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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-01-22 Town Board Minutes Present:Joel Gagnon, Town Supervisor Leslie Connors Katharine Hunter Patricia Woodworth Absent Paul Hansen Town Staff:Laura Shawley, Bookkeeper Mariah Dillon, Town Clerk Greg Hutnik, Planner Other Attendees:Marrell Cortright Steve Cortright Ronda Roaring Garry Huddle Ted Crane 1. Call to Order at 6:03 PM 2.Privilege of the Floor Marrell Cortright – Speaking on Ronda Roaring’s proposal for Little Free Library. While the idea of a little library is great, the proposed location in West Danby is a really bad idea. Fire fighters are in and out of there and we have younger members that come flying in there and really big trucks rolling quickly. The end of the road is not safe to enter the highway. We have had a lot of near misses over the years and it’s on a blind curve. There may be drug deals going down there as well. Perhaps she could speak to the Finger Lakes Land Trust about the Linsay-Parsons area which is safer, with parking and it’s easier to enter the highway. The current proposal is a really bad idea and I don’t feel it has been researched. Steve Cortright - Speaking on Ronda Roaring’s proposal for Little Library. Good Idea, Bad Location. Ditto to everything she (Marrell) said. We are book lovers and read everyday. We think it’s a good idea for West Danby residents to have access to books, so great idea, bad choice of location. Ronda Roaring -Speaking about a conversation she had with Joel regarding a report that is required by the comptrollers office at the end of February. I absolutely agree with Joel that the comptroller and the state consider the supervisor of a town to be the treasurer and main fiscal officer. So when the report is finished and approved by the town board it would be nice if it could be put on the town website. I don’t remember seeing one of these reports in all the time I have lived here. It would be nice if there was a spot on the website where the reports could be, in chronological order. Perhaps speaking to the town of Ithaca would help - how do they do this every year and do they have certain software. Garry Huddle – I have two things to say. One is I’d like to thank Keith and the highways guys for taking care of that ice problem over at the church for the food pantry. They did a great job. The other thing is that the accident that happened a few weeks ago, where the van rolled over and hit a tree in front of the vacant house right next to the town hall. ~ Too bad he didn’t go a little further and roll into it, that would have been helpful. But since that is not the case, either way, I’m going to be seeing him next week. Ted Crane – First of all, I’d like to say that the idea of the little free libraries, I think that is a great idea. I’m not sure that the town needs to be involved. It’s typically a citizen initiated thing. I understand why Sylvan Mary Ann Barr 2021  Town of Danby  Town Board Regular Meeting  Monday, January 22 2024 at 6:00 PM  Lane might not be the best place. I think places that are in neighborhoods might be more useful.I ‘ve wanted to put up one of those myself. I have dozens of books that could populate it instantly. So, I’d like to encourage Ronda to follow through on that. Second, I want to follow up on comments about the minutes. In the last meeting I did not feel I was misquoted, I stated that I was misquoted. I would ask the clerk that for the minutes of this meeting you say that someone who wants to know what I really said, should go to the recording of that meeting, and ditto for the minutes of the first January meeting. The minutes contain mostly just a record of who was there and how they voted. That’s the legal minimum, that’s fine. However, given that you are now relying on the recordings, for actual information about the meeting, I would like to submit that the audio recordings are not sufficient, that the video recordings should be kept permanently. And the reason for this is you can't tell who's talking. If you can see the lips moving you can tell, you can at least guess. So I think the town board should change its policy. Even if the minutes become more comprehensive., I think it would be a good idea to retain the video. A third issue is that during the last meeting, Leslie tried to explain how well let's I'll quote take a quote from the movie The Princess Bride. This word false, I do not think it means what you think it means. It was clearly a false report. In fact, there were several and yes if you are want to say that it was based on incomplete information. Yeah, in fact, I've seen incomplete information. It's very incomplete. And there was a conclusion jumped to that was absolutely inappropriate. And that's the point of what I was trying to get across, which is that someone who can make inappropriate decisions based on incomplete information should not be representing the town in any capacity. Whether it is a criminal offense or not, that's up to a court. But the town knows what happened. Sorry, Paul, I checked. You weren't on that mailing list, but all the other four of you were and I think that you basically made yourself complicit in what happened by ignoring it and appointing someone to a post. 3.Correspondence 3.1. 