want to talk about, do you want to summarize?

So basically, I was thinking the park books out rather quickly and it starts early on. I'll do it for my students, but. Um, so books out quickly, but I have had instances and I did have one last month where somebody was booking during the fire up with the fires and she called me and she said, I have to book an indoor party and it's going to cost me X amount of dollars. Can I be refunded? And at that time, because we don't have policy in place, I felt that she should have been refunded. You know, it was totally out of her hands. Um, it wasn't a, a, just a simple, um, weather related where you could be under the pavilion people actually were not supposed to be outside for the most part so um i think that in particular is just um of rare instance that that happens. So I do feel as though we should not be refunding for any other weather related instances. So I put that in here. But now that I'm in here, let me start.

Like it's not a major event.

Yeah. I mean, you still have the pavilion. Most events go on rain or shine for the most part. So I don't think that should constitute a reason to return a refund. But I just want to say I did do a refund return given the audit. canadian fires but how i started it was um within 30 30 days of the event they would be refunded 100 um minus and i put in like a fixed administrative processing fee because we still have to do all the banking portion out of it it goes into it gets coded put into the account and then there's a process to the refund end of it so um i didn't know how the board felt about that so right now it's a hundred dollar fee and a fifty dollar deposit this person would get back eighty five dollars plus their deposit at a hundred percent if they do it thirty days or more in advance um service fee fifteen dollars so they would lose fifteen dollars 15 to 29 days prior to the event, I thought it would be appropriate for a 50% refund because we still could potentially book the park at least two weeks out. And then I thought anything after the two-week period to the event, they don't get a refund because that lessens our chances of booking it out. We lose out on money if that doesn't happen, you know, if we don't book it out and we've had people already wiring about the date. Um, so I put that portion in there. And then step 2 was, um, that we will fully refund the deposit as long as, you know, the trash is taken out. No damage is done to the park. Um, are these deposits or there's both so there's a fee and the deposit. So, if the fee is 100 dollars, the deposit is 50. So, um. This is generally we refund the deposit automatically. This is about refunding the fee.

I think you should. I mean, that's fine. But the circumstances under which you would refund are what?

Okay. So I feel like if it's 30 days prior, I don't know if it necessarily would matter why they're canceling it.

Um, no, I, I guess what I'm that's everything's fine. The thing I would be concerned about is if there's some sort of force majeure where due to circumstances beyond their control, like a severe weather or air quality.

Right. So I do have an inclement weather and natural disasters, um, where it stays in here that if it's rain, wind or extreme heat. Do you have a shelf the pavilion there so that wouldn't constitute a refund, but in the event, there is a like unsafe weather conditions fall in trees sudden maintenance that needs to be done to the park or the renter receives 100% of the refund back. And then the policy rules and compliance is.

There a methodology for determine what's extreme.

For me, I felt like, so that's why I mentioned the Canadian fires. To me, that's an extreme. I don't, you know, that's like.

No, no, just add the question on the top. Okay. Specifically.

Okay. What do you want? And then just no refunds are issued if the event is shut down early because of them breaking any kind of violations along the way. Damage done to the park, unpermitted alcohol consumption, or staying past park hours. They will automatically lose any refund. This was fun. I've taken something else. Oh, I do have it up top. All cancellations have to be done by email or in paper format in order to receive it. And that's about it. There's just four little policies. I don't know if anyone wants to review it a little bit more.

So you think $15 covers the amount of time in terms of the banking and processing and everything? That's like 30 minutes. Yeah.

Should have stopped at $25,000. How many people have requested refunds since last year?

Two. It doesn't happen very often. And sometimes if people cancel like two or three days ahead, they had a birthday party and the kid is sick and they have to cancel it ahead of time, they generally seem comfortable with knowing that money is going towards the park. Um, wait, but can I see where I put the method of it? Oh, I just can't remember it. Um, I didn't put it up here. Um, so that would be under inclement weather, uh, related. I would say probably between these two that, um, what was the word extreme weather events for air quality?

Extreme weather. Refund spending granted with discretion as determined in the 10.

