by Alex Brooks
Tom Berry said the drainage improvement work designed by the Town’s engineer to keep water runoff out of the landfill as much as possible has been completed by the Berlin and Petersburgh highway departments. “All water drainage issues have been resolved,” said Berry. He said Mark Millspaugh, the engineer from Sterling Environmental, visited the site and inspected the work when it was completed, and he will communicate with DEC about the completion of this phase of the work.
Berry said now that this work is completed, the engineers can start monitoring the volume of seepage coming out of the landfill, which will determine the scale of the remediation needed to remove or treat it.
Berry also said gates, fencing and barriers have been put up to keep vehicles off the landfill cap. He said one culvert has not been installed yet, but that one doesn’t affect the drainage.
New Highway Workers
Supervisor Dennis Smith said the Highway Department, which has been working for most of the fall with only two workers, hired a third worker who started last week, and has hired another who will start in January.
Smith also said that the Town had reached an agreement with the highway workers union on a contract, but it has not been formally signed yet. He said most recently when he asked the union rep to send over the agreement so the Council could approve it, the language in that draft was different than what had been agreed to, so he will have to follow up to complete the process.
IT Update
Heinz Noeding said he is expecting a proposal by the first of the year or early in January to review the Town’s IT systems with an eye toward reliability, network security, regular backups and that sort of thing. He is expecting the cost of such a review to come in at about $2,000 or so. He will present this to the Council when it is received.
WIIA Reimbursement
Heinz Noeding said the Town has received from the Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) about $159,500 reimbursing the Town for expenditures on the Water District under the Water Infrastructure grant. This covers everything that was in the Town’s request except for $55,000 in payments to Cedarwood Engineering. Noeding said he does not know yet why the Cedarwood bills were not paid, but he is guessing there is some missing information or paperwork that held them up and is hopeful that whatever it is can be resolved and the Town can get the rest of the reimbursement paid soon.
Dog Shelter
Supervisor Smith said he had met with the Ag and Markets inspector who failed the Town’s dog shelter in two recent inspections to see what could be done to fix it so that it would pass inspection. She said the problem is that the building is sitting on concrete blocks which have been washing out because of water running off there. Smith proposes to put in some concrete piers there which will securely hold the building up and put the shelter back in service. He said this would cost about $200 for materials and he could do the work with assistance from the Highway Department crew. He said he believes he can get that done before the end of the year.
Smith said all of the dog kennels that the Town has contacted require an annual fee of somewhere between $1,000 and $1,400 whether any dogs are sent there or not, and then have usage fees in addition to that for any services needed. They also are quite some distance from Town, so they require a good deal of driving both by the Dog Officer to take the dogs there, and by the dog owners to get their dogs back. He feels it would be less expensive and more convenient to continue to use the dog shelter behind the Town Hall.
PVMCC
Mary Lou Walters, Secretary of the PVMCC, came to the Town Council to request that the PVMCC be allowed to modify its agreement with the Town so that it can pay less. She said the PVMCC lost its biggest tenant, the church that was holding services and gatherings there, and so has lost $8,400 of revenue annually. She said the PVMCC has been paying the Town $2,000 each year, and they are asking to drop that to $1,000. Supervisor Smith said the Board will consider the request.
Heinz Noeding asked about the HVAC evaluation of the building that the Council agreed to. Walters said it had been done, but no one on the Town Council had seen it yet. She said the problem continues with the upstairs room being very hot and the main part of the building very cool.
Library MOU
A Memorandum of Understanding has been worked out between representatives of the Town Council and the Library Board on how the Library’s finances will be handled, but it has only just been sent to the full councils for consideration, so it was not ready for approval.
Meetings Scheduled
The Board scheduled its end of the year meeting for Wednesday, December 29, at 7:30 pm, and the organizational meeting for Monday, January 3, at 7 pm.