Seth Sheraden of Environmental Consultants

Transcription

1 Date of Meeting: November 10, 2011 Kind of Meeting: Place of Meeting: Members Present: Members Absent: Consultants Present: Business Village Hall Robert Murphy, Chairman Tracy Durkin David Kelly Wayne Osborn Steve Walsh Robert Liffland Seth Sheraden of Environmental Consultants At 7:00 p.m. the regular business meeting of the Pawling Joint Sewer Commission was called to order by Chairman Robert Murphy with the Pledge of Allegiance. MOVED by David Kelly, SECONDED by Wayne Osborn to table the acceptance of the October 13, 2011 minutes because they received them today and didn t have time to read them. All were in favor and motion carried. MOVED by David Kelly, SECONDED by Tracy Durkin to approve the Treasurer s Report of October 1, 2011 through October 31, 2011 as presented. All were in favor and motion carried. MOVED by Tracy Durkin, SECONDED by David Kelly to approve payment of the October, 2011 vouchers as presented and the November prepaid vouchers. All were in favor and motion carried. MOVED by Tracy Durkin, SECONDED by Wayne Osborn to approve the Correspondence Log of November 9, 2011 as presented. All were in favor and motion carried. Consultants: Business / Reports Attorney Report Chairman Robert Murphy said the only thing he has from the attorney is a letter from Dave Wise, ref. #175. He said it s about the change in the meeting attorney to Pamela Richardson. Chairman Robert Murphy said that Dave and Scott have conflicts with the Commissions meeting dates so they would like to send Pam. He said they will still be very involved with the legal issues for the Commission. Chairman Robert Murphy said if the board is happy with that then he ll pass that along to Dave that it s acceptable. The members said it s OK.

2 PJSC Meeting November 10, 2011 Page 2 Engineering Report Chairman Robert Murphy said he d like to talk about the smoke testing that is referenced down under the new business on the Agenda #172, #176 and #177 and then combine them with a new memo that just came in, Ref.#179. Chairman Robert Murphy said they are getting ready to do the smoke testing so he wants to discuss it with the board. He told the members if they want to take a few minutes to read through it, Ref.#179, they can. Chairman Robert Murphy said #177 is a draft letter that the Commission will send to the residents. He asked the members if they are happy with it. He said in addition, in #172 they can see all the notice that the contractor will have to do with the residents. Chairman Robert Murphy said he asked Dave Wise what the Commission can legally do as far as inspecting there house and Dave s response is Ref. #176. He said that clearly the Commission will have to have permission to enter a house and if we don t get permission then that house will have to be marked as such. Chairman Robert Murphy said if anyone has any questions for Dave he can pass them along. Chairman Robert Murphy said if the members want to go over the list and correspondence they can but they are certainly getting ready to do the smoke and dye testing as it is required by our permit. Chairman Robert Murphy said he and Seth spoke to Betty Tani today. Betty will put an article in the newspaper about the work the Commission will be doing. Tracy said that a consent form is a good idea. Chairman Robert Murphy said the letter from Dave should be sent over to Jim so Jim could notify the contractor that any kind of permission to enter homes should be done with a consent form signed by the homeowner. Dave Kelly asked if they have a time frame that they re looking at. He said that in the letter, in the 3 rd paragraph up it just says in the coming months. Chairman Robert Murphy said that at the time we didn t have dates so that s why that was put in that way, but that now they can narrow it down and put in dates. Wayne asked if the contractors will have ID. Chairman Robert Murphy said that they will have to make sure that Doug and Karl are told because they are the ones that have to do the inspections. Chairman Robert Murphy said they probably will not be able to do the testing at Cedar Valley unless they get permission from them. He said that is something they can take a look at. He said the same with Trinity Pawling.