I would take the. Ventures may request a 1 time date transfer within the same calendar. Your subject going available. I would make that a separate. Bullet, because I assume they can also do that for the 15 to 29 days.

Oh, yes. And I did see that was connected right in there. I didn't even mention that. I did have in there under the cancellations that the renter may be allowed at one time to do a date transfer, but no change. But yeah, I think that's fine being its own loan form.

So the renter's main request. We're just hitting enter on that. Yeah. Okay.

You know, Abraham multiple and that's there. Wisconsin.

So people do book out by they put in the time we have had events that happened to in one day.

Is that not two people using the same at the same time. It's good.

So I'll make a motion that we adopt the Town of Rochester Park Pavilion refund policy as presented by the Town Clerk with the two amendments. Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. So and then I don't remember this at all.

Did you talk about this? So I received notice in the beginning of the year, and I just didn't have time to really research it a little bit. But the Ag and Markets Law changed where it requires a municipality to include on our dog license renewal forms and dog license go out a section where people can voluntarily contribute to any animal shelter that we designate. I thought it would be appropriate since we have our own shelter that that would be the shelter we would use. So I have a template legislative resolution on us using the town of Rochester animal shelter. I think I put dog shelter. I didn't know if that was the proper terminology for what we call it.

I think it's dog shelter.

I think it's dog shelter. Yeah. So the idea is that this resolution allows us the ability to implement on the dog licenses, the ability for people to make donations.

Yeah, so this is not saying that all license fees need to be used for the dog.

No.

It's a voluntary, additional voluntary.

Yeah, it will be a whole separate section on the dog licensing itself that offers the ability.

Yeah, that would be great. That would be good.

But then from an accounting standpoint, does that make any worse? Does that have to go to the most restricted account?

I think it would have to be allocated towards whatever we have. Does it be a donation? And it's being specific, so it has to go to the shelter.

No, what else would be great? Is it the other tenants that utilize our shelter could modify their licensing process and enable their residents to use ours as well? Well, to also donate.

Yeah. um yeah i think we could send it and um maybe that's something i could talk to jill about as well i do know other towns do pay um for their boarding when jill takes and goes into our town to pay for that but that could be a good option yeah because we do i mean we want to make upgrades to the facility and we're going to have any events there yeah i know people like donating to animal organizations yeah

So can I put this one on the next agenda? Oh, wait. Let me see if I shared it with you.

That actually reminds me. Did we ever do MOUs with those counts about that? Can we talk about that a while?

Yeah, and I thought it was updated, but I don't remember if we've updated it. Yeah, OK. OK, yeah.

Oh, so I did put it in the public drive. I just didn't have it on the agenda.

Oh, totally up to you guys. Just want to wait till now you want to take a look at it.

It's fine, but we can do it now. Okay. You want me to do it?

Because I had it shared.

I'll make a motion that the town board As against the voluntary animal shelter contributions pursuant to your state agriculture markets law. Oh, 9. That's a recipient. On very dental shelter contributions from your state and both markets. Well, I.

Should we have Designating Town of Rochester Dog Shelter?

Designating Town of Rochester Dog Shelter as the recipient of voluntary animal shelter contributions pursuant to New York State agricultural law. All right, thank you.

Any more discussion? All in favor. Aye. Opposed? Let's see. Motion carries. Thank you, Kate. Okay, so I wanted to talk to you guys about tasers. So we got a quote for tasers that we are sharing. And it is a five year you're basically purchasing the teasers over the course of five years.

Do we own them at the end of the five years?

Yeah, we own them at the end of the five years. But it's a big chunk of money. So I just wanted to ask, you know, annually, it's not... When you break it down annually, it definitely is not... That's big of a sticker shock. I didn't realize they cost so much.

What are the guys using them?

Outdated.

That were owned or just borrowed?

Yeah, their own. I don't know how they were purchased.

Do you know how old they are?

I do. I feel I would prefer not to give too many details because I feel like it could have been dated.

And this is for how many pieces?

Seven. And then all the maintenance, too.

So is that like 1,000 per year?

For each one, yep.

