Public Works - Regular Meeting

Yeah, we'll see. It's stuff that's not on the agenda. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, I'm telling you, the challenge with control, that sucks.

Yeah.

I wish you found it. Yeah. Yes. I mean, if you're trying to...

You're the chair, buddy.

I call the July 28th Public Works Committee to order. Motion to accept the motion.

Motion to be made. Accepted by James and- Ernie. Ernie. Everybody in favor signify by saying yes. Yes. The ones not in favor signify by saying nay. So passes. Okay, department reports. Kevin, sewer district.

Sewer district's pretty straightforward today. I'm sure many of you have heard, if not all of you, the county received 25 commissioners I just haven't had a chance to formally talk about it and explain to everybody here. Huge thanks to Dave. Dave was kind of the liaison on behalf of the county. The sewer district got the award letters. There are two enormous sewer separation projects. One, FE1A, is in the village of Fort Edward. It's been around since 2013, I believe. just never really got the funding to take off. That project was originated because there's a huge sewer line going through Irving Tissue's property and they wanted to expand their business. They couldn't do so because there's a sewer line cutting right through. So a big part of that project is moving the sewer line around Irving's property. And at the same time, we had to reduce some flow to do that. So all of the sewer lines Directly north of Irving's property is all going to be separated. When I say separated, that means removing the storm and rain flow from the sewer lines to give that a direct path to the river. The other project is in the village of Hudson Falls. We call it HF1A. You're going to be hearing both of these acronyms a lot in the future, and I apologize. HF1A was in development up until 2024. the DEC changed the way they were looking at our permit. The easiest way to put it is we were required to do that project until about midway through 2024, and then they said, now we're just going to monitor your projects. And we want to see how everything you've done so far, how it's playing out. So much more detail there. So we pushed pause on that project. because we were looking for more funding. Thanks to everybody who attended the special meeting yesterday. That was for the HF1A project. What that was about, every year we've been applying for grants for the HF1A project to try to get funding to make it happen. And then once we received this $25 million grant, the requirements changed because we were going to have debt on the project we were going to borrow. Now it's a 100% grant, so it's just Too much detail there, but the requirements changed. We had to call that special meeting to do an authorizing resolution. We got that through. So now the goal is to apply for water quality grants for both of these projects because they will score for them. And my early understanding from the ESD, ESD is Empire State Development. That's who is funneling the $25 million to the county. My early understanding is the ESD will let us repurpose some of the $25 million if we find other funding. So if we get a couple million here, a couple million there from water quality grants, we'll be able to take some of that $25 million and use it elsewhere. So it's kind of flexible money. I don't want to keep going and going, but timeline, Hudson Falls is a little bit more ready. So that's about a two-year project right now. And the Fort Edward project is about a three-year project. They both need a lot of engineering right off of the get-go, and then construction will probably be in about a year on Hudson Falls one and two years on the Fort Edward one. Both of these projects will remove a bunch of extraneous flow that comes to the district, and what that means is we'll be able to expand the district, set a new flow, whether that's residential or commercial. That's the huge need for these projects. And lastly, on this note, the ESD won't just give us the money up front and let us pay for our projects. They're going to reimburse us as we go. Typically, the ESD only reimburses at the end. I've already made the argument we can't afford to borrow $25 million and get paid back at the end. So they're currently talking about four reimbursements. line up the numbers, we might need to borrow around $5 million-ish just to pay our first batch of invoices, and that will be reversed kind of as we go. So I'm not asking for that today, but that's going to be cool. We'll essentially need a fund just to start the project, so then we'll get it back out of it. So that was number one. It was just really an update, but I kind of want to get everybody on the same page there. Yep.

Number one.

Yep.

How far is the $25 million going to take you?

That's full project costs for both of them. Based on the engineering report numbers, not to say they'll come in higher. Municipal projects have been coming in higher the past couple of years, ever since COVID. It's just supply chain and labor and material itself seems to have gone up, but We believe at this point that'll pay for the entirety of the two projects. Maybe even a path where one comes in lower that we can repurpose the money. I don't know. But because of the nature of these projects, it's not like we're building one big building and there's no shortcuts to take. If we get to the point where maybe one street doesn't get done or two streets doesn't get done, we could do something like that. Or maybe just borrow a little bit of money to finish the project. That'll be a ways down the road.

