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The regular meeting of the Mechanicville City Council was held at the Central Fire Station, North Main Street, Mechanicville, NY, on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. Mayor Sylvester opened the meeting at 3:03 p.m. Roll Call: Mayor
Sylvester - present Comm. Seber led the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Mayor Sylvester, seconded by Comm. Seber, moved that the minutes of the regular meeting of March 3, 2010 be accepted as prepared. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Mayor Sylvester read his correspondence: 1.) Request for a tag day on May 22nd for the Red Raiders Football/ Cheerleader Organization. The date is available. 2.) Request for a tag day on May 1st for the Mechanicville Area Community Service Center. The date is available. Mayor Sylvester said there is a resolution for the XO Tower on the agenda that will be tabled today because they haven’t gotten the contract yet. Said they will act on it at the next meeting. Comm. Seber said they just finished tax collection without penalty on March 15th. Said they sent out 1510 bills and they received back 1261 bills. Said the warrant was $2,954,709.68 which includes county, city, county sewer as well as re-levied sewer and water for the city and they collected $2,508,254.52 which is about 85.36% collection rate. Said water and sewer bills are going out April 1st and residents will have until May 31st, two months, to pay those without penalty. Said he just wanted to mention that BJ Farms and Debs down here, they set up for several months at a time and each time they come in and apply for a license permit they need to go to the Planning Board. Said down the road sometime they should address this, your first time in you should go to the Planning Board but after that, as long as nothing changes dramatically, it seems like a waste of time to him that they have to keep going to the board. Said maybe they can address that down the road at a future meeting if the council wants to go in that direction. Said Val went to court March 5th, they did have someone show up but the Judge ruled in our favor and they will have title to these properties at some point but the paper work has to be worked out first and then they will have title to 6 properties. Said they will have an auction around August 2nd if there are any left but let’s hope there’s not. Comm. Chauvin had nothing to report at this time. Comm. Higgins said in the next few weeks NYSEG will be cleaning gas lines on Saratoga Avenue and Round Lake Avenue and will be doing Round Lake Avenue first. Said they took the big trees down on Park Avenue and they will replace them with small ones which are a lot cheaper. Comm. Hipwell had nothing to report at this time. Mr. Serbalik asked to go into executive session after the meeting to discuss a personnel issue. Chief Waldron wished everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day and asked everyone to please drive careful. Said they will have DWI patrols out tonight and all weekend so he’s reminding them to drive carefully. Said he’s still working on the 911 house numbers as they asked him to do at the last meeting. Said he’s working with John Holland making sure all houses have numbers. Mayor Sylvester said they will table the resolution on the XO Tower until they get the contract to sign. Said another resolution they will be asking our representatives to change the name of our Post Office in honor of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who came to Mechanicville back in 1966. Comm. Seber asked if the Post Office wants this and where did it come from. Said he’s not saying he’s not for this, it just surprised him. Comm. Hipwell said he went to the Post Office and they didn’t have a problem with it. Said he asked why he wants to do it, said when he was a child he met the guy personally when Jack Connors was Mayor and everybody else was doing something so he figured on his own to talk to the Post Office. Said our Post Office and Albany can’t do it, it’s got to go to Congress so we have to do it this way. Mayor Sylvester made a motion to close the regular meeting to go into a Public Hearing to receive public comment on a possible grant application to the New York State Office of Community Renewal under the 2010 Annual Competitive Round Grant Program for Community Development activities at 3:11 p.m., seconded by Comm. Seber. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Comm. Seber attested to the fact that the notice was published in the newspaper. Mayor Sylvester said they are holding the public hearing at the afternoon meeting because of the fact that the application has to be put in right away. Called upon Rachel Selsky of Camoin Associates to explain the application. Ms. Selsky said she’s working on an application for the city. Said the city is considering applying for a grant from the Office of Community Renewal for a block grant. Said there is 40 million dollars available for municipalities across the state. Eligible municipalities are towns, villages and cities with population under 50,000 so the city if eligible. Said the applicants must ensure that the activity they are going for meets one of the national objectives which includes benefit to low and moderate income households, elimination of slums and blight that is an eminent threat to the health an d safety of the community and at least 50% of the funds requested must benefit low to moderate income persons. Said low to moderate means their household income is 80% or below the area median income. Said in January 2010 the Office of Community Renewal asked for communities to submit proposals for what they would like to do with the funds. Said the funds can be used for a variety of things, either housing rehab, home ownership, private water systems, construction of new affordable housing or public facilities like public infrastructure or service related projects. Said just last year the city got one to improve the waste water system. Said the grant ceiling for housing application is $400,000 and also $400,000 for public facility applications. Said the grant application is due April 23rd and all the applications are compared to other applications in the area. Said the City of Mechanicville is considering applying for a grant to assist low to moderate income households and individuals with general housing rehabilitation needs and all the rehab to assist low to moderate income households. Asked if anyone had any questions or input they want to give them about considering applying for, type of grant. Sam Carabis asked if that was the CDBG Grant. Ms. Selsky said it was. Comm. Seber said just about what the Mayor said, they are having this meeting in the afternoon because