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1976-10-05 SP f Special Meeting October 5 , 1976 Members present: Michel Brandt Supervisor Daniel Olson Councilman Robert Barber Councilman Harold Robillard Councilman Hammond Robertson Councilman i Joseph Brennan Town Counsel The meeting opened at 7 :00 P.M. with a salute to the flag. Present were members of the press, Mr. Kestner, Mr. Harrison, John Bowman Charles Trombley, Carl Garb, Jay Morey, Ralph Van Dusen, Sydney Van Dusen. The purpose of this special meeting is to allow the Town Clerk to dist - ribute copies of the Town budget to the Town Board. Mr. Brandt noted that there are two corrections on the budget to be made. One is on the Pine View Cemetery where Mr. Brandt overlooked one employee and there should be a $5 ,344. 00 increase in C8810. 1. The second error is an mission which is for the Police retirement benefits which are paid a year later so even though we formed a county police force we would have to pay a $14, 968. 00 retirement benefit that is not in the budget. The coding is under A9000. Mr. Brandt stated there will be some other figures coming in as time goes on. He stated that he is trying to get an accurate picture of what the insurance will be next year. We have made an educated guess in the budget so we may be over on that account. Mr. Olson questioned the supervisor as to what he had planned as far as meeting with department heads on the budget. Mr. Brandt stated that we very definitely want some open forum meetings after the regular meetings so the board may get the people's input regarding the budget. Town Clerk, Donald Chase gave a report regarding the dates the board had to remember in adopting the budget. The public hearing will be held on November 4th and if the budget is not adopted by November 20th, the pre- liminary budget. becomes the adopted budget for 1977. Town Counsel , Joseph Brennan agreed with the Clerk' s remarks. It was decided that the budget would be discussed at the meetings of October 12th and October 19th to get the public' s input. Mr. Brandt remarked that there could be some controversy in next years budget discussions . It was decided that the board should hold a specie on October 19th for public discussion with the board on the budget. Move was made to have a recess whilwaiting for the Common Council and some members of the Board of Supervisors . Letter from Audit and Control regarding payments on Fire Company contracts was given to the Board and was placed on file in the Clerk' s office. At approximately 7 :30 P.M. the special meeting between the Town Board of the Town of Oueensbury and the Common Council of the City of Glens Falls regarding a joint landfill operation on the Ridge Road was called to order. Mr. Brandt stated that he would like to introduce a resolution requesting - that the County of Warren implement via provisions of Section 226 B of the Town Law to administer and operate a joint landfill (a County run landfill) for our two municipalities . The Town of Ouepnsbury will be willing to financially support this program as per an agreement which will have to be signed by the City and the Town at a later date. This is a declaration of intent as well as a request to implement this program through the County Law. RiS introduced by Mr. Brandt, who moved its adoption seconded by Mr'. Barber. This resolution was not available at meeting time but will be forthcoming; from Town Counsel and will be found on page // . Mayor Cronin stated that we are much further ahead when we work together and pool our resources--at tomorrow nights meeting of the Council we hope to have an affirmative vote similar to the one that we observed here tonight to start us on the way to a joint operation of the landfill. Mr. Brandt explained why this joint venture was taken: We all know that landfills are not very desirable. The landfill that the city of Glens Falls is operating has some of the residents in that area quite irritated. We also know that the residents of Queensbury living next to our own landfill have plenty of reason to be irritated. We know that we have to run a far better landfill than what has been done. We also know that we can not continue landfill operations the way they are going. We can not continue to keep burying the volumes of material that are being generated by the communities . That means in due time we must address ourselves to resource recovery and that is to try and extract fuel and metal or any resource that is worth recovering out of this bulk and to get it recycled back. That is a very expensive proposition. It also takes more than one community to do it successfully. In fact I am sure it is going to take more than the two communities to do it successfully. We concluded that because this needed many communities to make that a reality that we would be wise in the beginning to organize within the county structure so that it would be easy for other communities to join us, at least the ones within the county. This could put us in a position to talk to other counties to try and get a joint effort for at least the communities living here as neighbors along the bend of the river. From there we examined several ways to implement our basic agreements. We have made basic agreements and we are now going along with some research work to try and define exactly how we are going to carry out the basic agreements . In substance the basic agreements are that the city and the town would financially take care o£ all the costs