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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021-07-08TB 7-8-21 Page 1 of 5 TOWN OF DRYDEN TOWN BOARD MEETING July 8, 2021 Present: Cl Daniel Lamb, Cl James Skaley, Cl Loren Sparling, Cl Leonardo Vargas-Mendez Absent: Supv Jason Leifer Elected Officials: Bambi L. Avery, Town Clerk Rick Young, Highway DPW/Superintendent Other Town Staff: Amanda Anderson, Bookkeeper Deputy Supervisor Lamb called the meeting to order at 6:0 2 p.m. Financials & Human Resources RESOLUTION #131 (2021) – APPROVE ABSTRACT #7 Cl Skaley offered the following resolution and asked for its adoption: RESOLVED, that this Town Board hereby approves Abstract #7, as audited, general vouchers #497 through #587 ($624,053.27) and TA vouchers #28 through 31 ($4,591.43), totaling $628,644.70. 2nd Cl Vargas-Mendez Roll Call Vote Cl Sparling Yes Cl Vargas-Mendez Yes Cl Skaley Yes Cl Lamb Yes Amanda Anderson explained that she took on the task of balancing the escrow records maintained in the Planning Department with the bookkeeper’s accounting sy stem records. Funds are deposited by applicants to cover related engineering and legal expenses. She was able to reconcile some differences, made some corrections and adjustments, and the difference is currently $1,468.88. Most differences are in the B fund and after talking with the Planning Director, she is asking the board to approve moving the $1,468.88 from the B fund to the escrow account. Resolution #132 (2021) - Correcting Escrow Balance with B Fund Balance Cl Lamb offered the following resolution and asked for its adoption: Whereas, when the Town started collecting escrow funds in 2010, there was not very clear accounting of the funds from 2010 to 2015 . Whereas, the escrow balance according to the Planning Administrative Assi stant calculated with Excel has never matched the accounting program’s balance. Whereas, over the fall and winter of 2020, the bookkeeper did research to discover the discrepancy between the Planning Department’s Excel worksheet and the accounting program . TB 7-8-21 Page 2 of 5 Whereas, the bookkeeper has been able to clearly review all the entries, make corrections, and can reconcile the difference from 2016 to today. Whereas, there is a deficit of $1,468.88 of the escrow account in the accounting program. Therefore, be it resolved that the Board approves the transfer of funds from B Fund Balance (B599) to Cash, Customer’s Deposits (B235) of $1,468.88 to correct the balance in the accounting program to match the actual balance in the escrow account. 2nd Cl Vargas-Mendez Roll Call Vote Cl Sparling Yes Cl Vargas-Mendez Yes Cl Skaley Yes Cl Lamb Yes Discussion/Action Items Personnel Manual Update – A Anderson said she was tasked with looking into updating the personnel manual. It hasn’t really been updated since 2010 or so and there have been several resolutions passed that never really got incorporated into the manual. She gave the wrong information to an employee because she didn’t know the manual was out of date. She found an HR firm that mainly deals with municipalities, and they offered a contract for $5,000 to redo the personnel manual. She and Sherri Crispell have reviewed the document four times cleaning things up and removing and changing things to make it really apply to us. The Union representative was provided a copy for review (certain parts apply to Union employees) and they had no response and no changes in a month and a half. The document is available on the town website. It spells out more clearly policies and procedures for employees. There are three things that were changed from previous policy. Part-time employees now get personal leave and a floating holiday. The family requirement for bereavement time was extended to include an in-law or stepfamily member. In the past we had vacation buy-out for unused time vacation (over a certain number of hours) that was paid out in December. It was basically rewarding employees to not take vacation time. When employees don’t take time for themselves, the result could be employees being burned out at work. Starting in January 2022 on December 31, 2022, they will only be able to carry over 80 hours. This follows the policy in the highway department. If an employee doesn’t use the time, they lose it. After discussion, it was decided the manual will be sent to department heads who can talk with their employees and provide any comments or concerns to the Human Resources Committee by July 31. The board will consider adoption at the agenda meeting in August. Freese Rd Bridge Update – Cl Lamb said the preference is to start the process over so we can reuse the trusses for a public purpose in Groton. Groton can establish a public park and put the most significant elements of the Freese Road bridge on a proper display. We will initiate a new process for a bridge in Varna. We know what design we want. The whole process would be expedited because we basically already know the outcome. We are waiting now on the cost of moving the trusses. We are gathering estimates for the cost to move the old trusses to Groton. We want to find out what that is as opposed to the cost of considering them scrap and moving them to a metal recycling place. Federal Highway will only reimburse for the cost of scrapping the metal, not the additional cost of