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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-22-2024 Town Board Meeting Minutes & Public Hearing BudgetTOWN OF GROTON –MINUTES OF THE TOWN BOARD PUBLIC HEARING REGARDING 2025 PRELIMINARY FISCAL BUDGET TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2024, AT 7:30 PM Town Officers Present: Town Officers Absent: Also Present: Donald F. Scheffler, Supervisor Crystal Young, Councilperson Molly Messenger, DR Solar Richard Gamel, Councilperson W. Rick Fritz, Code Official Melissa Melko, DR Solar Brian Klumpp, Councilperson Julie Graham, Bookkeeper Usman Chaundry, DR Solar Sheldon C. Clark, Councilperson David Durrett, Ithaca Times Ellard Keister, Highway Supt. Chris Skawski, CCE TC Mack Rankin, Dept. Highway Glenn Morey, Youth Commission Francis Casullo, Attorney Elizabeth Conger, Village Trustee Robin Cargian, Town Clerk Matt Liponis, DR Solar Attorney Lisa Maloney-Hahn, Planning Board Frank & Lisa Yager Monica Carey, Groton Planning Barry Siebe, County Environmental Council Representative Dr. Jamila. Simon Jane Chauncey Lee Shurtleff, County Legislature The meeting was called into session with the Pledge of Allegiance at 7:30 PM and the announcement printed in the Cortland Standard was read by the Town Clerk, Robin Cargian. Notices were also placed at both Post offices, the Town Clerk’s Office, and the Town of Groton website. No comments were received by the Town Clerk before the meeting. MOTION #24-082- ACCEPT THE PRELIMINARY BUDGET MOVED by Councilperson Klumpp, seconded by Councilperson Gamel to accept the Tentative Budget as the Preliminary Budget for 2024. Ayes –Clark, Klumpp, Gamel, Scheffler Motion Passed MOVED by Councilperson Klumpp, seconded by Councilperson Gamel to open the Public Hearing for the 2025 Fiscal Budget. Ayes –Clark, Klumpp, Gamel, Scheffler Motion Passed Public Hearing Lisa Maloney-Hahn, 505 W. Groton Rd.- As a community member I ask that the highway department be given a priority as they do an amazing job. I don’t know of any other town where you can call someone at 7:36 in the morning and tell them there is a dangerous tree in the road and by 8:00 AM they have taken it out of the road. I feel the crew that Ellard has and working with Ellard has been a very good experience. I hope we can keep that crew and keep that in mind when you are looking at the budget. Town Board Meeting & Public Hearing Minutes Page 2 October 22, 2024 Supervisor Scheffler stated there is a sizable raise per hour in the budget and we know that they are probably the best that there is. We know that and are trying to move them up steadily. This budget reflects as much of a raise as we can give to all our employees without going over the tax cap. After everyone was heard who wished to speak, It was MOVED by Councilperson Klumpp, seconded by Councilperson Clark, to close the Public Hearing on the 2025 Fiscal Budget. Ayes –Clark, Klumpp, Gamel, Scheffler Motion Passed Nays – Public Hearing on the 2025 Fire and Ambulance Agreements Lee Shurtleff, representing the Groton Fire Department and Emergency Ambulance Service spoke under the authority of the Department Board of Wardens. There have been several concerns raised at different times as you were considering different requests, and I have tried to put together an outline for you that gives you fuller information than what we have seen in the past. I will hit the highlights of the 2024-2025 increases in the contracts. The Fire Department's overall budget as of 2024 is $673,000. The bulk of it is supported by four contracts which are the Village Fire and Ambulance contract and the Town Fire and Ambulance Contract. What we have requested for 2025 for each of the four contracts is a $3,000 increase from each or $12,000 total. Which I believe is a 1.1% increase overall. This brings the Town Fire Contract to $162,500.00 and the Ambulance to $183,500.00. One thing I will point out is that there are other sources of funding that we work out of to the tune of $32,000. So, in addition to the contracts from the Town and Village, we also raise money through interest ($5,000), average donations ($6,000), reimbursement from insurance companies ($6,000.00,) and fundraising ($13,000). We point this $32,000 non-tax dollar out, to demonstrate in addition to the services that you contract for, we also set aside money that is to be placed into a capital reserve building account, and this also covers the special event costs such as the clam bake or annual banquet for the volunteer firefighters and ambulance crews. If we run a surplus at the end of the year, if we are able to meet the budget, the goal is to put $20,000.00 in a capital reserve fund. Some years it was $10,000, some years it was $5,000. If we came into a year where we ran into major equipment costs, we may have borrowed