Right. Good evening, and welcome to the December 3 work session for the Croton-Hudson Village Board of Trustees. Our first item of business is is a discussion on undertaking a budget priority survey in advance of the twenty twenty six-twenty seven budget. Manager Healy has created a memo. Would you like to briefly summarize?
• as part of our budget preparations every year, we look to see different ways that we can engage with the public. Right? And this was a suggestion that the mayor actually brought to my attention about other communities throughout the country and other other countries have put together this budget priorities survey document for residents to express their thoughts on how they saw the best value coming from their tax dollars. And so we just wanted to have that conversation, see what board members thought of this. You know, the survey would have to be designed in a way to maximize participation. And, you know, there are also discuss things that actually could be impacted, right? Because we have a lot of contractual costs that we have to spend on, right? There's employee contracts, there's benefits, there's other contractual obligations we have with other municipalities that are nonnegotiable while those contracts are in effect. So we would just be dealing with more the smaller subset of the budget that is actually
• that we actually have the power to move the funds as the board deems fit.
When you were did you do any analysis around how much of the budget is truly fungible?
So the employee benefits, which include which includes the salaries, is a little more sorry, a little less than half of the budget. Okay. You know, that's that includes, obviously, all the salaries, the health insurance, the other medical insurances that we have, the LOSAP for the fire department, the police pension system, right, it includes all of those costs. And then, like I said, there's these other contractual obligations that have with the town of Portland, the town of Ossining, Krohn and Caring, the American Legion. Right? We have all these other agreements that those funds are set, and those, you know, we don't, unless we break the contracts, those are staying how they are. So I don't know what that percentage is, but it's probably it would probably be 40%, I would say, that could actually be changed. Now a lot of those things are not contractual. Like, for example, we don't have a contractual amount that we have to spend on seeding the fields, let's say, right? But generally, we want to spend money on grass seed for the fields, right? So I mean, it's like chances are the board's not going to want to reduce that cost. So there's things that are not strictly contractual based, but just based off longstanding practice, those amounts have stayed. I think it was either
in the memo or it was between the lines. What we're really talking about, I think, to some extent is, if we're going to have any new initiatives, what do you, the in public, think?
• This direction or in that direction? The survey is a good idea for a lot of reasons. Interestingly, I thought, you know, of course, we only saw the output. We didn't see the input. But I thought of the smaller community, Timmins, I thought did actually do a better job than Absolutely. Yeah. I I want to go to Timmins, you know, not just because a great job. Not just because it's an international trip, you know, but it seems like an interesting place. But I thought it was great. You know, the thing that I would, you know, we want to have in ours, we do this, we definitely want to have maybe a one page budget primer on there so folks understand what the budget is. Here's the budget. We're not the school. Right? Exactly. Of your taxes. Right?
point of Yeah. Where does 75% of your taxes is actually school tax. Money goes where does money go in? How does it come out? And then talk a little bit about maybe another half page or page about just our own budget process. The March, your opportunity in addition to the survey is going to be through public comment in many different forms. I think that's great to if we could get that in there. And it would And of course, it's a sensitive issue, I know. But we want to say, as I'm saying now, that a survey is not a plebiscite. We're not asking we can't make the decisions on the budget that way, although that can influence our decisions. But we have to make the decisions essentially at this table when our sleeves rolled up when we're looking at a 300 page draft. You've given us with a lot of numbers. But getting that headwind from a survey effort would be very helpful.
Yeah, think you answered one of my questions, which the memo said discretionary funds. And when I looked at the definition of all the funds, that wasn't one of the words that were defined. And I was so I was wondering how you were describing, you know, discretionary. So you said it's about I mean, 40% is probably
It sounds high. Yeah, it's not the number that I was giving Trustee Nicholson is it was more just the funds that are not already tied up in contractual obligations. But there are a lot of other things that we do as part of the standard operation of government that, you know, our fees that we have for the auditors, the fees that we have for our attorneys. Right? I mean, we don't have strictly contractual obligations with that, but we do have agreements, and we have month to month arrangements with other people that are just things that we continue. More discretionary funding, I would has to do with things like recreation programs, the celebrations, things like that. Pretty small line, I mean Correct.
I think what the deputy mayor was saying was the way to think of this, and I think we you know, I'll I guess that'll come up in the drafting process is how to actually say it with precision of but at the same time, is to say, like, if there was additional money to be spent in a certain area, where would you spend it? Because I think, you know, again, perhaps reading between the lines, right, I think that one of the important things is it has to be to get good participation, it has to be straightforward so people can complete it rather quickly. And for us to even have usable results for us, it has to be relatively simple. Like, if you had something with 20 different options, the number one option might have 12% that might win in a landslide. But that's useless, honestly, data, because that could very easily be, you know, what Project X. But the overwhelming majority of people might not have a very strong feeling about that one way or the other. But there is you know, it has a constituency. But that doesn't tell us anything. So, you know, I think you need
to be pretty clear and have a little bit broad guard. That's you know, like, if if one choice is recreation, that may be inadequate because, you know, someone could then, you know, write in comments. You have enough parks. But that's not really what we meant. I think we meant it Right. For those Maybe it's a youth center where there's a shuttle. So that's That's why the draft is so. Yeah. And I think what the mayor said is a good way to think of it again as as we try to develop what the exact wording is. If we, you know, if we had a $100,000
that we could spend on something, right, would the public rather see that go into new recreation programs? Would they rather see that just go return to the fund balance and then reduce any potential tax increase, right? Mean those I think that might be if
we talk about a potential if we had a source of money, Right. You I mean part of me was like, well, the timing of this, right? Because our but we don't really know, right? Mean, there are a lot of unknowns with the budget, but there is in terms of what's coming down from the state, etcetera. But what we do know is the lump of money that is going to be coming into our coffers is the single body. Right? So that money is sort of a that's that could be sort of the part of it. But we don't wanna say if we have more money when we're this may be a tight budget season. We may not have money. We and But we definitely have that. Yeah. And I think for those, you know, who are you know, just want to be careful about things, who might reflex
and say, we'll put it away for a rainy day. I think that's part of the budget primer to let people know that we have a healthy fund balance and we have saved for a rainy day. So I
this is maybe the cart before the horse or maybe it's in the right order, who knows. But I think that one of the other things that I've discussed with the manager is having a presentation from our financial analyst with regards to the question of we have been, for some time, let's say, closer, edging closer to a bond upgrade, which would be good. There would be benefits to that. We could borrow at lower interest rates. It is unclear to me, you know, how that ranks as a priority for the board and certainly for the larger public, but that's another point of consideration.
I always see confusion on the public's part as to the percent of the budget that is the village as opposed to the school as opposed to the town as so opposed to something upfront that really puts it in context might be helpful.
And we put that we have that in our budget presentation. But, you know, that's only as good as the amount of people that actually either come here or watch the meeting.
And just looking at the team in survey, I mean, if we want to pull that one up, I think the Tucson one is just not relevant. Relevant. I mean, it's just the issues that are happening in Tucson are too different than what we have here. But when we look at sort of the municipal services as their first question after they get through no. I I guess they get they do a priorities question. Right? So what are your priorities ranking
• ranking between these issues, right, which is
• somewhat relevant. I don't know. I think it's helpful to have
a forced rank, forced priority. So instead of somebody listing, oh, yes, I have interest in eight things, it's forcing the priorities of those things so that whatever number you end up doing, I think, would be helpful feedback manager if it's a, you know, a forced rank approach.
So if you had five options and that people are required to rank one yeah. One through five. Mhmm. Right choice. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay.
And then the next category they have is services, which I think is pretty relevant. Yes. I I think Croton is gonna rank higher in arts and culture than Timmons is my prediction. Right.
you know, I I mean, I think that the decisions we have to make around sewer and water and wastewater, I mean, those are just decisions we have to make. Right? There's no And and they're not necessarily
germane to the topic of our general fund budget because we have separate water and sewer funds. Right. So
Yeah. I think another thing that we may want to consider is breaking out operating versus capital because, A, that's how we do the budget. And B, because it make there's a reason why we do that. It makes a huge difference in terms of the budget, right? So, like, we can talk about lot A, but that should really only be used realistically for capital or for some appropriation and return of fund balance in the way we usually do. But that's, again, in the expectation of it being used to smooth contingent revenue sources, not a sinking fund
And then I think that going in, sorry, just going through the survey is like the property taxes and service levels. So like what value you're seeing, I think is an interesting question. And
• then it goes on to ask about prioritization, about if you wanna maintain the taxes, decrease property taxes, and reduce service levels.
I think that that that was also an interesting set of questions. And then they did an infrastructure
• piece. And then I really liked communication. Right? Like, how do you find out about the budget? Watching it and attending a budget meeting. Have some good engagement. They do have some good engagement. And then how do you you know, where do you find out communication is sort of the second after this slide is, you know, the media form that they hear about things. So social media, their website, email, word-of-mouth, so that's sort of interesting.
What would be the process for reviewing the survey and giving feedback on the survey? For example, in this survey, I know there's a pain point in our village with parking. You know, people would love more parking. That's not on here. So you know how can we brainstorm?
You know some I think Stacy you would say that could be a capital expenditure. I mean, there's also no.
• Shovel ready project in that area, really. I mean, there are some very ancient plans that the manager was trading emails about going back to as far back as, like, 1990. I think further than that, yeah. About there's some plans that were like, you know, if you wanted to expand parking in the Upper Village, for instance, you could consider the purchase of these lots. But highly speculative and very old at this point. But, I mean, if there was a response, say, the capital section where parking was far and away the number one issue, I mean, that's something we could consider.
Various examples of types of parking and how people engage in parking individually.
Well, yeah, I think 'd you have to be and it's the tension between being precise enough to make make it actionable, but general enough to makes give us some flexibility for actual governing. Right? So it would be like parking in commercial areas because we're not going to be able to identify the exact spots we're going to add to the service, Yeah. You
So I think Trustee Nottkollar's question, we would be able to put a draft together of the document based off of this initial feedback using what is it? Forgot what this place is called now. Timmons. Timmons, thank you. Using Timmons as an example and then bring the draft back to the Board in January to review. That should still give us plenty of time to get it out before the budget is due in March. And does our communications firms
doing surveys or advice? I would think that they do. Actually working on those Yeah. With the town of Portland on a survey currently. So I think they have a whole component, which is not which is outside the scope of what we have engaged with them for. But, a, they do have an expertise in this area, and, also, we should definitely partner with them on this because this is you know, especially getting the best results, whatever the questions are gonna look like. Yeah. We've set the bar pretty high after the parking survey we just did in that very small area. Yeah. I don't think we can expect anything close to what those that Engagement. Yes. However, they're gonna have some good ideas about how to get the word out once we craft this permit. Great.
