Thursday, January 29, 2009

Woodstock Town Board Meeting, January 20, 2009

This article appeared in the Townsman, January 22 edition


The issue of elected officials availing themselves of the medical insurance buy-out, first surfaced during the 2008 budget hearings, was resurrected by councilwoman Liz Simonson inviting labor relations consultant Michael Richardson to make a presentation to the town board on the matter. Although it has been a long-standing and uncontroversial policy to offer the buyout to employees of the Town, it has never been the case until the beginning of 2008 that elected officials, including at least two members of the town board, took the buyout, which ranges between $4000 to $5000 dollars per year.

The purpose of the buyout is to give employees an incentive to "migrate" away from the Town provided medical insurance plan, in most cases to a plan available to an employee's spouse. By giving the buyout the Town saves 50% on the cost of insuring the employee.

Richardson, who worked for the consulting company that wrote the Town's employee handbook, a document that describes the contractual obligations between the Town and its employees, stated that it had never been the intention to offer the buyout to elected officials, but added that the town board could make it a policy to do so if it wished. Of the twelve townships in Ulster County Richardson has worked with, he reported none offer elected officials the buyout (several townships don't offer their elected officials medical insurance at all). Richardson described himself as philosophically opposed to the idea, stating, "An elected official should not need an incentive to save the taxpayer money."

Councilwoman Terrie Rosenblum volunteered to work with several Town employees and officials to make up a list of recommendations to the town board with regard to updating the handbook. The board expressed no position on the issue of the buyout.

Simonson also brought up the old issue of a contested sewer bill that had been re-levied on a property owner in the Hamlet sewer district, despite the owner's plea, which was backed up by a statement from the sewer superintendent, that the accidental discharge of water from a broken water pipe did not enter the sewer system. In the past the town boards have charged the full price for the water, but adjusted the sewer portion of the bill to reflect the average use over five previous billing periods. There ensued several minutes of discussion on the matter, it finally being discovered that the practice of adjusting sewer bills under such circumstances had been written into the local law governing the operation of the hamlet sewer district in 2007.

Resolutions saw unanimous acceptance of minutes for meetings held on December 16 and 30 2008, and January 6. The town clerk's report on monthly receipts, and payment of bills totaling $280,071.49 were also unanimously approved. Councilman Chris Collins abstained on the motion to accept monthly transfers, explaining he did not have time to study the sheet.

Officer Kevin Lane will replace Sergeant Greg Van de Bogart as the police department's detective supervisor.

Reports from the skate park and swimming pools task forces were held off until a future meeting.

Sub committee reports were fairly brief. With a meeting scheduled for 4:30 PM at the Town Offices on January 27 to discuss progress with the comprehensive plan, Collins said nothing on that matter. The Ulster County Winter Watch meeting for January had apparently been cancelled, so there was nothing to report on that. He expressed the opinion that if the board did its work with regard to pulling together documents and performing the required environmental review that the Comeau easement, which had been held up in litigation for five years, could be ready for signature by perhaps March or April of this year.

Simonson added up all of the Town's 2008's electric bills, finding a total of $105,000 including $27,000 spent at the sewage treatment plant and $17,000 at the highway garage, to indicate the progress she has made in her several year endeavor to make Woodstock sustainable. While decrying the high cost of powering the geothermal heating and cooling system for the new highway facility she did not mention the progress, if any with the project to install photo-voltaic panels at the site. The Town so far has spent $20,000 in apparatus and $5000 for a consultant for such installation. Next will be reports from Simonson on how much fuel the Town's buildings have consumed in 2008 and then the total fuel consumption of the Town's fleet of vehicles and heavy machinery. It is not clear why the Town bookkeeper can't produce spreadsheets with this information. Simonson's hope for extending cell phone service to the western areas of the town will be discussed at a town board meet scheduled for January 26 at 3:00 PM at the Town Offices, where land use attorney for the Town Drayton Grant will be present to discuss the status of the tower on Overlook Mountain. Simonson also reported that she was unable to find any consultants to help the Town with its cable television franchise renewal except for Sue Buske of the Buske Group. Buske will be providing the Town with proposed rates for her services.

Councilman Jay Wenk's effort to removed buried fuel tanks in the area of the Town wells is described in an eleven-page document not available yet to the public. It appears that he is working on crafting a local law to address the issue with the assistance of George ("Jerry") Washington. The document will be discussed at a future meeting before being forwarded to the attorney for the Town, Rod Futerfas.

The Woodstock recreation commission did not meet in January, so Rosenblum had no report on its latest initiatives. She did report, as liaison to the Library board, a wish that the Town consider creating space to archive art works and precious volumes that are in the Library's possession. There idea appeared to get little traction from the board.

At the next regularly scheduled meeting, February 10, supervisor Jeff Moran hopes to have a list of architects and their proposals for the town board to select from to move the proposal to relocate all Town offices currently located in the Town Hall and Comeal offices to the vacated Elna Ferrite building.

To quickly recap the immediate future meetings dates, the town board will meet Monday, January 26 at 3:00 PM to discuss the 300 foot tower on Overlook Mountain, which according to a memo sent to the Town by its land use attorney Drayton Grant is in violation of the zoning law. The following day, Tuesday January 27 the town board will meet at 4:30 to discuss the comprehensive plan.

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