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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-07-11TB 7-11-19 Page 1 of 5 TOWN OF DRYDEN TOWN BOARD MEETING July 11, 2019 Present: Cl Daniel Lamb, Cl Kathrin Servoss, Cl Alice Green Absent: Supervisor Jason Leifer, Cl Linda Lavine Elected Officials: Bambi L. Avery, Town Clerk Rick Young, Highway/DPW Superintendent Other Town Staff: Jennifer Case, Bookkeeper Ryan McHugh, Secretary to the Supervisor Deputy Supervisor Dan Lamb opened the meeting at 6:05 p.m. Abstract Approval RESOLUTION #108 (2019) – APPROVE ABSTRACT #7 Cl Green offered the following resolution and asked for its adoption: RESOLVED, that this Town Board hereby approves Abstract #7, as audited, general vouchers #462 through #547 ($863,679.87) and TA vouchers #47 and #48 ($3,112.55), totaling $866,792.42. 2nd Cl Servoss Roll Call Vote Cl Green Yes Cl Servoss Yes Cl Lamb Yes Budget Modification J Case presented a budget modification request signed by the Supervisor to move $3,500.00 from the general legal budget line to a new Judgments & Claims line to cover the settlement for the arbitration case. RESOLUTION #109 (2019) – APPROVE BUDGET MODIFICATION Cl Lamb offered the following resolution and asked for its adoption: RESOLVED, that this Town Board hereby approves the following budget modification: From To A1420.402 Legal A1930.4 Judgments & Claims $3,500.00 2nd Cl Green Roll Call Vote Cl Green Yes Cl Servoss Yes Cl Lamb Yes TB 7-11-19 Page 2 of 5 LED STREETLIGHTS Cl Green introduced Casey Mastro of the New York Power Authority (NYPA) and Terry Carroll, Energy Manager with Cornell Cooperative Extension (who has been working with the town on Climate Smart matters). She explained that the town has been invited to par ticipate in a consortium with other Tompkins County municipalities to use joint purchasing power for conversion to LED street lights. The town has proposals from NYSEG & NYPA, each providing a way of converting our 90 or so street light bulbs. There are three different options from NYPA and T Carroll can help us compare those with the proposal from NYSEG. Casey Mastro, Central New York Energy Manager for the New York Power Authority, said when the Governor issued his smart street lighting program a year ago to change out 500,000 streetlights by 2025, the Power Authority embarked on a major campaign that began with the top five cities in the state, excluding New York City. NYPA is promoting a municipal ownership model for street light acquisition and LED upgrade. Currently most municipalities don’t own their lighting assets. They are owned by the utility. When looking at the utility bills you see a huge discrepancy between energy delivery and supply and what you pay in a facility charge to the utility to buy down the depreciation of their assets. NYPA promotes ownership because when you purchase the assets, the facility charges go potentially to zero and there is a vast savings. When looking at proposals, the u tility owned option looks like a better deal. However, under utility ownership there are minor potential savings in energy delivery, supply and production based on kilowatt hours being reduced, but you would still pay facility charges in perpetuity. C Mastro estimates that the town pays $11,441.71 per year in facility charges to the utility. He calculates an energy savings on LED upgrade alone to be $2,900 per year. NYPA procures maintenance contracts at a fraction of what is paid in the utility’s facilities charges. NYPA did a nationwide bid for materials and that savings is passed on to the customer. They can buy materials at 30-40% less. They have drafted a countywide street aggregation model and that is through the design phase in Wayne, Sullivan and Livingston counties. The Town of Dryden would be the final addition to the approximately 1400 street light fixture project in Tompkins County. C Mastro explained the three models prepared for the town. They offer digital asset management control and smart cities sensor technologies. NYPA has a grant program for smart city technology. Digital asset management control gives the municipality the ability to dim the lights so there is savings in not operating at full power all night long. He recommends the LED upgrade with asset management control. For the short term they would install the lights at 80% power, changing the lifespan of the asset from 15 years to 25 years. There is the ability to continue to adjust the brightness based on constituent input. Currently municipalities are billed a flat rate per pole, but he expects that to change so that municipalities get credit for dimming in the next few years as the result of a pilot program in Orange and Rockland Counties. NYPA is offering to provide what