Just sort of on my personal wish list, I would love to do a deeper recreation survey this year, talking about kind of getting to what our priorities because there are just a lot
• needs and desires, and it would be kinda nice to suss that out a little bit. And then just a reminder, just to not oversurvey our public, we do have a police survey that we're required to do this year from police reforms. So that will be going out
The nice thing about that one is that the the police advisory committee modified the survey the past couple of years to kind of get to some issues. But this year, they're doing this going back to the standard survey so they can compare the results from five years ago directly so they don't have to worry about creating new questions or anything like that. So that should be pretty straightforward.
Yeah, I think there would be, you know, Nora, to your point about not over surveying people, you know, I don't want to say should, you know, we shouldn't do a recreation survey, but I think the areas where residents want to see, you know, identified priority area for investment, that would probably make the most sense for a follow-up survey for clarification, you know, going from to go out sometime, let's say, between the date of adoption and the actual start of the fiscal year because that would help us adjust programming in that area. Now that we're funding it more, how can we, you know, make responsive as possible to what people were actually envisioning when they said they wanted more? And I think that just going back to the samples we've seen with the Timmins survey, I think, you know, very directly calling the question about, like, what people are willing to pay for, like, you know, you want an increase in Area X. Are you willing to pay our taxes for it? And if so, how much? And I think that the you know, it's it's a different country,
• first of all. But, you know, I think that you have some pretty general parameters as I would like I want no tax increase, and that's actually my highest priority after all. A tax increase under the cap Right. Or a tax increase over the cap. I am gonna predict now that number three is probably gonna pull poorly, but who
knows? But, manager, I think to the mayor's point, I think when we do that, that one two page primer budget process, you'll have a little section there that talks about the taxation
Yeah. So just thinking about The assessor is I mean, it's already moved Yeah. It's actually now would be the time that people would normally be coming in to renew their exemptions. So like the senior you know, under the old system, all the renewals for senior citizens, physically disabled, firefighter exemptions, all of those were due in the month of December. So now with the town, all the exemptions are due in the month of March. No.
• Sorry. They're due by May 1, so they're due in the month of April. So does there seem to be confusion with people? Do they? I haven't heard no. I haven't heard anyone come I I was just trying to come in and do whatever they did. Yeah. No. I haven't heard any of that. I was just saying, you know, what trustee Nixon was saying about communication. It would if we were gonna if we wanted to communicate about the assessor issue, it might actually be now would be a good time to do that just to remind people Yeah. That there's nothing that's needed to be filed at this point. And then the town will be responsible for
letting our village residents know that they should be filing for their exemptions in March, or is that our responsibility?
I don't I don't think that they would notify. Maybe they maybe they do. I I shouldn't say that. I should I should check. You know, we would we would usually reach out to people and say to them, you know, FYI, your exemption is up. So but the town is a much larger operation. I don't know if they have the ability to to do that. Okay. Is that something we can Yes. We can find out about.
• We talked a little bit about it, trustee Simon did, about that we would have to explain in the introduction basically that this is a document to help guide the board. It's not that we're able to adopt these results in full, right? I mean, this is there's more that has to go into developing the budget than just the survey document.
Right. But I think that, like, that front loaded communication about Yeah. What we're gonna do because then we're gonna have data. And then we're gonna do we're gonna have data, and then we what happens when we do something that is contrary to the data that we got from the residents who took the time to cover the survey? I'm not saying that that I need that that we should come up with an answer right now, but I just wanna be very cognizant of the fact that this is something that potentially might occur. And then we're gonna have people who are saying, you asked what we thought Yeah. The time to respond, and now you're doing something different than what the majority of respondents said. It's sort of the
Yeah. It's sort of It's a very fair, very fair question. Absolutely. I mean, you know, we don't we don't know how things are going to be in the future, right? We don't know how the economic conditions are going to be. If we get a survey if we get the results of the survey that show that people don't want a tax increase, for example, let's say, right? And then we have economic downturn, right? And we have to reduce our projected revenues because of whatever those conditions might be, you're going to have to make a very tough decision, right? Are you going to then cut your expenditures because your question.
• a a full time employee here or or
do a 50% employee next year or something like that. So so there's there's a lot of things that go into motion. And some some of that we can control. Some can't. Yeah. And some of those things that go in, you know, come from comments that you hear at the public hearing or they come from the department heads when they come to you. Right? I mean, so there's there's a lot of
moving parts. Yeah. The other thing that is gonna be kind of unique this year is, you know, where the town and the county already know what their taxes look like, and they where because they're ahead of us in the in the budget process. Right? So and we know that those are not gonna be flat or going down. So I think that that
• I wanna be careful how we word the questions. Absolutely. Don't want all of the no one's gonna want all of the taxes going up and all of the taxing entities that then be as residents residents fall this year. And we already know what's happening with the town and county. So I don't know if how much, you know, how much asking people if they want those taxes to you know, do you want your town and county and village taxes to go up? I mean, I think, you know, if if if we are gonna ask that question, what if have to be thoughtful about how we're crafting it? Just be Absolutely.
Yes. Yeah. That's What we can control Yeah. As a village. But framing that up front will be very helpful. Yep. And are we also
• do we not want to go there? I think that the
priority section would have be kind of implicit in that. But, you know, my concern about having the specific offers with regards to subtractions is that's an area where the public would have less perfect or less perfect information about the downstream consequences of that, and that would create I think when we're designing the survey, as Maria was indicating, it's kind of like all of the choices have to be good choices. Right? And so we can't put in, like, oh, this was the secret bad choice that we can't ever actually do. Know, they all have to be Right. Reasonable, responsible. So, you know, it can't be, you know, we're going to cut save money by removing filters at the Right. Water treatment. You can't yeah. I mean,
floor. So it's interesting. Yeah. That's right. I mean, everybody all departments, right, come with their wish list, so to speak. And you know what? We have the obviously, we have an overarching goal of staying within the tax cap and, you know, try to keep the taxes generally as as any potential increase as low as possible. So there are, you know, tough decisions that are made even before it comes here, and then we have to make more tough decisions over here.
Okay. I'd say particularly on personal. Yes. Because the Everybody could use more people. Yeah. And and, you know, you're you're not only looking at situations like that, salary benefits.
• You when one more time, when would you anticipate having a draft? So I we can look to have a draft in available for the January work session. Okay. Sounds good. I think so that would be the January.
• Yeah. Right. We we would wanna have the results before I mean, I'm assuming we would wanna have the results before the tentative budget comes out. Right. Is March. March 20. And happily, for the respondents, it's multiple choice. Yeah. It should it will not take very So, little yeah. Yeah. That's that is the key component.
• next item is the discussion of implementing occupational preferences for affordable housing.
So over the summer, I wrote a memo to West Chester County, the Planning Commissioner Blanca Lopez, that summarized discussions that had been going on with members of the board about affordable housing preferences, making potential changes to the preferences in our cohort. Right now we don't have any preferences, and there have been other communities that have been able to adopt the And
• so, that's I think together a memo to the county asking for their important informal opinion about.
• Their their consideration of our request, right? So what we were looking at was a veteran's preference, right? Veterans of the armed forces, and then also having emergency service workers and medical workers be a second occupational preference. So we had the Housing Action Council and our friends at the PACE Land Use Law Center look at this data and provide us with some information that seemed to show that a majority of the workers in these fields were it was a majority minority fields, right? And so that would seem to show that we could have these preferences and not run afoul of any sort of
• discrimination laws. So I heard back As currently envisioned as it's been going. Yes, correct. As they currently stand. So and these this would be could you refer to it as a really defined lottery?
• recipients of the units would still be
in these categories would still still be be chosen chosen by by lottery. Lottery? I I think so. I think everybody would have to apply for the lottery. But only certain
appointing different Yeah. Right. Because you're so, like, what a lot of places have is they have a very small set aside. Right? So if you were having for the veterans, let's just say, you would set aside aside 10% of any units in any particular development. Right? So if you had a 20 unit building being built, two of the units would be set aside for for veterans. So and then, you know, basically, I guess, whatever people when were they filling out the lottery application, they would check off, I guess, if they were a veteran, and then they would be placed into that priority pool.
• Yeah. That's I think that's how that would work.
• So I heard back from the county at in October, and, you know, they said that they did not have any objections to us moving forward with the proposal as long as we could demonstrate that there was no
• disparate impact and that the policy does not adversely affect any protected groups. So, you know, I think the data that we have shows that. If we were to formally refer it to the county, they would then provide a formal response. As I said, this was more of an informal. Review to see if it was even worthwhile. Moving in this direction. You know, the county said they also sent some additional comments. We had we had been under the impression that the county had already previously approved veterans as.
• Occupational preference. What I was told by the commissioner is that after consulting with the county law department, we confirmed that no formal determination was reached. That is not a foregoing conclusion as I kind of relayed in the memo here. So they would need to study that as well. There is veterans and disabled veterans
Oh, no, I don't think I think the manager is not saying that there's reason to believe that there would be a problem. It's just to say that the county hasn't explicitly done this in the domain of housing. There are many, you know, programs that have preferences for veterans hiring or acquisition
from veterans. Correct, yeah, the county just has not formally determined that. I was going to ask what you're saying.
There's no reason at this point to think that with respect to preferences preferences for for affordable affordable housing, housing that that there's there's any any distinction between rental and condominiums? I don't think so, no. Yeah. That's it. How
This would be done if the board wanted to move forward with this, we would draft a local law that would outline the preferences that we wanted to include and whatever that set aside would be. Right? I used 10% as an example, but you could make it less or more. It's up to you. And then we would have to refer the local law to the county for their opinion. It would also be referred to the planning board for their review, and it would go to the Waterfront Advisory Committee for their review. The Board would get all the comments back from those different agencies, take any proposed recommendations consideration, and then you would have a public hearing and conduct your seeker review, the State Environmental Quality Review Act. And then once you've done all of that, if satisfied, you can adopt the law. So it's multi month process to do that.
And this is for just for your clarification. Mean, we're so our affordable housing whenever a development is made 10% there's a 10% set aside. Yes. Right. So it would be that 10%. Yeah.
yes and no. Think I would would say that Trustee Nicholson's probably description is the most accurate here, right? Because if something is being funded by an outside agency, right? As the saying goes, you who pays the piper calls the tomb, right? And so it's going to be the grantor that makes that determination. But where we have flexibility is in these affordable units under our inclusive zoning law or under affirmative it's a mouthful affordable affirmatively furthering fair housing law. And that's, you know, where we would have the flexibility. So again, it's a very it's a kind of a narrow subset of housing, right? It's buildings new buildings over 10 units and 10% being set aside. It's about that 10% set Right. So our inclusionary.
