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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-09-09 Town Board Meeting Minutes1 | P a g e Town of Danby Town Board Meeting Minutes Held Monday, September 9, 2024 Board Members Present: Joel Gagnon, Town Supervisor Leslie Connors Katharine Hunter Patricia Woodworth Paul Hansen Town Staff: Laura Shawley, Bookkeeper Mariah Dillon, Town Clerk Steve Cortright, CEO Keith Shipman, Highway Superintendent Greg Hutnik, Town Planner Blake Savoy, Assistant Clerk Other Attendees: Ted Crane Garry Huddle Ronda Roaring Jim Holahan Zach Larkins Captain Charles Tilton Theresa Klinger Kristin McCarthy • Call to Order 6:03 • Additions/Deletions to Agenda • Privilege of the Floor Blake Savoy – Noticed in Local Law #1 of 2024 there is a clause in section 3 that speciffes real property owned by a “husband and wife” … Savoy’s issue is that speciffc wording could be exclusionary of non- traditional spouses and thinks the term “marital spouses” would do in terms of serving the spirit of the law and that would better serve the community. Supervisor Gagnon agreed that the law was based on boiler plate language and suggested that Savoy recommend better wording for the board to consider. Woodworth suggested the change be on the agenda prior to making any change. Connors moved that there be a public hearing to change the wording in the law. Supervisor Gagnon thought we should talk to the Town Attorney before modifying the language of the law. It was generally agreed that once the board agrees on new language, they would then vote to have a public hearing on the matter. Ronda Roaring – Restated Jennings Pond statistics for the record: Total days open 32 Total days of 0 attendees 20 Total attendees 37 “That means that there were just 12 days on which there were people attending. The total number of attendees throughout the season was 37 that means there's, if you divide that, it's slightly over one person for each of the 32 days that the pond was open, so an average of one person per day. But si nce there were no people on 20 days and there were 12, maybe you could ffgure it also as roughly three people per open day or 2 | P a g e per day, that there was somebody there. What it comes down to, when I started ffguring this out, was that we spent an awful lot of money paying the lifeguard for 20 days in which there were no people there to guard. And that's a whole month. Twenty days is ffve days a week for four weeks. And he did that and got paid for the whole time. I'm saying that Jennings pond is a bad use of taxpayers’ dollars, and that if you look back at the 2022 records that the health department has, which are a bit spotty, the number of days open and the number of attendees is similar to this. And you could have done this, you could as a board, you could have gone back and looked at the records for 2022 and seen that very few people were using the pond. I feel, since we're heading into the budget, that we need to take a really hard look at whether or not we're going to have this program again.” Ted Crane – Crane expressed his appreciation of Savoy’s observation and was pleased by the board’s reaction. “I think that that whole thing is very nice. And yes, you do have to have a public hearing and pass a law to change the law. In the document about email policy, it's not clear what the changes you're proposing are, but it is clear that section four is missing a couple of sections in it, a couple of, you know minor sections in it, and there are no carriage returns, so the minor section numbering appears right along with in line with the rest of the text. As to unused items, I certainly hope that whatever policy you come up with will follow the guidelines issued by the State, which makes which make it very clear that you have to try and realized maximum possible income from getting rid of unused items, and in particular, if th at's necessary, that you don't have a better bidder, that you should offer them to the public before giving them away for free or throwing them out. You also have an item of passing the tax cap override, which I was pleased to see. And in general, I am in favor of passing an override law. However, that assumes that you're going to do your best to keep the budget as little as low as possible. And with regard to that, there was a long discussion about solar panels during the last board meeting. And I think the point that could not be made strongly enough is that you have to look at the total cost of ownership of those panels. If you have some free money coming from the federal government using free money to basically lower your annual operating costs by $16,000 you purchase the panels, you don't have to pay for them anymore. Your electricity is free for the most part. That is an excellent use of money, and that would also reduce the budget by so much that you might not need to override the tax cap. And ffnally, my last point, since Ronda mentioned the trail at the park, I should tell you that in a discussion with someone else, it's not important, because it's a good question anyway, the question of maintaining the trails around Jenning's pond - there are trees down. Who's responsible? Is the question. Who's responsible for trail maintenance/ It's part of the park system, but the town pays for the swimming area. If there are trees down and we want the trails used, perhaps we should be looking into that.” Garry Huddle – “In reading the proposal for the special event law. It looks like you got about everything covered, except I didn't see anything in there about sanitation, the bathroom facility requirements