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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2012-02-14 TOWN OF GROTON -MINUTES OF TOWN BOARD MEETING TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2012 AT 7:30 PM THE TOWN HALL, 101 CONGER BOULEVARD Those present: Glenn E. Morey, Supervisor Ellard L. Sovocool, Councilman Donald F. Scheffler, Councilman Richard B. Gamel, Councilman Sheldon C. Clark, Councilman Fran Casullo, Attorney for the Town Also present: David Becker, Eric Burhans, Michael Gorr, Jean Morey, Dan Mizer, David Katt, Marc Perosio, Vernon Filkins II, Nick Niezgoda, Linda Mizer, Carole Daugherty, Cornelia Farnum, Edward Ficken, Pegi Ficken, Dan Cerretani, Susan Cerretani, Anne Mantey, Peg Coleman, Ed Neuhauser, Joseph Osmeioski, Doug Newman, Rachel Newman, Jennifer Schwade, Mary McGarry-Newman, Mike Goldstein, Kelly Smith, Danny Klimeszewski, Dorothy Pomponio, David Bestys, Nick Babel, Howard Snyder, Elizabeth Snyder, Grace Meddaugh, Mike Morris, Richard Meddaugh, Marie McRoe, Greg Weiland, Dan Carey, James Abrams, Dorothy Cornelius, Georg Schlesien, Daina Schlesien, John Morey, Dean Wolf, Tom Brown, Donald Boyce, Joan Packard, Sheena Mason, Lynette Thilbure, Robert Thilbure, Sandie Doren, Rena Caldwell, Dyan Lombardi, Lyle Raymond, Kay Blake, Bev Oaksfore, James Henry, Bob Walpole, Gary Coats, Charles Rankin, April Scheffler. MOVED by Councilman Sovocool, seconded by Councilman Gamel, to approve the minutes of the January 10, 2012 meeting as presented. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey. Claim Numbers 2-17 of the Highway Fund in the amount of $26,999.90 were presented for audit. MOVED by Councilman, seconded by Councilman, to approve the Highway Bills for payment. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey. Claim Numbers 21-56 of the General Fund in the amount of $26,523.93 were presented for audit. MOVED by Councilman Gamel, seconded by Councilman Clark, to approve the General Bills for payment. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey. Town Board Minutes Page 2 February 14,2012 Monthly Reports: Charles Rankin, Bookkeeper - Submitted monthly reports for the Board's review. Mr. Rankin spoke to the Board about passing a fund balance policy and will be providing some samples at a future meeting. He has been attending meetings concerning cable franchises on behalf of the Village and offered to also report on these meetings to the Town. The Village had hired a firm to see if money could be saved and there was some that could be. This is something the Town may want to consider at some time. Gary Coats, Code/Fire Enforcement Officer - Submitted monthly reports for the Board's review. Weather has been good and has resulted in a lot of construction going on. Richard C. Case, Jr., Highway Superintendent- Was not present. April L. Scheffler, Town Clerk/Tax Collection - Submitted monthly reports for the Board's review. Tax collection went smoothly this year. The Town is paid off and I will be taking the first installments to the County in the morning. I don't think there were as many senior citizens taking advantage of the extension to pay as there were last year, but the ones who did were very appreciative of the extra days. As with last year, it also prompted a lot of questions about exemptions and resulted in quite a few people making sure that they got their applications in to the Assessment Department. I've been working on fulfilling our obligation under the new section to the Freedom of Information Law which requires us to post agendas, resolutions and other information online and have done this through links attached to the meetings calendar on our website. This first effort seemed to take up an awful lot of my time, but hopefully it will get better as I work on easier ways to get things online and all departments work to help get the information together. RESOLUTION #12-012 TOWN CLERK & DEPUTY CLERK TO ATTEND CONFERENCE MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Gamel Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board hereby approves the payment of expenses for the Town Clerk and the Deputy Town Clerk to attend the New York State Town Clerks Association 2012 Conference in Saratoga, NY from April 22 - 25, 2012. Councilman Donald Scheffler, as Recreation Coordinator - We have advertised the position for Recreation Coordinator and are currently waiting for applications to come in. Other than that, I have nothing to report. Brian Robison, Tompkins County Legislator- Was not present. Privilege of the Floor: Supervisor Morey - I want to say something before we start. The Board and I take our obligation to the Town of Groton very seriously. We don't have the luxury to serve special interest groups. We were elected to serve the total population of the Town of Town Board Minutes Page 3 February 14,2012 Groton. As long as we serve the Town of Groton we'll protect every individual's rights without prejudice. On Monday morning at 9:07 am, I received a request from Mariko Fukuyama to film the Town of Groton Board meeting. She's a contract researcher/producer at Japanese National Network Television, NTV. She's also a writer and producer for CNN. I assumed that Ms. Fukuyama knew all about the Open Meetings Law and knew that she could film the Town of Groton meeting without my permission. After reading my first email I realized that it appeared I was declining her request to film. That was not my intent. What I was declining was her request to conduct interviews during the meeting, which I feel would be disruptive to the