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2003-07-14 SP Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 340 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING JULY 14, 2003 7:00 p.m. MTG. #29 RES. 328 TOWN BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT SUPERVISOR DENNIS BROWER COUNCILMAN ROGER BOOR COUNCILMAN THEODORE TURNER COUNCILMAN DANIEL STEC COUNCILMAN TIM BREWER RECREATOIN COMMISSION MEMBERS COMPTROLLER HENRY HESS RECREATION DIRECTOR HARRY HANSEN Called to order 1.0 RESOLUTIONS NONE 2.0 DISCUSSIONS 2.1 Town Fund Balance - County Tax Off-Set Supervisor Brower-The first item on tonights agenda is the discussion regarding the Town's Fund Balance and the possible County Off Set or leaving sales tax revenue with the County to off set County property taxes. Now, as you all know all the Board Members know at least two years ago we dropped the Town Tax which at the time was eighteen point six cents I believe which equated to around a little of three hundred thousand dollars. I think it was three thirteen. Councilman Stec-Three twenty four and change. Supervisor Brower-The reason the Board unanimously decided to take that action was because we realized that we could sustain that Councilman Stec-How was it unanimously? We unanimously passed the budget but it only included a no property tax when Jim Martin and Tim and I all agreed that it had to be zero. Supervisor Brower- I believe that we all voted for it. Councilman Stec-We all did pass the budget yes. Supervisor Brower-Thank you. As a result of that.. Councilman Stec-Lets not mis represent the facts. Supervisor Brower-We have been able to maintain a zero town tax. The idea of doing that was so that we could continue to have a zero town tax for years to come. Last year Councilman Stec did propose off the floor a resolution to leave a million dollars with the County. I know I abstained on that motion and the reason I abstained was not necessarily that I was against leaving sales tax for the County but more importantly that I had no information to really base the decision as to what the impact would be. In any case, Henry Hess our Comptroller has provided us with a great deal of detail, I have additional copies that I did bring with me. (passed them out) I remember about a year ago when Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 341 we first started talking about this I was sitting with Henry and I do not know if it was just a one on one session or if other Board Members were there, but I do remember Henry indicating that in order for us not to have to impose a Town Tax in the future our sales tax would have to continue to grow assuming current spending was not cut, and assuming that costs continue to escalate. He estimated that we would have to grow our sales tax five percent a year to keep pace with the increased expenditures that we would be faced with under normal operating conditions. I wanted to have the workshop tonight, I wanted to see if we as a Town Board can come to some consensus as to what would be a prudent action to take regarding our fund balance. If you look at the sheets that have been handed out particularly the cover memorandum, Henry made some assumptions providing for retention for revenue stabilization of nine hundred and fifteen thousand dollars a year, and retention for cash flow purposes of one million six hundred and fifty thousand a year. Which would equate to two million five hundred and sixty five million total. With an unrestricted fund balance of six point one two seven million. It would leave us an expendable fund balance of three million five hundred sixty two thousand dollars however is off set, by two million three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in this years budget. Comptroller Hess-That would be in next years budget. Supervisor Brower-You are assuming it was the same level of spending. Comptroller Hess-Until the budget is prepared I have no reason to assume it would be different than this years. I am just carrying forward next years.. Supervisor Brower-So if it was identical next year we would end up with a fund balance of one million two hundred thirty seven thousand dollars assuming that revenues are flat. Now, right, now we are experiencing very high mortgage revenue from people that are refinancing their mortgages at forty year low rates. So, we are bring in quite a bit of additional revenue probably this year, which probably has not been factored into our budget. Can we maintain that level of revenue growth in the future when interest rates start raising? I do not know, but we have to keep it in mind. We have to look at both the revenue and expenditure side. Councilman Brewer-Just for the sake of we are not looking at what is projected we are talking about what we have right now we are not talking about what we might have in the future or might not have. Supervisor Brower-We have to take into consideration low sales tax continue to grow in the Town of Queensbury and we do have a couple fine new stores. Councilman Brewer-Tax rate went up. Councilman Stec-And we have a lot of data that supports the continued growth of sales tax. This is in a down economy. Supervisor Brower-Our first quarter was down about four percent but I believe that our second quarter is going to come in about probably two percent above last year. So, I think it will be somewhat flat but at least its to the positive side from my brief discussion with Joan Parsons recently. That is a decent sign at least it is staying relatively stable. Councilman Brewer-Henry, I do not know how long or how much work it would take can we, I know we had a discussion previous, can we take all accounts I will give you an example of the five hundred thousand dollars that was put away a number of years ago for the drainage in Ward I and not to pick on Ward lor anything but, those types of accounts that have been sitting in an account. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 342 What I would like to do if we could do it in a short period of time, take those accounts such as that one particular one that just comes to my mind that has been put away for lets just give it a year or two years a year and a half and it has not been touched or used and get that number. In other words those were appropriated accounts but they have never been spent for a year and a half that have not touched. If we take that number that gives me a better picture. I do not know about anybody else, of money that the Town has that has not been used. Maybe it should be invested maybe it should be used for something like this or I do not know. I would like to see that number if it is possible in the next week or so. Comptroller Hess-You actually have it tonight. All those accounts are itemized on this sheet, that is why we broke it down and made certain assumptions, some of these capital projects were expendable and some were not. But, the four sixteen fund 125, that is Ward I Four sixteen nine-o- nine. That is the number that you can use. Councilman Brewer-Another account I am talking about and not that I am saying I want to take that money, the CPI we picked a number of two and a half million dollars and put it in there and a year and a half later we have not spent a dime. Not to say that we are not going to .. Councilman Boor-We have Route 9 and 254 Councilman Brewer-I understand that Roger, but I am just saying if we take those numbers that gives me a real idea of what we have that we haven't spent in the last year and a half that we put away for a certain project for whatever reason we didn't. Councilman Boor-But it is not expendable, right? Supervisor Brower-We made a commitment to the Capital Improvement Plan. Councilman Brewer-I understand that two and a half million dollars doesn't have to be the number to start something off Dennis, we can put two and a half million dollars away. Comptroller Hess-Actually, it is three million dollars. Councilman Brewer-I just want an idea what is there, that is all I am not saying it is expendable, I am just asking a question. Supervisor Brower-I know I have made a commitment to half a million dollars a year to the Capital Improvement Plan that was what was in my budget last year, and I assume the Board is going to continue to support it. Councilman Brewer-My point would be you keep putting a half million dollars away in an account that we are not using the money what is the sense of putting it in that account? Supervisor Brower-Because it is seed money for capital projects, Tim. Councilman Brewer-You are missing the point Dennis. Councilman Boor-Route 9 and 254, we are doing the engineering we can't just let them build it without the engineering. Councilman Brewer-I understand that Roger I am just asking for the numbers. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 343 Supervisor Brower-What is the point. Councilman Boor-Are you going to try and give it away? Councilman Brewer-No, I did not say that at all. Councilman Boor-I thought you were talking about the fund balance and you are into appropriated funds now and I do not, there is a difference between appropriated funds... Councilman Brewer-What I would like to see is those particular accounts that we or previous Boards have put money away in for a number of years that has not been spent. I am not saying maybe that three million dollars isn't the magic number maybe it should be a million maybe it should be four I do not know. But I want to see those numbers. Comptroller Hess-Let me go down this sheet really quickly just describe what is on this long sheet, because this may answer some of your questions and then you can make judgments on the other half. I do caution you though where there are designations or appropriations it reflects a commitment. They were done by resolution of the Board and of course you always have the option of changing that except in the capital reserve which takes a public hearing to do it, because that is a restricted fund. Fund 001 that is the general fund has an inappropriate fund balance of three million eight twenty eight and I carry that all down to the bottom of the page as unrestricted fund balance which is available for expenditure. Account 013 is economic assistance money that has been put aside for and I think some of this was left over from the old AMG property it is in a fund of its own but I carry it to the bottom of the page as being expendable. Councilman Brewer-Is that program active or un-active. Comptroller Hess-It is in-active. So, I calculate that as being discretionary type of money. Account 015 Central Fleet internal service fund, that is an accounting transaction that will probably show up this year we close that out last year this shows three hundred and seventy five thousand but it is in this unrestricted fund balance category. Fund 061 which are the recreation assessment reserve, which you may not transfer from Account 062 which is a highway garage reserve, which you mayor may not, you may want to I did not carry it down it is one hundred thousand dollars. The three million dollars that is in the cap of the CIP which you can reallocate but that was a recent decision to put it in there, so you have a conscious decision to not do that. 115 is a storage building reserve you have not done anything with the storage building although some money needs to be spent theoretically if you are ever going to do anything with that Sunnyside that is sort of sitting idle up there. Councilman Brewer-I thought our decision was to use that money when we bought that building? Why didn't we use that? Comptroller Hess-Because it was non cash transaction of in kind from the Fire Company so we never did use cash to buy that building, we just took title on an in kind thing. So, this money was put aside, we had submitted a plan one time intending to use some of this money to remodel or do unique modifications to the building...but anyway that money is sitting there and I have carried it down to the unrestricted fund balance. Account 125 would run road and drainage four hundred and seventeen thousand dollars, that is on the bottom line which adds into the available amount. The Cemetery Fund there are two cemetery funds one is a cemetery operating fund and a cemetery equipment reserve. The equipment reserve is a reserve fund I have not brought that done but the cemetery operating fund you have a fund balance there, if you want to spend it Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 344 on something you are welcome to spend it, so it carried on the bottom line. The self insurance fund you can not use that because that is estimated. The Highway Fund there is twenty nine thousand dollars and that is carried down to the bottom line as expendable. Their funds even though it is appropriated from the general fund it goes into a operating fund for the Highway and that has its own fund balance until the end of the year. It is just an operating it is what they end up with there is always some number there. Councilman Brewer-So, does that at the end of the year go back into the general fund? Comptroller Hess-It is appropriated to balance next years budget, the money does not come back to the general fund we just give them that much less in the following year, so that is how that works. In the Solid Waste Fund there are two accounts one is 910, that is their operating fund they have a fund balance now of approximately thirty three thousand dollars and although I do not think it is a prudent use of the money the fact is, it is un-restricted. You can bring it and do something else with it. Councilman Brewer-Do we treat that the same as we do with the Highway? Comptroller Hess-Yes, well, except that is an entrepreneurial fund that generates its own revenue. So, we do use it to balance their budget yes. Councilman Brewer-What I am saying is if they end up with thirty three thousand at the end of the year do we give them thirty three thousand less? Comptroller Hess-Not necessarily. Councilman Brewer-Why wouldn't we do that if we do it with the Highway? Comptroller Hess-Because the status of the funds are different, Highway has virtually no other revenue source we fund their whole thing. We control that revenue and the solid waste fund we monitor that to make sure that they have it. The fact is we try to keep a balance there because you never know what could happen over there. You could fund the Highway additional money if you need do the solid waste is a little more difficult. Jim just went out and had to spend eighteen thousand dollars this week for a loader and if he didn't have this money he would not be able to do that. So, we manage fund balances in those accounts. But none the less it is discretionary and I brought it all down to the bottom line. Mr. Tucker-We are in partners with the City of Glens Falls on this waste disposal wouldn't they have a say in the balances? Comptroller Hess-No. They would not have a say it is our fund. They have an interest in surpluses they have a liability for deficits but they do not have say in how it is run. Councilman Brewer-But they do not contribute for labor and Mr. Tucker-When we were there you could get them to pay for half of Jims truck if you wanted to and all that. Comptroller Hess-It comes out of the fund. Mrs. Betty Monahan-Are you sure of that now because we had a resolution one time that closed that out and they paid a certain amount or we paid them and I think they finished that relationship. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 345 Comptroller Hess-Can I bring us back on the topic that is not really relevant to what we are trying to accomplish here. Supervisor Brower-Lets stay on this topic, thank you. Comptroller Hess-063 is the landfill closure reserve there is a million nine in that, 742 is be allocated for testing and remediation, you can do away with that but you need something there, so that is a number that was calculated... Supervisor Brower-If that landfill ever contaminates wells in that area it would cost us six million dollars to run water to there, that is Ralph's estimate. So, about a third of it is reserve. Councilman Stec-It 's got to be a special district charge? Supervisor Brower-It would probably be a general fund charge. Comptroller Hess-It could be a general fund charge because where...there is a million one that is not designated. Councilman Boor-I do not want it a special district charge. Comptroller Hess-And which comes down as we have brought a million one to the bottom line. If you add up all those unrestricted fund balances it comes to six million one twenty seven. Now if you take the cover memorandum in the center of the page I have taken the unrestricted fund balance of six million one twenty seven and we have identified two reasons that you carry cash in a town for, to balance things out to level the playing field from year to year if you will. One is revenue stabilization and one is cash flow. When January 1st comes you do not zero in the bank because you know need cash flow. We have used fifteen percent of budget for cash flow and fifteen percent of sales tax for revenue. That is how we came up with those two numbers. That is very conservative compared to what some of our piers of our size are doing. It is within range of their target but generally at this point they have more than that and they are keeping more than that because of the uncertainty. But, none the less I still feel comfortable with the two fifteen percents, that equate to about two million five. So, if I were to say what is your optimum un-encumbered fund balance it is two million five. That is as good as I can estimate it. Optimum is a value judgment ... If you deduct that two million five from the six million one twenty seven you come up with an expendable fund balance of three million five sixty two which includes the four hundred and sixteen thousand it includes the million dollars from the solid waste it includes all those other things. Three million five sixty two is really what I consider or what I am proposing to you to consider an expendable fund balance. Where Dennis was talking about the budget, this years budget appropriated two point three million dollars to balance the budget. In other words you have a deficit budget where you project expenditures will exceed revenues by two point three, two five million dollars until this years budget is developed I am going to assume it is going to be in that same range next year and it may not be. You may cut expenditures by two million dollars you may estimate revenue by that much more, but I am using the same number because it is historical and I feel justified by doing that. So, if