for anything like that. I know the health department is mentioned as far as camping and stuff. We've got the ffre district covered and the parking and everything else. But I didn't see anything. I don't know if that's the responsibility of the health department, or if they've got a system they use. If there's so many people coming, you have to have so many port-a-johns or something like that. But it's not mentioned in there. I just thought I'd bring that to your attention.” Planner Hutnik mentioned that the location of sanitary facilities is mentioned in section 4, subsection 15 of the draft proposal. Correspondence Dillon read an email from Ronda Roaring claiming the Thurnheer property is missing a deed. Roaring wrote: “It would be both illegal and irresponsible for the Town to allow this subdivision to continue. In addition, if Parcel 3 has no deed, the Thurnheers should be required to vacate the parcel. 3 | P a g e This smacks a lot of Rodney Palmer's use of the Town's land in Deputron Hollow. We must establish a policy where the Town claims or reclaims all parcels on which a person is occupying the land (squatting) without a deed or without a valid deed. The People of the Town of Danby have a right to that land, and the Town Board is currently denying them that right. The Town Board has been elected to represent the People of the Town of Danby. It has no authority to allow anyone to occupy land without a valid deed.” Supervisor Gagnon reported that the Planner did look into this and will provide a report shortly. Reports & Presentations Town Clerk Report Code Enforcement Olficer Meeting Minutes Resolution 204 of 2024 To Approve the Town Board Meeting Minutes of August 19, 2024 Moved by Connors Seconded by Woodworth Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Abstain Resolution 204 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Warrant Abstract No 16 of 2024 Resolution 205 of 2024 To Approve General Fund Vouchers 267–280 for $10,277.37 Moved by Connors Seconded by Woodworth Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 205 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Resolution 206 of 2024 To Approve Highway Fund Vouchers 149–158 for $26,192.21 Moved by Connors Seconded by Woodworth Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 206 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Resolution 207 of 2024 To Approve the West Danby Water District Fund Voucher 23 for $14.99 Moved by Connors Seconded by Woodworth Vote: Connors Yes 4 | P a g e Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 207 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Business Consideration of Kartman Easement – Public Hearing or Not? Supervisor Gagnon mentioned that while we don’t really need a public hearing, we could have one. Connors suggested it would make it more formal to have public comments. Discussion ensued. There was decision to not have a public hearing for the Kartman Easement. Special Event Law Discussion Planner Hutnik had Attorney Krogh look over the proposed law and Krogh had only minor comments on it. One comment was that the way the law was initially written it gave the planner a lot of discretionary authority, and he felt that was maybe more for the Board of Zoning Appeals. So, either you make the permit application more black and white - Do you meet this, yes or no - then the Planner could review and approve it. Otherwise, if you do want to look at an event on a case-by-case basis and give the board of zoning appeals more discretion, that makes more sense. Rather than go through and rewrite everything to make it black and white, the planner or zoning olficer could approve, just swap out the zoning olficer with board of zoning appeals and he give his blessings. Other changes include making sure that events that are related to governmental, religious and school functions are exempt. If this looks okay to the town board, the next step would be to take this through an environmental quality review. Discussion ensued regarding what an environmental quality review might look like. Resolution 208 of 2024 To Approve that the Town Board Be the Lead Agency in Environmental Review of the Special Event Law Moved by Gagnon Seconded by Connors Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 208 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Hutnik will have a new draft of the special event law by the first week of October and then potentially schedule a public hearing for the first meeting in November. Discussion ensued regarding several aspects of the current Special Event Law Draft, including much discussion about sanitary facilities . Hutnik updated the board on the event that occurred in August of 2023. Mr. Peters was charged and pled guilty to violating the zoning law. Huddle clarified the procedure for paying the fine with input from L Shawley and Klinger. 