whole meeting. I was also declining the request for an interview with me. Tonight we are here to listen to all your concerns. I ask that everyone have respect for the person speaking and give that person the right to speak. We have to remember that we are neighbors and will continue to be neighbors after this. I would like to suggest some rules to speak tonight: state your name and address; respect others' opinions; each person may speak only once; no one can defer their time to speak to another person; there is a limit of two minutes to speak tonight. Tonight we're going to cap the privilege of the floor to 30 minutes. The Board is here to listen and may or may not answer any questions. If everybody understands these rules, who's first? Dorothy Pomponio - Much has been said about the positive things that drilling will do for business but there is some negative things that many people do not know about that gas drilling will do. First of all, gas leases and mortgage contracts are like oil and water. They do not mix. 79% of the land in Groton is leased. How many of those properties that are leased have mortgages on them? This is a serious issue. Tompkins Trust Company has been doing research on this for a long time and Greg May, who's the vice president of Tompkins Trust, has been going around raising the alert about this mortgage/gasoline conflict. The bank itself has no opinion on leasing but they do need to protect their mortgage assets. Besides the mortgages themselves, title insurance is violated. Homeowner insurance policies do not meet minimum standards for mortgage issuance. Homeowners' insurance policies commonly have exclusions of coverage for many of the very acts that a gas lease allows. I'm going to quote you an attorney, Beth Radow, who in December wrote an extensive legal review of this issue for the New York State Bar Associations Journal. Residential mortgages prohibit borrowers from committing waste, damage or destruction, or causing substantial change to the mortgaged property, or allowing a third party to do so. This includes operations for gas drilling. A second quote, standard residential mortgages prohibit borrowers from causing or committing the presence, use, disposal, storage, or release of any hazardous substances on, under or about the mortgaged property. Third quote, signing a gas lease without lender consent is likely to constitute a mortgage default. At any time before or after the drilling begins the lender can demand the borrower to either terminate the lease or pay off the loan. Finally, she says, if homeowners with gas leases can't mortgage their property, they probably can't sell their property either. The inability to sell one's home may represent the most pervasive adverse impact of residential fracking. Our County Legislature, and I'm very proud of them, has a Task Force on Gas Drilling, Assessment and Land Valuation Subcommittee. Carol Chock is the chair of it and she has also joined with Tompkins Trust to study this issue. There are a whole series of serious issues with secondary mortgage lending, etc. I'm going to quote to you from Greg May, comments made by leaders who are not lenders mislead the reader to believe there are not any conflicts between gas leases and residential mortgages. There are many areas of conflict that must be addressed when considering traditional residential lending and gas leases. The following are some of the Town Board Minutes Page 4 February 14,2012 key areas: appraisal issues that may not meet minimum standards; homeowners' insurance issues that would not meet minimum standards; conflicts with the terms of the mortgage document; conflicts with setback provisions and title insurance; conflicts with the lenders ability to confirm compliance with secondary market guidelines. His summary, a reader of the January article may incorrectly conclude that a borrower under a residential mortgage loan does not need lender consent in connection with signing a gas lease. As explained in this letter and the Elizabeth Radow article, which I quoted you from before, this would be an incorrect conclusion. As a service to your members it seems important that this particular point be corrected in a future publication. Ms. Pomponio handed out a copy of her information to be distributed to the Board. Michael Goldstein - Got three items for you. The first being the nature of the various types of presentations that are being presented to the Board. I'm quite concerned that you might believe that Mr. Atchie's presentation today represent the unvarnished truth. What it represents is a biased view from the industry that has a clear financial stake in drilling in the area. And, as you know, I'm a scientist. I spend a lot of time trying to find information at the raw data level and so what I've got for you is a resource that I really hope you've read already but your actions via email indicate to me that you probably haven't which is the executive summary of the Tompkins County Community Impact Statement on High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing. So, what I want to do today is hand you the executive summary. Just so as a matter of public record that we know that you have that and hopefully that you've read it. That is merely an abstract of a much larger document that is available online. Okay, secondly, I wanted to bring up some information I don't think we're going to hear in the presentation today and of course overshadowed by this filming issue is the much larger issue of not being allowed to ask questions of the presenter. So, hypothetically