01/07/2024 email from Kartik Sribarra re: Danby Food and Drink Liquor License notice. Since Kartik is here (video conferencing) we might want to ask him any questions we have. ( We need to acknowledge with the State Liquor Authority, that we have received the application.) Connors: It looks like there's four different kinds of licenses. What kind of license are you applying for? Sribarra: The "On Premises." That one allows the sale of beer and cider as well as in house consumption. Connors: How about live music? Has there been discussion about when or r time of night? It's checked off on the application that there will probably be live music. Sribarra: The music to me is part of the overall goal of bringing people together. That's ultimately what I'm trying to do with the whole market, with music being a piece of that. I don't envision it ever getting rowdy. I'm an early to bed early to rise kind of person and I know that not everyone's that way, but I'm certainly not interested in getting anything, crazy or problematic for the neighbors. The tentative hours that I have on my application, and again, these are tentative, I believe it was closing down at 7pm on weekdays, and eight or 9pm on Friday and Saturday, and probably four or something on Sunday. So those are all still to be determined, but that's kind of the range. So, any music wouldn't be too loud. I would have a small amp in the backyard if it's outdoor music, but nothing going late, nothing too loud. And indoor, of course, is fairly contained in that way. Is that helpful to address concerns or raise more questions? Connors: Down the road, if there's an issue, are there barriers that could be put up - trees or fences - to mitigate any kind of problem with noise? There's neighbors right next door and on either side. Hanson: My questions is, have you talked to them? Sribarra: Yeah, I've talked to them briefly. I know Olivia has been in very close contact with them. She's the landlord on both the building where the market will be and both adjacent residences. And she has been in close contact with them and I believe everybody knows that music will be a part of it. I plan to be in much more touch with them, as things get closer and as I have more of a sense of what we're doing and make sure that there are no concerns. Hanson brought up the board potentially limiting the approval to the exact hours. Gagnon asked if Greg Hutnik could clarify what kind of approvals are associated with this in terms of site plan, where this with this with how these kinds of questions would be dealt with? Probably by the planning board, right? Hutnik: This was already approved by the planning board, and there were no conditions on hours of operation or music or anything like that. They're all permitted uses and so a bar is a permitted use in this zone district, not that Karthik is operating a bar.Iit's more of a full service market. But no, there was no condition put about hours of operation, so I think at this point, it's kind of up to his business model and the town doesn't have anything else about businesses shutting down on a certain hour so it doesn't seem that is part of the conversation. Hunter: All the words that you use to describe music were very vague. I happen to live near a place that does have a live venue and what you might say is wild and crazy doesn't mean much to me. But as I hear Greg, right, we don't have anything we can say about the music. I thought it's all involved in the liquor license, the music permission? What’s in the application? Gagnon: The application just asks what you're planning on doing. Whether there would be any constraints on music would be depending on what our local rules would put in place. And what Greg said - that basically, our local rules don't have any constraints. Unless we adopt a noise law or otherwise add something to the to the zoning law that isn't there yet. Sribarra: I just want to say I did hear that concern about being vague, and aside from, you know, stating specific hours which I'd rather decide in community with neighbors and others, or like establishing those kind of decibel Max. The best I can do right now is just give my genuine word that I want this to be family friendly and closing before it gets too late and things like that. I understand that's vague, but I hope that suffices for now. Garry Huddle brought up the summertime events at the nearby church. Sribarra responded that he has reached out to the church, and maintains that he wants to be a good neighbor, and would give the church clearance to have their events without disturbance. Sribarra: I want to be clear I'm not trying to start a music venue. This isn't a place where there's music three, four or five nights a week. Music is kind of a side thing, but because the Liquor Authority asked, I had to include that. Thank you. 4.Announcements 4.1.The town was gifted a flag for the town hall, by Denise Benjamin. Gagnon would like to acknowledge with gratitude as the old flag was getting kind of ratty and she noticed and was kind enough to get a new flag. A thank you note will be sent from the town board with their gratitude. 5.Reports & Presentations 5.1. Interview of EMC) Rep Applicant Jeffrey SimmonsEnvironment Management Council ( Jeffery Simmons, introduced himself: I’m from West Danby and getting ready to retire from Cornell, 33 years, and I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. I see that we need some help in the town with the Environmental Council, liaison to the county. I did go to that county meeting, to see what it was like. Everybody loves the environment, and I have some time, and if I can help with that role, that's really what I'm here to discuss. Do you have any questions for me? Gagnon: You weren’t completely turned off when you went to the meeting? Simmons: No. They’d like some things from us, I’m sure we’d like some things from them, and to share information. It's all simple stuff, but it's baby steps. They’d like to know about conservation efforts that we have. The county would like to bring someone here to talk about our unique natural areas and they also talked about if we have any involvement in the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and if we have a list of contacts. Gagnon: It would be great to have somebody report back to us on a regular basis. So your willingness to do that would be an asset. Connors: It’s nice to have somebody interested and involved. 