you hold two point threes, two five million dollars to balance next years budget it leaves you a million two hundred and some thousand dollars left. Now, the memo goes on to explain that chances are revenues will exceed budget. Maybe expenditures will we will not spend every dollar that is budgeted that will generate a surplus for this year. I do not know what the size of that will be whatever the size of that is you can add to this three point five sixty five. That is not history until the end of the year. You really cannot spend that money twice in the same year you have Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 346 to wait for it to, to have it and I am saying that I figure that is another value judgment on my part. But, you have committed a budget you voted a budget and spending that same money twice in the same year isn't necessarily the most prudent thing. So, you really got three point five sixty two less whatever you think you are going to have to appropriate to balance the budget that you are now in the process of preparing. Supervisor Brower-That being said I want the Board to keep in mind a couple of things and I am not sure how it will all shake out but we have Main Street the underground power as you, Betty Little is trying to come through with a grant but if she fails to come through with a grant we may be burdened with a seven hundred and fifty thousand, one million dollar cost to put underground power under our section of Main Street. Councilman Brewer-Wouldn't we borrow that money though? Supervisor Brower-It certainly could be borrowed, but that service has to be paid, the debt service has to be paid. Councilman Brewer-Understood. Supervisor Brower-No, matter what you do. Councilman Stec-We do not have a lot of debt. Supervisor Brower-That is correct. The eight hundred thousand for a connector road, the connector road is going to be a million dollars. Councilman Brewer-The City is going to pay how much? Supervisor Brower-We are responsible for eight hundred the City is responsible for two hundred thousand of that which was part of the sewer agreement. Because they recognized that in addition to improving traffic flow in Queensbury it is also going to help them in putting some trucks to the industrial park. Councilman Boor-Was it always eight hundred thousand dollars ...share? Councilman Brewer-No it was two hundred thousand dollars the City was going to pay Councilman Stec-We were the balance. Councilman Brewer-what ever the balance was ..but we do not know if it is going to be eight hundred we have not got the numbers. Supervisor Brower-We do not have numbers, those are budgeted numbers. Councilman Brewer-So, I do not know how you would say eight hundred thousand. Supervisor Brower-They are budgeted numbers at this point. .. Councilman Boor-Where did you come up with the eight hundred just our of courisity? Supervisor Brower-That what we, we asked Rick what he estimated the cost would be, he estimated a million dollars. Plus we have the relocation expense which is a special district for the ems squad which we already know about and Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 347 recognize. So, we planned for that because we did not allow them to expand three years ago when they wanted to expand. Councilman Brewer-How long if that road going to be? Is it going to be a mile or half a mile? Supervisor Brower-In looking carefully at these fund balances, my gut feeling I am approaching this the same way we approach the Town tax if we cannot sustain it over a period of years, multiple years we should not do it. The only amount that I believe that we can really afford to consider leaving at the County would be two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a quarter of a million dollars. I could support leaving a quarter million dollars. Councilman Brewer-Why, let me ask you why? Supervisor Brower- I do not know how the rest of you feel. Councilman Brewer-Why would you say we have to sustain it for a number of years? Supervisor Brower-Why, a one shot deal is no deal for the taxpayer. If we, lets say we give a million dollars to the county right now I do not believe that we could sustain that for more than two years at the tops and probably only one year. But if we leave a million bucks at the county you drop your tax rate by x number of dollars the following year you cannot do it so it not only goes up x number of dollars you just saved them it goes up any increase that would occur after that. So, the get a double whammy two years later or three years later. Or, unless you can sustain it. The same as the town tax rate, the Town Tax rate which we eliminated if we need to bring in additional revenue the only source we have is the sales tax isn't coming in properly or if we have a sudden shift in sales tax from the negative is property tax. You might end up with a dollar a thousand property tax. Councilman Brewer-My thought on it Dennis is maybe a million dollars isn't the number but and I am not so sure you have to do it every single year. It would be nice to be able to do that every year but when you are looking at school taxes going up fourteen percent, county taxes going up eleven percent that is a shot for some people, in one year and it happens one year at a time. So, if we can give a significant number that we can live with and be comfortable with I do not see the harm in doing it one year. Because your taxes are not going to go up twenty percent the following year. My feeling is Supervisor Brower-It is a matter of philosophy. Councilman Stec-I just want to make sure I understand what you said, I will paraphrase back what I heard. What you are saying is, is that if somebody told you I am going to give you back one hundred dollars of your money this year oh no I am not because I cannot give it back to you the following year you would not want the money? Just because it is not sustainable doesn't mean it is a bad thing. It is your money and I am holding it and if you say I do not want you to give me that hundred dollars because you cannot give it to me every year. Who would say that? Supervisor Brower-Who would say that? I would say that. Council man Stec-... minority. Councilman Brewer-Whatever we get back you leave it to the town ... Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 348 Councilman Stec-I have heard all that and I have followed this April 24th memo, Henry what would you say a fair number is for annual general fund budget dollar number, what is the size of the general fund budget? Comptroller Hess-The general fund budget is seven million dollars. Councilman Stec-Where I was coming at this a couple years ago and frankly it was not unamious two years ago but we will not split hairs. I looked at this, there was a guide line and there currently is a State Law I believe for School Districts and gives an actual percent of what is a maximum allow surplus to carry and some of you correct me if I am wrong it is either two or five percent of the budget. Comptroller Hess-Two percent. Councilman Stec-So, if it was two percent of seven million dollar budget if we were a school, seven million ten percent of seven hundred, seventy thousand times two a hundred and forty a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If we were a school a hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be the maximum size surplus that we would carry. Now, I am not arguing that we should make our decisions based on that, I am just putting that there for a little perspective if we were a school. In the mid 90's and I apologize that I did not print enough out and basically you will have to share, the top page is where, are about this time the memo came out I e-mailed a couple of times back and forth with Henry as to you know, is there more analysis coming or are we complete with the study. Henry had indicated that we were, that he had done everything that he thought that we needed to have which is this memo of the 24th. Around that same time I had asked for a laundry list of some other data some other numbers and actually I thought it worked out better. Henry gave me a copy of each of the last twelve years financial reports. So, that is where these numbers came from. You have seen most of them, this one I added the year end 2002 balance and I put it some text boxes to show the time line. In 2001 we had the 2000 numbers to work off of when we were making the decision three to two to eliminate the town property tax. That was about according to my numbers and this is the tax rate times our grand total assessed value at the time and I apologize that I did not print out the entire data table, just the graphs. Three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year that we said we can do without because if you turn the next page you can see what was happening between our actual sales tax revenue and the budgeted sales tax revenue. You can see that those lines are in fact both going up and they are both divergent. So, essentially where we were two years ago is we were bring in consistently a million dollars more than we were budgeting from sales tax revenue, which is a good problem to have, don't get me wrong. But, the rational was we had, if we were bring in a million more than we plan to, we did not need the three hundred and twenty five thousand dollar a year property tax we could and we haven't yet but we could the marketing value of having no town property tax is worth something. Look at what Wilton has been able to do there. So, in 2001 with the 2000 numbers we decided at the time it was around seven million dollars, seven point two million dollars if you look at the bottom was the fun balance and I follow what Henry presented and I agree with the numbers that Henry presented as far as where these numbers are coming from. But, again, I was looking at, at the end of the year you have got to look at the financial report and there is a bottom line and that is our fund balance. That is what this blue line represents. Now, last year in 2002 we had 2001 numbers to go off of. The grand total that I had was around nine point four, grand total, and it had gone up approximately two million dollars since the previous year and I was saying lets leave a million dollars at the County as a credit on County property taxes. That vote as Dennis pointed out failed, Ted was absent with recovering for heart surgery. That did not pass after seven weeks of consideration. Now we did a study it has been almost a year Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 349 since we last talked about this and again, after the April 24th memo we got the audit from 2002. Totaling those two we were looking at ten point seven and that is adding the fleet reserve that fund to the general fund. So, again it has increased since last, since we last talked about this, it has increased one point three million dollars. Again, I am looking at that snap shot. Now, to turn to the third page, I am all for saving for a rainy day. I have an engineering background I have an MBA I was a Navy Officer these three things are pretty conservative things and I believe in safety factors bring more than you need when you are in the service you definitely want to have too much instead of not enough. But, I am all for saving for a rainy day. I tell people, it is raining now, school taxes go up consistently fifteen, twenty percent a year. County taxes have gone up fifteen, twenty percent a year. The third page on the handout that I provided shows you the town tax rate over the last twelve, thirteen years in blue and then the County tax rate and the total tax rate which is the two together in red. You can see that over the last five or six years the taxes have gone up dramatically. But in the mean time the town surplus has ballooned. I am a full supporter of the Capital Reserve but again it is a paper tiger if it sets for two years and we have not spent anything. We will not spend it all in one shot. A lot of the projects that we are talking about on our Capital Plan are special district projects that yes we can fuel them with money from the general fund but ultimately they are going to get paid for by district users. So, you know, I am explaining this to give you a little rational. The last page, again, you know, I mentioned school taxes and you can see where Lake George assessment in the outlets and all the Ward I properties in Lake George School District have done a great job keeping their school tax rate down but we have four school districts in the town, Queensbury, Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, and Lake George, and Queensbury, Glens Falls and Hudson Falls you can see they are up there around the nineteen, twenty dollar a thousand mark, a hundred times what the towns property tax was a couple of years ago before we eliminated it. I guess what I am saying is, is that you know we can argue is it three and a half million dollars or is it ten million dollars but the trend is still true no matter how we slice it. The first half of the nineties our whole surplus hovered around two million dollars. It was, I mean to look at the report here and the discussion here, you would wonder gee how did this town ever survive in the early nineties? I follow the long spread sheet here what I understand and how I would paraphrase all this is, taking the three million dollars out for the capital reserve, taking six hundred thousand dollars out of the rec. fund, a hundred thousand dollars out for highway garage and if we also took out the one point one million dollar solid waste, we took all that extra not the seven hundred and forty but the whole one point eight. If we took all that out we would still be talking about five million dollars left over. That is with three million dollars sitting unused in the capital reserve fund. Now I will go back to the original two percent of our budget is roughly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and we have many, many, many times that now. So, I understand what you are saying it would be nice for the taxpayer to say you know we would like to be able to give you a repeatable amount every year, but Supervisor Brower-Well, we can also adjust it, but until you we are not sure sales tax revenues are going to continue to increase they will in the short term. Councilman Stec-We have ten million dollars in a bad economy, the economy has been poor in the last two years, not just poor in the 90's poor over historic and decades of time. We have had a particularly bad economy especially in the north east. The arguments that we used two years ago was September 11th we cannot do this because we do not know what September 11th will do. Last year the argument that was used was we cannot do this because September 11th and the recession. But, I have shown you in the last three years what has happened in that fund balance which is not my number, that comes from a financial audit that we pay for, professional for it. There is no doubt in my mind that we can prudently do at least the million dollars that we talked about doing last year. If Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 350 somebody said, well we would like to repeat it every year then I would say fine, perhaps a half a million dollars a year goal would be a good goal to have. But, today I would still say I want to do this years half a million dollars and a half a million for last year. So, I am still saying that it is very prudent. Supervisor Brower-Are you saying you can sustain a million dollars ... Councilman Stec-No, I am saying that I do not know if we can or we can't but I am not going to tell somebody I am not going to give you ten dollars back this year because I do not think I can give you back ten dollars next year, to me that is not a good argument. It is their money let them hold it. I wanted to get back to just one more brief thing, actually Dennis that you brought up. Two things that I have learned on the Town Board that happen when you carry a lot of money like we do and the Post Star and the Chronicle have been good at point out the first one. You do not always spend it well, we have been criticized for excessive car fleets, for beautification projects, for fire houses, we criticized and perhaps if we did not have that kind of money we would not be spending that kind of money. So, I see that as personal finance if you got extra money you are likely to spend it. The other thing that I have seen and you brought up a couple of them, you brought up the Main Street burying the power, the connector road, Glens Falls Sewer Negotiations and how the connector road comes in to play there. What has happened we have become the deep pocket. When we sit down with the City to talk about a deal or the State and County to talk about burying power or connector road we are paying out of town taxpayers pockets for things that other communities are getting the State and County to pay for because they do not have. When we sit down at the table and talk to these people they looked at us and they say, Queensbury you got money, you pay for it. I am all for paying our fair share but I cannot look anybody in the eye and saying we should be paying more than our fair share because it ends up costing us money to carry that kind of money. So, if it goes away in two years because we have aggressively given back the taxpayers their own money then I am all for that. That is how I have felt since 2001 when we eliminated the town property tax. The doom and gloom that was predicted by some two years ago has not panned out. The fund balance has gone up, sales tax has gone up, school and county taxes have gone up we can afford to do it, it is the right thing to do. We have to act on this before September 1st. for it to take affect next year so I am proposing that sometime in the next couple of regular meetings we have a resolution. There is a resolution kicking around from last year I think it quotes the fund balance at seven point two million dollars it is certainly much higher than that now. Again, I am all for continuing as long as possible to do as much as possible, I do not think it has to be the same number every year is what I am saying. If we are going to say lets shoot for a target every year, one I am going to want it to be an aggressive target every year to return. Again, I have used this argument last year, there is no risk. There is no risk to giving the taxpayer back their own money. If I said let me take that ten million dollars go to Vegas and put it on black and I will make it twenty I hope everyone in this room would stop me. But, there is no risk to say lets take your money and give it back to you hold