it’s required that they have two public hearings and because of the timing of the grant application, it was too close to have the two public hearings in April so they chose today and there will be another public hearing on this subject at their April 7th meeting as well. Ms. Selsky said right, this meeting is really to introduce the idea of what they have in mind and at the next meeting they will be more specific about what the city is proposing, the specific of the grant and there will be a resolution at that meeting. Comm. Seber said the second point is there’s an administrative component in the grant as well, 8% of the value of the grant, whatever that turns out to be, would be used for administrative costs. Said in other words if Camoin administers the program for us, their fees would come out of the grant, any expense they incur internally whether they have to hire somebody to do some work or whether internally they use some staff to do some work, their time will be reimbursable as well so it’s not going to come out of public funds, if we successful, it will come out of the grant. Man from Gazette asked if it was a matching grant. Comm. Seber said no. Ms. Selsky said there are a number of different ways to set up; it’s really up to the city about how they want to do it. Said conversations she’s had so far sounds like they are interested in doing for homeowners, it can be a full out grant but if it’s someone who rents their property, you can approve tenant occupied, there will be about a 25% requirement from the homeowner. Comm. Seber said the city has no match in this. Ms. Selsky said that is correct. Said the city is also applying for a home grant which will also help low to moderate income individuals with housing rehabilitation. Said hopefully they will get both grants. Mayor Sylvester made a motion to close the public hearing at 3:17 to re-open the regular meeting, seconded by Comm. Higgins. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Mayor Sylvester opened the meeting to public comment, said to state their name and they have 5 minutes. Mary Lou Anatriello, 19 Gilbert Street, said her question has to do with a grant that was owed from our Community Development Office in the past which she believes was over $300,000. Asked what the status is on that. Mayor Sylvester said it was the micro grant and nothing was paid back on that. Said he called HUD in Buffalo numerous times and they said they are still doing their investigations but seeing that’s such a small amount they want the ones that are 6, 7 million dollars that gives them a high profile. Said he contacted them about a month ago. Said some of the problems with the other grants, other than that particular one, is why they couldn’t apply before, they had to get everything straightened out up there and Rachel has done a fantastic job in doing that in a very short period of time compared to other people that he had there. He thanked her for that. Mrs. Anatriello said she’s happy that we are going to get the tax money from the sale of those properties but why does there have to be an interval of 5 months. How long does it take to finalize that work? Comm. Seber said he doesn’t know how long it takes to finalize the papers, say it’s early sometime by time they advertised sometime in May so you are really talking 3 months, 5 months from the time it went to court. Said there are 6 properties on it and they have a situation where one of the properties has filed some court documents which could potentially prolong the process even longer. They settled on the fact that they agreed to push the sale back, at least on that particular property, to at least August 1st. Said that’s shortening their time frame because the court could have held this up in litigation longer than that. Said his plan is to have the sale at 2:00 on August 2nd and hopefully at that time be in the position to put the New York Avenue property, the Montefore property which they actual took title to last year but because of environmental concerns they didn’t put it on the last tax sale, on there as well and possibly 2 parcels the city owns of building property on it as well. Mrs. Anatriello asked if there was any additional information regarding the numbering of buildings in Mechanicville. Mayor Sylvester said Joe spoke about that. Chief Waldron said they talked about this very briefly with John Holland who is going to put something in the paper informing the public that a number is required on all homes and businesses according to State Code. Said it will be done but right now they have their hands full with working on Alexander J. and Zachary Lane with 911 system. Said John is working hard on this. Mrs. Anatriello said in the Express there was an article on Stillwater that their fire department is playing a major role in getting numbers. Asked if anyone approached the fire department regarding being involved. Chief Waldron said he didn’t believe at this stage but thinks it eventually will be. Said Stillwater has a jump on this as they have been doing it for 6 months ahead of them. Comm. Higgins said in June or July County Waste will be giving out garbage cans. Said they are going to try it and there will be no cost to the city. Mayor Sylvester said Dave is thinking that we can get a cheaper rate on our garbage collection if we had these pails with arms so there only has to be one guy on the truck and not two to left these pails up. Said he doesn’t know how it will work with our parking situation in Mechanicville, the pails will have to be brought out alongside the automobile for this way to work. Said the only drawback to it if there are extra bags and the guy has to get off the truck, they will charge for it. Comm. Higgins said spring cleanup will be the week of the 24th of May, city wide. Mayor Sylvester read RES. NO.
35-10 CITY REQUESTING THE Introduced by Mayor Sylvester, seconded by Comm. Hipwell. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Comm. Chauvin read RES. NO. 36-10 PAYROLL AND VOUCHERS Introduced by Comm. Chauvin, seconded by Mayor Sylvester. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Comm. Seber made a motion to table RES. NO. 34-10 XO TOWER, seconded by Mayor Sylvester. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Mayor Sylvester made a motion to close the regular meeting at 3:29 p.m. to go into executive session, seconded by Comm. Hipwell. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Comm. Seber, seconded by Mayor Sylvester, moved that the executive session be closed at 4:09 p.m. to re-open the regular meeting. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. Mayor Sylvester, seconded by Comm. Higgins, moved that the regular meeting be adjourned at 4:10 p.m. Roll Call: Affirmative – all. Negative – none. |