Board of Trustees Work Session
Telecom Tower on the village on property at 230 Hessian Hills Road. Manager, would you like to be in, or are we gonna have an app? Sure. The applicant present live. Yep.
mayor. So, as you just stated, we're here to discuss the proposal that we've received from Homelandt Towers. Before I hand it over to, mister Xavier here to discuss, I just wanted to, you know, address that we've received a couple of emails and comments from residents and neighbors in the area. And, you know, this is just a proposal at this time. There's been no application that has been filed to install this tower. And if we were to proceed down that route, there will certainly be a formal application process which would involve an environmental review. There would be notice for a public hearing, and it would follow our standard special permit app application process. But we're not we're not at that step even yet. This is just simply a proposal, and that's why it's been put on the board's work session agenda just for consideration
tonight. So with that being said Just to clarify, it's village property. Yes. So that's why it's it's sort of at this introductory level. Because first, you have to decide, you know, whether you're even willing to entertain leasing the property.
Okay. Go ahead. Well, good evening. I'm Vincent Xavier, and I'm the regional manager for Homelandt Towers. First, to start a little bit about the company. Homelandt Towers, specializes in developing, owning, and managing telecommunications infrastructure. And I would say about 60% of our deals are generally directly with municipalities. You know, I'm here today because, you know, we've identified a need within the village. And upon review of suitable properties, we did identify a property that's owned by the village that currently already has a smaller telecommunications tower as well as, underground water tank on the property. We ran some analysis of it to see what kind of coverage you'd be able to get from a site there, and we do think that it would be suitable to meet the needs in that area to provide more reliable coverage. And there's obviously several benefits to have it in our village property. Besides just the revenue stream, is more important for the municipalities to actually have control of the structure. And that is control of what it looks like, you know, how it changes in the future. These are forty year leases at least. So having the site itself on village property affords the the board control of it going forward. I'm not sure what you're looking to put up there. Do you did you have everything that I submitted? I can get copies if anybody wants to. Nope. I think I think we're just gonna pull up, I guess, the, proposal document. But if you do have copies I'll take it. We'll take it. It's
Don't have to lock it. Just go to the If anything, I I if you do have capability to put it up there, would ask them to put the Google map satellite map up first. I'm sorry. Say that again. Impossible to put you that satellite map up first. Yep.
Good call on having the hard copies. Yeah. Well, you gotta you gotta be prepared. Mhmm. Alright. While that's booting up, if you do look at the first satellite image there, what I tried to do is, you know, show the borders of the village and all of the nearest possible existing infrastructure sites that I could identify. You know, as you can see just looking top down on this, you can see that there is a hole in the middle of all the monopoles just east of the Hudson National Golf Course. And if any of you live up there or have been driving up there, there is an obvious issue with having a reliable service in that area.
That's I'm sorry to interrupt you, Xavier, but Yeah. I mean, I know there are people in the audience waiting for this to come up, and it hasn't come up yet. So is it Yeah. Yeah. So Thank you. Is it gonna happen? Or Yeah. We'll have a little screen issue here. Okay. We'll we're getting there. Okay.
There you go. Okay. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt you. Yes. Thank you. Win win. So first, I really just wanted to talk about why you have the issue that you do. Besides just the obvious that there's no infrastructure in that area in the middle to the east of the golf course, you have to look at where the existing sites are, at what height they are, and why you're not getting coverage there. First, it's important to understand that wireless technology is a line of sight technology, meaning it needs to physically have a line of sight back to the tower. Everything from leaves on trees to obviously mountains are going to degrade obviously mountains more. If you look at the top left where the tower says monopole, that's where the condos are, that's a 300 foot ground elevation. As you travel east from there, just below the p, the second p in proposed, the hills get there, get up to 561 feet, meaning that all the coverage from that site to the east is being blocked by that. If you look at the north most one, that's the one behind the, auto repair center, that's at 267 feet. The site actually where we're at itself is about between five twenty five and five fifty, but the hill around the proposed site itself rises up to 556 feet, meaning coverage from that site to the south is significantly blocked by terrain and is not getting us any signal in there. The newest tower you have that benefits your community is to the east there of the proposed site at the Quaker Bridge. I'm not sure what it's actually being used for now or how the litigation is playing out there, but the tower does exist. So you are getting some beneficial coverage
from that site to the west to cover, hopefully, the enhanced coverage to your elementary schools and the high schools. And then in the middle, the rooftop site is obviously this building. This building has a ground elevation of a 118 feet. It's a relatively low structure, meaning the maximum antenna height you're getting is maybe a 150 feet. And antennas don't generally point up because they don't wanna waste the coverage into the sky. They're either out horizontal to the plane or they have a down tilt. Meaning that this rooftop site is not providing much coverage to the north as the hill goes up. And then lastly, the last site is actually a site that my company developed many years ago at the train station, which is really at capacity and is obviously covering just that downtown area and the train station itself. So is there any questions on that? That's why you have issues in that area and why a site is needed.
Alright. So if you wanna look at the the lease exhibit, the actual design perhaps.
Sorry. Does your company your company is the only one that owns the the only monopole that you own is the one at the train stations? Technically, don't own it anymore.
These things get handed off. That was maybe fifteen years ago at least. But we developed it and we were responsible for building it. Another time I can tell you some stories because just to get that one constructed, I wasn't personally involved at the time, the president of my company was. In order to build it on the river there, they had to drive steel 60 or 70 feet into the ground because obviously there's no bedrock to base it on. So that was that was a difficult one. I don't think you wanna go through the lease right now. Let me see. Site plans? The fourth, fifth one? Mhmm. Yeah. That yep. And this is the 11 by 17 copies copies that I've given you. This is the proposed site location. It's a village owned property. Like I said, it currently has a small lattice tower for your public safety and underground water tank site. We tried to site this site on the property where it would be most away from residents as much as possible. Obviously, the residential area up there is very dense. The property itself is very difficult because the terrain on it varies by 30 feet in some spots. So what we did was we proposed an access road coming in on the western side there back to a relatively flat area that is behind the existing water tank and lattice tower. The lattice tower and the the roadway there itself gets up to about 550 feet. The proposed site location is at about 525 feet. Obviously, I'll be able to be more precise once we move forward and do survey work, etcetera.
Difference. So we're proposing a 120 foot structure, which from the road itself will only appear to be less than a 100 feet because of the terrain difference from from where you're standing. And obviously, the the way the terrain is, it'll benefit the surrounding neighbors and that they're not gonna have a direct visibility of any of the ground equipment. The second page, if you could slide down, kinda shows the outline, the plan a little bit more and how it would be put in there. And then finally, the last page, as part of the proposal itself, you know, we're trying to find ways to maximize the public safety as of this as well. So we're reserving the top of the tower and space below the fourth carrier for use free of charge. Meaning all those antennas that you currently have on the short small lattice tower there are gonna be able to get increased height and increased coverage, increasing the quality of your public safety network as well.
So let's talk about visibility. That's obviously the greatest concern when you're trying to do these. We get into this, there are different stealthing options we can do, but can't make them invisible yet. This site is uniquely located and that the actual visibility from the site here, show the one mile view shed. It's very minimal. The blue areas on this map are showing where based on computer modeling, you would have direct visibility of the town. And generally, it's showing the the power lines, the property directly across the street, and then portions of Hudson National Golf Course. So all told, even though you're in a dense residential area, direct visibility of this tower, even a 120 feet because of the lower ground elevation, is going to be pretty minimal. If you would like to move forward and and you wanna explore this further, I would recommend the next step to be to actually fly a balloon on the property. We fly a balloon where the top of the balloon is the top of the proposed height of the tower. We would go around, take photos, and provide a visual resource evaluation, which would include photo simulations, which I would work with you on to make sure we capture all the viewpoints you wanted from, and we can discuss potential stealth options as so in the simulations. And, really, that's the best way to determine what the visibility actually is because, obviously, this based on computer modeling can only tell you so much.
Is there any questions? Is it gonna be a camouflage in appearance? Or Well, that's what we would have to discuss further. You know? There there's only so many options when it comes to a residential forested area. You either have leave it as a galvanized monopole Mhmm. Which believe it or not does have benefits over time because it dulls and it doesn't reflect light as much. You can paint it either a brown. Sometimes we'll do a sky blue, but really in this instance, it's probably gonna be better being a brown if we're gonna go with the painted option. And then you have the stealth tree option, the monopine fake tree.
option. Is that right? It is the most expensive option. And there's concerns with, you know, upkeep over time. But and and a lot of people think of, like, the worst fake tree you've ever seen, like the one on the hutch or something. On the hutch. I was gonna say, and has it evolved since First, does this my track by at every Well, not the tree. That specific fake tree, but the disguised trees in general. Yeah. Well, the one on the hutch, just to touch on briefly, it does look ridiculous when you're driving down the highway. But that's because it wasn't for people in their cars. It was designed like that for people on the sides of the highway that would be looking towards it. And there, don't have as bad a view because behind it is other trees so it blends in better. Yes, it looks ridiculous in the middle of a highway, but like I said, it just wasn't four people driving in their cars. That plus the fact that monopine or fake tree technology has gotten much better and they do look better nowadays. And especially when we do these, you know, I'll be able to show you examples of other trees we've done in the area and I can provide a list and those address to you. You know, as long as we work together and we make sure and I I throw this out there all the time and and not all companies do. It's not just about the tree itself. First, there's low, medium, and heavy density of how many branches you put on it. It's about ensuring that the antennas and the equipment to its greatest extent are also camouflaged, either through painting or a mix of painting and what they call socks, which is like a wrap that goes around that kinda has needles on it to help it blend in better. So if you go around and you see some of these fake trees,
if over time they're not controlled and they're on private property where the requirement may not exist pursuant to a planning board resolution, the carriers aren't necessarily gonna spend that extra money to do that painting and or to do the wraps if there's some kind of warranty issue with the antennas or to put the the socks on. So being an admissible lease, those are things that you would have control over to have actually direct the end of lease as a requirement to make it look better over time. And, you know, as I said, if you elect to move forward, we can show you potential simulations of the site in that nature.