Exactly. Okay. So that's good to know. So, you know, if we've been on hold for a while, but as an example, if thirteen eighty Albee began construction, which we hope they will soon, at least get their building permit, there's 10% set aside in those 29 units. So
Well, I think it would there'd be it's a good both a good and a bad example, right? It's the kind of project this would cover. I don't know how retroactivity would come into play because they have all their Yeah. Pretty Right. I mean, at the end of the day, though, I don't know if their merit I don't think well, who knows if the owner has a strong opinion about sticking with this. Can we zoom in a little more? So
lot a would not be there's no way this could happen fast enough that it could be
we could we could fly this to lot. It it would be contingent on what the I mean, it they have received authorization through a home, right? Or a hop? A hop, yes. So
it would be I think a lot of it would be what a hop is willing to entertain. A hop is because that would make I mean, I'm I'm in favor of this in general, but it would be even better if we could do this and have a huge project like Lot A be able to make it so that some of, you know, our first responders would have an even better
chance than Well in a lottery of doing. Important to say first responders, not ours, other than the fact that they would be first responders who would ultimately live in the village. Right? Right. But I mean, yeah. Yes. Yes. But of course Precisely. Heavy
Good points. And possibly even what I may have. But I think all of it is really just risk for your follow-up conversations with the county just in terms of how in reality, how do you apply these in terms of time line types But of I think it's I mean, the county
is going to naturally be very broad and not specific in their comments right now because this is not we haven't formally referred it to them.
So I just think of this as a great tool, and if we can adopt it, you know, we'll figure out how best to use it. It's a great tool to have. Yeah.
And, you know, in terms of the drafting, I'll just note that our existing code, as you can see there, kind of at the bottom of A1A, you know, it there they took well, yeah, it's referred to at different points, that's the earliest reference made. The Westchester County Fair and Affordable Housing Affirmative Marketing Plan, and that's really what is the quote unquote lottery system that's, you know, making reference to the plan that the county has that was, I assume, developed as a result of the settlement from a few decades, you know, sixteen years ago. Yeah. And.
• But it doesn't have the whole plan in there, And so I think that we don't have we'll see. I'll defer to our journeys. But we could have some flexibility in our drafting on that.
So they continued by saying they reviewed other local preferences, and quote, We note that Elmsford specifically prioritizes fire and EMS personnel separately from other village employees. New Rochelle prioritizes city uniformed workers, though the language is somewhat broad. So there is some precedent for having those emergency services
Starting point and then each we we did not request this, but HCR recently approved preferences for victims of flooding. This is currently being applied or will be applied in the city of White Plains for the townhomes under construction. These are the we actually had that on the agenda on Monday. The development includes two levels of preference. First, for households impacted by Hurricane Ida and second, for
• county of Westchester. So those are those are other potential preferences. Yeah.
Since ultimately, we're we're going to have to get an official kind of response from the county when we draft. I know it's been mentioned before at different times. I think it's worth at least including it in what we submit to the county, then we can make a decision about where it winds up in the final product, especially given the response, but school district employees, and I would cast a wide net on that. Of course, most naturally, that includes teachers, but I think also the paraprofessionals.
• I mean, I know that I think the person actually just retired, but there was a school district paraprofessional residing at Maple Commons who since retired. But, I mean, that's, you know, the pay for those positions is not, you know, pay scales are compressed, so let's put it that way. And
• they could definitely benefit from having access to this. And in turn, the community has access to that benefiting from local talent in its schools.
So we, in effect, we need to go back to the county. So I think we really want to do this. Any guidance before we start drafting? Well,
was kind of saying, no, this is as much guidance as we're gonna get. Yeah. Now it's gonna be
• Well, what I would suggest They'll they'll look at the draft. Yes. Exactly. Well, we begin the system. We we begin the draft. Draft and begin the secret process. Get this draft to them as early in the process as possible.
• So
do we want to move forward with both both preferences that we outlined, the veterans and the emergency services and the and the medical?
And I would like to add some I I'd say what that And we'll I mean, we'll see where it lands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel if so we have a consensus on Yes. At least this stage. So I I do wanna give credit where credit is due. It's sad that he's not here with us to see this as it progresses, but Tony Gagliotti, I remember back in 2021, we were honoring his ninetieth birthday party with Tower Ladder Company. And he pulls me to his side, and he says, mayor, I know people always ask for references in housing. He said, I know I know you can't do local preferences, but you gotta do something for the first responders. And I said, you mean an occupational preference devoid of any geographic component? He said, yeah. Something like that. And he was like, well
And so And I think it was that I think it was that same year, mayor, we we were very proudly showing the new piece of equipment to the to the firefighters that had just arrived. It was bright and shiny in in the garage. I think it was probably around COVID. And we said, isn't this great? And and they responded by saying, we really appreciate this. What we really need is some housing opportunities in growth.
That already have certain levels of approval. Yep. That'll that'll happen. Yeah. I I would think that projects that are already approved would operate under the old guidelines, but I don't think there would be anything that would prevent them from voluntarily Yeah. Adopting the Well, that's that's And then it's usually there's a
commitment to how they appropriate the Affordable Housing Program. Are they losing anything? No. No. The interest property? Is there any taking? Is there any problem with that? Yeah. They probably could. Yeah.
Absent them being already being in the application process, I don't think they would care.
Alright. Next is a discussion of home rule legislation enacted by the governor but also passed at our request.
Thank you, governor. She couldn't have done it without us. Yeah. And vice versa. Yeah. Okay. So we had a number of home rule bills passed this year, but two that require some further discussion from the board are the hotel and motel tax as well as the what I'm calling the red light cameras, but officially it's the adjudication of traffic control signal indications in the village. So I think we'll, we can start with the easier one first, which is the hotel and motel tax. So we request that this be implemented because of the change in state legislation that now imposes this tax on short term rentals. So as most people probably know, we don't actually have any hotels or motels in Croton. So even though a number of other municipalities had this tax for a number of years, there was no real incentive for us to request it because there was no benefit that could be gained. But now that the law has changed, there was incentive for us to get it. So it's now been signed, and so we just wanted to confirm that the board wanted us to move forward with preparing this legislation. I think the attorneys already drafted it actually. And so we could, you know, schedule it for a public hearing at some point in the New Year and have it. Have it on the books.
• I'll pull it There's the Okay. Under ninety days. Yeah. I forget what the exact window is. We'll pull up the law to see.
Manager, while the village attorney is looking for that, just a clarification that you may want to answer to. The the the the
kind of where we're at with the rental registry. So, yeah, and I mean Do we know how many short term rentals we have? We do. I don't know. We don't know the answer to that yet. So we're in the process of gearing up the short term sorry. The rental thing would be Airbnb. Isn't the registry with with the
Draft. Just Yeah. Like a processing. Okay. So we're in the process of gearing that up. Engineering, actually, I have the the draft form on my desk that I have to review for the landlords to fill out. We're we're planning to start it in the in the beginning of the the year. So and we were actually just talking about potentially, we have to set the fees for the next
• meeting, probably, a resolution to set the fees. So
So it's it's three percent. Right? That's what that's what the law is. And the law says it's not applicable to people who are deemed permanent residents. And you gain permanent residence residency if you stay in the room for more than ninety consecutive days. So if you're renting an Airbnb and you stay for more than three months, then you would no longer have the tax. Yep.
• Yeah, there was I mean, we had discussed this at some point in the past, and there was state legislation that was enacted. You know, I'm not sure if the board wanted to take additional
steps. I mean, if we're taxing them, we should probably write them down. At least to have a framework. We should at least have the conversation. Does
• the list ever get shorter? No.
• But that's okay. All right. So that I think we're pretty much set on that. So we will prepare that. Moving on to the red light cameras. So we received authorization to establish up to three intersections with the traffic signal traffic control signal photo violation monitoring devices, aka the red light cameras. Little
• a bit
• a do all three at once if we didn't want to. You know, the the intersections I've spoken to the chief of police about this, and you know, his recommendations were the two intersections at Porter Point Avenue with the. Where the ramps are, right? So the the northbound ramp from Route 9 and then the southbound ramp from Route 9 as well as the intersection of Municipal Place and South Riverside
• near Croton Auto Park. So
I see cameras now. What's the distinction between the ones that I see now? Yeah. So those what
at certain intersections, there are license plate reader technology. Those that's, you know, security security tools tools for for the the police. Police. Yeah. So those are not those are not red light. We don't have any red light cameras currently in the village.
• Yeah. I mean, I don't think. Yeah. I I mean, I think the I think every intersection could be
Yeah. These are not speed cameras. These are Right. Or what if you're making a light turn, where are you not supposed to? It would be the same thing. Yeah. That because you're that's technically going through the light. Yeah. Yeah. And
sorry. Many efforts. You're right. Exactly. Right. You could not make yeah. On one way, you can. Right. And on one one, you can't. And that's part our control. Correct.
So I think the chief's recommendation was based off of the data that we have, right, just based off of tickets that have been written. I mean, there are a lot of people that go through that red light at the southern ramp, right, the southbound ramp. Right. So I mean, it's It's maddening. Yeah. So
• I mean, you we also see it at Municipal Place at South Riverside. There are a lot of people. It's it's kinda mind boggling to me. They, like, they they come to a full stop at on South Riverside, and then they're like, oh, well, I'm just gonna go because nobody's here, and then they're like, they just go. But so there are three I think there are three spots where is that what what you were saying?
Because I think the three spots where you can't go right on red are going going south, go near the Blue Bay, which is the one you just recommended. And, also, can you make a right on red on municipal police?