3 PJSC Meeting November 10, 2011 Page 3 Chairman Robert Murphy asked the members if they were all happy with moving forward and they all said yes. Sewer Operator Report Seth said the general operations of the plant are all good. The flows were up a little because of the rain they had. Seth said they did just a lot of general maintenance at the plant. Seth said they got a call for Furnia s home saying the new pump station wasn t working. Seth said apparently someone was trying to put some drainage in and they hit the electrical wire that goes from the house to the pump. He said they almost pulled the wiring right out of the control box. Seth said he called Mark from EMT. Dave asked if they called before they dug. Seth said no. They didn t even mention it when they called, they just said the pump station wasn t working. Seth said he did tell the homeowner that the cost of the repair is on the property owner, not the Commission. Seth said that Mark had to put in a temporary line. Seth said they did well during the storm but one thing he did talk with Chairman Robert Murphy about is they were without power at the plant, Hillview and Haight St. pump stations for the bulk of the time. He said the plant ran on its backup generator with no problems. He said for the other pumps they have the portable generator for them. He said he s so glad those were the only two pump stations that were out because just dealing with them with the portable generator with the snow was very difficult to do. He said they talked about putting permanent generators at the pump stations that don t have them. He said he and Jim Fitzsimmons can get some numbers together to see about cost. Seth said the pump stations they are looking to get the generators for are Hillview, Sheraden, West Main and Haight Street. Seth said he didn t include West St. because the flows there are so little and they could bring the portable there if needed. He said he can follow up with Jim Fitzsimmons if the Commission wants to look into doing this. Chairman Robert Murphy asked the members how they feel about it. Everyone said they thought it would be a good idea. Seth said he can have something for the Commission by the next meeting. Seth said they got the correspondence from the DEC on the Thermal Impact Study saying that all of the results were OK, so they will just continue with what they have been doing. Seth said Janice Tedesco called and asked if her company, who deals in Gould pumps, can come for a tour of the sewer plant. They have a date set for November 18 th.

4 PJSC Meeting November 10, 2011 Page 4 Chairman Robert Murphy said that he and Linda will get some information together like budget things and billing for handouts. Chairman Robert Murphy said he won t be able to be there because he will be away. Seth said he can take them around to some of the pump stations where they use the Gould pumps. Chairman Robert Murphy asked if there are any questions for Seth. There were none. New Business MOVED by David Kelly, SECONDED by Tracy Durkin to approve a transfer of $17.50 from Castagna Escrow # to O&M # for legal fees. All were in favor and motion carried. Chairman Robert Murphy said they have a request from sewer acct.#801, ref. #178. MOVED by Tracy Durkin, SECONDED by David Kelly to approve the penalty waiver of $31.18 for sewer customer #801. All were in favor and motion carried. Budget Discussion Chairman Robert Murphy said they have a draft of the budget for Chairman Robert Murphy said the overall budget is $744,023 which is an $11,713 increase over last year, which is a budget to budget increase of 1.6%. Chairman Robert Murphy said the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) account goes to $513,085 which is a 4.51% increase. Chairman Robert Murphy said the debt portion of the budget is $230,938 which is minus 4.32%. Chairman Robert Murphy said overall the increase in sewer rents is $12,462 which represents an average increase of 1.77%. Chairman Robert Murphy said he ll go over the revenues and if there are any questions they can talk about it. Then he ll go over the appropriations and they can talk about that. Chairman Robert Murphy went over and explained the revenues line by line. Dave asked if the Wartburg Bond is being paid off. Chairman Robert Murphy said yes, it is part of Bond No. 2 Chairman Robert Murphy went over and explained the appropriations line by line.

5 PJSC Meeting November 10, 2011 Page 5 When Chairman Robert Murphy got to the Sewer Operator line on the budget Dave asked what the terms of the contract are. Chairman Robert Murphy said they raise it yearly according to the CPI up to 3% and it takes effect in March. Dave asked how long is the contract for. Chairman Robert Murphy said it s usually for five years and we are probably two years into it. Chairman Robert Murphy said Linda and Jennifer figured that if the board would like they can lower the postage to $1300 because Linda does not mail out the monthly meeting packages any more. There is going to be an increase in postage this year from $.44 to $.45. Dave said he feels they should leave it at $1600 because the big thing they are seeing now is anything odd size, they are increasing that dramatically, so anything outside of a letter, those costs are dramatically being increased. Chairman Robert Murphy said they can take another look at it. Chairman Robert Murphy continued down the budget lines. Chairman Robert Murphy said he wanted to talk about the repairs and maintenance and the sludge lines because they are connected. Chairman Robert Murphy said that the repairs and maintenance are increased by $19,500. He said $5,000 of that he asked for as just a general increase of the repairs and maintenance. He said the reason he increased it another $14,500 is because included in these bills is $14,500 associated with cleaning out all of the lift stations and some of the grit chambers and things like that at the plant. He said right now we take that out of the sludge line. He said that this is typically something more of a maintenance issue than it is a sludge issue. He said what he wants to see from a sludge account is what they are actually hauling out of the plant, the actual sludge cost. Chairman Robert Murphy said they subtracted the $14,500 from the sludge costs year to date and did the math and came up with the sludge cost from the plant would average about $50,000, so that is why they lowered the sludge costs by $6,000 but they had to add the $14,500 to repairs and maintenance. Chairman Robert Murphy continued down the budget lines. Dave asked if they can look at a 3 year or 5 year average electric costs for the next budget cycle. Chairman Robert Murphy said Linda can send it over to him. Chairman Robert Murphy continued down the budge lines.