Vincent, thank you very much for the presentation. I wanna just agree with our village manager that we are actually in the very early stages Yes. Of of this. And I I think on projects like this, you know, we we tend to be fairly cautious and Sure. And try to get the the right amount of involvement from all the parties that that that are potentially impacted. So I just wanted to ask you just three quick questions. And and again, you know, you you we may delve into this more in the future, but just from some of the some of the comments that we've gotten from from neighbors. First is, I appreciate what you're saying about the view shed. And, you know, let's let's just for argument's sake, that's correct from from the broad view, looking at it from very, very distant areas, vantage points. But what about folks that are actually very, very close, almost co located, if you will, with with with the facility? What experience have you seen in other communities where that can be mitigated or ameliorated so that the the the impact is is is not so profound? Yeah.
Well, believe it or not, generally, closer homes see it less because those homes are looking up through trees at the structure. Generally, if you're gonna have direct visibility, it's gonna be like on this the showing from Hudson National Golf Course, further away where you're looking over the trees to it. Generally, the people who are closest are going to see it through trees. You're not gonna have the direct visibility. That's why most of the closed homes are not shaded blue. In this instance, because the home directly across the street is not gonna have any kind of existing vegetation there, that home is gonna have a view of the site. And there's nothing you there's really nowhere you can put these where it's gonna be completely not visible from homes. But in this instance, in order to cite this, to correct the infrastructure that your community issue that your community has, to have only one property really have a direct view of it is not something they're gonna like to hear, but it is actually a pretty good site selection in that instance. Now when it comes to the other site properties we're gonna be looking through, really the only one who may have, other visibility is the property directly to the cell. They're they are gonna be looking through trees, but they're going to be on the other side of the hill, 228 Hessian Hills Road. Yep. And that's why it's important, like you said, to get the community in now and get them in now to see what we can do to help mitigate any views of the base station equipment that they may have. There may be options here. Either we could propose some landscaping on the property. We could propose either landscaping on 228 Hessian Hills to help them or a fund that they can use to
buy their own landscaping and and design that however they see fit to help mitigate that. Well, good. And, you know, I I should say, you know, that in a lot of these situations, the the best solutions are not apparent right away. So I think that's why it's it's important for us to sort of go step by step. Trustee Galelli and I happen to be also the liaisons to the planning board. And I and I know that the planning board itself, if we got to that point, would wanna roll up their sleeves and and really really and you've got I'm sure you've got experience on that as well. Yes. Second second question, we also had some communication from our fire department just with respect to a general concern about how this integrates with the signals that they use for for for their communication system. Are is there does is there potential for interference? Or how do you Mhmm. How do you approach that?
Well, I have an RF engineer come in to speak more intelligently. Okay. But the fire departments and the carrier networks operate at different frequencies. And in almost every instance, almost at least half of the instance, there are existing public safety equipment on the same towers as the commercial carriers. The obstructions and interference really only come when there's physical obstruction in that instance because they're operating at different frequencies. Generally, there's more of an interference issue between, like, the transmit and the receive antennas of your fire department themselves. I don't recall offhand who your consultant was that works with the fire department. Don't know he was at Metrocom. Metrocom. Yeah. So what I would do is, as we move forward, I would work with Kevin over at Metrocom, and we can have the analysis conducted to ensure that there's no
issues that would exist related to the And we'll wanna just like we we would with our neighbors who live up there, we'll wanna get our fire department and our EMS folks involved in in this process as well. And, actually, there's even though they're separate departments, many of our volunteer firefighters are also professional EMS folks. So there's a great reliance on on that system there as well. Third and final question for me. I found it very, very interesting to to look at your proposal in terms of how the revenue dollars potentially would grow with additional carriers appending themselves to the to the system. Can you tell us a little bit about is that hopeful and aspirational on on your part, or is there is there hard evidence that we could look at to say, hey. We know we'll have one likely, but here's
here's the reasons why we may have two or three or four. I think it'd be be interesting to hear that as well. Well, I can tell you, on average, a carrier is gonna be paying between 3,500 and $4,000 a rent. And some of them are lower if their first carrier on, generally, they're a little cheaper. But if a site only had and I thought it was only gonna be good for one carrier, I wouldn't build it. To go through this whole process and build the site is gonna cost at least a $500,000 to $750,000, especially if it's monopine. At that, to get a return on that with one carrier after paying monthly taxes and maintenance on the site, a one carrier site, if you ever see it, is a loser site as far as, business perspective for whoever developed it. So we wouldn't come in here if we didn't think that it was gonna be needed for all the carriers. And as we go from four gs to five gs, the coverage from each tower is actually getting less because although it operates at a higher frequency at five g, it's actually weaker in the distance that it goes. So you're actually going to need more towers. And since there's already a need for a site here at the four g level, which you'll have, it's only gonna be needed even more in the future at five g. And as far as a guarantee that over time the revenue would increase, the way the proposal is structured with you and and every other other that we work with, it's a revenue share model, which means you're getting a base minimum rent or the proposal's 35% of gross revenue, whichever is greater. And it's important to know that that's gross and not net because
it's not just the net profit. It's the gross of all the revenue, all the rents received from the tower, the municipality is gonna get 35%, which if you were to look at that from a net profit perspective, you're probably getting up to 45% of the profit of the tower itself. With no monetary investment from your community, you're getting the the benefits of the coverage, the increased public safety, and this revenue stream. So each carrier's lease to me and as is the lease to you, has a minimum rent escalation of 2% per year, which means that, yes, it has actually baked into the lease that over time it is guaranteed to go up. And the fact that I have the incentive to ensure that the site is structurally designed to accommodate the additional carriers, and I believe that they will be on it,
leads me to confidently say that, yes, over time, the revenue of this will increase. Is is it the case that the hunger for signal availability is so strong in in our communities, you know, these days that that the companies can't find enough places to to put additional signal and therefore would would tend to congregate to this? Well,
they'll find a place. And that's one of the reasons I come directly to work in this pallet. It's more difficult from my perspective to deal with the board than it would be just to go to a private landlord. Yeah. And carriers do have specific budgets each year. They can't just build as many sites as they want. They can only build so many here and there. So, lost my train of thought there. But
shoot. I did lose my train of thought. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No. You you you really answered the question. Okay. So that was that was good. I appreciate that. And I look look forward to learning more about this as we as we go forward and getting everyone involved. Yeah. And like you said before, this is very preliminary.
I reached out to the village. Nobody from the board reached out to me. And this is me just asking, telling you I think I have a solution and to see if you're interested in it.
So could you speak a little bit to, what kind of, if this were to proceed, what kind of, traffic on both construction and post construction might be involved,
in this? Sure. During construction itself, it's really kind of fits and starts. You're only gonna have large vehicles there. Total over a two to three month construction time, maybe seven days. You need cement trucks to be there to pour the foundation. That's generally a one to two day job. And then the tower itself gets stacked with a crane in one day. Other than that, it's going be just regular trucks, you know, pickup trucks and things like that that come in, drop off rebar and the workers and do that. So really there's a very minimal amount of days that are going to have large vehicles. Once the site is constructed, we tell people on average per carrier on the tower, you might have one pickup truck type truck show up to the site per month. In reality, that's an exaggeration because these things are also remotely monitored now. Unless there's an issue, there's not people coming just checking on the sites all the time. But if there was, you would say maybe one truck per month per carrier could come and stop and look at it assuming there's no issues.
Okay. And I I'd just like to explore a little bit more about the current coverage in the area and and how this would, what it is and how this would expand
it or, you know, what you project in that? Yeah. I don't have the the actual coverage maps available tonight to to go through. You know, I can definitely provide those to you. But it will show that let see this map here. You know, that the coverage is going to in my opinion, you know, I'll I'll have the covered maps to show you at the different height levels. But it's gonna meet to where the rooftop coverage is from this site to the north drops off. It's gonna cover into the National Golf Course. It's gonna cover portions of Cortlandt to the north and down to the east towards Grand Street, I would say would be the limit. So it'd be the beginning of the Hudson National Golf Course, where Furnace Dock meets Mount Harry Road to Grand Street to some point north of the rooftop of this site. And do we know what that coverage is now
Yes. In a sense, I don't have the maps, like I said, tonight, but I can definitely provide that to you.
This area has been marked as a dead zone. I don't know if that's a technical term. It is. But yes. It is. But it is you you've shown us the coverage map previously, I believe. And I remember seeing that this area was considered a dead zone because it's it's, you know, surrounded by towers on the end. So it doesn't this particular area does not have good coverage. And it's part of that five g effort to try and get the last mile covered.
But even like I said, four g right now, you have coverage issues. What I could also do is send you an email where I can show you how on your phone to read the DB level. You know, the bars on your phone are really set by the manufacturer of the phone as to, like, what dB level is gonna translate to one bar, two bar, three bars. And what the dB level is a measure of signal strength. The closer to zero, the better. I can show on your phone or with an app where if you're just driving around, can see what your DB level is. Anything worse than neg 95 is considered unreliable, especially in building coverage. And just driving around there myself, and it's part of how I find these sites, I use my phone, and there's an app called Network Signal Info Pro, and you can see what the dB level is. And if you have less than neg 95, you know, further away from zero, then you have unreliable signal in that area.