You cannot make a right on red from South Riverside onto municipal place. So, I mean, those seem like the
Well, I mean, people the the recommendation for the northbound ramp is not so much I mean, because you can make a right on red there. That's not so much the issue. It's that people run the light going to the train. Like, they're on Corner Point Avenue, and they Right. They just go You just go left on red. That's very No. No. No. They're they're on Point Avenue, and they're headed to the train station. So they just go straight through the light. Oh. Yeah. Oh, so it wouldn't be where you're making the turn. It would be on that Correct. It's it's straight you're going straight through the intersection trying to get to the train station. Where you if you set the camera up, does it only does it No. No. It it can do captures all It could do all yeah. Correct. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't really have a preference for where they are, I guess. It I mean, you know, the it's red light cameras are there's a little controversy around this, right, in the media. If you're paying attention to this topic Yep. There are some we have been contacted, but also it you know, by residents, but also across the state of New York. This is a topic in the media right now. So I I don't I I understand why we wanna do it, but I do think that there is some
you have know, to train people's data. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because there's Well, there's specific
manager, can we bring up the red light camera legislation? Well, the correspondence we received from a resident was about license plate readers, Right. Which is
red light cameras wouldn't capture the license plate. Oh, they they have to. But they But they're supposed to be
Right? That's correct. They only they only capture a picture of the license plate, and you don't get any points based off of the violation because they there's no there's no way to identify who was driving the car. So it's not it's not points on your license. I mean, I think it depends on how the our
household has received these. Well, for real who was driving the car. Wasn't me. But you can you can sort of you know, the photo that that is being taken is you can see that was a second. I'm as I said, I'm not opposed to this. I just want to say out loud that I'm aware of, you know, this is not Well, and it begs the question, you know, do we and to the attorney,
do we will we need a a data capture policy for this and a and then a data usage policy for this so that we're being clear with the vendor, you know, that these images will blur the faces and the passengers
and, you know, and There has been some state legislation. Oh, sorry. There's been some state legislation, but usually when we have issues is when we're holding credit cards and processing credit cards. I mean, I can look into that and see about possible applicability, but my at first blush, I don't think that that would be problematic
data under the I mean, the village the village is not privacy. The village is not going to have the data. Right? I mean, so we would be because we're not I think Stacy's point is, but we do care about how the vendor Absolutely. But I'm just saying specifically, we would not have we're not holding the data. So we would we the village itself wouldn't have to have a policy, but we would need to make sure the vendor had a policy. Well, and just just to throw it in just for conversational purposes, but this issue actually came up in
the bicycle and pedestrian community as we were putting together Project Mover. Because not only does Project Mover have your credit card, but the GPS there's GPS on the bike, so it always knows where you are and who you are and all of that. Yeah. And they the shared mobility, which is the company that owns this project, we've just got an ironclad policy on locking up all of that, not sharing it, not not allowing a jet to it to be seen or selling it or anything like that. Yeah. That's a good standard. Generally,
when we review vendor contracts, this is what we're looking at. Is there a credit card? Is there a password? Is that you know, and that's when we make sure that they have the right data protections involved in it. So what what we that would be something we would look at in evaluating the vendor contract, but it's something that we would look at before.
Because we do we have this red light camera vendor yet? No. Not at all. No. No. No. Okay.
It's that one, I think. No. Go further up. It begins with such demonstration program shall utilize.
• Yeah. And then blow it up. And then if you'd be so kind as to
by such traffic control signal photo violation monitoring systems shall not include images that identify the driver, the passengers, or the contents of the vehicle, provided, however, that no notice of liability issued pursuant to this section shall be dismissed solely because our photographs allow for the identification of the contents of a vehicle, provided that such village has made a reasonable effort to comply with the provisions of this paragraph.
Okay. And of course, we would seek vendors through an RFP. Yes. We could have a stronger statement about privacy
as we Yes. We're not the first municipality to have these. Right? So I mean the vendors have some experience. Red light cameras have been around for at least a decade at this point. So You could do it in the city for a while. Yeah. So we have And that that is they're mainly in cities or,
you know, mean, The Bronx and drive in River. I mean Yonkers. I don't Does Briar
not sure if I think Pelham Manor? They're Pelham Manor has one or just recently got authorized for one. But generally, you're correct.
• Authorization to Manager, you're correct. Pella Manor. I read every once in a while. Yeah. The the authorizations have only recently begun to be extended to noncities.
I would see a bunch of water. We'll know if I just think we should be considerate.
I'm just concerned that doing too many at once, we're we're gonna get a lot of backlash. You know? Yeah.
I mean, like I said, we're authorized to have up to three. That doesn't mean we have to do all Do we know the cost of the implementation of it? I I don't. I haven't I we would have to get this is not something even if you pass this law, this is not something that we would be doing right away because we would have to budget for it in the upcoming budget. Right? I mean, it would have to be it would be a capital capital project. Who
Well, and it's it's probably monthly or annual fee because it's the vendor's camera.
I mean, I would I I'm sure I'm sure that the vendors get a cut of the of the ticket amount. I don't know if I don't know if we would have to pay. We probably have to pay some upfront cost for the equipment, and then there's probably a software installation expenses, maintenance expense. Say there's some sort of software maintenance cost that's probably an annual fee, and then they get whatever the percentage of the Yeah. Of the ticket is. That would be that would be my guess as to how it how it works.
Yeah. Looks like there's one vendor that it's, like, 40% of the campaign. There
colleague over there. It's like, come on. So procedurally or process wise, I'd also like to float the idea of making a referral to the BPC, Bicycle Pedestrian Committee, for comment on this as well.
Their comments on the locations. And I would say, especially with the note that we can have up to three, we should ask them to actually rank them. And I don't know if the chief ranked his recommendations or not or if they were just
far as I recall, they weren't ranked. They were just I think we should ask for rankings from each. Okay. I wonder if his
that that could be correct. Would not be an unreasonable point. I would be curious what he thought. Yeah. And as the deputy mayor indicated, these are not red light cameras. No. They're not speed cameras. Sorry. Yeah. Yes. The other word They are. These are red light cameras, so they're not speed cameras. And, you know, that is another thing that could be done through Home Rule, where, you know, this would be yes. And if that's something that we wanted to eventually, this is the time of year to start that conversation in advance of the legislative session. And, again, just to back out and go over the homework process, right, we need the bill introduced some sometime, I would say, this is the first half of the session, thereabouts. So from sometime from January to April or May, maybe. And maybe it gets passed in the session, and then the governor makes a decision about signing it towards the end of the year. And then we have all the time in the world to decide about implementation.
It doesn't mean we have to Exactly. Do the meeting with their Yeah. But if we want that optionality,
you know, it is something that we need to think about. Oh, red no. Light camera vendor or Oh. Just to know if they Well, no. I mean, we yes, we should absolutely do an RFP for red light camera vendors. Yeah. But what I'm saying is if we want to do consider having the option of the speed cameras at some point in the future, this is the time where we should think about whether or not we want to include that in our legislative packet.
I know that the managers And I just asking, do you include it as a capability? Sorry for not being weird. Oh, red light camera RFP just to know the capability of what we're installing.
Yeah. I think the I think the locations of the speed cameras versus the red light cameras would probably be different. I the I saw there's also been home rule legislation that was approved for White Plains and one other thing is valid. Don't know if you remember, Mayor, that they were they got speed cameras approved. And I think primarily they're looking at school zones for speed cameras. So like whereas the red light cameras are focused more on the areas near the expressway, the speed camera would probably best fit on Maple Street where we have our school speed zone. Yep. So
• food food for thought. Yeah. The
cameras on the school buses. Correct. Yeah. And that's a separate that's a separate program. That's a county program that the school district has entered into an agreement to participate, although they have not launched it yet. Hen Henhud has launched theirs in the northern part of the village, but the Corona Harmon School District has not launched theirs yet. But when it when it if and when it does launch, the cameras will monitor whenever the stop arm is deployed. And if you pass the school bus when the stop arm is deployed, you will will get a ticket. Yep. So
It's a nice little callback to item one from this evening, going back to the survey, right? You know, when we talk about surveys, the police survey. And every year, what's the number one priority? Traffic. Yeah. Safety. Yep. And so this is a budget friendly way of doing this because it's less labor intensive and allows us more coverage with the same amount of staffing. Well, at the urging of the board, we now have an
Also, that's an excellent point. We've actually already done the staffing thing on traffic. So now it's the technology thing. Yeah.
• I'll send some information to the Bike Ped Committee, ask to have this I don't believe they're meeting this month, so we would be hearing from them after their January meeting. And then based on that feedback, we can have another discussion and see what we want to do. Did Pat already discuss this?
think I was a little too optimistic when I wrote final review. But Maybe we'll
Okay. So we've had a number of conversations about these guidelines for the boards and committees. And based off of those conversations and the existing document that we had, I've put together this draft of
• guidelines for all of our advisory boards and committees. So I don't know do we want to go through each section? Okay. Yep. All right. So the first section is the committee's relationship to the village government, right? So all the advisory committees are accountable to the board, to the manager. They can't function as independent entities, and they have to operate within our established procedures and policies. Expenditures and resource utilization has to be approved by myself or a representative. This includes the use of staff for meeting facilitation research and general administrative support. And then committee records including meeting minutes, correspondence, reports are village records subject to FOIL, and those records must be maintained and provided to us as requested. Any comments or questions on that first section?
So the the correspondence, You know, we got a question around this. So a committee member is taking notes on their personal computers. So how would that work for FOIL requests?
So what we've what we have to what we've done in the past when there's been requests made of committee members, right, is that we just we have we asked the committee members. We've received a FOIL request for all records pertaining to x y z for the period of January 1 through June 1, let's just say. And we ask them to, you know, please make a diligent search of your email and send any records that, you know, fall into this. And if they write back and say, I don't have any, then that's what it is. If they write back and say, here's what I have, then that's what it is. Right? I mean, we we have to we have to make a diligent search of whatever records that we would potentially have in our possession. So
Yeah. Like I said, we've had requests made in the past where people have requested things. The housing task force members, for example, there's been requests made of them. I'm sure there were other committees as well. I can't remember off the top of my head. But, yeah, this is not a new I mean, any anyone who is representing the village in any capacity, whether it's statutory or advisory or elected, everybody is subject to foil. Yep. So
And I think that that I mean, this the reason why we're doing this, right, is is so everyone is aware. Right? I mean, I I think when you take on the responsibility of being a volunteer committee member, you need to be aware that that's the case. And I I don't think that's I don't think we know that necessarily. So I think it is important for us to be Spell it out. Yeah. Spelling it out. Yeah. Is there something
• if there's if there's correspondence that's happening among the committee and the trustee liaison is on those correspondence Then the email is saved on our system. Right. So, I mean, maybe there should be some I I don't wanna overreach and say that, you know, correspondence, you know, among committee members should always include the trustee liaison. But that would be or I don't wanna spell it. Maybe maybe you don't wanna spell it out that way. But if we were to do that, then Yeah. Then that we would have access to that in a way where, you know, then the the clerk would be able to search those records, and then the responsibility would not be on the volunteer committee members or chair. Right? So, I mean, of course, could inadvertently leave somebody off an email or whatever that is, but that would be a way to take the burden off the committee and put it on back onto either the leave the trustee or the clerk. Yeah. Yeah. And
we don't really have any best practices. Right? And I think that's why, like, you know, some of our committees have their own email addresses, right, that are village email addresses. Some of our committees have
just No. I don't think no. There's as far as I I don't think there's any committees that have official emails. Yeah. No. No. They don't have dot they don't have .gov email addresses. They might have a Gmail. Right. That's what I'm saying. Right? But is that really the best practice, right, for them create their own email address You on know, some
• it varies widely. Some places have email addresses that are just for the committee, right, like planning board at Hudson. Right? Other places have each board member have an email address. But, I mean, that would get very costly very quickly. Yes. Right? I mean, because each email license is, like, $52 a year, I think. Right? And so if you if we have over a 100 people on committees, you know, you're looking at over $5,000 just in in email addresses.