Does that include any sort of training?

Yes.

And I saw certification and calibration. Yep. How much did you say per year? Per 1,000. They're invoicing through sales tax.

Yes, we let them know that we wouldn't. So should I find the money for these and put it on the next agenda? I mean, I have to get another quote.

Yeah.

Oh, no, I don't because they're on state bid. Sorry. They're on state bid, so we don't have to go through our procurement policy.

How did we come up with that number? What so the assumption is that we would be. Everybody would have their individual. Uh, device.

Is there a way that you have to know you have to issue them. Everyone needs to be that's my I will double check, but that is my understanding.

But we can't have. I mean, you know what I'm asking. Do we have something that can be checked out?

I started to look into that, but it was like right before the meeting. What I found initially, the answer was no, but I can double check on that.

Is there a requirement that they be armed with tasers?

No, but it's a non-lethal, you know, they have like Three non-lethal.

Those chemical sprays. And our employees feel it's important.

Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. Yes.

Have they ever been used? Have they ever been used in a hotel in Rochester? I do not know.

that with certainty. Can you tell us to pose recently? Tonight I've been like, I cannot answer that question.

So I think we should figure out what the requirements are in terms of if we have a lower number and then we should get quotes.

Okay. But we don't have to get quotes. Do you want me to get quotes?

No.

This is the company that has the state bid for. Yeah. And there's also a grant program. available that we can oh that's that's an enticing yes so um okay i will have that on this agenda um okay so my thing is i want to talk about why i had to so i took cancel the public hearings tonight because um i forgot about the registration link for Zoom. And we used to reuse links for public hearings and I wasn't thinking about it and I don't think Kate was thinking about it. So what got noticed was the registration link from a former public hearing, but I couldn't reactivate it. So I wasn't able, that just brought people to nowhere. And I consulted with Mary Lou and she said, you gotta reschedule the public hearing. It brings up two things. One, do we want to do away with that policy? We've been making fresh links for every meeting, but then that link would get circulated on a public notice.

We use the same link and just change it every six months or a year or so.

Oh, you mean for the public hearings?

Or if you're asking whether we should have the Zoom link at all?

No, I was asking if we should go back to the way we used to do it, which was just to publish the Zoom link in the public hearing. But we made a new policy in January that you have to register. So I have to make a registration link and then people click on that and then they register.

Why don't we dispose of that? And if there's a problem for a topic, we do have more protections in place.

Yeah, I mean, we're only using it for public hearings. It's not for a regular.

So well, I'd be open to. I do think it's valuable to have options for people who have potential mobility issues or transportation issues to be able to spend.

We're not saying to do away with Zoom. We're saying we go back to just publishing the link.

But also for public comment.

We're not talking about public comment right now.

Yeah, I think we should do it. And we have implemented more protections to prevent any kind of Zoom interruptions.

So will someone make a motion?

I move that we terminate the requirement for Zoom registration for public hearings in June. And go back to having open, having the ability of interest persons to express their own comment on Zoom.

Can I remake that? Yes. Okay. So I'll make a motion that the town board publishes the Zoom link to be used for public hearing comment directly in the notice rather than requiring a registration. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? 15, motion carries. So that brings me to, I would like to reschedule those, but for the local law, that established the permit, I made a new draft from what we initially did and I made it a lot more simple. So I wanted to talk, walk you guys through what's in front of you. I changed the definition so that it's mobile food preparation vehicle slash food truck because the fire code uses the phrase mobile food preparation vehicle. So under operating permit, I deleted a bunch of the regulations. Yes. I deleted a bunch of the regulations, except I kept, you know, you provide your name, phone number. There was just a lot more things. And I just made it a lot simpler, but I kept you know that you a valid ulster county department of health one of the bits of feedback i got is that the department of health permits for food trucks are either six months or one year and it's like there's a certain time of year that that happens um So what I said, what we had is nine months or three days. I just said food truck operating permits shall be issued for up to 12 months at a time and may be issued annually. So if someone puts in their application that they just want to operate their food truck through October, then they can make the operating permit through October and someone else could then take out a permit for that same parcel if they wanted. So But for people that are using this for their livelihood, a 12-month that's renewed annually.