Well, I think those coverage maps are gonna be very important. Well, certainly, the rent would be appreciated, and we wouldn't allow you to build on a municipal on-site without charging rent. I think our primary interest here, you speaking for myself, perhaps with the rest of the board, is the ability to improve Cover. Public safety through access to these to improve coverage. And related to that so please, by all means, absolutely bring those maps in. If you wanna provide us a link for use of this app on our own, that would be helpful. Sure. But also, I would like to ask the manager. This seems almost orthogonal to the current topic, but it is related, promise. Is it possible to obtain from Verizon the number of remaining copper line connections in the village?
I don't have any hard statistical backing for this at the moment, but it's impossible for me to believe that we have the same number of copper connections as we did, like, ten years ago. There's landlines that are fiber. Yeah. That's true. Oh, do the do the fiber ones continue to have connection during this during an outage?
They most most of them have battery backups that last for, like, twelve hours or so. But then if the power is not restored within twelve hours, they won't have service.
Okay. Well, then let's get both of those then. Yep. And then but v over IP would be would not have that backup, typically. Correct?
Or would it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The voice over Internet protocols basically means you have an Internet connection, whether it's gonna be fiber or, like, the optimum cable coaxial cables, in the event of a tree taken out of line, yeah, you're gonna have a similar issue. And in that instance is when most people turn to their wireless network. Yeah. Power outage is what I'm thinking. In
Each carrier handles their own backup power. So they decide whether or not they're gonna bring a generator to the site or not and and what type. They all do have battery backups, but whether or not they're gonna bring a generator in, each carrier determines for themselves.
the the battery backup would be, a number of hours? Or Yeah. I'd have to I don't wanna quote a number for them, but I I could find out for you. Does each carrier get one array one array level? Yeah. Each carrier will get 10 feet on the pole. And so if you look at page three of the site plans, you'll see how they're laid out. Mhmm. When it gets back to interference, that's why they need to be,
So they each go down. And there are currently four FCC licensed carriers. I'm not sure if you're all familiar with this network at all, but they are the fourth carrier now. Because of the merger between T Mobile and Sprint, part of the DOJ's approval to do that required that T Mobile give some of their use of their frequencies to Dish Network, and Dish Network is in the process right now of collocating their own equipment on each antenna. And what that's also gonna offer in the hopefully not too distant future is communities the opportunity to have more of an option for their Internet provider than just Optimum or Verizon Fios because you're going to have T Mobile's or DISH Network's that are going be able to provide wireless Internet to people's homes at significant speeds, and it's gonna hopefully give communities more options when it comes to that as well, which I appreciate because I don't like Verizon files, and Okay. Optimum has been not so good here so far. So.
Dish has actually is in the process of They're going on the roof. Yeah. The pole at the train station. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that should be coming in
the relatively near future. We're we're awaiting an application on that. Yeah. The Dish has already indicated interest on the Politz Train Station.
existing structures on the site, would they be affected at all? Yes. I believe that we're gonna work together to remove the existing tower that's there, and then that equipment would be relocated onto the new tower. So, you know, as the board may or may not be aware from the email that we received from chief Munson, there are constant issues with our radio communications as they are now. This the pole that's there is older. It's been there for a long time. The equipment was originally copper based, and it has switched now to fiber. So it's not you know, it it was rehabbed, basically. It wasn't put in to handle the system that it's operating on now. And, you know, there's as Vincent said, you know, some of the existing systems may be pointing at each other or not pointing at the exact right way. And so having everything be located on one pole where everything can be analyzed at the same time to make sure that items are not interfering with each other, we believe and hope that it will, you know, improve our emergency communications greatly.
And when it comes to emergency communications too, there's obviously the municipal antenna system. But it's also important to note that the police generally use Verizon's wireless network for the computers in their car. Obviously, people use their Verizon or other networks to call 911. AT and T has their FirstNet system, which is a dedicated emergency responder system, that came about after 09:11. So, you know, there the actual commercial antennas themselves do enhance public safety and their network in a meaningful way as well.
No. Do I do I have Cold Spring on one of my things? Oh, that's fine. Oh, no. My my engineering firm. He he lives in Cold Spring. So, maintenance actually out of Danbury. Was if this was in fact done, maintenance is coming from Cold Spring or Danbury? No. No. You know, there's Homelandt Towers in our partner company and for wireless. And maintenance comes you know, maintenance on these things generally itself isn't isn't great. If there's a landscaping issue, you call a local landscaper to fix the problem. You know, it's not like I have landscaping guys to handle that. So in for each site, you call a local person to do Okay. The need to work there. And, obviously, for maintenance of the carrier's equipment, they handle all that in house themselves. Yeah.
You know, for an example, we have the tower down at the train station. And I would say probably once a year or so, they're there to just kind of do a general inspection of, you know, the equipment that's down there. And that's that's really it. It's very minimal interaction from the from the wireless companies actually being physically on-site.
Yeah. You know, and a lot of planning boards, not a lot, but many planning boards will also put a requirement in there that biannually or every two years or so, the natural report be provided, documenting that somebody went to the site, looked at it from a structural perspective to make sure there were no obvious deficiencies, to look at the fencing, etcetera. And we can either make that a requirement in the lease or a requirement as any subsequent planning board resolution as well. But you're it remotely than on a The carriers monitor their equipment remotely. Right. So if somebody tries to tamper with it there used to be a bigger issue because there's a lot of copper at these sites, so you'd have a lot of copper thieves. Okay. There's not so much copper anymore, but regardless, they're remotely monitored to know if there's you know, a door's been opened or something. They'll get some kind of silent alarm back in their system, and they would send somebody. We would have an an 800 number for 247 in case somebody does see an issue, and they can call and report it. But it's generally just remotely monitored for tampering.
Did I misunderstand? Or your company Well, you can require that a report be provided. Okay. But, yeah, generally, you know, for our sites, either me when I still control them or the other companies, they do go to their sites periodically just to check on things and and make sure that the fence is intact and secure. But like I said, just as part of the lease, you can make it a requirement that you as the landlord actually receive a written report signed off by an engineer saying they physically inspected the property, etcetera. Great. Thank you.
So I don't know if you wanna just wait to discuss it amongst yourselves or if you wanna make it back to you or at this time. But we set up a time in August
that you'd like me to float the balloon and time that the board could all I think a balloon yeah. I think that we need a balloon test, and I think we need the coverage match before we reconvene on this issue.
Alright. So what I'll do then is I'll work with my engineer to come up with some available dates over the next couple of months, and I'll work with mister Healy to, you know, present those to you to make sure it's a date that you all are available to actually see the the flying. Usually, it happens you know, we can do it the weekend or during the week, whatever's convenient for you. We generally float it from about 09:00 to 12:00, because afternoon, when the heat from the ground, it messes with the balloon and moves around too much. We need to find a day that has less than seven mile per hour winds. But I'll coordinate with mister Healy and see if we can come with a date and just so we can figure it out. And and I think we'd like to figure out, you know, a a way to get concerned,
nearby residents, involved in that process as well, either physically there or just Yeah. This way, you have we could come up a day at the end of August or something where you'll have ample time to go to part and however you see fit. Like, our our planning board and zoning board routinely do site visits Mhmm. Where we yep. So I I would see this as, you know, something along that nature. Yeah. Absolutely.
Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Thank you for coming.
Alright. The next item is an evaluation of the current accessory apartment law in relation to the Westchester County model accessory dwelling unit ordinance. I'll give it a minute for people that were here for item number one specifically to exit the room and proceed. Alright. Would the representatives of the housing task force like to join us?
Do you wanna review the differences between the ordinance? Yeah. I'm actually gonna ask attorney White. She's she's put together just an outline explaining the factual differences between our current accessory apartments law and the model ordinance. And, you know, we can either she can either go through them or we can have a discussion on each one however you'd like to.
discuss at the end. Okay. Very good. Okay. So I'm just gonna kinda run through some of the differences between your current, ordinance provisions and the provisions that the county has developed in the county's model ordinance. The first thing is, that your ordinance requires planning board approval, for an accessory apartment, with noticing and a fee. The model ordinance, the approval is, granted by the building inspector after reviewing for code compliance. And there is a limitation on the fee. So that's a a procedural difference. The next thing, and this isn't really clear in the model ordinance, but your code says that, an accessory apartment can be permitted on any property in a single family zoning district, and they refer to on any residentially zoned lot, which could be it's again, it's kind of poorly drafted in the model. But that could be deemed to permit them on, like, two family or or other as because it just says residentially zoned, not single family.
The next provision is that your approval runs with the owner. And on a change of ownership, there is a ninety day period to reapply or have the owner or have the, tenant move out. So it doesn't automatically it doesn't run with the land, you if will. It runs with the owner. The model ordinance is actually silent on this. So it would appear that it would just provided other conditions are met. And the one condition that is in both and that would have to continue to be met is that the owner has to reside in one of the units, whether it's the main structure or the accessory dwelling unit. So the the difference here is that, a new owner under the model ordinance would not have to reapply provided they were living at the property. It would just continue. Another provision in your code that is not in the model ordinance is that, you do not permit an accessory dwelling unit in a property if there is a professional office use in the property.
