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Town of Victory Town Board Meeting June 13th 2016 Council Members Present: Mike Wiggins-Supervisor Robin Bartholomew Leonard Hand Terrance McBride Lester VanDyke Others present: Julia Iozzio-Clerk Bruce Applebee- Code Enforcement Debra Davis -Justice Beverly Sayles-Town Historian Lezli Parsons-Assessor Steve Yonkers-Highway Supervisor Harvey Mills-Planning Board David Shurtleff Waste Management Comettee: Will Macarther Laurie Reichter-chairperson Janet Marsden Public Present: Carol Mills Meeting called to order at 7:00pm with the Pledge of Allegiance by supervisor Mike Wiggins opened up the meeting. The first order of business was to open up a public hearing for the local law. The law would allow the town to override the real property tax levy limit for the 2017 budget if they find it necessary when preparing the budget. A copy of the local law was made available to view. The offer was made to hear any comments that pertained to the hearing. The comment was made by Lester that we have dealt with hearings in the past and have never had two utilized it, meaning, we stay in confines of the budget. Mike offered the fact that if we didn’t do this now that by the time the budget was put together there would be no time to make any adjustments. The business meeting that offered resolutions. First was to transfer $1154.29 cents from the assessor’s equipment to assessor’s contractual line due to Lezli taking money out of contractual for equipment. It’s a basic replacement. Lester made a motion and Robin 2nd it. All ayes. Resolution for town’s spending monies for chips ceiling the area, $2000.00 for the Salt Barn area. Lester motioned and Leonard 2nd. All ayes. ---PAGE BREAK--- The bills were received and reviewed. Lester there motioned 2nd by Leonard. All ayes. The minutes were written for the last meeting but not typed for the board’s approval. Mike requested to wave approval. Lester motioned and Robin 2nd. All ayes. The supervisors report was read. Supervisor’s report by Mike Wiggins as of 5/31/2016 General fund: $316,141.03 Cash reserve, CD: $192,136.46 Petty cash: $50.00 Special reserve, Capital Project: $192,357.52 Money market Special reserve: $60,000.00 Total for General fund: $760,685.01 Highway funds: $446,120.54 Victory Street Lighting Dist.: Cash- Checking: $3,528.04 Cash in time Deposits: $3,194.83 Total: $6,722.89 Westbury Street Lighting Dist.: Cash-Checking: $2,415.17 Cash in time Deposits: $ 288.91 Total: $2,704.08 Total for all funds: $1,216,232.99 Increases on the report are due to deposited check from sales tax into the Hwy. fund ($26,000.00), as well as remaining funds from snowplowing contract ($38,201.00) from the county. General fund ($62,065.0) 1st quarter sales tax and a check was recently received for the mortgage tax ($3893.00) which has yet to show up. We received one bid from VanNostrand fuel. The bid was $1.723 per gal. clear diesel, $1.728 per gal. for fuel oil and $1.665 per gal unleaded gas. The bids are based on prices June 10th 2016 and the bids are projected on an escalating basis for one year from June 10, 2016 to June 10, 2017. This bid was from Wayne VanNostrand owner of VanNostrand Oil Company. No other bids were received. Lester motioned and Robin 2nd. All ayes. There is an update on our “Land use law. There is a call for information on our regulations regarding communication towers. What our fees are excreta? There is no verbiage in our zoning ---PAGE BREAK--- law about towers. This may require some review as well as some other issues on law that have come up. There will be an auction on the 30th of June regarding 3 properties (which can be found on the auction site) at Emerson Park. There are two homes and a vacant property that are in town. They are listed on the county auctions web site. The “Vietnam Veteran Hwy Valor Tribute ride” will be making its way through the town on Saturday, July 9. Anyone interested, the scheduled time of arrival on route 38 is about 1:00 PM. For more information, there are flyers available. There has been a few phone calls made regarding removal of dead deer from properties. It is not the job of the Hwy. dept. but phone calls will be made. A letter was sent regarding a request regarding speed limits for a reduction on Sanford Rd. and Popel Rd. as well as Sawhill Rd. and route 38. The answer to the request was: it is not appropriate at this time to change the speed limits. A letter was received by Dave Parkinson thanking all of his customers for the past 30 + years of service at D&L garbage removal. The clerks report was given. Clerks report was read Clerk’s Report: (as of 5/31/2016) 4- Building permits =$155.20 51-Dog licenses =$309.00 2- Garbage Permits =$280.00 3- Records copies 3.25 0-Subdivision 00.00 Steve Yonker stated that he did not know what was going on with the grass lately? The grass seems to be growing quite quickly. The road crew has been getting their work done a lot earlier. He believes they will have better stone retention, next spring. The thought is if they get the roads done earlier it’ll allow the stone to get driven down into the ground. They were ditching on Hall Rd. this month. They also had three trees to take down on Stahlnecker Rd. They increase the road from 18 feet to 20 feet. They also took down a few trees that they felt were a safety issue. They also paved Stahlnecker Rd. 1.75 miles. They also pay the parking lot across the street from the fire house. They also had to repair a few edges of a few people’s driveways from the winter plows. If there are any other people that have issues with driveways please allow the Hwy Dept. to know. Steve wanted to do the salt shed parking lot because the pavement is starting to crumble in spots. He figures with the oil being so low it would definitely benefit town financially. They will also be chips ceiling the parking lot across the way from the fire house at the end of June. At that time people can start riding on it. ---PAGE BREAK--- Harvey Mills stated he was waiting on a subdivide. They received a letter from the town of Mentz they applied for an Agriculture and Markets grant for $25,000.00 this was put in place to help farmers hold onto their farmland. This instead of renting out in smaller parcels. He is recommending that we as a town look into it to see if we might be able to apply for it. He also suggested that we take some of that grant money and take it to the county and ask for help. Mike then stated that he was still trying to figure out why this grant would be offered to help farmers not to subdivide their land? He also questioned where the money was coming from. Harvey stated that he believes that it was to help farmers retain farmland as farm land. Mike believes if eventually there are no monies left in the program; the government will ask the towns to then be responsible for the balance. Harvey then stated he would look further into the grant program. Leonard