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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-02-05 Town Board Minutes Present:Joel Gagnon, Town Supervisor Leslie Connors Paul Hanson Katharine Hunter Patricia Woodworth Town Staff:Laura Shawley, Bookkeeper Mariah Dillon, Town Clerk Steve Cortright, CEO Other Attendees:Jim Holahan Ted Crane Zach Larkins 1.Call to Order at 6:09 PM 2.Additions to the Agenda 2.1. CDBG Housing Rehab Approval for 355 South Danby Rd 2.2. Consider Beautification Grant Support for Community Signs 3.Privilege of the Floor Ted Crane Regarding the beautification grant support for community signs~ I guess you're talking about signs that are not town owned signs, and I wonder whether it'd be wise to contact the community organizations or private individuals perhaps, who own the signs before applying for grant. Code enforcement officer, I note on the on the report that he is working on renumbering to Deputron Hollow, which probably makes sense, but I would hope that he would provide public information on all of the numbers that are being changed - the old numbers and the new numbers. Meeting Minutes; I appreciate that statements from the public are being reproduced verbatim. It's a little wordy, but hey, it's a good way to solve the problem. However, much of the other conversation is not. I think it would be a great idea to change your policy so that video recordings are kept forever because you can't really tell who's talking on a recording unless you see the lips moving and for that you need video. And finally there was just one more thing down there. Yes, surplus equipment. I see you have a template sample from the county. I think they've got a very reasonable procedure there. And I would encourage the town when it adopts such a procedure, to make sure that it includes a step that the public must be notified in a reason in a useful way and given time to respond with bids for surplus equipment before it is given away or recycled. 4.Correspondence None 5.Announcements None 6.Reports & Presentations 6.1.Code Enforcement Officer Hanson Mentioned that Steve needs some filing cabinets for his office. 7.Meeting Minutes 7.1.All board members have not read the January 22 Meeting Minutes It was determined that the board would wait until the next meeting to approve the minutes. Mary Ann Barr 2021  Town of Danby  Town Board Regular Meeting  Monday, February 05 2024 at 6:00 PM  8.Warrant Abstract No 28 of 2023 8.1.Resolution 67 of 2024 to Approve General Fund Vouchers 429-431 for $1859.10 Moved By Conners Seconded by Gagnon Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 67 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 8.2.Resolution 68 of 2024 to Approve Highway Fund Vouchers 258-259 for $195.17 Moved By Conners Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 68 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 9.Warrant Abstract No 3 of 2024 9.1. Resolution 69 of 2024 to Approve General Fund Voucher 26-41 for $32,149.49 Moved By Connors Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 69 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 9.2. Resolution 70 of 2024 to Approve Highway Fund Vouchers 9-19 for $17,798.03 Moved By Connors Seconded by Woodworth Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 70 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 10.Business 10.1.Briefing by Energy Advisor/Climate Smart Communities Coordinator Jim Holahan on Next Step Options: I just wanted to give an update on some things from last year 2023, and looking forward to 2024 as far as energy savings into town and a bit about clean energy community program. In work with the Clean Energy coordinator, to do some of the advanced bench marking, we were at 2,900 points. The next level of points is 3000. So just completing the advanced bench marking portion of it, increases us 300 points, which gets us over the 3000 point mark. By us by doing the advanced bench marking, it makes us eligible for free energy audit which we can use on the town hall, and also eligible for a $10,000 grant. Being pushed over the 3000 point level, and now makes us eligible for a $50,000 grant. So going forward into 2024, we'll have $60,000 to use towards some sort of energy saving projects and for the town. I’m holding back on putting the $50,000 grant in, because once we do that we have to have a plan in place to use it, and you have three months to actually implement it. So, what I'm thinking is to complete the advanced bench marking, which gets us the $10,000 grant and the free energy audit. And then we can use the energy audit to decide where we want to put the $50,000 towards. We can see what the energy audit comes back with. There’s a company called LNS we'll be working with out of buffalo. We can look at you know more Evie chargers replacing what's there. We can look at air source heat pumps, upgrading the heating system in the building, we can look at possible geothermal, a portion of the costs from that. I’ve been looking at other incentives to help that along. You