from the capital reserve fund. Let me talk to you about the ambulance. Our current revenue is budgeted at $138,000. Every year we make a payment of $38,000, and we make an average interest payment against the ambulance loan of $5,000. Some years it is $3,000, some years it is $7,000. Salaries for three full-time paramedics and half a dozen per diem paramedics or critical care technicians we budget $300,000. We also budget $10,000 towards the shared position with the Village of Groton for a daytime driver. Everyone else is a volunteer! Our evening drivers and daytime help, when we don’t have staff, are zero dollars. Each defibrillator costs on average $30,000, which we lease ours and that payment is $15,000 per year. Ambulance maintenance, supplies, equipment, training, $31,000. 378,000 dollars is what it takes to roll that ambulance throughout the year using volunteer help in addition to the paid staff. The contract covers $338,000, we annually have a deficit of $40,000 in operating costs. I will show you how we make that up. These are strictly ambulance-related costs. The fire department contract underwrites all shared expenses. Our property, liability, casualty, and disability insurance as well as workmen’s compensation comes out of the fire contract. The shared building expenses and fuel come from the fire contract. What you are seeing as costs increase on the ambulance side is a deduction from the fire contracts to support the real operations and subsidize the buying of equipment and other expenses for the ambulance. The current revenue for the Fire contract is $315,000. The first $30,000 goes to buy insurance, including a separate $5,000 policy required to cover members due to the high rate of cancer occurrences in firefighters. Workmen’s compensation costs $25,000 per year, which has decreased over time from $45,000 due to the diligence of our members and lack of claims. Fuel, vehicle maintenance, building maintenance, and utilities numbers were based on the old building, protective equipment, legal & audit, physicals and medicals, fire education, administrative costs, and community education costs adding up to $275,000. What drives the request that comes before you? ISO, Insurance Services Organization sets the rates for fire insurance costs. We Town Board Meeting & Public Hearing Minutes Page 3 October 22, 2024 have a rating in the middle of the Town at a five, it is a scale of one to ten. In order to maintain insurance ratings and commercial insurance at a reasonable cost we have to maintain a level of equipment. That includes having two engines that can produce in excess of two thousand gallons per minute. We deal with a rural water supply. We used to have two tankers, but we now have one with three thousand gallons. Part of the justification is between the two engines and the tanker you now have five thousand gallons going in if you have an active fire. If you can’t put it out with five thousand gallons of water, you are going to be there for a while. We try to keep it at a basic level. When I was chief in the late 90’s we had nine vehicles consisting of three engines, a ladder truck, a city service truck, a rescue truck, two tankers, and two ambulances. Now, we have modified that to two class A engines which keeps us able to support the ISO requirements and we also have one tanker for rural water supply and mutual aid agreements with outside resources that if we do not have hydrant service, we have more water coming to us on an outside basis. We also have two ambulances that up until two years ago, we bought one every four years and kept them for a life of eight years. So, every four years one would be replaced. Due to increasing costs, we have slipped back into replacing every five or ten. What we are finding is we are putting so many miles on those ambulances that we need to get them back to a five-year rotation. That will be a bit of a challenge with the budget that we are working on. In 2022 we purchased the last ambulance, the same exact model as the last three before it and paid $159,000. Due to the production schedules, we signed a contract last year to lock us in to take possession in three years. This ambulance will cost $209,000, a $50,000 increase in two years. The other challenge is replacing a stretcher which includes an automatic lifting mechanism that costs $30,000. With the essential lifting add-ons to protect our medics, an ambulance for 2026 will cost $270,000. I mentioned our payment factored in each year is $25,000. When the price was $150,000, we were putting money into that from the ambulance memorials, donations, a little bit of reserve as well as a trade-in value on a rig. We will have to raise that amount to $70,000 a year to stay at a decent level. That means there will be an increased cost of interest. Of the two engines spoken of