So, again, I'm, like, sort of steering, though. Like, I have a brand new committee chair. Right? What should I do? Like, how should I set up my email address? Like, we should give them that guidance and be like, you can create a g Gmail address.
share with you the I don't know. Well, I think there could there could be a benefit to having a call it the chair of the REC. Right? So if there was a chair REC chair at whatever the extension of our email address is, and then when the chair changes hands, then you would hand it over. And then the incoming chair would get the historical record of whatever the outgoing chair would have. That's how they I mean, there are other organizations that do it that way. So then you would have hundreds of additional email addresses, but I don't know. Like, you know, we have 20 committees. So it would be 52 times 20. But then at least there would be some continuity for us of where I mean,
it doesn't sound too bad. I think honestly your hardest part might be getting buy in from all the committees to actually
these are village committees. You know what mean? There have to be some rules that No. I'm I'm just I'm just saying. Right? I mean decide that's okay. Yeah. You you have
I just wonder if it's less burdensome for someone to just, you know, step into a chair, commit, yeah, and then you have an email address, right, that's assigned to you versus you then meeting. Because I know we've had conversations around, you know, creating Gmail accounts, and we don't want people to have personal sending personal emails. That's why they sort of create another account.
Yeah. And some people prescriptive on it. Maybe it's Yeah. Some people have to have when they take you know, go on a committee, they create an email address that's just for their So they can organize their Yeah. I don't know. I'm not going to say if that's the best way to do it or not, but I do like the idea of just having a chair email address both for the record retention purposes and the continuity
purposes. It's I mean, it would be a pretty drastic change from how we're doing it now. Yeah. But I think that if we were you know, it is the beginning of the you know, if we're gonna do it, I don't know how long, you know, this would be the time to do it in at the beginning of the well, before while while we sell a lot of appointments being held over,
• it might be the time to do it. As a former chair of a committee, I would have Yeah.
So we have 13 sorry. Yeah. No, the board is included in there. So we have 12 committees. So it really would not be a huge amount to make 12 more email addresses if that's what we wanted to do, one for each.
Mean, it would be a change, but, you know, it's a especially point three here is just memorializing the reality that the committees are subject to foil, and it is an advantage to the committee, certainly the chair, to have this. And, you know, presumably, almost all relevant correspondence for the committee is going to the chair. And so this would capture almost anything that would need for a flow.
• I don't know exactly where I'll put that in here, but I'll put that in somewhere. Think about that. Okay. Administrative requirements. Yes. So all advisory committees have a chair appointed by the mayor, committees designate secretary to draft the agendas in coordination with the chair and take meeting minutes. Other leadership positions, such as the vice chair, are assigned at the discretion of the chair. The meeting agendas are due at least two business days prior to the meeting and should include the date, time, and location of the meeting, agenda items with brief descriptions, any anticipated action items or recommendations, and supporting materials or documents to be discussed.
• As it said previously, the committees must take minutes of their meeting and submit the minutes to the village manager within thirty days following the date of the meeting. Minutes shall include a minimum of record of attendance, a brief summary of any discussion items, a record of any motions made in the voting results, a record of any action items in the responsible parties, and any recommendations that are to be prepared for the board. Any formal recommendations or responses to referrals from the board must be submitted through the manager in the form of written memo. The memo may be included on the board agenda at the discretion of the manager, and memos should clearly state the recommendation or information being shared by the committee, the background and rationale for the recommendation, any potential fiscal impact or policy implication if known, and the requested action be taken by the village board if any. And finally, all advisory committees must submit an annual report summarizing their accomplishments, activities, recommendations, and areas of collaboration with other committees, goals, priorities for upcoming the year, and any budget requests. Annual reports are due by December 31 of each year.
Comments or questions on those? So I mean, the feedback we got today from our committee chair was that some committees, they have process where they take minutes at the meeting, and then they don't approve their minutes until the following meeting. Yes. Which is what we do. Right? I mean than thirty days. So I think the thirty days was was the issue. So we could say after
approval. I mean, personally, I would like to keep it to the thirty days. If we wanted to put language in there that it could be draft minutes, I think that would be fine. But, you know, that if we if especially if a committee is not meeting every month, if we don't get the minutes,
we're not necessarily knowing what's going on with that committee, right? So I would just add, as one model I'm not saying it's the best one. As one model, sustainability committee meets, usually there's draft minutes given out by the chair within a
Okay. And, you know, the committees, though, you know, meet publicly to almost entirely, but only a few are actually subject to open meetings laws. And those meet more than well, one of them definitely meets more than one month once a month. The planning board and the zoning board of appeals, those two does not meet more than once a month, but they both have the advantage of having professional support staff. So I I don't think it's a real issue. I mean, you know, point here is that while this board couldn't really approve its own minutes via email, because we are subject to open meetings law, the advisory boards and committees can.
But there are some let's use RAC again as an example. For probably fifteen years, there's been a system in place there of the minutes being taken and then shared with the agenda and then approved at the next meeting. It's probably give or take thirty days depending on how many days are in But I think that that's a system that's not broken and is pretty well established with the the way that that department and committee run it. So I think that I think it's good for us to put it in writing this way, but for there to be a little bit of flexibility if you're getting the minutes.
Mean, you want to change it to forty five days? Would that make everybody feel better so that it gives a little It would, at least it would. I mean, you little have wiggle room there at least. Yes, because I do think that Yeah. So, yeah. And I mean, if something came in on day 31, it's not like we'd be like, oh, you know, you go to committee jail.
• Are you managing this? Because a lot the the I that's
• I case.
Requirements on the village staff member who is liaising to all the committees. So Yeah. I mean, we say we say a lot of you know, most of the places in here, I think, are it says village manager or the designated representative, right? Which is I mean, just the way that most things in our code are and how we do a lot of our policies is that everything is on everything is on me, and then I can devolve it. You know, I can designate somebody else to handle it.
I guess the question is, do do these changes increase the amount of staff time that is being dedicated to committees in an unreasonable in a in a way that is manageable? I I I mean, I think it's manageable. Mo at at this point, most committees are sending minutes already. So Amy is already handling that by
taking the minutes and putting them on the website and dealing with the committee members. Not
• all committees currently provide agendas. So I would say if I look at my list here again, you know, the WACC and the VEV, those are handled by Karen in engineering. And then we
• get an agenda from CAC that that Amy posts,
• and I think that's it. Stephanie. Yeah. But I'm sorry. Was just talking about the advisory committees. But I mean, RAC mean, I know that
let's just go back to that one because I was on it for so long. But, you know, Mark does provide an agenda more than two days ago.
No, but I'm just saying it doesn't come to it doesn't currently, it doesn't come to us. So your your question was increased workload. So, yeah. I mean, we would right now, we only get an agenda from one Oh, okay. So I assume you were still answering that. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I moved on. I apologize. So but but so now there were gonna formally be asked and these are, you know, So it is gonna somewhat increase. Yes. In in terms of in terms of publicizing agendas because right now, we only do for one. And, you know, now we would be doing for what? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven seven of them. Oh, so we'd also be publicizing. So it's not for your information that they'd be sending the agendas. It would be for publication.
That was how I took it, but it doesn't it doesn't have to be that way. On the calendar? The they already the meetings are already on the calendar. Right. But the agenda doesn't Correct. Back of the agenda was Yeah. So, like, right now, we we get when we get the CAC agenda, we put it out to the public. And the VEB agenda goes to the public. The WAC agenda goes to the public. We don't get public agendas for the other committees.
I think it might make sense to just post the agenda instead of sending them out or putting them on the calendar always. I think, you know, just as a, like, the the it might make more sense to just post them on the web page. So when the
• the minutes and the agendas. So if somebody's interested in going to the arts and humanities committee meeting, you know, then it'll go to the website
to that Yeah. It's a good point. To that. Like, right here. Yeah. Yeah. So we would just add so like you said, these are the let's have a lesson here. Okay. So when you go to the village website, okay, and you click right here meetings and agendas, It brings you to everything right here. Alright.
So If you go to the bike ped committee page, the agendas aren't there. They're on the agendas page?
So we don't have so we don't have agendas for bike and ped. Okay. So that was a bad example. Yeah. But, like, if you if you go to VEB,
• right, you have agendas here.
Oh, yeah. So you would just create a space on each of the pages for the Correct. The agendas. Yeah. Think that makes sense. Yeah. Because that way, residents would know if they want to go to that if there's something of interest in them at that meeting. Otherwise, how would you know what Yeah.
So and and that actually, trustee Slip, that's a good example. Right? Because when we had the REC meeting, they don't publicize their agendas, but we put it in one of the recent newsletters a number of months ago that the RIC was gonna be talking about Dobbs Park. Right? And we actually had people come to because they saw it in the newsletter, and they wanted to talk about it. Right? So that was why I I think we whatever information we can publish, I think we should. There's really no reason to keep the agendas not public. So, I mean, if there's something if there's something that a a committee feels like they need to talk about in, you know, I don't know executive session is really a thing for them. But if they feel like they need to discuss it in a closed door session, then, you know, we could certainly talk about that and not include that on the public portion. I think the the one committee is the police advisory committee which has some.
So can you just explain that a little bit? How we would deal with it? Yeah, I think we would have to, in coordination with the chief, if there was things that he felt were not subject or were not prudent to discuss in public, then we would leave those off of the public agenda. Are the GAC meetings open to the public? Generally, right? I mean that's been our policy is that generally all our committee meetings are open to the public. I think there have been times when the chair of that committee has, like you said, has wanted things to not be discussed in public. And so if there have been public at those meetings, they've excused themselves and gone to meet in a different location. So I don't see any reason why they couldn't do that. They're not as advisory committees, they're not subject to open meetings law. There is no requirement that they meet in public. So yeah, no. I was
just this is some there's some good tips that I generally do with boards and email correspondence. And, you know, I know you talked about this previously, but it was just I was thinking about it. I usually advise no substantive debate via email. So I don't know if that's something you want to incorporate. I also think if you had maybe an email like advisoryboards@pro.gov or whatever and you would have said any statistical tabulations or any involving village business. You have to keep copy of that email address. It makes your life a little bit easier because that way it's one email address and everything is going That people are never gonna do that. It's just for foil it's just for foil purposes.
