Chambana Sun

Village of Ogden Town Board met October 25.

Here is the minutes provided by the Board:

Pledge Of Allegiance:

I: Call To Order: (7:00 p.m.)

Board Members Present

Gay H. Lenhard, Supervisor

Thomas J. Cole, Councilman

David F. Feeney, Councilman

Malcolm E. Perry, Councilman

Thomas J. Uschold, Councilman

Others Present

Noelle M. Burley, Town Clerk Jared Lag

Dan Schum, Town Attorney Mike Dellefave

David Widger, Highway Superintendent Mark Trostle

Joanne Feeney 9 P.I.G. students

Paula Parker

Marcia Davis

Mike Zale

Andrew Cole

Gail Wheaton-Roth

Hans Roth

Travis Choromanskis

Andrea Hansen

Christopher Mears

Tony Mattia

Frank Choromanskis

Bob Criddle

John & Susan Amon

Danna Magar

Linda Tague

Lyle Tague

Tom Hall

John Hibsch

Purpose of the Meeting

To audit claims, act on monthly reports and remittances, and to transact such other business which may legally come before said meeting.

7:00 p.m. – Public Hearing: Finance Director, Paula Parker will review the Town’s tentative budget for the fiscal year beginning January 1, 2018.

Supervisor Lenhard: Good evening. We will start with a presentation from our Finance Director, Paula Parker.

Paula Parker, Finance Director: We are going to look at the presentation tonight. I would like to note that the actual Public Hearing that the Board will be taking action is really going to be on November 21, 2017. We are going to present tonight and if you have any questions I would be happy to answer them for you. For 2018 we are looking at a total tax levy of $6,924,955.00. This tax levy encompasses all of the funds of the Village. We have several special districts, lighting, sewer and water. We also have the Highway fund, the General fund and the Town outside the village fund. The tax cap this year after adjustments, transfers and exclusions was about a little over $7,000,000.00. That was our tax cap it was about 1.84 percent when it was all said and done as compared to what we levied in the previous year. I am happy to say that this year, we are going to be underneath that tax cap by about $5,000 and for anyone that was here last year which would probably be my colleagues or if you all remember, last year we were over the tax cap because our tax cap last year was only 6/10 percent. We ended up going over another 7/10 of 1 percent. This year we are going to be under. Rates, everyone should focus on rates this year because it is important. Our Village rate last year was $4.17 and it will climb up about 7 cents. The total is going up from $5.71 to 5.77. Why are there two different tax rates? There are two groups of individuals in the Town of Ogden and we went through a lot last year. In the black circle we have the Village residents, the people who live in the Village of Spencerport. They have to pay for the General fund services which I will give you a list of. The $4.25 relates to those services and the people in the Village only pay that amount of money. In the white circle we have the people who live outside the Village limits and they are going to pay for all the General fund services. They pay for things like the Building Department, the Planning and Zoning Board, the parks, highway services, road work, brush removal. For all residents living anywhere in the Town paying for things like Police, Animal Control, Recreation, Town Board, Town Clerk, Highway Administration which provides support services, our Senior Center and our Historian, all of those services cost per thousand $4.25 and everybody that lives in the Town whether you are in the Village or not has to pay for all those services. Over here we are looking at services for Parks, the Building and the Zoning. Right now, we don’t levy any taxes in that fund. We are able to support that fund balance and by the revenues we are bringing in against that. However, the Highway funds services, road work, brush pickup, snow, plowing and removal, equipment maintenance and purchases, the people living outside the Village of Spencerport have to pay an additional $1.52. The people who were in that white circle have to pay the $4.25 plus they pay the $1.52. I am going to graph everything out for you. The bottom line in blue is going to be the Village residents pay, the top line in red is what the people living outside the Village of Spencerport pay. As you can see it is a nice even line. Most of the time they are running parallel to each other and this demonstrates that we are being fiscally responsible. We are trending up but we have salaries, wages, equipment to purchase, a lot of things. There is not any spice and this is what we want to avoid. This represents the total tax dollars excluding the special districts. From 2007 all the way to what is budgeted in 2018. You can see it’s a smooth line, we’ve had some years where we went up slightly and the rate if you remember from the previous graph they were the same. There were only slight increases. We had a little bit of a downturn in 2014 and the last couple years things have been going up slowly. Here is what we are doing for our major funds. Part-Town would be outside the Village. The Highway fund again would be outside the Village. The Town- wide Drainage which is self-explanatory, everyone pays for drainage. I am not going to bore you with the numbers. We have revenues such as mortgage tax, other revenues like pilot revenues. We are going to use a little more fund balance this year, we’ve been using about $130,000 in the previous years and this year we are going to bump that up a little. The amount to be raised in taxes is just under $4.9 million, Part-town is $983,000, some nice revenue of just under $650,000, Fund balance just under $340,000 again no taxes being raised under that fund. Highway’s taxes have gone down slightly about $3,700. In the highway we are going to be raising just about 4 million. Revenues in both the Highway and Part-town, the largest piece of revenues we have is sales tax. You buy gas or shop in locations in the town; we receive that money from Monroe County. Here is the problem, I can’t put that money in the General fund so I can’t pay for the Police Department and the Library and the Board, I can’t do that by low however you take that sales tax revenue and put them against the two highest revenues we have for those two funds. We are going to use fund balance again and the Highway is going to levy about $1.5 million in taxes. The Town-wide Drainage is a flat fee per property is $22 per property. It is to replace the surface drainage in the town, this year we are looking at $225,000. We anticipate very little revenue of it in sales tax. We are going to use some fund balance so we will be raising $135,000 in fund balance there. Add to those numbers the special districts, water, sewer and lighting. Those districts are supported solely by the people who have those services in their area so it is just under $500,000. There are a lot of revenues going to those districts. We are going to use a little more fund balances this year. We are actually going to raise in taxes those districts the $457,000. When we looked at that $6.9 million number in the very beginning that is all inclusive of all these numbers. That is the bottom line of what we are going to be raising in taxes. Looking at the General fund distribution for types of service, Public Safety which is our Police Department, that is the biggest share of our pie. This includes everything for our Police Department, the salaries, fringe benefits and their contractual needs. Next is our General Government, things like Personnel, Finance, Board Divisions, the Town Clerk, the Court, Historian and Senior Programs. The Town is fortunate we really don’t have any real debt. We transfer $10,000 a year into our Capital Reserves so that we can keep our fitness equipment up to date and the $30,000 is for a parking lot improvement that we have been doing for the last few years. Looking at the difference between the General fund which you remember was the Public Safety piece and we are going to look at the Highway and Part-town fund and the biggest piece is transportation like snow removal, road building, road repair, brush removal, salaries for the men that serve over there, the equipment that we buy. Culture and Recreation that is the Parks and Recreation Department system. Home and Community services are things like the cemeteries, we have our Zoning and Planning in there too. The General Government is mostly to the Highway fund and that is mostly liability insurance. Public Safety is going to be our Building Department and our Fire Inspection Safety. There are some differences. The largest part of our budget are salaries, 40% so pretty much $4.5 million. The second is contractual and that would be consumable supplies, utilities, day to day needs , 27.6% fringe benefits, the ones that relate directly to salaries, your health insurance, your retirement, workers comp insurance, things that are benefitted to employees, that’s at 23.4%, our equipment needs are up this year, a little over a million dollars and we are usually at $700-$800 thousand. The debt transfers that I spoke about earlier that is less than 1%. Speaking of new equipment what are we going to buy and how we are going to pay for it. Out of our General fund we’ve got the cooling tower replacement and I would like you to notice that that number is bolded. The next thing is a fire alarm panel replacement. Each year we put money into computers and technology, usually we do buy 2 cars for the Police Department in some shape or form. We have added to AED units for those cars. We are looking at doing some air conditioning improvements for upstairs. We have some other miscellaneous repairs and then there is that $10,000 contribution to our capital for our fitness equipment. Subtotal here is about $200,000. However that is not the impact to the budget because with the public hearing we are going to take out $78,500 and that money will pay for the cooling tower, the fire alarm and the air conditioner repairs. We try to put more money into the Capital Reserve every year and the reason we do that is so that when we have these larger repairs, we pull that money out and then that is like our savings account and it keeps those taxes from doing what that graph did. It helps smooths things out. Part –town is the same idea. We are going to replace a vehicle for the Building Department. We are going to get a mower, a utility vehicle set. We worked with our department heads, they plan their equipment years out usually. We are going to spend $138,000, we are going to take some money out of our Capital Reserve at $113,000 so that is the tax implication $25,000, which in that particular fund we don’t raise taxes. Highway, lots of equipment this year. We are going to buy a big dump truck, a plow truck, some computer switches, some surplus equipment and we are going to spend about $650,000. However, we have some revenue in that fund, we are going to sell some things at auction, we expect that we are going to get about $170,000 for the sale of that equipment and then we are going to pull $100,000 out of Capital Reserve and that will give us $376,000 which has impacted the budget. One thing I will tell you is that this revenue comes in greater than what we budgeted then we will take that difference and we will throw that money back to the Capital Reserves so that we can use it again in a following year to purchase more equipment. Two costs that I think every government struggles with are retirement costs and health insurance. This year we had a little bit of a break. We have a decrease, we were down to 15.8% from 16%. It is better than going up. However for the Police Department we saw a slight increase, only 1/10 of 1% here. This benefit is based on the salaries of the employees. If you give raises or there is a lot of overtime, we have lots of snow to plow or brush to collect, we have obligations to the Police Department. Regardless of that, those salaries directly impact what we have to pay in retirement. Over the past few years you can see how low it was back then and now what we are budgeting for is $724,000. That is staying relatively flat from what we budgeted in 2017. So, again we are hoping that it will flatten out. We are looking at the Police Department in this green line going up just a bit. Overall on the yellow line which represents the total, we are pretty much staying even. All in all we are staying flat which is good news. However, we have to budget for worst case scenario. If there is overtime in the budget, I have to budget retirement against that because that is what we have to plan for. We have a base plan for insurance this year the high deductible plan. The cost for a family is $16,545. It was $15,000 so it has gone up about $1,500 in a year. Single coverage from $6,700 to $6,200 again not even half of a percent. Employees pay 10% towards those premiums. Health insurance, again it is growing. Not as much as retirement did but we had a definite uphill climb in 2015 we saw some leveling out. We joined the FLMHIT Organization and saw some savings but for the last couple years we have seen increases I think probably greater than we would like to see but we have managed to hopefully over the next few years see those numbers flatten out. We are trying to contain those costs to the best of our abilities. That is our budget in a nutshell, again $4.25 is the rate for people living in the Village and $5.77 for everyone who lives outside the Village. We will be under the tax cap by $85,000.