moving it to Groton. It may cost $20,000 to cut it up and scrap it. It might cost $100,000 to properly disassemble and move to Groton. He expects the overall project to come in much below the 2.7 million we have for the bridge. If it goes over, we’ll ask the County for help. This option is a creative reuse and an example of TB 7-8-21 Page 3 of 5 intermunicipal cooperation. Once we have those figures, we will start the process over (new findings document, etc.) but it shouldn’t be a long process. Status of Compensation Study – Cl Lamb said the town has not had a systematic way of giving raises for employees in the past. There has been a study on how we can do this better, and they will have some information to share in the next few weeks about how to improve the process of giving raises and setting new compensation levels for staff. He has had three classes of grad students study this and brought in experts from Industrial Relations to study this. There were grants from Engage Cornell to develop stuff. And at the end of the day it came down to him and A Anderson looking at this deciding what to extract from the research. They are coming up with a new way to use employee evaluations and different indicators from supervisors to have a more systematic form of input come budget time. This will be more logical than what we have been doing at budget time. This has never fallen off the radar, and they want to get something in place before budget season so there is a justifiable way of giving employees raises. Community Garden – Cl Lamb explained there is not a formal memorandum of understanding for activities at the community garden. There was discussion about the history of the garden. Cl Lamb said he supports the concept of a community garden and a new agreement is necessary. Cl Vargas-Mendez said the City of Ithaca has an agreement with a non-profit group and he will try to get a copy of that. Cl Sparling asked how many people use the garden (currently 4 plots are being used), because some of the land has been promised for recreational fields, and there is a b igger demand for rec fields than for a community garden. He would like to see both. The garden may need to be moved. Cl Lamb suggested there should be some dialogue with the community garden board. There are plans for the property back there including a trail from TC3 to Neptune Drive. The garden group has been used to having the space to themselves and there needs to be some compatibility with this group. We can renegotiate the contract and make it compatible with other uses of this space. County Update - Mike Lane said we know that Covid isn’t over, and we must continue to be vigilant. The states of emergency at both the state and the county have been lifted and they are trying to get back to normal. They can’t just say it is done. The Delta variant is a concern, and we don’t know what that will mean. The President of TC3, Orinthia Montague, is leaving the third week in August and will take a position as president of a larger community college near Nashville, TN. The Board of Trustees is beginning to look for an interim President and begin a search for new President. This needs to be coordinated with SUNY because it must be confirmed by SUNY. Shirley Collado, Ithaca College President, also has taken another position, so 2 of our 3 institutions will be looking for new presidents. It is difficult to attract quality people, but they have been successful in the past. M Lane said he attended a photo event in Freeville where they celebrated their community and had a community photo done. He visited their new mini park, Station Park. It will be completed in the spring, and they will have a grand opening at that time. It is compact, thoughtful, talks about Freeville, railroads, and trails and all of that. The county had an expanded budget committee meeting and discussed how to go forward with spending the ARP money (a little over 9 million dollars for each of two years). The recommendation of the interim administrator is to use the funds to r eimburse lost revenues (more than 22 million dollars from Covid). Once that happened it would free up money in the TB 7-8-21 Page 4 of 5 budget that can be used for other things, keeping in mind that it is one time money. They discussed using some toward capital projects (jail, roads, bridges, and refitting and upgrading some county buildings). Hopefully, there will be money available for helping some of the agencies (Human Services Coalition, Library). Some are interested in affordable housing and helping people now, and they don’t want to duplicate efforts. Childcare is a huge issue in Tompkins County. There will be federal money credi t for childcare, but if there aren’t providers, how do we solve that problem? The compliance and reporting requirement is phenomenal. They will have to contract with auditors or bring on other staff just to comply with the federal reporting and auditing . Towns and Villages may not have as high a bar. Cl Skaley suggested a revolving loan fund for affordable housing and said the county will have to address affordable housing because it is a problem. M Lane said there is a fund with Cornell, the city, and the county. There is a lot of demand for single family housing. You have to have water and sewer to develop single family houses. They will have to be