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HomeMy WebLinkAbout07-13-2004 TOWN OF GROTON – MINUTES OF TOWN BOARD MEETING TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2004, 7:30 PM AT THE TOWN HALL, 101 CONGER BOULEVARD Those present: Glenn E. Morey, Supervisor Ellard L. Sovocool, Councilman Donald F. Scheffler, Councilman Sheldon C. Clark, Councilman Richard B. Gamel, Councilman Victoria Monty, Attorney for the Town Also present: Gary Coats, A. D. Dawson, Tena McClary, Rosemarie Tucker, April Scheffler. MOVED by Councilman Sovocool, seconded by Councilman Clark, to approve the minutes of the May 11, 2004 meeting with the correction showing that Councilman Gamel was not present. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey. Highway Fund Claim Numbers 122-138 of the in the amount of $45,447.65 were presented for audit. MOVED by Councilman Clark, seconded by Councilman Scheffler, to approve the Highway Bills for payment. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey. Special Grant (HUD) Fund Claim Numbers 349-357 of the in the amount of $38,382.88 were presented for audit. MOVED by Councilman Sovocool, seconded by Councilman Scheffler, to approve the HUD bills for payment. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey. General Fund Claim Numbers 170-206 of the in the amount of $9,408.40 were presented for audit. MOVED by Councilman Scheffler, seconded by Councilman Game., to approve the General Bills for payment with the exception of Claim Number 185 to Complete Cleaning Service in the amount of $600.00, making the total amount approved for payment to be $8,808.40. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey. Town Board Meeting Page 2 July 13, 2004 Supervisor Morey offered privilege of the floor and no one wished to speak. Monthly Reports: Elizabeth Brennan, Bookkeeper/Highway Clerk – Was absent. She had submitted the monthly report. Gary L. Coats, Code/Fire Enforcement Officer – Through the end of June, 14 building permits had been issued, 1 for a manufactured home and 1 for a log cabin and 12 others. 10 certificates of occupancy or completion had been issued. Life Safety Inspections were caught up, with the exception of one who says that he no longer has a 3-family home but a 2-family, in which case it will not need inspection. Mr. Coats had attended a training session at the Dryden Fire Station on Fire Codes. Several orders to remedy on junk vehicles had been reissued with warnings that court action may be taken against them. I want to thank you for the vote of confidence for hiring me. I want to note that George left me and the filing system in excellent shape. It was a very smooth transition. There wasn’t a lot of educating to do as far as the filing system goes because it was laid out the best that I could ask for. And I want to thank the ladies out front. They’ve been very helpful, gracious and patient during the transition and they’ve been helping me out an awful lot. Richard C. Case, Jr., Highway Superintendent – Was not present. April L. Scheffler, Town Clerk/Tax Collector – I’ve hired a summer youth worker, Stacie Vance. We have the Tompkins-Cortland County Historians using the Court Room for a conference on July 31. I was asked by the Groton Business Association to talk to you about the television ads. Clerk passed out information and explained that they were ads shown on local cable stations with the objective to promote Groton. The GBA is trying to get the program jumpstarted again this year and was asking if the Town would consider sponsoring an ad for one month. The Board thought that they would be interesting in possibly doing this and asked that the Clerk contact Terry Donlick to see if she would come to the August meeting and show the previous ads. Clerk Scheffler – I wanted to talk about the excess dog control funds. Supervisor Morey – The $14,000? Clerk Scheffler - $26,000. Supervisor Morey – That’s going back into the budget this year. We’re going to dispose of that. Do you have ideas of what you want to do? Clerk Scheffler – Well I was told that we could use it for a spay and neuter clinic or rabies clinic, anything to do with dogs. The fact that we have an excess is unusual. When Ag & Markets Law was rewritten in 1985, the intent was to make this a self-sustaining program. We can have a self-sustaining program because our income does go way beyond our expenses. Any Town Board Meeting Page 3 July 13, 2004 excess that is there, I was told, should be going back in to the budget to pay for such things a part of the deputy’s wage, part of my wage, computers, software, whatever pertains to dogs. You would have to figure out what percentage of these things pertain to dogs. Then there would not be an excess building up. Supervisor Morey – Correct, and you will be asked in the budget papers what you want to do. I know that you want a spay and neuter clinic and I know that you want to do some other things too. Hopefully we won’t have to spend it all in one year. Clerk Scheffler – No, they (State Comptroller’s Office) didn’t say that we had to spend it all in one year. They said we could do it this year, that there was no problem to put it into one of the funds that we already have. Supervisor Morey – Yes, whatever you want to do. But I was going to ask you in this budget season to come up with a budget for all the dog neutering programs or any kind of SPCA or animal program that you want and we’ll put it in the budget because I don’t want that in reserve. It has to come out. Clerk Scheffler – I have talked to the vets and they are willing to work with