involved in running this joint landfill under the wing of the county. We hope that the county would see fit to set up a committee that would be composed basically of two representatives, elected representatives of the city and two of the town and one person associated with neither, of which Carl Roblee has nobly filled that position during our negotiations and during our original committee work so that it would be a mechanism to break tie votes. The basic agreements are that we would close the landfill at the Luzerne Road site and not expand it. We would move the joint operation as expediantly as possible and in an intelligent manner to the properly designed fashion to the present Queensbury landfill. That an improvement will be made at the present operation site in the manner of operation. I would like to open it up to any other comments from anyone else who has been involved in these negotiations. Brian Harrisson stated that Mr. Brandt has explained it all except the concept of transfer. The concept is that rather than send all of the vehicles from the city and town out to our landfill, we will build some transfer stations near the city-town line so that people can go there and drop off their refuse and then it can be compressed and then by large truck be taken to the landfill We will try and keep the amount of traffic down from going to our landfill. Mr. Mark Kestner stated that his firm was brought in by the Refuse Agency to look at such thing as the useful life of the Glens Falls landfill also to look at the Queensbury landfill and to come up with a solution and eventually a 25 year plan to the landfill problem. Everyone has cooperated very nicely from the city and the Town of Queensbury and also the state agencies and we look forward to implementing this at the Queensbury landf ill. Mr. John Bowman asked when is this going to be implemented? Mr. Brandt stated that the answer to that is not within our grasp. We have made the decision to proceed as rapidly as possible along these lines but to make intelligent decisions of what can be done and how it should be done we have to have more input from engineering and technical data. We hope that, that can be forthcoming very soon and that it can be implemented this fall. We expect that it will be. Mr. Bowman: At the rate the Queensbury landfill has been filling up with just what Queensbury has been putting in there plus the ones that have been sneaking in from two or three counties , I can not see that you have room there for more. than five years. Mr. Brandt : We are well aware that it is a very limited lifetime in that landfill and that is why from the beginning we knew we would have to go to resource recovery. There has to be some real substantial effort to get there. Mr. Norm Barnes is here also who today went to New York to explore further uses of combining the sludge from sewers and some of the potential fuel derived from the landfill material to make a saleable fuel or to directly generate steam and/or electricity. Selling it to an industry in the community or utilizing it ourselves . . We do not know the answers to this yet. They are very large technical questions and also financial questions and they are going to take a lot of exploring. If through the Sewer Agency there is federal funding available to help us solve part of the problem, we may merge these two problems and get a lot of outside funding then we are very interested in that concept. I want to thank everyone who has helped with these negotiations. They started before I came here. It has moved along very well . I think it is a great first move to the relationships that are developing, a very substantial move between the two communities and I think that we a learning that our problemsdo not start or stop at the boundary line but they are really common problems and I hope that we can solve many of these problems in the future as this attempt has been made and I think everyone that has worked on it has given up a great deal of time and a great deal of effort and I personally have to thank them all and I want to also recognise that many of the county Board of Supervisors are here attending the meeting and I want to thank them for their help and their support in solving this problem with us. . Thank you very much. On motion the meeting was adjourned at 7 : 53 P.M. Respectfully submitted Donald A. Chase, Town Clerk REGULAR ITEETING OCTOBER 12, 1976 MEMBERS PRESENT: Michel Brandt-Supervisor Daniel Olson-Councilman Robert Barber-Councilman Harold Robillard-Councilman Hammond Robertson-Councilman Joseph Brennan-Town Counsel Meeting Opened: Salute to the Flag. Councilman Robertson 7 : 34P.M. TOW1N OFFICIALS : George Liapes OFFICIALS : Lloyd Demboski, Thomas Murphy PRESS : Tri Co. News, Lee Coleman "TUESTS : Mr. Woodcock, League of T,?omen Voters RESOLUTION TO HIRE ENGINEERI'N' ', FIRM TO STUDY DRAINAGE PROBLEMS IN THE CORINTH ROAD, LUZERNE ROAD AND SHERMAN AVE. AREAS -- RESOLUTION NO. 223, Introduced by Mr. Michel Brandt who moved its adoption, seconded by Mr. Hammond Robertson: WHEREAS, because of the bad drainage problems in certain areas of the Town of Oueensbury namely the Corinth Road, Luzerne Road and Sherman Ave. , and WHEREAS , it seems that the town will require professional advice for these problems , now, therefore be it RESOLVED, that the Town Board of the Town of nueensbury hire the firm of Joseph Kestner Associates of Troy, New York to make a study of these problems and to make a report back to this board