• work session. Our first item of business is a presentation of the, 2425
• Village Audit by Alan Kasay of, PFK O'Connor Davies.
• Alan, would you like to have a seat at the place of honor?
• evening.
• Hello. Good
• So
• we issued three reports.
• Is this on?
a vacuum. We issued three different reports for the fiscal year ending 05/31/2025,
• the financial statements, which is this, the management letter,
• and the justice court audit report.
• Today, I'm gonna go over the financial statements.
• And if everybody has a copy, we could turn to the first page after the table of contents,
• which is the independent auditor's report.
• Okay.
• Basically,
• the first paragraph discusses what we did. We audited the financial statements of the village of Croton
• as of and for the year ended 05/31/2025
• and the related notes to the financial statements.
• The paragraph below that is our opinion.
• In our opinion, the company financial statements
• referred to above present fairly in all material respects
• the financial position of the village as of 05/31/2025
• for the year then ended in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in The United States Of America.
• That's known as an unmodified opinion, also a clean opinion,
• and it's the best opinion you could receive.
• If you go down two paragraphs,
• you'll see something new in this current year, the change in accounting policy.
• The government accounting standards board known as GASB
• issued a new statement, statement one zero one, which deals
• with your compensated absences.
• Basically,
• in the past, all you did was you recorded all the accrued time that the employees had earned and you would record a liability on the statement of net position, the full accrual.
• Now what they want you to do is anticipate
• how much of that time is gonna be utilized in the subsequent
• year.
• So what you had to do is go back and restate
• twenty twenty four's balance, which is that change,
• and then restate
• taking that number and bringing it forward for 2025.
• Okay? It has no bearing
• on your budget,
• your operations.
• It's strictly on the statement of net position,
• which is the full accrual statement, which I'll get to in a few minutes. Okay?
• On page four
• is management's
• discussion and analysis.
• As it indicates in the first paragraph, it's a narrative overview and analysis of the financial activities of the village for the fiscal year ending 05/31/2025.
• It's basically a narrative that discusses all the financial activities
• that took place in the village
• during the year. It was written, I believe, by Brian.
• It's it's it's good to read. It gives you a
• sort of a layman's term,
• a layman's understanding of what transpired in the village instead of all the accounting jargon.
• This goes from pages four to 13.
• Now if you could I'm not gonna go through that, but I I recommend you read it.
• On page 14
• is the full accrual statement of net assets, I previously
• mentioned, statement of net position.
• There are certain things on this statement
• that does not appear in the governmental funds, the general fund, or any of the capital projects fund, or any of your other funds.
• If you look at the top portion of the page under the assets, you'll see the capital assets.
• That includes all the land, buildings, equipment
• that the village owns.
• The details for that is on page 38. That information does not appear in any of the governmental funds.
• Below that, you have your liabilities.
• And if you look right before where it says total liabilities,
• you'll see the noncurrent liabilities.
• There's a schedule of that on page 40.
• That includes your bonds payable, your compensated absences, your pension liability.
• It also includes your
• OPEB, other post employment benefit liability,
• which at the end of this year is about a liability of almost $39,000,000.
• The actual expense in the current year to the village for the post retirees health benefits
• was about 1,300,000.0.
• So this number and every other
• number on here for the most part
• is
• the full accrual statement.
• Okay? None of this information actually appears in your funds.
• Okay? Your bonds payable every year. You make an annual payment for your interest and your principal.
• You pay your OPEB. You pay your pension and everything else. But the actual liabilities
• are gonna be paid down the road.
• Okay?
• So if you look at the bottom,
• you'll see the second line up from the bottom. The unrestricted net position
• is a deficit of almost $43,000,000,
• and that's primarily driven by the OPEB, is 39,000,000.
• Okay?
• Now, again, this does not affect your budget.
• It does not affect your bond rating. It does not affect
• your operations.
And if you could flip one page to page 15 Before we go, one more on the OPEB. Right? This is the result of a change by the
• GASB, right, from a few years ago where we had to start accounting for it, but we're also, at the same time, legally prohibited from
• out prepaying
it, basically. Oh, yeah. Right. The only way the only way you could sort of pay or establish a reserve for this is to set up an irrevocable trust.
• New York state does not allow municipalities
• to do that.
• And even if you wanted to set up a trust, I mean, to fund the $39,000,000
• liability,
• would be rather difficult. Obviously, it's grown over the years,
• but for the most part,
• it's just a number that the government accounting standard boards want.
• Years and years ago, I think it was 2005,
• they came out with GASB statement number 34.
• Prior to that, page fourteen and fifteen did not exist in your financial statements.
• What the GASB wanted to do was to put all municipalities
• on a level playing field
• with
• all other commercial entities.
• So if an investor was looking to buy a bond,
• they can compare a municipality with a commercial entity on a full accrual basis.
• But there's
• quite a lot of differences because all commercial entities
• that used to pay their health insurance for the retirees stopped paying it. So
• they don't have this liability.
• So right off the bat, a $39,000,000
• liability on your books, which doesn't exist on a commercial entities,
• you're not comparing apples to apples.
• Okay? But that was the intent when they came out with it years and years ago.
• But it,
• as I said, it doesn't affect your budget or your governmental funds or anything else. Okay? It's mostly informational.
Okay? And when you say full accrual, that means the assumption is that everyone who is hypothetically entitled to the OPEB retired simultaneously.
• I forget what GASB's number was, maybe 54 or 56,
• you only had to record it for the retirees.
• Then they changed it and said you have to calculate the liability not only for the retired employees, but all employees.
• So, basically, if you have a very young
• staff throughout the village, your liability is gonna be extremely high because this liability calculates what the village is liable to pay health insurance benefits
• for an individual who may be 26, 27 years old from that point on
• until
• you know?
• So depending upon the age of your workforce, we'll sort of have a drastic bearing on your liability.
• Okay? So the GASB constantly
• makes revisions to their previously
• issued statements, and that was one of them.
• On page 67,
• This is really what the village is about.
• This is your general fund schedule of revenues,
• expenditures, and changes in fund balance.
• The left hand side of the page is your 2025
• activity. The right hand side is the 2024.
• The top portion of the page has your revenues. And going left to right, you have your original budget, your final budget.
• Excuse me. The actual results and then the variance with the final budget.
• Your actual revenues for 2025 were almost 23,000,000.
• And if you look across to the right hand side of the page, you'll see it was almost 22,000,000.
• So you're up about 4% from the prior year.
• Some of the larger increases has to it's in the fifth line down, the use of money and property.
• It was up
• it's comparable to the it was up about 450,000,
• and that's your positive variance. If you look at the last column,
• some of the other big changes, the state aid,
• there was a shortfall from your budget of 287,000,
• and that was basically in anticipation of some grants which may have come in in 2526.
• So overall, on the revenue side, you had a positive budgetary variance
• of 1,105,000.
• That's the last number in the right column on the variance for the revenues.
• On the expenditure side,
• you'll see that the total expenditures were 20,336,000.
• Last year, they were 19,333,000.
• That's up approximately 5%.
• Okay?
• As you can see in the variance with the final budget column, there aren't very many
• there aren't really any large variances
• from the final budget.
• Okay. The revenues are fairly consistent with the prior year.
• The biggest increase
• in the actual expenditures were in the employee benefits.
• Last year, they were 5,400,000.0.
• This year, was a little over 6,000,000.
• And the reason is the health benefits
• went up about 400,000
• and the retirement benefits were up as well, both the employee retirement system and the police and fire retiree system.
• Okay?
• Below that, you have your other financing sources and uses,
• which includes your insurance recoveries,
• your transfers in, your transfers out.
• If you look in the original
• budget column for the transfer is out, you'll see the bracketed 2,609,000.
• The original budget
• included a contribute or a transfer to the capital projects fund for 227,000
• and a transfer to the debt service fund for 2,400,000.0
• to pay off your existing bonds, the principal, and interest.
• The
• transfer was adjusted
• from the original budget to the final budget. It went up to almost $4,000,000,
• and that increase
• was all due to the capital projects.
• Basically, what you're doing is you're taking money from your unassigned fund balance, and instead of issuing debt,
• you're using it to fund some of the capital projects Mhmm. Which is a good thing to do. A, you save the issuance costs whenever you issue debt.
• There are all these issuance costs, the underwriters fee, the
• Bond counsel. Capital markets, you know, like is capital market your Yes. Financial adviser?
• The capital markets fees. So you're saving the issuance cost. And if you issue a ten, fifteen, twenty year bond, you're saving interest for that period of time.
• Okay?
• So you're you're utilizing
• available funds
• and you're saving expenses.
• So that's a smart thing to do. Okay? So that's why the increase in the capital projects fund.
• So if you look at the net change in fund balance,
• the third number up in the actual column, you'll see it's a bracketed 481,000.
• It's a shortfall.
• Had you not increased
• the capital projects fund transfer
• by a million 3, it would have been up about 900,000.
• Okay?
• But if you take the change in fund balance of 481,000,
• add it to the fund balance at the beginning of the year, the 11,530,000,
• you end the year with a total fund balance of 11,049,000.
• Okay?
• Which is
• just about $400,000
• less than the prior year, and that was your shortfall.
• If you turn to page 53,
• we could review what's in the actual components of your fund balance.
• I know it's a little small.
• It's a lot of information.
• It's in this world for me.
• On the left, again, you have the activity,
• the fund balance for 2025,
• and on the right side is 2024.
• And going left to right, you have the general fund, the water fund, debt service fund, capital projects fund,
• and the non major governmental funds in a total column.
• The first category is the non spendable or prepaid expenditures.
• Basically, that's money you expended
• prior to the end of 2025,
• which is gonna be an expense
• in 2026.
• Below that, you have your reserves.
• You have your restriction for employee benefits,
• which basically stayed the same from the prior year.
• The pension benefit, that's the low SAP.
• The service award program, that's a million 7.
• And then you have tax stabilization
• of a 100,000. That went up about 36,000
• from the prior year.
• So your total restricted
• fund balance is about 2,500,000.0,
• and last year is 2,300,000.0.
• Below that, you have your assigned fund balance
• and the first category are the purchases on order. Those are encumbrances.
• Basically, what that is is orders placed prior to the end of 05/31/2025
• for goods and services
• which you haven't received them as of May 31. So the money is encumbered,
• and that 125,000
• will roll forward in the 2526
• year to your original budget.
• Below that, you have the amount you're taking out of fund balance to balance the $25.26
• budget,
• the 650,000.
• Last year, it was 675,000,
• so it's down by about 25,000.
• The
• assignment for future retirement expenditures
• is 620,000,
• and that's up from the prior year from 290,000,
• up about 330,000.
• And the assignment for capital projects
• last year was 3,300,000.0.
• This year, it's 3,150,000.
• This is the money you're putting aside for future expenditures
• and future capital projects. So you have the available funds.
• So your total assigned fund balance is 4,500,000.0.
• Below that, you have your unassigned fund balance of 5,716,000,
• and that's about 25%
• of your 2526
• adopted budget.
• Okay? So again, your total fund balance
• is the
• $12,000,007.64
• and the difference between this number and the 11,000,000,000 I mentioned earlier is that the LOSAP, the service award program, the investments,
• and their fund balance is included in this calculation.
• Okay? Because it's all now recorded in the general fund. Okay?
by the retiree fund. That's correct? No. That's a separate not covered by the employees retirement or the police and fire. It's a separate program.
• is typically for paying out sick days and other accruals that or rather vacation days? No. Low LOCEF is for the fire department. No. No. I'm not talking about LOCEF. I'm talking about the the main retirement,
• fund.
We have we have two here. Right? So there's the employee benefits
• one, which is the restricted
• Mhmm. Which is for,
• paying out comp compensated absences when people retire.
• And then we have the future retirement expenditures,
• which is basically a rainy day fund if the bills from the pension system come in higher than we budgeted. Okay. So
• yeah. Usually,
• the rate that you pay for your pension is based on a five year average.
• So and it's based pretty much on the stock market.
• So the better the stock market does, the lower the rate will be. There's a downfall.
• Like in 2008 when the market had that crash, the rates increased drastically double digits.