speaking, I wonder if as a professional P.R. representative of Chesapeake Energy, if Mike's ever been in any public hearing context in which questions were expressly forbidden to be asked at the presentation. Maybe we'll get an answer later today. Finally, I'm going to read you something that was written by Chesapeake Energy Corporation as part of their 10K Annual Report. These is Item 1A, Risk Factors. This is something Chesapeake has come under fire for because they disclose it because they are legally obligated to shareholders yet they do not do so, for example, to lease holders. Natural gas and oil drilling producing operations may be hazardous and may expose us to liabilities, including environmental liabilities. Natural gas and oil operations are subject to many risks including well blowouts, cratering, and explosions, pipe failures, fires, formations with abnormal pressures, uncontrollable flows of natural gas, oil, brine, or well fluids, and other environmental hazards and risks. I must point out this is written by Chesapeake for their shareholders. Our drilling operations involve risks from high pressures and mechanical difficulties such as stuck pipes, collapsed casings and separated cables. Some of these risk or hazards could materially and adversely affect our revenues and expenses by reducing or shutting in production from wells or otherwise negatively impacting the projects economic performance of our prospects. If any of these risks occurs we could sustain substantial losses as a result of injury or loss of life, severe damage to or destruction of property, natural resources, or equipment, pollution or other environmental damage, cleanup responsibilities, regulatory investigations, and administrative, civil and criminal penalties, some of what has recently happened down in PA, and injunctions resulting in limitation or suspension of operations. Town Board Minutes Page 5 February 14,2012 Jennifer Schwade - Given that it's Valentine's Day, I just wanted to remind the Board about two things that Mike Goldstein brought up during his presentation last week. When the Town of Groton did a survey to ask people in Groton what they value about their town, people mentioned that they value the rural quality of the Town, which presumably includes the quiet that we enjoy. People actually love having good roads. Given the likely impacts of hydraulic fracturing, based on what's happened in Pennsylvania and other places, I wonder how the Board would feel about 6% of the Town holds leases but the rest of us gets to deal with the increased air and noise pollution and snarled roads and extra traffic that would jeopardize the rural quality of our town. I just wanted to point out that there was an article in the Ithaca Journal a couple days ago saying that Cuomo thinks that we're coming close to a decision at the State level on hydraulic fracturing and if the Board were to want to take some sort of actions to protect the Town of Groton in terms of instituting any kind of additional regulation this should be the time to do it, that after permitting begins we'll be on much more tenuous legal ground. Marc Perosio - I'm for safe and effective drilling. I think that the Board ought to realize that there's a lot of pluses that come forward from this. With the concerns that the antis have, I think the Board may forget that 52% of our electricity comes from coal in New York State and coal mining is much more dangerous. It has a much worse track record than any of this does. I don't know how many people we killed in West Virginia last year in just one coal mining accident. So, therefore, I think the Board would be interested. We are not elitists here and the fact that we use a lot of energy, it comes with risks. We cannot put off the fact that if we're going to create energy here and mine it here, there are going to come inherent risks. What was learned in Pennsylvania has been incorporated into the DEC regulations and I think that the chances of the same problems that happened in Pennsylvania are much reduced here. I think you need to look at it as a holistic picture rather than a mine could fail or a gas well could fail. Yes, that could happen. Look what happened in West Virginia. I think we killed 22 last year in West Virginia. I don't know how many coal miners we've killed in the last 50 years. So, please look at it, the whole thing. And the most important thing is, if you're going to affect a ban, I think the Town is going to open itself up to some very, very serious lawsuits from somebody that could be very costly and would be counter productive. Dan Carey- I want to reiterate what I said before. I don't think the Town should enact a ban on drilling at this time. I think we should take it slow. The DEC is going to allow some drilling to take place this year on a limited basis in the Southern Tier and I think we're 3-5 years away from any drilling up here, in my opinion. I think we have a chance to see what happens. If it's not good, then I'd be all for a ban. But I think we have a chance to see what's going to happen in the Southern Tier. I don't think we have to take action now, at this point, to put a ban on. I think most of the landowners, I don't speak for everyone, but I think I speak for most of the landowners in this Town, and we're all for safe, environmental approved, DEC sanctioned drilling, but we also think that in the long run it's a safe process. It has its inherent dangers but everything does. So, I think go slow and let the DEC do its work and see what happens in the Southern Tier. I don't see