You require that, an accessory dwelling unit be within the main, primary residence building only. They cannot be in an accessory structure. The model ordinance allows, like, accessory cottages, or an accessory structure. What what's interesting is the model ordinance talks about accessory cottages, and it talks about converted garages. It doesn't really address the instance where you have an accessory existing accessory structure that might have a garage and might also have an accessory apartment. It it doesn't deal with that. Under your code, that's clearly not permitted. Both have square foot limitations. They're a little different. The village is a minimum of 400 square feet and a maximum of 750 square feet and 33 no more than 33.3% of the area of the primary structure. The county doesn't have a minimum. It has a maximum of 800 square feet and an odd provision that says, the size of the primary dwelling unit, which I guess is meant to say that if you're building an accessory cottage, it could be the same size. But, again, that's not tell us not a ordinance that's been actually used because there's some things that aren't really clear.
The village only permits accessory dwelling units under the village code if the lot is an existing conforming lot size. So if you have a, nonconforming undersized lot, you cannot have an accessory dwelling unit. There's, nothing about that in the model. And finally, your code requires parking for an accessory dwelling unit, and the model ordinance specifically does not require parking. No additional parking spaces are required. There are some similar provisions about design and visibility of entrances from the street, code compliance, things like that that are essentially the same in in both ordinances. K.
So sorry. Go ahead. Returning to my head. The one there's one that I noticed there about requiring that for the detached unit be behind
the the existing unit. Right. So your your code doesn't even allow detached. Because it's not detached. But But the model ordinance does have if you are gonna have detached, it does have some requirements for those Right. In terms of height setback
Right. Coverage and and where they're located. You know, that that could have one one impact if you're looking at it from one direction, but it could have another impact if you're looking at it from, say, someone who's looking at the house.
So I do have a question, but I wanted to see if Adam Decker had anything to add on behalf of the housing task force. I think that does cover most of everything I had listed as the differences.
I I was just gonna say I re I reread the ADU section of the task force report, and it was you know, continues to be just a great document. Cool. Thank you.
Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things to consider is that, you know, you can think of it as a buffet. That the adopting of the model ordinance may you don't there's nothing stopping you from taking some of this and taking and adding it to your existing.
Right. You don't have to adopt the model ordinance as a whole. You can change certain provisions of your code to incorporate some of the provisions of the model ordinance or just modify some of your provisions. Another thing that's been done some places is just to really try to publicize it.
And I would think but one of the things I think you you rightly point out is some of the some of the things that maybe you know, I think one of the one issue with our accessory dwelling unit code as it exists is that planning board step and the fact that it runs with the owner. And and I think that may be why we're seeing very little use of it as currently in Croton. I think the number of applications has been, I think, surprisingly small. Just a quick question
and for either attorney Whitehead or or you, Adam. But I I know you included the Ardsley Ardsley code in in the report. But I'm wondering, at this point in time, to to me, obviously, the the largest issue is detached versus, you know, non attached. And how many of our Westchester communities would you say, you know, just ballpark or or are there many ballpark that are closer now to how the county model ordinance approaches it versus Croton? I don't know, honestly.
I I I I can fill you in a little on on some of the aspects. Yeah. Most of them still require planning board approval. Yeah. A number do allow it in an accessory structure, although with with varying degrees of requirements. I'm trying to think what the other one. Well, the the The running with the owner. Most of them do require a reapplication.
But on the on the just general question of detached versus not allowing It's mixed. Next door. But the but at least some some do. Yeah. And and some of the ones that do are
lot coverage for the for the underlying zone. You you don't you don't add to it. Okay. Right. So I I think, you know, they're obviously they're good suggestions in the task force report. There's good suggestions, good examples coming out of the model ordinance, and and we can ultimately adopt something that that specifically looks like, none of the above, but takes elements from either the county ordinance or or what individual cities city towns or villages are doing and and make it our own because it's, it fits us the best. So that's I I think that's the interesting
interesting approach that we could do. I I do have some notes that actually looks at some of those instances in different unfortunately, I wasn't in the office today, so I didn't have that file with me. But I do have that, and I can get you more information on that because I did go through that. Also, one question I had is,
having just refinanced my mortgage, what happens when you are applying for a mortgage on a house that you no longer essentially,
within ninety days of your taking the house, you now have a nonconforming structure on your house? Well, you don't have a nonconforming structure. You just have an accessory dwelling unit that you may not be able to rent. Not it's not that the structure is not conforming.
So you'd be allowed to keep the structure. You would just not be allowed to rent it.
And what what's in place right now for the village? That's only that's only if you don't apply apply. Yeah. You have ninety you have a grace window of three months to apply to continue to use the accessory apartment. That's under our current Right. Yeah. So it would be only if you structure itself will be allowed to be maintained. If you did if you did not apply within those ninety days. Correct. Okay.
Yeah. You wouldn't be required to remove it. Right. You might eventually be required to remove, like, the kitchen or something, so it's not. It would be up to the building department. Right. So it's not So it's not a second dwelling unit. Dwelling at least a theoretical
situation where, you know, sadly, you know, the owner has died and the renter is now facing reality with with a new owner who may or may not want to continue.
Correct. Yeah. I mean, you could have a situation where somebody purchases the house and decides they wanna just make it a one family house because they have a large they have a large family. You know? So And that's where you have to build in, you know, the
grace periods and So the planning so it's ninety days. And in your code, the planning board can grant an additional ninety days for good cause. So, like, if you had a death and, you know, there's something just being figured out and you can't sell the property yet, so there's no new owner to apply yet. So your your code does sort of recognize
that sometimes ninety days may not be enough. But with the planning board approval, you'd be purchasing the property with the conditionality of the planning board approval. Right? And so, therefore, the mortgage lender might not value the property because you wouldn't be allowed to show that you had
approval of the planning board until after you You know, that's a that's a tough contingency. I'm not sure that that
Yeah. I mean, just personal experience here. I was gonna say, you just did this. I just bought I just bought a house with a accessory a legal accessory apartment, and I don't that did not come up in my mortgage.
But you didn't you had the right to the apartment. Right? No. They had to reapply? Yeah. To reapply. Yeah. Okay. So Most municipalities
have that provision that it's not automatic to the new owner. It has to reapply. And where he lives, he had to reapply.
So attorney Whitehead, with the planning board approval, what's the standard of review that the planning board has with these applications and what level of discretion do they have?
So there's not you know, it's the same thing. It's always the they can't be arbitrary and capricious. There are pretty specific standards set forth. And I if you meet those standards, you know, some of it is is a little bit subjective about, you know, the appearance. But in general, if it's it shouldn't be that much of an issue for, you know, where the planning board denies these. And I've gotta say that around the county, you don't see them getting denied. You might see someone coming to to speak at a planning board meeting and and so a a minor change being made or something. But but generally, I have not actually heard. And I've heard some stories about some municipalities where they do get opposition, and they still end up getting approved. And that's on the initial, not on the reapplication of a new owner. Well, but the standard's the same on the reapplication.
Right. So, like, I guess, what would be the what would what would be the the purpose of the second look of the planning board on the reapplication?
I guess that would be, like, if you made incorrect statement during your initial application. Like, if you said, you know, oh, you know, we're gonna park the cars in the driveway off the street. Right? And then comes to find out that you actually own six cars, and you've been parking five of them on the street, but only one in the driveway. So you kinda made an incorrect
statement there. But that wouldn't be you. It could also be to make sure that they are living there. Because there is a requirement that the owner reside at the property.
To confirm that the new owner is in fact planning to reside there. Interesting just to see what some of the cottages look like.
How many places how many municipalities in in Westchester County have approved a model ordinance?
I have tables. We have some tables that were put together by the county and, by one of, the mayors. But, the model has not been adopted like this by anyone. Most of the ordinances that are out there have existed for a while. There's been some changes to them over time. Dobbs Ferry is in the process of adopting now, and I think they are incorporating some of the model ordinance.
Give me two minutes. I'm gonna tell you. And what about Tarrytown too? Isn't Tarrytown also? Yeah. Tarrytown's looking out too. Okay. Yeah. It would be interesting to know what those two are doing. I mean, just as in my opinion, you know, going over the list that attorney Whitehead just read off, I think many of these are things that we could work in in some fashion to our existing accessory apartment slash ADU law. I do know that the building in the village engineer and I had a discussion on this, and, you know, he is concerned with the the possible removal of the permit granting authority of the planning board. You know, obviously, the planning board would have a chance to review this law, you know, before it went into effect. So they'll certainly give their own opinion on that. But they do, you know, as they do with all applications that come before them, they take a very interested view on on these sorts of things and taking something away from them and giving it, you know, to the purview of of somebody else, you know, I don't think Actually,
I I think that, you know, for those who who are, you know, potentially in the community might be concerned about this. To me, the planning board involvement is a virtue.
Yeah. I think that something that and, Linda, correct me if I'm wrong. Something that's been done in another community is that the initial approval goes to the planning board, but the renewals are handled by the building inspector. And so that could be some sort of So
some of them and your code actually doesn't do this. But some of them, like, only issue the permit for a certain number of years. And for instance, Hastings, changed a few years ago. Every renewal used to go back to the planning board every three years. And the planning board was like, why do we have to keep seeing these? So it's like I mean, they had months where they had meetings only because they had an accessory apartment renewal, and they always approved them. So it affected So we changed it so that the renewals are done by those license to rent that unit for a specific
But we don't we don't have that, actually. Is that correct, Linda? Right. Correct. I don't believe your code has that. Okay. Fine.
You know, that's why I mean, to me, it seems like, you know, village, you know, took the, you know, pretty bold step a few years ago to statute. And now rather than than saying thinking it in terms of shall we adopt the Westchester County model ordinance? To me, it's more like we we have the existing village ordinance. How can we build on that to to meet the challenges of the of the years ahead? And and it's more like taking an element from here, perhaps the model you have Some of the other cities, towns, or villages have done and come up with something that fits fits right with us.