Supervisor Lenhard: Does anyone have any questions about the budget. My guess is everyone is satisfied.

7:30 p.m. – Public Hearing: Application of Solar Energy Systems Overlay District for Delaware Solar.

Noelle Burley, Town Clerk: Read the Legal Notice

Supervisor Lenhard: We would like to hear your presentation and when the presentation is over we will open the public hearing and everyone will be allowed to speak.

George Reed: We are seeking approval for a solar energy system overlay district. I am here to answer questions about the electric and solar. We also have our Engineer here from Schultz to go over some of the site plan questions. We are proposing four separate solar community gardens. There will be around 2 megawatts ac of power, four separate interconnections. The four projects will be available for subscription. From a community standpoint we are exploring two different types of financing for this to allow the people in the town to participate. Legally anyone who is in RG&E load zone can participate. We will most likely have a limited time period of about 60 days where the residents can participate so that anyone who would like to get in can. Most likely there will be a 10% discount to kilowatt hour charges on your electricity bill. If we do have enough interest we may actually sell about one or two of the projects to residents if they want to own them. We may separate one of these projects out if there is enough interest in the town or locally where people can actually purchase instead of putting 8 panels up on your home you still quality for tax credits if you do that. That is the concept, I think we are here tonight to seek approval for the c-zone. We are here concerning questions people may have.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: What type of screening or buffering would you propose around each of the solar sites?

Schultz Engineer: There are many ways you could do that, work with the Planning Board and the Engineer to solidify how that is going to work. One option is that these are set far back from the houses and the roadways and most of these houses in the area have some sort of substantial vegetation behind their house between the farm field and their houses. We can go in and we can supplement that buffering to keep it away from seeing the solar arrays all the time. We would like to avoid putting a row of trees on the sideline of these things because then you are just going to have trees in the middle of the field. The preferred way is to supplement what is already there.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: You’re map seems to show fencing, will you address that at each of the sites?

Schultz Engineer: Each site will be encompassed by an 8 foot chain link fence. There will be gates for access. There will be access off of Colby Street and there is an existing farm right there, we will beef up the farm lane for the trucks that will be coming in and out during construction. That farm land will remain and the fence will be there.

Councilman Perry: Would you mind commenting on the size and acres. People might understand that more than the megawatts.

Schultz Engineer: This farm field, there are three parcels all owned by Rod Stettner which has about 193 total acres. Each one of these fenced in enclosures is about 10 to 11 acres and totals out to be about 44 acres encompassed by a fence.

Councilman Uschold: What is the distance between the garden and the nearest house?

Schultz Engineer: The nearest property line is 606 feet and that house is about 100 feet away from the property, so about 700 feet or so from the nearest house.

Councilman Uschold: What is the expected life span for these panels?

George Reed: The typical lifespan is 25-30 years from an investment standpoint from an investment standpoint the panels degrade at about a half a percent a year. After 30 years people are usually subject to better technology, if we want to continue with that we would have to update the panels with whatever the latest and greatest is or to decommission the system and remove it. We have obligations under our lease that if it doesn’t extend that we remove the system at our own cost.

