Petersburgh Town Board Action – Road Repairs Cause Budget Woes

by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board scheduled budget workshops for September 23 and 30 at 7 pm, and Town Supervisor Krahforst warned the Board that it will be facing a very difficult budget situation this year. Charles Guntner, the Town Bookkeeper, has warned the Supervisor that he doesn’t expect to have much fund balance at the end of the year. [private]Last year the Town budget applied $60,000 of the fund balance to reduce the tax levy in the General Fund and $40,000 to reduce Highway Fund appropriations, a total of $100,000 in both. Guntner said there won’t be anywhere near that much available at the end of this year to apply to the 2014 budget.
Two factors have been mentioned as the reasons for the Town’s depleted cash. One is the extraordinary expenses of repairing the roads after a violent rainstorm last spring. No one has mentioned a figure for how much the storm repairs have cost, but it is apparently a very substantial sum. The Town is continuing to pursue avenues which might lead to State or Federal help with these expenses but has not secured any help yet. The second is the cost of taking down the old Jones Garage building, which had deteriorated to a dangerous condition. Krahforst estimated the cost of that to be $25,000. The Town expects to be reimbursed by Rensselaer County for that expense, but Krahforst is not sure when that will happen.
No budget figures have been released to the public yet or even to the Town Board members. Supervisor Krahforst said he has started to work on the budget. He said he cut about $25,000 out of the budget, starting from 2013 figures, and he still had a shortfall of $40,000. He said health insurance is going up by 16% and other costs are rising as well.
Because of all these budget problems, Krahforst said he doesn’t think the Town will be able to keep its tax levy increase under 2%, and he urged the Board to pass a law allowing the Town to exceed that cap.
Duane Goodermote replied that he is not ready to vote for a law overriding the tax cap when he hasn’t seen any budget figures yet. He urged the Town Board to hold at least one budget workshop before voting on a measure to override the tax cap.
Krahforst said he was planning on a September 30 budget workshop because neither Councilman Bill Seel nor Bookkeeper Charles Guntner will be available before that, but, in response to Goodermote’s concerns, the Board scheduled an additional budget workshop for September 23.
Bookkeeper Charles Guntner urged the Board to pass a tax cap override right away because then they would be covered if they get in a tight spot with the budget. He pointed out that they could still decide to keep the tax levy increase to 2% when they are working on the budget, but they would have more freedom to make whatever decision they feel is best for the Town.
Although in previous years Towns were able to exceed the tax cap simply by passing a resolution giving themselves permission to do so, Town Attorney Kevin Engel said that this year they must pass a local law allowing the Town to exceed the tax cap, which would require a public hearing.
Planning Board Frustrated
Planning Board Member Tim Church told the Town Board that he and the other members of the Planning Board are very frustrated with the lack of enforcement by the Town of the laws that the Planning Board administers. He said, “It’s not fair that some people follow the letter of the law while others do whatever they want, and there are no consequences.” He was referring to people who come before the Planning Board and make application for a site plan review, pay their fees and get approval for their project while others don’t bother to apply. He concluded, “It’s to the point now that we’re going to just refer all site plan review applications to the Town Board. We’ll just do the subdivisions.”
Supervisor Krahforst replied that he has not done as much on this issue as he had hoped to by now because he had some medical emergencies in his family this month. He said he will be meeting with the Code Enforcement Officer soon to address this issue.  He said, “I’m trying to turn around something that has been neglected for decades,” and said he can’t be expected to do it overnight.
On another Planning Board matter, the Board approved the appointment of John Stickney to the Planning Board for a six year term. He replaces Jim Votra, who recently resigned. This is the seat vacated not long ago by the retirement of long time Planning Board member John McMahon.
Water District
Supervisor Krahforst read the monthly report of Water District Superintendent Ben Krahforst. The report said another water sample tested positive for e coli bacteria and he immediately took five more samples from different places in the District. The next day he took six more. The Rensselaer County lab worked overtime through the weekend to process all these samples, and all were negative for e coli bacteria. Krahforst is unsure why one sample this month and one in July were positive for e coli, but the 11 clean samples indicate that it is not an ongoing problem.
Krahforst also reported that water usage was slowly increasing during August to 5,000-10,000 gallons more than usual, but a leak was found and repaired which should solve that problem.
Emergency Contractors
David Alderman proposed that the Town solicit bids once a year for emergency work such as road repairs, digging up broken pipes, building demolition and the like. Local contractors would submit bids with hourly fees for men and equipment, and they would agree to bill at those bid prices if called on to do emergency work for the Town. That way, said Alderman, the Town can call on the lowest bidder first, and if they are not available move on to the second lowest bidder and so on.
No action was taken on Alderman’s proposal, but it did generate a good deal of discussion. Gene Kluck, candidate for Highway Superintendent, said he thought it was a good idea. Councilman Duane Goodermote wasn’t so sure this would get the Town the most cost efficient result because two operators with similar equipment will not get the same amount of work done in an hour – some will work smarter or better than others.
Supervisor Krahforst connected this proposal to an earlier letter written by Alderman (not made public) which was apparently critical of his handling of the demolition of the former Jones garage, and he defended the way he did that.
Highway
Highway Superintendent Ray Harrison was not present, Krahforst said he went to the hospital because of a bad case of poison ivy. His report was read; it said they had replaced a culvert on Potter Hill Road and all roads are now back in shape from the storm. It also said the Town had borrowed a boom mower from the County and mowed several roads over the weekend.
Other Matters
Supervisor Krahforst said the bridge project at Broken Wheel is continuing to move forward. Design work is proceeding, some core sampling has been done and the First Nations have signed off acknowledgments that archaeological work is not necessary at the site. The Town has been paying some bills from the engineering contractor, which will be reimbursed for all except the Town’s 5% share of the cost.
He also said the automatic door opener for handicap access has been installed on the front door.
The Board approved the usual agreement with Rensselaer County to have the County pay the Town to do snow and ice removal on several county roads in Town.
Supervisor Krahforst thanked Cecilia Guntner for all her work this summer planting and tending flowers and plants around the municipal buildings. He said it really makes the place look nice to have all those flowers.[/private]