• They've been fairly steady and maybe even gone down or up a little bit.
• So that's what that's for.
Manager, do you recall the timeline from when we get the the estimate from the comptroller's office on what the pension premium is gonna be or think you get caught
They they send it they send it pretty far in advance. I don't remember exactly.
• They send us an an estimate,
• and then they send the actual bill. And then but they send the estimate, I wanna say, in, like,
• May or June. They send it very early, and then we get the bill in, like, October.
• And,
• then, obviously, you have to we we have to pay it. If you pay it by December
• of that of the, fiscal year, you get a discount. Otherwise, it's due in February. So we obviously we pay it in December every year. So
• And there have been times where we've had to take out dual budget to address that. Yeah. I mean, we had to do one this year. This this year's was very minor because our police
• payment came in lower than we budgeted
• and our
• regular employee one came in higher than budget. So we were able to use most of the savings from the police
• to pay the the general fund. So we only,
• I think we only ended up having to take, like, $5,000
• out of that
• out of that fund that we were just talking about. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Thank you.
• Lastly, if we could turn to page eighty eight and eighty nine.
• This is a listing of all your capital projects that you have ongoing at the 2025.
• You'll see some of them
• are in a deficit.
• For example, the first one,
• the sidewalks and curbs has a negative deficit fund balance of 144,000.
• And what that means is that
• there's still an unexpended balance of about 56,000.
• So if you in con if you continue
• to expend
• monies for this project, that deficit will grow.
• And, basically, the only way to eliminate it is to transfer additional funds from the general fund into the capital projects fund to eliminate the deficit in order to close the project,
• which you've been doing for several years.
• You do have bond anticipation
• notes outstanding,
• which is used basically as short term borrowings to pay for some of these capital projects.
• And at the end of the year on page 91,
• you have 976,000
• of bands outstanding,
• and they're lined up with each of the projects that they were issued for.
• Okay?
• Bans are for five years or less. Is that correct? Usually five years or less. Yeah. Every year you may
• the
• when you issue a bond, a long term bond when it's issued, you record the revenue at the time of issuance when you receive the funds. With a band, you record the revenue every fifth year when you pay it down. So every year you you issue a band, you pay in the subsequent year, you record that revenue,
• and you roll the band forward.
K. And bands, because they're shorter term, typically have lower interest rates as well? Okay. If you look on page
• I don't think we'll there next. Okay.
• If you look on page 39,
• on the left hand side, the short term capital borrowing, those are your bands.
• The interest rates currently are about 3.75%.
• So you
• started the year with bands of 773,000.
• You issued 402,000
• of bands, and you redeemed almost 200,000.
• So you ended the year with the 976,000
• of bands. These will be rolled. The redemptions is what you paid off, and the new issues is basically a roll forward of the existing bands.
• Okay?
• And if you look to the right
• page, you'll see all your bonds
• and the general obligation bonds payable. These are all your bonds outstanding.
• And something that should
• be discussed
• with capital markets is if you look at some of the older bonds, for example, the first one issued in 2015,
• you have about 3,000,000 outstanding
• at a 5% interest rate. Usually, the interest rates on this one, it ranges from two and a half to five.
• The lower interest rates are usually at the beginning and they increase towards the end,
• which allows you to, if available
• and if it can save money, to refund the bond.
• Basically, it's like refinancing your mortgage.
• Even though the feds didn't lower the rates today,
• they anticipate that they may lower them in June.
• So this bond
• may be eligible for a refunding and capital markets will do the calculation.
• And, basically, you'll have savings
• on this bond going forward because there's a fair amount outstanding.
• And then also there's another bond, the refunding bond from 2019.
• It has a balance of $2,000,000
• and that's also at a 5% rate. So that's possibly also could generate some savings for the village.
• at our last work session, and she had said that she looked into she's recently looked into that, and we don't have anything that is
• Eligible? Eligible at this point. But she does she said that she'll, you know, look at it from time to time and, obviously,
• let us know if there's something that we can that we can do that on.
Yeah. Whenever you issue a bond, you get what's called an official statement, and included in that is the optional redemption provisions.
• It tells you which bonds can be
• refunded or redeemed and at what date and so forth.
• So that's what Brian was talking about.
• So
• that's it for the financial statements.
• The justice court was issued, and there were no issues there.
• We also issued what's known as a management letter, the letter to those charged with covenants, which I'm sure you've all seen.
• There
• are potentially three levels of comments, material weakness, significant deficiencies,
• or control deficiencies.
• A letter issued only had control deficiencies,
• which is a good thing. Some minor corrections which need to be addressed in the coming year, and Brian and I discussed them. I'm sure you all have read the letter and the report.
• So there's nothing major in there, but it's just some cleanup
• that needs to be done.
• Okay?
• Overall,
• despite the turnover in the treasurer's
• position,
• the village
• did well,
• and there's wasn't delay in the order due to that. But
• Brian and the team got it done. So
• everything worked out well.
• Okay? And,
Alan, you and your team helped us as well. So thank you very much. You're welcome. Alan, thank you for being here and for walking us through this and and and making making it very understandable
• at the same time. So, you know, back in
• in in places where I've
• been involved with before with other audits, we would we would use the phrase if we got a good audit, we would use the phrase a clean audit. Right. And I I noticed that you you you use
• the phrase unmodified report.
• Essentially,
• a clean audit. Correct? Right. Yeah. That's good to know. Okay. The official term is an unmodified
And, basically, it's a clean opinion. A clean audit. That's that's that's the kind we wanna get. So that that's terrific. And I know we've talked over the years
• about
• your guidance on how much of our operating budget should be
• in our unassigned fund balance.
• We're at 25%
• now, and and you'd
• that that's still pretty good actually. It's certainly not excessive.
Yeah. So that's a that's a good one. Okay. And it's not only the percentages, it's the dollar amounts.
• I mean, if you think of
• emergency certain projects like water projects and so forth, they run into, you know, double digit millions of dollars. Yep. So you have this assigned fund balance. You're using it to fund some of the other capital projects instead of doing the borrowing, which is a good thing.
• It's it's good that you have the ability to do that. Yes. Okay. Because if you didn't, you had to borrow.
• Then not only do you have the issuance cost, you have to pay back the debt. Right. Okay? Which puts a strain on your budget and your, you know,
• budget in terms of our bond rating.
in I think it came from the from the letter itself, but there was a a question or
• you pointed out that
• our software doesn't allow us to
• to follow construction
• in progress.
Right. A lot of well, I think Brian is looking into it. Yeah. Some a lot of programs
• do where you can monitor all your capital projects Mhmm. Through the software. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that's and that was that was really my question. If if there is
such a software out there, it'd be great for us to at least take a look at it and see if it's Yeah. If it's compatible and and viable with our our system. So
• and then, you know, the you know, like like you said, a lot of a lot of these are just, you know, sort of housekeeping kinds of things, whether it's a few outstanding checks, segregation of duties in terms of, you know, who's got the
• ability to do certain things. And and I think it seems like we can we can
• modify our own operations
• to to take all those There's nothing in that letter that couldn't be corrected. Yep. That's what that's how I felt. Right. Terrific. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. And and also I noticed one
• of my favorite phrases,
• adjusting journal entries, you know, because I used to get those from from my accountant on a monthly basis and just,
• you know, little things about they're always judgmental things about, you know, where where that should what account that should go in. And and sometimes you end up doing it twice because of
• projects change over time. So I appreciate that. So thanks very much. Welcome. Yeah. My pleasure.
I have a question. Couple of questions. Thank you. This is very well done. Strong financials.
• Well done, board.
• Looking ahead, if you were sitting in our seats as trustees and mayor,
• what would be the top two or three things, financial risks,
• or priorities
• that
• we should focus on in the next two to three years?
Well, one thing that you're currently doing, which I recommend that you continue doing, if you look at your budget,
• the revenues are all budgeted fairly conservatively,
• okay, which is a good thing.
• Because when the interest rates increase significantly,
• instead of increasing your budget
• to mirror that, you basically kept them you increased it slightly,
• but not drastically,
• which meant that if the revenues came in short, you would have a deficit.
• Okay? So budgeting your revenues conservatively
• because aside from the real property taxes,
• the other revenues, you have no control over.
• The state aid, if they cut the the federal government cuts the state funding,
• it's gonna trickle down to the municipalities,
• and that could be something that may affect you. The
• expenditure side of the budget is the area that you can control.
• Obviously, you don't wanna cut any services
• to the residents of the village,
• but there are things decisions that can be made
• that you can do on the expenditure side.
• Okay?
• And
• as far as long term exposure, how significant are the pension and the OPEB
• liabilities in relation to the village's overall financial
• position?
• expense for the OPEB in the current year was about 1,000,003.
• You could sort of, like, disregard the liability
• because if you look
• on page you could see what the breakdown, how they calculate the liability.
• Oh, you went too far.
• Okay. If you look on page 50
• in the financials
• Now this is all done by an actuary.
• Alright?
• So you have your total OPEB liability
• beginning beginning
• of the year is $39,000,008.61.
• The service cost of 900 but the third number down, the interest,
• which is what the mayor was referring to earlier, had you been able to fund this liability,
• that's bay basically, you're being penalized because you can't fund this in an irrevocable trust.
• They charge you interest.
• The theory is if you were able to put money aside to fund this, that money that you put aside would be earning
• the investments would be earning interest,
• which would offset the liability.
• But since you can't do that, you're penalized and they charge you interest.
• So there's a charge in there of a million 7.
• Okay? But these expenses in here have nothing to do with your budget.
• Okay? This is just the actuarial calculation.
• Alright?
• And is that a state law or what what That's a state law. The that you can't fund it? Yes. Yes. That's a state law. Is that something that we can influence any legislation
I don't know if anyone has a bill on it. It doesn't I'd like come discuss it.
• in a in a different way. There there's some you know, we we could You'll be there next week. Well, we're we're and we're gonna talk about that later in the but, yeah, there's there's some things that we can we can look at, you know, that
• NICOM is thinking about.
• It's done conservatively.
• The expenses are all in line. As you saw, there weren't major variances on the expenditure side. There wasn't a major positive or negative variance
• at all. The revenues because you have less control, the variances are more likely to fluctuate
• higher and lower, which they generally do.
But being keeping it conservative is a good thing. Yeah. And I think, you know, on the revenue side, I think we've been, you know, pleasantly surprised being conservative in our estimates.
• You you mentioned things we can't control.
• You know, the thing that really is around here that's almost
• wholly based on the economy is sales tax. And and when the sales tax goes up, you know, we we end up doing
• when sales go up, we end up doing better. And then all of a sudden, we're a higher increment than we originally thought. And that's Exactly. And, basically, that's out of your control. There's nothing the village can do to Yep. One way or the other. Yep. So How does our revenue mix compare to other municipalities?
You know, we've got property tax and non property tax revenues and Well, they're all all
• and certainly all the villages within the county have the same, basically, set of accounts.
• You will have the property non property taxes. Some may have one or two other things,
• but they would be minor revenues.
• Nothing I could think of off the top of my head. Seen anything that's
• grow their revenues that you might not have seen in our I think the the most important thing is just managing
• Staying conservative on the revenues and managing the expenditures
• Mhmm. And making decisions along the way
• as to what you should do or not do. Mhmm. I mean, if the interest rates
• drop
• in June, which the feds
• basically say they would have thinks that it's going to happen, your interest revenue is gonna drop.
• But then, again, the borrowing will be less as well.
Well and and then, you know, we we have been able to innovate on the revenue side. Perfect example being we're getting over 400,000
• annually
• from hosting the solar facility at our train station parking lot, and that's for thirty years. So that that helps a lot on as a share of our operating budget. And is that where the use of money and property,
• start on page 70.
• And if you look at the detail
• to see what was in these buckets.
I mean, the parking permits a few years ago were down drastically. Now they've rebounded to almost $3,000,000,
• which is a good thing. And,
• again, I mean, if you just the concept, if you look at the parking permits,
• in 2024,
• the actual came in at almost 3,000,000,
• but you basically kept your budget relatively
• flat. You didn't
• increase it. I mean, some entities may have said we'll get 3,000,000 next year and increase it, and you would have a shortfall. Mhmm. Okay?