Ryan? Yeah, so are you borrowing, talking as in the county borrowing, or are you talking bonding under one of your things you already have?

I mean, it'll be a county, yeah, like a county ban.

You'll still have to go out tomorrow. Right. So probably six or seven million is probably what you need because you're going to be taking that blank time and getting that money back.

Yeah. We're going to come up with a plan. reimbursement schedule is what we're calling it to kind of figure out how much money we're going to need over the next three years at any given point. And then whatever the biggest number is, that's probably what we'll have to borrow. If there's like a three-month span where we're going to need $7 million during that three-month span, then that's what we'll have to have.

Is there any chance to stay to buy into it whenever we agree? Will they actually get it back to you that quick? I mean, yeah, they're going to reimburse you. Will they give you an actual date you will be able to reimburse this date or...

That's what I don't know. We'll have it, whether it stays on plan is the question. That's what we're working on with ESD because, like I said, initially they said they'll reimburse us at the end. And I said, you know, we're going to borrow $25 million. We can't afford that. So now they're at four reimbursements. They didn't say equal reimbursements. They said four reimbursements. So, yeah. The tricky part about these projects is 80% to 90% of the cost comes within a couple-month window when we're in construction. So I don't have all the numbers right now. We're probably a year away from eating the big money. I'll work with you to get the right numbers. We may have to pay a little bit of interest in the short term, but we're getting $25 million. Kind of worth it, you know.

If you get the wage grants for both projects, that gives you some leeway. If it goes over by a million or two, at least you've got some leeway to cover it.

Right. Yep. Yep.

Yep. One of them is we were already in engineering. We just bid it two years ago, so we'll be able to use should have. The Fort Edward one, we're going to have to go out to engineering bid probably within the next couple months to get that rolling.

Thank you.

Okay. Number two on the agenda, the long-term control plan waste water treatment plant upgrade project change order 10. I haven't talked about this project in a while because it's been in the punch list stage The handout says nine. Change order nine. Should be our last change order for the project. This is for the grit system. What happened was the initial grit system wasn't working properly, so we had to get a quick redesign. At a wastewater plant, the grit doesn't stop coming, so we had to act quickly. Grit, for whoever doesn't know, is the heavy, sandy, rocky particles that are coming in with the wastewater flow. And the first thing that a typical treatment plant does is gets rid of the grit, because you don't want that going for your entire plant. So we try to get it out as soon as it gets there. We redesigned the new system, has been working better. And the EFC is really on us to get moving for the long-term closing. So we had to get this change order. done now. And the good news is, you know, we're still on track to receive our $6.3 million grant. And that's why we had to close. Actually, last Friday, we had to start a long-term closing. I guess I need a motion to have the chairman sign the motion.

Second.

Second.

Motion to be made and seconded.

Discussion.

Yes. First, is the grant going to cover the change order, the $59,000?

Yeah, so the grant is a, we have money left in the project to cover the change order, but the grant is a 50% total cost grant. We get it back at the end. So 6.3, the project was 12.6 million or something very close to that. And what happens is when we go long-term, We're not going to pay the EFC 12 million over 30 years. We're just going to pay them 6 million over 30 years. Grant actually never comes to us. It just gets taken off of what we owe.

And the other question you had, you said the system wasn't working, so you had to do a redesign. Was the system a new system designed by the engineer? Yes. And are they going to absorb some of the redo costs?

They did. They did. The total was about 150-something thousand dollars. We ended up having to pay $104, I think is the total number. With the municipal projects, the way we can get them funded and sleep at night is it has to be better. The new system has to be better. It can't just be like a replacement because the one didn't work. We re-looked at it. We figured out what was good, what wasn't, and we made the new system better, so it was worth spending the money on.

Great. There's another question. Motion has been made. All in favor, signify by saying yes.