they feel is a best solution for a public entity from an energy standpoint, with no profit margin. NYPA covers administrative costs to manage projects and cover the design team’s cost. NYPA will finance the upfront cost to purchase the remaining assets (poles, arms, lights). The wooden poles stay owned by utility because they often have other utilities on them. C Mastro estimates an annual savings to the town in excess of $12,000 and annual debt service of $11,000, so the town would have an annual positive cash flow of about $1,000 for the term of the analysis. TB 7-11-19 Page 3 of 5 Terry Carroll – Right now NYSEG owns the assets. What NYPA is proposing is that the town would own the assets and NYPA would procure the materials and a contractor for the conversion to LEDs and arrange for an optional maintenance contract for the town. He sees four options for the town: • Going with NYPA as has been described. • Convert streetlights to LEDs through NYSEG. NYSEG will charge a one -time cost to switch these over. It is significantly less than buying them back and paybacks for municipalities is generally between a half to a year and you will save some amount of money over the years the lights last. You would continue to lease and pay the maintenance costs to NYSEG. • Buy back the streetlights and try to band on with the City of Ithaca and use their consultant. He is uncertain which approach they are going with. There would be some charge for design by their consultant. • Buy it back and figure out on your own or hire another energy performance company to do that. T Carroll said the NYSEG option is probably the least expensive way to do it in the short term, a very small upfront cost, savings over the long term are pretty good, and less than what the NYPA option is. If you look ten years ahead, you are probably doing a little bit be tter with NYSEG. If you look farther ahead, NYPA is probably way ahead of NYSEG. If the dimmable tariff comes out as expected, having those dimmable lights will decrease the payback period and increase savings. The NYSEG conversion will likely not happen until well into next year. They are looking for a contractor and that hasn’t happened. They only must switch out 20% of lights in any given year. NYPA will do their projects next spring. The lights can’t be upgraded until transfer of ownership from NYSEG is complete. The PSC has a very specific timeline for the order of operations that need to happen. NYSEG conversion would be 2020 or 2021. NYSEG has two options for bulbs. NYPA has more choices for lights. NYSEG may not offer the ability to mix light colors (yellow or blue). It would be more effort on our part with NYPA, but a quicker turnaround on maintenance, etc. Cl Green would like vote to on this next Thursday and get into the phase one design with other Tompkins County municipalities. She will draft a resolution for next week. C Mastro said if the town decides to join the group, NYPA will make a recommendation of one of the three options presented after the design phase. Munic ipalities currently committed to the group are the Villages of Dryden, Freeville, Cayuga Heights, and Trumansburg, and the Towns of Caroline, Newfield, and Ithaca. Ulysses is considering it. Approve Match for Grant Application Cl Green presented a resolution for 50% match for a DEC comp plan grant application. The intent is that this money would help cover the cost of a consultant to help with the comp plan update. RESOLUTION #110 (2019) - DRYDEN COMPREHENSIVE PLAN RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING SUBMITTAL OF CFA GRANT APPLICATION AND COMMITMENT TO PAY REQUIRED 50% LOCAL MATCH Cl Green offered the following resolution and asked for its adoption: TB 7-11-19 Page 4 of 5 WHEREAS, Dryden's Comprehensive Plan, which was approved in 2005, needs to be updated, and WHEREAS, the Dryden Town Board has directed the Dryden Planning Department to engage the services of a planning firm to update the Comprehensive Plan, and WHEREAS, the existing Comprehensive Plan does not address environmental sustainability or climate change which are critical to planning for Dryden's future, and WHEREAS, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has a grant opportunity to assist local governments to update their comprehensive plans to inclu de environmental sustainability and climate change, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, the Dryden Planning Department is authorized to apply for NYSDEC funding through the Consolidated Funding Application process, to update Dryden's Comprehensive Plan, and BE IT ALSO RESOLVED, the Town of Dryden will pay the 50% Local Match as required by the Grant if it is approved. 