5.2.County Legislature Representative Dan Klein T he first thing I wanted to mention is about the County Office for the Aging. Every year the County Office for the Aging has what they call a public hearing, where they present information about what they do and they take input from any county resident that wants to give them input about what they should be working on and information that the office should have. The Office of the Aging rotates that public hearing every year to a different location, and this year, it's in Danby! It's on February 6 at 11 o clock at the church. It's open to the public. They will talk about what they do and they will accept input of anybody who has any ideas of what they should do. I want to talk about broadband again. I talk about this a lot. I sent the town board a little update last week, but just want to say some of it out loud. Things are moving along and they're kind of moving along behind the scenes. What happened was we put out a request for proposals, for internet service providers to provide broadband access to every unserved address in the county. A lot of those addresses are in Danby. We received eight proposals back from eight different internet service providers. So we consider that a very good response. We have gone through them; we've interviewed each one of them. This stuff is still confidential because they're considered bids, you know, business secrets, I guess that are protected by this process. So I can't give any specifics yet. But I can tell you that I was encouraged by what I heard. And I think we're going to be able to make an announcement soon, a month, two months, maybe, at the most. Also during this process, one of the providers talked about a different program. Let me let me back up for a sec. There are a bunch of different programs with a with lots of money available, but they all have different requirements and different timelines. The really big money came from the federal infrastructure act. Unfortunately, that money is not going to be available for a while no one knows exactly how long it could be - a year, it could be a year and a half, which is really unfortunate because we're going to be ready before them. And so we're still trying to find out if we're able to start our projects, even if the funding is not in place. We don't know the answer to that yet. However, there are these other programs with smaller pots of money. And one of them just opened up today. It's called the municipal infrastructure grants program. And it's my understanding that there is going to be at least one internet service provider who's going to bid, who's going to apply this program and wants to provide service to part of Danby. So that's going to be really good news. And like I said, this program, I believe it just opened today - literally today. And so hopefully it'll be public information soon. Hopefully they'll hear about their grant soon and the build out will happen in a reasonable timeframe. That's my report. Gagnon: Is that something that has been applied for and you're waiting to hear about, or has it just opened up as something that you can apply for? Klein: It just opened up to apply for and just to be clear, the county is not applying for it. It's a private Internet Service Provider. But there's very good reason to believe that they will have success with this grant. Crane: Did the RFP and any of the resulting bids or communications from the companies talk about long distance hookups to long driveway problem. And as important, from my point of view, fixed IP addresses - the availability of them. Klein: Yes on the driveways. And that was one of the questions we asked and so different people have different versions of how they would deal with that. I don't know the answer to your second question. I’m not even sure I understand it. Crane: Anyone who is actually running a business connected to the internet, which is serving data has to have fixed IP addresses as opposed to dynamic ones, that you'd never even care about. For example, clarity will do that, not exactly cheap, but it's affordable. AT&T will not through their cell phone, most cell phone providers won't. Starlink doesn't even know what it is. Klein asked Ted to send him an email with additional information. 5.3.Town Planner Report The request for proposals to administer the new CDBG award for multifamily housing rehabilitation~ was published on Friday, and the due date is February 16. It gives consulting firms about four weeks to respond to that RFP. So we're asking them for grant administration and program delivery for the CDBG grant that was awarded to the town and that is for housing rehabilitation for two to four unit residential buildings. I've already gotten a call today from somebody who owns a property that meets the criteria. And he was asking more about that. I said give me a call back in early March. Speaking of requests for proposals, the next one that is on my to do list is for the Beardsley Lane drainage district. It would be nice to get someone on board and ready for the spring to do some cleanup out there. Other than that, tomorrow we have a board of zoning appeals meeting. There are two area variance requests. The agenda is posted on the town website. We did not have a Planning Board meeting this past month. It was quiet because of the holidays, but I think next month should be pretty busy. On that,it's likely that the the farm community on Hornbrook Road by Kuba International, the nonprofit that’s been creating a little bit of a buzz will be on the agenda and I've gotten some questions about it. They will likely be submitting a sketch plan for review in February. And they will likely have to do a sort of parallel track Planning Board site plan approval if they actually move forward as well as going to the board of zoning appeals not for variance but potentially to be classified as a family