a need to put a ban on at this point. Dan Cerretani - Lived in the area for the 30 years, last 20 in McLean. I work with farmers in the Finger Lakes, in Bradford and Tioga County in Pennsylvania, so I hear about fracking everyday with people who are living it and those that feel that its coming to their town pretty soon. I'm very concerned about the impact of hydrofracking on our Town Board Minutes Page 6 February 14,2012 community. I know you are concerned as well. You are elected to protect our infrastructure, our land use patterns, our natural and cultural resources, and our community character. I know that you take that seriously. Also, as you mentioned at the outset, to promote the interest of the community as a whole. A very difficult task. I've read the minutes of the Board meetings going back to August when fracking comments first started to appear. The comments run 5 to 1 against fracking. There's been passionate arguments on both sides. Tonight you have invited a pro-fracking industry representative to speak. The Board has remained neutral on the topic thus far and you want to gather all the information possible for a good decision. This simply must be overwhelming to try to gather all this information, so I appreciate that fact. I guess my question to the Board is how are you gathering unbiased information to do the right thing for our community as we move forward? Have you been involved in the Tompkins County Council of Government's Community Impact Assessment on Fracking which was published on 12/15? Which I didn't realize but another speaker gave to you a little bit earlier. It's a pretty exhaustive document and it's developed for communities like ours who are facing these problems. So, I hope that you've taken advantage of this and to the links in this assessment that give you hard, scientific evidence and facts about fracking, pro and con. So, my questions are have you dug into the suggestive questions that the assessment suggests each community take a look at and what is your plan and your timeframe to address these things? So, to this end, I just make a suggestion that perhaps the Board may want to organize a public forum, pro and against fracking, have different speakers to try to help educate the community and bring together some good dialog. Greg Weiland - Today we're going to hear from a gas company spokesperson and as we listen I think we all should remember that the gas companies have the most to gain from drilling in Groton. There are other people that will gain a lot, people who own a lot of property; landlords, especially those who own apartments; restaurant and bar owners, I think this playing out is playing out in Pennsylvania and southern parts of New York where the migrant workers have essentially come in; liquor store owners as well are probably going to gain. But what concerns me is, what about people like me? I own a little bit of property. I'm not going to make money off of gas. I'm like probably 90% of the residents of this town. I think most of us fear what we're going to lose rather than think about what we're going to gain. And as other people have talked about, what I have come to love here, why I moved here, away from Cornell, is the rural character, the quiet, the country. Clearly, from what I've seen and what I've read, if gas drilling comes, the Town will be industrialized. It will change the character of the Town. We will have truck traffic; we will have noise; we will have air pollution. It will completely change what this place is. The possibility of losing property values, I mean that's real, because it will no longer be the same place. I live on a well. If my well is contaminated my property value is zero. You can't live without water. So, I'm just asking a rhetorical question, obviously, as you try to make this important decision about the Town's future, think about what the majority of the residents of the Town could gain form this. What are the 90% of us going to gain? Leased lands are owned by 10....6% of the people. And more importantly, what would we lose? David Kalb - Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. As was mentioned earlier, you look out at the pictures here about when Smith Corona and some of the other industries that were here in Groton. This was an industrial town. But what could come is miniscule compared to a gas drilling industry that could come and what it could do to the rural character of this town. Two things that I am concerned about: you will hear Town Board Minutes Page 7 February 14,2012 some industry say that this technique is 60 years old but in actuality slick water high volume hydraulic fracturing is only about 10 years old. They've only been doing it for that period in Texas for about 9 years and less everywhere else. The more that that time frame increases, the more science is finding that there are problems with this procedure. Maybe they someday they will invent a way to do it with just water, with no chemicals, but that day isn't here. Yesterday, Washington County, Pennsylvania, the EPA just announced that they are investigating an error, water and hazard materials impact in Washington County, Pennsylvania because of the gas drilling there. The air pollution has gotten bad. Barnett Shale area in Texas, they've been drilling there for about 10 years and the Texas Council of Environmental Quality just issued a report last year, which I can link you to, in the summer of 2011. And in the Fort Worth, Texas area, which is a very rural part of Texas, their air quality has decreased two-fold since the gas drilling