us. Supervisor Morey – Just the people in Groton? Clerk Scheffler – That’s my initial idea. I think we should support our businesses first. I haven’t gone further than that until I got confirmation from you that we should proceed…. Supervisor Morey – I think it’s a great idea. Clerk Scheffler - …..and that we would have the money available when the time comes. Supervisor Morey – Yes. There was some more discussion on the subject. Clerk passed out a sheet showing some research on the reserve dog fund concerning when and why it began accumulating. She explained that the State Comptroller’s Office also told her that interest earned on this account should be credited to it and it did not appear to show any interest. Clerk asked that this be looked into. Clerk also commented on the need to proceed with an enumeration and that either a spay/neuter program or a rabies clinic would work well if timed with an enumeration. Clerk Scheffler – I was wondering if you had decided how you wanted to do a contract or what you wanted to do about that so we could get moving on that. Councilman Sovocool – Has anyone thought about the SPCA doing an enumeration again? I talked to the supervisor over in Lansing and he said he thinks that’s what they’re going to do. Clerk Scheffler – They just finished one. They just paid someone on a voucher. Councilman Sovocool – I know, but next time they’re going back to the SPCA because they had a few problems too, I guess. Clerk Scheffler – Will the SPCA do it? Town Board Meeting Page 4 July 13, 2004 Councilman Sovocool – He seems to think they will. That would be one way to get it done. Clerk Scheffler – Maybe some of this excess dog money every year should be budgeted for an enumeration, every year or every other year. If the SPCA is willing to do it at least getting part of the dogs counted every year would be worth it. Supervisor Morey – Fine, come up with a solution. It’s your program. Clerk Scheffler – It’s my program? Okay. But, if the SPCA doesn’t want to do it what are you going to do? Supervisor Morey – I’m still a firm believer that we should have an independent contractor and have insurance and everything. I don’t know what the rest of the Board says, you know, I’m only one vote. Clerk Scheffler – Have you decided on wording for the contract? Supervisor Morey – No I haven’t. Councilman Scheffler – The SPCA would be a contractor and they’ve got to have insurance too. They probably already have it but we’d have to get a certificate from them if they have it. Tena McClary, Deputy Clerk – Can I put in my two cents? We’ve had three or four reports from the Groton PD on dog bites and at least two of those were animals that were not licensed. So, an enumeration is something that we need. I don’t know if the SPCA will do it. They’ve only got two officers. So, if we’re going to go with an independent contractor we need to really look at getting a contract written up. A couple of the towns that we talked to, one town actually put an ad in the paper that they were going to send out census forms, they mailed census forms and it worked fairly well for them. But most of the people who aren’t going to license their dogs aren’t going to do it unless you physically count them. Supervisor Morey – You did have somewhat of a contract that you submitted, didn’t you? Clerk Scheffler – I had the one that Dryden sent me. Supervisor Morey – Can you give it to Victoria and have her look at it and come up with something? Victoria Monty, Attorney for the Town – We would like any questions that the Board may have or the Code Enforcement Officer, we’d like to have those put in writing including specific facts so that we can answer your question with some confidence, that we have a clear understanding of what the question is. So, for Code Enforcement, names of the individuals, the property address, if there are attorneys involved, any of that. You should direct that to my attention and then we will get you a response in writing within 24 to 72 hours. So, I think that will be a better way to proceed in the future. It may be that I give it to Fran ultimately, but I think that our fear is that some people may take advantage of, if you don’t give us all of the details, the answer changed depending on what facts are given, obviously. And if they don’t like the response I give them they may seek Fran out and we don’t want that to happen. We want to Town Board Meeting Page 5 July 13, 2004 make sure we have all of the facts and if we have it in writing and if there was ever an issue in the future we can say well this was what we were told. You know, we like to cover our backsides but I think it’s covering the Town’s interest as well. Gary, I know you had a question for me today. Gary Coats – I will fax it to you tomorrow. Attorney Monty – That would be wonderful. There is another matter I’m working on relative to Diversified. I don’t want to discuss it in open session other than that and at this point I don’t think we need to go into executive session. I don’t have much to report. I’m still compiling information actually. A.D. Dawson, Town Justice – I believe that you folks have two reports actually from us, one a six-month report and one for this last month. I think, maybe I heard her wrong, but maybe you haven’t been getting the reports, like maybe last month. But we’re going to make sure that you are getting them monthly. Just by way of reporting anything special, we’ve got one case that’s in John’s court that’s a DWI and the attorney submitted his preliminary motion, like all attorneys do. However he submitted 27,030 pages of them, which