Yeah. It's hard to get more of the good habits, but it's a good habit. It would be I agree. It would be a nice thing if if people could just do that, but I don't think I don't know how much I think it's gonna be hard enough to get them to use the email address that we make for them. But I I think it's gonna be a I just Yeah. Yeah. Practically practically don't don't think think that that. We're
just. And, again, like, when we're having a meeting with the committees, like, sort of thinking about, you know, these are our best you know, giving them a set of best practices. So, even a best practice around minute taking, right? Like, this is our expectation around minute taking. This is a sample of a good agenda.
Yeah. Yeah. We could give samples of both, right? Samples of agendas Because minutes, right, the thing is template almost. We have some committee members, right, that are very good with their minutes, right? Minutes are not supposed to be verbatim of meetings,
• actions that were taken, discussions that were had, that's it. Right? I mean, it doesn't have to be you know, you don't have to feel like you sat through the whole thing when you read the minutes. Right. So, yeah, being able to provide examples and show people what Yeah. They should be doing
is definitely a good idea. Well, and the same thing with that, which we're just doing it now is the annual report. You know, you just ask for the annual reports. We've I've now seen a wide variety of things about what annual reports are, and some people still figuring out how to write up their A four reports. So I do think having a template for those three things would be helpful. Okay. So
there's no other comments there. On to inter committee coordination and collaboration. So committees are required to coordinate with other relevant committees when their work areas overlap or intersect. Before making a recommendation that may affect another committee's area of responsibility, the chair must notify the effective committees of the proposed action, provide opportunity for their input and discussion, and document the collaborative efforts.
• Which desire to include a permanent liaison from other boards of committees of the village, municipal corporations, or organizations must seek rule from the village manager before proceeding. The village manager may seek the counsel of the village board before approving such requests. The village manager representative is available to assist with coordination. Committee chair should inform the village manager's office when they identify the need to potentially collaborate with another committee.
• Comments or questions? So I think a
lot of this relies on the liaison saying, you know Hey. At the parts of the committee meeting, maybe we should talk to the CAC about what you're doing because these two things you know, I don't think it's gonna be front of mind. Although we should, you know, telling the chairs to remember to do this, but I I think a lot of that falls on us to remind, you know, while we're doing our liaison assignments, when we see something veering into another committee,
it's it really is on us to Yeah. Suggest making that connection Yeah. And with your help. However, that's going on. And I do think that there's an opportunity, like, if there is an in person. Right? We talked about doing an in person training. If all of the chairs can meet each other too, it would make such a big difference of talking about what their priorities are and how they'd like to collaborate together. I think just the face to face will help help it along.
And I think the examples that you did, and if there are more of examples of collaboration required or helpful.
Yeah, let people yeah, let people visualize what those might be. Yeah. Yep. Okay.
So two things on this section, first, more broadly. I think that especially because there is no committee jail, we should kind of like rephrase Yes. Yeah, yeah, rephrase some the language that kind of, let's say, has the language of a mandate and is more consistent with guidance, right? So all committees are required to coordinate. Think I should say all committees coordinate with other relevant committees because people are going to disagree about whether or not, you know, this thing was relevant or whatever Aren't encouraged? Encouraged? No, no. I would say should. Should. Should. Should is fine, but required. I mean,
there's no real mechanism for adjudicating that. I don't wanna create the impression I think there's not, except one committee who, you know, gets infringed upon by another committee. You know? We can't make them do it, but I would like I I don't I sort of don't mind the forceful language of us saying, you know, as a chair, we're requiring you to do this because I think and any of us who have been liaisons where this has happened know that people are upset when somebody takes a liberty with a committee that they're not, you know, that they're not part of that. I I don't you know, softening the language is fine, but I think that the spirit of it should be That's the responsibility of the chair. Yeah. Yeah. Should be encouraging it even if you don't want to be for wiring it.
Okay. Yeah. And then I think that there's a slight conflict in some ways between one and two. I think that creating a kind of a heavily bureaucratized system for having actually engaging with other committees could inhibit the kind of coordination we're looking for.
• And I would suggest so, instead of saying must receive approval from the village manager before proceeding, I would replace it with should provide notice to the village manager. Because, A, I don't imagine a scenario where the village manager would just would say, say no. I mean, again, most of these meetings happen in public spaces anyway. So if someone wants to come, they could come. And so it's just the manager should be aware. And then, like, if it's a regular part of the life of the committee or whatever, like, you know, we'll note this person on the village website perhaps as liaison from X.
I think that also part of the and I I don't I I wouldn't get to this later on. Part
• of this was also in terms members of it might not be necessary for somebody to serve on two committees. If you serve on one committee that has a dotted line to another committee, then instead of taking up two seats on two committees, you could be attending all of the of another committee meeting without actually taking up a seat there. So that was sort of the other idea, I think, when we were drafting this behind that liaison between committees roles. Because I think we have a few instances where people could still be an active member on the role, but, you know, on the committee, but their role wouldn't would then be a liaison from the zoning board to the arts and humanities committee, right, instead of being or or the other way, you know, instead of being in those two spots. I think that was sort of the spirit, I think. Because a lot of this got consolidated manager. Right? So that might have been was that I I honestly addressing this. I don't I don't remember what that was specifically about. When I wrote that, I think that's what I was thinking. Yeah. Okay. Well, I believe you. Intelligent way to, like, not to to free up a couple more spots,
but not take away somebody's ability to attend both meetings in a meaningful way. So, like, for example, at the idea committee, there are a committee that has representation from the school
• Right. Right? So in this instance, the all the idea committee would have needed to do is notify the manager that they would like to have a representative from the school board sitting
on their committee. Yeah. Because I think the way we found that out was part of this discussion was we saw that at the school board reorganization meeting, there was a school board member that was designated to the OT by pet. Oh, right. And to by pet. Yes. Right. So I think that but my thought was not necessarily mean, this is for I was thinking, you know, it's different maybe when it's inter committees or or intra. I don't know. But, you know, one is when it's our committees interacting with each other versus our committees interacting with the library or the school or the simply outside
• So does the school board member take up a seat on the that's not? And
then the the CAC, that has a planning board member sitting there as a liaison but not a member. Yeah. I think it's think that person's Yeah. Well, CAC has a planning board member who's officially on the CAC. Oh, so he's not there as a No, that's Well, there's a she who is Oh.
Yeah. Got it. So there's one planning board member who's an official member, and then there's one who serves as liaison. Got it. But I Yeah,
Go ahead. I mean, it's maybe not the conversation for here, but it's not a secret that I don't think that people should be serving up more than one committee. You know? So if this is I think we're going talk about that later. Yeah. Yeah. That's
Compliance and enforcement. All advisory committees are expected to operate in accordance with these guidelines. Failure to comply with the administrative requirements may result in temporary suspension of committee activities. Persistent noncompliance may result in the restructuring or dissolution of a committee by the village board. The village board authorizes the manager to interpret these guidelines and resolve any ambiguities. The village board shall review these guidelines annually and update them as necessary. Any proposed changes shall be adopted by resolution of the village board. Comments or questions?
• I
• was expecting it to change, Joe.
• I think that's the next section.
• Yes. That's I think I think that's it. We can't can't get get into that here. No. In the next one. The responsibilities of committee members. So upon appointment, the village clerk or deputy village clerk shall notify the individual of appointment. The chair of the committee should also be notified. Members of each committee are expected to participate regularly in the meetings activities of their respective committee. Members who miss four meetings in a calendar year without authorization from the committee chair shall be eligible for removal. Members of each committee are required to participate in the village's annual training program, including but not limited to sexual harassment prevention and workplace violence prevention. Members who take this training elsewhere may submit their training certificates annually in lieu of participating in the village's training program. Members
• who have been newly appointed to an advisory committee will receive an orientation on these guidelines and their responsibilities.
So on top of the the sexual harassment training and workplace violence prevention, are required by law, I think there's an opportunity for the training of the chairs, whether or not the village will hold an annual training of the chairs to review these guidelines and foster collaboration between committees, something along those lines. So, you know, people, you know, every year we kind of just have a conversation with Yeah. A summit. Yeah.
I think it's a good idea. I don't know if we want to put it in. We're doing a lot. Yeah.
We should try having We are doing a lot, but, like, that's why I think Yeah. We should make sure that I mean, we should do a
board of this is from the old website. The manager knows where they've gone with this. If you ever go back, look for you can go on Internet Archive and go through old versions of our Village website if you're bored. And at one point, we held a board before my time, a board of boards. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about. So if you want to call it a board of boards or a summit or whatever, I think we should do that. Yeah. I think it is premature to have it in the guidelines because we've never done it before. Think for the first time, we should have a little more flexibility.
And I do think that we do have a thank you event for all board members this summer, which there is an opportunity to, I would say, for every board chair to just go around and say, hey, I'm so and so. This is what we've been up to.
I think that would be kind of nice. I would suggest that those be different events. Think that Oh, yes. For sure. Yeah. The thank you event is supposed to be fun.
• That is fun. Yeah, it is fun, but it's a different kind of fun. I mean, there could be refreshments at this kind of update from the boards, but, you know, it's different.
Training a state law or Yes. I would suggest you add that in because some people think we're just being very burdensome, but
that's because I think the controller advises if it's not required to advise you. Well, our insurer
thinks it's the law. And that's actually, in many ways, more the law than the law. I
believe Nikon has confirmed that for us also. It's the law on it? Yeah. That all members are required. Correct.
I'll I'll I'll It doesn't matter at the end of the day. It's the best practices and what you should do. So there is no question. Yeah. I'll con people who are was just talking about how we phrase it. Yeah. Let me talk about it. I'll
confirm our understanding of it. And if we need to, or if we can, I'll add that in. But yes, there have been numerous emails in the past where we've been accused of just trying to make people's lives miserable. And believe me, the last thing we want to do is to track people down for training. We have many other things we would much rather be doing. Yeah, it's definitely good idea for training, especially for liability purposes, to get it done. And we have, you know, unfortunately we have had issues with some committees.