5 | P a g e Hanson asked if the fines for violating the Special Event Law had been paid. Discussion ensued regarding the process for paying fines. Resolution 209 of 2024 To Raise the Fine to a minimum of $1,000 up to $1,500 for a first offence violation of the Special Event Law. Doubled ($2,000 -$3,000) for a second offence and Tripled ($3,000 to $$4,500) for a Third Offence. Moved by Hanson Seconded by Connors Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 209 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Tax Cap Override Local Law Consideration Resolution 210 of 2024 To Propose a Tax Cap Override Law Moved by Hunter Seconded by Connors Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 210 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Resolution 211 of 2024 To Approve Scheduling a Public Hearing for the Local Law to Override the Tax Cap Moved by Gagnon Seconded by Hunter Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 211 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Public Hearing to be scheduled for the for the first meeting in October (October 7, 2024) Financial Overview Preceding Budget Consideration Bookkeeper Shawley produced a couple of reports showing where we are in the scheme of things . It gave an overview of the budget as it stands currently, and of the transfers that need to happen in order to cope with being underfunded in some lines. Shawley also produced a fund balance analysis which shows us where we were at the end of last year. What's not reifected in the fund balance report is, when we put the budget together, we always appropriate from the fund balance some money in order to determine how much we raise in taxes. We can use some of the fund balance to reduce the amount to be raised in taxes. We won't know where we're going to end up until we project our expenses to the end of the year s. 6 | P a g e L Shawley “When I put this together for the fund balance and the tax cap, I went back over the tax cap to look back through and see how many times we stayed under the tax cap in the last 10 years, and how many times we went over the tax cap. Most years, the board was really good at trying to keep it under as much as possible. “ Shawley also mentioned that the Town is allowed an increase this year of $76,715. Supervisor Gagnon mentioned that the health insurance consortium is raising premiums 14% and the living wage is going up to over $24.00 per hour. Gagnon has asked L Shawley to figure out what these increases would mean for Danby. Shawley will increase all the salaries by 3% and will report on the budget impact in the coming weeks. Interviews for CAC Secretary Kristin McCarthy. McCarthy answered several questions for the board. Budget Transfers Between Accounts Resolution 212 of 2024 To Approve to Transfer of Budgeted Funds Between Accounts L Shawley: “The Town went over budget in the pond and in the cemeteries, and that's the main thing, also, the fact that that certiffcation now for lifeguard is like six, $600 and we pay that for our lifeguards. That's what made us go over on Jennings Pond line... That'll be something that we really need to look at pretty closely when we're doing the budget for 2025 and seeing those additional (costs) or maybe deciding on how many mowings you really want. It depends on the weather and depends on what's going on, and how sharp you want it to be. And then we have another (issue) in the unallocated insurance and the insurance rate. The insurance rates went up. I am still waiting to hear back from them, because they had some vehicles and things on there that we are waiting to get some refunds on.” Discussion ensued regarding property insurance payments (Shawley will get quotes from other insurance companies) and the disappointing state of the Jennings Pond swimming area. RESOLVED, the Town Board approves the following budget transfers between accounts: From To Amount A1345.400 Purchasing Contr. A1345.410 Town Hall Postage 500.00 A1220.400 Supervisor Contr. A1345.410 Town Hall Postage 800.00 A1990.410 Contingent Grant Match A1910.400 Unallocated Insurance 1,517.00 A1910.400 Contingent Contr. A1910.400 Unallocated Insurance 2,230.00 A5132.400 Garage Contr. A1910.400 Unallocated Insurance 4,475.00 A9040.800 Workers Compensation A1910.400 Unallocated Insurance 1,253.00 A7150.100 Pond – Lifeguards A7150.400 Pond Contr. 1,940.00 A1990.410 Contingent Grant Match A7150.400 Pond Contr. 1,660.00 A9010.800 NYS Retirement A8810.400 Cemetery 696.00 A5132.400 Garage Contr. A8810.400 Cemetery 1,000.00 A1110.400 Court Security A8810.400 Cemetery 954.00 Moved by Gagnon Seconded by Connors Vote: Connors Yes 7 | P a g e Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 212 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 ARPA Update • WDWD Fire Hydrants ~Supervisor Gagnon reported that there was trouble getting people to replace the hydrants. • Solar Arrays – Holahan reported that Sunvestment had been doing remote monitoring on the site, and their contractor Renovus, is spending upwards of $15,000 per year to do maintenance of warranty work and possibly mowing the lawn. Lengthy discussion ensued. • Automatic Door Opener for Town Hall – Hanson volunteered to look into this, along with Larkins. Resolution 213 of 2024 To Extend the Meeting by 15 Minutes Moved by Gagnon Seconded by Hanson Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 213 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Email Policy Revision Proposal There was consensus to approve the revisions to the email policy. It was agreed that the Town will also adopt a form for all staff/committee members to sign detailing the rules regarding keeping town business on or attached to, someone’s olficial town email. The policy will be reviewed every January. Resolution 214 of 2024 To Approve Email Policy Revisions Moved by Woodworth Seconded by Hanson Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 214 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 CAC Secretary Appointment Resolution 215 of 2024 To Approve Appointing Kristin McCarthy as the Secretary to the CAC. 8 | P a g e Moved by Connors Seconded by Gagnon Vote: Connors Yes Hansen Yes Hunter Yes Woodworth Yes Gagnon Yes Resolution 215 of 2024 passed on September 9, 2024 Discussion of Next Meeting Agenda Email Agreement Ask Hutnik for a Planning subcommittee for zoning changes. Adjourn 8:26 PM