• So that's
• just an indication of what you should do.
• Overall, you're very you know,
• the state aid came in a little short. There were some grants that didn't materialize. They may have materialized in the current year.
• And
• overall
Well and and also, you know, it's ironically, we we have not been overly dependent on federal funding Right. Within the village. So we're not necessarily
• suffering, you know, what some others might be going through. I I think, you know, there there are periods where we we've certainly applied for lots of things and we would want more when it's available, but it just turns out that we haven't been able to incorporate
• all that much into our into our annual budgets on the federal side. So which is I just have this is
it's very it's a small thing, but on because it is on our agenda later this evening.
• Govea Park
• on page
• what is this page? I
• 53.
• Because you specifically
• noted it,
• the restriction for parklands
• represents
• so there's a parkland line here that has $767,701.
• Right. And the parkland fee, it says these funds may be used only for park, playground, rec,
• and the funds of the Govea Trust account, which I'm I'm the endowment.
• It it sounds like it's in that
line item. Is that right? It is. Okay. Yeah. In your non major other non major governmental funds,
• if you look on,
• let's see,
• on page 94,
• that's the special purpose fund. That's where the revenue is.
• Okay?
• So that's where all your trust whenever you get a a grant for a trust or something
• and it's restricted for a particular purpose, it goes into that fund. And the money could only be used for that purpose. But the Govea
• is not in this special purpose fund. Right? This is more for grants or for No. This is this is Govea. Oh, this is Govea. But it's not only Govea, but Govea Yeah. Is in
• So is it in it's in this line as well as the Parklands line?
No. It's split. Yeah. This this special purpose fund includes Govea. It includes
• other other restricted
• assets that we have in in trust.
• of 775,000
• Yeah. That's mostly Guevaia. Right? That's that that number is pretty much all Guevaia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the number. And that number did increase year over year.
Because of the interest that we've gotten. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Usually, when there's a reserve or restricted fund balance, interest is allocated to it.
• And that's basically what the increase was.
Thank you. Got it? Yeah. You're welcome. The audit of the judicial court, is that in this No. It's a separate report. It's a separate report. Yeah. Right. We have that. That's gonna be on the agenda
at next week's board meeting because the board has to formally vote to accept that audit. Got it. Thank you. So yeah. So you'll you'll have that on Friday with the with the agenda.
• is a question for the manager.
• The
• deficiencies that were pointed out, which do not I don't I don't
• you said that they're not nothing is this is a reasonable
sized list. Well, they're all listed as controlled efficiencies Right. Meaning that they're included there for
• to let the board be aware of them.
• And everything in there, I certainly could be
corrected, so to speak. So the question for the manager is when you look at this list Mhmm. I'm sure there are some things that you can easily knock off.
• But I think there are other things, you know, that you maybe can't change because of the size of your staff.
• So when you look at this overall list,
• I guess I'm not asking you right now, but does this seem like,
• some of these are carries over carryovers
• from year to year,
• or some of these things can be, you know, where you have a lot of super users, things like that. Is that something that you
• Yeah. I mean You you have a a plan to make some changes to this? As I said, it's a very for the
• scope of the
• work the village is doing, this is not a lot of deficiencies. And so it is maybe not fair to even focus on it as much as we have. But I do think that some of these things with the overall positivity of the whole report, this is sort of the one spot where it is,
• places where you could make some
Yeah. And we're we're already we have already been working on them. You know, we have as the audit notes, we have a number of checks that are outstanding.
• Right.
• You know, some of those go back a number of years,
• and we've been trying to work on them as time permits.
• We recently
• went through all our,
• we have to reimburse
• the retirees for their Medicare part, b
• payments.
• So,
• we recently went through all those, and there were some checks from, you know, almost twenty years ago that are still outstanding.
• And, unfortunately, most of those retirees have passed away at this point. And so we have to basically send those funds up to the office of unclaimed funds in the state comptroller's office. So, you know,
• they're not hard things to do. They're all just time cons Right. Consuming things to do. So we went but we've done that. We went through. We reissued the checks for the people that are still with us and the ones that we need to send to unclaimed funds. Well, we're gonna do that.
• The the deposit accounts, we've been looking at those. Some of them, we have been able to,
• reunite those funds with their proper owners. There was one there was one woman who had was doing a project in the village many years ago and had no idea that we were holding, you know, $2,500
• of her money from, you know, fifteen years ago. So she was very happy to get that check back over in the fall.
• So, yes, we've been we've been trying to go through those accounts as well.
• You know, the do tos and do froms, that's
• just really an accounting,
• you know, making sure that the money is transferred. Like, we only have we have one checking account. Right? So we write all our checks out of the general fund even though the expenses may be from the water fund or maybe from the sewer fund or whichever fund. So,
• you know, whenever Jeanette issues a check,
• she has to accrue it saying, okay. I'm paying this out of the general fund, but the water fund is now gonna owe the general fund this money. So it's just making sure that all those transfers take place and that the accounting is done correctly. So, you those are those are things that the, finance department has to continue to
• clean up and make sure that they're,
• accounting for that correctly.
• With the with the super users and the user and the segregation of duties, that is something that we really you know, it's it's a staffing issue. Right? Because,
• you know, there are people that
• enter the
• you know, that can enter the checks and also,
• can add the employees. Right? So
• but we don't have necessarily, we don't have multiple people that are working on payroll. Right? We have one person that does payroll. So we're not a large enough organization
• that says, alright. You know, you can enter the employees, but only you can press print on the on the payroll checks. Right? So,
• we did go through with the super users,
• and just made sure that there were no people that were,
• no longer with us. Right? That, you know, former employees who made sure that the,
• that the seven employees are actually people who should have access. So we've, you know, we've checked that and made sure that that was okay.
• You know, the interfund transfers, I'm not exactly sure
• why that those situations happened.
• But, you know, we've I've gone over this.
• I've reviewed this report with Jeanette and made sure that she understood,
• you know, what was what was being identified here so that we don't have that we don't have that issue again in the future.
• And then finally,
• the capital assets,
• we are going to look into whatever module
• we can get from Munis that would allow us to track this stuff in there.
• Previously,
• it was being just done in an Excel spreadsheet,
• and
• that's obviously not the best way to do it. So, we would like to
• we'd like to have that in in newness so that it's with everything else. Okay.
• So
• anything else for Alan?
• putting in my request now.
• Okay. You wanna invite AQRF? Yes.
• Let's come on here. Frank, you wanna join?
• A
• roadway engineer at Say, yeah. I'm sorry about that.
• AKRF's
engineering. Can you just introduce yourself? Sure thing. Yeah.
• which is consulting engineering firm out of White Plains.
• ACRF is retained by the village to
• perform a traffic study to identify safety and functionality issues for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
• We're also retained to
• develop 15
• design
• plans to address those deficiencies and create proposed improvements.
• I can go to the next slide.
• when we say just in case anyone didn't know, like me, until we until about 04:00. When when we say 15%,
• that really means preliminary.
• Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Very preliminary. Yeah. Thank you.
The study area is Old Post Road, particularly at Hunter Place and Lansbury Road Intersection as well as Michaels Lane Intersection. You can go to the next slide, please.
• AQRF collected turning movement counts, pedestrian counts, traffic volumes, speeds, as well as crash data
• from the New York State DOT,
• cleared data crash viewer.
• To quickly summarize the data that we found in the traffic study, there is no speeding. There are no crashes, but there are pedestrian cross crossings where there is not currently pedestrian facilities.
• Can you go to the next slide?
• I'm sorry. Did you first thing. Did you say there was no speeding?
• Yes. Yeah. No speeding.
• So
• the two locations where we identified and I'm sorry. You're not gonna see the oh, you can't see it on the screen anyway. So the
• east leg and the north leg were where pedestrians were crossing at, the Loudsbury Hunter Intersection.
• That east leg has a 58 foot wide
• opening,
• whereas the road is only 22 feet wide.
• There's also
• the the sight distance from that stop bar, which is set back pretty far, is not great.
• The turning radii from the if you're coming northbound making the right onto Lownsbury,
• you you basically don't even have to stop,
• as you're coming around that corner.
• You can go to the next slide, please.
• This is the the concept,
• that we created for the traffic study, not the 15% preliminary design, but basically the ideal scenario,
• for the intersection.
• We will be adding two new crosswalks,
• reducing the width of the opening of the Lounsbury Road
• entrance there,
• also reducing
• the distance that the pedestrian would need to be in the roadway.
• They will also,
• in turn, slower
• people have to slow down to make that right turn now as well. Also include pedestrian warning signage
• Because it is stop controlled in the southbound direction,
• you'd only really need that pedestrian warning signage,
• for northbound. There would be one
• at the crosswalk as well as one two hundred feet south of it,
• and that's because it's
• essentially an an uncontrolled
• crosswalk there.
• Slide, please.
• And this is the 15% design where we
• after reviewing doing some vehicle tracking, we used
• a
• school bus, 65 passenger school bus as well as a fire truck to check the radii,
• along with turns there.
• We were able to to narrow it down still
• still a major improvement to to 30 feet there instead of 58 feet.
• You
• it's a little bit difficult to see, and, yeah, I can't see that. But the, you you could see where the the existing curb line is and how we extended it out with the the curb extensions there.
• All the ramps will be ADA compliant, proag compliant,
• and you could see those pedestrian
• warning signs as well on on both sides,
• particularly for the northbound direction. The stop sign, for the southbound will remain.
• The site distance is also greatly improved there at the stop bar,
• much closer to the intersection.
• There was one tree within the the village right of way that was encroaching on the
• sight lines,
• and if removed, would greatly improve the the sight distance there.
• You can go to the next slide where,
• you can see the sight lines here.
• Ideally,
• based on AASHTO, you want, 412
• foot sight distance for that left turn from Loudounsbury onto the, that southbound left turn onto Old Post Road.
• You can go to the next slide, please.
• Michael's Lane is the other intersection here.
• Similarly,
• there
• were pedestrian crossings found on that,
• the south leg from Michael's Lane
• across Old Post Road. There's also poor sight distance around the corner there. There's a lot of shrubbery that could be trimmed in. And same same situation with the large turn radii with the southbound right turn onto Michaels Lane.
• You can go to the next slide, please.
• And, again, this was the concept plan.
• We
• to
• a comment to to reduce the turn radii or
• around the for the southbound right turn onto Michael's Lane.
• We could do a number of different curb extensions,
• whether that be just a a pavement marking
• or,
• a
• traversable curb or, you know, something,
• maybe about four inch curb.
• You you have the option of doing landscaping. It would need to be,
• shorter landscaping to not affect any site distance there.
• There there are a few options that could be utilized for that curb extension.
• We also recommended pedestrian warning signage,
• similar to the the other intersection.
• This is not stop controlled
• on either side, so you would have the pedestrian warning signage on both sides of the crosswalk as well as 200 feet in both directions.
• We'd also wanna maintain parking in front of the residential properties on Michaels Lane.
• Next slide, please.
• There's also a retaining wall right there. So, we would need a
• some sort of resolution that does not block up those,
• weep holes along the retaining wall and does not impact that retaining wall.
• And and, again, as I've mentioned, we you could go with painted. It doesn't really have any sort of vertical restriction,
• and, you know, people might be inclined to drive straight through the painted section.
• There is a straight vertical
• face that you could have.
• You you're gonna
• obviously feel that more, if you
• unintentionally roll over it. And then there's another option, which is a traversable curb.
• It will deter people from driving over that curb extension,
• but it will
• not you won't feel the impact as much. Go to the next slide, please.
• So here, we we are showing rectangular rapid flashing beacons at this intersection instead of just the pedestrian warning signage
• as well as,
• again, ADA compliant, proag compliant pedestrian ramps.
• You could see that, you know, in order to install
• these two ramps, we needed to replace
• driveway aprons nearby just to create that continuous,
• ADA compliant sidewalk,
• and to be able to access that crossing
• properly.
