Changing Highway Superintendent From Elected to Appointed Will Be On The Ballot in November
by Alex Brooks
The Petersburgh Town Board held two Public Hearings prior to its regular meeting on July 20, one on Planning Board re-authorization and one on a Local law putting a question on the ballot this November on whether to change the Town Highway Superintendent position from elected to appointed.
On the latter question, the Board was asked why it wanted to do this. Jack Barnhill said the Highway Superintendent at present does not need to be qualified in any way to be elected. Heinz Noeding said if the Town Board is appointing the Superintendent, it will look at resumes, and appoint the most qualified candidate.
Noeding emphasized the importance of the position, managing a budget in excess of half a million dollars per year. He said an effective highway superintendent can make a real difference both in saving taxpayer dollars and in “how the town is perceived.”
But some of the citizens in attendance were skeptical. Katie Snyder Murray said the Board could still appoint insiders. Zeegie Krahforst said there might be political influence involved in the appointment. He said if the Town Board was mostly of one party, they might limit their choices to people from their own party. He said making this change would mean “we [the voters] are losing our say-so. It would be taking power away from the people.”
Heinz Noeding responded to that by saying that the Highway Superintendent has often run unopposed, which does not give the voters much say, and added that if the voters do not like the choices made by the Town Board, they can change the makeup of the Town Board in elections every two years.
Jack Barnhill said the Town board is supposed to have some control over highway operations through the 284 agreement that is signed every year between the Town Board and the Highway Superintendent, but in fact the 284 agreement cannot be enforced – if the Highway Superintendent just refuses to follow direction from the Town Board, there’s not much they can do.
Terry Neaton said the Board just wants to control the Highway Superintendent. Barnhill replied, “Quite the opposite. We want to make sure a qualified person is running the Highway Department so that we don’t have to manage it.”
The Board then brought it to a vote, and the Local Law passed 4-1. Noeding, Barnhill and Berry voted in favor, and were joined by Alan Webster because he wants to let the voters decide, but he said he will vote against it in November. Dennis Smith voted against the Local Law.
Tri-Town Ambulance
Dennis Smith recounted the saga of the local ambulance squads that has been evolving over the last eight months or so. He said the crisis began when the Berlin Ambulance squad “ceased to exist” last October. The Grafton Ambulance Squad sought to take over its “Certificate of Need,” which would authorize it to provide ambulance service in Berlin, with an eye toward creating a merged three town ambulance service for Grafton, Berlin and Petersburgh. This transfer of the Certificate of Need has to be approved by the NYS Department of Health, which finally happened at the end of June. Smith said the Grafton ambulance is taking on the “administrative part” of setting up a weekday ambulance service with paid staff, and is seeking to have Petersburgh join in a Tri-Town Ambulance Service. The paid service would be on duty 6 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday. On nights and weekends the Petersburgh and Grafton volunteer crews would be on duty as they have been in the past. The paid staff would use the Grafton ambulance and generally be based in Grafton, but they may sometimes be based at the Petersburgh Squad house.
Smith said the annual cost of the paid service is about $160,000. Discussions about how this cost would be divided among the three towns involved population size and equipment contributed and perhaps other factors. Smith said Grafton and Berlin would pay the same, and Petersburgh would pay about 60% of what the other two towns were paying. Petersburgh’s share would be about $33,000 annually. Petersburgh budgeted $30,000 for this in this year’s budget. Because this service is only getting started in the last three or four months of the year, Petersburgh’s cost for this year would be under $10,000.
But Smith said NY State’s Shared Services initiative offers to pay 75% of the cost when towns cooperate to reduce costs by joining together to provide services, so it is possible that the actual cost to the towns would be a quarter of the figures mentioned above.
Heinz Noeding said he understands the need for this new paid service on weekdays, and he wants Petersburgh to be part of it, but he has concerns about the details of how it will work. In particular he asked if insurance billings from weekday calls by the paid service would go to the Grafton Ambulance Squad or be used only to support the paid service. It wasn’t clear to what extent the finances of the paid service would be separated from those of the Grafton Ambulance Squad.
Dennis Smith said some things remain to be worked out, but he reminded everyone of the urgency of the problem. If this paid service is not put in place, people in Petersburgh and Berlin may find themselves waiting 45 minutes for a Mohawk ambulance to be dispatched from Troy or Albany. “A 45 minute wait while you are having a heart attack or stroke is unacceptable,” said Smith. He said he hopes this will ultimately become a three-town ambulance district with taxing authority, but that is quite a few years in the future, In the meantime, he said, we need to find a way to provide ambulance service to the area.