came in. They've equated that air pollution level in Fort Worth from the gas drilling industry is more than the combination all the buses, cars and trucks in all of the Fort Worth area. And also, they've found benzene, not in the water, but in the air in 94% of the sites that they tested and this is the Texas State Commission that did that investigation. And also, we hear about drilling from the gas companies and the well casings and things like that and they say, well, we'll just add another casing and cement around the well and their own industry scientists, this is a publication from the Society of Petroleum Engineers that basically says, gas and oil wells can develop gas leaks along their casings long after productions has ceased. Surface casings have little effect on gas migration. Consequences of cement shrinkage are not trivial. In North American there are literally tens of thousands of abandoned, inactive and active oil and gas wells, including gas storage wells that currently leak gas to the surface. Much of this enters the atmosphere directly contributing slightly to greenhouse effects. Some of the gas enters shallow aquifers where a trace of sulfuric compounds can render the water non-portable and where the methane itself can generate (2)..such as gas locking of household wells or gas entering household systems to come out when the tapes are turned on. Now, a lot of the industry people will say, that doesn't happen, but this is the Society of Petroleum Engineers and as the more time goes on, the more we find that there are a lot of problems with this. And although you may not be interested in passing a ban right now, a good compromise is a moratorium which gives you, the Town, the time, as much time as you need to look into the subject with input from the Tompkins County Council of Governments to find out what they've done about road use planning, about CEAs, which are Critical Environmental Areas that you can erect into the Town to preserve places that are very critical to the water supply or whatever. So, I think a moratorium would be a good compromise and also to encourage this discourse to again suggest that we have a town forum with invited speakers where questions and answers are available. We'd also like to ask you to the presentation at the Groton High School on Thursday night where we have a couple of presenters that you may also be interested in hearing. Pegi Ficken - I have 3 wells on my property. One of them has enough methane in it right now that if you flip a switch it's move the pressure switch to the outside of the well casing or the well would explode. One of my neighbors has another well with methane in such that his well cap would blow all the way across the road. Some of the warnings that I've been hearing sound like the same kind of warnings that I got before I had knee surgery: you know that you could die of the anesthesia; you could get paralyzed; you could get a blood clot; it might be that you'll never walk again. But, you know, that's standard boilerplate and annual report boilerplate talks about any possible thing that could ever happen. There are two lawsuits right now, one in Dryden and one in Town Board Minutes Page 8 February 14,2012 Middlefield, and the taxpayers in those townships are open to the liability of their Town Boards having passed illegal laws. We don't know. We don't know how that's going to be. It's my understanding that there are townships where they are considering bans where liability insurance for the town has been cancelled. Yes, I agree with being protective but as far as slick water, high volume hydrofracking, back in the olden days when I was working as an engineer in the petrol-chemical industry they were doing slick water, high volume hydrofracking and that was in the 1970's. There's plenty of facts and science, but not in the movie "Gasland". Mike Morris - Just want to say at the last Village Board meeting we followed up on the questions that we posed to the Village Board in December which we also posed to the Town Board in December and for people who see the questions we posed, the Board graciously put them in the December minutes where you can find them online, the Town Board and I think the Village Board. The Village Board suggested possibly having a joint meeting and sort of be similar to the forum that people brought up where we could all discuss the questions, you can give answers if you have them or are inclined to give answers, etc. Just want to through that out there. Regarding this idea of lawsuits and all that, I'd be curious to at some point to hear the Town Attorney's opinion about all that and with Groton being this sort of odd bird out relative to other towns at this point who have all passed bans or moratorium all around us it seems like the Town could actually be opening itself up to lawsuits on the other side in the event of accidents or litigation due to problems with gas drilling should it occur here. I want to give you an article that was in the Ithaca Journal, widely circulated, about the increase in crime down in Pennsylvania where it gives different statistics from local police chiefs and such down there. I don't know if we're going to be allowed to ask questions or not, but assuming we're not, I hope that you all will ask questions of Mr. Atchie and couple things to bear in mind is that the oil and gas industry was specifically exempted from the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, specifically the process of hydrofracking, and why is that? And why are they resistant to closing those