unit. The Town of Danby family definition limits a household to three unrelated people and they might have a little bit more than three in their household. They need to go to the board of zoning appeals to get that approved, so they might have to do that as a parallel approval track. But we don't have too much information on that. Since the last update, I've had a few different meetings with various partners of the town. One was about the noise law. I met with Warren rCoss and we discussed how the noise law might actually be better handled from a land use perspective within zoning. So I'll be doing a little bit more research about if zoning can help the whole noise ordinance. I think he was going to reach out to you Joel, about what are the nature of complaints about noise so that we can understand what the scope is to see where's zoning might be able to help on some of those things. I met with Jim Holohan to discuss energy initiatives in the town and what he is working on. We just had more of an introductory conversation. This was the first time I met him so I think there'll be a good partnership moving forward to help the town with energy savings. There's a lot of grants out there from NYSERDA to help with energy savings and greenhouse gas reductions. So there might be some potential grants in the future related to that. I continue to meet with the South Hill Recreation Trail Extension committee, providing staff support on that. That's mostly headed by the super visors of the towns. On short term rentals, I met with Leslie and Katharine about some sort of law in the Town of Danby or at least a registry. So there'll be more to come on that. We're going to meet in a few weeks. The last thing is on a few committees around the county. Tomorrow I'll be meeting with the County Housing Task Force that I joined. I went to one meeting and tomorrow looks like a pretty packed agenda. It's a whole bunch of representatives from towns, there's county legislators, real estate folks, developers, all kind of coming together about how to help out our housing crisis that we're having. There’ll be more to report on that next month because I'm going to that tomorrow. And then I've also joined the Ithaca Tompkins County Transportation Council on its planning committee. I just went to the first committee meeting this last week, and it was more of an introductory meeting so I'll have more to report as that goes on. 5.4. Town Code Enforcement Report 6.Meeting Minutes of January 2, 2024 Resolution 53 of 2024 to Approve the Minutes of January 2 2024 Moved By Connors Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 53 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 Discussion ensued regarding the rules of providing advanced notice when a board member is going to be absent from a meeting. The clerk and other board members should be notified so that the clerk can post public notice that a member is going to be attending remotely. Pat Woodworth agreed to look into this and confirm or clarify this. For this meeting Paul will not be voting. 7.Warrants Abstract 27 of 2023 7.1.Resolution 54 of 2024 to approve General Fund Vouchers 417-428 for $13,967.65 Moved By Connors Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 54 - of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 7.2.Resolution 55 of 2024 to approve Highway Fund Vouchers 252-257 for $6,670.32 Moved By Connors Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 55 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 7.3.Resolution 56 of 2024 to approve Water Fund Vouchers 40-41 for $382.00 Moved By Connors Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 56 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 8.Warrants Abstract 2 of 2024 8.1.Resolution 57 of 2024 to approve General Fund Vouchers 15-25 for $56,668.37 Moved By Gagnon Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 57 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.2. Resolution 58 of 2024 to approve Highway Fund Vouchers 3-8 for $19,472.96 Moved By Connors Seconded by Gagnon Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 58 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024     9.Business 9.1.2023 Youth Employment Service Contract with Ithaca Youth Bureau The Youth Employment Service contract for 2023 didn't come to the board for approval, so this is a retroactive approval for last year so that we can get it on the record as having been done. Pat noted that there are some mistakes in the document. It was agreed that the document needs to be rewritten it can be approved but will need to be modified. Katharine will look into that. It was decided to approve the contract with the discussed changes. Resolution 59 of 2024 to approve the 2023 Youth Employment Service Contract with Ithaca Youth Bureau Moved By Gagnon ~as amended to include changes Seconded by Hunter Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 59 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.2.Resolution 60 of 2024 to approve the CSI 2024 Agreement and Exhibit A Moved By Gagnon Seconded by Connors Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 60 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.3. Consideration of Straightforward Zoning Law Changes Town Planner Greg Hutnik went over the proposed zoning amendments. He clarified that these are for discussion and not to be adopted tonight. For that, there would need to be a public hearing. Please see attached document and listen to the meeting audio to hear the entire discussion. Many questions were raised, and Greg agreed to do more research and come back with more suggestions. It was discussed that the board may want to have a subcommittee or special board meeting to further this discussion. Resolution 61 of 2024 to extend the meeting another 35 minutes. Moved By Gagnon Seconded by Connors Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 