2nd Cl Lamb Roll Call Vote Cl Green Yes Cl Servoss Yes Cl Lamb Yes John Kiefer, Planning Board Chair, said they have six proposals to the RFP for a consultant. There are two or three attractive ones. Costs are in the range of $90,000 to $100,000. He understands the board would like to get started this year, before we know whether the grant application is successful. You can’t recover money already spent. There is some money in the town’s 2019 budget, so we could get started and ask for matching funds on the next phase of work. The initial phase would be to hire a consultant to go through the documents referenced in the RFP, to update the housing development profile for the town based on building permits and such, put the survey together, administer it, and collect that data. Phase 2 would be based on survey, have community meetings, do the greenhouse gas inventory, do the climate threat inventory and begin to put together plans for affordable housing and really do the meat of the comprehensive plan development as part of phase two that we would be getting grant funds for. The benefit of proceeding in that way is to get started now. Sewer Agreement Renewals – Cl Lamb has no background information on this. He will gather information and it will be on the agenda next week. TAP Grant for Rail Trail – no new information Rail Trail privacy complaint – Trail neighbors near DPW Drive in the Village of Freeville are looking for an additional investment from the rail trail initiative to construct fencing because they feel the trail traffic is impeding their privacy. Cl Lamb said other people have protested the trail because it brings new visitors to an area that traditionally hadn’t had people. This is an old problem and he isn’t sure how to remedy it without creating a huge obligation for the town because others will want a fence. With respect to this investment that the town is making in the rail trail as a whole, the benefits outweigh the cost of people’s perceived privacy. R Young said there are bushes planted that will provide some privacy as they grow. The town is trying to resolve this and is spending money on it. TB 7-11-19 Page 5 of 5 Business Loan Fund – Cl Lamb shared a draft flyer that is being developed. Now that we have economic development activities, Cl Lamb suggested we might consider a name change for the Planning Department. The Town has $160,000 to start rolling out the program. Emmy’s Organics – TCAD used the $55,000 the town previously sent them for our program for Emmy’s Organics that are moving into the F & T Distributing building on R oyal Road. That money will circulate back to the town as it is repaid. IV4 – There was a brief discussion of the items recently billed against IV4’s retainer. Cl Green said in previous discussions with IV4, IV4 had committed to providing some training for staff. The board also discussed whether staff would benefit from that training. Staff may not be aware of certain capabilities. Ryan McHugh will follow up with IV4 regarding the bill. Cl Green said she understands that the share capability in the Office 365 Suite could give access for Town Board members and that IV4 can provide some training. It is something we are paying for and she suggested training in that for staff. Ambulance Service – Cl Lamb said he has had a few conversations with Bill Ackroyd and he wants us to be fully aware that he feels like the EMS system is broken and they are hanging on by a thread. He is having trouble retaining the talent they recruit. People have been lost due to low wages. These employees don’t get retirement benefits through NYS. The ambulance service just wants the town to be aware of it. Cl Lamb said it is time for out of the box thinking. R Young said are other avenues to look at, but EMS service people need to be paid a lot more. Cl Lamb suggested perhaps the EMS staff could be town employees with benefits and in the retirement system. Cl Green noted the contract will be revisited in the budget process. Cl Servoss suggested a cost analysis of having ambulance staff as town employees. George Road Bridge – Cl Servoss said there is an apparent low bidder, the same company that did the Red Mill and Malloryville Road bridges. The state requires contractors use a database system called EBO and the town does not have log-in. It would be one log-in for the entire town for all state or federally funded projects, including rail trail. Cl Servoss tried to get a log- in, but because Jason is on the original resolution with DOT, he needs to sign. This needs to be done quickly, and Cl Lamb signed the paperwork as Deputy Supervisor. There being no further business, on motion made, seconded and unanimously carried, the meeting was adjourned at 8:25 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Bambi L. Avery Town Clerk