is way, way too much to try to look through and glean that there’s anything in there at all that should be important to look at. But this is a tactic to get a dismissal, I think, for some of his cases. John, last night, issued an order that he was not going to look at 27,030 pages and he directed the District Attorney’s Office not to be compelled to respond to it either and gave the guy 7 days to refile 15 pages of motions and that he should take that as a hint that any further proceedings in this court that he has that might be an appropriate number. This attorney’s response was that he didn’t feel that he could fairly represent his client but we are aware that this has happened in other courts as well. He at that point said that there are Article 78’s, I believe, that he was thinking about filing or was filing for the other courts. However, there is ample case law. His primary concern was that we didn’t have a stenographer here but we’re not a court of record and examples of case law upholds that. But I just thought I would throw that out just to let you know that there are some screwy things that happen here like a guy going through all of that. If you notice in your reports, our cases are increasing somewhat. That’s because of good weather and things like that. We will be needing to speak to the Board at the next meeting regarding a couple of topics that are what we consider pretty important, that we need to speak to you before budget time comes around. We’ll get all the information to Glenn ahead of time so that everybody knows what’s going on and supporting documents that we need to have. We’ll get to you on that. It’s not anything that’s super-major st but it’s something that we need to look at as far as maintaining the court in the 21 Century. Supervisor Morey – And what might that be, Road Runner? Justice Dawson – To be honest with you there we just recently got a memo from Judge Kay’s office, who’s the “big boss”, indicating that they want to everything to be on-line submissions fairly soon. Supervisor Morey – You’re on line, Dewey. Justice Dawson – But there’s a difference. I really don’t want to try to get into the nuts and bolts of it now because we need to be able to have it together and be able to answer your questions better. But that’s one of them and another will be the recording of hearings and trials and stuff like that. Town Board Meeting Page 6 July 13, 2004 Justice Dawson offered the assistance of the Court to the new Code Enforcement Officer, Gary Coats. Councilman Donald Scheffler, as Recreation Coordinator – Our summer recreation programs are all up and running and going well. Don’t have a lot to report. The school budget passed so our fears of losing the fields and facilities, that went away. Supervisor Morey – Do you want to discuss the Memorandum of Understanding? Councilman Scheffler - We signed this quite awhile ago. The school has just changed one thing. They want to leave in the opportunity to charge for the facilities if they have to. It’s kind of a moot point anyway because if they charge us we’re not going to do anything because we don’t have any money. So, I guess it’s okay. They say they have no intention of ever charging. RESOLUTION # 77 – APPROVE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING MOVED by Councilman Scheffler, seconded by Councilman Sovocool Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board does hereby approve the Memorandum of Understanding between the Town of Groton, the Village of Groton and the Groton School Board concerning use of school facilities for the Joint Recreation Program. Rosemarie Tucker, Town Historian – Presented copies of “Place Names in Tompkins County” to Board Members, Clerk and Deputy Clerk. RESOLUTION # 78 – AUTHORIZE COURT CLERK TO ATTEND MEETING MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Scheffler Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board does hereby authorize Margaret Palmer, Court Clerk, to attend a User Group Meeting for Service Education Inc. Courtroom Software on Thursday, August 5, 2004 in Chittenango, NY and approve reimbursement of expenses. Town Board Meeting Page 7 July 13, 2004 RESOLUTION #79 – SMALL CITIES BUDGET MODIFICATIONS MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Sovocool Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board does hereby approve the following budget changes to the Community Development Construction Rehab Grand #4: Construction will remain the same at $330,000. Program Delivery: From: $40,000 To: $44,804 Administration: From: $23,000 To: $18,596 (for County) From: $ 7,000 To: $ 6,600 (for Town) Supervisor Morey – Next is review of M &T investments. Basically, for Rick being the newest person, the M & T investment is our security against our bank accounts. You have that in your packet to read at your leisure. Announcements: th Bikes & Blues – July 10, this past weekend. th Planning Board Meeting – July 15 th Farm-City Day – Fouts Farm – July 24 from 11AM to 4PM th McLean Block Dance – July 24 th McLean Community Council Meeting – September 15, 7:30 PM th Town Employee Vacations – Highway – will be back July 19 st Groton Business Association – Golf Day & Picnic – July 21 th Groton Business Association Meeting – September 15 – Elm Tree Inn – Lee Shurtleff speaking on 911 System. Supervisor will be away last two weeks of July th Tompkins County Municipal Officials Meeting – July 20 – at the Ichabod There being no further business, Councilman Sovocool moved to adjourn, seconded by Councilman Scheffler, at 8:19 PM. Unanimous. April L. Scheffler Town Clerk