Yes.

Anybody not figured, signify by saying nay. Yes, I'm nay. Yes, I'm nay. So fast. What would you like? A no? You do a great job.

Thank you. Thank you.

in the PCAB thing coming up?

Oh, yeah. So the PCAB, which is the multi... The acronym doesn't match the word. It's actually the MFP-CAB. It's the Multifunctional Process Control and Administration Building Project. We're already in design on that. We're about to go out to bid soon to demolish and reconstruct our current administration building and laboratory facility. We we noticed We were going back on some of the bond resolutions and we didn't do a public hearing that we were Required to do so we set the public hearing at the last board of supervisors meeting The public hearing is going to be at the next full board meeting And yeah, it's just to do with the the county undertaking the project. It's just a formal resolution we were supposed to have.

Well, we have to make a public interest finding, which I'll do the resolution for that. Do we have to repass the bombing resolution, correct? Sure. That was my understanding. I was coordinating with Larry. Yeah, well, it makes sense.

It's probably supposed to be after the public hearing.

So we may have to repass the bonding whereas the security passed. But just so there's no confusion when anything happens next meeting, I just want to make sure everybody kind of knew what the process was going to be.

Oh, there will be confusion no matter what.

There probably will be. We might have something to look back on before then.

It was just, there was confusion from the get-go because it was something I thought bond council does and down to bond council thought the county was doing. That's why I got this.

Okay, any more questions for Kevin? You're free. Next is public work. Number one in public works is the purchase of two 27 international dump trucks. That's already in the budget, correct?

We have to approve moving to finance or anything like that.

Okay. We don't have to move to finance.

I think usually we do, just to be safe. It's in the budget, but it's been purchased.

So, seconded. Seconded. move the purchase of the 227 international dump trucks to finance. Now, who are donor systems? Donor systems. We've got to vote on that.

We've got to vote on that.

Signify by saying yes.

See. Tim called you out on that, didn't he?

No.

It was me, John. Okay, motion to be made. Seconded? Aye. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody not? Nay. So passes. Is that a little better? Okay, now I believe the same thing for the Jonah systems. They were already budgeted. Motion. Second. We don't even want to hear the numbers. Most have been made and seconded. Discussion?

I wasn't going to exactly ask the numbers. These are the floating blades, right? How many of our trucks don't have them now? I thought we were getting to a point where most of the trucks had them, right? I was under the impression that every time they were

That's why we're going back to the 25 trucks, because they didn't have, from now on, they're on the trucks. One would buy them. So you had a question? His question answered my question.

Okay.

Motion to be made and seconded. Discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody not? Nay. So passes. Okay. Anything else happening or any other questions for DPW? Yeah, John, I have one. Okay.

So is there anything on a day-to-day basis that you think is falling behind down there and is not being followed up on? I don't think so. We're still bathing. We're still building bridges. We have to go over for next year's bathing project. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, I heard.

I'd like to address the committee if I could for a minute.

Okay. Recently, it came to me in the last couple of weeks that I've been here, the DBW employees coming to me explaining that they're getting told that nothing's getting done at the highway, the situation and stuff we're in. I just want to assure the committee that that's far from the truth, where anything that's on the 2026 schedule is either completed in the process of being completed,

I heard the same rumors. And when I checked into it, that had all been taken care of. One of them was a bridge marked or something. The rumor mill said it wasn't being taken care of, and it was taken care of like a week before the rumor mill. So I think you're right on par with that. Yeah.

Thank you for that. I know you've been reporting that, but that's exactly why I asked the question so that it could come before the committee because I know there were some concerns about it. People have been writing rumors and that kind of nonsense. That's how it goes.

Thank you. Thank you very much for what you are doing this time.

Is there anything else other than this? Yes, we need to go into an executive session to discuss the medical, financial, credit, or employment history of a particular person.

Okay, motion to go to executive session. Motion to go to the second. Second. Darlene.

Don't worry, my name's Darlene.

I got it this time.

I got it this time.

You got to vote.

I need it before I get called. Oh, yeah.