Yeah. And, you know, for example, where it said that we you know, our current law doesn't allow an accessory unit if there's an office on the property. You know, you have a case that's going before the zoning board on Wednesday for exactly that on Grant Street. So, I mean, things like you know, something like that, you know, obviously, that's not gonna have a negative effect on the village. You know, I'm making the assumption that that's going to be looked upon favorably. But a change like that, I think, could fit nicely in Yep. To our You know, living above the store used to be the great great American
know, just the other the other comment that I wanna make on this is the issue of parking, which I've discussed a little bit already. But, you know, the village is, like a lot of other municipalities, has prohibition on parking on the street during the winter. And, you know, encouraging more cars to be on the street because we're not requiring them to have off street parking is going to be an issue for the DPW, especially, you know, both not only during a storm, but also after a storm and trying to to clear the streets. And so I think that's something that, you know, before if the board did want to consider that, would need to take a very hard look at.
Actually, I had a question about that. What's in the code right now? The the RA five language? Are what are the restrictions on adding to your parking spaces on RA five on other occasions?
I don't know the exact answer to that. But I I We can certainly was probably that those are small lots, and they didn't want a lot more pavement. Right.
I had it. And I think that might be the only restriction on paving more of your lawn in an RA five. Like, essentially, long as you are in a parking spot for any reason other than accessory dwelling unit, it's permitted.
Paving, I think, would I don't know. I'm getting out of pay a paving might require if you were to tear up your lawn and and pave it, that might require some sort of a building permit. I don't know if it does or not. Yeah. Unfortunately it does, then you could you'd be bound by your your It's a store. Side yard setbacks and backyard setbacks. You know? So that would be an issue if you were to encroach on the setbacks. Yeah. So
Dobbs Ferry does require planning board approval. And just since we're talking about parking, they kind of came out with a compromise on parking. And I know I know that the county pushed them not to make it go to the planning board, and the county gave them that comment. And they said, no. We're gonna keep it this way. On parking, they have no additional parking shall be mandatory, but a parking assessment shall be made on a case by case basis during the review by the planning board. So there may be an instance where a planning board says, you know what? This is a street where there's no on street parking. We you really need to provide the off street parking. So it's and in Hastings, it's done similarly. There's a waiver. So the planning board sometimes waives it, but they do look at it.
I'm looking for the expiration of that too. And and the zoning board on Harrison. Can somebody explain the office use again?
I'm not sure. Under your code, if a building has a professional office use in it, you can't also have an accessory dwelling unit. And I'm assuming that was done because of the intensity of the use or something. I don't know. That could be something you want, you know, that. No. The owner was the owner always has to have an accessory dwelling unit, the owner has to live there. So you would have basically this scenario, two residential units,
right, the main and the accessory, and then also potentially a professional office. It's all part of the same property. But one of those things has to contain the owner. The the one of the residential units is still the owner. Okay.
Do we have any idea how much of Harmon is subject to the parking restrictions and the zoning code, or how much of it was pre 1962 built? Actually, not just Harmon. Anywhere in the village.
the excess current accessory apartments? Current no. Just current zoning. In the current like, right now, there's a off street parking requirement for but it's only residences that are pre 1962. Right? I'm sorry. Post 1962.
Just jumping back. I'm sorry. I'm reading dumps very well as I'm doing this. Change of ownership requires reinspection and transfer of the special permit. It they do have a ninety day expiration if the new owner does not apply. And then the new owner has to show that they meet the requirements.
I didn't understand your question, Anam. Could you oh. I thought that the off-site parking only applies to
structures built after 1962. That I think that structures built before 1962 weren't don't have the off-site parking requirement for I don't know when your zoning
first required off street park. Yeah. I could that could be correct, Adam. I I The prior zoning code might have also required some off street parking.
Yeah. I mean, it it's generally is that anything that was around at the time of adoption would be grandfathered in. So if there wasn't any if something was built prior to when it was adopted, then it would not you wouldn't have to go back and add to it.
Right. So Do we have any idea what percentage of, like, residential units or, like, therefore, the off street parking applies to versus how many it doesn't? No. I don't have that.
I mean, Dan could Dan might be able to figure that out, but I don't know it off offhand.
Do we know how much more the notice requirement adds to the cost of an application?
So But I think it's 1961 that it all dates back to you for the parking requirements, December There might have been some parking requirements in the prior zoning ordinance. The current zone might might go back to that. Can't find Terry Towns' draft.
Alright. Brian, did you have a question? Oh, yes. Do we know how much the notice requirements add to the cost of an application?
The notice requirements. I mean, it's I believe the accessory apartments are it's a 100 feet. So
Yeah. Property notice within a 100 feet, so it's not that many notices that would need to be sent. You know, probably a handful.
Right. Any thoughts from the board about specific things that they want to see in the revised version?
Well, I'd say, mayor, I'm I'm interested in proceeding. And I think, you know, I'd rather do it in terms of a session where we start going over the individual options start building up from our existing statute and see what you're I'm interested in the just personally in detached. I think that's a good evolution of what we have. I'm also interested in keeping planning board role in there. I think they do a good job. And then the other aspects of it, I think, are just kind of worthy of us kicking them around you know, one by one.
I would generally concur with Trustee Simon being an ex Planning Board Chairman. I am going to come down on the side of keeping the Planning board involved in the process. And I think that that even though I can see why some people would perhaps not want that, they would feel that that's like an extra burden or something. I think in general, it provides more community input and and actually gives a sounder basis for any decision by the planning board, which I would expect to be generally favorable. So that's I would prefer to see the planning board continue to be involved.
I think it's I think, what trustee, Simon said is a good idea to start out with what we have and then go to the model ordinance and then of that that we want to include in that list. Does that make sense?
It's really updating yours with the model ordinance provisions that Or or any other good examples that
Mhmm. You know, I'd I'd say, you know, within the county. Well, learning from what who's the others that have actually done some stuff. Yeah. Look and see if that would fit more fit better or or not. Right. What what would yeah. I have a question.
I'm sorry. No. I was just gonna say and, of course, keeping the task force involved even though they With we're not. Would would like to slip out.
So is there to to your knowledge, are there any municipalities that for additional added buildings, structures that is it tied to zoning? Like, you know, if you have an RA five is not allowed, but in a larger
Yeah. There are some some of the upcounty towns will allow accessory dwelling units in an ex in an second structure on a lot over a certain size. Or and that is I have the whole because I went through it all when I was preparing. I'll go on the website and watch the ADU program. I went through all of that when I was preparing for that. So I have all those notes. And and, again, I apologize. I, was unexpectedly not in the office today. And just just to
That seems to be what the model ordinance says. That's not what anybody else's ordinance says. It can't because it's supposed to be accessory. It's not supposed to be a second dwelling unit. It's supposed to be a smaller
Sort of defines So I I can certainly get you some examples of of what other codes permit Mhmm.
For in in accessory structures. Yeah. I mean, what it it what it says is an ADU may be no more than 800 square feet or the size of the primary dwelling, whichever is less. So, I mean, if you have an 800 square foot house, I mean, that's a pretty tiny house. So almost in almost all cases, it's going to be, you know, the size.
The 800 square feet would be the max, not the I think if you ask the county, they're not necessarily looking for anybody to adopt this ordinance exactly as it's written. They're looking to
have municipalities look at the provisions as they propose them. Yeah. It's yeah. I think it's it's great because there's there are definitely guidelines, but there's a lot of leeway in there too. So I'm excited. This is a good step forward for us.
We'll put this back on the agenda for August. And Yeah. You know? When is your August work session? You're here. It's the twenty second. Sorry. I know. Did you see that? Did you see that work? Trying to take that Monday off, actually, but that's okay.
I do have that. Oh, you we do. Yeah. Dan Dan would send it to me. Yeah. Do you wanna share it with the group? Sure. So the mayor had asked if I could gather the information on the cost for the current accessory apartments, which Dan O'Connor was able to get for me this afternoon. So there's currently 11 active accessory apartments in the village right now. The most recent one is 87 Maple Street, which was approved in May. There's two accessory apartments that are inactive right now. One is on Albany Post Road, which is currently under construction, and the second is on Observatory Drive. The property changed owners, and the application for the reapplication was not completed. So so those are what we have right now. So the the the last two are pending, would you say? One one is pending. The one on Albany Post Road is pending, I would say. It's gonna you know, it won't get approved until the construction is completed. And then the other one, I wouldn't say it's necessarily pending because they just you know, it could be that they bought the property and decided to make it, you know, just a regular family house.
So what we have here, you know, for example, one of the apartments, the building permit fee to do the to construct the accessory apartment was $813. Another one was $991, $445, $566, $358, $485. So it seems to be somewhere in the area of 500 to $1,000 is the building permit fee. And then there's additional you'd have a plumbing permit fee, which is, you know, on average, a $125, certificate of occupancy fee, which is another $125 and then the electrical inspection, which could be $150. That's an electrical inspection is done by a third party, so that's not a village issued fee. So, you know, depending on the size of your apartment, you're looking at somewhere between 750 to $1,250 to construct or to to for your permitting cost from the village. So which is less than one month's rent, which I'm sure most people are getting.
I was looking at beyond just the costs of the regulatory costs, like the actual costs of the structure. Or
It's gonna vary a lot. Like, you have an existing finished basement and you're just adding some doors and putting in a kitchen versus doing an addition.