loop-holes? There's two acts, the Frack Act and the Breath Act, which are in Congress and the industry opposes having to abide by the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, so why is that? And related to that, in the carve out in the Clean Water Act, the one exception was that they weren't allowed to use diesel fuel in their fracking process. Many of them continued to do so and got fined in the 4 or 5 years after that. But if diesel was exempted, why is that and why is it better that they're using the other chemicals that they're using? And then the other question that I hope you could ask Mr. Atchie would be could he trace the economics of a salable unit of gas, whatever unit they sell in or that royalties are paid on, from the time it's pumped up and then where, follow the money trail, get us the money trail, locally, if he can. He's the expert, hopefully he can tell us, they always say we're going to be so much in tax dollars, etc. What would our cut be? What's the local cut? How much ends up out of state, in Oklahoma, where Chesapeake is based, or in Texas for other companies? And then, Chesapeake has made a lot of deals lately with foreign companies, in billions of dollars, and they're building pipelines to export the gas, to raise the price, because the price is so low, so in his economic analysis I hope he would explain, follow that money. Where's the gas going to end up and what small piece of the pie stays locally? Town Board Minutes Page 9 February 14,2012 RESOLUTION #12-013 - APPOINT ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Scheffler Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board hereby appoints Steven Thane as Chair and Paul Fouts as Vice Chair of the Town of Groton Zoning Board of Appeals for the Year 2012 RESOLUTION #12-014 - APPOINT PLANNING BOARD CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Sovocool Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board hereby appoints Edward Neuhauser as Chair and Monica Carey as Vice Chair of the Town of Groton Planning Board for the Year 2012. RESOLUTION #12-015 - CODE OF ETHICS MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Gamel Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey WHEREAS, on May 8, 1979, the Town Board of the Town of Groton passed Resolution No. 18 of the Year 1979, establishing a Code of Ethics for officers and employees of the Town of Groton and WHEREAS, the Town Board has reviewed and updated said Code of Ethics, now therefore be it RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of Groton hereby replaces the 1979 Code of Ethics as follows: Section 1. Pursuant to the provisions of Section 806 of New York State General Municipal Law the Town Board of the Town of Groton recognizes that there are rules of ethical conduct for municipal officers and employees which must be observed if a high degree of moral conduct is to be obtained and if public confidence is to be maintained in our unit of local government. It is the purpose of this resolution to promulgate these rules of ethical conduct for the officers and employees of the Town of Groton. These rules shall serve as a guide for official conduct of the officers and employees of the Town of Groton. These rules of ethical conduct as adopted, shall not conflict with, but shall be in addition to any prohibition of Article 18 of General Municipal Law or any other general or special law relating to ethical conduct and interest in contracts of municipal officers and employees. Town Board Minutes Page 10 February 14,2012 Section 2. Definitions. (a) "Officer or Employee" means any person elected, appointed or employed by the Town of Groton whether paid or unpaid, including members of any administrative board, commission or other agency thereof. (b) "Interest" means a direct or indirect financial or material benefit accruing to a municipal officer or employee but does not include any benefit arising from the provision or receipt of any services generally available to other residents or taxpayers of the municipality. Section 3. Standards of Conduct. Every officer or employee of the Town of Groton shall be subject to and abide by the following standards of conduct: (a) Gifts. Officers or employees shall not directly or indirectly, solicit any gift; or accept or receive any gift having a value of seventy-five dollars ($75.00) or more, whether in the form of money, services, loan, travel, entertainment, hospitality, thing, promise, or any other form, under circumstances in which it could reasonably be inferred that the gift was intended to influence them, or could reasonably be expected to influence them, in the performance of their official duties or was intended as a reward for any official action on their part. (b) Confidential information. Officers and employees shall not disclose confidential information acquired by them in the course of their official duties or use such information to further their personal interest. (c) Representation before one's own agency. Officers and employees shall not receive, or enter into any agreement, express or implied, for compensation for services to be rendered in relation to any matter before any Town of Groton agency or board of which they are an officer, member or employee or of any Town of Groton agency, department or board over which they have jurisdiction or to which they have the power to appoint any member, officer or employee. (d) Representation before any agency for a contingent fee. Officers and employees shall not receive or enter into any agreement, express or implied for compensation for