• And then in this particular
• scenario,
• and and we'll have to we would have to look into this in further design, we're recommending a decorative stone mulch.
• We would
• remove the asphalt completely so that any drainage at that location would be able to infiltrate into the ground.
• It would be a traversable clerk curb, and then there would be additional clean clearing and rubbing on that south corner there.
• That south corner is act is also the
• I'll say the the southwest corner there is extended
• from the existing condition to shrink the roadway with even further there. I don't know if I mentioned it in the last slide, but the
• the the width of the roadway here,
• the opening is also very large, and, we can shrink it with the two curb extensions.
• came about? Sure.
• concerns from residents in the area,
• specifically about
• res you know, school children having to cross
• Old Post Road North where there's no crosswalks
• and then
• going on to, you know, making it across to the sidewalk that's on Old Post Road North.
• So,
• you know, myself and superintendent Balby and the chief
• all looked at it and,
• you know, we really did not feel comfortable making a decision one way or another about, you know, potentially adding a crosswalk,
• because of the fact that it's a mid block crossing,
• And,
• we wanted to really bring in,
• an expert to to look at it and and give us their give us their, feedback on potentially,
• you know, improving this area.
• Lionsbury in the intersection with Old Post Road North was also specifically identified by the bicycle master plan? Yes. That that's correct. Yeah. Though, I'm not Michael's name, which
• Look forward to the next 15%.
• But the
• we've installed already
• two RRFBs
• in the village, one on Maple, another one on Grant, both near near our schools, one a middle school, one a one an elementary school. And so I think we're big fans of that and and have gotten some very positive community feedback.
• So I was just wondering,
• are we talking about just two on on Michael's Lane, one on each side? Or how would you Yes. Just in Michael's Lane. Right? Okay. Okay. This current design. Great.
• But but one on each side. So Yes. Yeah. Facing both directions. Okay. Great. Thank you.
And how would a project like this be funded? Is this a capital? Yes. This would be a capital project.
• And
• as far as prioritization,
• would we have a discussion around,
• you know, are there higher priorities in the village where,
• you know, more people?
• Because,
• I don't know, on your slides, I'm I'm not
• undermining this in any way, the importance of it, but I think you said there were seven people that
• were crossing in your analysis?
I apologize. I don't have it off the top of my head. I I did not perform the study. I just did the design.
• of the kids that live on that street have to walk to school because they do not get a bus. Right. So Okay. You have if you are a family with children
• that go to PVC or the high school, you have no choice but to cross that street
• during the busiest.
• And I feel like looking at these numbers,
• I live on Michael's Lane. I didn't request this project, but I was really
• excited when it came in.
• But so I
• it it does look like
• when I look at the data in this,
• I'm sure that it is
• true, but I there's a lot of speeding that goes on. And the busiest
• pedestrian
• time of day is also the busiest traffic time of day. And so that makes it even more dangerous
• coupled with the fact that, you know,
• as I said, every single child on that street does not is not eligible for a bus once they're out of
• the the elementary school.
• So
• there's no other way.
• So it it's
• and I don't know how many other streets.
• So there's not
• you know, that that there where that's part of the routes to school that do not have a crosswalk, do not have any traffic calming measures,
• you know, and sort of are in this
• situation.
• So
• although the numbers do see when I'm looking at these numbers, I'm thinking I don't like, I feel like I should
• have Jeff count as kids are walking out past the house because I feel like it might be more than seven, but it depends on how you when you're taking the data. Yeah.
• But it is
• it's
• Mhmm. You know, but I I do I don't know what the other you know, I I don't know what the other I know that in the past, there have been
• there were studies done about, you know, walking from the
• Sunset Park area, you know, because that's another area where there's no busing
• and a lot of kids are walking. And there were some traffic traffic calming measures put in. There were those blinking lights. I forgot what they're called. There were some
• crosswalks put in, and they did make that did make
• a major difference.
• Mhmm. The shapes of these streets are very odd.
• The placement of the stop signs,
• if you stop at the stop sign, it does you no good. You you need to stop multiple times to be able to get out of that street. Your if you do stop at the stop sign, which I always do Yeah.
• It doesn't you then have to stop again several more times. And
• it is blind curves. So I don't
• you know, I'm interested
• in the in the
• the solutions that are proposed.
• I am kinda curious about how it was decided that on the I didn't mean to but were you did you have more questions? It was really no. Just just around a prioritization
and there's tremendous value in ensuring the safety of children and everybody wants the school their street is important. Is there a queue of Well, so what we're gonna cities in the village where we need to repair sidewalks and have Yeah. But we don't you know, we can like we did this year. Right? We funded repairs of sidewalks and we also funded,
• you know, new
• traffic lights. I mean, we can fund multiple projects. So I'm gonna I'll put together the capital budget like I do every year, and then the board is gonna have an opportunity to
• make changes to it, say, no. We don't wanna fund this. We wanna fund this project. And you'll have you'll have that opportunity
as part of the whole budget process. Mhmm. Okay. But I I would just add, you know, just particularly on the crosswalks,
• you know, I think this is not
• overdoing
• what what's here. This is bringing it up to a standard that I think probably exists in in most most of our other areas
of of major traffic for for for kids. And I I think I think you'd probably be hard pressed to find streets that are that have such wide
• openings
• Mhmm. In the village. Right? I mean, it seems that, like, Lounsbury is is just
• like like we said, you don't you don't even have to stop your car. It's so wide. You can just go right in from all post north. You know you know? Well, it's
• I I think the virtue of this study, at least for me, is it it it really emphasizes
• how
• absent, you know, some basic safety features are there. So I think bringing bringing that up to to
• a better standard, I think, is is probably a good investment.
• it's on slide I don't know what slide this is.
• Maybe?
• No.
• Across
• The one that says Hunter
• This one. Hunters
• Hunt well, Hunter and Loudsbury. This one.
• Yeah. So where that sidewalk
• I mean, where that crosswalk is,
• you
• know, I think that it where the where you're suggesting that people should cross is not,
• where people actually cross. I think the other side
• of,
• like, crossing to the other side of Hunter.
• I mean, I guess then you're you're encouraging people to have to cross two streets. But I just The think problem is also with the stop sign. That's why
Oh, you have to cross at this oh oh, you have to cross at the stop sign. I feel like there's no sidewalk on that side of Hunter. There there isn't. So we yeah. I don't know, Frank, if you we we talked about that. Right? That, you know, there is there's a sidewalk that ends at High Street Mhmm. And it would be fairly simple to extend that sidewalk
• There's a very low low
• why it's you know, there's a space to walk. It's not you're not on the you're on the Yeah. That's why I'm saying it would be fairly simple. That that wasn't included in the in the scope of this. Yeah. But I'm just saying right now, like, the the way this is drawn where people walk now is not but it makes sense what you're saying about the stop sign. But at the moment and I don't know what what the data about painting lines on the street does. Will people then go over to the crosswalk and walk, or will they,
• when you're walking down Hunter,
• the inclination is to be on the right side of the road and cross there versus go on to the left side where the stop sign is and cross, which is,
• obviously not
• safe.
• But I'm just, you know, like, you know,
• proposed versus, like Really not safe. User reality.
• You
• There
• will be some people that, you know Right. Will take the Right. The fastest route.
• And then to answer your question about the I I believe that the the if we go back to the data, again, I'm I'm sorry that I don't have it off the top of my head, but that the crossings were happening on the It looks like it was during that time. Yeah. During that yeah. The that's what took the where were And as far as the the the ramp
• leading to nowhere at this point, you wanna set it up so that at least the pedestrian is able to get off the roadway now, and then you could build the additional pedestrian facilities after,
• you know, when when you have a a project that you can extend it there. Right.
And then the only other question I don't have it many more specific questions about this
• right now.
• But I am I do so what's the process look like
• for, you know, to for to get neighborhood input? Because all of us, you know, different people walk at different times of day. Somebody's pushing a stroller, somebody's got a dog. You know what I mean? Like, there's there's a lot of different
• information
• beyond,
• the very good information that you guys were able to obtain. And so what is the process for this? Is there some type of public comment period where the neighbors would have an,
• you know and also, the people who are crossing at Michael's have a very different
• experience than the people who are crossing off Johnsbury or driving, whatever that looks like. So what's the what is the public comment?
• was sent a letter with an out basically informing them that the village board was going to be having this meeting tonight. And
• it let them know where they could access the plans. Right. It invited them to share their thoughts with the board by email.
• So that was the first that was the first outreach
• as
• Can come to any meeting, right, and comment. This, you know, this specific project doesn't it doesn't require a formal public hearing or anything like that. I mean, it's not Well, right. But I mean, neither did neither did no. But there are there are a lot of neighbors here right now and it's a work session, so they don't we can't hear what their comments are. Well, they were invited to come tonight. Right? So that's why they're here. Right. Right. Absolutely. But I'm just saying that I think
• I would like to advocate for an opportunity
• for the people in this neighborhoods, the somewhat the same way that we did for Dots Park
• to weigh in on what the plans are. I think that it would
• even if this weren't my street,
• I think that
• these are
• major changes,
• lot much of which are improved,
• but it is gonna impact
• people's
• what's
• been going on there for you know, some people have lived there for fifty years. So or more. So I I just wanna make sure that there's a mechanism
• for there to be a community conversation about it.
• Or mean, that was, you know, the more of a at the very end of the process and there's not
• we have to replace there's not a lot of ways to
flex that. But Right. You get the idea. Right. Yeah. But I just think a mechanism for that to happen. Well, I think the manager needs to, you know, kind of this needs to sort of be prioritized
• and thought about as in in phases. Right? So you can think about it from your capital budget and how much of this you would wanna put in your capital budget Yeah. For 2627.
• We can have the
• discussions
• around it with the larger budget.
• But if it does pass through the capital budget process,
• then at that point, I think that would be when we would have the I neighbors don't think it should be next week. I Right. But I I think you would. Right. Cause I think we need to sort of we need to evaluate from a capital from to Stacy's point, we need to evaluate kind of what our priorities are, how much money this is gonna be, where we wanna put it in the capital plan. Yep. And then sort of if it if it makes sense, we pass it through the capital plan, then the neighbors could weigh in. And there are certain aspects of this plan that probably are not that expensive. Right? I I would think Yeah. Some bang you know, good bang for your buck. And I would like to hear it from you. It's like, sort of the big biggest bang for your buck in looking at the safety of this corridor?
• You know, what do you think would be sort of the most important change that we should make
• certainly, if if you're trying to keep costs down, the the ramps and the crosswalks will be the best bang for your buck, the curve extensions.
• You're talking about a little bit more money when you throw in the rectangular rapid flashing beacon.
• So if if you're looking to, you know, create a cost savings for right off the bat and then, you know, you that's something for for later on, that's that's a potential possibility you put in signage and stuff. We've we've done, of course, our our RRFBs
have been done on existing crosswalks, so we could always do the crosswalks. Right. Yeah. And then add the So So have it all set up for you. And I was gonna say another model is what we've done with our
• our residential parking
• forums that we've had where we've invited the neighbors in to to this meeting
• at and just dedicated maybe the first hour to to talking about that. So there's lots lots of ways to get them in. Yeah.
And I think there could there be potentially grant money that we could is there a complete streets money that could?
So it's it's possible. Yeah. Depending on I I don't know if Westchester County has funded that pro that program again as part of their budget.
• That's an you know, the the Complete Streets that we applied for South Riverside and Municipal Place Yep. Sidewalks.
• So that's always a possibility. And there could there could be other
• That's and that's federal too. So And again, we have we haven't costed this out yet. No. We have not. So it may it may be abs we could possibly absorb this, you know Yeah. It yeah. It will depend. And I mean, you know, the the capital budget is gonna be
it's gonna be tight this year because we have to we have to allocate sorry. Sorry, mayor.
• We have to allocate,
• a lot of money towards the Brook Street project that we've been awarded.
• Right? So there's
• that that project is gonna take, you know, a decent amount of the funds that are available in capital. So it's it's all things I have to I still have to get the capital request from our various departments
• that, you know, that usually submit those and, you know, we'll have a better idea, you know, next month. If I could ask the superintendent a question. In
in the tradition of all the great work that DPW has done internally that rather than us contracting out, do you see aspects of this that would be done if we went forward with this aspects of it that would be done by by t d d DPW itself?