I I I don't understand. Vary. How much how much it cost to to do the build out? The construction. I mean, how we couldn't tell that from what we have now. I mean, the cost of going up 50% in the past couple of months. But aside from that, it's gonna vary so much depending on what you're starting with. Yeah. There's no way for us to to note what that would be. I mean, you know, you could kind of you could look and see because, obviously, the building permit fees are based off of what people estimate.
I don't know if Dan has that in the computer or not. He may have to pull the file, so it may take some time. But, again, I caution you. Old costs. Those are old costs. Old costs. You know? And the thing is is that people's estimates aren't always necessarily Accurate. The most accurate.
So right? I mean, people are because they know they're paying a fee based on them.
So yeah. But, yes, we can get you what we have. Okay. So I'm sorry. I didn't realize what your actual question was.
Right. And, also within that construction cost, can we try to find out the cost of parking as a share of that?
It's gonna depend whether sometimes they may have already have space and not have there may be no cost.
Yep. No. I mean, obviously, for the ones where parking is a factor, how big a factor it is. Okay.
Sustainability committee chair, Audin. Thank you for your patience. Yes, Linda. Alright. Alright. Thank you. It's been a long night and day.
You said you had some interest in the food scrap recycling program. Do you want, like, a two second history first or do you okay. We applied for a grant in from the New York DEC in early to mid two thousand eighteen. And we didn't get it initially. We were told, okay. You're gonna go on a waitlist. That means if somebody else's project fails, you come in line. Strangely enough, by September 2019, we got an answer, and they said, okay. You're up next. Of course, by then, was too late to do anything in 2019 because we were looking at a pilot program that would cover spring and summer, and summer was almost over. So we looked and said, okay. You know, in some September 2019, what can we do in early two thousand twenty? Well, then this thing called COVID came along, and it basically put everything off left and right. We also had a number of people who were interested in, working in the, food scrap program either leave the area or drop out of the interest of it or no longer wanted to do anything involving it. So, we looked around it again and again and continued to basically round up the usual suspects, so to speak, and, we found a few people who wanted to work on it. And we still have the original list from a survey that we did a couple of years back as to whether or not that people in the village wanted to participate. And we had a very good return on that, much more than we wanted. We were looking at doing a pilot program involving 40 to 50 families, and we got over 200 that said, oh, gee. We'd be interested in doing something on that. So there was enough interest to go ahead.
Long story short, last March, I requested from, DEC if we could get an extension on our grant, which I'll explain in a few seconds. The answer was yes. We got a two year extension. We have to spend the money, if you will, by 09/30/2024. If you work your way back for a six month program, that would mean roughly April fools to the end of September in 2024 or May Day to Halloween in 2023 because we have to spend all the money by the end of two thousand September 30. I prefer to do the the May to October period. It's just easier to organize and avoids weather issues. And I had originally suggested or we had originally discussed using Municipal Place, but that became very problematic. There was a notion that we need a traffic director because, you know, going in and out of Municipal Place is not easy and, also, a weighing station. It got very complex. Fortunately, because of COVID, so to speak, we were able to whittle it all down again and still keep the same amount of money. It's a 50% grant, about $14,000 in change, which means that the village would have to come up with, an equivalent amount in in kind contribution, which can be DPW labor. It can be, you know, putting up a, a small enclosure or whatever. And there's lots of ways to finagle that around. Then I was told, that, this is going back about a year ago, well, maybe we can get away with some other location. And I suggested Lot A at the parking lot in the train station. But that got shot down, I was told initially, because they were gonna either sell the land or lease the land or do something to the land. That apparently changed, and now I hear it's available again.
So if we can go to the far back of Lot A, that's an almost ideal location. No traffic manager needed. It's not next to a highway. It's basically open all the time. The only downside, which we're still trying to figure out, is I don't know if there's a water connection or if a water connection to be put in. The only reason you need a water connection is that the bins that are used to hold the scraps have to be rinsed out at least, like, once a week. Otherwise, they will begin to develop, you know, a bit of an odor. If we can do some way around that to to use the the water connection at the lost log building that's next door or, you know, rent their faucet or whatever, that would have resolved the problem very easily. In essence, the main thing for the program involves this. The money goes to purchase two types of bins. One that's a bin about so big that sits like on a table where people can put inside of it a biodegradable paper bag, and then they throw all their food scraps in and keep it closed. Then when they filled that up, they closed the bag, and they put it into a second bin, which they use to actually move the scraps to the pickup site. The small bin is not big enough for a week of scraps. It it usually gets filled up most of it in in a couple of days. So the second bin, which looks like a small rolling trash can, would be the thing that people would drag over, put in the back of their car, take that, and then dump that into the 64 gallon tote, which is a really big trash can, that we would have several of at the site.
Then this also was a great simplifying capability. The county came up with a program. They started about a year and a half, two years ago that said they would come and they would pick up the scraps and take them to our preferred site, which is the sustainable materials management site in Cortlandt Manor. Basically, think Peekskill. Originally, we were opposed to the way this is all set up by the county because they wanted to take all the scraps up to Ulster County, which when you start figuring out the emissions from the diesel fumes, kinda negated the whole thing. But taking it to Peekskill, you're talking six, seven miles. So that worked out. And, also, the county said they will pick it up for basically a pittance. We've been looking to do use a commercial carrier that would have cost us between 3 and $4,000 for the six month period. The county will do it for between 3 and $400. So there's now a lot of that $14,000 left over. So I'm not exactly sure what we're gonna do with all of it, but we can we can always spend less and because all we're gonna get back from from DEC is whatever we show up on invoices. So we have the money. As far as somebody to manage it, in Croton I'm sorry, in Ossining, they have a guy who's willing to do the same thing in Croton. His name is Marcus DiSilva. He is the, temporary or, we'll call, part time employee of the town of Ossining, which has had an almost identical program under an almost identical grant going on for the last two years. He also handles getting the the the bins, you know, distributing them out to the people,
selling them the the bags, the recyclable recyclable bags, and keeps track of all this. He, I would suggest, he's still around, but I haven't spoken to him since March, that this would be an ideal person to do it. It's an experienced person. He's been you know, got a good rep from town of Ossining, and it's also a very short distance for him to come and do the whole thing here. He was very open to it, and he, think, would be the part time employee, if you will. He's not really interested in being a contractor. It's a whole bunch of tax issues. He wants to be like a part time employee. And it would be essentially that on every Saturday this is an approximate. Every Saturday between 10AM and 4PM, the site would be open. I image the site as being basically an enclosure, like a chain link fence around it, because you have to have something to hold the bins in because otherwise they will blow away in a storm, and also test some security on the site. That would be between 10AM and 4PM on Saturdays. People would come and drop off stuff. The county would then come on Mondays, whatever time happens with their particular schedule, and they would come with their little truck. And the truck has a prong pair of prongs on it. They fit onto the dumps the the 64 gallon tote, pick it up, and dump it inside, and drop it back down. The truck looks like a very small garbage truck, if you will. There's no compression device in it. And then they take it, and off it goes. And like I say, it's it's I think it came to about 30 or $40 a month is all they're gonna charge.
And so that's a possible program if we then gather the 40 to 50 families, have somebody else aside from Marcus DiSilva as the Croton, you know, liaison. And I think the program is manageable from that standpoint, especially because lot a is ideal. Without having to get without having to deal with anything of the nonsense with a municipal place with all the traffic and everything, I think we have a real viable possibility. That's my story. Yes.
Good story, Lindsay. Superintendent Balbi, would you like to join us as well? And thank you for your patience.
So I just would like superintendent Balbi to kind of explain what would be required for DPW, you know, setting up the site, any maintenance, possible solution to the to the water issue.
So let's start with that one. I guess there is no water connection there at the back of Lot A, and and adding one would mean running a water line from Croton Point Avenue all the way through Lot A. So, you know, I I don't know if that's really worth it or not. There's no way to connect it to the to adjacent building if we've got permission from them? We'd have to I'm I'm assuming they would want some sort of payment for the water. Oh, yeah. Sure. They would. Yeah. So, I mean, I I don't know. I can't speak for the for the building owner. So short of that, I, you know, I don't know what we do with the water. And even with the rinsing of the the Bins. The bins, I'm not sure if there's any regulations as can that go into, like, a catch basin or because it is, I don't know, waste. Right? So I don't know what you're really supposed to do with that either. Yeah. So that's just a a question that's that's kinda out there. I mean, other than than that, I'm I'm assuming all from from the beginning of when we were talking about this, it was you know, we're kinda just getting it set up, and then it's sort of running from not not volunteers, but part time employees or or however we set that up.
That's how I understand it. So we would be able sorry. So we would be able to set up the chain link fence, and then it would kinda just run on its own.