services to be rendered in relation to any matter before any agency or board of the Town of Groton whereby their compensation is to be dependent or contingent upon any action by such agency or board with respect to such matter, provided that this paragraph shall not prohibit the fixing at any time of fees based upon the reasonable value of the services rendered. (e) Disclosure of interest in legislation. To the extent that any person knows thereof, a member of the Town Board and any officer or employee of the Town of Groton, whether paid or unpaid, who participates in the discussion or gives official opinion to the Town Board on any legislation before the Town Board shall publicly disclose on the official record the nature and extent of any direct or indirect financial or other private interest they have in such legislation. (f) Investments in conflict with official duties. Officers and employees shall not invest or hold any investments directly or indirectly in any financial, business, commercial, or other private transaction, which creates a conflict with their official duties. Town Board Minutes Page 11 February 14,2012 (g) Private employment. Officers and employees shall not engage in, solicit, negotiate for or promise to accept private employment or render services for private interests when such employment or service creates a conflict with or impairs the proper discharge of their official duties. (h) Future employment. Officers and employees shall not, after the termination of service or employment with the Town of Groton, appear before any board or agency of the Town of Groton in relation to any case, proceeding or application in which they personally participated during the period of their service or employment or which was under their active consideration. Section 4. Nothing herein shall be deemed to bar or prevent the timely filing by a present or former officer or employee of any claim, account demand or suit against the Town of Groton, or any agency thereof on behalf of themselves or any member of their family arising out of any personal injury or property damage or for any lawful benefit authorized or permitted by law. Section 5. Distribution of Code of Ethics. The Town Clerk of the Town of Groton shall incorporate this Code of Ethics into the Town of Groton Employee Handbook, a copy of which shall be furnished to each officer or employee before entering upon the duties of their office or employment. The Town Clerk shall also distribute an updated Employee Handbook to each municipal officer or employee currently working for the Town of Groton. Section 6. Penalties. In addition to any penalty contained in any other provision of law any person who shall knowingly and intentionally violate any of the provisions of this code may be fined, suspended or removed from office or employment, as the case may be, in the manner provided by law. Section 7. Effective date. This resolution shall take effect immediately. RESOLUTION APPROVE UPDATED EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Sovocool Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board hereby approves the Town of Groton Employee Handbook as updated to reflect current personnel policies. Jim Abrams, Groton Central School District Superintendent- Gave a presentation on the school budget that they are currently working on for the 2012-2013 year. Salaries, health insurance, pensions remain some of the biggest expenses and increases. They are looking an estimated 1 .2 million dollar gap that needs to be closed in the next 6 weeks. This would represent a 24% tax levy increase. With the tax cap, a figure will be arrived at and must be presented to the Comptroller by March 1St and tomorrow he will receive guidance on that. If the budget is voted down, they will have to go to zero and have no increase in tax levy. Although many cuts will need to be made, Mr. Town Board Minutes Page 12 February 14,2012 Abrams, pledged to do the best he can for the students. He said that these are the worst of times and that there will be cuts that bring everyone involved to tears. Councilman Gamel introduced Mike Atchie, representative from Chesapeake Oil Company, who did a presentation on the basics of natural gas development. He recognized the concerns of many people who spoke during privilege of the floor and said that he would be willing to come back to address some of their questions when more time would be available. Mr. Atchie talked about extent of Chesapeake's current production in Pennsylvania and factors considered in determining where to place drilling rigs. He explained preparation of the site, which included grading and containment. He went on to explain baseline testing of local water wells, construction of the site, storage facilities, the drilling rig and all phases of the drilling process. He talked about the amount of water used, that they have reduced the number of chemicals use, and said that they are no longer using holding ponds but are recycling the water which is continued to be used in drilling processes. He also talked about impacts on roads, local road laws, maintenance agreements and bonding. Film clips and slides were presented on the topics that he touched on. Councilman Gamel asked Mr. Atchie's opinion of the odds that Groton would be drilled. Mr. Atchie said that he could only speak for Chesapeake, and that they are mainly looking at the Broome and Tioga County area. Until a well is drilled and it is really known how it will produce, it is hard to answer this question. Councilman Gamel asked about Chesapeake not exporting