Yeah. I I mean, you know, taking the like like Michael said, taking the flashing beacons out of the equation,
• it's not like a huge huge product. It's curbs and and some pedestrian ramps and some sidewalks. Not to diminish that, but it's not, you know, we're not it's not like Crome Point Avenue. Right? Where we redid the entire thing. That that so I don't I don't wanna say routine, but these are these are things that DPW has done periodically. Things that we have done in house and we are comfortable
• doing for sure. Yeah. That that has an impact, obviously. Including the the flashing beacons as well. Just the flashing beacons, there's material cost that, you know, we just can't help. Right? So Yeah.
• there I know there was some discussion about the stop sign at Hunter, and that was in question in the past. I see that that in this plan,
• it that it's
• definitely still part of this. But there were some issues about how
• there were some questions about how that process went.
• And so we resolved those questions or we'll have to revisit those if we're putting a spotlight on this We
• you know, that's part of the study. They have validated the the need for the stop sign there. So we just need to update the village code to list the stop sign as a stop intersection.
Mhmm. So And as part of this plan, are neighbors losing any parking spaces that they have right now on the street?
No. We've maintained the two parking spaces in front of 1 Michaels Lane there. There's, like, 41 feet. You can see where there's currently parking.
• Mhmm. So this
• is actually the concept. If you go to the
• next sheet
• yeah. You can we shortened it up even further just so that there
• that one property can fit two cars right in front.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, there's there's no marked parking currently. But if you had a third car there, would assume it would be parked out into the roadway there.
Okay? Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you both. Thank you much. Thank you both. Thank
• not just here for this. Oh. Oh, we're here. Goodbye. It's too.
• Feels like this could have been a
When I scheduled him, we didn't know if we were gonna have the storm the storm of the decade. You know?
• Alright. And speaking of that, I think so I was I was supposed to give an update on the storm in the beginning of the meeting, which because I was dealing with technology, I forgot about. So since we have Frank here, I figured
• I'll do that now before we go into Govea.
• So the cleanup from this storm continues. Obviously, as I was saying, this is a pretty significant snowstorm for the village.
• DPW has worked more than forty five hours since,
• 7AM Sunday to clear the snow along our roads, sidewalks, crosswalks, and parks. Crews were in early again this morning clearing snow from the Upper Village, and we'll be back tomorrow morning to do the same. Snow will be removed from the Harmon Business District on Friday
• as part of the regular street cleaning schedule.
• We had a contractor come in, yesterday to help clear the Riverwalk, Croton Landing, the pedestrian bridge, and other neighborhood sidewalks.
• At this point, most sidewalks and crosswalks are cleared,
• and any remaining areas should be done by the end of the week. One of the biggest areas that requires snow removal is the train station parking lot.
• The piles there were removed last evening, and the crossening walkway along Route 9 was also cleared as well, which I didn't even think about, but that gets a ton of snow from the
• DOT plows on Route 9. You know, they just throw it all over there.
• So, so that took a a decent amount of time to clean.
• Our salt supply is in good shape. The shed is between 4050%
• full, and we got four loads of salt yesterday.
• I just wanna thank all our residents for their understanding and their and their good work in removing vehicles from the street, during the storm. We had a minimal number of tickets that were issued, this past weekend.
• And, you know, I heard from numerous residents that took advantage of the extended weekend parking at the train station and parked their vehicles under the canopies
• so they didn't have to clear 14 inches of snow off their cars. Wasn't that wasn't that smart? I should do that next time.
• So,
• so that was very good. We appreciated everybody getting their cars off the street.
• And, you know, we also had very good compliance with our sidewalk cleaning.
• There was only one home that has been identified that the contractor is gonna have to come in and clear, and that's it's, it's currently a vacant house.
• So,
• that makes sense. So yeah. But, you know, everything else appears to have been cleared. So we're just you know, I wanna thank everybody for for doing their part and, you know, helping
• helping,
• return to return to normal here.
• for this weekend? Thank you. Thank you. DPW.
Oh, the guys are chief of police is back there too. And all, you know, all of our emergency services and
• police work just
herculean efforts. Yep. You know? So thank you. No. No problem. Yeah. The guys did a great job, and we had everybody. And it was kind of in a good mood, which I was kinda surprised in fact because they we're here for a long time. So they were delirious by the end, but still in a good mood. So
so And I'm not I'm not making any predictions on this weekend because I don't want too early. I wanna say I want yeah. Exactly. I you all know what I wanna say, but I don't wanna jinx it. So These
• storms happening on weekends are a little Well, I mean, it's been crazy. It's like every every storm that's happened has been a weekend. So yeah.
• Not not great for the for the budget, but Yeah. Good for sledding. Good good for sledding. Bad for budget. Alright.
• Moving on to Govea.
• Do you wanna start first, Frank? You wanna start on the landscape architect?
Sure. Yes. So in our last discussion, I know one of the one of our sort of goals was to have a landscape architect
• take a look at it and come up with just an overall sort of
• site layout on on both what we have currently and what we can have,
• you know, in in the future.
• So we met with, actually,
• John Imbiano. He's a landscape architect, actually was a Croton resident, has done a lot of work in this area,
• Cortland, Croton, Ossining.
• He was actually very excited when we met with him.
• He came up with
• sort of a rough a rough layout. We we met on-site. We walked around quite a bit. He had some ideas that he was throwing around,
• and he was generally excited about it.
• So he gave us a a proposal, think, from Brian forwarded over to everybody.
• Again, just the it's more of just like a a
• an overall site plan, site layout of of what
• the park could look like.
• I I think this is very exciting
• very exciting to sort of, you know, as we're continuing kind of down the path of making
• investments in Guevea. And I just wanna say out loud, you know, we're gonna be having a public meeting
• on Guevaea to sort of update the public on kind of the history and then kind of what your current efforts are.
• So what, you know, what we've already sort of agreed to
• pay for out of the endowment and the work that's gonna start
• as soon as the snow melts,
• you know, we'll be seeing some work done at Quellavea.
• But, you know, we decided to take some of the endowment last year and invest in hiring an architecture firm
• to really look at the house. Mhmm. Right? So we sort of we're able to do concept drawings there
• and really understand kind of what the house could be
• in in real terms. Right? And we sort of did the work
• on the house. This proposal is for the entire property. Right. Right? So it's allowing us to really take a look at the entire property from a professional's perspective and really sketch it out to understand kind of what the possibilities are.
• We could use this
• in grant applications going forward. I mean, this is all kind of building our case for Guevea and also being able to prioritize
• the spending that we are going to need to do at Guevea.
• This kind of conversation happened just so everyone kinda understands.
• You know, there were some some someone had thrown out, let's build a pavilion at Quebeya, which is a great idea.
• And we seem like we had some money. Right? Because we had gotten some money from Senator Harkom.
• So we were like, oh, we've got a $100,000.
• Like, maybe we should just throw something up.
• And then we talked to Frank
• and, you know, we were like, where are we gonna put it? Like, what's the best place to put it? We've gotten ideas in the past about having
• community gardens at Quebeya. Also a wonderful idea,
• but we don't wanna just put these things in hodgepodge. We wanna be thoughtful about it and really have that professional
• look at the entire property
• so we can make the right decisions going forward. So, you know, I'm very excited about this. I think that it it it it it it's a good investment
• in the property and kind of a good investment in the future. So
• that that would be my take.
• with with,
• everything you said,
• trustee Nicholson.
• But I also wanna think about how, you know, all along I've sort of been saying
• things will happen at Govea if things start happening at Govea.
• So I love this overall concept, you know, all the work and time that we spend planning out what the house could be if we,
• you know but that's very much that's very,
• labor intensive and
• cost Costly. And costly.
• A lot of the things that can be done outside,
• I I think that there's I I would like to be thinking about ways to take
• these overall,
• landscape
• architecture
• concepts,
• and maybe think about it in much
• you know, once we do some of the things that that or or or look at it more
• comprehensively
• and then,
• think about some of the bite sized pieces that
• could be
• taken or could be accomplished.
• I don't want a hodgepodge of gardens,
• but at the same time,
• if we did if we were able to
• pick a place and a garden to start you know, if if there were a
• I hesitate to even, like,
• say something out loud. But, you know, for example, if there was a spot for a pollinator garden Mhmm. Then there'd be a pollinator garden there, which would make it a destination, which would mean that people would go there to see the pollinator garden and would see the other things that are happening there. I think there's at the same time that we're doing this big overall huge project that is going to be,
• you know, you highly utilized by everyone in all different ways,
• in all different segments of the community,
• these little being able to come up with some little bite sized projects that we can,
• fund and complete and then make a destination.
• You know, it's a challenge to do those two things simultaneously,
• but I think that
• that is part of how we're gonna get success and build some
• goodwill around,
• you know, something that's been,
you know, in development for a long time, to say the least. Yeah. I I was gonna I I think this is a very impressive
• proposal from mister Imbiano Quigley, I guess, is the name name of the company. And what I what I particularly like I I like their general approach in their proposal, but I was just stunned by a lot of their great work that they included as examples of of work. They've done actually some in Croton, you know, or Croton Landing and all that, but also Yeah. That's right. All over Westchester. So it looked very impressive. I noticed in
• their park Flint Park in Larchmont and then
• River Bay Park
• in nearby.
• Then in both cases, they they included sports
• courts
• there. And I'm not making any proposals, but it would just be interesting to see as we go forward if that if that reoccurs. Because we've we've had a lot of interest on the part of folks. And often,
• you know, thinking about, you know, noise and things like that, they gravitate towards Govea.
• Who knows if that's even feasible
• in terms of the grade and the layout and all that. But I'm pleased that they've got some experience
• in at least thinking about those possibilities and something something to think about. But but just the major point being this looks like a a real real good high quality piece of work.
• would ideas like this be included in this scope as far as concepting out? So
• including
• a sculpture
• garden or I know that
• there's been a lot of interest in in the role that art, right, and and music and all of that can play in the house, but how does what role does it play
• within the
• in, you know, environment and garden? And then also,
• you know, we've talked a lot about the dog park and some of the
• issues concerning the hours of the dog park and neighbors, and I don't know if it's ever come up before whether Govea has space for to consider a dog park. I mean, right? We don't have a lot of neighbors that
• live nearby that would be concerned about noise.
• You know, is that something that you would also
• look at? You know, is that
• is there a space here that people can also go, you know, with dogs? And then
• also the idea of a fitness park, which is Mhmm. You know, when
• deputy mayor you mentioned. Yep. You know? Right. And there's The sports. Yeah. Mhmm. When I was in Europe,
• all the parks have those fitness Yes. Yeah. And we have there's one similar to that in Portland.
• Okay. Yeah. Charles Cook at the Yeah. I think they're so fun. And it's Yeah. Something that our parks
• don't have currently, so this could be a Yep. Differentiator,
• you know, in terms of its use
• in space. So I don't mean to clutter it up with everything including the kitchen sink, but,
you know That that's exactly conversation number one that we would have. We'd all sit down, and he has, like, a rough sketch, and then we would he that's the conversation. Hey. We'd like to see
• maybe a sculpture, a a garden or or or a fitness park and this and that. So
• that's exactly,
you know, how how it how it gets there be space for a dog park just so we have another
We I mean, we had an extensive conversation about that We did. A couple of years ago where we where I mean, we were going we we even toyed with the idea of having two dog parks. Yeah. Having one there and one on I think Frank did some sketches on that. There were some there's limitations.
• So I it's that doesn't mean we certainly can't have the conversation again. But, you know, we have we've we've had that. We've talked about gardens there in the past. We've talked about the fitness stuff, I don't think we've talked about that at the landing. I was gonna say that the Mhmm. It always made more sense at least to me to do that at the landing because of how much use it gets. Mhmm.
• We did try to go for a grant for that that we weren't,
• successful for. And so the idea kind of,
• Mhmm. You know, fizzled at that point.