Last but not least, removal process for committee members. Any committee member eligible for removal will be notified by the village clerk or deputy village clerk if removal takes effect immediately upon notification. Any committee member may appeal their removal to the village manager within five days of notification. Village manager shall confer with the mayor to review the circumstances around the removal. A decision on the appeal will be made within ten days of receipt. So this is just this is the same practice that we have from the old guidelines.
• Okay. So the one item that is not anywhere in here, right, was the multiple So committee
• I didn't put it anywhere because I knew we were going to have a discussion on it. So we can't discuss at this point. Yeah. The other thing
is subcommittees, right? So these are the committees. Yeah. And then we also have a multitude of subcommittees, right? Some are more formal than other committees, right?
Well, so we treat in our view, subcommittees are just volunteers, right? They are not formally appointed committees. They are not if they're doing something, for example, like if they are participating in a cleanup, right, with the clean group, would be covered if something happened to them through our insurance because they're working on behalf of the village, but they don't, you know, they're not required to take the trainings. They, you know, if their groups meet, like if the trails group wanted to meet, you know, they don't, they we don't post that. We don't you know, because they're not they're not a committee. So they really wouldn't fall under any of this any of these requirements.
So what you have is residents may only serve on only one committee at any given time. They may, however, be a liaison to a related committee. Think that's the original.
That was the original one, yeah. That's that's you're that's what I'm referring to? Discussion Yes. Around consider putting into the Yeah. Because we've had we've had conversations over the past weeks when we've been talking about this, and there has been some disagreement on the board. So I left it out of the draft because I didn't know which way we were gonna go, I know that we we wanted to continue this conversation. So
I just I'll start. I just don't think it's fair, especially when we have people who want to serve on those committees, to have people serve sitting in
• be to attend, especially if they have a relevant a relevant reason to be there due to membership on another committee. But don't think that having one person serve on more than and I think that we can be pretty liberal about what those dotted line relationships are. But I, you know, but I don't think I think we're just limiting participation by residents by
In principle, I support this idea, but I think it's a question of phasing it in. I think that doing it now would create a lot of disruption to existing committees. I think that if we made it so that it read, no one shall be appointed to more than one committee after date X, let's say, 11/30/2026, that would be a facilitate a clean transition would be the time to think about where they want to end up and also for committees to that might have a sudden change or would be facing a change, have a chance to develop some internal leadership to prepare for that kind of transition rather than having, you know, maybe something being making up you know, if we did it today, there would be some committees where they the chair would just be conflicted out of the cane. Think that's No one has been you know, people haven't necessarily been thinking,
you know, it's not my time to step up. And you could see it just kind of falling apart. I think that's generally a good approach, Mayor, just grandfathering or grandmothering until expiration terms is a good way to go. And I would
Because that's the other thing is Well, we wouldn't want to appoint someone to three committees where their terms start this year. Right? And then they have another three year term. Names. So Sally Jones is appointed to the idea committee this year. She has a two year term because we agreed that idea would be a two year term. She's also appointed to the arts and humanities committee that has a two year term. So she's on the arts and humanities committee now for two more years too. She's also on the CAC for two years. Right? So It's going Sally's very busy, but we also have this kind of issue for the next two years, and we really wanna get to the point of making move on our committee sooner than later. I don't
I would I would not be pushing as hard if we had people who were not if were in a situation where everyone who was in this position was in the middle of serving their term. But we have been talking about this now for months. I think we came up with this first this first couple of drafts
• I
• think that so now we're gonna appoint those people to eleven months term, and now we're gonna have these weird so are people who get reappointed once Sally decides which committee she wants to be on, are they going to serve out what would have been Sally's full term, or are we now gonna have term alignment the term expirations that don't line up the way we want them to line up? I understand that ripping the Band Aid off here is going to be problematic for the person who is making the appointments, which is not me. But I think that this is the right thing to do. I don't think I think everyone who's in this position should be given the opportunity to choose which committee they want to continue to serve on. And if we can make the dotted line relationship for them, then we should do that. But I unless we are talking about committees where we don't have somebody who's stepped up and wants to fill that position. But I think in most of the cases of multiple seats being held, we have interested parties who come forward and said they're interested in serving. And as I've also said to the mayor when we talk about this, if we didn't have an opening some people well, we didn't say apply to any committee you want. We said apply to the ones that have openings, which may not have people don't can apply or maybe won't apply if there's not an opening. But if there's an opening, then somebody might apply to it. So I think that I can stop beating this dead horse, but I have now been talking for months about the fact that I think that expanding the representation or the opportunity for residents to participate
• in the committees, this is, you know, where the rubber meets the road, where the residents residents who don't sit up here can participate in village government. And I wanna make that as open to as many people as possible. I want and and I think all the other things that we're doing around committees right now about publishing agendas, making things more transparent, you know, maybe there will be more participation and interest from people who may in the future wanna serve. But I don't wanna be boxing people out so that a small number of people can serve more than one position. It's gonna it's it's unfortunate that people are gonna have to make and I'm grateful to people who are willing to give that amount of time to to the village, but I just think that you know? Well, I I think there's there's
now. I think what you could if you wanted to have some sort of compromise here, you could let people know now if that this is the plan, right, that we're no longer going to allow people to serve on more than one committee, but you would continue them in the holdover position for the next ninety days, right? And that would give time for hopefully some leadership
to be developed. I could compromise to ninety days, but I think waiting until November just feels too long. I So I have to reopen the
you know, that when that person makes a decision, then we might have to reopen it up to see if somebody will fill. I can't remember exactly how many openings there were on all the committees and how about I mean, because, you know, some some of the people, it it's gonna be a very easy choice, I think. Right? You know, some people are gonna say, oh, I wanna stay on x. Take me off y. Right? And it will be fine. But, you know, you have some situations where it's going to be a much more, you know, difficult transition. Right? So
I like the ninety day idea. I know we're asking folks to apply now. Would we include what is going to open up?
We don't know what's going to open up. Yeah. We would have to reach out to people and we find out what find out, let's say, and then
we open it up and say that role would start in ninety days or, you know, just
I guess we don't know. What if we because we we're the Chinese are also in the middle of their fiscal years. Right? So they have programming that they've been planning for the spring. Right? So we kind of want the continuity of that to continue. So it's almost like the fiscal year could be the better break than ninety days because Yeah. I just threw that out as an example. Right. It could be June 1 because then they can finish off any programming, you know, without interrupting that.
So then will the person who's getting appointed that new spot serve a an upgraded Correct.
Yeah. So so if it's a committee with a three year term, let's say, right, if they we keep the person as a holdover in their role, and then in June, the new person would get appointed and would only serve for two and a half years. Right. I mean, typically, people stay on committees for
for, you know, for a while. So I don't think that serving two and a half years versus serving three years or whatever it is, a year and a half versus two years is that a big deal. Yeah. But I think allowing people to sort of finish up their run
seems fair. All right. So we would have it say, effect after 06/01/2026. No one shall be appointed to serve on more than one committee. And we'll send a note to the people that are being held over to say that you have a holdover appointment through June 1. Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth a conversation. You know, because this is I mean, we're not
people have given a lot of time and energy and effort to where they are. I don't this has of this is personal. It's only with a tremendous amount of gratitude and wanting to give an opportunity to more people.
I think that previously in this process, I mean, I'm talking about months ago, we had said circulate this the guidelines and the committees. Oh, yes. To the committees, but that actually didn't happen yet. So we should do that. And look, we have a very short turnaround time. Well, I mean, in all honesty, I think that I I don't think that you could have circulated that you weren't ready to circulate this. Oh, no. No. I'm not I'm not I'm not here to throw stones about that. I'm saying that it didn't happen, but I think that we want to get this finalized sooner rather than later. So what timeline? When would we want to Do want to circulate it so that if any of the chairs,
I guess, work if anybody wants to I mean, it's brings up the agenda. You know, I think if we did get some comments, I don't think that people everyone's pouring over the agenda in December.
You know? Yeah. I mean, we could send it to the chairs and say, if you have any feedback on this, let me know by you know, we could pick a date two weeks from Friday or something like that. Just asking them to share it.
I think I don't think we need to ask them. Yeah. Because then I think Or that's ask them to know. No. No. Neither of those things.
It will be shared with the chairs. Yeah. Just ask them mean, to it's a matter of public record. Yeah. Right. And it's on the agenda. Mean, everyone can look at it. But
• the chair. So therefore, there should be, as Marie was kind of indicating, like, a little more personal than it appearing on the agenda. So
that and if other committee members, you know, have opinions based on seeing it on Depending on what the chair's relationship is. Yeah, exactly. Every committee is going handle it differently. Exactly. Committees are going to have a conversation about it, some of them. But maybe we should at least give each committee the opportunity to
have one more meeting. See, I think that I mean, all depends I on your would give them the time. I mean, what I would maybe we should shoot for adoption on the seventeenth, in which case I would say we should get feedback,
ask for feedback by Then I would need it by the twelfth. Exactly. Yeah. Like on December 17? Yeah. That seems I mean, why do we have to rush this exactly? I mean, we're kind of forcing ourselves into a box. I mean, this is just a You folks are starting when?
is are you saying Whenever they because you wanted to be able to appoint the holdovers on?
No. Well, the holdovers will be being held over. Right? They won't be getting appointed.
the five or four or everybody five over there. Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. All the other sorry. Yeah. But sorry. Yes. The people who I'm holding over to hold over to the June 1. Yes. I think that asking anybody to do something in less than two weeks in December is kind of a tough timeline. Okay. Let's give it two weeks and then shoot for adoption on January 7.
Yeah. Other piece of the agenda so I agree. So I think January 7 is good. And then I think the other piece that was in the backup was kind of these request forms, and this is more of a process management thing on your end, Brian, is, like, you know, if if a committee wants to have an event, just streamlining the communication so you're not bombarded with a million different emails. Right? So, like, making that kind of a straightforward process for a committee. So have you thought about
a form for events? I think a form would be great. Yeah. And we have a excuse me. We have the template that we can work from. Great. So we have good timing now with our new software that we just approved on Monday night. So,
yeah, we need to make forms. So I think if there's a spot for the forms and for the template for the agenda and for, you know The minutes. Have all of that ready to share To be honest. The same time. Yeah. To honest. Template you an agenda so that everyone
minutes. I mean, so that it it can all be somewhere where all the committee chairs will know where it is. Yep. We can put a little we can put a page on the website where those things live. Mhmm. And, Nora, did you wanna talk about the flow chart also?