Yeah, anybody can do that.

And then the other thing I did, I made it a lot shorter. I took out a couple of sections. And then for the siting, instead of putting anything in about setbacks, or I basically said they must be sited in a location that does not obstruct or interfere with free flow, doesn't restrict visibility. And then let's see that you, there's a section in here that you still have to have adequate ingress and egress. and can't, you know, so I just, instead of saying you have to be mind the setbacks, which is kind of insane with our code, because the setbacks are like really big. We're just saying like, it just needs to be cited. And then the code enforcement officer will look at it, basically.

That was one of the things.

Yeah. And then I added what was in a lot of the other, most of the applications. Mobile food truck preparation vehicles equipped with appliances that produce smoke or grease vapor shall comply with Section 319 of New York State Fire Code. And yeah, I basically cut out all the stuff that would make it so a food truck actually couldn't operate at all. But it's in... What we're trying to do is just make a permit so that someone can just apply and the code enforcement officer can approve it. And then they're good to go as long as they have their Department of Health permit. So...

So two things that came up and I don't know if they'll end up as feedback feedback we see from the planning board. There was discussion and I'm not weighing on this one way or the other. There's discussion about do we need a permit process for the special event ones and thinking if you're a caterer, you can have a caterer come on site that they don't need a permit for that, but you would need a permit for that. A food truck there. So that was one thing that was brought up. And there was also some question about the limit of how many times, how many events per year. So I think we have two. Some people seem to think that it should be more than that. So I don't know how the board feels. But I assume that that would be feedback that we get as part of either their feedback or public comment in general. That you should be able to do it more than two times.

Thanks.

Yeah. All right, well, But I don't know if making that change now is going to prevent us from doing the hearing committee and then just do the public hearing and I don't have to go into it because I assume there's going to be other adjustments we may want to make. So I think just go to the public hearing.

Yeah. And then I don't know what's going to happen with the operating permits that all expire at the end of the month. um okay and then the other one can stay this the other local law i think can stay the same that one just um i'm just going to have that one the other local law but i did not so this one i'll make a motion from what i'm going to say how much notice do we need

Public things seven days, we want to try to do special meetings and I think it potentially so the workshop me that there's a good version.

So my question is now that we're going to put this back to the planning board and town board anymore and you're at the wait 30 days.

Right it's it's new because the chain may change.

yep all right. Okay, so I'm going to make a motion that the town of Rochester town board schedules a public hearing for local law Y of 2026 food trucks version two. The document labeled version two for the August 27th workshop meeting and request the town clerk circulate notice. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. I'll make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board schedules a public hearing for local law X of 2026, a local law amending chapter 140 zoning. HAB-Juliette Boone, To include food trucks or the town of Rochester town board August 27. HAB-Juliette Boone, or 2026 workshop meeting and request the clerk. HAB-Juliette Boone, town clerk circulate notice so. HAB-Juliette Boone, Any discussion on paper on. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Opposed motion carries i'll make a motion that the town of Rochester town board well it didn't was. HAB-Masyn Moyer- With debris. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Because the one that we have to refer is the zoning law with no changes, we have to refer that one, but it doesn't have any changes um.

I would suggest, yes, only because it's changing the date of our public hearing. That might make a difference. But nothing in the language is changing.

I'll just do it anyway, and they can do whatever they want. So I'll make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board refers local law X of 2026... to the Ulster County Planning Board, the Town of Rochester Planning Board, and the Code Enforcement Office. And other listed required agencies. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. I'll make a motion that the Town of Rochester Town Board prefers Local Law Y of 2026 food trucks to the Town of Rochester Planning Board, the Town of Rochester Code Enforcement Officer, and any other required local agencies. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstaining? Motion carries. That is all I think we need to go over today. I missed some of it. I have notes. Except we do have an executive session.

I move that we go into executive session for the purpose of discussing potential litigation. And litigation. Town versus. Town versus Five Bridgeview.

The Town versus Five Bridgeview. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. Thank you.