• So,
• you know, we could certainly we could certainly look at that. I think I think
• the best bet if you wanted to try to get people there would be the gardens because we scoped that area out. We kinda know where it was going to go. We know it wouldn't necessarily,
• interfere
• with the plans that DPW has.
• So the the area that we were looking at is behind the Quonset Hut.
• You know, basically,
• it's a a meadow right now. So you would just mow that down and you'd be able to create,
• you could either create a community garden or if you wanted to create a pollinator garden and just leave it at that, you could do it or or some combination of both.
You know. And I yeah. I think just being able to have the firm come in Yeah. And scope it out and scale. Yeah. And then they've built in into the proposal
• community meetings to get community feedback, which is amazing. Mhmm. And really what's needed for GovAX. I think that, you know, we we've had community feedback, but it's been a while. Mhmm. So it's time to sort of reengage the community, and this is kind of they've done big projects before
so they can They know what to do. They know what to do. Right. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they they know the language. Right? They know sort of what's going on currently in parks and what's what's popular, what's what's kinda not. And and
• I think they're they're
• in Yes. The building. That's the plan. So,
• you know, another
• consideration, and maybe this is part of your plan, but
• how does the rec you know, how is this an extension of the rec department as well? You know, when I used to live in Riverdale and they have Wave Hill,
• and they would have, like, rec you know, art activities on the lawn and kids would come and
• they would paint and, you know, it's just is there a way that rec could become integrated into the
• activities?
I mean, that that's that would be the ultimate goal. Right? It's I mean, part of the reason that doing this is to have is to have outdoor
• nature walks and and, you know,
yoga in the park and stuff like that. Right? I mean, to Right. To basically make the park another classroom. And that would be part of poses And theoretically, the the artists and others who were on the Top Floor doing things couldn't gravitate out onto to the park itself. Yeah. Continue. But, you know, it's it wouldn't be it's not abnormal for the rec function of a municipality to be located
in not in the municipal building, but No. No. Actually in the park. Yeah. Very common. So, you it would just become an extension of
• you know, not only will it free up space here for more activities, but it would become that whole area would become an extension
• Yep. Of what the rec department can offer. Probably the timing of
all these great things can happen on the the grounds of the park that are much more cost effective
• than renovating that house. Right. So we'll probably end up it just depends. Right? Depends on what grant monies we get, what monies there are, what decisions we make. But and also think this will be an opportunity for the public to weigh in a little bit on the priorities
• of
• of what their priorities are. But the I think the outside landscape of that park
• and some features can that can be enhanced
• can happen sooner
• versus,
• you know, the house potentially.
Or I mean Yes. I mean, we've we've already allocated that as part of
• the the current year the current year's capital budget.
• Mhmm. Right? Is that right or do we do it the year before? I honestly don't remember. It's it's been allocated. Mhmm. So
• we have the you know, that was coming from the endowment.
• So so with the endowment,
• as we saw, right, is about 775,000.
• So we've allocated about 535,000
• of that, I think.
• Right. So this would be 23,000
off of that. Of that 100. Yeah. We put I believe we put 430,000
• for the DPW
• work Mhmm. And then a 100,000 for the professional services.
• So,
• between between the cost of Sullivan, the the house architects and the landscape architects,
• you've pretty much spent that that 100,000. Okay. Yeah.
• So
• I mean, at this point, it's just a matter of getting something.
You know, we've been unsuccessful with grants in the past because we haven't had something
• to show for, you know, that we need to get this. All of this work, the work on the house, the work the the proposal of about work on the house, the proposal on the grounds,
• and then some small
• improvements. You know, DPW is gonna start doing some things, but also whatever other things we can be doing to have activities happening there,
• will make this,
• you know, a more attractive
• package when we go out to get some additional grant money. The there are no two ways around it. Making this into the usable space that we all know it can be
• is going to take time and money. Yeah. But we've made more progress in the last
• three years, two years than we've made in well, when was the when was the
• ad hoc committee? Two, three years ago? Which one? Two years ago. Well,
• Whenever that was.
But, you know, the a lot of progress has been made. So, you know, it's exciting to see these these ideas,
• you know. And now there's a lot of snow, but I think once the snow is melted, there's gonna be a lot of activity there. Yes. Yeah. Mean, we were hoping to start this winter as we spoke, but Yeah. You know, mother nature had different plans for us. That's
That's not all. We have a second one. But we have more. Of these process. Yeah. And if we if we act now, the so,
• We went with the structural engineer. So the structural engineer is coming up with the
• structure for the for the addition.
• They have to tie into the existing building and to the existing
• beams, columns, and girders, whatever is there,
• which is a long way of saying we have to take down some of the ceiling and some of the walls just so we can take a look at what's structurally there.
• Because of the age of the house,
• there could be and maybe use of asbestos containing materials there.
• So we got a proposal from a firm that we've used
• a few times in the past to just test the materials
• so that if there is any abatement that is needed, at least we sort of know about it and we can we can go ahead with that.
• This is just the house. Yeah. This is just the house. Yeah. So and this is from Quest. They've helped us with you
• know, they did the
• the old EMS house. Mhmm.
• And they did the old DPW facility. Yep. So,
• you know, they're pretty quick, and they're on it. And they they're very familiar with all updated rules and regulations for the state. So that's why we called them for a proposal. Yeah. It's $5,415.
I mean, I I think it's sort of, you know, it it you know, part of me is like, you know, we're
• yeah. I I I think it's money well spent. So we are because we need to go when we start talking about the house and the cost, I mean, we haven't really gotten any estimates yet on the house, real estimates.
• This will give us another
• window into what that estimate will be. Yeah. And I think it's a money well spent that we know now
Mhmm. If there's a asbestos problem. It it really is a requirement in many ways. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And, you know, the roof, we know we need a new roof. Right? Now the way we take that out, the the existing one off is gonna depend whether it contains asbestos or lead or anything like that Yeah. Or if it doesn't. Unfortunately, it's going to be a cost
• attached to a higher cost, much higher cost attached to it if there are materials in there. But we, like Yeah.
• Trustee Simon said that's kinda that's something we we we have to know going in. Yeah.
• whenever we meet they're meeting there We talked about the thought is sort of, I wonder what's in these walls. So I'm kind of I mean, I'm nervous to find out because I think it's gonna be depending on what it is, you know, but I but I I
• would like to get over that hurdle so we know what we're dealing with. I feel like as I'm looking forward to
getting on the other side of this Yeah. Because it's gonna inform a lot of what happens next. Yeah. The one good part, it's not a typical house. Right? So Right. No. It's are a lot of windows and there are a lot of so Yeah. Whatever materials are there, I I think are gonna be
• as minimal as you can have for a house of that age. Right. I'll put it that way.
• If I had to absolutely guess, I mean, that was the that was the age where their, you know, asbestos was great. And Yeah. Let's put it in a miracle material. Surprised,
• I think I I, you know, I will be glad when we know because we have Yeah. Been every time we every time we talk about it, we talk about this. So what happens? Does is this money already approved? Do we need to make a motion to approve it? We'll have both of these on the agenda for next week for the board to approve. Great. Okay. So
• okay. Okay. Good. Thank you for thank you, guys. Frank, is that something, Kit, that can happen? Like, they can go in and do this while it's snow covered the way it is? Yes. Okay. Yeah. They only they need, like, a week's notice, and they can go and I just feel like every little bit of progress we can be making even in spite of the the snow and the weather, it it will be great. Yes. Thank you. I agree. Good
• night, guys. Thank you. Good night, Frank. Thank you. See you at four
• Four 4AM.
• Just
• board meeting, I'm wondering if the the landscape architect could
• potentially attend that meeting.
• I mean, I could ask. That's not normally what we do at board meetings. Right? I mean. That's alright. Alright. Yeah. I feel like I I don't I do I really am anxious to get that person in also, but I think that Yeah. We could probably I mean, we could invite him to the we have two work sessions in February. We could invite him. Well, and he we can invite him yeah. We'll need to think about how we can include him in in that March 2 meeting. Like Or we could just have him at his March 2 meeting. Right. Yeah. Right. Okay. So Okay.
Yeah. Being able to speak to him sooner rather or I shouldn't say him. Sooner rather than later
• makes sense. But I just want like, I want it to be when we can have an elongated conversation. Right? That makes sense.
Alright. So Make sure you talk into the microphone. Okay. There
• So I was asked to come here tonight and give you a little presentation. I, I think I wrote up a report, and I think, the village manager sent it to you all. But I'll basically go over it,
• just for anybody who's watching. So
• a lot of things happened last year, which I wanna try and explain. So in 2025,
• the department entered into a contract with Lexapol
• to upgrade our existing policies and procedures manual and to insist,
• to assist us in completing our accreditation manual.
• The policy manual is estimated to take approximately ten to twelve months
• to complete. It consisted of 169
• policies
• with an expected review, customization,
• and adoption rate of three to five policies a week.
• Lieutenant Chairman and I worked very hard on this, and we completed and reviewed all policies for the manual,
• and we completed it several months ahead of schedule.
• These adopted policies are now being distributed to the, department
• members
• for review and acknowledgment.
• As each policy is signed off,
• it will replace
• the corresponding policy that we already have in existence.
• This distribution and acknowledgment process
• is expected to take them at least eight months to complete.
• Lieutenant and I, Cermallini and I have started to, work on the procedures manual.
• And and chief, just before you go on, that eight month process, that's already started because they've been signing off on? It's it's started only we had to complete a bunch of the policy before we could even start to get them out. So they've only been getting their policies for maybe a month. Okay. But it's so it started. But it has started. Okay. Okay. And does our
• village council, do they have do you have any
• weigh in on police policy?
When asked Okay. Yes. When asked by the village manager and the police department, we're happy to wait. Okay. But otherwise, this is sort of Lexapro The company that we hired does them statewide
• They pretty much tell us they have a team of of attorneys
• that write them, and they're pretty much set for a lot of departments. When I say we had to customize them and tailor them, it's because
• some of them are written for large departments
• and, you know, some of the things that are in there don't apply to us. Right. Okay. So that's why we had to change some things and go over them all.
So that's what we did. Okay. I I've had to change some stuff too. Like, there was one in Briarcliffe that had to do with the there was a
• federal
• takings statute that had to do with, like, when you're towing cars and their policies were here and the law was here and we worked with whenever needed, we're here to help you and, like, less. Believe it or not, I think we spent more time on that policy. Yes. I mean, that's a that's always a fun one. Because they were, it was all over the place. Chief, would you say that that the the manual is is the biggest, chunk that gets us towards accreditation at this point? Still have to do the whole accreditation manual.
This is the process that gets us going so we have all our policies. Then we're gonna have all our procedures. Then we're gonna complete the accreditation manual.
• Okay?
• And the accreditation manual isn't just a manual. It's
• you have to have a policy and a procedure.
• And the way we were doing it, we were setting them up in folders. Yeah. With Lexapol, it's all gonna be electronic. There'll be electronic folders. So it's gonna be a lot easier for us, and we just have to put in.
• So, basically, for accreditation,
• you have to have a policy and a procedure. And if
• you get a complaint or you have a have a disciplinary issue, you have to show the policy, the procedure, and what you did to correct it. Okay? So that's what we're working on. Thank
• you. Okay?
• In July 25, the department SIG Sauer sidearms
• were brought to your attention due to reports of safety concerns involving uncommanded
• discharges.
• Following several months of research and upon the recommendation of the department's firearm instructor,
• I determined that, in the best interest of the officer and the public safety,
• that it was necessary to request funding from this from you
• to replace our firearms.
• I would like to again thank you and express, you know,
• appreciation for you agreeing to that and funding it.
• So the department's new firearms
• will be the Glock 45,
• which is a nine millimeter pistol. Some people think it's a 45 caliber, but it's a nine millimeter pistol.
• These firearms are going to be equipped,
• with a two phase trigger system, which most other
• gun manufacturers
• have,
• other than SIG SAU or their their safety issues, they start say are internal.
• But, basically, you're gonna have to have your,
• finger on the trigger, and there's, like, a little blade there that will release the trigger so that you can pull it after that.