it and if you want to spend it on a fleet of cars or a rock garden fine, don't ask me to hold it because maybe me or my successor not by successors but you know would ... but you know if it is there it is a temptation and I would rather have somebody else hold theirs, I would rather you hold your money than you ask me to hold your money. That is where I have been trying to say for two years and I mean, if we are going to say lets agree on an annual amount to shoot for I would agree it would be less than a million dollars to do it every year. But, what I am saying is if we say well lets make a five hundred thousand dollar a year per year every year that is our goal we are going to budget for that, that is fine but this year I want to do the half million for last year which we should have done. So, if we want to agree yea, lets do a half million every year and set Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 351 up some sort of program to make that happen. I am all for that so long as this year is a million dollars. Five hundred for this year and next year. Councilman Brewer-The thing of it is you cannot well, ... Supervisor Brower-Roger what are your thoughts on it? Councilman Boor-I have had brief discussions with Dan on this and obviously this is his baby so to speak and I have no problem giving back in a way, what I want to do is I want to back up and talk about some of the things that you said, some of the things that Dennis said and then we go from there. I think it is important that it be given back on a consistent basis a long term and you made the best case for it, when you said that look at the marketing value that Wilton has. They have marketing value because they have consistency in tax rates. There is no value, what is a bonus one year is going to be a huge increase the next. So, consistency is really important. You emphasized it when you said that school tax goes up every year and so does property tax so they go up consistently so lets not be inconsistent with how we return it, lets be consistent in how we return it. If we decide that is how we are going to do it because that is how everything else works. As far as it being their own money a large portion of it is but we do get revenue from tourism which is out of town money which I would like to think helps pay for infrastructure for the excessive amount of roads, bridges and highway we need when they are here. If we spend too much on a give back we jeopardize the capital improvement projects that in fact will allow more tax dollars to come to this area. If we cannot get the tourist in here can't get them off the interstate can't get them down exit 18, 19,20 that we lose sale tax revenue which in the long run may create a better surplus with which to give back over a long period of time. We are looking at this Rec. Center which could be the largest Capital Project this town ever faces. I think philosophically this Board supports that but lets not pretend that where the money is going to come from. So, would I be in favor of returning some money, sales tax, yes. But, I think we need to first identify what is an appropriate surplus, the two percent for the schools I think is grossly inadequate. But, if we can identify a percentage of what we consider to be the unrestricted fund balance and say this is what we think this town should hold and anything above that I would not mind having some kind of formula that would dole out equal amount over time every year. It would cut down on the tax rate, something like that. Would it be easy to figure out, I could not do it I have not the mathematical mind to do it. The one time give away is exactly that, it is a one time give away and it will be spent on a McDonald's dinner which is fine if that is what the people want to do with it, but it doesn't stabilize tax rate and it doesn't let a business coming into Town go, what will I be paying in a year if I locate my business here. What will the taxes be. They will not know because it is going to be hap hazard and different every year so companies will not know what to expect. Councilman Brewer-Is that the reason we are doing this to stabilize tax rates? Councilman Boor-I think stabilization is what allows people to plan. If you cannot know what your cost is going to be you will not buy the business you will not relocate. Councilman Brewer-We have no control over school taxes we have no control over County taxes. Councilman Boor-But we have control over this. That is what I am saying what would you have control over lets control. I think there is nothing wrong with giving back money if we have access but just to do it one time I do not think benefits. Business moving into Town it doesn't. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 352 Councilman Brewer-To begin with Roger the School budget is somewhere near thirty five, thirty four million our is what twenty? Supervisor Brower-Twenty two. Councilman Brewer-So, there is a big difference in when you say the percentage doesn't reflect, they have a larger surplus so to speak than we could have with the two percent. Councilman Boor-We could get out there on that and that creates a whole other problem if you want to go school tax because Lake George School District really makes out in this deal. They get the best of both worlds, they get the property tax rebate and they do not get the bump in the school tax. Councilman Brewer-The reason that I think this law was designed is only my interpretation is you do it year by year because you do not know what your fund balance is going to be that is why we have these discussions every year. I do not want to give somebody's money away ten years from now when I do not have anything to say about it. Councilman Stec-Let me ask you one quick question. Two percent is too tight there is no way we could run it, a business like that with, I am not arguing that point. Twenty percent would be a million five I mean you have more than that. Councilman Boor-It sounds like a lot. Councilman Brewer-It is a lot. A million five is a lot. Councilman Boor-Some of our houses you cannot buy around here for that, it is all relative guys. Councilman Brewer-It is not our money. Councilman Boor-It is not necessarily the residents of the Town of Queensbury either, a lot of it comes from tourist from out of State. It comes through this building and they expect us to keep the roads up they expect us to supply water to the Great Escape and to these other places that require it. Councilman Brewer-You think we are not going to keep the roads up? Councilman Boor-Where does the money come from Tim to do that? It does not come from Queensbury property tax. Councilman Brewer-You are right it doesn't because there is no Queensbury Property Tax. Councilman Stec-That is a pay back for the Town because we put up with the noise and the smell and the traffic and all the things that you know vilify suburbia we put up with that and before that these people are helping fund town operations. Supervisor Brower-You are also assuming that the sales tax is not going to be given back to the people and I contend that there are a lot of ways to give sales tax back to the people other than reduce the County tax. We could use fund balance to up front some of the rec. center cost if we need to. So, we might not have to borrow as much. Councilman Brewer-Can we do that legally though? Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 353 Supervisor Brower- I think so. Comptroller Hess-For Recreation, Yes. Supervisor Brower-There are ways that the taxpayers can still reap the benefit other than simply lowering the County Tax rate. You might have a multi pronged approach actually. Councilman Stec-But the four years that the four of us have been on this board I have not seen us make those investments back into the community. We talk about it, two years ago we set aside two and a half million dollars for capital projects but to date we have not spent a nickel. I am all for using some of this money to make those sorts of investments but we are doing right now we are doing neither. We neither investing it nor are we returning it. We are just watching it grow collect interest. Councilman Boor-Some of it is appropriated through projects that we know will happen. We know that Exit 18 is going to happen. Are you saying lets pretend that it is not going to happen and we will spend that money, because we cannot get the project to come along as fast as we want you think it is bad to save? Councilman Brewer-The sewer lines and the water lines Roger are not going, cannot used they have to .. Councilman Boor-That is a small portion of it, Tim Councilman Brewer-It is a County project Roger we are not footing the whole bill for that. Councilman Stec-That goes back to the point I was making, we carry money and when it comes time to talk about burying power they want Councilman Brewer-They want us to pay for it because we have seven million dollars. Councilman Stec-....You can shell out a million dollars to bury power they couldn't. Supervisor Brower-Actually I fully expect that we will get that grant. Councilman Stec-A bird in the hand Dennis, a bird in the hand. Supervisor Brower-Betty Little promised her support for it that is for sure. Ted I have not heard from you at all. Councilman Turner-We have all been talking and we have not really settled much of anything yet. Supervisor Brower- I know. But it is a discussion to see if there is some consensus. Councilman Turner-It is a long road, lets not dig ourselves a great big hole either. It is a long road we do not need to dig a great big hole by getting ourselves in trouble over this balance we have got to be careful how we handle this money. Just like Dan said, we have got to be really careful. If you want to give it back every year, we are going to have to be consistent. Councilman Brewer-That was not the proposal the proposal was that Dan brought was a one or two time ... Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 354 Councilman Turner-He wants to bring a one time right now. Councilman Stec-Well I want to do it as often as we can. Councilman Turner-But if we do it for a couple of years we are going to find out where we are going with this. Councilman Brewer-Ted, we make the decision every year if we can do a million this year, next year we say we cannot do a million we do a half million or we cannot do anything. Do you think people are not going to get, I mean they may like to have the idea they are going to get it back but Councilman Turner-you can give it back to them. Councilman Stec-I just cannot understand the argument I do not want to give you back ten dollars because I cannot give you back another ten next year. That is nuts. Councilman Boor-I just do not think it is good use of the money. Supervisor Brower-You might be asking them to shell out some of their own money if you are not careful. Councilman Boor-If you give them a rebate and then you say your taxes are going up because we are building and twenty five million dollar rec. center... Councilman Brewer-Then we are forced to justify... that is going to referendum and that is up to the taxpayers to vote and say yes we will build a twenty five million dollar, that is their decision Roger. Councilman Stec-That is why it has to go, that is why we are going to make it go before a referendum. Councilman Boor-That is their decision that is exactly right. Councilman Brewer-How does that affect us having Councilman Boor-You brought it up. Councilman Brewer-No Councilman Boor-I said how was it going to get paid for, the taxpayers are going to pay for it. Councilman Brewer-Absolutely they are. But they are going to decide if it is going to get built or not. Councilman Boor-So, you are going to give them a million dollars and then you are go and your taxes are going to go up. Councilman Brewer-But that is not going to break us a million dollars. I do not see how you guys think that we are going to be broke then we spend a million ... Councilman Boor-I do not see how it is going to benefit. Councilman Brewer-If I went to your house and offered you fifty bucks to take your wife out or take your kids somewhere would you say no? Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 355 Councilman Boor-Good Luck Councilman Brewer-You know what I am saying. You might say no. Councilman Boor-You are not better than I am pal. I understand what you said. I do not know if it is the best use of the money? Councilman Brewer-Did anybody here send the check back that the President sent us two years ago? Did anybody here send the money back? Supervisor Brower- I never saw it. Councilman Brewer-If you got it would you send it back? It is the same thing. Councilman Boor-I do not know if that has anything to do with if it is a good decision? If you found twenty dollars on the ground you are not going to go knocking on doors to find out who it is. The bottom line is, is that the best use of the money? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. What is the appropriate amount of surplus? If we Councilman Stec-Twenty percent. Councilman Boor-If you could come up with something that is appropriate and anything above that you decide you want to ... Councilman Stec-Forty percent is appropriate. That is three million dollars. Councilman Boor-Of what figure? Councilman Stec-Of the ten million dollars general fund. We are talking about general fund money here. Councilman Brewer-Use forty percent of the three million.... Councilman Boor-I am not comfortable with the landfill money and stuff in there. Councilman Brewer-How much is the forty percent of the three point eight two eight? Councilman Stec-If we pulled out the landfill money that six point one million becomes.. leaving all the reserves as they are including the landfill we would still have five million dollars. If you said you know what I want a forty percent buffer twenty times what the school are allowed to carry then it would be three million dollars. You would still have two million to play with. Councilman Boor-I guess it is just hard to comprehend I am hearing two arguments, one is that we have all this money and we should give it back and two is we have all this money and we should be spending it, because if we are not spending it we should give it back. Councilman Stec-We should not hoard it. Councilman Boor-I do not think we are hoarding it. Councilman Brewer-Our history proves in the last two years we have...and haven't spent a dime. That is the point that we are trying to drive home. I am not saying we shouldn't money but if we are going to have money to do these projects then we ought to do the projects. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 356 Councilman Boor-A lot of them are in the progress, Jenkinsville is being done. Councilman Brewer-That has nothing to do with this. That is the Recreation Dept. isn't it? Councilman Stec-It is on the capital plan. Councilman Boor-It is part of the money the ten million that you guys are counting. Come on lets be fair here, if you are going call it ten million dollars the recreation fund is in there. Councilman Brewer-How much is that project? Councilman Boor-I am using it as an example you said nothing is getting done, we have got engineering done on nine and two fifty four, we are, these things take time. I do not want to do a crummy job just for the sake of spending money. That is the argument you guys are making. Are you saying that we are being too careful and we should just throw the money away? Councilman Brewer-No Councilman Stec-No, this is not about the capital plan because those projects are good but a lot of the projects on there are not general funded projects and a lot of the ones that are, are very small dollar amounts. Fifty thousand, a hundred thousands, not, the only non special district thing hanging out there isn't even on as Dennis pointed out in the capital plan is the recreation center. But beyond the recreation center ... Supervisor Brower-It is on the plan but the lowest priority on the recreation projects that was rated by town managers. Councilman Stec-That one is going to referendum so there, people are going to pick their poison. They are going to say yes, lets spend ten million dollars or lets spend eight million dollars and they will know what they are getting themselves into, because they will make the decision. Supervisor Brower-One of the things that I know Henry you have been perceived as being opposed to leaving sales tax with the county but what is your feeling on it. Comptroller Hess-Actually I am not opposed at all, let me give you a little history dating back to 1997. When I came with the Town Fred Champagne was an advocate of that once a year he would on me again can we do it this year and my answer in fact we documented at one point, we wrote up a couple page memo for him and it sort of satisfied the Town Board at the time, Betty may remember it. At that time there was a town tax and the rational you do not give money back to the County until you have no town tax. You have no town tax now. The other feature that we highlight in there is that when you do that it should be sustainable. The tenants of governments are predictability and stabilization, you want to stabilize we are talking about stabilizing revenue for our benefit, stabilizing expenditures which also is going to stabilize tax rates. I do agree with Roger's point on that and although I am in favor of if the Town can afford a sustained give back to the County I am very much in favor of that. But I think it really needs to be stabilized and sustained if you are going to do it. The tenants of good governance are informed decisions which is why we are today with this kind of information and when optimism is justified and I agree with Dan that optimism is justified but that you exercise it cautiously. Do the best that you can do today and then worry about tomorrow, I think that is not what people want me, as Town Comptroller I would like to see you do this at a Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 357 minor level because I think it is the time to do it. If I was County treasurer I would be very enthusiastic about this and say I think you should do the whole thing. Councilman Boor-Well at least you are honest, anyway. Comptroller Hess-But, I am not I am the Town Comptroller and I think yes, I think the financial planning you have here can sustain it but I think not at a million dollars and I think going at a million dollars or some number that will fluctuate up and down is not what people look for in government. It is not in the text books it is not in any model of government that says that it should fluctuate wildly from year to year. It needs to be reasonably sustainable at a reasonably safe. Councilman Stec-I agree with that I just, again I point out two years ago when we were talking about getting rid of three hundred thousand dollar a year property tax there was a couple people in this room with all kinds of gloom and doom predictions about how we will not be able to afford to do that. We have done that two years in a row now and there is no end in site anyways any time soon. It turned out to be the right decision. Comptroller Hess-I just want to say, I did not hear a lot of predictions about what would happen I heard a lot of cautious and maybe it was not optimism there might have been some pessimism at the time and I think it was justified. I do not think anyone predicted that sales taxes were going to go down dramatically, we were not sure how fast they were going to raise. I think it was caution as possible to predicting gloom and doom. I think it was just caution at the time. Supervisor Brower-We are reaping some of the tragedy that occurred as the result of the States inability to retain corporations after nine eleven, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island they all gained from the tragedy that occurred in New York. The State is suffering for it. The State was in pretty good physical condition in 2001 and now it is horrific condition. But, a lot of it was because of that .. tragedy. Councilman Stec-Today, just now you are saying that we benefit from nine eleven but last year and the year before that you said that nine eleven was going to kill us. Councilman Boor-No. What we said we did not what... Supervisor Brower-We actually benefited by it because I think was had more tourism from New York City than...! also think we are selling more homes to New York City people for vacation and shelters. Councilman Boor-Which is why we should proceed with caution at a stable ... Councilman Stec-Put a number on caution. Councilman Boor-I want us as a Board to determine an appropriate percentage surplus and then anything above that, that we can put out at a consistent rate I do not have a problem with. Councilman Stec-Twenty percent? Councilman Boor-I do not know. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 358 Comptroller Hess-Actually you are throwing out numbers out for fund balance and we have done an analysis here and said you think, somewhere between fifteen and twenty of appropriations and fifteen to twenty percent of your volatile tax revenue, your major tax revenue, sales tax is reasonable. I have got three other analysis from three other towns our size that support those number are higher. Throw in twenty percent without a basis to say why is it twenty? I will say fifteen on these a conservative side of what other towns are doing. But it is not twenty percent of any, a magic percent of any magic number. It is just what you feel. Let me, one other comment here, I have a reason to talk to a lot of people lately about political issues and you know a couple of them have raised the issue about the fund balance, how come Queensbury has all this money. One of their responses is, yea, they do their fund balance is left over from the nineties, they are still growing to some degree and the board is making a very conscious review onto how they can best use it. There are several ways to use it one is to give back cash and the other is to do some of the pent up projects that need to be done which is a way of giving it back. Doing things that just haven't been done, like recreation centers and park enhancements and roads and things or a combination of both. I have no stand on which you should do, that is truly your choice. I just have to think it needs to be, it does have to be predictable and stable and I will throw a value judgment on this or a subjective point of view in although I try to be mostly objective. I think you are much safer doing it, I will just use a number, there is nothing magic in it. But, if you were to say a quarter of a million dollars or three hundred thousand dollars and then next year you found that the trend that you were still building a fund balance increase to three fifty. The following year you get ..four fifty and it stays four fifty for two or three years and you found that your trend was up and good, you are going to be ...if you are doing it for personal election that is the wrong reason to do it. If you are doing it for the good of the tax payer that is the way to build their confidence in their government. Councilman Stec-Well than, I will point out again that the elimination of the property tax was two years ago when none of us were up for re-election. Last year it was brought up and if you recall and it is in the minutes I specifically said it was bring, brought up last year because it was an off year, it was not a political issue last year it so happens to be a political this year, so be it I am comfortable with my side of the argument. Mr. Tucker-Why don't you settle for two year program.. Councilman Stec-I want you to look at, again those last two data points on the front page, last year at the end of 2001 nine point four, yes all that other stuff is in there you know so the numbers something under nine point four but again the trends the ...are correct. Nine point four million dollars I said lets leave a million and we didn't. It went to ten point seven. If we had left a million we would still have nine point seven. We would still have more than we had last year. I am all for saying lets re-evaluate it every year but what I am saying is if we look back and say if we had done it where would we be, that ten point seven would be nine point seven. It would still be more than what we ... Councilman Boor-I still prefer a more cautious approach. Councilman Stec-I hear you and that is why I said what ever number we think is reasonable, but I want to do last years and this years. So, if we say three hundred thousand ... Councilman Boor-That might be what you want to do but that's maybe not what the board wants to do. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 359 Councilman Stec-I appreciate that. Councilman Boor-I am not trying to be smart. Councilman Stec-I fully appreciate that we are a Board of five equals Roger. Councilman Boor-I think of going slow and that way we are ahead of the trend. We are not guess these big guesses. Supervisor Brower-If we considered three hundred thousand we would be close to what our town tax was before. Councilman Stec-Personally, that is far too conservative. Supervisor Brower-Well I am a conservative. Councilman Boor-Well, but if it was four hundred the next year, five hundred the next year. Councilman Stec-Conservatives return taxpayers money. Councilman Boor-Lets keep it on the point here you know. Councilman Stec-That is on point, Roger. Councilman Boor-No, I think it is a little bit... Councilman Stec-Two years of why we can't gets frustrating, why we cannot do something that to most people is pretty straight forward. We did not need a year to consider this. We did not need seven weeks to consider it last summer, but the argument was we did not have enough time. Councilman Boor-But, Dan, that is your opinion. Councilman Stec-That was what was said, that is in the minutes, Roger. It is not what I said it is what other people said and it is in the minutes. Councilman Boor-I think it is an important enough issue that we all know what we are getting into and we are all comfortable with it. Councilman Stec-We have talked about it for a year. Councilman Boor-No, you have talked about it for a year. Councilman Stec-Well, somebody ought to be talking about it, and I am glad I am. Councilman Boor-We are here and we are talking about it, and I think this is the foru m to do it. Councilman Stec-I told you how I feel and I am inflexible on the point. Councilman Boor-I know and that makes it very difficult to come to a consensus. Councilman Stec-It is the right thing to do.. Councilman Boor-That is in your mind Dan. Councilman Stec-Well, and that is my opinion. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 360 Councilman Boor-I know, but I mean, we all have to give you know, if you do not want to it makes it very difficult to get where we want to go. Some of us Councilman Stec-Throw a number out, I put a million out you said it is too high, put a number on it, we need to do this, we got to put a number on it eventually. So, lets... Councilman Boor-I am willing to say that we can do something, we can return some money. Councilman Stec-I thought we were going to be prepared to resolve something tonight, not study it some more. Again, September 1st. is coming. Councilman Boor-Here is another deadline and I don't see the importance. Councilman Stec-State Law says September 1st. is the dead line. Councilman Boor-I, you do what you want to do we have to do it by September 1 st. Councilman Stec-Even if we do two hundred thousand it still..by September 1st. Councilman Brewer-You have to do it by September 1st. Supervisor Brower-No matter what we do we have to move it forward. I would like to have something at the next board meeting that we can agree on, at least the majority of us. I do not know Councilman Brewer-We are saying a million and you guys are saying two and fifty thousand. Supervisor Brower-The most I would want to go would be something reflecting the last reduction of the Town Tax would be the maximum I would want to consider. Councilman Boor-Is what, three hundred thousand. Councilman Brewer-three hundred and twenty five? Councilman Stec-That is right, you said three twenty five then I would say lets do last years and this years so the first year lets do six fifty. Supervisor Brower-I would not do two years. Councilman Stec-Well, we should have done it last year, Dennis, I just explained to you. Councilman Boor-That is your opinion Dan. Councilman Stec-I just explained to you we have got one point three million more then we had last year. If we gave million back then we would still be three hundred thousand ahead of the game. There is no risk in this, this is taxpayer money there is no risk in giving it back to the taxpayer. Councilman Boor-You jeopardize other projects. Councilman Stec-No Roger. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 361 Councilman Boor-Yes, Dan. Councilman Stec-Because if the Town Board decides we are going to do something you do it. Councilman Boor-You got ten dollars and you give one away how much to you have? Councilman Stec-You have nine, Roger. Councilman Boor-You cannot do a ten dollar project anywhere now.... Councilman Brewer-This town has never been deprived of doing any project. Councilman Boor-There are some big ones coming down the pike that you just pretend aren't going to be there. Councilman Brewer-No, I am not pretending they are not going to be there, Roger, we are not going to fund those projects you are speaking of out of this fund balance, we are going to borrow the money. If we are going to do a three million dollars or two million dollars Councilman Boor-That is certainly an option we have, if you do not want to use any of this for it that is an option. Councilman Brewer-project, we have sat here with fire companies we have sat here with rescue squads and we said don't pay cash, borrow. We have instructed them to borrow to do projects. Supervisor Brower-There is still O&M though. If you build this rec. center that we are talking about if the taxpayers approve it who knows that the O&M is going to be on it on a yearly basis, half a million dollars a million dollars? Councilman Brewer-Do you think we are honestly going to do it this year, Dennis? Supervisor Brower-No, I doubt it. Councilman Brewer-We do not even know what the project is yet. Supervisor Brower-I think the rec. commission ...to be honest with you. Councilman Stec-We are not even sure we have a contract yet. Councilman Brewer-So, you are thinking hypothetical that are just not there, may never develop, may never happen. Supervisor Brower-If this Board approves going ahead with a consultant Councilman Brewer-We already did that didn't we? Supervisor Brower-We may do it again. Councilman Stec-That vote was unanimous. Councilman Brewer-We can all agree to disagree but if Dan wants to do this with whatever number he picks you bring a resolution forward and if it defeats then somebody else bring another and ... Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 362 Supervisor Brower-My comment is to bring a number forward and then the Board can compromise... Councilman Stec-I have told you my fall back position, my is if you want to do an annual amount lets decide on the annual amount but first year we should do last years and this years. That is my fall back compromise position, I think it is extremely reasonable. We are a board of five equals as I have said and many others have said, some still have a hard time accepting that. Mrs. Monahan-We know that the tax rate of the County this year will be higher than it was last year, but we do not know what it is going to be so lets assume that the tax rate this year will be the same as last year my question is if you give a million back how much effect is that going ... Councilman Stec-Right around fifty six cents per thousand, that is the number from last year based on our assessed evaluation it was exactly the increase within a couple pennies of County increase last year. It went from four to four fifty and the million dollars would have been fifty five, fifty six cents per thousand. So it nullified the increase. Mrs. Monahan-We are talking about the property tax owners, giving the tax back a lot of the taxes paid in there that gives you the surplus came from sales tax which everybody pays is the other thing better to reduce the towns sales tax rate? That affects everybody. ... This is just affecting the property owner and it is really giving back more to the people who have the most expensive houses. But it is really not benefiting very much the people that don't have a very expensive house but had to pay a lot of their income in sales tax because so many of our necessities are taxes. You know like tooth paste and things like that. I am saying this would almost be fairer if you want to be fair to reduce the towns tax. Councilman Stec-I want to be fair and I want to follow the law we asked our Attorney last year what were our options with the surplus as far as tax relief goes and this was the recommended option from our Town Counsel. Councilman Boor-There is a regressive nature what Betty is getting at everybody has to buy tooth paste and if you only make fifty dollars a year that tube of toothpaste affects you a lot more than somebody that make ten thousand dollars a year. So, it is very regressive as opposed if you approve roads that everybody uses no matter how much money they make. Mrs. Monahan-If you reduce your sales tax it is not getting it back out of your surplus you would not be collecting as much sales tax in the future. Councilman Stec-We would leave it we would not receive it from the County, they would withhold a million over a set schedule next year. As the money comes in like two hundred and fifty thousand a quarter if there was a million dollars would be left at the County on behalf of the taxpayers of Queensbury. ...I think we have said everything that needs to be said I think the five of us need to go and decide what number we can all agree on. Councilman Brewer-To go on the high side and review it year by year. Supervisor Brower-I go on the low side. I am worried by the being able to sustain it over the years. Councilman Stec-If we were to come up with an annual number the only thing I want is I want last years number included in this years number. That is my compromise. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 363 Councilman Boor-Then you run that risk you know where people stand, you run that risk. It is like gambling, Dan, if you want to be like that Councilman Stec-I do not gamble with taxpayers money. Councilman Boor-Well, apparently you do. Councilman Stec-Anything that we do, any number that we give back is a zero risk proposition because it is their money. Councilman Brewer-It is like you have got it in your mind that because we do it this year we have to do it next year. Councilman Boor-Yes, I have that in my mind. Councilman Brewer-You do not have to do it next year. Councilman Boor-Because I said stability in government is the key to good govern ment. Councilman Brewer-That is your opinion. Councilman Boor-Yes, it is. Councilman Stec-Some people would say that you're saying that the taxpayer is a child that cannot be trusted with their own money. Councilman Boor-Those are your words pal, not mine. Councilman Stec-I am just saying that is the opposite. Councilman Boor-I would never do that. Councilman Stec-Somehow you cannot tell them this is a one time deal don't count on next year. Councilman Boor-The taxpayers are smarter than you think don't kid yourself. Councilman Stec-I know they are and that is why the see right through that kind of argument that kind of reasoning, somehow giving me back ten dollars this year I don't want it because you cannot do it next year that is nuts. Councilman Boor-My responsibility is stability and good decision making. I am not into bate and switch I am not going to sell witches for fifty cents and run an ad saying I will give you a dollar if you come in here and be limited to one per item and I get fifty cents on the deal, that not cool I would be out of business in a week. Councilman Stec-Schools were two percent leaving a twenty percent comfort ten times what schools are allowed to carry, lets limit ourselves, maybe that is the discussion we should be having. Lets limit ourselves to twenty percent. Supervisor Brower-Are we on the conservative side of what other governments our size that you have analyzed in regard to fund balance? Comptroller Hess-Yea. We are in the range but generally on the conservative side of the ones that I have samples of the ones that supplied specific data. The Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 364 Town of Rotterdam, they have a ceiling of twenty five to thirty percent of budget appropriations that is their target that is what they maintain. Councilman Brewer-What is their tax rate? Comptroller Hess-I don't know, I did not ask them tax rates. Councilman Brewer-I would like to compare apples to apples. Councilman Boor-What do tax rates have to do with it? Comptroller Hess-We are talking about optimum fund balance and tax rates to not enter into it at all. Councilman Brewer-What is their budget do you have that? Comptroller Hess-Sixteen million two. Councilman Stec-Against our twenty two or against our ten? Comptroller Hess-It is general fund plus the other general town fund function, it is the whole thing. We selected these, the ones that we pulled on the basis of population, land area and budget size, the three criteria that were predominant. We polled six and got five responses three of which included an updated to see what they did on fund balance. Not enough data to make a summary that I could distribute to you but here is the Town of Bethlehem, as a general rule the policy of the town is to maintain fund balance between ten and twenty percent of appropriations, the general fund has maintained a higher fund balance due to the independence of revenue sources that are sensitive to prevailing economic trends the need to provide inter fund loans to the water fund and significant capital funding requirements, that is a comment. The Town of Dewitt, the target of fund balance is fifteen percent of the budget appropriations and right now they are maintaining a fund balance of around twenty five percent. Councilman Stec-So, based on those numbers you said a reasonable or a good estimate of our general fund budget is seven million dollars. The money of seven million figure or the twenty million dollar figure when we think about what percentage .. Comptroller Hess-I use general fund appropriations which are let me look at my calculations here, fifteen percent of estimated sales tax revenues is one factor and fifteen percent of appropriations for all the funds that are involved. It is basically the general fund because some of the other funds to not have appropriations of those two numbers. Councilman Stec-What is our total number? Comptroller Hess-I target the optimum fund balance is two million five sixty five. Using that formula... Councilman Brewer-We do not know what this years revenues are going to be.. be it good or be it bad. Comptroller Hess-Our sales tax is two million year project even though have got a couple behind us in the conversation with the County reveals that we may experience a one percent increase in the upcoming quarter. But, we have actually what I call stable receipts for the first half. We projected I think four percent increase. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 365 Councilman Brewer-Don't we historically get a big bang at the last quarter. Comptroller Hess-Yes, but we project that out. Councilman Stec-It was higher last year than we budgeted. Comptroller Hess-It has been for a number of years we are closing the gap in it. The Board is saying lets be less optimistic less conservative each time but there is still a good deal of conservatism built into that I cannot deny that. Councilman Brewer-I say, Dan if you want to do that with a million or whatever the number is bring the resolution and Dennis if you want to do two fifty you bring a resolution. Supervisor Brower-I will talk to Ted and Roger they seem to be on the same conservative wave length so we will decide whether we bring one for two fifty or three and a quarter or three hundred or whatever. Councilman Boor-What I would want to see is a formula for it continuing at that rate it could go up possibly, but, stabilization. Comptroller Hess-Taxpayers are happier if you could take a conservative number and build on it and increase every year than they can if you ...back, here again that is a subjective comment but I think it is very valid. Councilman Brewer-We are not talking about raising the tax rate we are talking about a fund balance that we want to return to the tax payer because we have no tax rate. We have no control over the county tax, we have no control over the school tax, we are talking about money that the Town has in the bank so to speak that has come from tax payers. Councilman Boor-Not necessarily. A lot of tourist dollars in this town. Councilman Stec-Sales tax is a tax. Councilman Boor-Yes, but lets not pretend that we do not have to have infrastructure for this. Councilman Brewer-I am not saying we don't Roger, I am saying that we are not going to neglect our town ... Councilman Boor-I keep hearing that we want to give the money back to the people as if they are the people that paid it all. They are not the ones that paid it all. ... I think we are a tourist based economy you do not believe that. Councilman Brewer-Do you know that they didn't? Councilman Boor-No, I don't. Councilman Brewer-So, you are making an argument to me Roger that you cannot prove. Councilman Boor-You are trying to put a resolution through and you do not even have the basic information. You do not even know how much tourism dollars, sales tax is Councilman Brewer-Because you disagree with it. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 366 Councilman Boor-No. I want to make an educated decision. If you cannot even tell me how much of the sales tax revenue comes from out of the area. Councilman Stec-That is not relevant. Councilman Boor-Yes it is relevant. You keep saying you are returning the money... Councilman Stec-If you listen to the things I say, I said that people that are coming from outside our community generating sales tax that is our payment for the smell and the noise and the light and the big box stores and all that. Councilman Boor-But it doesn't build roads and bridges. Councilman Brewer-It pays for the infrastructure it pays for... Councilman Boor-If you spend it on the infrastructure it does. If you spend it on the Docksider it doesn't. Councilman Brewer-We have not spent any town money on the Docksider. Supervisor Brower-I guess we have beaten this one to death this evening. Thank you for participating in the discussion, I think it was interest ring. 2.2 FILMING OF REGULAR TOWN BOARD MEETINGS Supervisor Brower-Introduced Mr. Mike Collins from TV 8 he has proposed filming the Town Board Meeting. Mr. Mike Collins-Councilman Boor came to my office and asked if we could tape the meetings, and I said we could and I submitted a proposal, unfortunately there is not an easy, noted they were not in the production business we are in the broadcast business. Peter Pepe is in the production business and using an hourly rate, depending on what has to be done. I took a guess in this proposal from Roger on what you wanted done, $375.00. Noted that the Board will have to decide on if you want to do it and if you do we would be more than will to do it. Noted if money was an issue you could get away with one camera... Supervisor Brower-Spoke to First National regarding sponsoring of the program....noted that they had sponsored Town Talk before, they said they would like to try it for three months. Mr. Collins-In order to do this we have very good camera people estimating a five hour night with two cameras and one operator... noted the proposal was with one camera with three hours... we can do it for about five hundred dollars a month. Councilman Brewer-It has come up that other TV stations do it for municipalities at no cost, is that true or untrue. Mr. Collins-I think it is untrue, I think you are talking about the cable access channels. Cable access channels was to provide diversity in local programming for the communities they have three sources of revenue, net work suppliers, subscribers to cable and advertisers. Adelphia I think would broadcast, in fact we would produced it and I would give it to Adelphia and they would run it on the air at no charge. They would not produce it for free. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 367 Supervisor Brower-Did have someone contact the Town to produce the program for cable access, they would have charged for their time then they said they could not handle it. Mr. Collins-The Cable access if free without commercials, as soon as you have Evergreen you now have to pay, I believe it is about twenty eight dollars a hour. Councilman Brewer-If we did the Town Board as a trail process you would charge by the hour? Mr. Collins-We have production, where you want it to run and how many times. At a minimum we are talking about a three hour broadcast when I look at the schedule to see where to run that we would want to run it at least twice week or once week for two weeks and then produce another one and run that for another two weeks. Councilman Brewer-Questioned the time frame? Mr. Collins-Noted he felt it is good programming and should be on the air. We could do it eleven thirty at night M-F, 8 to 11:00 in the morning M-F 11:30 A.m. to 3:00 P.M. M-F we could look at a weekend spot somewhere. You want to run it more than once a week. Councilman Boor-Twice anyway. The five hundred includes the broadcast fees. Councilman Brewer-Noted he wanted the contract to review before a final decision is made. Mr. Collins-Noted he would have the contract in a couple of days. Councilman Boor-Asked for an hourly rate if there was to be a special meeting? Mr. Collins-Noted in the next couple of days he would provide some more details. 2.3 Vehicle Price Information South Queensbury Fire Company Supervisor Brower-Introduced Bill Duell of So. Qsby. Fire Co. Mr. Duell-The main concern I had was the carrying capacity of the Humvee carrying the skid unit on the back of it. Did hours of research on the internet and found out that the one we are looking for has a solid back bumper and carries forty four hundred pounds in the back of it. We are looking at less than three thousand pounds, with the water... it is a ploy tank and frame with an 18 horse trump and motor on it. Supervisor Brower-How many gallons on it? Mr. Duell-Three hundred. Supervisor Brower-One of the concerns if the reliability of the Hummer the fact they breakdown in the fields and they are costly to repair what is the availability of parts? Mr. Duell-The availability of parts it has a six point two diesel GM diesel and a turbo 400 m automatic transmission those part of available, the other parts like the breaks etc. are GM are available through parts warehouses in the area, any Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 368 body panels that are not available locally are available next day from a number of places. Supervisor Brower-Who can repair the vehicle? Mr. Duell-The fellow we contacted has already agreed Mr. Bill Morehouse he is repairman in the Army National Guard in Whitehall. Supervisor Brower-Are there other mechanics? Mr. Duell-There is another mechanic on Warren Street. Supervisor Brower-The County is looking at land to give the armory the Nation Guard wants to relocate their armory and they are willing to invest 6.+- million in building and infrastructure but the County has to give them the land to do that. If they are willing to do that they will make the investment in our community and continue to keep a local presence. Mr. Duell-Showed the Board documentation from the military testing on reliability of the Humbee, it was double the military standards and twice as durable it set new standards for modern tactical vehicles. Supervisor Brower-What is the price of the vehicle? Mr. Duell-Orignial was nineteen five plus refurbishing it would be twenty nine five. We have found other outlets we can buy the vehicle for the nineteen five along with a winch assembly, the initial cost twenty one thousand. The other place to do rehab would paint it go thorough and change the oils and stuff in it and hose and belts we can have that done locally. Budget price of three thousand for two different paint places, put the lights and sirens in radios buy the skid unit mise. equipment routine maintenance which I am calling routine, change oil and belts, and get the vehicle here the total cost of forty five thousand eighty dollars. Before we were looking at forty six thousand. Supervisor Brower-The Humvee is a wide vehicle how is it going to get on the mountain trails. Mr. Duell-It is seven foot two inches wide the current brush truck is seven foot seven inches wide at the back. Supervisor Brower-So, it is narrower than your current truck. Councilman Brewer-How many brush fires do you go on in a year? Mr. Duell-I would have to look that up but we have been on two this year already. In addition to being a brush vehicle our ACR One unit which is a pickup truck our air crash truck in the winter time take the skid unit out of that and put it in the back of the Hummer, take the skid unit out of the Hummer it is the brush truck makes it into the ACR truck for the winter. These trucks were designed to go through three foot of snow towing nine thousand pounds behind them. Councilman Stec-This would replace two vehicles? Mr. Duell-No, only in the winter time. Supervisor Brower-Mr. Bruce Lehmann happens to be here Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 369 Mr. Lehmann-One of my clients is Arrow Head Equipment Co. they do research and development for the Army Corp. of Engineers...I think it is a great move for the Town to get into a high level multi use vehicle where this vehicle can attack brush fires it can be part of mowing and it can be have attachments put on for mowing, in the wintertime it could be retro fitted for sanding as well as plowing. It is a diverse vehicle. Supervisor Brower-Does Arrowhead repair Humvee vehicles? Mr. Lehmann-Yes, they do. Councilman Brewer-The conversation that I have had Bill and I have not instigated it is that the Fire Co. wants to get a new toy. Mr. Duell-If they think it is a new toy I am sorry. They do not fight the fires they do not go up on French Mountain or up on West Mountain they have not seen what these trucks have to do. Councilman Brewer-Can we get some data to show how many trips you would use this truck for? How many fires, how many rescues at the airport? So we can show data to people that would ask us why you want to buy this. Mr. Duell-In one year you may go to fifteen brush fires. Supervisor Brower-What is the year of your current vehicle? M r. Duell-1958 Supervisor Brower-You impressed me so much on how good that vehicle was I hated to see you get rid of it. Mr. Duell-That vehicle is a good vehicle it will out perform any new pickup truck, brush truck in this area. It will go places that the new ones will not do. We were due last year for a new thirty five thousand dollar one ton truck, we are looking for a twenty thousand dollar Hummer, we were trying to save the town money and yet try and provide them with a better piece of apparatus that will go through our whole town plus the surrounding areas not just our town this can be used as a rescue vehicle for anybody in Pilot Knob or wherever. Supervisor Brower-How many miles on this vehicle? Mr. Duell- On the odometer, five hundred and thirty two point four miles. Councilman Boor-Did you drive it? Mr. Duell-In the lot. Councilman Stec-It is definitely the time to replace the 1958 truck. Supervisor Brower-How much are you looking from the Town for are you looking at the base cost of that ... Mr. Duell-We have it in our truck fund, right now. We are not asking for any money, it is already set aside we need the permission. Councilman Turner-Is the winch in the front or back? Mr. Duell-The winch is in the front. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 370 Councilman Turner-What is the suspension? Mr. Duell-The suspension is A Frame suspension with coil over springs. Councilman Boor-Are you going with one inch lines on this? Mr. Duell-one hundred gallons of foam premixed on it and five hundred pounds of purple k, .... That would be all we have on the truck. Councilman Boor-What do you do with it when you don't use it? Mr. Duell-It gets stirred. The total cost would be forty five eighty. Councilman Brewer-Requested that the Board receive a break down of the cost relating to the vehicle purchase.... Mr. Duell-Spoke to the Board regarding the tires...Good year. Noted this was a 1988 unit. Councilman Boor-What mileage would you put in this unit in a year? Mr. Duell-The 1958 has sixteen thousand miles. Supervisor Brower-Why aren't you keeping the 58'. Mr. Duell-Noted, hard to find parts. Supervisor Brower-What are your plans for the old truck? Mr. Duell-We are thinking about a parade truck with it... Supervisor Brower-Thanked Mr. Duell... Mr. Duell-Noted he would get the information needed to the Board, and Monday night we should know one way or the other. 