Supervisor Lenhard: Have you visited any of the residents of the surrounding area.

George Reed: I have not personally. I am not sure if you guys have done any outreach.

Supervisor Lenhard: Did you write a letter to them?

George Reed: We did not, unless the landowner did and I didn’t know.

Councilman Uschold: So contacting them is not a part of your business plan?

George Reed: We interact in the meetings and if anyone has questions or concerns we are happy to work with them.

Supervisor Lenhard: This gives the people who live in the area an opportunity to come up and you can raise your hand if you want to speak or ask them questions.

Jared Lag: There is clearly room in the drawing where you can put more communities in there, is there any plan for that or does it stay like this?

George Reed: We would like to build whenever we have a willing land owner and a suitable site. We would like to build as much as we can, however we are limited by the utilities, circuits and the kind of capacity that they have. When we have some land that is suitable we apply for a connection agreement and then they come back to us and say we have enough room to fit this much capacity on that line and it is going to cost you a certain amount of dollars to do this. This is the maximum that we can fit on these two existing lines that is economically feasible.

Deb Iacuzzi: When I first heard about this project it has turned out to be more than what we originally thought. I have done a lot of research and I have been here before. I have been very busy, I have a sick husband and a sick mother. I went to the town to look at these maps and it was very hard visually. I have cataracts and it would have been nice if they provided each resident with a smaller copy of this so we could actually look at it at home and the project did turn out to be bigger than we thought originally when I came a while back. I know on each one of these there are about 108-110 panels and I just want to know where the power source would be. You have to have a power source in order to run the panels. If I am at 782 Washington Street, the sign went up where the old snowmobile trails are which sets back a little where the brush is and I barely noticed it. If I didn’t get the letter I wouldn’t have known. Then you went around Colby Street you see it where the other part of the snowmobile trail used to be which is not there anymore. The thing about him saying for residents to buy in to the solar energy, I did studying on that from other areas and it takes many years to recoup money for that so I don’t really know who this is benefitting. Is it benefitting the farmer because he is leasing the property to Delaware Solar? Who is benefitting from the energy the panels produce? Is it actually the residents or does it go somewhere else. I am not in favor of it for one because behind me there is property that was not tilled by the farmer, Mr. Stettner. I am trying to explain it because back there when I try to look at it I am having trouble seeing it when I am looking at the town, like I said it would have been helpful if we all had a smaller thing of this so we could actually study it and look at it. I am just wondering why it turned out to be so much bigger than what I originally thought. I was just thinking it was going to be one section, I didn’t know it was going to be this big.

Supervisor Lenhard: I think you are referring to the first configuration we saw from a different company.

Deb Iacuzzi: No, it was Delaware Solar because that is who I got the letter from. I came to your town meetings. I am very curious about that. I want to know how much this will depreciate my property value too. In some towns that I have studied from other areas it has done that so I don’t know whose burden of proof that has to fall on.

George Reed: Energy production is going to be coming from the solar panels. That is what we are trying to do here. Building systems helps out New York’s goal of moving toward 50% renewable energy generation by 2030. These are coordinated efforts between the State and NYSERDA and other companies that are going to support the development of this and it will move the state of New York towards a sustainable energy future. The power is going to be generated here and it will convert the energy into dc power which then moves to an inverter which converts that to ac power which then goes into a transformer and then gets interconnected to the grid. The power that is generated will be used to lower the cost of energy to not only town residents but anyone else who subscribes to that power directly should receive a 10% discount. The benefit of that system will flow directly to the town’s people or whoever subscribes to the system. If you buy 2% of that system you will get 2% of the output and you won’t pay anyone for it. It is meant to create a renewable energy structure in towns throughout the state and directly benefit the people of the town. If it is not fully subscribed by resident then we are able to allow subscriptions to anyone who is in RG&E territory, I believe it is load zone B. If you want to give me your contact information I am happy to get you details.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: It was represented in a different application but the subscription is going to be on a first come, first serve basis once they have approvals which means that those of you who would like to subscribe and have some type of discount on your RG&E bill would show up as an item and your bill would be entitled to subscribe as the applicant has indicated, first. If there is a full subscription there wouldn’t be any energy that would be subscribed for in the town. If it is not a full subscription that is excess energy which would be sold on the open market to anyone in the RG&E load zone B. The volume of energy produced by this type of system would easily be subscribed to people within the town if you chose to do that.

George Reed: Each system should support depending on the size of the home around 400 homes so you are talking about 1600 homes throughout the four projects.

Councilman Feeney: Does that hold true with the people that live in the Village too?

George Reed: Yes.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: I don’t know if that is true or not. The Village already has an agreement with a power grid outside of Niagara Falls. They have their own service. With respect to the transformers and switching equipment, is there going to be more than one site or is there going to be one central location for conversion and transmission?

George Reed: Each project will be a separate and distinct project. That is the way that we have to design them in order to comply with the laws in the state. Each one will have a centralized inverter and transformer.

Schultz Engineer: Each one of these areas would have a line coming out the road and it would be underground going out to the pole but the actual inverter and equipment would be centralized inside each of the systems.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: So they would be enclosed in the chain link fence area?

George Reed: Yes, there won’t be equipment all over the field. They do make a little humming noise just like any other transformer that you would see. I think it is about 79 decibels. That is the sound volume of someone speaking about 3 feet away from you. At night they make no noise because they are not producing anything.

Travis Choromanskis: I believe one of my properties is one of the closest to the solar array. My first question is regarding the berm. If you could see on this map here I have a view that you mentioned previously a buffer with trees and I didn’t really like that answer with respect to a berm being included. As you can see from my back deck and my second story, if there is not a berm installed my beautiful view of the farm land is not a sea of glass and a chain link fence. Another question that I had was with respect to the transfer lines are these going to be above or below ground?

George Reed: I believe they are all underground. The only thing you would see outside the chain link fence would be the telephone pole.

Travis Choromanskis: Another question I have or concern that I have, one being that this is three times the size as what was previously communicated to us. I got home and I got a letter from the town mentioning 60 acres and now we are talking 193 acres if I am not mistaken.

George Reed: The entire lot is 193 acres and the area that the solar system is going to be is around 60 acres total.

Travis Choromanskis: I could be mistaken but the letter that I received mentioned that the land parcel was around 60 acres. The letter says approximately 60 acres to be rezoned but we are rezoning 193?

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: The point of the public hearing is to consider an overlay district for lands and we identify them by the entire tax parcel. Obviously the site itself is substantially smaller than the entire ownership of Mr. Stettner. If the board were to act favorably the parcel that would need to be applied to the overlay district would be only that lands which are proposed for the farms not all the way out to your boundary.

Travis Choromanskis: Understood, so again like one of my neighbors mentioned I am concerned. I mean I have a beautiful view of open farm land that has been there for a long time and that is part of the reason that I moved to Ogden. This is really based on my property and my view, this is a horrible thing for me to see a sea of black glass and glare. That is not something that I want and I think it is going to negatively impact my property value as well.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: Not seeing the map, you property runs north or south?