6 PJSC Meeting November 10, 2011 Page 6 Chairman Robert Murphy said the telephone was lowered. He said last year they raised it because they thought they were going to get DSL but they couldn t get it so they will bring that line back down. Dave said that Comcast has to run the cable to the plant. He said the contract calls for cable to be available to every municipal building, that Comcast has to run that cable. Linda said that Jennifer looked into it and the sewer plant was not a part of the contract. Dave said it is supposed to be every municipally owned building and his recommendation is to have Mike Hayes look into it. Chairman Robert Murphy said they will leave the budget amount the same as last year. Chairman Robert Murphy continued down the budget lines. Chairman Robert Murphy asked if anyone had any questions about the budget. There were none. Chairman Robert Murphy said the only other thing they need to discuss is page two and that is how they will break down the revenue. He said the only alternative he did was what they did last year which was partial up the revenue which for 2012 would be 29,481 is dividing that between operation and maintenance and debt. He said what he did for 2012, just proposed, in order to keep the debt increase at zero, they have to portion $14,642 in revenue toward the debt and then the rest of that could be portioned out to operation and maintenance. Chairman Robert Murphy said that would lower the tax increase on the operation and maintenance to 2.56%. He said the actual money they need to raise by taxes for the debt would be zero and the overall increase would come out to be a little higher than the 1.77%. Chairman Robert Murphy told the members if they want to do something else they can. He said he just gave that one alternative because that s what they did last year. Chairman Robert Murphy did some math on his calculator and said that the total increase to the operation and maintenance with the changes they made tonight would be 2.67% with 0% for the debt and said that next year they can lower it significantly because the Village Bond No. 1 and the Town Bond will be paid off. Chairman Robert Murphy asked if anyone wanted to change anything or were there any questions. There were none. MOVED by Tracy Durkin, SECONDED by David Kelly to set the date for the Public Hearing on the 2012 Budget for December 8, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. All were in favor and motion carried.

7 PJSC Meeting November 10, 2011 Page 7 Chairman Robert Murphy said they will also have their reorganization meeting on that date. Chairman Robert Murphy asked Dave if he would like to give the Commission members a brief update on the meeting that they had with Castagna and Elm St. Partners on 11/1/11. Dave said this meeting was on the first of November, the Town hosted a meeting of all interested parties for Castagna and Elm St. as well as principals, attorneys, engineers, the Sewer Commissions engineer Jim, and Chairman Robert Murphy was there representing the Sewer Commission. He said basically they ran through a whole gambit of discussion. First was the petition; where do they need to go from here. Dave said the petition right now is at Elm St. He said Castagna has written their portion of it. Dave said he actually requested that it be in the Town Clerks hands tomorrow but he doubts that will happen. Dave said they talked about the line; if it s sized the correct way, if there will be taps all the way through. He said they discussed access. Dave said it was just really productive and everyone was cordial. Dave said there were about 16 people sitting at the table. Dave said they discussed that the Town will own the line and the Sewer Commission will maintain it. Chairman Robert Murphy said that one of the things the developers will have to work out is how they will apportion the cost of the sewer line. He said usually that is done by flow. He said that is something they will be paying immediately. He said it would be in their best interest to pay that now because the cost for the hookup fees is only going to go up and if they have to borrow the money, interest rates are never going to be low. He said it will benefit them to pay for it now, even though the property might sit idle because no matter what the economy does construction costs always go up. There was some discussion amongst the members on the line that is coming up Route 22. Dave said at the last Commission meeting things got hot and heavy but having the two entities here spearheaded a lot of things to be done. Dave said to Tracy because she ran that meeting, that things weren t done intentional but things needed to be done and now they are working together. Dave said when they start construction it is going to be very good for this area. Wayne asked when Castagna hopes to get started.

8 PJSC Meeting November 10, 2011 Page 8 Dave said they want to break ground at the end of summer to early fall of next year. Chairman Robert Murphy said that s why Castagna is requesting that they try to get the initial 71 houses under our current SPDES permit as opposed to the medical office building. He said he knows Castagna has to go through some issues with the town but that will enable them to build the 71 houses while the plant is under construction for expansion and then hopefully when the expansion is done they will expand to whatever they want to do with the housing, maybe the medical office buildings, but they will be set to go. Chairman Robert Murphy said the Commission will take the lead from Dave as far as getting started on the plant expansion because Dave said he wanted to wait until the petition is done. Chairman Robert Murphy told Dave to give Linda a call or him a call so they can put it on the agenda when he feels it s appropriate, so the Commission can get the engineers to start moving forward. Chairman Robert Murphy asked if there were any other Commission member comments. There were none. MOVED by David Kelly, SECONDED by Steve Walsh to close the meeting and adjourn. Time: 7:55 p.m. All were in favor and motion carried. Steve Walsh, Secretary