gas and Mr. Atchie their focus right now was not to export the gas. Councilman Gamel asked if Mr. Atchie new anything about "SteriFrac" which is supposed to be a new, environmentally safe frocking fluid. Mr. Atchie said he didn't know anything about it but would like to learn more. Supervisor Morey asked what the minimum number of wells they would drill on one pad. Mr. Atchie said their minimum was 6. Some companies do 8. Supervisor asked about the number of days this takes. Mr. Atchie said they would do 2 initially which would take about 70 days then come back to do the other 4 at about 30 days each. The equipment runs 24 hours a day. Supervisor Morey brought up one of the questions that had previously been asked by GRAC and asked if Chesapeake would give back to the community in a recreation facility. Mr. Atchie explained that since they were not operating in New York at this time, the question is a little hard to answer and corporate giving would be entertained once they were operating here. He also wanted to point out the ad valorum tax system of New York State and that the money from taxing the wells would remain locally, which would be a benefit to towns and municipalities. Councilman Scheffler asked about the reduced use of chemicals in the fracking water and what the mandatory chemicals used. Mr. Atchie explained some of them and said that they were listed in a packet that he handed out to the Board. He said the Frack Focus website was also a good place to check out what chemicals were used in specific wells. Town Board Minutes Page 13 February 14,2012 Bob Walpole and Jim Henry were present to discuss the property owned by Julie Martin, on South Parkway, that is infringing on property owned by the Town. It was previously thought that they could do an encroachment agreement but because of the extent of encroachment and the fact that it contains approximately 1/3 of an in-ground swimming pool, it would be better for the Town to sell this piece of property to Ms. Martin. The property has been surveyed and appraised by an independent appraiser at $690.00. Any additional costs will be paid by the buyer. After some discussion the following resolution was passed: RESOLUTION #12-017 - SALE OF PROPERTY TO JULIE MARTIN MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Sovocool Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board hereby approves the sale of ± .12 acres of land to Julie Martin for $690.00, with the buyer paying any additional costs subject to approval of both attorneys, Fran Casullo and Jim Henry, the approval of the Highway Superintendents, Rick Case, and pursuant to all requirements of New York State Town Law. MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Scheffler, to enter into Executive Session for the purpose of discussing litigation, at 9:43 pm. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Gamel, to return to Regular Session at 9:48 pm. Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLUTION #12-018 - ENFORCE JUDGE MULVEY'S DECISION ON THE BECK MATTER MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Scheffler Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey RESOLVED, that the Town Board hereby authorizes the Town Attorneys to take legal steps necessary to enforce Judge Mulvey's ruling on the Beck matter. Supervisor Morey - Let the record show that this is all that was discussed in Executive Session. Town Board Minutes Page 14 February 14,2012 RESOLUTION #12-019- IN SUPPORT OF MAINTAINING DEDICATED FUNDING FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION FUNDING IN THE SURFACE TRANSPORTATION LEGISLATION MOVED by Supervisor Morey, seconded by Councilman Clark Ayes - Sovocool, Scheffler, Gamel, Clark, Morey WHEREAS, the provisions in the recently unveiled House bill H.R. 3864, the federal American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Financing Act, would eliminate dedicated federal fuels taxes for public transit and create long-term uncertainty for public transportation funding for the first time in three decades, and WHEREAS, since 1983, nearly half of all public transportation funding has been provided from the federal motor fuels tax dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund, and WHEREAS, this funding structure has successfully provided highway and transit programs with secure, dedicated revenues and has allowed Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, Inc. (TCAT, Inc.) and public transit systems across the country to create jobs, including those for the bus manufacturing industry in New York State, and WHEREAS, under the proposed change, public transit funding would receive a one- time appropriation with no funding for public transportation after 2016 and would create uncertainty for TCAT, and WHEREAS, as TCAT looks to expand capacity during record ridership of nearly 4 million annual trips, this change will have dire consequences for the thousands of people in Tompkins County who rely on public transit. NOW, THEREFORE, be it RESOLVED that Town of Groton, strongly opposes H.R. 3864 and asks members of Congress to reject it in their final vote. Announcements: > Planning Board, February 16 at 7:30 pm > Zoning Board of Appeals, February 29 at 7:00 pm > New York State Association of Towns Annual Conference in New York City - February 19 - 22 > Information Forum on hydrofracking, February 16 at 7:00 pm at the Groton High School Cafeteria There being no further business, Councilman Gamel moved to adjourn, seconded by Councilman Scheffler, at 9:50 pm. Unanimous. April L. Scheffler, RMC Town Clerk