Travis Choromanskis: I am towards the east.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: Typically they point the panels towards the south because that is where the dominant sun comes from. The panels would be tilted from south to north. I am not sure how that would impact your visual. I am trying to understand.

Travis Choromanskis: That brings up another good question, are these panels motorized?

George Reed: All of our systems are fixed tilt systems.

Travis Choromanskis: So they do tilt as the sun moves.

George Reed: No. Fixed tilt means they will be set at a 25 to go degree angle facing due south. We can send you some information on glare studies. The glare is not going to be an issue, it is not something that is made to reflect. I am not sure if you have something to suggest in terms of your view. It would not be an issue to provide what you want in terms of view or the type of trees we put up so that it doesn’t look bad.

Travis Choromanskis: I don’t think there are a lot of people in the town that are going to agree with you. Building trees and having a buffer is better than nothing, I would prefer not to have this in my back yard at all.

George Reed: The issue is that we need to have areas where there is sufficient energy and connection ability. We would love to put them out in the middle of nowhere but the cost to upgrade the amount of lines just to transfer that power is usually cost prohibitive. It is very rare that we are able to find a decent sized system where there is not at least one or two people who are impacted in some way and that is the reality of the situation. We can do whatever we can try to do to mitigate that but that is the reality. Someone is going to have to view these.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: The mechanics of the process, the applicant is here to ask the board to consider applying the overlay district to a portion of these lands. If the board were to act favorably in that application the next step would be for this applicant to go back to the Planning Board where every issue whether it is visual noise, traffic would have to be addressed. If it were to get that far because we are a fairly conservative board who is in the interest of the resident first, being here tonight and hearing a general comment doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be more favorably address to your satisfaction at the Planning Board. Understood that the best advice would be not to have it.

Travis Choromanskis: Thank you that clears it up for me. I think that is the end of my questions. Thank you.

Supervisor Lenhard: The Planning Board has the same operation. People will be able to speak there as well. The more questions the better so that we all understand.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: Out property is not impacted by this but our neighbors did have some questions because some of our neighbors did not get letters from Ogden about this or knew anything about this. They were concerned about why the neighbors next door to us hadn’t gotten a letter and they are in this area also. One of the things that Ogden has always has been good about is the Recreation Department and not that I am fond of the noise from the snowmobiles but what is going to happen to the trails that go across so that these people are safe? Is there a tax break going to be given to this company or because this was residential farm land will they be paying taxes a little higher because now they are going to be paying into a commercial company who is making a profit and how are those profits going to benefit the Town of Ogden.

Supervisor Lenhard: We are researching that.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: I really think that is important.

Councilman Uschold: What we can say is that the state constructed these types of solar farms and made it a default situation to where they would get a tax break and what we have elected to do is say that they are not going to get that tax break. We have opted out of that. We could evaluate something on a case by case basis for a payment in lieu of taxes but we don’t see that we are interested in going that direction either. This now becomes an issue for the Assessor to determine how will this particular proposed land be assessed and there are issues that come into play because if it is in an Agricultural District it is now being used as something other than that and how will that be different. There are some issues that we don’t know the answers to yet.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: Because we have seen a lot of tax things given to companies, not here but in the city of Rochester and then the companies leave. Then the city is left with property that like he was saying if it doesn’t work in a few years that they are going to take their panels out, well then what happens?

Supervisor Lenhard: It would resort back to farm land.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: Ok but the man who owns this is leasing this land and he is the one who is paying the taxes and not them right?

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: That is between the land owner and the developer.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: Ok but because he had farm property and was paying farm taxes, will that be taken into consideration also because we as tax payers are paying a lot of taxes.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: Typically it is that any increase in taxes as a result of changes would be paid for by the developer and not the land owner. The developer is the person who would be doing this for a profit and they would be paying the increase.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: I would think that the company would want to protect their panels as far as with a fence around them because of our deer population. Those poor deer are not going to know that that is a glass panel that they can’t jump into in the dark. There are going to be a lot of panels that are going to be broken and then I just see that that is going to be a problem. We are going to have a lot of deer that are going to be hurt too. We need to protect his property.

Councilman Cole: They are displaying an 8 foot fence and that is what we call a deer fence. It will keep the deer out.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: But will it go around the whole farm? Because when you were talking you were saying some of it was and some of it is not.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: Each of the facilities will have the fence around it but the whole 193 acres will not be fenced.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: That makes a little more sense because I am worried about the deer. The maintenance, as long is someone is taking care of it that is important but I think that the board should look at the taxes because if we are going to abstain our community and we want to have extra revenue too and we are going to deem it to be commercial property then we need to look at this.

George Reed: We are developing this project and then as I mentioned before we are financing it. The revenues on this project are not nearly what they are in other areas. The amount that the system owners have they are not making a ton of money. They are making a return on their investment given the risk. It is our hope to enter into some sort of pilot negotiation with the town so that any investors that come to the table understand what their obligations are. On top of that if we decide that there is enough interest in the town so that we are selling the system to actual town residents, any property taxes that are levied by the town could be passed on to the town people themselves because the people in the town will own it. We are going to attach the property tax value to the cost of that system. From our view we understand there has to be revenue coming in from the pilot but we hope to reach something that is reasonable for everyone. We also as a developer take responsibility for any raises in the taxes.

Councilman Cole: This is one of the first presentations where it has come up that the developer is going to sell one of these systems to an outside source. If we rezone this property, to me there is a big complication if you decide to sell this to some other entity.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: The answer to the question is that it doesn’t matter if it is a mall or a solar array. It is a product that can be sold on the open market and what the town would need to do from the outset is decommissioning if the product is not feasible. Our present ordinance requires that the present developer before a shovel goes in the ground has to post a bond for the full amount of the decommissioning costs. That is money that goes into the town and it goes into an escrow so that if the developer went broke and the farmer walked away the town could hire someone to take the panels out and the fences down if need be. That is control within the code so that we are not relying on this company. These things have tremendous tax breaks for the developer in terms of the developing these sites, state taxes and incentives and all of those kinds of things at the state level. Those are going to flow to the developer once they develop this site they are free in the open market to sell this to someone else and put a bigger group together. Our job is to make sure that the maintenance agreement and the decommissioning obligations are met up front.

George Reed: We have submitted as part of our application a willingness to enter into an agreement with the town where we can provide examples of other agreements we executed with other towns. Typically what we put up is $60,000 per project before we start construction with a 1% contribution escalation for each year.

Supervisor Lenhard: How long have you been in business?

George Reed: Delaware River Solar has been doing this as soon as the law came out so summer of 2015. This was not allowable before that time. We have been doing solar investments in Massachusetts for 8 years.

Councilman Feeney: Why did you choose Ogden?