County would be back on Mondays. That's right. They said. Yeah. Lindsay, just a a quick question. So is this presumed to be running for the length of the grant? The the reason I say that is because while there's nothing imminent with lot a,
lot a is not forever because something will happen there at at some point. The whole point of this was a six month pilot. Okay. That's all we wanted to do. I am a little bit skeptical of such programs. I've seen them work, and they're very nice and all that. But working with village people is always going to be an organizing effort, and I'm unclear as to exactly how extensive that would be. I believe that a six month period we built into the grant was to see, is this viable? If you have a lot of people in the first month and nobody in the second or the third Right. We're pretty much done with food scrap recycling as far as I'm concerned. Does that fit hold if, say, over the six month period, we held together that fifty, sixty families
viable if you're at that level? That's what's been viable in other locations. Most of them have actually more than that. I wanted to keep it to 40 or 50 just so we wouldn't have, you know, Right. A big program on our back. And a lot of people calling me in the middle of the night saying, when can I bring my in? Right. Right. So I I would see it as being a pilot to see whether or not we have sufficient consistent going forward interest. And then at the end of those six months, I would shut the whole thing down and sit back and say, okay. Now we're gonna look at all the numbers on this, see whether this is worthwhile, see if there was a hassle, see if we had any raccoons hanging around the area or whatever. And then whatever. And then say, okay. Maybe you wanna find a more permanent location than lot A. Mhmm. Because I understand it is still a temporary place. It's just a really good temporary place for a six month program. That's that's kind of my question. What if at the end of six months, it's it's popular? It's very popular. We wanna continue. Then what? That's your problem. Superintendent
is going across the street to the to the larger lot other than the river. Is there is there a an ease, like, at the far end towards the salt shed? Is there a water connection there? Nothing like The water ends where our building was, where the old DPW garage was. So we'd have to think about Yeah. We had we had discussed
relocating this pilot, if it was successful, to the area behind the salt shed before before echo. Yep. So but, unfortunately, it can't go there right now because that's set to be the staging area for the canopies. Right. Exactly. So once the construction on the canopies is complete, then the program could be located there. Again Yeah. You know, we'll have to That could be a nice transition, I guess. Yeah. And, again, it's kind of, you know I mean, who knows if it will always be that way, but right now, it's a deserted area. Yeah. And, you know, it will give people the ability to just kinda pull in, drop off their stuff, and circle around, and leave. So yeah. So that would be that you know, if and when lot a goes on the market, you know, that would be where we would relocate to.
So at least short term, lot a seems like a a good location if we can solve the water issue.
I have one question on that as a possibility. Even in in town of Ossining, they do not have a water connection. They actually do, and this may sound excessive labor, is they have a guy with a spray container to spray the inside of the barrels, and he has to wash them out, which takes, like, about an hour, which I think is a huge waste of time. But, if we did that and it was with, I don't know, paper I'm sort of spitballing. Paper toweling, so all all that comes off-site, there would be no runoff. And then if that material was disposed of properly through regular trash, that might be a way to do it. It just seems like a Yeah. Almost ridiculous thing to have a guy paint a guy squeeze the water in there and, you know, mop it out.
As long as it's allowed to be As long as it's allowed to be washed out. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a little skeptical on that, but, yeah, I mean I was thinking that also. Yeah. You know, we have the Gardener Portable. Has the has the truck that has the water tank on it. Mhmm. And so that could just drive down there on Tuesdays, let's say, and kinda just hose everything out. Mhmm. That would be us cleaning out the the bins? Unless it's allowed for I mean, do we wanna allow Marcus to I was just gonna ask use the equipment? Could that be in his job description, or would that be That could be I I'm completely unaware of what what this is a a a village owned truck that has water in it? Yeah. It goes the we have a part time employee who goes around and waters the different municipal gardens and, like, the new trees we've planted.
And so it's it's basically a very mini tanker that has a water tank on the back of it. Maybe she could meet him at a at a a specified time with the truck with the water in the truck, and then he could do the whatever appropriate cleaning. The main thing is to have some sort of spray. And, you know, that that that that the you are spreading the water around on the inside without actually filling up the container so you can wash it out and just dump it out. As as long as the dumping out is not gonna cause a problem, then I would say that's fine. Yeah. But where does the dumping out go? It's just gonna run into the ground. It's just talking water.
It's water with now food waste in it that would just go surface runoff, find the catch basin, and and go on its way, which is why I I just wanna bring it up. That's Yeah. Talk about it. That's all. Okay.
But it's no it's not a there's no polluting effect from it because it's just there's no polluting effect from the dumping of I don't know. It's Maybe there is sort of waste. I I don't know. Like, I don't and, know, we're not the first municipality to do this. Right? So I'm sure that question's been answered.
Good question. Where does she do that? At the parking lot. Now there's no spray. It's just
gravity fed. So there's no force behind it or anything. That's still that's still better than getting down inside and wiping it off the inside. Okay. I've spoken to mister DiSilva. He's very open to doing anything like that. He said I think there's just a hose attached to it.
Oh, you mean the water up to water the flowers? Yeah. Yeah. She has a hose on it. It's a I just didn't know where the water came from.
How big is 64 gallons? It's about about this high. But the a stand bigger than a standard loader? It's the next one up. Next one up. The main thing is that these are very light. You know, they only weigh, like, a couple of pounds. And and and my trash can, which is about this big, will blow around in any kind of Right. Weather. That's you've gotta have an enclosure. These things gonna end up in the river somewhere. How many of those would be on the side? Either three or four. Originally, we're planning on four. If we only get 40 people, then three is enough. Town of Austin uses four, and they've got, like, a 100 people involved. So what it comes down to is that we pay based upon the the entire tote being assumed to be full. They they don't actually weigh this stuff. And they've they've Oh, really? Yeah. The county just says, okay. You got four totes. That's I'm making this up. A 150 pounds. If it's four totes that are half full, still a 150 pounds. And they charge us based on that. K.
And how many time the the arson gets once a week pickup as well? That's what they do now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What if the if we need more tows, let's say we get to 50 families and four is not enough for whatever reason, we would just have to add to it? Yeah. We we have if if we don't have to do a traffic manager, that saves us $6,000
out of the $14,000 right there. So we have plenty of money left over for lots of extra totes if you want. The main thing is the enclosure. It still needs to be large enough. So you if you wanna build it for six or eight or 10 or something, build the enclosure big enough. And now initially, we were talking about some sort of office space or something like that. Well, we were talking about a shed initially. Mhmm. But the the totes, to my surprise, are spring loaded. So that means that when you open up, drop something in, closes automatically. So they can be exposed to the outside weather without them building up water inside. And then the truck comes along, picks them up, and because of the weight of the stuff that's inside, it tilts it up and the top opens up and drops right in, and they drop it back down again. So you you could do a shed if you wanted, but it turns out it's really not necessary to keep the water out of the out of the totes.
Okay. What about okay. I mean, another thing for the shed was the person that's actually going to be
Well, that that again, we can eliminate by not having to use a municipal place. We also initially, we were gonna actually weigh the totes. That was the big thing. And the d p DEC really loved this idea because they said, oh, you can be very precise as to how much scraps that you've picked up. And after going through it and figuring it out and having to hire a second person to do nothing more than weigh garbage, basically, I I became a little unenamored with the idea. So I went back to DEC and said, how about this? We'll take a picture inside each tote to see how full it is. And we'll say, okay. If it's really full, that's a 150 pounds. If it's half full, it's 75 pounds. They said, yeah. Fine. No problem. So we got rid of we we stripped the thing down to the point where it's more We could put markers on the inside.
We could put a yardstick down or something. But They had to use a picture instead. Right. I think I guess maybe Frank is saying that if you're gonna have this person there on Saturdays in December outside for six hours, where are they going to stand? Note the time period that I indicated. Yeah. You May 1 to October 31. Right. Oh, okay. In the winter. Six months down. Oh, so we would so so your idea, we're not starting this in the fall then?
There's there's a planning period that has to be, like, three months beforehand. But my notion was to start that delivery deliveries. Drop offs would be May 1 until October 31. That's the six month period. After October 31, talking 2023, we would gather all the data back, you know, decide what makes sense. I'd come to you with a report. DiSilva would be reporting to the sustainability committee once a month on how much stuff got picked up or dropped off or whatever, and any problems he had. We'd come back to you and say, here's the problems. Here's how it worked out. 40 people were there or only 10 showed up or whatever, and that'd be it. And then you could make the decision what you wanted to do going forward. So it starts pouring on a Saturday.
Well, all he's doing is, essentially taking the totes out of the enclosure. Yeah. He'll get there at 09:00. We allow people to drop off at 10:00. He'd be out there even if it's raining because he's in in town of Ossining, that's what he does. They use a park, and he has to go out there and do all this stuff. Most of the work he does is is on the phone, with the participants who always have questions. You know, can I put in cottage cheese? That kind of thing. And, also, to provide them with the small totes, the big totes, and the bags. Yep. And sometimes he drops them off or whatever. And he has a means by which can people can pick them up. So it's either the way he does it right now is he actually at this at this park, he has a a like a box, and he'll put a label on whatever people are picking up. And I'm I was always surprised. I thought, what if somebody comes along and just steals everything? Right? He says, it's never happened. So I called a couple of the other places. Scarsdale. Nobody's ever stolen the stuff. So I thought that's as good an easy thing to do as well. Do they have issues with dumping? The only issue they've had is with the smell of the the totes if they're not washed out. Right. Because all all the bags come you know, it's you you have the plastic tote. You put the the paper bag inside. You close it up when it's done. You put that in the tote the trivium tote. You take that and drop that into all it is is bags of Right. Nothing that removes the bags at at least Well, that's not that's not true. There's a smell even at scars. Oh, yeah. I've tried it. But so there's there's an odor. But no sugar. But they're not dumping anything out of the bags. Unless the bag No. But I'm saying Oh, you'll still have the odor. Saturday. No doubt. Two. That's great. Thursday at 09:00 at night, somebody comes over there and and and throws whatever. Absolutely. That's why you wanna have an enclosure. The enclosure. Put it away so they can't nobody can come except on Saturdays from ten to four. That's You lock them away. That's great. But if it's outside the enclosure, then what do you do? Well, that's what DiSilva is supposed to do. He's supposed to open the enclosure, take them out, you know, at at 10:10 by 10:00, come back at 04:00 Oh, that's put them back in and close it up again. I think Frank If doesn't, you fire him.