previously, one was purchased in 2008 from Plastisol when they were in operation. In 2018 the second was purchased to replace a 1993 engine kept five years longer than we should have. We bought a demo unit that was $327,000.00, which was a bargain to meet our needs and get 20 years out of it. The going rate of an engine now, which I am sure the highway department is telling you about the price of dump trucks and rollers, comparable trucks are now being sold in this area for $750,000. There is our challenge with the fire budget. We have been setting aside $50,000 a year for apparatus replacement. The challenge is if we stick to replacing an engine every 10 years hoping for 20 years of life out of it, we are looking at payments in 2028 of $75,000.00. What we have attempted to do by asking for incremental raises in the four contracts is to increase the apparatus accounts up to $50,000 or even $75,000 and start to have them at a point where we can maintain that apparatus replacement. We have had some good news and some not-so-good news. The fire department has stepped into ambulance cost recovery. Up until 2022, the fire department and based ambulance services were prohibited from billing for third-party insurance reimbursements. We finally got the governor and state legislature to agree to allow fire departments to bill for ambulance cost recovery through whatever insurance was available. We became certified around August of 2023; within the first six months, we recovered about $98,000. We started to look for a way to incorporate that income into the budget. The State put a three-year sunset to that legislation so in 2025 the State must renew that authorization in order to continue to bill. We have no guarantee that will happen. We are currently placing that money in a reserve account to purchase the next ambulance to ease that payment over a period. If we can see that revenue stream continues permanently, it will be incorporated into the long-term budget with an estimated goal, minus the administrative costs of roughly $175,000 to keep the ambulance in a four-year rotation. We would also be looking for a fourth paramedic or critical care technician to fill out the schedule using $75,000. The shortfall of the balance would be used to offset the ambulance budget and alleviate the pressure on the fire budget. The money will be spent toward the next ambulance purchase and equipment. Hopefully, it will allow us to stabilize and limit any increase for the town and village going forward. The other wild card that is out there. I do not know if the Village of Groton has met to discuss the building project and is not factored in here. To my understanding, the Village extended the bond anticipation note into next year, an additional year before they get to the final price on it. The second is we have no idea what the utility costs will be. We suspect there will be some cost savings from what we were using before with a combination of gas and electricity, to a more efficient system and utility. We are earmarking that $29,000 to go towards whatever utility assessment the Village has and also to be able to share in the cost in the longer term for whatever the bond will Town Board Meeting & Public Hearing Minutes Page 4 October 22, 2024 be. The budget will continue to support some reimbursement to the village for utilities and building maintenance moving forward. So, you are funding part of that with this budget, which is carried over to the new building and hopefully, we will see some efficiency from it. I promised I would give you more details than we had a couple of months ago and am happy to answer any questions you have. We appreciate your consideration of the request, and we will try to keep it at a level that has a minimal increase in your tax levy moving forward. We are at 787 ambulance calls as of this afternoon. We are on a record to reach a thousand by the end of the year. When I joined in the late 80’s and later as chief in the 90’s, we thought a 400 call volume was outrageous. To give you an idea of the stress that is going on, every ambulance in the County was out in the middle of a Sunday afternoon last week. As we were leaving Cayuga Medical Center, we got routed to Titus Towers for Bangs Ambulance Service who was out of rigs. Earlier in the morning we were called to the Love Inn Church on Route 13 to take a heart call. It turned out to be a Groton Resident who was happy to see her local crew show up. Yesterday afternoon we sent an ambulance to Moravia. By the same token, there are days when we are stretched, and outside ambulances are coming in to cover Groton. There are half periods when we are down paramedics and without a crew temporarily. It is an industry-wide problem. Even if we could create that fourth position right now, I am not sure we could find someone to