know, envelope improvements, installation things for the building. We can also use it for an incentive program for the town, or making people aware of what's available out there. All the funds it don't have to go towards one project, we can divide up, but we have to come up with a plan that gets presented to NYSERDA to use the $30,000. Hanson: Would you provide a document outlining what some of the options are, and how much they cost? Holahan: From the energy audit, we'll get some better costs for doing improvements on the building. And I think I can give you some ballpark for E-V chargers. I'll put together a document I'll send to you on what I'm talking about now. And then you can have that to refer back to see what you might be interested in doing for the town. Going forward after that, there's other there's other possibilities. At the next level we can go up to 5000 points where you're eligible for $100,000 grant!, Which we can work to afterwards, because we'll be at this will be a 3200 if we do a geothermal. We can monitor the town hall to see what the energy savings is. If we get 10 to 15% energy savings were, eligible for another batch of points. Then we can work our way up towards the $100,000 grant afterwards. Which I think is not out of the question going forward. With the EV charger, there's there is a program through NYSEG which is Make Ready. This program will give you up to up to the cost of installing the infrastructure for EV chargers, not the actual unit itself, but all the electrical groundwork. I did meet with with Greg, and we just gave you gave him an update on some of things that we're talking about here and as far as incentives energy savings for the building what we already did for the highway garage just to remind everybody we did get $100,000 grant a few years ago, and we put that into the highway garage with heat pumps and more insulation and air sealing in the building. And I met with Greg and we talked about looking at the Comprehensive Plan. So maybe we can work towards putting together a sustainability portion of it. As you know, part of some of this funding there's also through NYSERDA, a 50/50 co share, work through FlexTech program which will pay for some of the Comp-plan or some of the sustainability planning for the town. Gregs going to look at some other possible funding for the comp-plan. I will put together a list of all this, and can answer some questions anyone has. Pat Woodworth: Can we schedule an audit now? Jim Holahan: No. During the next week, I have to finish the bench marking which gets put into the EPA Portfolio Manager, which is a dashboard you put utility bills for the last couple of years and then they compare a typical building of the size and the same type of climate, a municipal building of this size square footage in other areas, and you get a grade. If your grade is over 75% you're doing well, on the average of other buildings, if you get to 35% you know, your building isn't doing well compared to other buildings of typical size and in the same climate area. It's a great way to track your energy usage. Going forward, when you get your following years utility bills and put them in, it’s a good way to track and compare them with other buildings in the same group. So if you're using, 100,000 kilowatts this year and you see you get going down 80,000, you can look at why, and you can see if your improvement is paying off. So that's what advanced bench marking is. Then once we get that in, it will probably take a few weeks before the energy company will contact us to schedule the audit. Paul Hanson: Can you give us a timeframe when you expect all these benchmarks to be met? Jim Holohan: I can give you some . approximations as best as I can We can't schedule implementing the other $50,000 grant until we actually are ready to do it. We only have three months at that point to put together a project. They just changed some of the incentives amounts, it went from $40,000 up to $50,000 if you get it in by October this year. if you accomplish the advanced bench marking, we get additional 10,000. So if this if they didn't put the new incentives in place, we would have just gotten to 300 points. And we would have been eligible for $40,000. But since they changed the incentives now are eligible for the $10,000 plus $50,000 instead of $40,000 - So it's a good thing! Next step is getting the bench marking out of the way (to see how much energy we use) and then see what our options are. We w ill get notification from NYSERDA saying we're eligible for the $10,000 and then we post our bench marking on the website so people can see that how much energy we use, and then NYSERDA will contact LNS, and they'll get in touch with us to do the energy audit. 