No. That that I mean, that flow chart, that was so long ago with I mean, basically, it is just creating that process of, like, when I if I'm a committee chair, I wanna have an event, what do I do? I go to this you know, I fill out this form that answers all the questions, and it gets directed to the right people. So then Brian isn't handling so much. And the other helpful guidance, though, as far as Oh, just thought process. Yes. Yeah.
That might be good for them to have with the templates as examples. I thought that was helpful.
Committees. Right? Because that also becomes cumbersome. Well, we asked in the guidelines, they're asked to submit that as part of their year end report. Oh.
Yes. So they would be Did you do that, though? Did you ask the committees committees to to submit their budgets?
Because this year end? No. Will be for next year. Correct. Okay. So this year, we'll follow the the process that we've done, which is ask for them in January. Okay. But we put it in to have it with their annual reports so that we'll have you know, everyone will will submit one at the same time.
So the annual reports and the budget request for the calendar will all be due December 30? Yes.
• We I mean, we have for long tenured members. Right? We give we have given either certificates of recognition. Sometimes we'll give a key to the village. You know, it's it's Proclamation. Yeah. Proclamation. It's at the discretion of the mayor to
Those are big those sound meteor. You know, I mean, it what about because I know we have a lot of commit committee members. What if it's just,
Yeah. Lot of time and effort. It's a good we should think about that. Yeah. This need to be in the guidelines, but we should think about it. Okay.
• Okay. So we've received some additional funding this year from state senator Harcom. It's an additional $100,000 through the Crest program. We've already received $100,000 that was put towards Dobbs Park, and then we also received $100,000 from state Assemblywoman Dan Levenberg for the sidewalks along South Riverside Of Municipal Place. So this $100,000 has to follow the guidance for the CREST program. So generally speaking, the funds can be spent on any project that has a useful life of ten or more years. So some of the examples they give are construction projects, water or sewer infrastructure, sidewalks, heavy duty vehicles. Based on our capital plan, I looked at some of the projects that we have upcoming, and they include these would be projects that we could apply the funds to, right? The Farrington Steps, the sidewalks on South Riverside Municipal Place, roof replacement for the Harmon Firehouse, a new senior bus, Govea Park improvements, and the Brook Street drainage project. You know, could be additional projects that, you know, if any member of the board wanted to suggest, we could look at and see. That's not an exhaustive list. Those are just the ones that kind of stuck out to me in the in the capital plan.
So. And do we have any outstanding grants requests for any of those projects at the moment of the key municipal place? Yeah. Throw one from the to the county. Yes. Wrote a grant to the county for the sidewalks on municipal place. That was a complete streets grant for half
the cost, which was approximately like $380,000 to the county. And we have an outstanding we have two grants outstanding for Govea, both state funds. And we did receive a grant for Brook Street to cover half the cost of that project.
• we did a bid for trade services, which includes masonry. And so we're thinking we might be able to use that masonry contract for the steps to be continued.
But that would be where it was. We had originally did go out to bid and it was The bids were too high. Yeah.
Yeah. I wanted to just put in a word on the senior bus. And trustee back then, who will see as the new senior liaison to the new liaison to the seniors, not senior. This comes up regularly, and it has I've been the liaison to the seniors now. I guess it's going on two years
• active. I know the manager has been working even just this week on a holiday shuttle that we have for our business community on December. So I think that we have talked about possible placement of the senior bus in future capital budget. But if we could make some progress on this, I think it would be appreciated. It's not just it's not just because everyone likes things new. There are discomfort issues for the seniors. It's spring issues, shock issues. So I think it would be if we could make some progress on that, I think that we could be very appreciative.
• 70 folks that is incredibly intense and a good many of them take advantage of the trip opportunities.
It would it would be it would be replacing the existing bus, you know, which is at least At least 10. Yeah. At least 10 old. They they would like they want a bus that has better shock absorption. It's true. Yeah. And I think they they need a it was going to have one less seat, I believe, for wheelchair. Correct. Yeah. So I think we we priced it out at a 150,000. So, I mean, this would go two thirds of the way to cover the cost of it. So
The yes. Yeah. And I would still it's you know, by the time the paperwork gets completed and everything, I mean, you're still looking at probably June before we could order it. But So I know I'm calling it the senior bus,
but is this something that then could potentially be used for the transportation to the the center?
• Of course. Right. And then use it for teens as well. Right. But use it for the teen for teens because I know that was something that was on your priority list. Yeah. So I would be I'm not opposed to doing it just for the seniors because I know that and the community in the way that it's used right now. But I think that if we could expand it to use it for the for for that use also Yeah. It's a it's a There's
there's it's a triad. There's something there was something that stopped us from being able to do that with the current bus. I don't I don't remember exactly what it is, but there was something it it was I don't wanna speculate because I don't remember, but there was a reason why we couldn't do that. So I don't know I don't know if a new bus would cure that or if it's something
more That was something we were talking about. I think that the you know, if we can if we can
• that
• would be a benefit. So I don't know if that's something I don't I don't know how that logistics of that work at all. And I'm sure there's a worse legal solution. Would have already done it. Yeah. But I would like to you know, I think that finding ways for us to share services
Right. Right. So I don't I don't know if that's something that we could solve. Are you I'm just
I'm a little tired. Are you are you saying to use the school like, use a school bus in lieu of the senior? Are you saying to use the school bus for the seniors?
I I I don't I don't know. It feels like I've I've opened up a bigger handbook. No. I'm I'm I'm serious. I was that what you is that what you were like Yeah. I don't I mean, I don't know what the what the, you know I assume the buses are handicapped accessible. The school buses are. I don't I don't think no. I don't think they are. Yeah.
That's kinda And the school district has offered usage of the buses to the village for students' off hours if we paid for the driver. So they've already kind of given us that offer.
Right. So if we did a recreation bus Yeah. That we we could use the school buses. We would just. I mean, that's that's what we've done in the past. Right? When we had the teen program before COVID, we used the school buses to transport kids. So, I mean, there's definitely there's been a precedent for that, and school reiterated that to us a little while ago that if we wanted to do that, we could we could make it happen. I don't think it's practical for the seniors, though, to be able have Yeah.
yeah, I think that I think getting a better vehicle and having also two I mean, I I I think the old one is old, but it also It's not it's not use it. Yeah. I was just gonna say it's it's not So this would be in addition to so then we would have two two buses. If we didn't want if we didn't wanna surplus the other bus, if we wanted to keep it to use as a as a spare or, you know, we could even, you know, for ask a shuttle. I was gonna say we could use it if we wanted to like, on some of our bigger events, we could actually have two shuttles running on the loop. Right? I mean Well, let's not get crazy. Because because that loop is long. Right? Yeah. Right? It could take a half hour. Thirty, thirty five minute loop around the village. So if we had two buses
it it gives you the opportunity to have multiple programming so you can have, you know, the seniors out doing a trip,
Okay. So are we saying that that's what we want to put I need to I have to get an answer because the paperwork is due by the end of the month. I'd make the I'd first of all make a a motion that first
thanking Senator Harkel for his incredible generosity because as your memo notes, it's the second increment of Crest
• for seniors and other other priorities.
If you if you can If we can that make that happen. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we did have some conversation that we we we definitely don't have time to have more of for that
• the year.
• Is
• then
And you will you know, when the funding comes in from lot a, you'll have an opportunity. There'll be lots of projects that you could potentially use that money on. So yeah.
• So I Are you I don't I I don't I don't I mean, you really unless you really want to, I don't think you need to make formal Consensus. Consensus. Consensus is fine.
• Yeah. So great news. No. Absolutely.
I would wait. I mean, obviously, it's part of the agenda, right? But I think that we should wait before we do, like, you know, kind of a broadcast announcement. I would wait until the funds are actually encumbered, you know, after they're authorized by Yeah. Although nominally, you know, nominally nominated, but although the project is nominated to the dormitory authority of the state of New York, they're the ones that actually handle all the paperwork. And so they will give you the grant agreement to pull that. Yeah. So just but just so you know for
well, we normally get these we get notified by the offices of the respective legislators that we've been given this funding. We fill out the initial application, and then that application gets approved. And then we get contacted by DASNY, which is the dormitory authority. There's more paperwork that needs to be filled out, and then they have they they never accept it on the first you know, there's always more there's always more questions. And then it's only after that do they say, okay. You're good. And then they send the grant agreement, which then has to come back to the board to get approval for me to sign. So there's
We're months away. We're we're months away. We should celebrate it when we get it. Exactly. Absolutely. And we've we've done that description. Superb. It's a process. Make a nice I just ask one clarifying question?
So once we say, yes. We're gonna accept this money and we tell them what we're gonna accept it for, then then it is like, now we basically just made the decision that we're using it for the senior class. Yes. There's no way we'll work once you go back to that and say that.
• That's
Conferences in the past where either Senator Harkom has come or Assemblywoman Levenberg has come. When we got the press money for the tower ladder, we had a nice press conference over there. So we definitely do try to publicize it at appropriate the appropriate time. Right. That's great. And when we bond for a project, right? So
is the rates are the rates different? So if we had to bond by the bus versus bonding for the steps, is it are the interest rates the same?
The interest rates are the same. The difference and I don't know. I guess in that particular instance, it probably would make a difference. I'm trying to think because different It's tied to the lifetime of was going to say different different items have different useful lives. Right? So a vehicle may only have a useful life of fifteen years.
• Exactly. Right? I think forty is the highest they go. Okay. But, you know, so it would have a life of forty years. Right? So you'd be paying the bond for the steps off over a forty year period, whereas the vehicle bond, you're only paying off over a fifteen
year period. Got it. So it makes sense for us to use not bond for a bus and bond for the steps. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. Generally speaking, you wanna you try to bond as little as possible. But, yes, the bonds that are over a longer period of time, you pay more interest on. Right? But you're paying less per year. Per year. Yeah. So, yes, it it's a very it's a very interesting Yeah. The whole the whole because we're gonna do all of these things. Right? It's just how we wanna fund them. Yes. Right? And that and that's that was what I mean, because normally, I just identify the projects. Like, we don't have this conversation normally. But this was since this was money, this money was a little special. I wanted to bring it to the board. But, you know, it it really you're just you're just rearranging the the ledger sheets. Right? Because if we put a 100 doll a 100,000 towards this project, we have to bond for this project. If we put the money towards this project, we have to bond for this
• there'll be I mean, it happens every year practically. From what you the what you adopt in the capital plan in April, by the time we do the bond resolutions in June, it's almost certainly different because we've been lucky enough to either identify a grant or other sources of funding that so we don't need to use all of those Sales of the funds. Yeah.