George Reed: We are a New York based company. Our headquarters are in New York. Our CEO has a cattle ranch in Sullivan County as well as a couple farms. He was the one who got really interested in this when the community laws came to New York so he started talking to his neighbors and fellow farmers. A bunch of them signed up and came up with a strategy to see where on the grid these systems would be most useful. They also reached out to different land owners. I am not exactly sure how this place was found specifically but generally that is how the process goes.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: One of the questions that were asked previously was that you have approached RG&E with a connectivity agreement?

George Reed: Yes. We have applied for connection for all of these projects. We have gotten feedback and cost information and I was driving up from New York today so I wasn’t in the office but I believe today was the last day to make payments against those. You have to either put down full payments against those commitments in order to reserve your spot in the que and we must have done it today since I am still here. We put a bunch of money down to reserve the spots.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: It is my understanding that they actually calculate the cost to upgrade their transmission lines and tell you what the final numbers are. Do you know those numbers yet?

George Reed: Yes, we know that number and we paid at least 25% of it on each project. It is a lot but we understand the needs of the utilities.

Patrick Smith, Building Inspector: We have a town law that speaks about decommissioning that the company has to give us 150% of what it costs to decommission prior to issuing a permit. It is not negotiable. You mentioned something about 60%. Our law says 150% prior to getting a permit.

Supervisor Lenhard: Did you know that?

George Reed: I personally was not aware of that. The $60,000 is based on a NYSERDA study that was done by the state. They looked mostly at systems that were decommissioned in Massachusetts. They issued guidance saying that $60,000 was the amount. If yours is 150% then it would be $90,000 or we can make an argument that it is less because there is a significant salvage value in this equipment. If in two years we have to decommission then the panels will be over a million dollars. We can get people to do that for free and sell the equipment if things go wrong but we are open to negotiation on that for sure.

Mike Dellefave: I stopped in the clerk’s office and they mentioned a plan to put up a fence with shrub work and things along the edge. That at a minimum would be good. I heard the engineer mention that they prefer not to put a row of pine trees which I understand that it is cheaper to do. It will be a view across the whole thing. I am not opposed to it, it is not my property, I don’t own it. I only moved in two months ago. I heard you mention $60,000 with a 1% increase. In 20-25 years is that going to be enough to decommission the equipment and two is that number you provide or is that a number provided by a study? Also, have you requested an upsize in service for possible expansion later on? Have you made any plans to expand in the future if they let you?

Councilman Uschold: Let me interject for a moment because Patrick, our Building Inspector got up and stated the law for us which essentially states that the decommissioning amounts to be paid up front is 150% of the cost. The point of that is it may be 100% today but in 25 years from now it will be more. That is what he intended to address.

Mike Dellefave: As you mentioned, the panels degrade after 25 years or so after the end of the 25 years they are not really worth it and I find it hard to believe that someone is going to purchase 25 year old panels that are past their life expectancy to use them somewhere else. I just wanted to make sure that we will have enough money for stuff. We have had a lot of that happen in Rochester. The issue with it going there, like I said I don’t care, it’s not my property. I just want to make sure there is a proper plan in place.

George Reed: In terms of a screening that is kind of what we are here to talk about. When we get to the Planning Board we will have to show an analysis. If there is anyone here that lives here I would like to get your contact information for what you would prefer. My understanding is that what we have applied here is the max utility circuit. We do not have any plans to expand here in this area. If anything happens it would be a situation where we would want something back because the utility companies find out that the cost they are trying to charge us, because they have different connection costs depending on when they were submitted so some of them are more economically feasible than not. Where we come out in terms of decommissioning costs, where we come out in terms of pilot, one or some of these projects may not be economically feasible. We have not current intentions to expand.

Frank Choromanskis: One of the things I want to address was what everyone else that has come up here and discussed and that was the abandonment. The town was wise in acquiring the 150% because people make promises but then 20-30 years down the line things don’t work like they should and then the town gets stuck. I understand that Delaware would propose to you what the costs are, your town engineer would approve it and have to review those costs. The only caution I would make is again the same comment that was made, what happened down the line when it cost more to decommission?

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: That is the elephant in the room, only because if you could tell me what it is going to cost to put a roof over your head in 25 years I would be impressed. Right now the only thing we can do is guess.

Frank Choromanskis: If you had to make a guess then guess high because you don’t want to get stuck holding the bag. If that is too high then you give back whatever wasn’t used.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: Typically what I understand is that this development is nothing more than posts in the ground so it is not like you are doing major construction. It is still a cost.

Frank Choromanskis: There are underground lines, batteries, fencing. You made the comment that the only thing that would be rezoned was the four red areas. Dan Schum, Town Attorney: That is just my recommendation to the Town Board. Just the parcels that are actually going to be developed for solar purposes would be subject to the overlay district.

Frank Choromanskis: Reading the law it sounds like you can only use half of the acreage that is rezoned so it sounds like you will have to have an overlay district of 88 acres so that they could put 44 acres on there.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: I am not familiar with the reference that you are making.

Frank Choromanskis: It says that the terms of subject coverage shall not exceed 50% of the lot.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: The lot is the tax parcel which is the much larger piece.

Frank Choromanskis: I was assuming that the lot is what you approve as the overlay district. Another thing that I was confused about was the town law for the overlay district requires that they have to show proof of land ownership so I read that to say that they have to own the land and now I am hearing they are leasing it.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: They have to submit in their application consent of the property owner if they are not the property owner. Many developers are not owners of the land but the land owner has to consent to the application. Obviously they could not apply without it.