fill it as there are just not enough people going into the advanced level or paramedic classes to meet the demand that is out there. I feel sorry for Dryden Ambulance as there isn’t a day that goes by that they are not going to Ithaca or Cortland to back up the commercial ambulances. The stress that is out there right now, to meet this call volume, especially with the aging population that we have, is something that we are having to contend with now and ahead. Hopefully, that gives you a little idea of how we are trying to budget and portion the resources that we are getting from local governments. After everyone was heard who wished to speak, It was MOVED by Councilperson Gamel, seconded by Councilperson Klumpp, to close the Public Hearing on the 2025 Fire and Ambulance Agreements with the Groton Fire Department. Ayes –Clark, Klumpp, Gamel, Scheffler Motion Passed Nays – Environmental Assessment Review Project #1 Delaware River Solar Supervisor Scheffler read aloud the Part II document of the Full Environmental Assessment Form for Project #1. Negative responses were obtained to all but questions #8 Impact on Agricultural Resources and #11 Impact on Open Space and Recreation. Where moderate to large impacts were found the developer will mitigate impacts and modify the site plan application as follows: Section 8 d- A moderate to large impact was determined as the project is wholly located within The Tompkins County Agriculture District and would irreversibly convert 15.66 acres of agricultural land to non-agricultural uses. The developer agrees to follow the NYSDAM and DEC guidelines and use a pollinator mix for planting so that no bare earth will remain as conditions of the Special Permit Application. Section 18 f- A moderate to large impact was determined that would be inconsistent with the existing character of the natural landscape currently agriculture, woodland, brush vegetation, and some residential housing impacting 30+ neighbors. The developer agrees to provide visual screening to the affected neighbors, provide an escrow account to be used in the event the plantings are unsuccessful, and use 6’ – 8’ plantings in their landscaping plan before and after construction as conditions to the Special Permit Application. Town Board Meeting & Public Hearing Minutes Page 5 October 22, 2024 A motion was then made by Councilperson Klumpp that, based on the information and analysis of the Environmental Assessment Review concerning this application, the Groton Town Board has determined that with the mitigation requirements to the application, the proposed action will not result in any significant adverse environmental impact, resulting in a Negative Declaration. The motion was seconded by Councilperson Gamel, with the vote recorded as follows: Ayes –Clark, Klumpp, Gamel, Scheffler Motion Passed Nays – Environmental Assessment Review Project #2 Delaware River Solar Supervisor Scheffler read aloud the Part II form of the Full Environmental Assessment Form for Project #2. Negative responses were obtained to all but questions #8 Impact on Agricultural Resources, #11 Impact on Open Space and Recreation, and #18 Consistency with Community Character. Where moderate to large impacts were found the developer will mitigate impacts and modify the Site Plan application as follows: Section 8 d- A moderate to large impact was determined as the project is wholly located within The Tompkins County Agriculture District and would irreversibly convert 11.82 acres of agricultural land including 5.99 acres of woodland to non-agricultural uses. The developer agrees to follow the NYSDAM and all DEC guidelines and use a pollinator mix for planting so that no bare earth will remain as conditions of the Special Permit Application. Section 18 f- A moderate to large impact was determined that would be inconsistent with the existing character of the natural landscape currently agriculture, woodland, brush vegetation, and some residential housing impacting 30+ neighbors. The developer agrees to provide visual screening to the affected neighbors, provide an escrow account to be used in the event the plantings are unsuccessful, and use 6’ – 8’ plantings in their landscaping plan before and after construction as conditions to the Special Permit Application. A Motion was then made by Councilperson Gamel that, based on the information and analysis of the Environmental Assessment concerning this application, the Groton Town Board has determined that with the mitigation requirements to the application, the proposed action will not result in any significant adverse environmental impact, resulting in a Negative Declaration. The motion was seconded by Councilperson Klumpp, with the vote recorded as follows: Ayes –Clark, Klumpp, Gamel, Scheffler Motion Passed Nays – Ms. Messenger read the approval conditions listed