clustered or otherwise set up. Not every new house has to be connected to a node. We may have to see what we can do about water and sewer. It is available in Varna. There is a possibility of Freeville having to do something about its sewer plant . We all need to think about how to do this. There will be a new complex (144 apartment units) in Cortlandville near the JM Murray Center and that may increase commuter travel on Route 13 for people working in Tompkins County. Cl Lamb said a big part of the comp plan update is looking for potential growth. There is a possibility of extending sewer lines out West Dryden Road for development in that area. Rail Trail Public Information Meeting Recap – People seemed to be engaged and about 70 people attended over the 3 hours. There is a lot of talk now about what the project is about, and this is an opportunity now to get accurate information out along with answers to the frequently asked questions. Cl Lamb is working on a document to answer those questions, and they will push that out over the weekend. For example, why going under Route 13 was cost prohibitive, or why under the existing bridge along Fall Creek was seen as an unsafe option. He said we have not invoked eminent domain and people are jumping ahead of the game in using that phrase right now. The task force is negotiating on one-tenth of an acre (nowhere near the home and closer to Route 13 for a ramp for the bridge. They think this property owner should consider taking just compensation for this sliver of property. It would be a shame to see the whole project fall because we can’t negotiate for this sliver of property. It is out of the town’s hands as far as the board is concerned and NYSDOT will administer the process. R Burger explained the town has made a decision for an alternative to move forward with and turned over the acquisition process to NYSDOT because they are experts. The town needs to continue to make a case to the greater public. Cl Lamb said this option resolves the matter of having two trails that dead end at Route 13. It is transportation corridor, and we would be negligent to not look at this as a way to get cars off the road. Having people go ¾ of a mile down to Fall Creek is not a satisfactory option because we want people to see this as a practical way to get to work. R Burger said the RTTF went through an exhaustive process and looked at 13 alternatives and tried to minimize the impacts and are ending up with an impact of 7% of a two-acre residential parcel and 3% of a 22-acre commercial parcel. He thinks they’ve done a great job. Cl Lamb said other easements were donated by good neighbors. There was a long process with DEC to get through the Game Farm and lengthy discussio ns with George Junior Republic to get through that property. A lot of work has been done without having to come TB 7-8-21 Page 5 of 5 down to hard negotiations with a couple of property owners. It looks like there might be progress on the commercial property and that the property owner sees the benefit of the project may negotiate a transfer. The Rail Trail Task Force meets monthly, and people are welcome to attend. Everything is done publicly. R Young reported that the Game Farm section of the trail may be complete in three or four weeks. They have been repairing the trestles and made good progress. County Elected Official Call Notes – The county is up to 75% of the eligible population having had at least one dose of the vaccine. Two cases of the Delta variant have been detected, both from people travelling into the county, so they were isolated upon arrival. Next Week’s Agenda There will be a public hearing on the matter of reapplying for a CDBG grant to help fund the sewer portion of the Varna project. Cl Skaley will be getting several pieces of information and previously signed documents that will need to be resigned with appropriate dates. The application must be complete and in by July 30. Last month the board authorized a contract with G & G Consulting to work on a grant for sidewalks which will be postponed for another year, pending the next round of CDBG funds. TG Miller is looking for a firm to do the telescoping of the sewer mains to locate any issues that need to be dealt with. Once a firm is chosen, it will take about a week to do the work. This project will involve working with and around DOT. We are hoping to be under contract for work on the watermains starting in March. DOT is putting off their work schedule until May and will probably work in sections of 366, not in downtown Varna, until we can replace the water mains that need to be replaced. NYSDOT will hold a public information meeting (virtually) on the milling and resurfacing of Route 366 from Ithaca to Route 13 on August 10 at 6:00 p.m. Further information will be shared as it becomes available. Cl Lamb said the Planning Board passed a nice tribute resolution for Tom Hatfield and that will be read next week. Cl Sparling reported the Planning Board asked him to remind the Town Board of a resolution they passed in 2019 requesting that the Planning Department resources be reviewed. He will send it to board members. There being no further business, on motion made, seconded, and unanimously carried, the meeting was adjourned at 7:32 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Bambi L. Avery Town Clerk