Frank Choromanskis: Right, I was just reading very literally what your law says and it says they have to show proof of ownership. Take another look at it. Maybe they can’t do it if it’s leased. One of the other things that I did was look at your law, it is a good law and it covers a lot of things. The thing that caught my attention most was the purpose of the solar energy overlay district right at the beginning of the law. It is to accommodate solar energy systems in appropriate locations. So what we are talking about is, is this an appropriate location? Where does one go to find out what is an appropriate location? Do you go to your Comprehensive Plan and your Farmland Protection plan? I am going to give you some things to think about. The town’s Comprehensive Plan is a vision of the town to be known for its vital farmland and agricultural heritage. The Town will strive to keep its rural character and small town charm. The Comprehensive Plan when it talks about farmland and agricultural heritage goes on to say, it is a policy of the town to be a rural community that values its farmland and agricultural heritage. The Town will support land use regulations that protect agricultural lands from residential and commercial encroachment. This is the perfect example of commercial encroachment. Comprehensive Plan when you look at the very end of it says that the Town of Ogden has much to offer including a rural landscape. These assets much be preserved to ensure that Ogden maintains the character and appeal that has drawn people here in the first place. Similar to some of the comments you have heard before. Ogden will have to monitor development closely to ensure that its open space and agricultural lands are preserved for future generations. Further down it says that Town Officials should strive to ensure that future development be in accordance with this plan. In addition the town will need to take measures to preserve the cultural and open space lands that the community wishes to protect. The town has another document that they could look at. The agricultural and farmland protection plan was adopted a few years ago. There is a section in there on future land use. Areas of the town that are intended to be used predominantly for rural and agricultural in nature are shown on a map. It is there future land use map. It shows everything west of Union Street should be preserved as agricultural land. The rest of it is open for grabs. The protection plan goes on to say that there remains a significant amount of land characterized as vacant in the eastern of the town. Many of the vacant parcels are large in size. The town has expressed interest in steering large scale industrial and residential developments to this area of the town, east of 259 which should allow for the preservation of agricultural and open space, land west of union street, land use decisions make over the next decade will need to take all these factors into consideration and determine the land use measures that preserve its agricultural character. I know this sounds repetitive to you and it is over and over again but I think it is important to hammer home that this is the town’s plan and the town’s agricultural preservation plan and you didn’t mention it once in a footnote, it is over and over again that we are a rural community and we have to protect our farmland. It talks about the loss of farmland as a bad thing and here we are talking about a huge loss of farmland. Further agricultural policies state that it is a policy of the town to be a rural community that values its farmland and agricultural heritage. The town acknowledges that farming and farmland provide a public service in the form of open space. The town will support land use regulations that protect agricultural land from residential and commercial encroachment. The objectives of this agricultural policy again from the town’s records is to ensure that the regulations and permit procedures are supported and protective of agricultural activities. My comment about all this is this application is clearly for land that is intended to be used for agricultural and rural purposes. I would suggest that you deny the application and refer Delaware to east of Union Street and have them explore that before they go in the middle of farmland and take a big chunk and convert it into a big commercial operation. It is up to you guys. Are you going to follow the plan or are we going to have solar farms all over town. I suggest you follow your documents. Send them to the other side of town where there is land available. This is not compatible with what the town is about.

Lyle Tague: I have a couple questions. First of have you looked into water management?

Schultz Engineer: The storm water plan will be all a part of the agricultural plan and we submitted a conceptual plan to the Town Engineer and the Highway Department, they reviewed it and now it is in for the preliminary Planning Board meeting.

Lyle Tague: Will you use a retention pond?

Schultz Engineer: No, there won’t be a retention pond.

Lyle Tague: So that is something that will get looked over by the town? Obviously the water really pours into the Colby Street area. You guys indicated four different points on the grid, could you be more specific?

Schultz Engineer: *Shows map to Lyle Tague, conversation inaudible*

Lyle Tague: You indicated a 10% guaranteed discount?

George Reed: Yes, it depends on the rate but it’s a financing thing, the lower the costs the bigger the discount we could offer with respect to any projects that will lower the decommissioning project. If we have to pay the utility $3,000,000 to do the work and then pay a whole bunch of taxes we may not be able to offer anything, it all depends on the cost. Almost every town we have been to we have been able to offer a 10% discount.

Lyle Tague: Thank you because quite often it is projected at 10% but that is why I asked if it is guaranteed. The final comment that I have would be is that I grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and I support this project because to me if someone else owns the land they ought to be able to do with that land what they want within reason. I’ll be looking at the back end of the solar panels. When we built there 22 years ago our conversation with Mr. Stettner was if you ever decide to sell that property, I didn’t want a housing development behind us, give us a chance to buy some property.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: The last man that spoke about agricultural districts and the town’s plan, this project is required to be forwarded to the Monroe County Department of Planning for comments. They have a statutory right to comment on all proposed development within the County. In three paragraphs of their response it has to do with the fact that this project appears to be within 500 feet of land in agricultural production. There is a County and State law that requires the developer to produce something called an Agricultural District Impact Statement to be submitted to the Monroe County Department of Planning. Also there is a New York State Department of Agricultural and Markets as an overall guidance oversite for construction, maintenance and monitoring of solar energy systems. There are at least three different topics of discussion impacting agricultural district’s development that the developer will have to respond to if the developer gets that far. It is on file here at the Town Hall and you could get a copy of it.

Frank Choromanskis: I appreciate your comments but that is not what I was talking about. I was talking about the Town’s Comprehensive Plan and the Town’s Agricultural Plan. To me it sounds much different from what you talked about. I would like to have them prove to the town that they haven’t looked at the east side of 259. I mean this might be the best place in town to do it but it is probably better for them to look somewhere else.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: That is a very common position for someone to take. Unfortunately “look somewhere else” is not within the Town’s germane to say that. The Town can’t direct someone where to go.

Frank Choromanskis: What I read to you about the Town trying to keep people out of the agricultural area.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: It doesn’t say that. It says to maintain it. I am not taking any sides. This overlay district is that this type of development can go in any district in the town, it can go in a residential, commercial, industrial so it does not change the district uses that are already in the district. This land can be farmed. It can continue to be farmed. It doesn’t lose its character as farmland. This is an overlay district which means it is something that goes on top of an existing zoning use. The Board may find that it is incompatible or we may find that it is compatible. It does not take away or change the existing permitted use of this land.

Frank Choromanskis: I understand that and I wasn’t expressing my views, I was expressing the Town’s views that have been approved since 2012. In any variety of ways that you read this it gives you the intent of the Town on what is appropriate and where. I understand the law says they can put it in my back yard, your back yard, I understand that but still the Town Board’s responsibility because the purpose of the solar law was to accommodate them in an appropriate location. The Town has to determine if this is an appropriate location. So you can say, “Wait a minute, you want a solar farm? This isn’t an appropriate place because we want to protect the rural heritage. Go look somewhere else.”

David Widger, Highway Superintendent: What I can tell you is that it will be looked at as an appropriate place and one reason it might be an appropriate place is because it is very unproductive property because of the high bedrock. The farmer chose this because he doesn’t get good production off of this land. It is not viable land. He owns a lot of land in this town and he picked a spot that doesn’t get good crop production and that is why it becomes viable for him.

Frank Choromanskis: Well it may be viable for him.

David Widger, Highway Superintendent: It is his property, he owns the land.

Frank Choromanskis: I would want to do the same thing if I was the farmer, however, the town is on record saying that they want to preserve this kind of stuff for future generations.

David Widger, Highway Superintendent: Absolutely, for viable land.

Frank Choromanskis: Those are not my words they are your words. Are you going to approve this because it is good for Delaware? I hope not? Do you approve it because it is good for the farmer? I hope not. I think you should look at it for what’s good for the town. You want to preserve as much as you can so deny it and tell them not to come back until they have exhausted every opportunity to go to the east side of 259.

Supervisor Lenhard: David, do you know if he is farming that land now?

David Widger, Highway Superintendent: On and off. I don’t think he is this year but a lot of farmland hasn’t been done this year. He also sat on that commission.

Patrick Smith, Building Inspector: This gentleman asked how you made a decision. In the law which you guys wrote, it says that you want recommendation from the Planning Board prior to them coming to this public hearing. The Planning Board did have a concept meeting with this developer and they considered a good spot for this use.

Frank Choromanskis: I have no doubt that it is a good location, I just want it to go somewhere else.

