Agreement With Taconic On Water Project Under Discussion
by Alex Brooks
Heinz Noeding said a conference call was held last week with NY State’s Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC), which is managing the Water Infrastructure Grant now being used to fund a thorough renovation of the Petersburgh Water District’s facilities. Noeding said although EFC said last July that it needed to see a written agreement between the Town and Taconic specifying exactly what part of the project Taconic has agreed to pay before it could continue with disbursements of grant funds, in last week’s call it agreed to reimburse the Town for expenditures on parts of the grant project that the Town has completed which did not involve any participation by Taconic. This clears the way for the Town to make a request from EFC for grant funds of somewhere between $150,000 and $170,000, and that request is being put together by Municipal Solutions, the Town’s grant administrator.
However, the bulk of the remaining work on this project will be in one contract which will be put out to bid soon, and that definitely does include participation by Taconic, so Noeding said a written agreement with Taconic will need to be in place before that can be put out to bid. Noeding said Cedarwood Engineering is working on an RFP and the specifications in the bid package now and he expects it will be ready in two to three weeks. That project includes the new water building, a new well, an automated control system for the pumps and water treatment equipment, and various other ancillary items.
Noeding said Taconic has sent the Town a check for $27,534.54, which covered almost all of the Town’s historical claims submitted to Taconic for reimbursement of PFOA-related expenses, which cleared the air of a number of old arguments between Taconic and the Town.
The biggest current issue between Petersburgh and Taconic was pointed to by Water District Committee member Ben Krahforst, who asked how the Taconic agreement is going to handle a “transposition error” in the grant documents. Apparently in the original grant application and in the original verbal agreement with Taconic, the total amount of Taconic’s contribution to the project was $472,500, but somewhere in the process, that was written as $427,500. Noeding said the document Taconic has is the project finance agreement, signed by representatives of EFC and the Town of Petersburgh, which contains the $427,500 figure. He said Petersburgh’s attorney who drafted that agreement and the Board member who signed it did not catch the error.
Krahforst asked Smith if Taconic verbally agreed to the $472,500 figure in 2018 when the project budget was being formulated, and Smith said yes. That agreement was worked out with Larry Carroll, who is no longer with the company.
Noeding said, “Hopefully we will resolve it with our friends at Taconic so that it will not be a problem.”
Supervisor Dennis Smith said, “I’m not expecting a problem, but until the papers are signed, nothing is guaranteed.”
Taconic has sent the Town a draft agreement on the water project, which Noeding said, “will need more discussions.”
The Board held an executive session at the conclusion of the meeting to discuss that proposed agreement and the Town’s response to it.