Noeding acknowledged the need, but he said there needs to be a detailed proposal spelling out how it will work before the Town can commit to it. “We can’t just approve this based on your verbal description,” he said. Noeding offered to attend the next meeting about the ambulance service as a representative of the Petersburgh Board. Smith said he would like that, because he wants to attend said meeting as a representative of the Petersburgh Ambulance Squad. The goal is to bring a written proposal to the next Petersburgh Town Board meeting for an up or down vote.
Summer Program
The Board once again took up the question of whether to subsidize Petersburgh children participating in the Grafton Summer Program, since Petersburgh will not be running a summer program this year. A copy of Grafton’s safety protocols was supplied to the Board describing in detail measures that will be taken to prevent the spread of disease. Town attorney Gruenberg said he doesn’t believe having the Town subsidize participation raises a significant liability issue. He said it’s really up to the parents to decide if they think it is safe for their children to attend the program.
Katie Snyder Murray said there are 7 Petersburgh kids who want to attend the Grafton program and at least one of them couldn’t afford to do so unless Petersburgh pays the fee.
Heinz Noeding said since the Town has a budget for this and the attorney is advising that there is not a significant liability problem, he is in favor of having the Town pay Grafton’s participation fee. Jack Barnhill and Tom Berry concurred. It was put to a vote, and passed 3-1. Dennis Smith abstained and Alan Webster voted against, saying it’s too risky, as in the current environment a child could bring home disease and a grandparent could die.
Landfill Invoices Rejected
The Joint Berlin Petersburgh Landfill Committee submitted to the Petersburgh Board a statement of invoices to be paid for work on the landfill project. There was a bill from Young/Sommer for $1,964 and a bill from Sterling Environmental for $13,200 for “preliminary services.” Under the Memorandum of Understanding between the two towns, such bills must be approved by both town boards before being paid. Heinz Noeding found fault with both of them and urged the Board not to approve payment until the invoices were revised. His objections to the Young Sommer bill seemed minor and easily corrected, but the Sterling bill contained only a seven line paragraph describing in general terms the work that they had done from November 2019 through May 2020, and Noeding said it cannot be paid unless it provides detailed logs of time spent by whom and at what rate, and itemized expenses. The Board will seek more detail from Sterling before authorizing payment of this invoice.
Planning Board Re-Authorized
The other Public Hearing prior to the start of the regular meeting was on a local law re-authorizing the Town Planning Board, because when it was originally created sometime around 1970, it was created by resolution rather than by Local Law as required by State Law. There was not too much comment about it and it passed by a 5-0 vote. Only two issues arose related to it. One was the question of whether training will be required of Planning Board members. The local law said the Planning Board must complete training as required by the Town Board, which at present means no training is required because a 2015 town law exempts them from training requirements. The Board may revisit this law, as State law requires 4 hours of training per year for Planning Board members, and there seems to be some sentiment on the Board in favor of establishing training requirements. The other issue was about Petersburgh’s mobile home law, which until now has been part of the Planning Board’s purview. Under this local law it was not included among the laws for which the Planning Board is designated as the acting authority. The Board would like to revisit this law and will probably revise it before making it once again part of the Planning Board’s mandate. A special meeting of the Petersburgh Town Board was scheduled for Monday August 10 at 7 pm to discuss the Mobile Home Law and what to do about it.
Water Shortage
Supervisor Smith reported that there is currently about 20’ of water in the tank and the wells are unable to keep the tank full. He said as best they can determine, the wells are supplying 20,000 to 25,000 gallons per day, and normal usage is 12,000 to 14,000 gallons per day, so the system appears to be losing at least 10,000 gallons per day. Repeated efforts to find a leak have not found one. The latest plan is to turn off the wells from 1 to 3 in the morning when water usage is very low and go around the system measuring flow to try to determine where water might be flowing out of the system.
NYSEG Lighting Upgrade
The Board accepted a proposal from Lime Energy Services Company to replace the lighting fixtures in the Town Hall with more efficient LED lighting. The total cost of the project is $4,882, and NYSEG contributes $3,457 towards that cost, so the cost to the Town is $1,425. That can be paid over 2 years with no interest, so it will cost the Town under $60 per month. The savings from reduced electricity usage is expected to be larger than that, so the project is expected to improve net monthly cash flow immediately without any upfront cost to the Town.