No. Frank is Frank is saying that somebody a bad actor comes and just dumps garbage there. And there's, you know, I mean, there's really no way to prevent that unless, you know, we can set up some sort of deterrent. Like, we have wireless cameras now. Right? So we could put up a wireless camera and say, smile, you're on camera, you know, and don't. Hopefully, will deter people. I would shut down the program if that happened.
Okay? This is a situation where you're expecting honesty from people. If they if somebody abuses the system, I say, okay. Six month pilot. All done. Bye bye. Here's the rest of your grant back, DEC, and we're gonna walk you I I know. But the I you know, and Frank can attest to this more,
you know, situations. You have people, you know right? It costs a lot of money to get rid of construction materials. Right? So people just try and find places to dump these things. And if they see an empty parking lot with containers that look like garbage cans in the back, that may be an appetizing place for them to try and dump their
materials. Well, you wanna put it in an enclosed shed so they can't be seen? We we put money we put money into this thing for an enclosed shed because it was gonna be a much bigger deal.
That's fine. I mean We could do that. But okay. We can do that. That that you know, anytime you have a place where you're supposed to dump stuff, people are gonna go and dump stuff. They're not gonna read the sign that says, oh, this is food scraps only. Forget about it. And drive on. They're gonna they're looking for a place to get rid of stuff. It's it's happened in the past. It'll happen again in the future, unfortunately. Again, we're just here sort of bringing up points and then talking about it. That's all. We have the money for an enclosed sheds at block. I'm just gonna say the grant could pay for it. Are you speaking from experience?
Hey, Croton. We built that in originally. The original grant included a a shed that was about $8,000 or something. So and and and with a lock on it and the whole bit. It also had a weighing station, which we're got rid of that completely. So, yeah, we could That's awesome. Enclose shed with the roof and everything, which might be useful to you when you're at the end of the program or something.
Is there any way to move forward the timeline? I know that you said that there is a necessary
set of time for this. But The earliest we could start on this might be around January or February 2023. We need about two or three months to go back and sign people up so they were actually gonna say they're gonna show up, get telephone numbers, get all the totes and bins. That takes a month or two. So that by May 1, everybody has their totes, everybody has their bags, they and the pickup site is all set up, and then they can go from there until May until October 31. But anything earlier than that is if if you start this in February, you got snow, you got all the other issues. So I wanna make it in a time where the where the weather is basically perfect so we don't have any of that nonsense involved.
pickup is year round? Year round. Yes. Yes. And it's from I think they got nine sites they pick up now, nine or 10. So, you know, we're like a little addition. One of which is the town of Ossining. Yeah. And, basically, between the town of Ossining and the Peekskill site, we're right in the middle. Yeah.
The mayor's point is that, you know, I was under the impression that we were gonna be able to start this sooner, like I said, in the fall. You know, waiting until May '23, that may present some challenges for the the use of the site. You know, depending on how quickly we're able to market the the site. You know, it could be by the end you know, by the late summer or fall of twenty three, that site may not be available anymore. So
I wondered about lot a when you first told me it was available. I really thought that was too good to be true. Well, yeah. I mean, it's because it's it's most likely going to be available through the winter. Right? So if we started in October and we're done by March, that would be fine, I would think. But
lot a is is still shoveled out or plowed out. Right? Yes. It is. Okay. Well, the idea of doing this during the wintertime with people, you know, and I really don't like winter, but if you say go with the winter, I'm sure Marcus DiSilva will say fine because he'd like to get a new job at some point as well. When would lot a not be sure? You're sure that's gonna be gone by, you think, October 2023? I can't be sure of anything. Hopefully,
I I'll know a little more next month when we have our work session on the zoning process. Yeah. Rezoning process that we're going through.
So Well, I think what happens here's a bit of my suggestion. Figure out what time period you would you're pretty safe with on lot a, and then come back to me, and then I can see, you know, like I say, who's interested in working on it, if the wants to work in the winter or whatever, and I'll come back with you and answer.
Yeah. We can do that. I mean, like I said, I'm pretty sure I would feel pretty safe with anything through winter of twenty three. So March '23, just based on our timeline of actually looking at the zoning and then approving the zoning and then actually putting out an RFP, selecting a developer, getting that process. You know? So that's what I mean. So we're most likely a year away from actually being able to sell the property. But, you know, that would put us in the middle of the program if we were to do it in a year. Right? So Yeah. Yeah.
So you're looking more like to have something like January talking 2023, January to June or something like that for six months?
I mean, that it's it's possible that that could that that would be okay. I mean, I have to look at the I I wanna talk to the attorney and look at the timeline a little more just on the on the zoning and see if if we think that that would be if it's gonna take that long.
So we would really not need to be start organizing the people in about October, November so that by January 1, they were ready with their their garbage to take it there. Okay. Okay. Understood. Alright. We'll we'll look at that, and I'll talk to Lindsay. Alright. Very good. Thank you. Well done. Thank you very much. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Thank you both. Alright.
You might as well stay there for the next session. You're now on to our other interesting.
Good night, Lindsay. Good night. Thanks, Lindsay. Okay. So I've put together this memo that just kinda outlined some regular summertime issues that we are dealing with in our parks. You know, this is based on some comments that we received. You know, the the geese are are back and forth at Senosqua, and we currently have a contract to have a nontoxic spray application on the grass down at Senosco to try and get the geese to not not to hang out in the park. Right? You know, it's it's currently being done every other week. We're getting ready to move to a weekly schedule. I don't know if that's already started, Frank. Next week. Next week. Okay. So it will be a weekly schedule starting next week. And, you know, hopefully, that will kind of deter the flocks from from being there. You know, the one caveat, which actually hasn't really been an issue this summer since it's been so dry, but it does the spray doesn't work in the rain. So if it if we have a heavy rain if it gets sprayed on Monday and we have a heavy rain Tuesday, it's gonna be washed away, and that will be that.
But, you know, we've also I've had superintendent recreation superintendent, Mark Duncan, speak to the gate guards to remind them to keep the areas as clean as possible. You know? And and the suggest some suggestions have been about the these animal decoys. I got an email over the weekend from a woman who was at Candlewood Lake in Connecticut, and she saw a fake flying flamingos.
When we talk about decoys, these are what Trustee Gollelli was talking about. Yes. Not live. No. No. Plastic animals. No. The reason I said it, you know, we were, you know, we were looking at this place where for son's wedding. Was a comparable situation in terms of this was in February, and they said, well, we bring out the dogs in the spring. And but I thought she was talking about real dogs. Sort of roam there. But if if the if the fake ones work, well, why not?
Yeah. Which won't be an issue, you know, with the gate guards down there. They'll be able to move them. You know, we've had I don't know. You you probably weren't here, Frank. I know I wasn't here the last time we tried this, but I don't think it had good success.
No. This the actually, this spray has been the the has been successful up until this year. I I don't know what it is with this year, but that you know, we tried a bunch of stuff before I got here from from what I understand. Is is Croton Point Park having the same issues? I haven't heard about anything from Croton.
That's a good question. We'd have to we could ask. I'd have to ask them. Yeah. We're not having I mean, I don't think we're also having this issue at Croton Landing either. It seems to just be kind of, you know, concentrated at Senosco for whatever reason. You know? Maybe it's Is it because there's a lot of food? That's why was just wondering. Maybe somebody maybe people are feeding them. You know? Or they're or they're finding Or remnants, you know, from grilling. Yeah. From Friday night. Or from the concerts. From the Friday night concerts. Yeah. From the Friday night. Yeah. It could it could be all these things combined. Yeah. The new mural is attractive. The new mural? Yeah. This is this is a great place. The beauty the beautiful new bathhouse that's been redone. You guys come over. Let's just see all of it. Yeah. It's a bathhouse.
You know, I haven't heard back, so we'll find we'll see if they do or not. But, I mean, I I wouldn't necessarily I'd I'd wanna see how the weekly spraying works. And if that if it's still not effective, then and the county doesn't have free ones to give us, then maybe we could look at purchasing some. But I'd rather kinda hold off on on purchasing until we see if these other
I believe it's a liquid spray that they they put down. And it's just like I guess it's grape. If you're ever there right after this, it smells like grape bubble gum. Mhmm. And I guess they don't like that taste, and they they in their head, they say, we don't like that. So then they stay away. They're supposed to stay away anyway. But it's also flock by flock. Right? So it's one flock will say, we you know, we'll we'll learn we'll learn that the location is no good, but then another flock might come in, you know, a day after a rainstorm, and then we have to reteach. Right. Isn't it we we need a high pitched sound undetectable
Well, thank you very much for the update. I appreciate it. No problem. Thank you, superintendent. Yep. Sorry. Before we finish, there's also one other portion of this memo that I just wanted to discuss. Yeah. So we've also gotten a bunch of comments, questions, complaints, I would say, about the algae growth in the two ponds, Kaplan's and Duck Pond. And, you know, this is a certain plant known as duckweed, which has appeared in the ponds previously. The last time it was this strong, I believe, was six or seven years ago. And, you know, usually, it will dissipate once we have the hotter weather, which is pretty much coming this week. And, you know but we did have a site visit with the aquatic specialist that we have used in the past who has some nontoxic treatments that can be used on the ponds to kind of, you know, shock the shock the plant. You know? And so we're gonna be looking at that as well to try and speed up the the process to have the plant dissipate. So if you see that, you know, you can certainly see it as you drive up or down South Riverside towards ShopRite. But it does actually look better than it did a couple weeks ago. So it is slowly going away, so we're gonna try and speed that up.