10.2. Adopt a Policy on Disposition of Surplus Equipment Tompkins County has a surplus equipment policy that we have been casually following. Leslie Connors has been working with Laura Shawley, and proposes that she bring a draft Surplus Property Policy to the first board meeting in March. Connors has completed a preliminary inventory of excess property at the Town Hall, and has removed 27 empty toner cartridges. Resolution 71 of 2024 to Approve that Leslie (Connors) hauls this stuff away at her convenience, with help from Zach. Moved By Hanson Seconded by Woodworth Ted Crane: According to the County, s urplus equipment shall be disposed of in a way that is most financially B beneficial to the county. efore you chuck anything out or give it away to a staff member, you really have to ask the public whether they want it and how much it's worth to them. Ted Crane offered to pick up his personal computers from the Library/ meeting room Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 71 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 10.3. Review and Reaffirmation of Policies and Procedures will be taken up at a future meeting. Resolution 72 of 2024 to Approve the CAC Annual Report Review and Acceptance With Changes Moved By Woodworth Seconded by Hanson Connors mentions there is a typo in the report. There was discussion about some other minor concerns with the report. Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 72 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 10.4.Tompkins County Beautification Grant The grants are available for beautifying items that are on town property. There was discussion about the town signs, both north and south of town, but there have been problems getting a hold of the property owners where the sings are located. There was discussion about the Town Hall, as well as the plantings and parking lot edging. Connors and Hutnik will collaborate on putting together at least one application for board approval for a Tompkins County Beautification Grant. LC to bring a proposal to the next meeting Resolution 73 of 2024 to Support applying for a Tompkins County Beautif ication grant that Greg will be applying for with Pauls help. Moved By Woodworth Seconded by Connors Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 73 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 Resolution 74 of 2024 to Approve CDBG Housing Rehab Approval for 355 South Danby Rd Moved By Woodworth Seconded by Connors Discussion ensued about sharing the name of the person who qualifies for the grant with the public. The Board is okay with publicizing the address, but not the name of the person who qualifies. Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 74 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 11. Discussion of Next Meeting Agenda ○ Planners Report ○ Security Issues – Hunter brought up an issue with her computer system where she was potentially hacked, and hopes that everyone will be on the alert for counterfeit companies running nefarious system upgrades. ○ Beautification Grant ○Special Events Law /Permit Policy and Enforcement Discussion ensued regarding the violation of permitting laws and lack of prosecution for an event that happened this past summer on South Danby Rd. Resolution 75 of 2024 to Prosecute the Violation of the Unapproved Event on South Danby Road this Past Summer. Moved By Woodworth Seconded by Hanson Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 75 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 ○ Revisiting Capital Projects and ARPA Money ○ Acquire Solar Arrays Gannon proposed that someone provide an appraisal of the current solar array, and whether the Town already owns it. There are two solar arrays, one at Town Hall and one at the Highway department. The solar array next to the Town Hall does not currently belong to the town. It possibly has a buyout option after ten years. The highway array was more recent, and might also have a buyout program. The board primarily wants to know what the life expectancy is of the arrays. Holahan: Overtime there is some slight digression to the panel's himself but the real issue is the inverters, that's the only thing that fails over a period of time. It was agreed that the Town should pursue getting a quote from David Tedeyan to look at the solar array to determine what type of maintenance we should be doing. Holahan will reach out to Laura Shawley and copy Tedeyan to get them in touch. Resolution 76 of 2024 to Hire Dave Tedeyan to Evaluate the Solar Array by the Highway Department (Not to Exceed $500) Moved By Hanson Seconded by Woodworth Discussion ensued regarding putting a not to exceed amount on the resolution. Roll Call: Connors Yes Hanson Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 76 of 2024 passed on February 5, 2024 Zach Larkins brought up the possibility of using ARPA money to purchase and/or fix up the derelict property next store to the town hall. He also mentioned an effort to rehab a house at the corner of Michigan Hollow and Danby Rd. Options to use ARPA money will be added to the next agenda. Hunter announced that the Office of the Aging is having their Annual Public Hearing tomorrow (Tuesday, February 5th), at the Danby church at 11 o clock, to outline all their available services. More information can be found at: https://www.tompkinscountyny.gov/cofa Meeting Adjourned at 7:40