• I think we've learned that a lot of the uncommanded
• discharges were from
• items that may have gotten down inside the holster and pulled that trigger. And without that blade, it's a safety issue.
• So that's why we went with the these.
• So on top of that, these new handguns will also be equipped with the red dot optic system, which is also something new that most departments are going to. It's not a new system, but it's something that most of the departments are going to.
• It enhances
• officer accuracy,
• especially during the critical critical incident.
• So in February,
• or next month, the department's two firearm instructors will be going to be trained on how to teach
• and use the optic system for us. So once that's done and the department firearms come in, we will start to
• train on them and deploy with them.
• I don't think that's actually gonna happen until probably around April this year.
• Okay?
• Alright. Also last year in June, we we, department inflated the three, dedicated traffic enforcement car,
• which was staffed by officers
• who were assigned in a two month rotation. Throughout the year, the department also participated in governor's traffic enforcement
• initiative.
• These campaigns, some of them include no empty chair, speed awareness week, click it or ticket.
• Additionally, the department also participates in the Westchester County DWI enforcement program
• throughout the year, and we also focus on efforts
• to conduct high visibility dates such as fourth of July and Thanksgiving.
• During the reported year, we issued
• 1,368
• traffic summonses,
• which
• I went back the last ten years and it's the highest number we've had in the past ten years. I didn't go further than that.
• I could have, but I guess I didn't. So anyway,
• while the traffic enforcement detail contributed significantly
• to the total,
• over 800 summons or around 800 summons which were issued by the patrol,
• division
• to show their commitment for traffic safety and enforcement in there throughout the village.
• So that was a
• high number for us. I think we brought up the safety concerns that had been brought to our attention to the PAC survey and stuff like that,
• and hopefully, we'll continue with that. We did
• take a brief period
• off of the traffic enforcement car from mid December
• and starting again this February or in a couple days.
• Okay.
Alright. Can I ask you a question about the tickets, or do you want to wait till the end with my questions? Excuse me? Can I ask you a question, or do want me wait till the end? No. No. No. You can can you break down the number of tickets,
• like, that are that are in the village versus on nine?
I probably could, but I'm just curious how much of this is, like, somebody A lot of the traffic enforcement we tried to do was through in town.
• Route 9 is a major thoroughfare through through our village. We handle all traffic accidents out there, so we do spend time out there also because lowering the speed
• helps with traffic, you know,
• helps with traffic accidents. It helps us, diminish the number of traffic. The majority of those almost 1,400
• are in with are I can't I won't I will say a good portion of them are throughout the village. You know? Or you wanna say three quarters, it might be, but I I don't know that number. I was just wondering if you can break down the numbers. You don't have to it now. Thank you. Okay.
• Okay.
• Right now, the department is currently engaged in the comprehensive evaluation of the body worn camera and in car systems
• from multiple manufacturers.
• Over the past several months, Lieutenant Terminally have gone on
• and attended different classes,
• demonstrations,
• and we have sought to get test equipment.
• We currently have two
• body cameras from Axon,
• which were just started to go out on Tuesday.
• We have them for a month trial period,
• and we're trying to get an additional
• set of cameras,
• from Motorola Solutions,
• which we just signed the, contract for. And that's just to get the test ones. Okay? Is that just visual or audio and visual?
• The,
• cameras are going to do audio and
• visual. Okay?
• Mhmm.
• The ones in the cars will also do the same. Mhmm. They should pick up
• the car cameras will pick up everything in the front and the audio, everything in the back of the audio. And then we're also gonna have a camera inside the car
• to view the back in case there's a prisoner in there. Okay? So that's what we're gonna do with those. And do you know how the data is protected or, you know, who owns the data, who could access the data? Well, one of the things in here is we're going to determine all that. But the data is gonna be for us to review. It's our it's our camera system. We're buying it from them. They're going to keep the data in the cloud system or whichever system we go with, which I don't know which one we're gonna go with yet. But
• it's for our purposes.
• It will also be you know, as I read on, it's it's also gonna be for training. We're gonna have to review these cameras all the time. Mhmm. You know, we're gonna have to check
• Mhmm. To see what's going on, see during the day.
You know, that's And they're not I mean, they're not activated all the time. That it's not like it's eight hours of footage.
• like, the the car cameras will activate as soon as the emergency lights go on. Okay? There are there are other switches to where as soon as the officer gets out of the car, it will activate. Mhmm. They can also activate it themselves. There's going to be a switch on their sidearm,
• so that whenever it comes out of the holster, it will automatically.
• So it's kinda to prevent
• sometimes in a stressful situation, you have to make it out of the car and forget to put it on, and I wouldn't fault them for that. It's a stressful situation.
• So
all these systems try to take that stress out of there Mhmm. So that it comes on. So that's basically what they're gonna pay. Chief, it sound it sounds like you're making great progress on this. I I know just from, you know, talking to, you know, friends and others around the country, it's, it's they're great great to have significant
• data management
staffing required Yeah. For this. Yeah. It's also gonna take a lot of manpower to review, which is Yeah. Why I guess I always ask for more manpower. So I'm gonna throw that out there tonight.
• But it is it it is time consuming, and we have to do it. And it's also gonna put a lot more,
• stress on the stuff that we need for court Yep. And stuff like that. So, you know, all these cameras are gonna have to be downloaded and preserved and and put. There are certain ways, like, if we know there's an incident
• where there's an arrest, we can go in and save it so it won't it won't disappear because I I think some of this may disappear over a period of time too. Mhmm. So but Yeah. I would I would imagine, you know, we don't have unlimited data storage. Right? So it's gonna have to have some sort of know? And some of them charge a lot more for data storage, is why we're viewing two different ones. Right. And and there are, you know, like I mean, it's it's essentially the the data is like a document in in the sense that the public has access to it, you know, through the foil process.
• It's if it's involved with a with a case, they're not gonna have access to it. Okay.
Not not not until the case is Right. Exactly. Yeah. You know. So yeah.
• you know, like I said, there's gonna be a lot of time consumption on management to review all this stuff. So,
• we're gonna find out what it entails.
• We're gonna try and make the judge best judgment and get these ordered at some point in the near future. And, manager, have we reserved a portion of our justice grant,
Yeah. Because we originally we've had this in the capital That's right. Budget for a number of years, but,
• it was all we inevitably, it got pushed into an out year Yep. In every budget because we just didn't, you know
• It it just was not happening. So then when we got the we got this,
• large the law enforcement technology grant, which I believe the governor has included in
• the budget again this year. I hear it's coming on March. Yeah. So that will be that will be great to get. Hopefully, we get a similar amount because we got a quarter of $1,000,000 last year. So
• yeah. So we have some of that money that we got from that grant is is set aside for the cameras. And
we may have to come up with additional money because that grant was several years ago, and everything has gone up. So,
• but we're gonna try and find out what we can afford and what we can do with the money we have. And, also, like I said, the operations, the simplicity,
• how much downloading time we have, and what we have to do for core is gonna be a major factor.
• Okay?
• Just a short note on the community events. You know, we usually do the senior luncheon, which is coming up next month. We do usually do the as Easter basket, drive,
• national night out,
• pumpkin painting, Christmas toy drive, and last year, we had the big bicycle toy drive, which, was quite successful.
• A lot of the smaller
• things we have, like cones with a cop and stuff like that, kinda all got pushed into national night out, which, you know, the first one was here. I think it was good. The one we had last year down at Sonesta, I think, was much better, and that's where we're planning on having it again this year. So The one we had here was also
• was a rain day. Yes. It was It got rained out in the you know? So yeah. But I I agree. Last year's was a was a nice event. You know, we had we you know, DPW was involved. Fire department was involved. It it was a nice event. We had the boat down there, which seemed to be probably the biggest hit. The line was,
• you know, 50 deep, I think. Kevin Kevin Ward's still out there, you know, giving And we used it so much, we literally had to take it out and gas it up. You know? And it had a full tank when we brought it there. So,
• it was used quite a bit. So,
• also,
• I'd like to discuss implementing a program to recognize,
• and reward,
• exceptional service by officers of department such as recognizing should include,
• and contribute to community events.
• Like, Jeremy Davis does a great job with a lot of these events. And and
• sometimes he won't even take time, and a lot of times he he brings supplies from his home. I mean, you know, he's just
• he's a good officer for that. He really gets into it. He does a great job. You know? And there's other things, you know, for, you know, life saving awards and such,
• tragic events and whatever.
• You know, I I brought this up to the manager and we're gonna hopefully talk about it more and and maybe get your approval on it. Well
• deserved.
• So
• and that's basically just a well, we'll talk about it when I talk to the manager. We'll go over it.
• One thing I didn't put in the report, we
• made a big push to start the cadet program.
• Oh. We have 21
• cadets that have signed up, and we're gonna be starting the program February 9.
• So that would be our first meeting. Yeah. Fantastic. We haven't had the cadet program since before COVID. Right. Yeah. So So,
• we got a lot of participation.
• First meeting's just gonna really be to
• meet them, give them the rules, the guidelines,
• get measurements for uniforms and stuff like that. What age group is that for? That goes from seventh grade to to,
• from when you graduate, and then we cancel it. You know, once they graduate, they're gone. We kinda have a little
• ceremony for them and off they go to college. That's great. Yeah. So,
• but it's it's a it's a good program.
• You know, we I've have I just had two officers go down to Westchester County to watch theirs,
• and I have the same two going up to Putnam County, in another I think next week. And they're gonna go over them,
• so that we can come up with a a program that, you know,
• works well for us.
• So
• that'll be a that'll be a nice
• thing for the community. That's wonderful. That's awesome. We used to have the kids the kid that used to help us with
• at Summerfest and stuff like that, just have them there, seen, and stuff like that. So it's a it's a nice program. Think we'll We got a good spirit here in in the community. We we learned at the EMS
swearing in of their officers. They've got a waiting list of 50 for their for their youth programs. Yeah. You know, it's a good program, and, and we have had
• you know, people graduating, going off to college, and becoming police officers. So,
• you know, we did a we did a, actually,
• Kevin Ward and Edward Hondres,
• went down to PVC in the high school and they did a big push and got it going again.
• the backup material was not on the agenda for the meeting, but you you'll be able to add it?
• I'll just talk to the chief about it as long as wanna make sure think that was great information. I don't know how many people are watching right now, but I would like the community video to be able to see the update that you shared publicly with us as part of the backup if that's possible. Yeah. As long as it's I just wanna review it and make sure it's okay to post and then we'll do that. Yeah.
Thank you, chief. Thank you. Yeah. Alright. Thank appreciate it. To the whole department. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good night. Alright.
Thank you. Thank you. You want this off? One last one. It's a baby. It must feel like we have, like, one breeze through too many.
• I mean, one too many.
We could we could we could be done with this in twenty minutes. I make a motion that we clean up the zoning code. Okay.
• So No second. I'm
• gonna start with my memo,
• and then we can look at the law.
• So
• for the past couple months, we've been working myself, the village engineer, our planning consultant,
• the village attorney,
• to address a number of cleanup items in the zoning code. Generally, what we do is we whatever either myself or Vinny or the attorneys or whoever, if we see something in the code that we feel needs to be updated, we kinda just keep track of it, and then we combine it all into one law because amending the zoning code is a little bit of a process because it has to be referred to the planning board. It has to go to the county planning board, and we have to do seeker on it. And so we don't like to do that for every little thing. We try to combine things and do it all at once. So,
• we've come up with this
• law to do the cleanup items
• that, a lot of the items in the law are related to the special permit law that was passed by the village board last year that transferred the special permit,
• issuance from the village board to the planning board.
• They also,
• a lot of the items deal with the revisions that the village board adopted to the solar systems law in 2024
• and the battery energy storage system that the board adopted
• in, 2024.
• So,
• those are not addressed in this memo, but we can certainly look at those in the law itself.
• So,
• the sub the sub
• substantive changes that are included in this local law,
• in section two,
• there are a number of definitions in our code that were either outdated
• or, were sufficiently vague that they left
• some interpretation,
• right, which is not usually what you want in your in your code. You want definitions to be clear and, you know, no ambiguity.