below for the board to include the mitigation measures stated in the environmental assessment reviews. Approval Conditions 1. Town Costs. Payment of all fees in accordance with the Town’s fee schedule and payment of any outstanding consultant fees. 2. Construction Schedule. Prior to issuance of a building permit, the Applicant shall submit a revised construction schedule to the Building Inspector. Town Board Meeting & Public Hearing Minutes Page 6 October 22, 2024 3. Local Agent. Prior to issuance of a building permit, the Applicant shall designate a local agent and provide the names of other persons or entities having a vested or contingent interest in the solar energy system on the Project Site to the Building Inspector. 4. Decommissioning Agreement. Prior to issuance of a building permit the owner of the solar energy system shall enter into a Decommissioning Agreement with the Town Non-compliance with the Decommissioning Plan or failure to maintain the required security shall be a violation of the site plan approval. 5. Emergency Access. Prior to issuance of a building permit, the emergency response and safety plan shall be approved by the Building Inspector. The emergency response plan may be modified by a successor- in-interest in cooperation and with the consent of the Fire Department. The owner or operator of the solar energy system shall install a Knox Box or implement other commercially reasonably means to provide the Volunteer Fire Company access to the site in case of emergency. 6. Emergency Contact. Prior to issuance of a building permit, the owner or operator of the solar energy system shall identify a person responsible for responding to safety inquiries and notify the Building Inspector of the person identified. 7. Signage. Prior to issuance of certificate of occupancy or certificate of compliance, the owner or operator of the solar energy system shall install all required signage to the satisfaction of the Building Inspector. 8. Driveway Access Permit: Prior to issuance of a building permit, the Applicant shall comply with the condition of the Town of Groton DPW as well as Tompkins County Highway to obtain a DPW Highway Access Permit for the driveway access off of Southy Main Street Ext. to the Community Solar Field. 9. System Maintenance. The owner or operator of the solar energy system approved herein shall maintain it in good condition and in accordance with industry standards. 10. Herbicides. Use of herbicides at the parcel in question to control plant growth in and around the Community ground mounted solar energy system and its components and equipment shall be prohibited, unless approved by the Code Enforcement Official 11. Operations and Maintenance Plan. Non-compliance with the project Operations and Maintenance Plan dated 9/30/24 as reviewed by the Town Board shall be a violation of the site plan approval permit. 12. Compliance with Site Plan. Non-compliance with the conditions and safeguards as shown on the project Site Plan shall constitute a violation of the site plan approval permit. 13. Compliance with Mitigation Measures. Non-compliance with the mitigation measures set forth in the SEQRA Negative Declaration shall constitute a violation of the site plan approval permit. 14. Compliance with Project Summary. Non-compliance with the safeguards and representations set forth in the May 3, 2024 Project Summary shall constitute a violation of the site plan approval permit, except that any conflicts between the Project Summary and any other project approval document (e.g. approval resolution, Site Plan, and conditions set forth herein) shall be deemed to supersede and modify the Project Summary. 15. Ownership Changes. If the owner or operator of the Large- Scale Solar Energy System changes, the Special Permit shall remain in effect, provided that the successor owner or operator assumes in writing all of the obligations of the decommissioning plan. A new owner or operator of the Large- Scale Solar Energy System shall notify the Code Town Board Meeting & Public Hearing Minutes Page 7 October 22, 2024 Enforcement Officer of such changes in ownership or operator within 30 days of the ownership change. 16. Prior to issuance of a building permit the owner of the solar energy system shall enter into a Decommissioning Agreement with the Town. Non-compliance with the Decommissioning Plan or failure to maintain the required security shall be a violation of the site plan approval. A MOTION to allow the Supervisor to sign the Clean Energy Community Review Team grant letter was made by Councilperson Gamel and seconded by Councilperson Klumpp. Ayes – Clark, Klumpp, Gamel, Scheffler Motion Passed There being no further business, Councilperson Gamel moved to adjourn, seconded by Councilperson Clark at 9:01 PM Unanimous. Robin Cargian, RMC Town Clerk/Tax Collector