John Hibsch: First of all I want to thank Frank for is comments, he is very articulate. I want to thank the Town Board for putting time and effort into this. I live on Chamber Valley Estates. I think Delaware Solar would have been better suited doing some neighborhood interviews upon the concept of this and asked what their views and concerns were. I have 300 feet of woodlands there and I have been approached by a least a half a dozen logs men who want to come in and log it. If I log it now I will be staring directly at it. If you had come to me and said, are you in favor or are you opposed, I might have asked for you to put in a tree line where if I decided to do something with this property, I am not going to be negatively affected. I have owned my property for 7 years and there have been corn crops there. My question to Dave is due to the wet summer we had there was a month this year where I could not mow my lawn because it was so wet. Is the construction of this property going to cause more runoff?

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: One of the comments from the County Planning Department is that that the National Wetland Inventory list of federal wetlands has buffering in the area. The applicant needs to apply to the Army Corps of Engineers and it says that it is a strong indicator that the wetlands regulated by the Army Corps may exist within the project or on the project line or within a certain distance of the project line so they ask that there be an onsite review of that with the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps is there to protect wetlands and obviously wetlands exist because water flows into them. I would think that at least the Planning Board is going to address wetlands.

John Hibsch: The second phase of that question is that I know from speaking with Dave in the past a wetland problem or water problem on Washington and Chambers Street comes through my property and they are talking about cover through there which goes through to the retention pond on Chamber Valley but if that is not then all that water comes on to my property and anytime of the year where we get a half inch of rain I have standing water all over my lawn. I know that is my problem but if we increase that by the other farm I might as well put in a big swimming pool. I am not trying to be sarcastic but there have been weeks where I could not mow my lawn because it is too wet in the lower lying areas. Another question I have is they talked about a 10% discount for town residents, why isn’t that a sliding scale to the people who are adversely affected? That seems grossly unfair.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: The proposed energy savings is just that. It is proposed, it is not guaranteed. It has nothing to do with how close or how far you are from the property.

John Hibsch: That is the point I am making.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: I understand that, but some guy in Ontario County could buy power from this grid if you don’t so why is that fair? The Public Service Commission says that they can sell this energy to anyone in this service area and it is without discrimination.

John Hibsch: In contrast to your point, if I want Spencerport Electric I can’t get it. I am just giving you the argument behind it. If you are saying that everyone is entitled to 10% I am saying it is unfair because the people who are surrounded by it should receive a greater reward.

Dan Schum, Town Attorney: I understand your point. We can look into it but the sale of that is regulated by the service commission and not by the town.

John Hibsch: It is grossly inappropriate. The other thing they talked about was the noise. I can hear cars and motorcycles on 531 at night. The noise if it is a constant humming. 77 decibels is louder than people think, I can hear coyotes 3 or 4 miles away and I think that should be considered.

Gail Wheaton-Roth: What percentage of your solar panels is recyclable? We can’t just get rid of televisions without paying for it. So how are you going to get rid of them and if we end up having to take them down, where are we going to take them?

George Reed: If they get taken down any time before year 15 they would be reused because they have value. Afterwards I am not sure that they are recyclable. We would hire someone to decommission them and give them scrap rights so that would be incentive for them. Just to touch on the farmland a little, this is the area that the farm owner chose which is where he wanted it located. Once we remove the systems we are not going there to build a casino or a big building and disrupting land, we pull the posts out and restore it back to farmland. It doesn’t have the disturbance of a commercial or industrial project. The land disturbance would be the access road and the concrete paths where we put the inverters and transformers. Everything can be picked up pretty easily.

Supervisor Lenhard: Is there anyone who hasn’t spoken that would like to speak?

Deb Iacuzzi: I do want to refer the town to Delaware Solar. You sent me this letter on Christmas Eve, registered mail. This has been going on since 2016. I came to all the town meetings. My Mom got sick and I stopped coming to the town meetings. I am worried about the noise from the batteries because my husband is a heart patient. He has memory loss from when he had open heart surgery. He has nerve endings that bother him and I am concerned about the batteries and how they will affect him. On Washington Street we are pretty wet. Like the gentleman stated on my property it can’t be mowed. The water flows. In front of my house I voiced concerns about putting in a pipe because it is so low and the water comes up. I talked to the State and I talked to the Town and no one has agreed to do that. What is bothering me too is I know they need to get to the electric pole for these to work and I want to know if that is going to be near my property because I can’t tell from the map.

George Reed: *Shows Deb Iacuzzi the map, conversation inaudible*

Deb Iacuzzi: I do have to leave but I just want to voice my opinion. A company that will send you this on Christmas Eve, I did research this company and they are a big company and they are affiliated with a lot of other companies and I don’t think I would let them do it. Especially when they send you mail on Christmas Eve. I found out all about this company, I spent many hours researching them. I am concerned about the noise factor for my husband. When you are sick and you have memory loss and you have to worry about nerve endings or I tried to find research on this and it was very hard. There are a lot of farmers looking to work with this company. I work at a big retail box store so I hear a lot of things about the farmers around here. I am concerned because now I have to move and my property is going to decrease in value. I am getting older and we moved there for them to enjoy all of it.

George Reed: We are happy to provide to the board any information about the sound and the amount of sound. There is zero sound at night and you will not hear anything. We will send you some more information.

Angela Sinclair: Actually we are a little happy because the project is further from our house than we thought. Are the lines going to be above ground or under?

Schultz Engineer: I am 99% sure it is going to be underground.

Angela Sinclair: Ok, thank you. Our only complaint is that we would like more screening.

Supervisor Lenhard: Thank you.

Hans Roth: My question is that these transformers have highly toxic oil in it. How do they prevent them from leaking to the ground if they have a failure?

George Reed: I am going to go back and check the Caesar study, requirements from the utility. Most of the time, that is done by the utility company.

Hans Roth: Any time a telephone pole falls over, I see an environmental company cleaning up. How are you going to contain these spills of the transformers?

George Reed: Again, we pay for the upgrades but it is the utility that is going to be maintaining and responding to these types of incidents.

Travis Choromanskis: I share the same concern, what kind of technology do the batteries use?

George Reed: I am not sure where the confusion is but there are no batteries associated with this system.

Travis Choromanskis: Thank you, that answers the question.

Supervisor Lenhard: Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Thank you all for coming and asking questions that is why we have this public hearing so that we could hear you.

II: Approval Of The Minutes:

Resolution #245-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman Uschold

Seconded by Councilman Feeney

Be It Resolved, that the minutes of the Regular Meetings of October 11, 2017, there being no errors or omissions, stand approved as submitted.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

III: Privilege Of The Floor:

None

26

IV: Reports And Remittances From Town Officers:

None

V. Town Audits:

Resolution #246-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman Cole

Seconded Councilman Feeney

Be It Resolved, that the following budget appropriations and transfers be approved as itemized below:

Amount to be Appropriated; To Account; Account Description; Explanation for Appropriation:

$500; 001.0001.1289.3000; Wellness Grants; Appropriate the 2017 Wellness Grant award from FLMHIT (funds received in June 2017).