brought up the fact that he received a letter regarding solar energy. He posed the question to Harvey where are we in regards to more information? This then brought up the solar grant information. To that Mike stated that the paperwork has already gone to and has been approved. He did receive one letter from the county which stated not to forget the paperwork/information on the towns web site. Basically it was a standard check list. Mike van explained that he still needed a password in order to gain access to the web site. The town is still in need of updating its website. Mike will make the attempt to update it and maintain it. Kelly Anderson was the guest at the last supervisors meeting. Mike was able to ask her about some of the properties that were going to be auctioned off. All of the properties were being auctioned off for delinquencies; taxes haven’t been paid on them for three years. Some of them are $7 to 8,000 behind in taxes. Some go even higher than that. Mike also stated that he had gone and printed out some of Sterling’s “Land use laws. He offered them to Harvey and realized that there are some things that Sterling has that we don’t. They may have to resort to look into other towns as well to see what else we may be missing. Lester offered up and a presentation to be given by the Waste Management committee next month. Will Macarthur gave the presentation regarding other options for our waste removal system. He explained how the committee was formed as well as who was a part of said committee. He also went on to say that their goal was to find a more cost effective waste removal system. He also stated that upon their meeting they chose to visit other towns to review their Waste Management system. The committee came to the conclusion that Ira had the best waste transfer system, which also allows them to work with “We care”. The cost for a system such as Ira’s is $350.00 a month, this is for a compactor. Roll off is $185.00 per trip. Ira estimates that they will be sending a roll off every other week. They also took into consideration that they have a higher population holding dump permits than we do. Trips for recyclables are $165.00 Because of all that we receive in bulk and volume; recyclables will probably have to be removed every week. The tipping fee for the compactor/roll off is $40.00 a ton. Given figures from the 1st of January till the end of April we’re generating about 6.6 tons per week. Salaries would be $15.00 for operator and helper at $12.00 per hour. The hours would still be the same on Saturday from 9 to 4. The operator and helper would be considered town employees. A total cost per year would be $44,601.00 -25,000.00= $19,601.00 needs to be raised by permit holders. Divide that by 300 permit holders $66.00 per permit holder was the average cost. Initial cost ---PAGE BREAK--- must be taken into consideration as well as limiting about 6 bags per week per household, using 30 gal. bags. Bags will be provided by the users. There will be no contractor waste accepted. A contractor is someone who is getting paid to do contract work. A person who is just a rebuilding a room or removing some insulation per your own household, those things will be accepted. Special days will also have to be set up; special days include things such as: tires appliances excreta. I are also has another roll-off that they use for overflow. They also have another one for large clumsy things such as bicycles. The town of Ira also has a five year contract with We Care. The contract states that all costs will escalate $1.00 per year for the length of the contract. The committee felt as though a transfer station would be the best for the town. They felt as though a site on Upton Rd. would be the best for long-term waste site. They also felt as though that Ira’s was the best model to use. In order to institute this program, further costs would have to be considered. A three phase electric service would have to be in place as well as concrete pad, the two sections security gate, as well as an 8x8 or an 8x10 insulated shed including electric for the operators. The estimated cost for the structure was $10,000.00 The question was asked why other sites were taken into consideration? The response was mainly because of the summer months and if it were too close to a resident they might complain of the smell caused by the heat. Folders were handed out and he offered some different options for our town. The folder is available for review at the request from the town clerk. The board agreed that this was something that would take further investigation. The time had arrived (8pm) for the floor to be opened up for the public hearing. An hour had passed and the allotted time was up for further discussion or comments regarding the local law regarding the overriding of the tax levy for the upcoming year. Lester made a motion and it was 2nd by Robin. Mike and Terrance voted yes and Leonard voted no. The yeses had it and it was passed. Christopher Palermo needed to be informed regarding said matter. The meeting resumed with the discussion regarding the waste transfer station and more figures were offered regarding the installation of electric to be placed into this new area. The rough estimate was $5250.00 $10,000.00 was something spoken of by RG&E. It was believed that they should get RG&E to do better than that price wise. The concrete pad should run $2500.- $3000. The work would be proposed to be done by Victory Hwy. Dept. The question is still the “where” the location should be. The idea was that there would have to be a gate around the area so that no one would be tempted to throw trash in the area on off times. The presentation was thorough and detailed. Again information is available upon request at the town clerks desk. Lester proposed that the fee may have to go up with the unforeseen costs that the Cato/Ira had dealt with. He also proposed that we try to recoup our capital cost within three years, by adjusting the initial permit costs. At 8:30 the committee concluded their presentation and left the meeting. Lester also said that he would continue to be the liaison for the committee. The idea was to continue to look at a few other surrounding towns and how they have handled their trash. The budget workshops will be planned and we can include that in some of our issues to look into. Mike brought up a few other things about how we can’t possibly make everyone happy and how change in our waste management system is inevitable. Lester said that he would get in touch with Vitale’s for some more specific numbers. A commitment was made that we ---PAGE BREAK--- will continue to work with the committee to try and come up with a fair and reasonable solution by next month. The issue of checking permits was addressed by Lester and he was assured by We Care that permits were being shown and asked to be seen. Lester made a motion to adjourn the meeting and all ayes at 9:10 pm