2.4 RECREATION COMMISSION DISCUSSION Supervisor Brower-At Monday evenings board meeting we had some discussions regarding a couple of things, the primary discussion item which came up in the open forum session related to a contract issue with a contract that the Ree. Commission was entering into. Although the newspaper seemed to indicate that I had held up the signature on the contract the truth was I never saw the contract. My signature was never requested on the contract which is totally dis- similar to other contracts we frequently and continuously enter into on a regular basis here at the town. I know I spoke about the situation and had definite concerns about it our Comptroller and Attorney are here this evening as well as the Recreation Commission Chairman Doug Irish and Ree. Commissioners I appreciate all of you coming and attending this meeting. I do think it is an important meeting. I have an issue on the contract signing we will have to split this up but more importantly I feel that after carefully thinking about this particular issue although I voted in favor of hiring the consultant that was recommended that hiring was I believe we did not have enough information. I do not believe that the Commission evaluated proposals from those people that would be interested in providing the services that they are seeking. Even though it is below the twenty thousand dollar threshold its nineteen thousand dollars plus and I think for a project of this importance to the Town in the future if we do not evaluate proposals from those that are interested in seeking this business Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 371 we are not doing our due diligence as a Town. Therefore I suggested we rescind the resolution and I still feel that way. In looking at our purchasing policies another thing popped up and that was that purchases from between five thousand and twenty thousand dollars were required to get a minimum of three price quotes unless the items are State or County Contract pricing. If three quotes are unattainable then attached written justification to the purchase order. That's part of our purchasing policy. One point that did disturb me as Supervisor for Queensbury was the fact that I was never informed that there was an issue about signing this contract. My Counsel is here and I am going to mention point blank that Bob, you never called me on this you never told me there was an issue on it. I was totally surprised the only way I found out about this was thanks to Henry Hess, because Henry was reviewing the contract prior to going on vacation as he reviewed the contract he was missing page two he inquired with Pam as to where page two was she said it must have been missing she provided it to him and then and only then did he see that there was a signature by Doug Irish not identifying him as Rec Commission Chair and the Contractor in question. Both were signed by the way. No place on it was there any place for the Supervisor signature. Even though understanding at last Monday's night meeting was that you indicated to Mr. Irish that he should seek my signature and he didn't. Or told you not to, directed you not to, I do not know what he told you. Town Counsel Hafner-I am surprised at that Dennis, I thought that I had explained it. The question had come up prior, to signing, I had talked with Doug Irish at length recommending that he do what has always been done and let you sign. I had lengthily conversations with the Comptroller and with Harry Hansen about it, I had come done with the conclusion that under State Law that Doug as Chairman of the Rec Commission was also entitled to sign. I hoped that Doug would take my advice and let you sign. I e-mailed Doug the contract for his review the next time I saw it, it was in the office and was signed by Doug. I immediately made a copy of it delivered copies to Henry and to Harry Hansen with copies to the entire Town Board including yourself. I do not know how much quicker I could have gotten things to you. I also on that Monday morning looked for you, see this is exactly a week ago. I looked for you the first time I came in and when I left and at the end of my shift here around noon I was meeting with Henry talking about this exact thing. Where we discussed everything about it and I talked with him and said that I hoped that he would be able to talk to you later in the day and let you know that I was looking for you and pass on my comments. Supervisor Brower-Thank you for the synopsis. Subsequent to our meeting on Monday night I called Harry Hansen and inquired do you remember the inquiries we got earlier this year from interested parties about our rec building and he said yes I do. I said do you still have that information? He said I sure do and I said would you bring it down to me? So, Harry came in with three proposals, one from CT Male Assoe., indicating interest in our rec project. Ree. Chairman Irish-What is the date on that? Supervisor Brower-March 18th 2003. One from the Benier Car Group out of Watertown, New York and one from Bovis Lend Lease a Mr. Richard White that seemed pretty, not only detailed but very professional it even showed our Queensbury Recreation Center on the front of the proposal the information sheet and then proceeded to show other recreational facilities apparently they have been involved with. Which I thought was pretty impressive. I did not see this before Monday's meeting, but to me it confirmed that if none of these companies had even been offered or had a discussion with you maybe we did not do our job as the town in seeking the best proposal or certainly we did not do a complete job. So, that bothered me. I do not know if it bothers any of you? But, with a Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 372 project of this potential magnitude and I have heard figures of ten, fifteen million bandied around I think it is too important a project to not do due diligence on the front end. Unknown-Are those proposals for such a thing as a general contractor or for, we were talking about project manager slash consultant. Supervisor Brower-In follow up to our prior phone conversation this is to me actually regarding the proposed Queensbury Recreational Center I have enclosed a Bovis Lend Lease qualification package for your review. I asked Harry why Doug did not have these and Harry said he did not ask me for them. Ree. Director Harry Hansen-They did not come to me you will notice the names on them are to you and to the purchasing agent and one to me. Supervisor Brower-CT Male is one of our major engineers that does a lot of work for the Town of Queensbury. Noted they were interested in competing for all feasibility and design components ... Ree. Member Connie Goedert-Who was that addressed to Dennis? Supervisor Brower-Harry Hansen. Unknown-That was talking about development as opposed to project manager to help us deal with which one of these companies we might pick. Ree. Chairman Irish-Certainly if the Commission had known about other consultants before we had entered into discussion with Greg Farentino we would sat down with everybody. None of those proposals came to my desk, I did not know of any of them except for I think Bovis sent me an e-mail after we had already set down as a Commission and interviewed Farentino and discussed hiring him and the Commission agreed, they had all met with him and were comfortable with him they liked what he had to say. We spoke or I spoke with Tom McGowan at Glens Falls Schools. Had this information come to us in a timely fashion we would have probably acted on it and interviewed all of them. But, since nobody knew about it except for you and Harry Hansen we had no opportunity to interview anybody. We did what we thought was best for our project. Supervisor Brower-Why wouldn't Harry have known about this? Ree. Chairman Irish-I have no idea, I did not get the information is all I know. It did not come to the Commission. Whether that was because of a routing problem or whatever happened at Town Hall I do not have any control over that. Certainly the project management portion of this project is going to go out to bid. We are not at this point in the game we are not looking for project manager we are looking for a consultant to help us get to the point of hiring an architect. That is why we had him scale his proposal down for it meets the bidding requirements for the towns professional services under your purchasing policy and we moved forward with that information. If this information had been in front of us when we were first sitting down and talking about planning this project, certainly we would have called everybody in and interviewed them and gone from there. At this point in the game I think it is the consensus of our board that we do not want to back track and go back interviewing perspective candidates for it because we are going to an RFP for both an architect and construction manager and building portion of the project. I guess, at this point I am not real sure other than to hear the issues that you expressed to me at Town Board with the entire Commission here I am not really sure what the Commission is here to do tonight. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 373 Supervisor Brower-The first issue is that of contract signatures. Henry since you first brought this to light would you care to elaborate a little. Comptroller Hess-I will probably dodge around this a little bit because I do not know what sequence of events this will come out but, I read the paper, I knew this was going to be on the agenda last week but unfortunately I could not be here. I had asked Jennifer to come in my place and just make everybody aware that the concern of the Comptrollers Office is that had a contract that did not comply, was signed in compliance with the resolution that was passed. Although I acknowledge in writing that, and all the Town Board saw it, that if you want to change your policy you may do that but until you do I have to go with the resolutions you adopted. It did not comply with that, and that we were breaking new ground here and there was an assumption of authority to execute contracts and transactions that never existed before and we needed guidelines to do that. I asked Jennifer to just make the Town Board aware that, that is the objection. It really wasn't you or all the paper projected it as that you were the obstacle here I will admit to the fact that it was the Comptrollers Office that became the obstacle. We are not honoring this contract, we are not booking it because ... Councilman Brewer-When you were talking about the resolution didn't it say that Doug was authorized to sign the contract? Comptroller Hess-No. Ree. Chairman Irish-It said the Commission was authorized to engage KVS services. To me that is the same as giving the authority to sign the contract, the first resolved. Comptroller Hess-There really became a Comptrollers issue because I am looking here and saying I am not unilaterally going to give up an authority that the Town Board has retained for itself and the Supervisor is the elected CO that the Town has. I am not going to unilaterally turn my back while that gets eroded to a Commission without the Town Board acknowledges that, that is what the intent is. That has not happened. I raised my concerns in writing and I expressed them, the Board Members, all got them. I think a couple memos went out there was some e-mail exchanges. Dan and I had a question about it a very valid question. We answered it I know, I talked to Bob a couple of times, Bob did not tell you that we disagreed on this issue every time we talked about it but we did. It is simply because Bob says that he thinks that they have the authority. I am saying fine it may give them, there may be a legality I think the word I used is, is this legal and you know and Bob is the first one to remind me from time to time that legality is a threshold it is not an absolute measure of right and wrong. If you don't do it is it legal? If you don't do it is it illegal? If you do it is it legal if you don't do it is it illegal? It is legal to drive sixty miles but it is still legal to drive forty, fifty, fifty five. I think that is what we have here. The fact that it is legal for Bob, determines that it is legal for them to sign it but is it illegal for the Supervisor to sign it or for the Town Board to retain that authority on its own. Those questions need to be answered. This contract does not comply with the purchasing policy. There was no RFQ, Bill was never, we have a purchasing agent, that says we have contract we route it thorough it was not routed through it does require an RFQ it did require an RFP because the original bid was for thirty nine thousand dollars. Ree. Chairman Irish-No, that was a draft bid. I think I explained all of it to you and realized you did not have a copy of it when we were talking but the proposal was for not to exceed nineteen thousand fifty dollars. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 374 Comptroller Hess-And that is fine so we said under that basis I do not think it complies with the intent of what the purchasing department, what the purchasing policy is but if the Town Board approves this transaction then we will be all right. The Town Board did approve the transaction but it was not executed the way we understood it should be executed. So, it raises a number of other and I am not disputing the Town Boards authority to grant that authority to sign contract to the Recreation Commission but I have to tell you that we have to look at the purchasing policy and make some amendments if you are going to do that. If the Recreation Commission is going to execute contracts does it need to do it in compliance with the purchasing policy as it applies to all other departments? Do transaction get routed through the purchasing agent as they do with all other departments? Do they need to qualify bidders in accordance with the purchasing policy and seek interested other interested bidders proactively seek them as opposed to passively waiting for somebody to come in and say I would like to do that job? Does the Commission authority to willing to raise funds equals the authority you prepared to give it to spend funds? It is really, it has no money, it has a limited amount of money are you going to give it the authority to spend money that you have to provide? Please don't interpret what I am saying as a value judgment that I am against them. That is a very valid question that needs to be answered before we can transact business through the Comptrollers Office. I mean that is just, that is just the way business is done with all other departments. Is there a requirement that Capital Projects, we talked about this earlier and Doug and I had agreed that gees if we are going to go out and do something like this there must be some sense of the scope here. Is this a twenty million dollar project is it a five million dollar project? Are you going to show we what you think a balanced budget might look like? Revenue equaling expenditures, and we have not seen that in any Capital Project we have on the books has those elements prior to the time that we spend too much money on them. I am not concerned about all the independent issues that you are talking about should this guy have done it, should you have used these, I do not care about those issues. The process to me is sacred I mean, my concern is the process of the transaction and how it complies with established procedures. If the legislation gives authority in Bob's opinion he convinces you that's unequivocal that they now have the authority to do something that they have never had fine, then they have it. You have to address the purchasing procedures and the way transactions are processed. I have a hard time I admit that Doug's signature on that contract I have no authority unless Dennis stopped the transaction I had no authority to stop the transaction. If the guy had worked and sent bills in I cannot stop that. But, I have a real hard time when bills come in and they are not authorized by one of the traditional bill authorizers. I will not accept until the Board does something dramatic in its procedures I am not going to accept a voucher signed by the Chairman of the Recreation Commission because there is no implied or granted authority to do that. Councilman Brewer-Having said that can I interject something here, I will not disagree that maybe the Town Board did not get enough information on this project that aside I think Dennis when you read the purchasing policy and I have a problem with this because we hire an Attorney to interpret the law for us and we take his word because he is an Attorney and we are not. Professional services in our purchasing policy says a retention of professional services and consulting services, legal, engineering, auditing, medical ete. exceeding five thousand dollars must be approved by resolution of the Town Board, which we did. To go on where you read Dennis, written request for proposals for particular type of professional services shall be sent to at least three potential qualified professional vendors when the cost of professional services anticipated to exceed twenty thousand dollars in any physical year. We know that this was nineteen thousand the RFP maybe conducted by the department manager with advice approval from the RFP from process of the purchasing manager following Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 375 the RFP process a copy of the Department Managers recommendation should be furnished to the purchasing manager prior to committing the profession or consulting services. So, I think legally we gave the Ree. Commission the authority to do it. Whether we disagree with it now or not we gave him that authority by resolution. We create this policy we make the rules and I think and I am not trying to be smart about this but we directed this contract to take place I do not think you have a right to stop it Dennis or the Comptroller does because he does not agree with it. That is fundamentally what I have a problem with. Agreed that we should look at this hard and long before we do it, the process that Henry is holding so wholly is we set the policy we make the policy we pass the resolution according to the policy and it was stopped. Seven weeks went by and we were not told about it, that is a sin to me. If you disagree with it don't stop me yet.. . seven weeks from the date we passed the resolution to do this before we knew about it last Monday that it was stopped. Councilman Boor-It was not signed until a week ago or so, when did you sign it Doug? Councilman Brewer-Seven weeks ago Councilman Boor-He did not sign it seven weeks ago, he did not even have it. Councilman Brewer-when we talked about this Roger... Ree. Chairman Irish-We had the thirty day referendum... Councilman Boor-We did not know it was signed until tens days.. Councilman Brewer-Seven weeks went by I daily discussed it and nothing ever happened, Dennis never said he was not going to sign it? Comptroller Hess-Dennis did not refuse to sign it. Councilman Brewer-It did not have to be signed by Dennis. Supervisor Brower-I never had the opportunity to sign it. Councilman Brewer-It did not have to be signed by you Dennis, but we agreed to do that, you included. Councilman Boor-Well actually the other thing ... Comptroller Hess-You don't get to tell me that, you do not get to tell me that, that is the case. I get to make some of those judgments on my own and when I look at a resolution and I think it is ambiguous I have the authority to act on that. I am acting and saying that is an ambiguous resolution until you resolve it I have a hard time with it. Councilman Boor-It is ambiguous for a couple of reasons, one of the ambiguities is that implicit, State Law is that Doug can sign it but explicitly in verbiage it is the Comptroller and the Supervisor. Ree. Chairman Irish-That is not what it says. Councilman Boor-It is explicit that they are the ones Ree. Chairman Irish -Open your policy Councilman Boor-I am talking about the resolution Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 376 Ree. Chairman Irish-No, it does not explicitly anything like that. Councilman Boor-It does not say or the Ree. Commissioner. Ree. Chairman Irish-No it say the first resolved gives the Recreation Commission authorizes the Recreation Commission to engage in the ...services, then it says at the end of it that it directs the Supervisor and or the Comptroller to take any other or additional... Councilman Boor-They were never given the opportunity because you consummated the agreement before they saw it, how could they take other steps? You had already signed it and consummated it. Ree. Chairman Irish-The only other step there would be to take would be to pay the bills when they came in. Councilman Boor-Or to say wait a second have we looked at this? I am not trying to argue with you I am saying that the opportunity for them to do what was in the last resolved was never given them because you had already signed it. It was signed when he saw it. So, that option was taken away and I am not hear to argue one side or the other but State Law allows you to do it the way this was written they were going to review it before it was signed. Ree. Chairman Irish-That was not the way it was, when we discussed it that night and when it was passed nobody said go ahead and engage them but we want to have final say on this. If that had happened. Councilman Boor-..maybe would have asked some questions Doug, but the opportunity that we afford in the language of the resolution was not given to us. Councilman Stec-Personally I tend to agree that I would have rather not have the ree. commission chairman sign it, I think it is our past practice ... Ree. Chairman Irish-Let me ask you if legally you have agree that I have the right to sign it. Councilman Stec-That is what the Attorney, but my point is lets assume we say you know what, we screwed up because we did not follow our policy. Then the hold up is tear up your version of the contract hand Dennis a version of the contract. Ree. Chairman Irish-We offered that last week. Supervisor Brower-Well, let me ask you this, who, what part does Harry Hansen play previously in contract signing, wouldn't he be the guy signing the contract on behalf of the commission? Unknown-No. Supervisor Brower-Who is reviewing the vouchers as they come in? Who signs that the work has been done? Ree. Chairman Irish-I will be the first one to admit that the Rec Commission is probably never faced this issue before because they have always kind of set back and you know let whatever happen, happen. You have got a Board now that has agreed they are not going to sit back and just be wall flowers they are going to do their job and their responsibilities that are exercised their responsibilities the way they are described in the law. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 377 Supervisor Brower-Regardless of what Town practices have been. Ree. Chairman Irish-Once you have establish a Commission Dennis you cannot dictate the way we operate. You can certainly abolish the commission that is certainly within your right as a board but you cannot and by reason, I say that because I asked you pointedly for committee for the recreation commission and you told me no we do not have committees and we went to Roger and he agreed to sit in and act as a liaison. That was one of the reasons was to keep the Town Board in the loop on what it was the Recreation Commission was doing. When you approve your budget you do not conditionally approve it for a recreation commission. We submit the budget you approve it or your disapprove it and that is the end of it. You do not get the opportunity to come in and tell us when you do this we want you to do it this way. That is not the way a commission operates. Councilman Stec-We have several members of the Recreation Commission here and I just, by a nod the only question I have do you all feel that you did your due diligence to decide that you knew enough about GDF to enter into the contract? Ree. Member Connie Goedert-I met with this gentleman a couple of times and just so that I know that we are all on the same game plan. Number one, I think we are re-hashing stuff that was re-hashed Monday night and honestly never came to a conclusion. I do not know what miracle is going to hit us tonight to come to conclusion. But, I think that we are getting lost up into a signature and speaking with the Rec Commissioners this evening I was under the influence that we were going to come in feeling that we were justified in having the commissioner, the Chairperson sign the contract, but just say lets pull the contract back from GDF and have the Supervisor's contract, signature go on that contract. My understanding is what heard here is I am not an engineer I am not a builder, I am not any of those things, I am a Funeral Director I have not one idea how we go about building a rec center. What we were hiring this guy was to take us through all those necessary steps to get to a point to get something to hand you guys. Well this is what it is going to cost us this is what we have to do to fund it this is how we are going to pay for it and this is what it is going to cost us to operate. I think our whole project that we have already spent lots of hours on is being lost in a dispute over who can sign the contract and cannot sign the contract. Why don't we just put two signatures on the contact, move the project with the gentleman from GDF for what we wanted for it and that is to take a step by step by step on how to get it to the next step which we do not have at this point. Supervisor Brower-How do you know that they are the best people to take it. Ree. Member Goedert-I do not think anybody is the best people. Rec Chairman Irish-How do we know any of them are. We are all going to go by comfortability with who we are dealing with. None of us have dealt with any of these consultants none of us are contractors or engineers so it comes down to comfortability. Who you are comfortable with in dealing with. We are comfortable with Mr. Farentino. Now that is not to say we wouldn't be comfortable with one of the other project consultants or managers but again we go back to the point of if we had, had the information in a timely fashion we would have interviewed everybody. Having not had that available to us we did what we thought was best in meeting with this guy, finding out what he was about. Certainly if anybody had any problems with him we would have raised the issue and probably not gone with GDF. Now, having said that there is still an opportunity for a project manager which we have not hired yet. This guy is a Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 378 consultant to get us to a Capital Budget to get us to interviewing architects put an RFP out for architects he is not the project manager. There is still an opportunity and that will be out to bid for a project manager. Ree. Member-Dennis to answer your question early you have heard numbers bantered about that is why we cannot give any definite number because we do not know, that was what this guy was going to help us do. Dan, to answer your question I did what some of the other people did including Doug because I spoke to people, he is working on a project now at Glens Falls High School so I went down there and met with people and they are thrilled with him. I did meet with him twice in this room and was very pleased. I had some tough questions for him but I was pretty pleased. Councilman Stec-I got the sense that was the case but I wanted the group to hear it. I know Jack has been trying Ree. Member-All this discussion going on I am the one vote the other way on the Recreation Commission. I do not agree with everything that is going on. Now, it strikes me I do not understand a lot, I do have a masters degree in physical education and recreation in this area that we are talking about which by the way I felt that is part of my knowledge has been ignored. I know that our recreation director has a degree in this field and from time to time I have felt he has been squeezed out of decisions. But, I do not understand how anybody, any of us on our recreation commission even if you say it is the law it still, how can we sign contracts I just do not understand that. I do not understand the concept of it. But, Bob Hafner says we could legally do it so guess we can, I do not question it but I just really don't understand how that is even possible. Mr. Hess says that and you have pointed out that you need to have three people, to me that makes sense. Now, I think what happened is that one person was put in front of us I do not even know his name that took the word Doug, Dr. Etu, Connie, took the word then and I wish now having the knowledge that I have had over this whole thing that I wish now we had done a different project, or process. I think not a wrong decision was made the decision that was made even by this Town Board at the time was the best decision you could make with the limited knowledge you had. As time has gone on and we have gotten more and more knowledge and we have delved into this situation deeper I think that you did not make a wrong decision but I regret the decision that was made at that time with todays knowledge. It is not that we made a bad decision, I just wish I would make a decision better knowledge and different process. My suggest quite naively would be that we would look at two or three different people start maybe all over again. Now, this does not set the project back we can do that in the next three or four or five days. Unknown-You still have a thirty day referendum Jack. Ree. Member-Now, those are the things that I do not have off the top of my head. The other things that happens is that when I try to express my opinion somebody figures out why it is no good. So, I just do not understand this process I do not think it was done correctly but I am going to take the words of those people that and I am the black sheep on this recreation commission... Ree. Chairman Irish-...expressed that opinion before and you never had. Ree. Member-Lets not break it down ... Supervisor Brower-...he is kind of like me regretting my vote on the thing because the more I thought about it I realize we had not really, we had not insisted that the ree. commission do diligence in putting out a request to interview multiple vendors. Mr. Layman here I will let speak for a moment he Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 379 came into my office saying I want to do a permissive referendum, how do I do it? Ree. Chairman Irish-Is he the same guy that is running the Moreau Ree. Center facility thing? Supervisor Brower-I believe so. When I found out though, when he found out that he needed five percent of the registered voters in, that voted in the gubernatorial election, he kind of gave up. Mr. Layman-It was quite a process actually because when I read it on May 19th, I commend the Supervisor and the Board for kind of saying ok, wait a second lets take a look at what we have done. This is a classic dilemma resolution as Coach has said nothing really has been wrong but you know maybe there is a better way here. I am a resident in Queensbury I live here on 10 Willow Road and we do this kind of work. We took another project we did a retreat with the Board and Community leaders we have tied it in with the political process and helped them due diligence we helped them, we did the business plan for them, we have helped them qualify for the empire zone and what I am seeing here, there are two things. One who is the CEO and two I grew up in a community done in the southern tier ...and another situation occurred like this that I am going to tell you what is going to happen. BC Open was started as a community project it has gotten so bad from the political process between the BC Open politics in the village and the PGA that they have actually moved their offices off the golf course and yes they moved it into the mall to be able to have a better retain outlet. But it becomes a power struggle. Before you even go any further you know, I think as the Comptroller has very clearly pointed out, you know lets take a look at what is the due diligence here. I think the RFP should have been presented from what I just heard the RFP initially came in at thirty nine thousand. I do this for a living it doesn't, you call them RFP's we call them RFI's you are looking for a request for information. Then we put it together then we are all interviewed and then you write you RFP. We actually help organizations like this write the RFP and take them through the process. Yes, you do have thirty days but this is talking about master planning for the community for the future and you are tying in a lot of resources and what you are doing with the rec facility here with the College how does it play out with the other school districts what Queensbury is doing and that type of thing and where does that fit into the bigger spectrum. That is the kind of issues and things that you want to plan and put together on and I am the one, I came forward and said gees I do not understand, I did not even know about it and I live here. Ree. Member-One of the issues and we kind of talked about it briefly was that I think, I am ahead of the planning committee for the commission was when I came on board they said you are stuck with this. There was like a survey done and Harry you might know the date it was like 1996 and again 1999. But, it was a smaller one previous to that. But the idea was that, year after year when these things have been done residents of the Town of Queensbury have said can you give us more recreational facilities? We talked to more people on this side of town seem to be the place to put it too. The more we looked at it we said really not much has been done. We have done a lot of things in terms of park development certainly Queensbury has got some of the best parks in the region, but we were looking for an indoor year round facility. Particularly because the recreation department is so booked up, it is so popular a department we have all these people signing up for programs that we needed the space. I am rehashing this but everybody needs to know that so we went ahead and said gee not much has been done since the public was polled all these years ago, we really should not be dragging our feet lets start going. We were not trying to by pass anybody by signing Greg Farentino that was not the point what we were trying to do was get somebody on board that could lead us to where the next step Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 380 would be. Hopefully to get it on the ballot for November, that was our original goal. So, that we did not have to put it off maybe for another year or expend a whole bunch of money having a separate vote, set up sometime next spring. Our intentions were good we are just residents of the Town of Queensbury trying to guide the community into building this recreation center, as several people have said we do not know what we are doing we are going to be consultants to tell us what to do, we have a general idea. Ree. Chairman Irish- I think there is a misconception because the Town Board isn't intimately aware of what it is we are doing every minute that we have not done our duty and we have. We have done what, we have investigated this, certainly we know what is going on with the Queensbury School because we have the majority of our projects there. We really did not leave other than the fact that we didn't interview any additional candidates we did not leave any stone unturned in going forward with this project. It is not a pipe dream for us that we just threw something out and said lets go for it without any plan. We have got a plan we have got a time table and we are moving forward. Is there, maybe we should send a monthly memo or something to the Town Board but I mean, I guess I am just taken back by the impression that the Town Rec Commission isn't exercising due diligence because the Town Board does not know what we are doing. That seems to be the perception. Comptroller Hess-Let me just throw another thought in here and here again we are talking about process and we are talking about specifics. I hold to my determination that this is a tainted contract. The original proposal was for thirty nine thousand dollars and we say if you contemplate that this, the purchasing policy says that if you expect that any a contract will come in at over twenty you need to bid it. Ree. Chairman Irish-In a fiscal year. Comptroller Hess-In a fiscal year, however, the three phases of the contact that we wrote phase 1,11,111 were originally bid at six, nine and six, a total of twenty one thousand dollars. That triggers an RFP. They were written to come in at less than twenty Ree. Chairman Irish-And has never been done before has it. Comptroller Hess-Whether it has been done before or not, is not my determination I am saying that this is a tainted contract and Ree. Chairman Irish-Well, you are not looking at the contract that was considered by the Board, you are looking at a draft contract that was given to the Board by whoever that was not acted upon by this commission. Councilman Boor-But in reality Doug and I go back to this again, the contract was signed before we read it. So, the notion that we could somehow interfere is incorrect because we never even got to see it before it was signed. Supervisor Brower-Well, it was brought up from the floor too... Ree. Chairman Irish-Well, there is a reason it was brought up from the floor. Supervisor Brower-Why was that? Ree. Chairman Irish-Because you told Bob not to draft a resolution that was asked to be drafted by the Attorney for that meeting. Town Counsel Hafner-He just did not ask for it. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 381 Rec. Chairman Irish-That is why it was brought from the floor. That is not out fault. I guess it is our fault because we asked Dan to bring it from the floor. Councilman Boor-That is the other thing is, I sit on this commission why wasn't I, I am hurt. I sit on this commission and you went from the floor out of the blue with him to draft something without a contract. Rec. Chairman Irish-We expected it to be on the agenda that night and you were on vacation. When you left on vacation you thought it was going to be on the agenda. You said I am not going to be there but Councilman Boor-I was there when it was brought from the floor. Ok. I was at that meeting when it was brought from the floor. Town Counsel Hafner-It was a five - 0 vote. Councilman Boor-It does not speak well I do not know why I sit in there sometimes. Rec. Member-But you knew we had asked Harry to get the resolution on the board for us. Councilman Boor-Never saw the contract, never knew, I do not know when you guys did it. I do not know when you decided that, I do not know what to say. Rec. Chairman Iris-Maybe you were not at that meeting when we voted to Joe, probably has the minutes when we agreed to go to the Town Board with a resolution requesting the approval for the engagement of them, I thought you were at that meeting. Councilman Boor-I do not think when you bring something from the floor, it is risky when you say we want to have it on the November ballot is unrealistic Rec. Chairman Irish-It is not... Councilman Boor-It is if you want to do a good job, Doug, I sit on the commission and I know that there is even discussions about a sixty four hundred dollar contract to have environmental work done and the very commission said, you know what we should probably get some other prices. So, it was important enough on that issue to go to RFP but not on a multi million dollar one, it is hard to get the feel for why this is. Rec. Chairman Irish-That is the thing that amazes me you guys you are talking about a multi million dollar contact and we are talking about getting a guy to get us to the point so we know how much this is. And we are playing around here because I signed the contract and it did not have Dennis's name on it. Councilman Boor-No, that is not it. Rec. Chairman Irish-That is why we are here. Councilman Boor-It is because .. Rec. Chairman Irish-If Dennis's name on it we would not even be here. Councilman Boor-Dennis did not get to review it before it was consummated. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 382 Rec. Chairman Irish-That is my point. If it had Dennis's name we wouldn't be here. Councilman Boor-In the resolution it says that he has to see it. Supervisor Brower-In retro spec maybe it is a blessing that it did not have my name on it because I think we have an opportunity to rescind the resolution and do the right thing and Mr. White who happens to be from BOVIS. Do you have any opinion on this? Mr.White-First off let me preface this the guys the (new tape) all over Glens Falls we are doing projects in this area. The services that you are looking for are not unusual. The dollars you might be paying I cannot second guess those and I know what we have charged for similar things. I think by not it least opening for other people to talk to them and please do not take this the wrong way but not opening the door you do not you are dealing with kind of one hand over one eye type of thing. This should be in the... for future consideration...There is a right way to do it and there is a less than right way to do it. The more people you can talk to the more information you can get the more, your decisions can be based on information and judgments and other experiences. You got references from one person or two people and I can give you a couple that kicked him off jobs. Now, I am not here to shoot him in the foot, he does a good job I do not know all the considerations over there. There are other things out there and when you do a formal RFP you are looking for more recommendations and more references than maybe what you got and that is going to give you more balance view of the firm that you are talking to. You guys have a tough situation here relative to signatures and contractibility and my wife is a Comptroller in ....1 listen to these types of conversations all the time, I know what is going on here. That is not something that we deal with. We are here basically the services that we would offer to counsel you and to move you in that direction. If we want us to help, had we been involved to develop and RFP architects to provide pre lists of those firms that have done this type of work in the past to base it on our experience we would be happy to do that. We are construction managers. Typically our role comes on usually when the architects in line or about ready to get going, because that is ...come from. He does not have the benefit to give you numbers at this point. Rec. Chairman Irish-That is not what we hired at this point. That is my issue. Mr. White-One thing I would question or caution you one of the statements that I heard tonight was that he is going to come up with the numbers to help you go to referendum. I do not know what he is going to base it on because I know from his personal experience he doesn't have that ability and you are not talking about having anything to even reference it on, like a schematic drawing or a conceptual plan. Rec. Chairman Irish-No, he is going to work with the architect. Mr. White-There is no architect yet. What I am saying is you need to move to that level and once you moved into that level you have moved into ...services that is all. Rec. Member-I think this conversation has just stepped over the line the man isn't here to defend himself and I think these statements are absolutely out of line. Supervisor Brower-I think they are right on target. Rec. Member- I don't. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 383 Supervisor Brower-...more than anything I am Rec. Member-Can I say something now? Supervisor Brower-No. I am speaking. Mr. White-Let me step in, I apologize you are absolutely correct he should be here he should have the ability to comment on that. Supervisor Brower-I am going to have a motion on Monday to rescind the resolution and if you guys don't want to support it that is fine. Comptroller Hess-Let me just throw another thing in, and this goes back to a couple weeks before the resolution, before the contract was brought forth and at that time we had not seen the draft what we call the draft proposal we ended up seeing the draft proposal after the final proposal was adopted. Back on May the 14th I cautioned the Town Board and this was after talking to Doug and Harry and Bob that the proposed the hiring of the consultant may not comply with the Town's purchasing policy. We raised the issue at that time that, that I understand that the professional services proposal submitted to the Recreation Commission is for a broader scope and a higher cost than the nineteen thousand dollar approval the Recreation Commission is seeking from the Town Board. Why nineteen thousand dollar contact for professional services might not always require bidding this transaction gives the appearance of being processed incrementally to fall under the twenty thousand dollar per year bidding exclusion. With the possible appearance of transaction manipulation and even perhaps vendor favoritism especially in view of the ultimate scope and expense of the contemplated capital project I recommend that this transaction follow the town purchasing policy to the letter. That was back on the 14th. Rec. Member-And we did that. Comptroller Hess-No, we did not because it was incrementally brought down it was not bid. Once you got a bid of that amount especially when the draft policy was amended and I did not know that at the time. We are just taking three elements of it and adopting that, that is not what happened, we took three elements and we cut it below the twenty thousand dollars. It gives the appearance and I am not saying it does show favoritism I am not saying it does manipulate the prices but it gives that appearance. For that reason I still think the contract is tainted. Supervisor Brower-Mr. Fusco, I will give you an opportunity to speak, I am sorry. Mr. Fusco-I said what I was going to say Dennis, I said, at the moment it was stepped over the line. When somebody isn't in here to defend themselves. I will say one other thing we are getting bogged down this is far too important project and we are getting bogged down and all of this minutia and I think we need to move forward. I do not know what the resolution is going to be that is your job as a Town to decide but we are getting, it is like Roger said the other night we are getting refocused. The whole idea, these guys in the paper that put this...are going to shift the whole focus away from an extremely important project to political infighting and bickering. That is basically what we are looking at. I think that is a shame. Comptroller Hess-That is exactly what we are trying to, if we can get this thing on track it will. Rec. Member Fusco-Henry with all due respect this is a power struggle. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 384 Councilman Brewer-Why don't we end all this nonsense like everybody said here. Councilman Boor-I think everybody should have an opportunity to speak since we have granted some. Supervisor Brower-Betty. Mrs. Betty Monahan-I think and I wonder some of the things that I am hearing, because I am hearing this person that is coming in to help them write an RFP for architects as I understand is also going to give you a figure so you can go to a referendum. I do not think that person has that ability it isn't until you get an architect and have some drawings and everybody agrees what that building is going to be in that you could have a figure firm enough that you could go out to the public so they can say we want a referendum. So, I think there is something here that is getting missed and I have sat where you guys have sat and I just do not think you can jump that step like.. Councilman Boor-I do not believe that we can get to the ballot in November for that very reason. We are not talking about quite honestly I have not heard what is going to be in the building in. Mrs. Monahan-The person that you are talking about doing the contract with cannot give you a construction figure. Until you know the components of that building and what is going to be in it, is it going to be bricked faced or is it going to be stucco or whatever you cannot .. anywhere near an accurate figure of what that project is going to cost. He may go to the means book and say ok, commercial figures now are so much per square foot and stuff like that but it is not giving you the finite information that you are going to need to know what the project is really going to cost. It is going to be what kind of floors you are going to have what the facing on the building is going to be etc. I think what you hoped you were going to accomplish you are not going to accomplish until you have an architect and sit down with that architect and tell him consensus what this building is going to encompass. Unknown-Let me address the political infighting, first of all Town the Rec Department does a wonderful job in this community managing the recreational facilities. This is a major component for the future we are all going to be dead and people are going to be enjoying this thing. But, the thing that I am hearing that is really striking in the management of the committee where does the rec. department, is it a department head. Why doesn't the rec department give monthly to the Town Board or whatever like I am just talking from a business manager perspective. They cannot have complete antimony. The Board is supposed to be the stewards and the Supervisor that is supposed to be the CEO. To have them unilaterally have the ability to just do things is not I think is good due diligence. I do not know... Mrs. Monanhan-You need to read New York State Law establishing a recreation commission and see the power that they are given under New York State Law and that will answer your question. Councilman Brewer-As somebody else said I think we are missing the point here, I think the Rec. Commission their intentions were pure like Jack said maybe we did not do anything wrong but maybe we did not do it right. So, can we go from this point, it is not going to be on the ballot this year Doug as much as everybody wants it to be. I think, as I think about it we have to define what the project is that has been said what do we want and maybe we have to hire or look at another half a dozen people. It is not going to be the end of the world if Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 385 this goes on until next year, maybe it will be a better project. It will be a better project. Councilman Boor-If we could all leave without being at each other it is going to make a big difference. Councilman Brewer-I will be the first one to say that I get hot tempered and I get as hard as that is for me to say, it happens, I think we ought to put that behind us and move on. Rec. Chairman Irish-To answer your question I guess from speaking with the Commissioners earlier tonight that were here, our opinion is that we do not see any problem with it. You guys have to do whatever you think you have to do. Rec. Member-I do not remember you speaking to me? Rec. Chairman Irish..I said the Commissioners that were here when I was speaking to them Jack, ok. Rec. Member-Did I show up late again? Rec. Chairman Irish-Yes. Councilman Brewer-Nobody should get the intention that Doug came to us and said I need a resolution to do this, we had a workshop and talked about what was going to be done and maybe it is all of our faults that we did not do it the right way. Maybe it could be on the ballot. Councilman Boor-...do it the right way Councilman Brewer-I understand that. Councilman Boor-I think you are right on. Councilman Brewer-I think we ought to take a week off next week we have a meeting Monday we will have another workshop. Well, Connie you shake your head and I get disappointed but.. Mrs. Goedert-Could you do me a favor we have more meetings lets set a time and lets meet and stay within the calendar time and get it done and over with because...Nine o'Clock at night being on a calendar ... Councilman Brewer-It was because of a conflict with the Attorney that is why. Councilman Boor-He had to be in Fort Ann. Mrs. Goedert-I totally understand that Councilman Boor-We got into trouble because we had one meeting without the Comptroller that started it. Councilman Brewer-It does not have to be a Monday, it could be a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday whatever you want. Saturday afternoon I do not care. But, we have to know what we are going to build before we start talking about. Rec. Chairman Irish-I think before you get to that issue you need to address the issue of your purchasing policy the authority of the Recreation Commission. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 386 Councilman Brewer-I think we can all do this together Doug. And it will not be an issue. The fighting back and forth and I fought for you just as much as you did and I thought Dennis was wrong and I still think he was wrong by stopping the contract. Supervisor Brower- I did not stop the contract. Councilman Brewer-Well, whatever happened Dennis you know what I mean. Henry stopped the contract, ok? I meant that it did not go forward. Maybe it is a good thing that you did it. Supervisor Brower-Actually I think it was a blessing in disguise. Councilman Brewer-Well, maybe it is but that is behind us now, so lets just put it aside and step forward. Supervisor Brower-We might actually be able to save ... Unknown-Dennis, regardless of what you do I would hope that it doesn't take a whole year which as the implication to get it done. In other words, lets say you go though...talking about I personally would look at it and I have some experience with this I would look at six months and say you know fine if we are ready to go in six months then you have to also as a Board say are we going to spend the money for a referendum? I certainly hope it does not take the year to get the thing started, because I think it is a very important project and especially in this side of town and I think we need a swimming pool and I think we need to balance off Queensbury School even though I am on the Board too, and things like that. I would just hope my comment is don't let this drag very long. Do it professionally and quickly. Councilman Brewer-It certainly will be next year it will not be this year, it could be in January. Councilman Boor-Certainly nobody wants to pay for a special election but when you look at the scale of the project it is a drop in the bucket. It is has to be a special election that is not that expensive compared to the benefits after words. I do not want to rush into the biggest project that this town might ever take on because we want to get it in quick. We can move expeditiously, thoughtfully and arrive at a good product within six months a year. I do not see a problem. Councilman Brewer-I do not think it has to take that long. Councilman Boor-Well it might not have to, but you know what in the greater scheme of things if it is done correctly we all benefit. I do not think that there is anybody in this room that doesn't want to see this project. That is the one thing that unites us and that is the thing that we have got to remember. Rec. Chairman Irish-Every time you make that statement that we do this thing the right way it assumes that we didn't the Recreation Commission. Councilman Boor-That is your take on it. Rec. Chairman Irish-No it is not. Councilman Boor-It is a basic Rec. Chairman Irish-It is a perception that you are throwing out there as a Town Board Member that we didn't do our duty. Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 387 Councilman Boor-I did not say that. Councilman Turner-Doug, didn't I walk up to you after the last meeting and say to you Doug, you have sit on the Town Board, Connie sat on the Town Board we never, never did it this way. The Town Board always approved any contract. I do not care what that book says the Town Board always approves a contract. Councilman Boor-This is not a personnel dig on anybody. Rec. Chairman Irish-I did not say it was personal. Councilman Boor-It comes across I get the feeling that I am knocking you and the fact that I want to do it right means that we are doing it wrong. I just say, I think everybody wants to do everything they are involved in right. We have got to work together to do it right. I do not think anybody enjoys this environment where it is like ... Mrs. Monahan-May I suggest instead of saying do it right do it for the best benefit of the residents of this town? Councilman Boor-I am sorry if I gave the impression. Councilman Brewer-I think that is what everybody intention in this room is Betty, but .. Mrs. Monahan-But I thought maybe we could get off those semantics. Councilman Brewer-Why don't we pick a day like Connie said, pick a time and let that be the only item on the agenda. We will find out, I honestly do not know what this building is going to be. I can remember when the discussion was a five million dollars, I have heard twenty million dollars, I have heard fifteen million dollars. I do not have a problem with any of them as long as I know what the heck it is. Rec. Chairman Irish-We offered to present a conceptual plan for you? Councilman Brewer-Give us a date. Pick a date right now we are all here. Rec. Chairman Irish-Paul would have to pick a date. Rec. Member-I don't care. Discussion held regarding date of next meeting...July 22nd. 2003 7:00 P.M. To define project, set by parameter as to what we want to hire... RESOLUITON ADJOURNING TOWN BOARD MEETING RESOLUTION NO. 328.2003 INTRODUCED BY: Mr. Tim Brewer WHO MOVED FOR ITS ADOPTION SECONDED BY: Mr. Theodore Turner RESOLVED, that the Town Board Special Meeting is hereby adjourned by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Boor, Mr. Turner, Mr. Stec, Mr. Brewer, Mr. Brower NOES: None Special Town Board Meeting 07-14-2003 MTG. #29 388 ABSENT: None Respectfully submitted, Miss Darleen M. Dougher Town Clerk-Queensbury