$500; 001.1650.4520.3000;Wellness Program Expenses;

Amount to be transferred; To Account; From Account; Explanation for transfer

$260.00; 002.1950.4600 Taxes & Assessment; 002.1910.4600 Insurance Expense; Transfer to cover overage on tax assessments on Town property for non-exempt taxable services.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

VI. Correspondence Received And Filed:

None

VII. Reports From Town Officers:

Gay H. Lenhard, Supervisor

1. Today I had the opportunity to be involved with the dedication of the Stone Wall at the Pulver House. Luckily it didn’t rain but it was very cold. It was an event that was precipitated by a boy scout. It was his Eagle Scout project. It was beautiful. Some of us were invited to speak. It is on Colby Street, if you have a chance to look at it please stop by. They built the wall and in the front there will be a daylily garden. It was very well done.

Thomas J. Cole, Councilman

No report.

David F. Feeney, Councilman

1. I also had a chance to attend that same ceremony and it was cold but good.

Malcolm E. Perry, Councilman

No report.

Thomas J. Uschold, Councilman

No report.

David H. Widger, Highway Superintendent

1. Starting to wind down on the highway work so now we are getting ready for winter.

2. A lot of people have questions about Washington Street and when it is going to be done. We had a meeting the other day and it will be December 1st. We will be looking at traffic patterns but nothing will change.

3. Stony Point Road is still closed but I believe it will be open next week.

Noelle M. Burley, Town Clerk

No report.

Daniel G. Schum, Town Attorney

1. I attended the fall Homesteads for Hope presentation in the Town of Ogden on Manitou Road. A young lady has a vision about helping children with special needs. It was well attended and it is an exciting project.

2. I worked on a resolution for a Public Hearing to extend the Cold War Veterans exemption that was previously adopted 10 years ago. There was a ten year limit on it and the new statute removes the time limit. As long as the vets are still alive they are entitled to that exemption.

3. I received a report in conjunction with tonight’s meeting for solar energy and the comments from the County Planning Department were received and on file at the clerk’s office.

VIII. Unfinished Business:

None

IX. New Business

Resolution #247-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman Feeney

Seconded by Councilman Uschold

Resolved, that Gay Lenhard, Town of Ogden Supervisor, is authorized to sign a contract (Combined Service Agreement) between the Town of Ogden and Benefit Resource Inc. to provide administrative services for benefits including but not limited to the Active Employee Health Reimbursement Arrangements effective January 1, 2018.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

Resolution #248-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman Perry

Seconded by Councilman Uschold

Whereas, there is a need for limited part-time help in the Parks and Recreation Department;

Now, Therefore Be It Resolved, that the Town Board of the Town of Ogden does hereby approve hiring the following individuals as limited Part-time Recreation Attendants:

Courtney Perkins: $9.70/hour, effective 10/02/17 (Before/After School Program)

Thaddeus Rivaldo: $9.70/hour, effective 10/02/17 (Before/After School Program

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

Resolution #249-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman Cole

Seconded by Councilman Feeney

Proclamation School Board Recognition Week:

Whereas, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has declared the week of October 23 – October 27, 2017 to be School Board Recognition Week; and

Whereas, the Ogden Town Board would also like to pay tribute to the Spencerport Central School Board, the Churchville-Chili School Board and the Brockport Central School Board members who set the direction and policy for their schools and their dedication to the children in this area; and

Whereas, the Ogden Town Board ask that citizens in the area join them in demonstrating their gratitude to these dedicated individuals.

Now, Therefore Be It Resolved that the Town Board of the Town of Ogden does hereby declare the week of October 23 – October 27, 2016 to be School Board Recognition Week and does recognize the dedication of school board members in the Spencerport Central School District, Churchville-Chili Central School District and Brockport Central School District to the children in this area.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

Resolution #250-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman Perry

Seconded by Councilman Uschold

Whereas, there is a need for a limited part-time Office Clerk IV in the Historian’s Office due to the resignation of Nora Venezky, and

Whereas, interviews were conducted with qualified applicants, and Jesse Diehl was found to be qualified and desirous of the position, and

Whereas, it is the desire of the Ogden Town Board to hire Jesse Diehl to fill the position of limited part-time Office Clerk IV in the Historian’s Office.

Now, Therefore Be It Resolved that the Town Board of the Town of Ogden does hereby approve the hiring of Jesse Diehl to the position of limited part-time Office Clerk IV at the rate of $12.97 per hour effective October 29, 2017 with a 12 month probationary period.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

Resolution #251-10.25.17

Introductory Local Law #7-2017

Introduced by Councilman Uschold

Seconded by Councilman Feeney

Whereas, the Town of Ogden did heretofore enact Local Law # 11-2007, adopted on November 28, 2007 providing for a Cold War Veterans Exemption, as provided for by §485-b of the Real Property Tax Law; and

Whereas, a recent amendment to such Real Property Tax Law removes the ten year exemption period and allows for the adoption of a Local Law to provide for the Cold War Veterans Exemption to apply to qualifying owners of qualifying real property for as long as they remain qualifying owners, without regard to such ten year limitations; and

Whereas, the Town Board of the Town of Ogden is desirous of adopting a Local Law to extend such Cold War Veterans Exemption indefinitely;

Now, Therefore, Be It Resolved by the Town Board of the Town of Ogden, Monroe County, New York, as follows:

Section I: That the Town Board of the Town of Ogden shall hold and conduct a Public Hearing to consider the enactment of Introductory Local Law #7-2017, which Public Hearing will be held and conducted by the Ogden Town Board at the Ogden Community Center, 269 Ogden Center Road, Spencerport, New York on the 8th day of November, 2017 at 7:00 p.m., and at which hearing all interested persons shall be heard concerning the subject matter thereof.

Section II: That the proposed Local Law removes the ten year exemption period for qualifying Cold War Veterans for tax emption upon qualifying real property and allows for such exemption to continue indefinitely. A complete copy of the proposed Local Law is presently on file in the Town Clerk’s Office where it may be examined by all interested persons during normal business hours.

Section III: That the Town Clerk shall give due notice of such Public Hearing, as required by law.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

Resolution #252-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman Uschold

Seconded by Councilman Perry

Whereas, Patrick Smith, Building Inspector/Code Enforcement Officer for the Building Department, is hereby recommending the appointment of John Holtfoth as a volunteer intern.

Now, Therefore Be It Resolved that the Town Board of the Town of Ogden does hereby approve the appointment of John Holtfoth as a volunteer intern for the Building Department on November 7, 2017.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

X. Adjournment

Resolution #253-10.25.17

Introduced by Councilman

Seconded by Councilman

Resolved, that the Regular Meeting of the Town Board of the Town of Ogden be and hereby is adjourned at 9:04 p.m.

Vote of the Board:

Ayes: Cole, Feeney, Lenhard, Perry, Uschold

Nays: None

https://www.ecode360.com/documents/OG0089/public/403466665.pdf