• So,
• we've redone the definition of of buildings, of structures, of accessory buildings. We've added the definition for swimming pools.
• All of these have been updated to give clear direction on what requires the building permit and then what requires site plan approval.
• So it's just it gives better guidance to the village engineer on what he needs to issue building permits for. It gives better guidance to the village engineer and the planning board as to what needs to go to the planning board for site plan approval. So those those definitions were updated.
• Section three,
• we've changed the number of foul that are permitted on a property. God. That's a lot. I mean Yeah. So I can't believe it was that high. Yes. Exactly.
• Right? So, know, this this probably dates back to,
• it could date back to the sixties when the zoning code was first amended. Right? Because the properties were a lot bigger than it, and we were a lot less dense then.
• So
• yeah. So currently up to 25
• foul chickens,
ducks, whatever it might be. And the well, and the chart that's in there that that does that allows
a certain number per size of your lot, I think, is very helpful. Yeah. So currently, you can have 25 whether you're RA five, RA 60, anything in between, you can have 25 chickens. So what we've proposed
• is,
• allowing it proportionally based on the size of your lot. So if you have a smaller lot, you would be allowed less. And then if you have a larger lot, you can have more.
• So,
• we've also suggested removing the prohibition on more than three dogs on any one property.
• You know, this
• this has come up from time to time. It really it mainly comes up when people come in to license their dog,
• and
• they say that they have more than three dogs. And we say we can't issue more than three licenses because
• the law is that you're only allowed to have three dogs. So they say, okay, and they leave. And so
• they're not getting rid of one of their dogs. They're just not licensing
• the dog that they that they have.
• Right? So
• I I don't think we really wanna police that. It's it has as far as I know, it's never been a problem Mhmm. With people having I I think it's more important to have the to have the drug registered. That they're registered and that they're and they have their rabies vaccinations and that, you know
• yeah. So I think that that's that's you know, and Valerie agreed with this. She, you know, she thought that it was a it was kind of a strange provision to have in the zoning code anyway.
• So
• so that was that. And then, sections 12 through 14,
• what this is doing is,
• recognizing that the board actually has issued a permanent special permit for,
• merchants to have sidewalk displays and sidewalk dining that was done back in 1993.
• And then during the pandemic, the board, revised that resolution.
• The code currently
• the way that it reads is that
• individual merchants would have to come and get their own special permits. So
• that just needs to be, clarified.
• Section 21,
• back in the 2003
• comp plan, right, the the board at that time identified some sidewalks that they wanted built,
• namely,
• the sidewalk along Croton Point Avenue.
• And so that's
• been built, and so, you know, those sidewalks can be can be removed from that list.
• Section 24, this change clarifies the accessory cottages require minor site plan approval and that accessory apartments do not.
• This is just a clarification. Right? That that was that was pretty much the intent behind
• the adoption of the ADU law back in in 2024,
• I think, beginning of '24. Yep.
• And
• section 37.
• So going forward, noncommercial
• swimming pools and residential accessory buildings that are larger than 300 square feet will require minor site plan approval.
• Like I was saying earlier with regards to the definitions,
• it was kind of ambiguous
• as to whether
• accessory buildings needed,
• site plan approval.
• And they obvious they always needed building permits, but they did they really need site plan approval? Did they have to go to the planning board? The code was kind of
• on the side of that any accessory building was supposed to go to the planning board. That was not the practice that was occurring.
• So we kind of met somewhere
• that everybody felt was reasonable. You know, if somebody wants to put a shed in their yard, they shouldn't have to go to the planning board. Right? But if somebody wants to build a four car garage,
• you know, that probably should require some
• overview. Yeah. So
• so that's we cut we settled on that 300 square foot number for for what would need to go to the planning board.
• And then, again, just a clarification in this section that any walls in excess of six feet and the accessory cottages require Myers site plan approval.
• Okay. So section 38,
• the applicant,
• an applicant can get a 50% refund if their site plan is denied by the planning board under the current code.
• Again, we've all kind of felt this was an unusual provision
• because
• whether the site plan is granted or not, the engineer still needs to
• do all the reviews. We need to still have the planning board
• do their reviews, potentially
• schedule and notice a public hearing. So, you know, the costs are really the same whether it's it's approved or not. And so we're What is the application fee?
• It really it depends. Right? I mean, I think the I think for the planning board, it's $3.03
• I couldn't tell you the last time a site plan was denied in all honesty. I don't I I don't think it happens very often. I don't know, trustee Simon, if you if you remember anyone Not done. Being done. Not in my experience with the planning board. Yeah. I mean, the the planning board, as everybody probably knows,
• spends a great deal of time working with the applicant to to get And sometimes it takes six months. Yeah. That's what I mean. I'm not saying it won't take time, but, you know, they they don't
• deny stuff. They try they try to work with somebody to get Come back in two weeks with a better landscape plan. Yeah. Yeah. So
• okay. I'm being passed a note here. Excuse me. I was just giving
Yeah. So, I mean, they they can these are the site plans. Right? They can go anywhere from
• $300
• to $3,000.
• So
• thank you. I'm gonna pass that back. Okay. I guess we'll put into less than the blow.
• Yeah.
• And then lastly, on sections forty and forty eight, this is just adding to our codes of state requirement that the planning board and zoning board members undertake the four hours of training a year that they're required to do.
And I assume they're all doing that. They are all doing that. Yes. Yep. We make sure of that. You know, there's a there's a lot of jobs that I I thought I'd like to do some time in municipal government. This is not one of them. So I really have to take my hat off to Valerie Monastra and our our planner and Lori Lee Jack Dixon for doing a great job and getting through all this. They they I mean, Lori Lee spent She's fantastic. Yeah. I got this. I love Lori Lee. I think she emailed this to me at, like, 10:00 on Friday night. Was racing. Was racing. So
• for
• being scheduled for well, it's not gonna be scheduled for a public hearing yet. You're gonna have to refer it to the other boards. We we should award both of them with complimentary
• exams. You know?
• So
so I don't know if you have questions, if you wanted you know, I mean, we could go through the whole law if you want to.
• Well, first, just very basic, but the definition, you know, we've always we talked about accessory dwelling units, ADU,
• but I it's not in the definition.
• And I I've only seen,
• applications
• for accessory cottages. Is that the same thing as an ADU? Or So an a so an ADU,
• term.
• Right? And then so underneath ADU is accessory apartments,
• which are within the primary structure.
• Right? So that like, somebody
• Accessory apartments.
I think that definition is so so what's in the law, the the only definitions that are in the law are the ones that are being proposed to change.
• So if you wanted to see the full list of definitions yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, unfortunately, we have the the zoning code has a lot of definitions. Yeah. So,
• it only included
• the the local law only includes the ones that are Change. Changing. So, like, I just pulled it up here on the screen. So you can see there's accessory apartment and accessory at all. Yeah.
• Alright. Sorry. Hold on.
So an accessory apartment is part of the main building? Correct. Yeah. Okay. And a Not a double bookstore. Hold on. But it's it's it's gotta include a separate kitchen, separate entrance, separate bathroom. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. So those definitions are are in the code. Yeah. K. So the the definitions or even the changes, they're not the whole laws. These are just where the areas are that are being changed are. Correct. Right. So if you wanna if you if you wanna go back and read this in the context of the zoning code, you can have the zoning code open on your computer. You mean multiple things open. Yeah. So you might have Yeah. The manager talked to me about some of this, which was helpful. So thank you. Of course.
• section 36,
• down the second to last paragraph,
• the application shall be and the word distributed was struck out and the word referred was put in to the board of trustees by the planning board
• for its recommendation within thirty days. And I was curious, what is the difference between
• distributed
• and referred?
• I mean, I think I don't really think there's necessarily
• a huge difference there. I think we were just trying to formal formalize the process
• because under this right. If you read it as it's originally written, right, it says the application shall be distributed to the board of trustees for its recommendation, if any, period. Right? That's what the sentence says right now.
• And
• as we as we discussed when we were talking about this yesterday,
• it kinda left it open ended for the planning board because
• they would they would send it
• when they got a special permit application, they would send it to the village board
• as it says they're supposed to do.
• And then
• they didn't know they didn't know how long they were supposed to wait to hear back from the village board if they were gonna or if they were even going to hear back from the village board because it just says it shall be distributed to you for your recommendation, if any. It doesn't say you have to. So
• so they were kind of in a little bit of a limbo in that they didn't know if they should proceed or if they were waiting to hear from the board because there was no time frame
• indicated here.
• So that's why we're we're adding in that it's it's a referral
• and that you have thirty days to give a response to the planning board. And if they don't hear from you, then they can just move forward. So how does this work in
• So if there is a special permit going to the planning board,
do all members Yeah. It would it would be put on it would be put on a board agenda.
• it's
Yeah. Correct. So so It's more formal. It's more formal. Exactly. The planning board know if we were limiting our ability to
Or Distributed was a soft is a softer sell Okay. As opposed to referred. Right. Because, like,
• I'm trying to remember what special permit it was that we got. I think it might have been for the
• mechanic's garage at across from ShopRite
• in the Straddles Building. Uh-huh.
• That went to that was the first plan that was the first special permit that the planning board did, I think.
• And
• that was just emails to the board. Right? Because it it was it said to distribute it, so it was just emailed. So this will be this will be more open. This will be on an agenda as a refer as a referral from the planning board to the village board. With the ability to discuss?
• Then,
• I don't have many others. So
• but there was something in here that changed the timing of
• giving people less days to view something, and I was just curious.
• I think it went from ten to five.
Alright. That might have been the that might have been having to do with the mailing, maybe.
• Was that it?
Yeah. I was just I just wanted to make sure we're making some 24. Yeah. It's it's section 42. Yeah. This so so state law only requires a five day,
• five days before the date of the hearing publication in the official newspaper.
• Since our official newspaper only publishes once a week,
• you know,
• giving ourselves
• but in the law, we wanna give ourselves the the minimum
• number. Yeah. So that that way because the thing is, I mean, we can also publish in the journal news if we have to. But, I mean, it cost us
• $50 to publish with Gary, right, in the Gazette, and it cost us $300
• to publish in the Journal News. So we obviously would much rather
• put it in the Gazette with That's a Nikon proposal,
• by the way, that that we'd be able to post all of this on our website. Well, yeah. Well, considering mean, the other thing requirements that way. Yeah. The other thing I was gonna say is that, at least in the Gazette, it has a it has a somewhat decent chance of actually being read by somebody in the village. Whereas if you put a legal notice in the journal news,
• there's not a soul in the village that's looking at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
• you know, so that that that was the reason for the change there is that it the state law is only five days and, you know, we just we wanted we wanna be able to use our local paper
• giving the public enough time to
show up if there's a hearing or if there's Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, generally speaking,
• you know, the zoning board agenda is usually
• like, today was the or yesterday was the deadline for
• the meeting on February
• 17.
• Right? So the agendas for the zoning board meeting are set pretty far in advance.
• So we usually try to get the the notices to the paper
• pretty far in advance. So it's not, you know, we're not waiting until the last minute to do it. It's just sometimes there are situations that come up that,
• may require either a special meeting of the board or,
• whatever it may be. And
• I know the public was upset because many of them are on winter break Yes. And they can't attend the meeting.
• So I don't know if there's any
• are there specific
• zoning?
• They're probably are there laws that say when an applicant
• submits an application that
there needs to be a Notice from to adjoining property owners, you mean like that?
So I I I don't I don't know if we necessarily wanna talk about this right now. We're we're we're working on it. Yeah. We're we're working on it,
• you know, hopefully, we'll have an update on it soon. Okay. So but, yes, we're we're we have received the comments from the from the public that, you know, it is during the break week. So we're we're working on it. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Thank you. You're welcome.
• Did anyone else have any other
• questions?
• for
• Okay. The modernization.
• to,
• declare a lead agency, send it to the WAC, send it to planning board, send it to the county planning board, you know, all that all that stuff. And then we'll we'll start the process.
• So
• Thank you. Alright. It took twenty three minutes, not twenty, but I tried. Well, Johanna