61 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.4.Resolution 62 of 2024 to Appoint Jeffery Simmons to the Environment Management Council (EMC) Moved By Woodworth Seconded by Connors Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 62 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.5. Senior and Disabled Tax Exemption Local Law - Proposal to Increase Supervisor Gagnon had Guy Krogh (Attorney for theTown) draft a local law that would more closely match what the county has for the income levels that would provide tax relief. Jay Franklin from the County Assessment Office gave us an analysis of what the tax implications would be for Danby if we adopted the county levels. It's not insignificant. It's an over $3 million decrease in the tax base which would amount to, for the average $225,000 property, about an $11.55 increase in annual property tax in order to pay for these increased exemptions. So the question for the board is are you willing to entertain passing this local law to increase the exemptions for seniors and disabled? And if so, could we could go ahead and schedule a public hearing for February? Probably not for the first meeting, because we want to let the public know what's coming and have a chance to comment at the public hearing. So probably for the second meeting in February, which we might want to consider moving because it's on Presidents Day. Resolution 63 of 2024 To move the 2nd town board meeting in February 2024 from Monday February 19th to the following Wednesday, February 21st Moved By Gagnon Seconded by Connors Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 63 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 Resolution 64 of 2024 to Schedule a public hearing for the proposed local law to change the senior and disabled tax exemption eligibility for 6:00 P.M. on Wednesday, February 21st Moved By Gagnon Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 64 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.6.Tax Exemption for Conservation Easements - Next Steps Supervisor Gagnon met with the Conservation Advisory Committee. They thought that the issue of w hether this mechanism adequately addresses the original problem that it was intended to, which should be addressed by the town board. was to provide some relief for from the taxation on land, . But on the specific question of what we've already got approval for and what we should go back for, theCAC concurs that we should we should seek to have the language broadened so that it includes all town easements, including the ones that were in existence prior to the adoption the local law. They were not in agreement that it should include easements by other conservation organizations, because it's thought it would be administratively difficult to do. The question is now should we go to Anna and to Leah and say can you get us the law amended so that we can include all easements held by the town of Danby? - Yes, and if there is anything to be done in the future that would be a separate issue. So we're just going to broaden the scope to go from new ones to all the ones that Joel will ask Dan Klein if he could help us with this initiative. Katharine will ask we currently hold. Jonathon Zisk. 9.7.Ronda Roaring's Little Free Library Proposal Supervisor Gagnon asked the Library group for feedback on this proposal and they suggested that having a little free library so close to the existing library would be problematic for them in terms of not just duplicating services, but creating confusion about which books go where. Woodworth mentioned concerns about having a library so close to an existing library and confusion about West Danby would benefit from having a where library books get returned. It was agreed that library, but the proposed location was concerning. However, it’s not really the towns role to offer a location, as the only property we have control over is town property. Gagnon suggested soliciting suggestions from residents and directing those responses to Ronda. Ronda wrote an article for Ted's newsletter, and Ted has it. 9.8.Prioritizing Mass Gathering Permitting Legislation Supervisor Gagnon mentioned that Pat pointed out that if we're going to get something in place before the season, we need to get on it - putting something together to legislatively address creating a permitting process. It was suggested that Greg could bring the board a proposal for a special event permit. Greg suggested modeling it after Trumansburg"s special event permit law. Greg will bring something to the board for the second meeting in February. 9.9. Contract for Services With TC Soil and Water Conservation District Resolution 65 of 2024 to approve the Contract for Services With TC Soil and Water Conservation District Moved By Woodworth Seconded by Gagnon Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 65 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.10.Resolution 66 of 2024 to Acknowledge Receipt of Notice of Intent to Apply for Liquor License for Danby Food and Drink Moved By Gagnon Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hansen Absent Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 66 of 2024 passed on January 22, 2024 9.11. Beautif ication Committee The Tompkins County Beautification Program gives grants to municipalities in Tomkins County to implement beautification projects. Funding comes from the Tompkins County Tourism Program. Projects need to be on public land highly visible to the public. Danby has funded projects in the past with this grant (gazebo repairs, plantings at Welcome signs). The application needs to be submitted by the end of February. If you have suggestions for potential projects or have an interest in helping with a project please let Leslie Connors know. Discussion of Next Meeting Agenda Reaffirming our policies and procedures. Adjourn 8:37